 | CHAPTER IV. Westward ho! |  |
4. CHAPTER IV.
Showing how Mrs. Judith Paddock was almost frightened
out of her wits.
Virginia took the earliest opportunity of disclosing
to Rainsford the particulars of the interview
with her mother, and he expressed his
grateful sense of her delicacy in withholding
the secret which it had been the great object of
his existence to preserve. But he foresaw, and
he told her so, the painful situation in which he
had placed her, and at times lamented that she
had not made a full disclosure. From this period
he imagined himself an object of jealous suspicion,
and perverted every look, and word, and
action of the colonel and Mrs. Dangerfield accordingly.
Perhaps he was right; for though
they preserved towards him all the appearance
of outward courtesy, they could not divest themselves
of that awkward embarrassment which
is ever the product of the absence of confidence
in those with whom we associate.
A few days had passed when, an opportunity
presenting itself, Colonel Dangerfield took occasion
to introduce the subject of the engagement
which subsisted between Rainsford and Virginia.
“I will acknowledge, Mr. Rainsford, that all
I have seen of you since you came to this part
of the country has contributed to give me a favourable
independently of the obligation you have conferred
on me and mine. In other circumstances,
and as an ordinary acquaintance, I should rest
satisfied; but the relation in which you now
stand towards my family makes it necessary
that I should know more of you. You will
therefore, I trust, not think me impertinent or
curious if I now take the liberty of asking a
few questions.”
Though in general Rainsford was highly
nervous and sensitive, there were occasions
when he would rally himself into a lofty feeling
of firmness and decision. In the latter spirit
he replied,—
“Colonel Dangerfield, you certainly have a
right to ask any questions you think necessary.
I am sure they will be only such as your situation
and mine render it proper for one gentleman
to ask another. But I must tell you beforehand,
there are questions which, as yet, I
cannot, I do not feel disposed to answer.”
“Very well; frankly, then, where have you
generally resided before you came hither?”
“I cannot—I had rather be excused answering
that question.”
“Indeed! well, sir, may I ask the situation,
circumstances, and character of your family?”
“I am the last of my family,” said Rainsford,
with a shudder.
“That is somewhat remarkable. I scarcely
ever met a human being so utterly desolate as
to be without relatives. You must have been
very unfortunate. Are you a native of this
country?”
“I am. I have some distant relatives, but
have never associated or had any interchange
of kindness with them.”
“And you decline giving any information
on the subject of your family or fortune?”
“My family—so far I will say—my family
is respectable; and as to wealth, I have more
than I shall ever have occasion for. The proofs
I can produce at any time.”
“I am not very solicitous on that point. But
you must be aware, Mr. Rainsford, that I cannot
give my only daughter away to a man who
not only refuses to explain who he is, but
chooses himself to propose delays, for which,
though he has given her sufficient reasons, he
does not condescend to explain to my satisfaction.”
“Is not this very proposal of delay a proof
that I mean neither to wrong or deceive either
her or you? Did I intend this, I should hasten
the completion of that happiness which I sometimes
hope I may yet enjoy. Swindlers and
villains fear nothing so much as time, which
sooner or later lays open all secrets.”
“True, that is assuredly true,” replied the
colonel, musing; “but still, Mr. Rainsford—I
will be plain with you—still you must confess,
if you know any thing of the world and of the
intercourse of mankind, that the man who declines
giving a reasonable solution to any course
of conduct which is not within the sphere of
ordinary motives and principles, justly lays
himself open to a suspicion that his motives
will not bear examination. It is not without
confound mystery with guilt.”
“But, Colonel Dangerfield, may not there be
misfortunes of such a peculiar and painful
nature, that a sensitive being will shrink from
disclosing them, as he would from the acknowledgment
of a crime?”
“Certainly; but these instances are so rare,
that no man has a right to complain if the
world transforms this feeling of sore delicacy
into the consciousness of guilt.”
“Yes, I know that but too well.”
“But, sir, to bring this home to ourselves: as
strangers, we are not entitled to ask of you any
disclosure that might be painful; as mere ordinary
acquaintances, we would not wish it: but
as the parents of a virtuous and, I must say,
beautiful young woman, who has somewhat
hastily intrusted her prospects of happiness to
your future decision, I now inform you, once
for all, that before the affair goes any further,
we must and we will know who and what you
are.”
“I will tell you, in one word, a wretch; but
not a guilty one. Colonel Dangerfield, do not
take from me the hope of one day, if it please
Heaven to spare me, calling Virginia mine. If
you knew all, you would pity, perhaps you
would shrink from me; it is that I fear, it is
that which makes me shudder at the thought
of laying open the sources of my conduct, the
apparent mystery in which I have wrapped
myself from all save Virginia. She had a right
to know, and she does know it all.”
`Some stale romantic story, I suppose,” said
wicked indulgence, wrapped in the simulated
language of the day, when a violation of the
obligations of justice is called imprudence, and
guilt softened down into misfortune. Some
pretty device to steal away the pity of a tender,
inexperienced girl.”
“Would to Heaven it were! No, sir; you
wrong me, on my soul you do. But let us end
this painful interview. Colonel Dangerfield,”
continued he, with deep solemnity, “do you
believe in oaths; in appeals to the Being who
is all truth, all justice? If so, hear me assure
you, as I hope for happiness hereafter, if not
here; as I am a being possessing an immortal
soul, which I here pledge to everlasting perdition
if I say not the truth; hear me swear to
you, that it is misfortune, and not guilt, which
urges me to keep from you for a time the reasons
for my conduct towards you and yours.
They may be weak, unfounded, childish perhaps;
they may be a part of my mal—but
such as they are, I cannot overcome them just
now. Yet before the throne of the great Governor
of the universe, I here pledge myself
that ere another year has passed away, you
shall know all, and that in the mean time the
confidence you have bestowed upon me shall
not be abused. Dare you trust me thus far?”
“It is asking almost too much, sir; but when
I call to mind that but for you I should have
had no daughter, I cannot but confess that you
are entitled to some little confidence.” He reflected
a few moments, and resumed,—“I will
trust you; though even you yourself little
at as the most rash and imprudent of fathers.
I agree to your terms; in less than a year, you
say?”
“In less than a year. Oh! sir,” and he took
the hand of Colonel Dangerfield, and pressed
it; “Oh! sir, you cannot know my gratitude
for this confidence; and—and Heaven grant
you may never live to repent it!”
They separated, the colonel musing on this
last wish, which sounded somewhat equivocal,
and Rainsford bending his way to the domicil
of Master Zeno Paddock, where sat Mrs. Judith
in an ague, a very agony of curiosity. She
had a sort of instinctive feeling that something
had happened, that something would happen,
that something was going on which she did
not exactly comprehend, and she forthwith
lashed herself, as it were, in nautical phrase,
yardarm and yardarm, alongside of Rainsford,
determined to sink him outright, if he did not
surrender his secret. But alas! all her manœuvres
for boarding failed. Rainsford was so
deeply immersed in his own anxious and painful
feelings, that he answered her like Hotspur,
“neglectingly, he knew not what,” and unintentionally
perplexed her beyond all womanly
endurance.
“I thought I saw you coming out of the
colonel's just now; didn't I, Mr. Rainsford?”
He looked in her face with a blank vacuity,
and replied to his own thoughts,
“One year more—yes—hum—and all will
be known.”
Mrs. Judith could make nothing of this.
“O yes, as you say, one year more, and then
—we shall all be a year older.” Mrs. Judith
did not know exactly what to say, and, as usual
in such like cases, talked nonsense.
“Perhaps not—perhaps after all it may not
come to pass.”
“Not come to pass that we shall be a year
older next year!” screamed Mrs. Paddock, and
the scream brought him to his recollection for
a moment.
“We may be dead, you know,” said he,
smiling.
“Ah, that's true; that's clever; hah, hah! I
declare you make me laugh, Mr. Rainsford.”
“And yet,” said Rainsford, relapsing, “it
may be—hum—um—um.”
“What did you say, sir?”
“All—yes—all my poor brothers went that
way—and within a few months of the same
age—um—u—u—m.”
“Ah! yes sir, this is a scan—I mean a miserable
world; we may die, or be robbed, or
ose all we have in the world, and our wits into
the bargain, before—”
“What do you say about losing my wits,
woman?” cried Rainsford, starting up furiously,
and glaring at her as if he had seen a ghost.
Mrs. Judith fled out of the room like a timid
fawn, and, throwing her handkerchief over it
to protect the head of Holofernes from the sun,
“made tracks,” as Bushfield would say, in a
straight line over to the temporary residence of
Colonel Dangerfield, where the first person she
encountered was Virginia.
“O, Miss Phiginny! Miss Phiginny! such
an accident has happened to Mr. Rainsford.”
“What accident? tell me, Mrs. Paddock;
quick, quick!”
“O, what a miserable world is this! O, Miss
Phiginny!”
“For heaven's sake tell me,” cried the young
lady, “what, what has happened to Mr. Rainsford?”
and she trembled and grew as pale as
ashes.
“O!—O!—O, I declare I'm so frightened,
and so out of breath,—O, who'd have thought
it, poor young man!”
“What? what?” cried Virginia, in agony.
“Why, he's run distracted, as sure—”
Here Mrs. Judith was arrested in her speech;
Virginia uttered one scream, and fell as if dead
on the greensward of the little enclosure in
the rear of the house, where she had been sitting
under the shade of a spreading tree. Mrs.
Dangerfield heard the scream, and ran out to
see the cause. She found Virginia lying senseless,
and Mrs. Judith wringing her hands, and
crying out against this miserable world, almost,
nay, quite unconscious of what she was saying.
After some time and care, the young maiden
recovered sufficiently to utter a few rambling
incoherent words.
“So soon—it was not to have come yet.
Poor, poor Rainsford, and poor Virginia.”
Then seeing Mrs. Paddock, she raised herself
up, and asked,
“Are you sure, quite sure?”
“Why I can't altogether say that he has lost
all his wits but he talked as if he did not know
didn't know me from Adam; and then he called
me woman, as if he meant d—l. But as I live,
here he comes; who'd have thought it?”
At this moment Rainsford looked over the
little paling, and invited Virginia to walk with
him to the river-side. Mrs. Dangerfield would
have opposed it, but Virginia insisted she was
quite recovered, and displayed so much impatience
of contradiction, that the kind mother
acquiesced.
“My dear Virginia,” thought she, “you are
not what you used to be.”
They walked a long while over the smooth
meadows that skirted the river, and under the
spreading elms and lofty sycamore-trees that
here and there overshadowed the carpets of
flowers, now putting forth their many-tinted
products of the spring. Rainsford inquired
the cause of her temporary indisposition, to
which he had heard her mother allude; but
she evaded the subject, fearful of giving him
pain, and by so doing inflicted perhaps a
greater. At length, urged beyond her will to
resist, she disclosed the whole of Mrs. Judith's
communication. He shrunk with bitter and
mortified feelings.
“Yes, every one sees it coming; every one
will know it soon, and fly from me as they did
from my poor father and brothers; as this
foolish woman did from me. Art thou not
afraid of me, Virginia?”
“Afraid of you!” and she gave him a look
so innocent and confiding, that he once more
revived to a perception of happiness. They
period which it was supposed would decide the
colour of their future days.
“If,” said he, “as now I sometimes hope it
will be,—if all goes well with me, till the dark
line of my fate is safely crossed, shall we not
be happy, Virginia? I am sure we shall; for
art thou not all beauty, and purity, and intelligence;
and shall not I be the greatest brute
that ever abused the generous reliance of woman,
to repay such a confidence as was never
yet reposed in man, with any thing but
love, reverence, devotion, adoration? Yes,
yes! in the words of the poet of tenderness
itself,
Circling our souls and loves in one another;
We'll spring together, and we'll bear one fruit;
One joy shall make us smile, and one grief mourn;
One age go with us, and one hour of death
Shall close our eyes, and one grave make us happy.”'
They sat on the same mossy rock, and the
same hallowed silence of nature breathed
around, as when he had told his sad history,
and disclosed his melancholy love. The time,
the occasion, and all the still sublimity of nature,
were calculated to call forth the most lofty
as well as tender associations.
For silence is the energy of God!”
The peevish and evanescent excitements of
noise and motion, the petty feelings awakened
by the glittering pageantry of worldly pomps,
inspiration of a scene like this. The imagination
becomes swelled by those kindred conceptions
which the vast concave arch above, the
various and magnificent world lying basking
all around, awaken; and nothing selfish, or
mean, or wicked can enter a well-constituted
mind, while contemplating the glorious works
of a Being all purity, grandeur, and beneficence.
The mind of Rainsford seemed to take wing
to the highest heaven, and to revel in the most
glorious perceptions. With the mingled feeling
of poetry and philosophy, of love and devotion,
he expatiated on the beauty of nature, the
chaste delights of virtuous affection, the labours
and triumphs of well-aimed genius, and the
crowning gift of immortality bestowed upon it
here and hereafter. Virginia sat beside him,
leaning forward with downward face; her eye
raised to his in mingled admiration of his lofty
flights, and fear lest he should overleap the
slippery pinnacle of reason, and topple down
headlong on the other side. She trembled at
the dizzy height to which he sometimes soared,
and her fearful anticipations pictured him as
just shivering on the verge of the almost imperceptible
line, the very hairbreadth space
which, in the sensitive empire of the brain,
separates the fruitful region where the elements
act in sweet accord and all is universal harmony,
from that of chaos, where nothing but
shapeless monsters and jarring atoms abide.
A feeling of exquisitely mournful tenderness
came over her soul, and the tears flowed down
become pale with the labours of the mind. He
observed her, and suddenly stopping his career
among the regions of the upper world, softly
asked,—
“What ails thee, Virginia? Do not be frightened;
I am not gone yet, whatever I may be,
or whatever Mrs. Judith may say. For the
first time since I began to live only in the bitterness
of anticipated wretchedness, for the first
time I have this evening suffered myself to hope
for better things, and the new guest has made
me almost giddy with delight. Yes, we shall
yet be blessed together.”
At that moment the same shrill, cold quaver
they had heard on a former occasion thrilled
across the purple waters.
“Let us go home,” said Virginia; and they
returned without exchanging another word
| CHAPTER IV. Westward ho! | |