E. Fenwick

“ When my uncle began to speak, Clement trembled; but all my emotions were chained up in astonishment: for I heard him say that Clement should that day quit the castle, that he should seek new companions, new countries, new climates.
'Never! never!' I cried. I folded my arms round my lover—'Thou shalt not go, Clement,' I said. 'We have world enough. No: thou shalt not go, my Clement!'
Mr. Valmont furiously bade me desist; but he had awakened a dread in my mind more powerful than my dread of him. For a time, I expostulated with vehemence and courage ”

“ You perceive plainly, don't you, Walter, that I have no alternative but taking Sibella Valmont with her 7,000l. per annum? You have now seen her picture, tell me, is she not unequalled? And may I not sometimes, without any violent effort of self-denial, condescend to toy away an hour or two with (though my own wife) a creature so perfect? Walter! Walter! Could I drench in oblivion that youth with the flowing beard, I should be proud to acknowledge how often I dream of this little seducer!—As it certainly was not Montgomery, who could it be?—and why came he there? ”

“ The eye beams no tidings, for the heart feels no warmth! Such is my love to me!—Tell me, Miss Valmont, what would you do were Clement thus?'
'Alas! Die also!'
'Oh brave!' said Murden with a strange kind of smile:—'bear witness, thou unhallowed gloomy mansion, for one, one moment of our lives are we agreed!—Miss Valmont, I shall never see you more. If I have created uneasiness in your breast, by my strange visits to this spot, forgive and forget it. Ask me no questions. In some hour of less anguish than the present, I will tell Miss Ashburn how and why I came hither. ”

“ Miss Monckton is a coquette, with all the finish of high breeding. She is elegant, though diminutive; highly accomplished in exterior: the rest a blank.—Yet her ease, grace, and vivacity, would have claimed more moments of admiration from me, were not my thoughts perpetually gadding after this Sibella Valmont: sometimes arraigning, sometimes acquitting, her. But my heart has no interest in the motive, Boyer.—No; she is quite an original, formed rather to constitute the business of a life, than the casual pleasure of a moment. I should hate uniformity even of happiness. ”

“ I charge you, cease to repeat my uncle's useless prohibition, that I should remember Clement otherwise than as a brother. Let him give his barrier to the waves, arrest the strong air in its current, but dream not of placing limits to the love of Clement and Sibella!
Do I weary you with this endless topic? You read the world: I, my own heart. Imprisoned, during so many years, within the narrow boundary of this castle and its parks, the same objects eternally before me, I look with disgust from their perpetual round of succession. Nature herself, spring, summer, autumn, degenerate into sameness. ”

“ But it is in your power, Montgomery, to live surrounded by riches and splendor, to command the perpetual succession of pleasures which riches and splendor can procure.
Remember the proposal I made you one day, half in earnest half in jest. Think of it. Embrace it. And send Mr. Valmont back his paltry annuity in disdain. You cannot be so blind, so mad as to reject this only means of your happiness. Renounce it, and I shall believe you reserve yourself for my rival, the faithless and barbarous Sibella. Accept it, and all the delights which Janetta's love can bestow are your's for ever. ”

“ This is no spirit of your uncle's choosing, Sibella. No: it is one who has refined upon romance; who can give, I perceive, as much enthusiasm to the affections, and carve misery for himself as ingeniously, as though he had passed his days under the safeguard of Mr. Valmont's walls and draw-bridges. 'He will protect, but cannot harm thee.' In truth, I believe it. Go to the wood then, Sibella. See him, if possible; and tell me, did symmetry ever mould a statue in finer proportions than his form can boast? His eye in its passive state is a clear grey, its shape long ”

“ To Clement's murmurs against Mr. Valmont, succeeded a little species of delirium: for I named you, and no impassioned lover-like epithet was omitted in the recital of your charms.—Whatever, Sibella, may be my own vanity and pretensions I could hear praises of your beauty from a thousand tongues without envy or weariness. Yet, from Clement, a slighter mention would have pleased me better. He is the chosen of your heart; and should prize the mind you possess equal to heaven. An Angel's beauty might be forgotten, when the present and future contemplation of such a mind could be brought in view. ”

“ Let not imagination bring before me the etherial beauty of my Sibella! Let it not transport me to her arms, within the heaven of Valmont wood! or I shall be left a form without a soul; and be excluded from the enjoyment that I now admire, as being in absence my solace, my happiness.
I expected I should have been dull without thee, Murden; but I hardly know, except when I am writing, that thou hast left me. I dress, I dance, I ride, I visit, I am visited. My remittances bring me all I wish, in their profusion. I adore, and am adored ”

“ No, Andrew, 'tis in vain you search. No fair wood-nymph greets your eye. No voice answers to your call.——Ay! ay! assemble them:—hold your convocations in the great hall:—crowd, closer and closer:—whisper your suspicions, lest the dread ear of Valmont catch the tidings, that—she is gone!—Who shall carry these tidings to Mr. Valmont?—Not I! not I! not I! answers every voice at once; and up to the hall door drives his coach and six. Away fly the pale culprits!—Jostling against each other, confusion retards their speed, and the dreadful secret is in part betrayed. ”

“ No one knows better than yourself, dear Murden, how closely I have pursued Mr. Valmont's rule of conduct, and I think you can guess also how greatly I shall now enjoy the pleasant solitude of Valmont castle.
For a week, a month, perchance, the blooming Sibella will render the wilderness a world. Could I flatter myself, that Mr. Valmont recals me to give her to my arms, how I should bound over the distance which now separates us? No, Arthur, no such blessing awaits your luckless friend; I am to look on her as a sister, says Mr. Valmont. Good heaven! ”

“ You know, dear Walter, that resolved to obtain the heiress of Valmont castle, I left London to return to Monkton Hall, with a heart full of promise, and a head full of stratagem. Fortune, that dear blind inconstant goddess, who formerly was almost within my grasp, now dashes the projects of others to the ground, to give my wishes their triumph. Some Merlin, with more potent spells than mine, broke the enchanted castle, bore off the damsel, and, directed by fate and fortune, brought her on the road, to meet me, to the very spot where it was decreed his success should end, that mine might begin. ”

“ Yes, Murden, I say purity. Ay, and she is as pure as angels, notwithstanding Clement has been admitted to her embraces. For I am her husband. She never heard of ties more holy, more binding, than those of the heart. Custom has not placed its sordid restraint on her feelings. Nature forms her impulses. Oh, she is Nature's genuine child! more lovely than painting can trace: yet robust as the peasant who climbs yon hill to toil for his hourly subsistence—soft as her lover's bounding wishes can desire: yet stedfast, aspiring, brave enough to lead an army in the field. ”

“ A. MURDEN
LETTER VI FROM CAROLINE ASHBURN
TO
SIBELLA VALMONT
For the first time of my life, have I become the assiduous watcher of windows, the listener after footsteps; and have lived eternally in the drawing room. Yet has no Clement Montgomery appeared; and I have just now recollected that my desire of knowing him will not accelerate his approach, that so much time given to expectation is so much thrown away, and that to employ the same quantity of time in endeavouring to amuse you would be more friendly and of course more laudable. ”

“ How wantonly cruel it is of Miss Ashburn to throw me thus in the way of torment and contempt! No one but herself could have told Janetta of the alteration in my affairs. 'Tis false! there is no alteration: for have I not four hundred pounds in my possession?
Where are you, and what are you doing, Arthur? By heaven, I never think of you without astonishment! You whom fortune favours, you so highly gifted to charm, to be sacrificing the age of delights, in a barbarous solitude! What, upon earth, can be your inducement? Your uncle pines for you. ”

“ Want to give up an angel, with whom it were life to die, to live from whom is death! Is she not torn from my arms? Am I not interdicted, and another elected? By heavens! my Lord, your secresy was unkind, but this triumph is insulting!'
And thus, Walter, we passed away the morning:—he, affirming; I denying. I fairly overshot my mark in leading him to talk so often of Sibella; for he has tacked together such a number of scraps and ends, that, with the aid of his colouring, make proofs as strong as proofs of holy writ.—Well, and if he does speak of me in this way to Mr. Valmont? ”

“ Darkness and silence are admirable auxiliaries to reflection. First, past in array before me my mortgages, my debts, and the diabolical stake I lost to Spellman for which I have given notes that extend to the uttermost penny I can raise. Then, how gaily danced before me the visions I had indulged while I sounded my father about this hidden fortune of Miss Valmont, and while I reflected on the well-known wealth of her uncle. 'Ah but,' said I, 'her uncle has refused me, has already selected a husband for her!' And I shut my eyes; and sighed, Walter. ”

“ His tutor, Janetta Laundy, also is most admirably chosen; and if Valmont deems that to be a dupe with a beggared purse, and shattered constitution, is the antidote against society, Montgomery is going the high road to answer all his wishes.
Your hint, dear knight, respecting Mrs. Ashburn, was not lost upon me; but, though I would not marry for aught but money, I should like to have a wife thrown into the bargain whom I could love now and then. I acknowledge the widow is as young as any woman (of her years) I ever saw in my life; and in wealth I should be an emperor. ”

“ You repulse my caresses! You give me up to misery and despair; and the wretched Montgomery dies under your neglect.
Farewel, my Janetta! Oh farewel, farewel, then, to all the blooming pleasures which I gathered with an eager hand! My sentence is without appeal. Mr. Valmont—that a father should be so cruel! dooms me to poverty and disgrace. Can I exist in poverty? No, by heaven! Shall I languish in a sordid dwelling, with there food and covering, and sicken over the remembrance of past enjoyments? ”

“ And what but thought, imperceptible yet mighty thought, could make a creature so infinitely diminutive in its proportions, so apparently valueless in the creation, shun the hand of power, and seek for itself sources of enjoyment?—I could tell you, Miss Ashburn, how I have imagined I met sympathy and reflection in that flower which enamoured of the sun mourns throughout the term of his absence, droops on her stalk, and shuts her bosom to the gloom and darkness which succeeds, nor bursts again into vigour and beauty till cheered by his all inspiring return. ”

“ When I first discovered that Montgomery's beloved was the selected friend of Miss Ashburn, I then knew they might be paired, but never mated. To rival him with one woman, methought could be little injury, when in her absence twenty others equally could charm.
After Miss Valmont had irrevocably given herself to Clement, I resolved to travel, for to the antipodes would I have journeyed, rather than met Montgomery. Yet I tutored my heart into the supposition that I still had a friendship for him, that Sibella had injured me, and was now not a jot beyond my friend, or my friend's wife. ”