The Heroine

'Now, Madam, you must already guess my motive for having taken this step. It is to secure your immediate marriage with his lordship, and thus to terminate for ever my daughter's hopes, and my own inquietude. In two days, therefore, be prepared to give him your hand, or to suffer imprisonment for life.'

'My lord,' said I, 'I am a poor, weak, timid girl, but yet not unmindful of my noble lineage. I cannot consent to disgrace it. My lord, I will not wed Montmorenci.'

'You will not?' cried he, starting from his seat.

'I will not,' said I, in a tone of the sweetest obstinacy.

'Insolent!' exclaimed he, and began to pace the chamber with prodigious strides. Conceive the scene; – the tall figure of Hildebrand passing along, with folded arms; the hideous desolation of the room, and my shrinking figure. It was great, very great. It resembled a Pandemonium, where an angel of light was tormented by a fiend. Yet insult and oppression had but added to my charms, as the rose throws forth fresh fragrance by being mutilated.

On a sudden he stopped short before me.

'What is your reason for refusing to marry him?' said he.

'My lord,' answered I, 'I do not feel for his lordship the passion of love.'

'Love!' cried he, with yells of laughter. 'Why this is Sympathina's silly rhodomontade. Love! There is no such passion. But mark me, Madam: soon shall you learn that there is such a passion as revenge!' And with these words he rushed out of the chamber.

Nothing could be better than my conduct on this occasion. I was delighted with it, and with the castle, and with every thing. I therefore knelt and chaunted a vesper hymn, so soft, and so solemn; while my eyes, like a magdalen's, were cast to the planets.

Adieu.

LETTER XLI

I had flung myself on the bed: my lamp was extinguished; and now sleep began to pour its opiate over me, when, (terrible to tell!) methought I heard steps stealing through my very chamber.

'She sleeps,' whispered a voice.

'Then poniard her at once,' said another.

'Remember, I must have five ducats,' said the first.

'Four,' said the second: 'Grufflan, the tormentor of innocents, would charge but two.'

'Then I will betray the murder.'

'I will take good care you shall not.'

'How so?'

'I will assassinate you after it.'

'Diavolo! 'Tis prudent, however. But by St. Jago, I will not consent to be assassinated under a ducat a-piece to my children.'

'Well, you shall have them.'

'Then, Maestro mio illustrissimo, the Bravo Abellino is your povero devotissimo!'

The next instant my strained eyeballs saw a figure half starting from behind the tattered arras, in a long cloak, and flat cap. His right hand held a dagger, and his left a dark lantern, that cast a yellow glare on the ruffianly sculpture of his visage.

I screamed; – but sorry am I to say, less like a heroine than a sea-gull; – and the bravo advanced. On a sudden, the door of the chamber was burst open, and Montmorenci rushed forward, with a brandished sword. At the same moment, Baron Hildebrand sprang from behind the tapestry.

'Turn, villain!' cried Montmorenci; and a desperate battle began.

My life was the stake. I hung upon every blow, winced as the steel descended on Montmorenci, and moved as he moved, with agonised mimicry.

At length, victory declared in his favour. The bandit lay lifeless, and the baron was disarmed; but escaped out of the chamber.

'Let us fly!' cried my preserver, snatching me to his heart. 'I have bribed a domestic. – A horse is in waiting. – Let us fly!'

'Let us, let us!' said I, disengaging myself.

'Yet hold!' cried he. 'I have saved your life. Save mine, by consenting to an immediate union.'

'Ay, my lord – '

'What?'

'I cannot.'

'Cannot!'

'Come, my lord; do come!'

'On my knees, lady – '

'Seize the villain, and immure him in the deepest dungeon!' exclaimed the baron, rushing into the room with his domestics.

Some of them laid hold on Montmorenci, the rest bore off the body of the bandit. The baron and I were left alone.

'My lord,' said I, flinging myself at his feet (for alas, I had now lost all my magnanimity), 'that man is my horror and detestation. But only promise to spare my life for one day more, and indeed, indeed, I will try if I can make up my mind to marry him.'

''Tis well,' said the baron. 'To-night you sleep secure: to-morrow decides your fate.'

He spoke, and stalked out of the chamber.

This horrid castle – would I had never set foot in it. I will escape if I can, I am resolved. I have already tried the walls, for a sliding pannel or a concealed door; but nothing of the kind can I discover. And yet something of the kind there must be, else how could the baron and bravo have entered my chamber? I protest this facility of intrusion in antique apartments is extremely distressing. For besides its exposing one to be murdered, just think how it exposes one to be peeped at. I declare I dare not even undress, lest some menial should be leering through a secret crevice. Oh, that I were once more in the mud cottage! I am sick of castles.

Adieu.

LETTER XLII

This morning, after a maid had cleaned out the room, Dame Ursulina brought breakfast.

'Graciousnessosity!' cried she, 'here is the whole castle in such a fluster; hammering and clamouring, and paddling at all manner of possets, to make much of the fine company that is coming down to the baron to-day.'

'Heavens!' exclaimed I, 'when will my troubles cease? Doubtless they are a most dissolute set. An amorous Verezzi, an insinuating Cavigni, and an abandoned Orsino; besides some lovely voluptuary, some fascinating desperado, who plays the harp, and poisons by the hour.'

'La, not at all,' said the dame. 'We shall have none but old Sir Charles Grandison, and his lady, Miss Harriet Byron, that was; – old Mr. Mortimer Delville, and his lady, Miss Cecilia, that was; – and old Lord Mortimer, and his lady, Miss Amanda, that was.'

'Can it be possible?' cried I. 'Why these are all heroes and heroines!'

'Pon my conversation, and by my fig, and as I am a true maiden, so they are,' said she; 'for my lord scorns any other sort of varment. And we shall have such tickling and pinching; and fircumdandying, and cherrybrandying, and the genteel poison of bad wine; and the warder blowing his horn, and the baron in his scowered armour, and I in a coif plaited high with ribbons all about it, and in the most rustling silk I have. And Philip, the butler, meets me in the dark. "Oddsboddikins," says he (for that is his pet oath), "mayhap I should know the voice of that silk?" "Oddspittikins," says I, "peradventure thou should'st;" and then he catches me round the neck, and – '

'There, there!' cried I, 'you distract me.'

'Marry come up!' muttered she. 'Some people think some people – Marry come up, quotha!' And she flounced out of the room.

I sat down to breakfast, astonished at what I had just heard. Harriet Byron, Cecilia, Amanda, and their respective consorts, all alive and well! Oh, could I get but one glimpse of them, speak ten words with them, I should die content. I pictured them to myself, adorned with all the venerable loveliness of a virtuous old age, – even in greyness engaging, even in wrinkles interesting. Hand in hand they walk down the gentle slope of life, and often pause to look back upon the scenes that they have passed – the happy vale of their childhood, the turretted castle, the cloistered monastery.

This reverie was interrupted by the return of Dame Ursulina.

'The baron,' said she, 'has just gone off to London; we think either for the purpose of consulting physicians about his periodical madness, or of advising government to propose a peace with France. So my young mistress, the Lady Sympathina, is anxious to visit you during his absence, – as he prohibited her; – and she has sent me to request that you will honor her with your permission.'

'Tell her I shall be most happy to see and to solace a lady of her miseries,' answered I. 'And I trust we shall swear an eternal friendship when we meet.'

'Friendship,' said the dame, 'is the soft soother of human cares. O, to see two fair females sobbing respondent, while their blue eyes shine through their tears like hyacinths bathed in the dews of the morning!'

'Why, dame,' cried I, 'how did you manage to pick up such a charming sentiment, and such elegant language?'

'Marry come up!' said she, 'I havn't lived, not I, not with heroines, not for nothing. Marry come up, quotha!' And this frumpish old woman sailed out of the chamber in a great fume.

I now prepared for an interview of congenial souls; not was I long kept in suspense. Hardly had the dame disappeared, when the door opened again, and a tall, thin, lovely girl, flew into the room. She stopped opposite me. Her yellow ringlets hung round her pale face like a mist round the moon. Again she advanced, took both my hands, and stood gazing on my features.

'Ah, what wonder,' said she, 'that Montmorenci should be captivated by these charms! No, I will not, cannot take him from you. He is your's, my friend. Marry him, and leave me to the solitude of a cloister.'

'Never!' cried I. 'Ah, madam, ah, Sympathina, your magnanimity amazes, transports me. No, my friend; your's he shall, he must be; for you love him, and I hate him.'

'Hate him!' cried she; 'and wherefore? Ah, what a form is his, and ah, what a face! Locks like the spicy cinnamon; eyes half dew, half lightning; lips like a casket of jewels, loveliest when open – '

'And teeth like the Sybil's books,' said I; 'for two of them are wanting.'

'Ah,' cried she, 'this I am informed is your reason for not marrying him; as if his charms lay in his teeth, like Sampson's strength in his hair.'

'Upon my honor,' said I, 'I would not marry him, if he had five hundred teeth. But you, my friend, you shall marry him, in spite of his teeth.'

'Ah,' cried she, 'and see my father torture you to death?'

'It were not torture,' said I, 'to save you from it.'

'It were double torture,' cried she, 'to be saved by your's.'

'Justice,' said I, 'demands the sacrifice.'

'Generosity,' said she, 'would spare the victim.'

'Is it generosity,' said I, 'to wed me with one I hate?'

'Is it justice,' said she, 'to wed me with one who hates me?'

'Ah, my friend,' cried I, 'you may vanquish me in Antithetical and Gallican repartee, but never shall you conquer me in sentimental magnanimity.'

'Let us then swear an eternal friendship,' cried she.

'I swear!' said I.

'I swear!' said she.

We rushed into each other's arms.

'And now,' cried she, when the first transports had subsided, 'how do you like being a heroine?'

'Above all things in the world,' said I.

'And how do you get on at the profession?' asked she.

'It is not for me to say,' replied I. 'Only this, that ardor and assiduity are not wanting on my part.'

'Of course then,' said she, 'you shine in all the requisite qualities. Do you blush well?'

'As well as can be expected,' said I.

'Because,' said she, 'blushing is my chief beauty. I blush one tint and three-fourths with joy; two tints, including forehead and bosom, with modesty; and four with love, to the points of my fingers. My father once blushed me against the dawn for a tattered banner to a rusty poniard.'

'And who won?' said I.

'It was play or pay,' replied she; 'and the morning happened to be misty, so there was no sport in that way; but I fainted, which was just as good, if not better. Are you much addicted to fainting?'

'A little,' said I.

''Pon honor?'

'Well, ma'am, to be honest with you, I am afraid I have never fainted yet; but at a proper opportunity I flatter myself – '

'Nay, love,' said she, 'do not be distressed about the matter. If you weep well, 'tis a good substitute. Do you weep well?'

'Extremely well, indeed,' said I.

'Come then,' cried she, 'we will weep on each other's necks.' And she flung her arms about me. We remained some moments in motionless endearment.

'Are you weeping?' said she, at length.

'No, ma'am,' answered I.

'Ah, why don't you?' said she.

'I can't, ma'am,' said I; 'I can't.'

'Ah, do,' said she.

'Upon my word, I can't,' said I: 'sure I am trying all I can. But, bless me, how desperately you are crying. Your tears are running down my bosom like a torrent, and boiling hot too. Excuse me, ma'am, but you will give me my death of cold.'

'Ah, my fondling,' said she, raising herself from my neck; 'tears are my sole consolation. Ofttimes I sit and weep, I know not why; and then I weep to find myself weeping. Then, when I can weep, I weep at having nothing to weep at; and then, when I have something to weep at, I weep that I cannot weep at it. This very morning I bumpered a tulip with my tears, while reading a dainty ditty that I must now repeat to you.

'The moon had just risen, as a maid parted from her lover. A sylph was pursuing her sigh through the deserts of air, bathing in its warmth, and enhaling its odours. As he flew over the ocean, he saw a sea-nymph sitting on the shore, and singing the fate of a shipwreck, that appeared at a distance, with broken masts, and floating rudder. Her instrument was her own long and blue tresses, which she had strung across rocks of coral. The sparkling spray struck them, and made sweet music. He saw, he loved, he hovered over her. But invisible, how could he attract her eyes? Incorporeal, how could he touch her? Even his voice could not be heard by her amidst the dashing of the waves, and the melody of her ringlets. The sylphs, pitying his miserable state, exiled him to a bower of woodbine. There he sits, dips his pen of moonshine in the subtle dew ere it falls, and writes his love on the bell of a silver lily.'

This charming tale led us to talk of moonshine. We moralized on the uncertainty of it, and of life; discussed sighs, and agreed that they were charming things; enumerated the various kinds of tresses – flaxen, golden, chesnut, amber, sunny, jetty, carroty; and I suggested two new epithets, – sorrel hair and narcissine hair. Such a flow of soul never was.

At last she rose to depart.

'Now, my love,' said she, 'I am in momentary expectation of Sir Charles Grandison, Mortimer Delville, and Lord Mortimer, with their amiable wives. Will you permit them, during the baron's absence, to spend an hour with you this evening? They will not betray us. I shall be proud of showing you to them, and you will receive much delight and edification from their society.'

I grasped at the proposal with eagerness; she flitted out of the chamber with a promissory smile; and I was so charmed, that I began frisking about, and snapping my fingers, in a most indecorous manner.

What an angel is this Sympathina! Her face has the contour of a Madona, with the sensibility of a Magdalen. Her voice is soft as the last accents of a dying maid. Her language is engaging, her oh is sublime, and her ah is beautiful.

Adieu.

LETTER XLIII

Towards night I heard the sound of several steps approaching the chamber. The bolts were undrawn, and Lady Sympathina, at the head of the company, entered, and announced their names.

'Bless me!' said I, involuntarily; for such a set of objects never were seen.

Sir Charles Grandison came forward the first. He was an emaciated old oddity in flannels and a flowing wig. He bowed over my hand, and kissed it – his old custom, you know.

Lady Grandison leaned on his arm, bursting with fat and laughter, and so unlike what I had conceived of Harriet Byron, that I turned from her in disgust.

Mortimer Delville came next; and my disappointment at finding him a plain, sturdy, hard-featured fellow, was soon absorbed in my still greater regret at seeing his Cecilia, – once the blue-eyed, sun-tressed Cecilia, – now flaunting in all the reverend graces of a painted grandmother, and leering most roguishly.

After them, Lord Mortimer and his Amanda advanced; but he had fallen into flesh; and she, with a face like scorched parchment, appeared both broken-hearted and broken-winded; such a perpetual sighing and wheezing did she keep.

I was too much shocked and disappointed to speak; but Sir Charles soon broke silence; and after the most tedious sentence of compliment that I had ever heard, he thus continued:

'Your ladyship may recollect I have always been celebrated for giving advice. Let me then advise you to relieve yourself from your present embarrassment, by marrying Lord Montmorenci. It seems you do not love him. For that very reason marry him. Trust me, love before marriage is the surest preventive of love after it. Heroes and heroines exemplify the proposition. Why do their biographers always conclude the book just at their wedding? Simply because all beyond it is unhappiness and hatred.'

'Surely, Sir Charles,' said I, 'you must be mistaken. Their biographers (who have such admirable information, that they can even tell the thoughts and actions of dying personages, when not a soul is near them), these always end the book with declaring that the connubial lives of their heroes and heroines are like unclouded skies, or unruffled streams, or summer all the year through, or some gentle simile or other.'

'That is all irony,' replied Sir Charles. 'But I know most of these heroes and heroines myself; and I know that nothing can equal their misery.'

'Do you know Lord Orville and his Evelina?' said I; 'and are not they happy?'

'Happy!' cried he, laughing. 'Have you really never heard of their notorious miffs? Why it was but yesterday that she flogged him with a boiled leg of mutton, because he had sent home no turnips.'

'Astonishment!' exclaimed I. 'And she, when a girl, so meek.'

'Ay, there it is,' said he. 'One has never seen a white foal or a cross girl; but often white horses and cross wives. Let me advise you against white horses.'

'But pray,' said I, addressing Amanda, 'is not your brother Oscar happy with his Adela?'

'Alas, no,' cried she. 'Oscar became infatuated with the charms of Evelina's old governess, Madam Duval; so poor Adela absconded; and she, who was once the soul of mirth, has now grown a confirmed methodist; curls a sacred sneer at gaiety, loves canting and decanting, piety and eau de vie. In short, the devil is very busy about her, though she sometimes drives him away with a thump of the Bible.'

'Well, Rosa, the gentle beggar-girl, – what of her?' said I.

'Eloped with one Corporal Trim,' answered Sir Charles.

'How shocking!' cried I. 'But Pamela, the virtuous Pamela?' —

'Made somewhat a better choice,' said Sir Charles; 'for she ran off with Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, when he returned to the happy valley.'

'Dreadful accounts, indeed!' said I.

'So dreadful,' said Sir Charles, bowing over my hand, 'that I trust they will determine you to marry Montmorenci. 'Tis true, he has lost two teeth, and you do not love him; but was not Walstein a cripple? And did not Caroline of Lichfield fall in love with him after their marriage, though she had hated him before it?'

'Recollect,' cried Cecilia, 'what perils environ you here. The baron is the first murderer of the age.'

'Look at yonder blood,' cried old Mortimer Delville.

'Remember the bandit last night,' cried old Lord Mortimer.

'Think of the tremendous spectre that haunts this apartment,' cried Lady Grandison.

'And above all,' cried the Lady Sympathina, 'bear in mind that this chamber may be the means of your waking some morning with a face like a pumpkin.'

'Heavens!' exclaimed I, 'what do you mean? My face like a pumpkin?'

'Yes,' said she. 'The dampness of the room would swell it up like a pumpkin in a single night.'

'Oh! ladies and gentlemen,' cried I, dropping on my knees, 'you see what shocking horrors surround me here. Oh! let me beseech of you to pity and to rescue me. Surely, surely you might aid me in escaping!'

'It is out of the nature of possibilities,' said Lady Sympathina.

'At least, then,' cried I, 'you might use your influence to have me removed from this vile room, that feels like a well.'

'Fly!' cried Dame Ursulina, running in breathless. 'The baron has just returned, and is searching for you all. And he has already been through the chapel, and armoury, and gallery; and the west tower, and east tower, and south tower; and the cedar chamber, and oaken chamber, and black chamber, and grey, brown, yellow, green, pale pink, sky blue; and every shade, tinge, and tint of chamber in the whole castle. Benedicite, Santa Maria; how the times have degenerated! Come, come, come.'

The guests vanished, the door was barred, and I remained alone.

I sat ruminating in sad earnest, on the necessity for my consenting to this hateful match; when (and I protest to you, I had not thought it was more than nine o'clock), a terrible bell, which I never heard before, tolled, with an appalling reverberation, that rang through my whole frame, the frightful hour of One!

At the same moment I heard a noise; and looking towards the opposite end of the chamber, I beheld the great picture on a sudden disappear; and, standing in its stead, a tall figure, cased in blood-stained steel, and with a spectral visage, the perfect counterpart of the baron's.

I sat gasping. It uttered these sepulchral intonations.

'I am the spirit of the murdered Alphonso. Lord Montmorenci deserves thee. Wed him, or in two days thou liest a corpse. To-morrow night I come again.'

The superhuman appearance spoke; and (oh, soothing sound) uttered a human sneeze!

'Damnation!' it muttered. 'All is blown!' And immediately the picture flew back to its place.

Well, I had never heard of a ghost's sneezing before: so you may judge I soon got rid of my terror, and felt pretty certain that this was no bloodless and marrowless apparition, but the baron himself, who had adopted the ghosting system, so common in romances, for the purpose of frightening me into his schemes.

However, I had now discovered a concealed door, and with it a chance of escape. I must tell you, that escape by the public door is utterly impracticable, as a maid always opens it for those that enter, and remains outside till they return. However, I have a plan about the private door; which, if the ghost should appear again, as it promised, is likely to succeed.

I was pondering upon this plan, when in came Dame Ursulina, taking snuff, and sneezing at a furious rate.

'By the mass,' said she, 'it rejoiceth the old cockles of my heart to see your ladyship safe; for as I passed your door just now, methought I heard the ghost.'

'You might well have heard it,' said I, pretending infinite faintness, 'for I have seen it; and it entered through yonder picture.'

'Benedicite!' cried she, 'but it was a true spectre!'

'A real, downright apparition,' said I, 'uncontaminated with the smallest mixture of mortality.'

'And didn't your ladyship hear me sneeze at the door?' said she.

'I was too much alarmed to hear anything,' answered I. 'But pray have the goodness to lend me that snuff-box, as a pinch or two may revive me from my faintness.' I had my reasons for this request.

'A heroine take snuff!' cried she, laying the box on the table. 'Lack-a-daisy, how the times are changed! But now, my lady, don't be trying to move or cut that great picture; for though the ghost comes into the chamber through it, no mortal can. I know better than to let you give me the slip; and I will tell a story to prove my knowledge of bolts and bars. When I was a girl, a young man lodged in the house; and one night he stole the stick that I used to fasten the hasp and staple of my door with. Well, my mother bade me put a carrot (as there was nothing else) in its place. So I put in a carrot – for I was a dutiful daughter; but I put in a boiled carrot – for I was a love-sick maiden. Eh, don't I understand the doctrine of bolts and bars?'

'You understand a great deal too much,' said I, as the withered wanton went chuckling out of the chamber.

I must now retire to rest. I do not fear being disturbed by a bravo to-night; but I am uneasy, lest I should wake in the morning with a face like a pumpkin.

Adieu.

LETTER XLIV

About noon the Baron Hildebrand paid me a visit, to hear, as he said, my final determination respecting my marriage with Montmorenci. I had prepared my lesson, and I told him that my mind was not yet entirely reconciled to such an event; but that it was much swayed by a most extraordinary circumstance which had occurred the night before. He desired me to relate it; and I then, with apparent agitation, recounted the particulars of the apparition, and declared that if it should come again I would endeavour to preserve my presence of mind, and enter into conversation with it; in order (as it appeared quite well informed of the picture) to learn whether my marriage with his lordship would prove fortunate or otherwise. I then added, that if its answer should be favourable, I would not hesitate another moment to give him my hand.