The Fortunes of Nigel

“By my means, maiden?” said the lady – “you are beside yourself! – What means can I possess in this secluded situation, of assisting this unfortunate nobleman?”

“You have means,” said Margaret, eagerly; “you have those means, unless I mistake greatly, which can do anything – can do everything, in this city, in this world – you have wealth, and the command of a small portion of it will enable me to extricate him from his present danger. He will be enabled and directed how to make his escape – and I – ” she paused.

“Will accompany him, doubtless, and reap the fruits of your sage exertions in his behalf?” said the Lady Hermione, ironically.

“May heaven forgive you the unjust thought, lady,” answered Margaret. “I will never see him more – but I shall have saved him, and the thought will make me happy.”

“A cold conclusion to so bold and warm a flame,” said the lady, with a smile which seemed to intimate incredulity.

“It is, however, the only one which I expect, madam – I could almost say the only one which I wish – I am sure I will use no efforts to bring about any other; if I am bold in his cause, I am timorous enough in my own. During our only interview I was unable to speak a word to him. He knows not the sound of my voice – and all that I have risked, and must yet risk, I am doing for one, who, were he asked the question, would say he has long since forgotten that he ever saw, spoke to, or sat beside, a creature of so little signification as I am.”

“This is a strange and unreasonable indulgence of a passion equally fanciful and dangerous,” said Lady Hermione. “You will not assist me, then?” said Margaret; “have good-day, then, madam – my secret, I trust, is safe in such honourable keeping.”

“Tarry yet a little,” said the lady, “and tell me what resource you have to assist this youth, if you were supplied with money to put it in motion.”

“It is superfluous to ask me the question, madam,” answered Margaret, “unless you purpose to assist me; and, if you do so purpose, it is still superfluous. You could not understand the means I must use, and time is too brief to explain.”

“But have you in reality such means?” said the lady.

“I have, with the command of a moderate sum,” answered Margaret Ramsay, “the power of baffling all his enemies – of eluding the passion of the irritated king – the colder but more determined displeasure of the prince – the vindictive spirit of Buckingham, so hastily directed against whomsoever crosses the path of his ambition – the cold concentrated malice of Lord Dalgarno – all, I can baffle them all!”

“But is this to be done without your own personal risk, Margaret?” replied the lady; “for, be your purpose what it will, you are not to peril your own reputation or person, in the romantic attempt of serving another; and I, maiden, am answerable to your godfather, – to your benefactor, and my own, – not to aid you in any dangerous or unworthy enterprise.”

“Depend upon my word, – my oath, – dearest lady,” replied the supplicant, “that I will act by the agency of others, and do not myself design to mingle in any enterprise in which my appearance might be either perilous or unwomanly.”

“I know not what to do,” said the Lady Hermione; “it is perhaps incautious and inconsiderate in me to aid so wild a project; yet the end seems honourable, if the means be sure – what is the penalty if he fall into their power?”

“Alas, alas! the loss of his right hand!” replied Margaret, her voice almost stifled with sobs.

“Are the laws of England so cruel? Then there is mercy in heaven alone,” said the lady, “since, even in this free land, men are wolves to each other. – Compose yourself, Margaret, and tell me what money is necessary to secure Lord Glenvarloch’s escape.”

“Two hundred pieces,” replied Margaret; “I would speak to you of restoring them – and I must one day have the power – only that I know – that is, I think – your ladyship is indifferent on that score.”

“Not a word more of it,” said the lady; “call Monna Paula hither.”

CHAPTER XX

  Credit me, friend, it hath been ever thus,  Since the ark rested on Mount Ararat.  False man hath sworn, and woman hath believed —  Repented and reproach’d, and then believed once more.The New World.

By the time that Margaret returned with Monna Paula, the Lady Hermione was rising from the table at which she had been engaged in writing something on a small slip of paper, which she gave to her attendant.

“Monna Paula,” she said, “carry this paper to Roberts the cash-keeper; let them give you the money mentioned in the note, and bring it hither presently.”

Monna Paula left the room, and her mistress proceeded.

“I do not know,” she said, “Margaret, if I have done, and am doing, well in this affair. My life has been one of strange seclusion, and I am totally unacquainted with the practical ways of this world – an ignorance which I know cannot be remedied by mere reading. – I fear I am doing wrong to you, and perhaps to the laws of the country which affords me refuge, by thus indulging you; and yet there is something in my heart which cannot resist your entreaties.”

“O, listen to it – listen to it, dear, generous lady!” said Margaret, throwing herself on her knees and grasping those of her benefactress and looking in that attitude like a beautiful mortal in the act of supplicating her tutelary angel; “the laws of men are but the injunctions of mortality, but what the heart prompts is the echo of the voice from heaven within us.”

“Rise, rise, maiden,” said Hermione; “you affect me more than I thought I could have been moved by aught that should approach me. Rise and tell me whence it comes, that, in so short a time, your thoughts, your looks, your speech, and even your slightest actions, are changed from those of a capricious and fanciful girl, to all this energy and impassioned eloquence of word and action?”

“I am sure I know not, dearest lady,” said Margaret, looking down; “but I suppose that, when I was a trifler, I was only thinking of trifles. What I now reflect is deep and serious, and I am thankful if my speech and manner bear reasonable proportion to my thoughts.”

“It must be so,” said the lady; “yet the change seems a rapid and strange one. It seems to be as if a childish girl had at once shot up into deep-thinking and impassioned woman, ready to make exertions alike, and sacrifices, with all that vain devotion to a favourite object of affection, which is often so basely rewarded.”

The Lady Hermione sighed bitterly, and Monna Paula entered ere the conversation proceeded farther. She spoke to her mistress in the foreign language in which they frequently conversed, but which was unknown to Margaret.

“We must have patience for a time,” said the lady to her visitor; “the cash-keeper is abroad on some business, but he is expected home in the course of half an hour.”

Margaret wrung her hands in vexation and impatience.

“Minutes are precious,” continued the lady; “that I am well aware of; and we will at least suffer none of them to escape us. Monna Paula shall remain below and transact our business, the very instant that Roberts returns home.”

She spoke to her attendant accordingly, who again left the room.

“You are very kind, madam – very good,” said the poor little Margaret, while the anxious trembling of her lip and of her hand showed all that sickening agitation of the heart which arises from hope deferred.

“Be patient, Margaret, and collect yourself,” said the lady; “you may, you must, have much to do to carry through this your bold purpose – reserve your spirits, which you may need so much – be patient – it is the only remedy against the evils of life.”

“Yes, madam,” said Margaret, wiping her eyes, and endeavouring in vain to suppress the natural impatience of her temper, – “I have heard so – very often indeed; and I dare say I have myself, heaven forgive me, said so to people in perplexity and affliction; but it was before I had suffered perplexity and vexation myself, and I am sure I will never preach patience to any human being again, now that I know how much the medicine goes against the stomach.”

“You will think better of it, maiden,” said the Lady Hermione; “I also, when I first felt distress, thought they did me wrong who spoke to me of patience; but my sorrows have been repeated and continued till I have been taught to cling to it as the best, and – religious duties excepted, of which, indeed, patience forms a part – the only alleviation which life can afford them.”

Margaret, who neither wanted sense nor feeling, wiped her tears hastily, and asked her patroness’s forgiveness for her petulance.

“I might have thought” – she said, “I ought to have reflected, that even from the manner of your life, madam, it is plain you must have suffered sorrow; and yet, God knows, the patience which I have ever seen you display, well entitles you to recommend your own example to others.”

The lady was silent for a moment, and then replied —

“Margaret, I am about to repose a high confidence in you. You are no longer a child, but a thinking and a feeling woman. You have told me as much of your secret as you dared – I will let you know as much of mine as I may venture to tell. You will ask me, perhaps, why, at a moment when your own mind is agitated, I should force upon you the consideration of my sorrows? and I answer, that I cannot withstand the impulse which now induces me to do so. Perhaps from having witnessed, for the first time these three years, the natural effects of human passion, my own sorrows have been awakened, and are for the moment too big for my own bosom – perhaps I may hope that you, who seem driving full sail on the very rock on which I was wrecked for ever, will take warning by the tale I have to tell. Enough, if you are willing to listen, I am willing to tell you who the melancholy inhabitant of the Foljambe apartments really is, and why she resides here. It will serve, at least, to while away the time until Monna Paula shall bring us the reply from Roberts.”

At any other moment of her life, Margaret Ramsay would have heard with undivided interest a communication so flattering in itself, and referring to a subject upon which the general curiosity had been so strongly excited. And even at this agitating moment, although she ceased not to listen with an anxious ear and throbbing heart for the sound of Monna Paula’s returning footsteps, she nevertheless, as gratitude and policy, as well as a portion of curiosity dictated, composed herself, in appearance at least, to the strictest attention to the Lady Hermione, and thanked her with humility for the high confidence she was pleased to repose in her. The Lady Hermione, with the same calmness which always attended her speech and actions, thus recounted her story to her young friend:

“My father,” she said, “was a merchant, but he was of a city whose merchants are princes. I am the daughter of a noble house in Genoa, whose name stood as high in honour and in antiquity, as any inscribed in the Golden Register of that famous aristocracy.

“My mother was a noble Scottish woman. She was descended – do not start – and not remotely descended, of the house of Glenvarloch – no wonder that I was easily led to take concern in the misfortunes of this young lord. He is my near relation, and my mother, who was more than sufficiently proud of her descent, early taught me to take an interest in the name. My maternal grandfather, a cadet of that house of Glenvarloch, had followed the fortunes of an unhappy fugitive, Francis Earl of Bothwell, who, after showing his miseries in many a foreign court, at length settled in Spain upon a miserable pension, which he earned by conforming to the Catholic faith. Ralph Olifaunt, my grandfather, separated from him in disgust, and settled at Barcelona, where, by the friendship of the governor, his heresy, as it was termed, was connived at. My father, in the course of his commerce, resided more at Barcelona than in his native country, though at times he visited Genoa.

“It was at Barcelona that he became acquainted with my mother, loved her, and married her; they differed in faith, but they agreed in affection. I was their only child. In public I conformed to the docterins and ceremonial of the Church of Rome; but my mother, by whom these were regarded with horror, privately trained me up in those of the reformed religion; and my father, either indifferent in the matter, or unwilling to distress the woman whom he loved, overlooked or connived at my secretly joining in her devotions.

“But when, unhappily, my father was attacked, while yet in the prime of life, by a slow wasting disease, which he felt to be incurable, he foresaw the hazard to which his widow and orphan might be exposed, after he was no more, in a country so bigoted to Catholicism as Spain. He made it his business, during the two last years of his life, to realize and remit to England a large part of his fortune, which, by the faith and honour of his correspondent, the excellent man under whose roof I now reside, was employed to great advantage. Had my father lived to complete his purpose, by withdrawing his whole fortune from commerce, he himself would have accompanied us to England, and would have beheld us settled in peace and honour before his death. But heaven had ordained it otherwise. He died, leaving several sums engaged in the hands of his Spanish debtors; and, in particular, he had made a large and extensive consignment to a certain wealthy society of merchants at Madrid, who showed no willingness after his death to account for the proceeds. Would to God we had left these covetous and wicked men in possession of their booty, for such they seemed to hold the property of their deceased correspondent and friend! We had enough for comfort, and even splendour, already secured in England; but friends exclaimed upon the folly of permitting these unprincipled men to plunder us of our rightful property. The sum itself was large, and the claim having been made, my mother thought that my father’s memory was interested in its being enforced, especially as the defences set up for the mercantile society went, in some degree, to impeach the fairness of his transactions.

“We went therefore to Madrid. I was then, my Margaret, about your age, young and thoughtless, as you have hitherto been – We went, I say, to Madrid, to solicit the protection of the Court and of the king, without which we were told it would be in vain to expect justice against an opulent and powerful association.

“Our residence at the Spanish metropolis drew on from weeks to months. For my part, my natural sorrow for a kind, though not a fond father, having abated, I cared not if the lawsuit had detained us at Madrid for ever. My mother permitted herself and me rather more liberty than we had been accustomed to. She found relations among the Scottish and Irish officers, many of whom held a high rank in the Spanish armies; their wives and daughters became our friends and companions, and I had perpetual occasion to exercise my mother’s native language, which I had learned from my infancy. By degrees, as my mother’s spirits were low, and her health indifferent, she was induced, by her partial fondness for me, to suffer me to mingle occasionally in society which she herself did not frequent, under the guardianship of such ladies as she imagined she could trust, and particularly under the care of the lady of a general officer, whose weakness or falsehood was the original cause of my misfortunes. I was as gay, Margaret, and thoughtless – I again repeat it – as you were but lately, and my attention, like yours, became suddenly riveted to one object, and to one set of feelings.

“The person by whom they were excited was young, noble, handsome, accomplished, a soldier, and a Briton. So far our cases are nearly parallel; but, may heaven forbid that the parallel should become complete! This man, so noble, so fairly formed, so gifted, and so brave – this villain, for that, Margaret, was his fittest name, spoke of love to me, and I listened – Could I suspect his sincerity? If he was wealthy, noble, and long-descended, I also was a noble and an opulent heiress. It is true, that he neither knew the extent of my father’s wealth, nor did I communicate to him (I do not even remember if I myself knew it at the time) the important circumstance, that the greater part of that wealth was beyond the grasp of arbitrary power, and not subject to the precarious award of arbitrary judges. My lover might think, perhaps, as my mother was desirous the world at large should believe, that almost our whole fortune depended on the precarious suit which we had come to Madrid to prosecute – a belief which she had countenanced out of policy, being well aware that a knowledge of my father’s having remitted such a large part of his fortune to England, would in no shape aid the recovery of further sums in the Spanish courts. Yet, with no more extensive views of my fortune than were possessed by the public, I believe that he, of whom I am speaking, was at first sincere in his pretensions. He had himself interest sufficient to have obtained a decision in our favour in the courts, and my fortune, reckoning only what was in Spain, would then have been no inconsiderable sum. To be brief, whatever might be his motives or temptation for so far committing himself, he applied to my mother for my hand, with my consent and approval. My mother’s judgment had become weaker, but her passions had become more irritable, during her increasing illness.

“You have heard of the bitterness of the ancient Scottish feuds, of which it may be said, in the language of Scripture, that the fathers eat sour grapes, and the teeth of the children are set on edge. Unhappily – I should say happily, considering what this man has now shown himself to be – some such strain of bitterness had divided his house from my mother’s, and she had succeeded to the inheritance of hatred. When he asked her for my hand, she was no longer able to command her passions – she raked up every injury which the rival families had inflicted upon each other during a bloody feud of two centuries – heaped him with epithets of scorn, and rejected his proposal of alliance, as if it had come from the basest of mankind.

“My lover retired in passion; and I remained to weep and murmur against fortune, and – I will confess my fault – against my affectionate parent. I had been educated with different feelings, and the traditions of the feuds and quarrels of my mother’s family in Scotland, which we’re to her monuments and chronicles, seemed to me as insignificant and unmeaning as the actions and fantasies of Don Quixote; and I blamed my mother bitterly for sacrificing my happiness to an empty dream of family dignity.

“While I was in this humour, my lover sought a renewal of our intercourse. We met repeatedly in the house of the lady whom I have mentioned, and who, in levity, or in the spirit of intrigue, countenanced our secret correspondence. At length we were secretly married – so far did my blinded passion hurry me. My lover had secured the assistance of a clergyman of the English church. Monna Paula, who had been my attendant from infancy, was one witness of our union. Let me do the faithful creature justice – She conjured me to suspend my purpose till my mother’s death should permit us to celebrate our marriage openly; but the entreaties of my lover, and my own wayward passion, prevailed over her remonstrances. The lady I have spoken of was another witness, but whether she was in full possession of my bridegroom’s secret, I had never the means to learn. But the shelter of her name and roof afforded us the means of frequently meeting, and the love of my husband seemed as sincere and as unbounded as my own.

“He was eager, he said, to gratify his pride, by introducing me to one or two of his noble English friends. This could not be done at Lady D – ’s; but by his command, which I was now entitled to consider as my law, I contrived twice to visit him at his own hotel, accompanied only by Monna Paula. There was a very small party, of two ladies and two gentlemen. There was music, mirth, and dancing. I had heard of the frankness of the English nation, but I could not help thinking it bordered on license during these entertainments, and in the course of the collation which followed; but I imputed my scruples to my inexperience, and would not doubt the propriety of what was approved by my husband.

“I was soon summoned to other scenes: My poor mother’s disease drew to a conclusion – Happy I am that it took place before she discovered what would have cut her to the soul.

“In Spain you may have heard how the Catholic priests, and particularly the monks, besiege the beds of the dying, to obtain bequests for the good of the church. I have said that my mother’s temper was irritated by disease, and her judgment impaired in proportion. She gathered spirits and force from the resentment which the priests around her bed excited by their importunity, and the boldness of the stern sect of reformers, to which she had secretly adhered, seemed to animate her dying tongue. She avowed the religion she had so long concealed; renounced all hope and aid which did not come by and through its dictates; rejected with contempt the ceremonial of the Romish church; loaded the astonished priests with reproaches for their greediness and hypocrisy, and commanded them to leave her house. They went in bitterness and rage, but it was to return with the inquisitorial power, its warrants, and its officers; and they found only the cold corpse left of her, on whom they had hoped to work their vengeance. As I was soon discovered to have shared my mother’s heresy, I was dragged from her dead body, imprisoned in a solitary cloister, and treated with severity, which the Abbess assured me was due to the looseness of my life, as well as my spiritual errors. I avowed my marriage, to justify the situation in which I found myself – I implored the assistance of the Superior to communicate my situation to my husband. She smiled coldly at the proposal, and told me the church had provided a better spouse for me; advised me to secure myself of divine grace hereafter, and deserve milder treatment here, by presently taking the veil. In order to convince me that I had no other resource, she showed me a royal decree, by which all my estate was hypothecated to the convent of Saint Magdalen, and became their complete property upon my death, or my taking the vows. As I was, both from religious principle, and affectionate attachment to my husband, absolutely immovable in my rejection of the veil, I believe – may heaven forgive me if I wrong her – that the Abbess was desirous to make sure of my spoils, by hastening the former event.

“It was a small and a poor convent, and situated among the mountains of Guadarrama. Some of the sisters were the daughters of neighbouring Hidalgoes, as poor as they were proud and ignorant; others were women immured there on account of their vicious conduct. The Superior herself was of a high family, to which she owed her situation; but she was said to have disgraced her connexions by her conduct during youth, and now, in advanced age, covetousness and the love of power, a spirit too of severity and cruelty, had succeeded to the thirst after licentious pleasure. I suffered much under this woman – and still her dark, glassy eye, her tall, shrouded form, and her rigid features, haunt my slumbers.

“I was not destined to be a mother. I was very ill, and my recovery was long doubtful. The most violent remedies were applied, if remedies they indeed were. My health was restored at length, against my own expectation and that of all around me. But, when I first again beheld the reflection of my own face, I thought it was the visage of a ghost. I was wont to be flattered by all, but particularly by my husband, for the fineness of my complexion – it was now totally gone, and, what is more extraordinary, it has never returned. I have observed that the few who now see me, look upon me as a bloodless phantom – Such has been the abiding effect of the treatment to which I was subjected. May God forgive those who were the agents of it! – I thank Heaven I can say so with as sincere a wish, as that with which I pray for forgiveness of my own sins. They now relented somewhat towards me – moved perhaps to compassion by my singular appearance, which bore witness to my sufferings; or afraid that the matter might attract attention during a visitation of the bishop, which was approaching. One day, as I was walking in the convent-garden, to which I had been lately admitted, a miserable old Moorish slave, who was kept to cultivate the little spot, muttered as I passed him, but still keeping his wrinkled face and decrepit form in the same angle with the earth – ‘There is Heart’s Ease near the postern.’