Charlotte Smith

“ Monimia – was an incessant occasion of reproach – 'Why,' said Mrs Rayland, 'why would you, Lennard, give the child such a name? As the girl will have nothing, why put such romantic notions in her head, as may perhaps prevent her getting her bread honestly? – Monimia! – I protest I don't love even to repeat the name; it puts me so in mind of a very hateful play, which I remember shocked me so when I was a mere girl, that I have always detested the name. Monimia! ”

“ Poor Monimia was extremely willing to obey. – She sat down and began to undress, listening as patiently as she could to the violent scolding which her indefatigable aunt still kept up against her; who having at length exhausted her breath, bounced out and locked the door.
Monimia, then left alone, again began to indulge her tears; but her room was in a turret over a sort of lumber-room, where the gamekeeper kept his nets and his rods, and where Orlando used to deposit his bow, his cricket-bats and other instruments of sport, with which he was indulged with playing in the park. ”

“ Orlando, I have forseen that the happiness I have so little a while enjoyed of seeing you would not last long!'
'I know not,' replied he. 'I may be too easily alarmed; but, with the bustle and fuss my uncle makes about every thing he pursues, he seldom fails of carrying his point; and he is now elated with his success over the prudent and worldly-minded Mr Fitz-Owen, and believes his interposition would every where prove as infallible as it has done in hurrying up this marriage for Philippa.'
'Do you think it then too much hurried?' said Monimia. ”

“ The wind is so high, that any trifling noise could hardly be heard by my aunt if she were upon the watch, which I hope she is not.' 'You are generous to indulge me,' answered Orlando; 'and I must be a monster to dream of injuring such innocence and candour. But, Monimia, there are a thousand uneasy thoughts continually crowding upon me about you. This Betty Richards – I am afraid she is a bad girl; I am sure she is an artful one; and there is an alliance of some sort or other between her and the old butler: you will never trust her, Monimia.'
'Never indeed,' replied Monimia ”

“ Yet I am sure I mean no hurt to any body; nor can it do my cruel aunt any harm, that you pity a poor orphan who has no friend upon earth.'
'I will, however,' replied he warmly, 'pity and love you too – love you as well as I do any of my sisters – even the sister I love best – and I should hate myself if I did not. But, dear Monimia, tell me, if I cannot see you in the day-time, is it impossible for you to walk out of an evening, when these old women are in bed? ”

“ The lecture ended, and the old coachman withdrew, extremely discontent that his Patty had been compared to the house-keeper's niece, who was, as he mutterd to himself, a mere pauper; and Monimia was not at all flattered by being brought forward as a comparison for Miss Snelcraft, whom the servants, and particularly Betty, had been turning into ridicule for her awkward finery and airs of consequence – nor did the expression, that she was born of parents whom some people would call genteel, at all sweeten the bitterness of this comparison. ”

“ The purchase of Carloraine Castle by such a man had given Mrs Rayland inexpressible concern and mortification, which every circumstance that came to her knowledge had contributed to increase. She had already heard enough to foresee all the inconveniences of this exchange of neighbours; on which she dwelt continually, yet seemed to take strange pains to irritate her own uneasiness by daily enquiries into the alterations and proceedings of Mr Stockton; who, even before the purchase was generally know to be complete, had begun, under the auspices of modern taste, to new model every thing. ”

“ When the young Orlando was at home, and accompanied his family in these visits, the austere visage of Mrs Rayland was alone seen to relax into a smile – and as he grew older, this partiality was observed evidently to increase, insomuch that the neighbours observed, that whatever aversion the old lady had to feminine beauty, she did not detest that which nature had very liberally bestowed on Orlando. ”

“ If there was any dependence to be placed on expression of countenance, the animation and intelligence that were visible in the soft features of Monimia promised an excellent understanding. What pity that it should not be cultivated! What delight to be her preceptor, and, in despite of the malignity of fortune, to render her mind as lovely as her form! This project got so entirely the possession of Orlando's imagination, that he thought, he dreamed, of nothing else ”

“ The adjuration was too powerful: Monimia forgot the dread of her aunt in the superior dread of offending Orlando. She took her scissars, and, cutting the hangings, which through time were little more than tinder, discovered the door, which was very thin and only nailed up, strengthened on the outside by a few slight deals across it. Orlando, who, like another Pyramus, watched with a beating heart the breach through which he now saw the light, forced away those slight barriers with very little difficulty ”

“ Mr Fitz-Owen is a very young man: he only saw Philippa half a dozen times when she was in town last spring with my uncle; and he has insisted upon this match with as much vehemence as he could have done, had he known all her good qualities.'
'That,' said Monimia, 'is a very grave reflection. If Philippa has the good qualities of which the gentleman is ignorant, the discovery that beauty is her least perfection will increase his happiness.'
'But what does she know of him, Monimia? What opportunity can she have had to judge of a man with whom she is engaged to pass her life? ”

“ To the beauty indeed of any female the ladies of Rayland Hall had a particular objection, but that of the Miss Somerives was above all obnoxious to them – Nor could they ever forget the error the grandfather of these children had committed in marrying for her beauty the young woman, whose poverty having reduced her to be their humble companion, they had considered as an inferior being, and had treated with supercilious insolence and contempt. ”

“ He had early in life seized with avidity the idea, which servants and tenants were ready enough to communicate, that he must have the Rayland estate; and had very thoughtlessly expressed this to those who failed not to repeat it to their present mistress, tenacious of her power, and jealous of every attempt to encroach on her property. – He had besides trespassed on some remote corners of her manors; and her gamekeeper had represented him as a terrible depredator among her partridges, pheasants, and hares. ”

“ The hour at length came when he believed every one in the house were occupied with their own affairs; and having excused himself from drinking tea with Mrs Rayland, under the pretence of being busied in writing for his father, he stole softly to the room under that of Monimia, and from thence up the stairs.
He listened, fearful of again hearing the indefatigable clack of Betty; but every thing was profoundly silent. The letter, which he had deposited there, was gone; but there was no answer. He feared Monimia was ill – the terror, the fatigue of the preceding night, had been too much for her. ”

“ Come, tell us – you have more sense than to cry because one asks a civil question.'
'Lord, Sir,' replied Betty, 'to be sure you are such another wild gentleman that I don't at all wonder you've frighted our Miss, who, poor thing! has scarcely ever been out of our house all her life. ”

“ But after all, Betty, pray are you sure these ladies and gentlemen will be there?'
'As sure as five pence – for John Dickman told me so. Oh! that I could but go! – for Orlando, you know, Miss, who is the sweetest temperd good-naturdest cretur in all England, would never tell if he saw one ever so smartly dress: – No, egollys! he's more like to give one some trifle or other to help one out, than to blab to get one anger.'
'Has he ever given you any thing, Betty?' said Monimia, in a voice the tremor of which she could not disguise ”

“ The eldest son, who would, as the father fondly hoped, succeed to the Rayland estate, he had sent to Oxford, where he had been indulged in his natural turn to expence; and his father had suffered him to live rather suitably to what he expected than to what he was sure of. – In this Mr Somerive had acted extremely wrong; but it was from motives so natural, that his error was rather lamented than blamed. – An error however, and of the most dangerous tendency, he had now discovered it to be; young Somerive had violent passions, and an understanding very ill suited to their management. ”

“ At six years old she had so much won upon the heart of Mrs Rayland, that she became a frequent guest in the parlour, and saved her aunt the trouble of opening the door for Bella, and Pompey, and Julie. From the tenderness of her nature she became an admirable nurse for the frequent litters of kittens, with which two favourite cats continually increased the family of her protectress; and the numerous daily applications from robins and sparrows under the windows, were never so well attended to as since Monimia was entrusted with the care of answering their demands. ”

“ But as history must conceal no part of the truth, from partiality to the hero it celebrates, it must not be denied that the young Orlando had, though insensibly and almost unknown to himself, another motive for submitting with a good grace to pass much of his time in a way, for which, thinking as he thought, the prospect of even boundless wealth could have made him no compensation. ”

“ She begged pardon; and another look from her aunt bade her beware that she did not offend a second time – when Mrs Rayland thus went on:
'After a taste for such company, this place must be very dull: drinking and jollity, I suppose, are soon learned. And so Mr Orlando has not been here these two days! Mighty well; he is his own master – Lennard! he has not called this morning, has he?'
Monimia, by a glance of her eye, saw him at that moment pensively and dejectedly crossing the park on foot. ”

“ Mrs Lennard, to whom the constant residence of Orlando at the Hall might be supposed to be disagreeable, was much more civil to him, now that he was a fine young man, than ever she had been during his childhood: to her he was always extremely obliging; and though he disdained to stoop to the meanness of flattering Mrs Rayland, where money might be supposed to be his sole object, he did not think it equally unworthy to use a little art to promote the interest of his love. ”

“ You cannot, with all the spirit you possess yourself, desire me to act like a coward; you must despise me if I did: and even my dear, my tender mother would blush for her son, if she thought him afraid of any man when he is conscious of a good cause.'
'What is to be done, then?' cried Somerive in great perplexity. 'You will certainly receive a challenge, Orlando.'
'And then I must certainly accept it. But indeed, dear Sir, you are needlessly distressed: if this warlike Sir John must vindicate his injured honour by firing a brace of pistols at me, I have as good a chance as he has ”

“ Let him be put into some way of doing for himself – every man who knows the world will agree with me – let him be put into some way of doing for himself; and then, if Mrs Rayland has a mind to be a friend to him, take my word for it she'll do it so much the sooner. I'm sure of it, for I've remarked it in my dealings among mankind, and every man who knows the world will agree with me, that people are always more ready to help those who are in a way of doing well, than those that hang about helpless. ”

“ She was a ruddy, shewy girl, with a large but rather a good figure; and her face was no sooner washed, and her hair combed over a roll, than she became an object which attracted the attention of the great Mr Pattenson himself; who, proceeding in the usual way by which he had won the favour of so many of the subaltern nymphs in Mrs Rayland's kitchen, began to make her many presents, and to talk of her beauty ”

“ City apprentices, that used to live soberly at their shops, are turned sportsmen, forsooth, and have the impudence to call themselves gentlemen. I hear, and I suppose 'tis true enough, that Mr Philip Somerive thinks proper to be acquainted with this mushroom fellow – and to be one of his party! – Pray, child, can you tell me – is it true?'
'I believe, madam, my brother has some acquaintance, but I fancy only a slight acquaintance, with Mr Stockton.'
'Oh! I have very little curiosity – I dare say he is one of the set, and it is very fit he should. "Birds of a feather, you know, flock together." ”

“ So deep, and often so fatal, are early impressions in minds where reason slowly and feebly combats the influence of passion, that though nothing was more certain than that Mrs Rayland's fortune was entirely at her own disposal, and nothing more evident than her dislike to him, he never could be persuaded that, as he was the heir at law, he should not possess the greater part of the estate ”