University of Virginia Library

4. CHAPTER IV.

Redwood joined his friend, and they
embarked together for Europe, furnished
with every facility for an introduction
to good society which Americans
could then procure. They visited Paris,
and gained admission to its highest
literary circles: to society the most
dangerous, and the most captivating,
men and women, who from having been
born thralls to the despotic dogmas and
pompous ritual of the Romish church,
had identified the corruptions of Christianity

with its truth, and rejecting the
galling yoke, had loosened all necessary
and salutary restraints. There was in
them much to be admired by a virtuous
person, much to excite the sympathy of
the representative of a young republic,
for they had an unaffected zeal for
the happiness of their species, and a
genuine hatred of every mode of tyranny.
They had too an amenity and exquisite
refinement of manners, which they owed
to the vital spirit that Christianity had
infused into civilized life, and which
remained after the spirit had departed;
as the body from which the soul has fled
retains, while life is still recent, its fair
proportions, and beautiful expression; or,
as a plant which the passing gale has
uprooted, is still decorated with the
flowers that owed their birth to the
parent earth. In these circles, Redwood's
devotion to intellectual power
(the ruling passion of his youth) revived,
and he resigned himself to the charms
of society, to those pleasures which one
who was their victim, has, with a few
vivid touches, described “la parole n'y
est pas seulement comme ailleurs un
moyen de se communiquev ses idées, ses
sentiments, et ses affaires mais c'est un
instrument dont on aime à jouer et qui
ranime les esprits, comme la musique
chez quelque peuples, et les liqueurs
fortes chez quelques autres.”[1] And in
these circles, Redwood felt that Paris
“etait lieu du monde où l' on pouvoit
le mieux se passer de bonheur.”[2]

While he remained in the French
capital, there was no suspension of excitement,
not an hour for reflection,

scarcely a solitary moment for the impertinent
whispering of conscience. His
wife, the young and innocent creature,
who had surrendered to him the whole
treasure of her affections, abandoned
solitary, sick, and heart-broken, was
scarcely remembered, or if remembered,
was always associated with the dark
cloud with which she had shaded his
future fortunes. But after he had left
Paris, in the further prosecution of his
travels, there were times when she was
remembered; the powers of conscience,
spell-bound by the noise and glare of
society, were awakened by the voice of
the Divinity issuing from the eloquent
places of nature. The pure streams, the
placid lakes, the green hills, and the
“fixed mountains looking tranquillity,”
seemed to reproach him with his desertion
of nature's fairer work; for all the
works of nature are linked together by
an invisible, an “electric chain.” Redwood
hurried from place to place; he
tried the power of novelty, of activity,
he gazed on those objects that have
been the marvel, and the delight of the
world; and when the first excitement
was over, he felt that he could not resist
the great moral law which has indissolubly
joined virtue and happiness.

On his arrival at Rome he found
letters awaiting him there. To avoid
the hazard of discovery, he had determined
that all intercourse between himself
and his wife should be suspended
during his absence, and had purposely
omitted to furnish her with his address—
his anxiety to receive some intelligence
from her, had, however, become so strong
that he would now have willingly incurred
any risk for that gratification. On
turning over his letters, he noticed one
in a hand writing which he recognised
to be that of the clergyman who had
married him to Mary Erwine; he hastily
tore it open. There was within it a
letter from his wife, and a few lines

from the clergyman stated that he had
received that letter enclosed in another,
and post-marked Philadelphia: he was
requested to forward it by the first conveyance,
and to inform him to whom it
was addressed, that the writer had died
two days after closing the letter.

Alsop entered Redwood's apartment
a moment after he had read the letter,
and while he was yet nearly stunned
with the sudden blow: Alsop looked at
the unsealed letter which had fallen
on the floor, and then took the open one
from the unresisting hand of his friend,
who, while he hid his convulsed face
with his hands, exclaimed, “oh, I have
killed her, Alsop—I have killed her!”

“No, no,” replied Alsop, comprehending
at a glance the import of the
intelligence, “nature sentenced her;
you may have hastened the execution—
but that's all. What do you mean by
this drivelling, Redwood? Is it thus you
receive one of fate's happiest strokes?

By my soul, man, I have been a sworn
knight to my lady Fortune for these
twenty years, following her through
good and evil report, and for all my
devoted services, I have never obtained
one such favour.”

There was an audacity in this levity
which quickened to keen resentment the
awakened feelings of Redwood. He
spurned Alsop from him, and resigned
himself to the tide of misery that overwhelmed
his fortitude. As soon as he
could command sufficient courage, he
opened his wife's letter—it was cold
and brief, without a request or reproach;
and simply informed him that after his
departure she had sought a retirement
where she might prepare herself for that
better world, towards which her heavenly
Father in his tender mercy was
evidently leading her: she had found
one; and had received under the humble
roof where she should soon close her
eyes for ever, every kindness that humanity

could render. Should any regrets
induce Redwood to make inquiries about
her, she informed him they would be
vain and useless—vain, for she had taken
every precaution to keep the place of
her retreat secret—and useless, for she
should then be where no human being
could confer happiness, or inflict misery
on her. Some portions of the letter
betrayed strong emotions, but apparently
it did not result from the relations
which had subsisted between herself and
him, to whom she wrote. It was an
elevated state of feeling with which no
personal considerations seemed to mingle,
in which she regarded what had passed,
not as offences against herself, but as
portending misery to Redwood. The
letter concluded thus—“you will not,”
she said, “need the assurance of my
forgiveness; believe me I have no sterner
feeling than pity for you. I have sought,
and till my heart is stilled in death, I
shall seek for you his mercy who came
to heal the sick, to seek the lost, and to
restore the wanderer. Farewell, Redwood,
God grant the prayer of your
dying wife.”

“And is this all,” thought Redwood,
“that remains to me of the tenderness of
youthful love; of that innocent generous
affection, that questioned not, suspected
not? oh, I have most foully betrayed
her trust! we are severed for ever
—yes, for ever; for surely if there is a
heaven, she has entered it; and I—I have
no place—no hope there. I could have
borne reproaches, invectives, any thing
I could have borne better than this calm
tone which pronounces the sentence of
death—eternal death to our union.”

There is perhaps no keener suffering
to a generous mind, than the consciousness
of having inflicted a wrong which
cannot be repaired. Redwood's first
hasty resolution was to make the poor
amends in his power, to return to his
country, proclaim his marriage with

Mary Erwine, and endure the infamy
his desertion deserved. No sacrifice
appeared to him too great to appease
the clamours of his conscience, no self-mortification
too severe, if he might
thereby pay a tribute to her memory,
whose life he had embittered and cut off
in its early prime.

But after the first access of grief and
contrition gave place to calm and natural
considerations, he saw that however
just might be his conduct, still it must be
quite useless to the injured being whom
he could no longer serve nor harm.
She was an orphan, without any near
connexions to inquire after, or to be
afflicted by her destiny: why then
should he publish his own infamy, which
could never be mitigated in the eye of
the world by the knowledge of the virtuous
intention and severe remorse,
which, as Redwood hoped, in some
measure softened its deepest colouring?
These were certainly reasonable considerations;

and though every one must
wish that Redwood had followed the
simple dictate of right, no one who
knows how very cogent arguments
appear on that side to which the inclinations
lean, will be surprised that his virtuous
resolutions should have died away,
and his good emotions have subsided;
but they did not subside without permanent
effects. The wave retreated, but
its ravages remained; and Henry Redwood
carried through life a fast-rooted
misery, a sense of injustice recklessly
committed; a feeling of degradation that
led him to turn from all that is fair and
good, as a sick eye shuts out the light of
heaven.

Redwood avoided the poisonous society
of Alsop. He left Rome after wandering
for a little time about its magnificent
ruins; the melancholy tone of his mind
suiting well with their gloomy grandeur.
From Italy he repaired to England, and
after rambling over our parent land,

and admiring without enjoying its beauties,
he returned to his native country.

Quite indifferent to his own domestic
fate, he yielded a ready compliance to
the importunate wishes of his father and
mother, and solicited and easily obtained
the hand of his cousin Maria Manning, a
spoilt child and flattered beauty. Her
girlish preference of her handsome cousin
had been stimulated by the difficulty
of achieving the conquest of his affections;
and if her vanity had been piqued
by his long apparent indifference and
protracted absence, it was quite soothed
by the professedly unqualified admiration
of one who had gazed on foreign
beauties, and had been received with
favour in the circles of rank and fashion
in countries more polished than our own.
The ceremony of Redwood's marriage
was celebrated with all due pomp and
circumstance. A troop of gratified
friends attended him to the altar, whither
he led his beautiful bride, the ido

of fashion and the favourite of fortune:
one person alone in all the assembly
rightly interpreted his faltering voice,
restless movements, and changing colour,
and the fixed gaze that proved his
thoughts intent on the visions of his
imagination. It was the same church
to which, at twilight, and in secrecy he
had led the trustful girl, whose artless
tenderness, simple and spiritual beauty,
and unsuspecting confidence, haunted
him at this moment. The same clergyman
officiated who had then recorded
his plighted faith. Neither the dogmas
of a selfish philosophy, nor the training
of the world had indurated Redwood's
heart. At the moment the service concluded,
he staggered from the side of
his bride, and caught hold of the railing
around the altar. The clergyman whispered,
“you betray yourself, Mr. Redwood.”
His father bustling up to him,
called him in the same breath, “a lucky
dog and an odd fish;” and his young
friends crowding around him, mingled
with their congratulation well-timed
raillery of his timidity. Recovering his
self-possession, he parried their attacks
skilfully, and apologized to his wife with
the adroit courtesy of a well-bred man;
and she, with the happy facility of habitual
vanity, not knowing what his
emotion meant, believed it meant something
flattering to herself.

Redwood now entered on the career
of politics. His wife was the bright
cynosure of the fashionable world; and
both were the envy of those who form
their childish judgments by externals,
forgetting that the most brilliant hues
are reflected by empty vapours. Mrs
Redwood survived her marriage but a
few years, and left at her death one
child, Caroline, whom she consigned to
her mother. The child was accordingly
transferred to the care of Mrs. Olney;
and conveyed to Charleston, S. Carolina,
the residence of that lady, who evinced

her grief for the death of her daughter,
by lavishing on the child a twofold measure
of the indulgences and flatteries
that had spoiled the mother.

Mrs. Olney's notions of education
were not peculiar. In her view, the few
accomplishments quite indispensable to a
young lady, were dancing, music, and
French. To attain them, she used all
the arts of persuasion and bribery; she
procured a French governess who was a
monument of patience; she employed a
succession of teachers, that much enduring
order, who bore with all long suffering,
the young lady's indolence, caprices,
and tyranny. At the age of seven, the
grandmother's vanity no longer brooking
delay, the child was produced at
balls and routs, where her singular
beauty attracted every eye, and her
dexterous, graceful management of her
little person, already disciplined to the
rules of Vestris, called forth loud applauses.
The child and grandmother

were alike bewildered with the incense
that was offered to the infant belle, and
future heiress; and alike unconscious of
the sidelong looks of contempt and
whispered sneers which their pride and
folly provoked. At fourteen Miss. Redwood,
according to the universal phrase
to express the debût of a young lady,
was “brought out,” that is, entered the
lists as a candidate for the admiration
of fashion, and the pretensions of lovers.
At eighteen, the period which has been
selected to introduce her to our readers;
she was the idol of the fashionable
world, and as completely au fait in all its
arts and mysteries, as a veteran belle of
five-and-twenty.

Mr. Redwood had received the noblest
gifts of his Creator: a mind that naturally
aspired to heaven, and sensibilities
that inclined him to all that was pure,
and good, and lovely. The worldly advantages
he possessed would have been
the means of happiness to a vulgar, or

even an ordinary character; but they
had no control over a spirit that could
not endure to be limited to the objects of
selfish gratification, to bound its desires
and pursuits within the earthy prison-house.
After a few years, he, wearied
of the toil and strife of political life, resigned
its honours, and embarked for
Europe, from whence, after having
worn out two or three years in a vain
effort to escape from the demons of
restlessness and ennui, he returned to
his own country to seek happiness,
where none but the good find it, at home.
He was surprised with the ripened
beauty of his daughter, but most severely
mortified to find her just what he ought
to have expected from the influences to
which he had abandoned her. He had
never felt so strong an affection for the
child as would seem to have been natural.
His indifference to her mother,
the circumstances that preceded his
marriage, and perhaps the child's resemblance
to the parent, accounted in part
for this want of affection; and the carelessness
that was the result of it was to
be expected from one governed more
by casual impulses than principle.

Mr. Redwood hoped it was not too
late to repair his fault. He perceived
that his daughter possessed spirit and talents
not quite extinguished by her mode
of education and life; and for the purpose
of breaking off all unfavourable
associations, and removing her from the
influence of her doating grandmother,
he resolved on a tour through the northern
states.

Mr. Redwood hoped too that this
jaunt might lead to the accomplishment
of a project which he had long secretly
cherished; a union between his daughter
and Charles Westall, the son of his
earliest friend. He had transferred to
the son the strong affection he bore to
his father; and though he had not seen
him since his childhood, he had from

report, and from an occasional correspondence,
conceived the highest opinion
of his character. Time and philosophy
had failed to subdue Mr. Redwood's
ardent temperament: he still pressed on
with eagerness to the accomplishment
of his wishes, flattering himself all the
while that he had ceased to be the dupe
of the promises which the future makes
to the inexperienced and the hopeful.

Mr. Redwood and his daughter had
made the fashionable tour, that is to
say, had visited the lakes of Niagara,
and the Canadas, and had turned their
course towards Boston, when the unfortunate
accident which has been mentioned
put a stop to their progress, and
deposited them for a while at the house
of a respectable New England farmer.