 | CHAPTER II. Ormond, or, The secret witness |  |
2. CHAPTER II.
Thus in a moment was this man thrown from
the summit of affluence to the lowest indigence.
He had been habituated to independance and
ease. This reverse, therefore, was the harder to
bear. His present situation was much worse
than at his father's death. Then he was sanguine
with youth and glowing with health. He possessed
a fund on which he could commence his operations.
Materials were at hand, and nothing
was wanted but skill to use them. Now he had
advanced in life. His frame was not exempt
from infirmity. He had so long reposed on the
bosom of opulence and enjoyed the respect attendant
on wealth, that he felt himself totally incapacitated
for a new station. His misfortune
had not been foreseen. It was imbittered by the
consciousness of his own imprudence, and by recollecting
that the serpent which had stung him,
was nurtured in his own bosom.
It was not merely frugal fare and an humble
dwelling to which he was condemned. The evils
to be dreaded were beggary and contempt.
Luxury and leisure were not merely denied him.
He must bend all his efforts to procure cloathing
and food, to preserve his family from nakedness
and famine. His spirit would not brook dependance.
To live upon charity, or to take advantage
of the compassion of his friends, was a destiny
far worse than any other. To this therefore
he would not consent. However irksome
and painful it might prove, he determined to procure
his bread by the labour of his hands.
But to what scene or kind of employment
should he betake himself? He could not endure
which had witnessed his prosperity. One of
his first measures was to remove from New-York
to Philadelphia. How should he employ himself
in his new abode? Painting, the art in which
he was expert, would not afford him the means
of subsistence. Tho' no despicable musician, he
did not esteem himself qualified to be a teacher
of this art. This profession, besides, was treated
by his new neighbours, with general, though unmerited
contempt. There were few things on
which he prided himself more than on the facilities
and elegances of his penmanship. He was
besides well acquainted with arithmetic and accompting.
He concluded therefore, to offer his
services as a writer in a public office. This employment
demanded little bodily exertion. He
had spent much of his time at the book and the
desk: his new occupation, therefore, was further
recommended by its resemblance to his ancient
modes of life.
The first situation of this kind, for which he
applied, he obtained. The duties were constant,
but not otherwise toilsome or arduons.
The emoluments were slender, but by contracting,
within limits as narrow as possible, his expenses,
they could be made subservient to the
mere purposes of subsistence. He hired a small
house in the suburbs of the city. It consisted of
a room above and below, and a kitchen. His
wife, daughter and one girl, composed its inhabitants.
As long as his mind was occupied in projecting
and executing these arrangements, it was diverted
from uneasy contemplations. When his life
became uniform, and day followed day in monotonous
succession, and the novelty of his employment
likewise to fade, and was succeeded by unconquerable
melancholy. His present condition was
in every respect the contrast of his former. His
servitude was intolerable. He was associated
with sordid hirelings, gross and uneducated, who
treated his age with rude familiarity, and insulted
his ears with ribaldry and scurril jests. He was
subject to command, and had his portion of daily
drudgery allotted to him, to be performed for a
pittance no more than would buy the bread which
he daily consumed. The task assigned him was
technical and formal. He was perpetually encumbered
with the rubbish of law, and waded
with laborious steps through its endless tautologies,
its impertinent circuities, its lying assertions,
and hateful artifices. Nothing occurred
to relieve or diversify the scene. It was one tedious
round of scrawling and jargon; a tissue
made up of the shreds and remnants of barbarous
antiquity, polluted with the rust of ages, and
patched by the stupidity of modern workmen, into
new deformity.
When the day's task was finished, jaded spirits,
and a body enfeebled by reluctant application,
were but little adapted to domestic enjoyments.
These indeed were incompatible with a
temper like his, to whom the privation of the
comforts that attended his former condition, was
equivalent to the loss of life. These privations
were still more painful to his wife, and her death
added one more calamity to those under which
he already groaned. He had always loved her
with the tenderest affection, and he justly regarded
this evil as surpassing all his former woes.
But his destiny seemed never weary of persecuting
him. It was not enough that he should
fall a victim to the most atrocious arts, that he
that he should feel not only the personal restraints
and hardships attendant upon indigence,
but the keener pangs that result from negligence
and contumely. He was imperfectly recovered
from the shock occasioned by the death of his
wife, when his sight was invaded by a cataract.
Its progress was rapid, and terminated in total
blindness.
He was now disabled from pursuing his usual
occupation. He was shut out from the light of
heaven, and debarred of every human comfort.
Condemned to eternal dark, and worse than the
helplessness of infancy, he was dependant for the
meanest offices on the kindness of others, and he
who had formerly abounded in the gifts of fortune,
thought only of ending his days in a gaol or
an alms-house.
His situation however was alleviated by one
circumstance. He had a daughter whom I have
formerly mentioned, as the only survivor of many
children. She was sixteen years of age when the
storm of adversity fell upon her father's house.
It may be thought that one educated as she had
been, in the gratification of all her wishes, and
at an age of timidity and inexperience, would
have been less fitted than her father for encountering
misfortune, and yet when the task of comforter
fell upon her, her strength was not found
wanting. Her fortitude was immediately put to
the test. This reverse did not only affect her
obliquely and through the medium of her family,
but directly and in one way usually very
distressful to female feelings.
Her fortune and character had attracted many
admirers. One of them had some reason to flatter
himself with success. Miss Dudley's notions had
little in common with those around her. She had
degree, not by the hasty impulses of inclination,
but by the dictates of truth. She yielded nothing
to caprice or passion. Not that she was perfectly
exempt from intervals of weakness, or from the
necessity of painful struggles, but these intervals
were transient, and these struggles always successful.
She was no stranger to the pleadings of
love from the lips of others, and in her own bosom,
but its tumults were brief, and speedily
gave place to quiet thoughts and steadfast purposes.
She had listened to the solicitations of one,
not unworthy in himself, and amply recommended
by the circumstances of family and fortune.
He was young and therefore impetuous. Of the
good that he sought, he was not willing to delay
the acquisition for a moment. She had been
taught a very different lesson. Marriage included
vows of irrevocable affection and obedience.
It was a contract to endure for life. To form this
connection in extreme youth, before time had
unfolded and modelled the characters of the parties,
was, in her opinion, a proof of pernicious
and opprobrious temerity. Not to perceive the
propriety of delay in this case, or to be regardless
of the motives that would enjoin upon us a deliberate
procedure, furnished an unanswerable objection
to any man's pretensions. She was sensible,
however, that this, like other mistakes, was
curable. If her arguments failed to remove it,
time, it was likely, would effect this purpose. If
she rejected a matrimonial proposal for the present,
it was for reasons that might not preclude
her future acceptance of it.
Her scruples, in the present case, did not relate
to the temper or person, or understanding of
her lover, but to his age, to the imperfectness of
of character, which can flow only from
the progress of time and knowledge. These objections,
which so rarely exist, were conclusive
with her. There was no danger of her relinquishing
them in compliance with the remonstrances
of parents and the solicitations of her lover,
though the one and the other were urged with all
the force of authority and insinuation. The prescriptions
of duty were too clear to allow her to
hesitate and waver, but the consciousness of rectitude
could not secure her from temporary vexations.
Her parents were blemished with some of the
frailties of that character. They held themselves
entitled to prescribe in this article, but they forbore
to exert their power. They condescended
to persuade, but it was manifest, that they regarded
their own conduct as a relaxation of right,
and had not the lover's importunities suddenly
ceased, it is not possible to tell how far the happiness
of Miss Dudley might have been endangered.
The misfortunes of her father were no sooner
publicly known, than the youth forbore his visits,
and embarked on a voyage which he had
long projected, but which had been hitherto delayed
by a superior regard to the interests of his
passion.
It must be allowed that the lady had not foreseen
this event. She had exercised her judgment
upon his character, and had not been deceived.
Before this desertion, had it been clearly stated
to her apprehension, she would have readily admitted
it to be probable. She knew the fascmation
of wealth, and the delusiveness of self-confidence.
She was superior to the folly of supposing
him exempt from sinister influences, and deaf
to the whispers of ambition, and yet the manner
her that her heart had a larger share than her
reason in dictating her expectations.
Yet it must not be supposed that she suffered
any very acute distress on this account. She was
grieved less for her own sake than his. She had
no design of entering into marriage, in less than
seven years from this period. Not a single hope,
relative to her own condition, had been frustrated.
She had only been mistaken in her favourable
conceptions of another. He had exhibited
less constancy and virtue than her heart had
taught her to expect.
With those opinions, she could devote herself,
with a single heart, to the alleviation of her parent's
sorrows. This change in her condition she
treated lightly, and retained her cheerfulness unimpaired.
This happened because, in a rational
estimate, and so far as it affected herself, the misfortune
was slight, and because her dejection
would only tend to augment the disconsolateness
of her parents, while, on the other hand, her serenity
was calculated to infuse the same confidence
into them. She indulged herself in no fits
of exclamation or moodiness. She listened in silence
to their invectives and laments, and seized
every opportunity that offered to inspire them
with courage, to set before them the good as well
as ill, to which they were reserved, to suggest
expedients for improving their condition, and to
soften the asperitíes of his new mode of life, to
her father, by every species of blandishment and
tenderness.
She refused no personal exertion to the common
benefit. She incited her father to diligence,
as well by her example, as by her exortations;
suggested plans, and superintended or assisted in
the execution of them. The infirmities of sex
and activity flowing from her new situation.
When settled in his new abode, and profession,
she began to deliberate what conduct was incumbent
on herself, how she might participate
with her father, the burthen of the common maintainance,
and blunt the edge of this calamity by
the resources of a powerful and cultivated mind.
In the first place, she disposed of every superfluous
garb and trinket. She reduced her wardrobe
to the plainest and cheapest establishment.
By this means alone, she supplied her father's necessities
with a considerable sum. Her music
and even her books were not spared, not from
the slight esteem in which these were held by
her, but because she was thenceforth to become
an economist of time as well as of money, because
musical instruments are not necessary to
the practice of this art in its highest perfection,
and because, books, when she should procure leisure
to read, or money to purchase them, might
be obtained in a cheaper and more commodious
form, than those costly and splendid volumes,
with which her father's munificence had formerly
supplied her.
To make her expences as limited as possible
was her next care. For this end she assumed the
province of cook, the washing of house and
cloaths, and the cleansing of furniture. Their
house was small, the family consisted of no more
than four persons, and all formality and expensiveness
were studiously discarded, but her
strength was unequal to unavoidable tasks. A
vigorous constitution could not supply the place
of laborious habits, and this part of her plan must
have been changed for one less frugal. The aid
of a servant must have been hired, if it had not
been furnished by gratitude.
Some years before this misfortune, her mother
had taken under her protection a girl, the daughter
of a poor woman, who subsisted by labour,
and who dying, left this child without friend or
protector. This girl possessed no very improveable
capacity, and therefore, could not benefit by
the benevolent exertions of her young mistress as
much as the latter desired, but her temper was
artless and affectionate, and she attached herself
to Constance with the most entire devotion. In
this change of fortune she would not consent to
be separated, and Miss Dudley, influenced by
her affection to her Lucy, and reflecting that on
the whole it was most to her advantage to share
with her, at once, her kindness and her poverty,
retained her as her companion. With this girl
she shared the domestic duties, scrupling not to
divide with her the meanest and most rugged, as
well as the lightest offices.
This was not all. She, in the next place, considered
whether her ablity extended no farther
than to save. Could she not by the employment
of her bands increase the income as well as diminish
the expense? Why should she be precluded
from all lucrative occupation? She soon came to
a resolution. She was mistress of her needle, and
this skill she conceived herself bound to employ
for her own subsistence.
Cloathing is one of the necessaries of human
existence. The art of the taylor is scarcely of
less use than that of the tiller of the ground.
There are few the gains of which are better merited,
and less injurious to the principles of human
society. She resolved therefore to become
a workwoman, and to employ in this way, the
leisure she possessed from household avocations.
To this scheme she was obliged to reconcile not
only herself but her parents. The conquest of
and skill finally succeeded, and she procured
needle work in sufficient quantity to enable
her to enhance in no trivial degree, the common
fund.
It is one thing barely to comply with the urgencies
of the case, and to do that which, in necessitous
circumstances is best. But to conform
with grace and cheerfulness, to yield no place to
fruitless recriminations and repinings, to contract
the evils into as small a compass as possible, and
extract from our condition all possible good, is a
task of a different kind.
Mr. Dudley's situation required from him frugality
and diligence. He was regular and unintermitted
in his application to his pen. He was
frugal. His slender income was administered
agreeably to the maxims of his daughter: but he
was unhappy. He experienced in its full extent
the bitterness of disappointment.
He gave himself up for the most part to a listless
melancholy. Sometimes his impaticnce
would produce effects less excusable; and conjure
up an accusing and irascible spirit. His
wife and even his daughter he would make the
objects of peevish and absurd reproaches. These
were moments when her heart drooped indeed,
and her tears could not be restrained from flowing.
These fits were transitory and rare, and
when they had passed, the father seldom failed to
mingle tokens of contrition and repentance with
the tears of his daughter. Her arguments and
soothings were seldom disappointed of success.
Her mother's disposition was soft and pliant, but
she could not accommodate herself to the necessity
of her husband's affairs. She was obliged to
endure the want of some indulgences, but she reserved
to subdue this spirit in her was found utterly impracticable.
She died a victim to discontent.
This event deepened the gloom that shrouded
the soul of her father, and rendered the task of
consolation still more difficult. She did not despair.
Her sweetness and patience was invincible
by any thing that had already happened, but her
fortitude did not exceed the standard of human
nature. Evils now began to menace her, to
which it is likely she would have yielded, had not
their approach been intercepted by an evil of a
different kind.
The pressure of grief is sometimes such as to
prompt us to seek a refuge in voluntary death.
We must lay aside the burthen which we cannot
sustain. If thought degenerate into a vehicle of
pain, what remains but to destroy that vehicle?
For this end, death is the obvious, but not the
only, or morally speaking, the worst means.
There is one method of obtaining the bliss of forgetfulness,
in comparison with which suicide is
innocent.
The strongest mind is swayed by circumstances.
There is no firmness of integrity, perhaps,
able to repel every species of temptation, which
is produced by the present constitution of human
affairs, and yet temptation is successful, chiefly
by virtue of its gradual and invisible approaches.
We rush into danger, because we are not aware
of its existence, and have not therefore provided
the means of safety, and the dæmon that seizes
us is hourly reinforced by habit. Our opposition
grows fainter in proportion as our adversary acquires
new strength, and the man becomes enslaved
by the most sordid vices, whose fall
would, at a former period, have been deemed
impossible, or who would have been imagined liable
this.
Mr. Dudley's education had entailed upon
him many errors, yet who would have supposed
it possible for him to be enslaved by a depraved
appetite; to be enamoured of low debauchery,
and to grasp at the happiness that intoxication
had to bestow? This was a mournful
period in Constantia's history. My feelings will
not suffer me to dwell upon it. I cannot describe
the manner in which she was affected by the first
symptoms of this depravity, the struggles which
she made to counteract this dreadful infatuation,
and the grief which she experienced from the repeated
miscarriage of her efforts. I will not detail
her various expedients for this end, the appeals
which she made to his understanding, to his
sense of honor and dread of infamy, to the gratitude
to which she was entitled, and to the injunctions
of parental duty. I will not detail his
fits of remorse, his fruitless penitence, and continual
relapses, nor depict the heart-breaking
scenes of uproar and violence, and foul disgrace
that accompanied his paroxysms of drunkenness.
The only intellectual amusement which this lady
allowed herself was writing. She enjoyed one
distant friend, with whom she maintained an uninterrupted
correspondence, and to whom she
confided a circumstantial and copious relation of
all these particulars. That friend is the writer of
these memoirs. It is not impossible but that
these letters may be communicated to the world,
at some future period. The picture which they
exhibit is hourly exemplified and realized,
though, in the many-coloured scenes of human
life, none surpasses it in disastrousness and horror.
My eyes almost wept themselves dry over
this part of her tale.
In this state of things Mr. Dudley's blindness
might justly be accounted, even in its immediate
effects, a fortunate event. It dissolved the spell,
by which he was bound, and which, it is probable,
would never have been otherwise broken.
It restored him to himself and shewed him, with
a distinctness which made him shudder, the gulf to
which he was hastening. But nothing can compensate
to the sufferer the evils of blindness. It
was the business of Constantia's life to alleviate
those sufferings, to cherish and console her father,
and to rescue him, by the labour of her hands
from dependance on public charity. For this
end, her industry and solicitude were never at
rest. She was able, by that industry, to provide
him and herself with necessaries. Their portion
was scanty, and, if it sometimes exceeded the
standard of their wants, not less frequently fell
short of it. For all her toils and disquietudes she
esteemed herself fully compensated by the smiles
of her father. He indeed could seldom be
prompted to smile, or to suppress the dietates of
that despair which flowed from his sense of this
new calamity, and the aggravations of hardship
which his recent insobrieties had occasioned to his
daughter.
She purchased what books her scanty stock
would allow, and borrowed others. These she
read to him when her engagements would permit.
At other times she was accustomed to solace
herself with her own music. The lute which
her father had purchased in Italy, and which had
been disposed of among the rest of his effects, at
public sale, had been gratuitously restored to him
by the purchaser, on condition of his retaining it
in his possession. His blindness and inoccupation
now broke the long silence to which this instrument
to the young lady's voice.
Her chief employment was conversation. She
resorted to this as the best means of breaking the
monotony of the scene; but this purpose was not
only accomplished, but other benefits of the highest
value accrued from it. The habits of a painter
eminently tended to vivify and make exact her
father's conceptions and delineations of visible
objects. The sphere of his youthful observation
comprised more ingredients of the picturesque,
than any other sphere. The most precious materials
of the moral history of mankind, are derived
from the revolutions of Italy. Italian features
and landscape, constitute the chosen field of the
artist. No one had more carefully explored this
field than Mr. Dudley. His time, when abroad,
had been divided between residence at Rome,
and excursions to Calabria and Tuscany. Few
impressions were effaced from his capacious register,
and these were now rendered by his eloquence,
nearly as conspicuous to his companion
as to himself.
She was imbued with an ardent thirst of knowledge,
and by the acuteness of her remarks, and
the judiciousness of her enquiries, reflected back
upon his understanding as much improvement as
she received. These efforts to render his calamity
tolerable, and enure him to the profiting by
his own resources, were aided by time, and,
when reconciled by habit to unrespited gloom, he
was, sometimes, visited by gleams of cheerfulness,
and drew advantageous comparisons between his
present and former situation. A stillness not unakin
to happiness, frequently diffused itself over
their winter evenings. Constance enjoyed, in
their full extent, the felicities of health and self-approbation.
father, nourished by perpetual exercise, and undiverted
from its purpose by the intrusion of visible
objects, frequently afforded her a delight in
comparison with which all other pleasures were
mean.
| CHAPTER II. Ormond, or, The secret witness | |