Secresy; or, Ruin on the Rock. Fenwick Eliza
love of fruits of armour; nor did he think that civil war was the only time when a man could gather honours worthy of a distinguished name. No sooner was your uncle emancipated from the fetters of his minority, than he resolved to repair to court, where he expected to find only his equals, and those equals alive to and exact in the observance of all that haughty decorum, which Mr. Valmont deemed indispensably necessary to the well being of social institutions. Poor man! he feels himself lost in the motley multitude, sees his high-born pretensions to notice and deference pushed aside by individuals obscure in their origin, but renowned for artful intrigues, for bold perseverance, and dazzling success! Shocked at the contaminating mixture, he had fled back with precipitancy to his castle, but love detained him, for he had made an offering of his heart to a woman of rank and fashion. Nothing could be more unfortunate than this passion. Nothing further from congeniality than the minds and manners of Lady Margaret B – and Mr. Valmont: he, just risen, as it were, from the tomb of his progenitors, loaded with the punctilio of the last age, recoiling from the salute of every man who could not boast an unblemished pedigree, and lastly, and most worthily, possessing refined ideas of female delicacy, of honourable love, and of unchanging fidelity; and she, on the contrary, a graceful coquette, without an atom of real tenderness in her heart, and valuing her rank merely as it gave her opportunities of extending her conquest. Lady Margaret B – was highly diverted with Mr. Valmont's formalities; and, in spite of the torture her dissipated coquettish manners inflicted on him, she had sufficient power to make him the most ardent of her lovers. In fine, she rejected him, laughed at him, despised him.
I could not hear this anecdote, nor can I repeat it, without a sensation of pain, so strongly do I enter into the irritable feelings of your uncle, when, hitherto accustomed only to receive homage and obedience, he is at once foiled in his ambition by low born courtiers, and betrayed in his love by a high born jilt.
Mr. Valmont consulted no other guide than his passions; and instantly drew an angry and false picture of mankind. With such people as I have spoken of he could not associate; for their vices he abhorred; but his mind had not fortitude enough, had not comprehension enough, to cast aside his own prejudices; and, instead of attempting to reform mankind, he retires to rail at them; and carries with him the pride, selfishness, and love of power, in which all the vices of society originate.
Wrapped in the impenetrable selfishness of high birth, Mr. Valmont denies the possibility of eminent virtue existing without rank. Who shall presume to arraign his principles, to sit in judgment upon his actions, to teach him his duty? I stand, cries Mr. Valmont, within the sacred verge of nobility! Look on that coat of arms! I derive from the Normans! Wisdom in rags – keep off!
True: his ancestors conquered, that he should be wise! – Oh, cede to him the palm! Bind his brows with the laurel!
After a few months retirement, Mr. Valmont ventured once more into the heterogeneous multitude, in search of a wife: for, I suspect he found himself as ill qualified for solitude as society. Beside, he had formed the virtuous project of instructing a new race, to put the old world out of countenance.
I cannot but pause, to reflect upon your uncle's toils in search of his help mate. He must have a wife, whose pedigree his future sons might place beside his own; and he must have one, of a temperament and character opposite to that of lady Margaret B – ; and his good stars, his ill stars, or whatever else you please, led him to the feet of Mrs. Valmont.
It is true, your aunt was neither as coquettish nor had she the sprightly wit nor the mischievous gaiety of lady Margaret, but she loved crowds, detested solitude, and was a votary of dissipation; to convince her how much he had studied her inclinations, and how much he meant to gratify them, no sooner was Mr. Valmont in possession of his bride then he snatched her from the scenes where her existence was alone valuable to her, and buried her amidst obscurity and horror at Valmont castle.
What is the consequence? she had no mental accomplishments in reserve for their mutual benefit and delight; nor had he mind enough to steal fire from heaven and animate with life the marble. From the struggle of tempers, and the warfare of words, she droops into an hypocondriac; he degenerates into a cynic, proud of himself alone.
Among the disappointments produced by this marriage, the want of children was the most offensive to Mr. Valmont. Your father, who had pursued a course of life quite different from his brother, tasting all the excesses of dissipation; died; and, very improperly in my opinion, left you to the guardianship of your uncle. That Mr. Valmont should adopt a son from the lowly condition of a cottager's child, has occasioned much wonder and many surmises; however, as I do not find any thing material either to you or me in the conjectures, I have listened to on this occasion, I shall not be at the pains of relating them.
But how comes it to pass, my dearest Sibella, that when your uncle had the means of gratifying his darling wish in educating two children, and one of them a female, to whom according to his creed, nothing should be granted beyond what the instinct of appetite demands, how comes it, I say, that you possess the comprehensive powers of intellect? from what sources did you derive that eager desire of knowledge of which I find you possessed; and how came you to be learned on subjects, which, in the education of females, are strictly withheld, to make room for trifling gaudy and useless acomplishments? tell me by what miracle I find you such as you are, and let me cease to wonder at you, but never let me cease to love you.
Tell me too, how came you to be dependent on your uncle? Does your dependence only mean the protection due from him who stands in the place of a parent to you? I wish to be informed what explanation Mr. Valmont and yourself affix to the term of dependent, when it is applied to you; for colonel Ridson talks so familiarly of the fortune you must possess from your mother, and also the wealth of the Valmont family which he says is yours by heirship, that I must own I am puzzled. I care little about your being rich, but is seems unnatural and unjust to have you a dependent on your haughty uncle.
Ah, my dear Sibella, how often in a day do I feast my imagination by allowing it to bear me back to you; and yet perhaps, our separation gives a spur, a stimulus to our friendship. I am not convinced, indeed, but that temporary separations are even useful between lovers; and that Mr. Valmont may have acted rather wisely than otherwise, in parting you and your Clement for a season. Why he should bid you remember him only as a brother, is really too far plunged into obscurity for me to discover.
Do not, however, suppose for an instant that my affection for you would decay were I at liberty to enjoy your society as I wish; on the contrary, I am persuaded that every hour I should pass with you would add something to my improvement, and render us more valuable to each other. My expression arose from my being at that moment in idea a partner of your seclusion, and feeling that I should want in the same situation that energy and activity which is the support of your solitude. I am fond of society; and, indeed, I find myself most excited when I have most opportunities of observing the various characters and pursuits of those around me. Gladly would I possess the power of selecting my society. From that happy privilege I am debarred. But I seldom make one of a circle in which I do not find some novelty of character, and something either of excellence or absurdity from which I may draw improvement.
Yet, a two month's visit at the villa of Sir Thomas Barlowe is rather a hard trial of my patience; and, unless we are enlivened by new visitors, I fear the company here will afford me but a trifling harvest of observation. I shall soon be glad to turn from them to my own resources; and fly, even oftener than I now do, to the ever vivifying remembrance of my Sibella.
Sir Thomas Barlowe has risen from some very obscure station to the wealth and dignity of a nabob. He has risen too, I greatly fear, by the same depredating practices which the unfortunate natives of India seem destined constantly to suffer from those who perfidiously call themselves the protectors of the country. Sir Thomas Barlowe's riches have become his punishment. Each morning, his fears awaken with his faculties, lest that day should bring tidings of the dreaded scrutiny; and, when evening arrives, and he struggles to yield himself to mirth and wine amidst the circle he has assiduously gathered round him, a word, a look, or the most remote hint or allusion gives his watchful terrors an alarm. A sudden turn of his head, perchance, discovers his shadow on the wall. Legions of threatening phantoms then crowd upon his apprehension; and the evening, yet more miserable than the day, concludes with an opiate, administered to lull the feeble body into lethargy, and hush the perturbed conscience