The Man of Feeling, Henry Mackenzie [the reading strategies book .TXT] 📗

kneeled beside him, beautiful as an angel, but with a fading languor in her countenance, the still life of melancholy, that seemed to borrow its shade from the object on which she gazed. There was a tear in her eye—the sick man kissed it off in its bud, smiling through the dimness of his own—when she saw Mountford, she crawled forward on the ground, and clasped his knees. He raised her from the floor; she threw her arms round his neck, and sobbed out a speech of thankfulness, eloquent beyond the power of language.

“‘Compose yourself, my love,’ said the man on the bed; ‘but he, whose goodness has caused that emotion, will pardon its effects.’

“‘How is this, Mountford?’ said I; ‘what do I see? What must I do?’

“‘You see,’ replied the stranger, ‘a wretch, sunk in poverty, starving in prison, stretched on a sick bed. But that is little. There are his wife and children wanting the bread which he has not to give them! Yet you cannot easily imagine the conscious serenity of his mind. In the gripe of affliction, his heart swells with the pride of virtue; it can even look down with pity on the man whose cruelty has wrung it almost to bursting. You are, I fancy, a friend of Mr. Mountford’s. Come nearer, and I’ll tell you, for, short as my story is, I can hardly command breath enough for a recital. The son of Count Respino (I started, as if I had trod on a viper) has long had a criminal passion for my wife. This her prudence had concealed from me; but he had lately the boldness to declare it to myself. He promised me affluence in exchange for honour, and threatened misery as its attendant if I kept it. I treated him with the contempt he deserved; the consequence was, that he hired a couple of bravoes (for I am persuaded they acted under his direction), who attempted to assassinate me in the street; but I made such a defence as obliged them to fly, after having given me two or three stabs, none of which, however, were mortal. But his revenge was not thus to be disappointed. In the little dealings of my trade I had contracted some debts, of which he had made himself master for my ruin. I was confined here at his suit, when not yet recovered from the wounds I had received; the dear woman, and these two boys, followed me, that we might starve together; but Providence interposed, and sent Mr. Mountford to our support. He has relieved my family from the gnawings of hunger, and rescued me from death, to which a fever, consequent on my wounds and increased by the want of every necessary, had almost reduced me.’

“‘Inhuman villain!’ I exclaimed, lifting up my eyes to heaven.

“‘Inhuman indeed!’ said the lovely woman who stood at my side. ‘Alas! sir, what had we done to offend him? what had these little ones done, that they should perish in the toils of his vengeance?’

“I reached a pen which stood in the inkstand dish at the bed-side.

“‘May I ask what is the amount of the sum for which you are imprisoned?’

“‘I was able,’ he replied, ‘to pay all but five hundred crowns.’

“I wrote a draft on the banker with whom I had a credit from my father for 2,500, and presenting it to the stranger’s wife,

“‘You will receive, madam, on presenting this note, a sum more than sufficient for your husband’s discharge; the remainder I leave for his industry to improve.’

“I would have left the room. Each of them laid hold of one of my hands, the children clung to my coat. Oh! Mr. Harley, methinks I feel their gentle violence at this moment; it beats here with delight inexpressible.

“‘Stay, sir,’ said he, ‘I do not mean attempting to thank you’ (he took a pocket-book from under his pillow), ‘let me but know what name I shall place here next to Mr. Mountford!’

“‘Sedley.’

“He writ it down.

“‘An Englishman too, I presume.’

“‘He shall go to heaven, notwithstanding;’ said the boy who had been our guide.

“It began to be too much for me. I squeezed his hand that was clasped in mine, his wife’s I pressed to my lips, and burst from the place, to give vent to the feelings that laboured within me.

“‘Oh, Mountford!’ said I, when he had overtaken me at the door.

“‘It is time,’ replied he, ‘that we should think of our appointment; young Respino and his friends are waiting us.’

“‘Damn him, damn him!’ said I. ‘Let us leave Milan instantly; but soft—I will be calm; Mountford, your pencil.’ I wrote on a slip of paper,

 

“‘To Signor RESPINO.

“‘When you receive this, I am at a distance from Milan. Accept of my thanks for the civilities I have received from you and your family. As to the friendship with which you were pleased to honour me, the prison, which I have just left, has exhibited a scene to cancel it for ever. You may possibly be merry with your companions at my weakness, as I suppose you will term it. I give you leave for derision. You may affect a triumph, I shall feel it.

“EDWARD SEDLEY.”

 

“‘You may send this if you will,’ said Mountford, coolly, ‘but still Respino is a MAN OF HONOUR; the world will continue to call him so.’

“‘It is probable,’ I answered, ‘they may; I envy not the appellation. If this is the world’s honour, if these men are the guides of its manners—’

“‘Tut!’ said Mountford, ‘do you eat macaroni—’”

 

*

 

[At this place had the greatest depredations of the curate begun. There were so very few connected passages of the subsequent chapters remaining, that even the partiality of an editor could not offer them to the public. I discovered, from some scattered sentences, that they were of much the same tenor with the preceding; recitals of little adventures, in which the dispositions of a man, sensible to judge, and still more warm to feel, had room to unfold themselves. Some instruction, and some example, I make no doubt they contained; but it is likely that many of those, whom chance has led to a perusal of what I have already presented, may have read it with little pleasure, and will feel no disappointment from the want of those parts which I have been unable to procure. To such as may have expected the intricacies of a novel, a few incidents in a life undistinguished, except by some features of the heart, cannot have afforded much entertainment.

Harley’s own story, from the mutilated passages I have mentioned, as well as from some inquiries I was at the trouble of making in the country, I found to have been simple to excess. His mistress, I could perceive, was not married to Sir Harry Benson; but it would seem, by one of the following chapters, which is still entire, that Harley had not profited on the occasion by making any declaration of his own passion, after those of the other had been unsuccessful. The state of his health, for some part of this period, appears to have been such as to forbid any thoughts of that kind: he had been seized with a very dangerous fever, caught by attending old Edwards in one of an infectious kind. From this he had recovered but imperfectly, and though he had no formed complaint, his health was manifestly on the decline.

It appears that the sagacity of some friend had at length pointed out to his aunt a cause from which this might be supposed to proceed, to wit, his hopeless love for Miss Walton; for, according to the conceptions of the world, the love of a man of Harley’s fortune for the heiress of 4,000 pounds a year is indeed desperate. Whether it was so in this case may be gathered from the next chapter, which, with the two subsequent, concluding the performance, have escaped those accidents that proved fatal to the rest.]

 

CHAPTER LV—HE SEES MISS WALTON, AND IS HAPPY

 

Harley was one of those few friends whom the malevolence of fortune had yet left me; I could not therefore but be sensibly concerned for his present indisposition; there seldom passed a day on which I did not make inquiry about him.

The physician who attended him had informed me the evening before, that he thought him considerably better than he had been for some time past. I called next morning to be confirmed in a piece of intelligence so welcome to me.

When I entered his apartment, I found him sitting on a couch, leaning on his hand, with his eye turned upwards in the attitude of thoughtful inspiration. His look had always an open benignity, which commanded esteem; there was now something more—a gentle triumph in it.

He rose, and met me with his usual kindness. When I gave him the good accounts I had had from his physician, “I am foolish enough,” said he, “to rely but little, in this instance, upon physic: my presentiment may be false; but I think I feel myself approaching to my end, by steps so easy, that they woo me to approach it.

“There is a certain dignity in retiring from life at a time, when the infirmities of age have not sapped our faculties. This world, my dear Charles, was a scene in which I never much delighted. I was not formed for the bustle of the busy, nor the dissipation of the gay; a thousand things occurred, where I blushed for the impropriety of my conduct when I thought on the world, though my reason told me I should have blushed to have done otherwise.—It was a scene of dissimulation, of restraint, of disappointment. I leave it to enter on that state which I have learned to believe is replete with the genuine happiness attendant upon virtue. I look back on the tenor of my life, with the consciousness of few great offences to account for. There are blemishes, I confess, which deform in some degree the picture. But I know the benignity of the Supreme Being, and rejoice at the thoughts of its exertion in my favour. My mind expands at the thought I shall enter into the society of the blessed, wise as angels, with the simplicity of children.” He had by this time clasped my hand, and found it wet by a tear which had just fallen upon it.—His eye began to moisten too—we sat for some time silent.—At last, with an attempt to a look of more composure, “There are some remembrances,” said Harley, “which rise involuntary on my heart, and make me almost wish to live. I have been blessed with a few friends, who redeem my opinion of mankind. I recollect, with the tenderest emotion, the scenes of pleasure I have passed among them; but we shall meet again, my friend, never to be separated. There are some feelings which perhaps are too tender to be suffered by the world.—The world is in general selfish, interested, and unthinking, and throws the imputation of romance or melancholy on every temper more susceptible than its own. I cannot think but in those regions which I contemplate, if there is any thing of mortality left about us, that these feelings will subsist;- -they are called,—perhaps they are—weaknesses here;—but there may be some better modifications of them in heaven, which may deserve the name of virtues.” He sighed as he spoke these last words. He had scarcely finished them, when the door opened, and his aunt appeared, leading in Miss Walton. “My dear,” said she, “here is Miss Walton, who has been so kind as to come and inquire for you herself.” I could observe a transient glow upon his