ABODES OF HORROR have frequently been described, and castles,
filled with spectres and chimeras, conjured up by the magic spell
of genius to harrow the soul, and absorb the wondering mind. But,
formed of such stuff as dreams are made of, what were they to the
mansion of despair, in one corner of which Maria sat, endeavouring
to recall her scattered thoughts!
Surprise, astonishment, that bordered on distraction, seemed to
have suspended her faculties, till, waking by degrees to a keen
sense of anguish, a whirlwind of rage and indignation roused her
torpid pulse. One recollection with frightful velocity following
another, threatened to fire her brain, and make her a fit companion
for the terrific inhabitants, whose groans and shrieks were no
unsubstantial sounds of whistling winds, or startled birds,
modulated by a romantic fancy, which amuse while they affright; but
such tones of misery as carry a dreadful certainty directly to the
heart. What effect must they then have produced on one, true to the
touch of sympathy, and tortured by maternal apprehension!
Her infant’s image was continually floating on Maria’s sight,
and the first smile of intelligence remembered, as none but a
mother, an unhappy mother, can conceive. She heard her half
speaking half cooing, and felt the little twinkling fingers on her
burning bosom—a bosom bursting with the nutriment for which this
cherished child might now be pining in vain. From a stranger she
could indeed receive the maternal aliment, Maria was grieved at the
thought—but who would watch her with a mother’s tenderness, a
mother’s self-denial?
The retreating shadows of former sorrows rushed back in a gloomy
train, and seemed to be pictured on the walls of her prison,
magnified by the state of mind in which they were viewed—Still she
mourned for her child, lamented she was a daughter, and anticipated
the aggravated ills of life that her sex rendered almost
inevitable, even while dreading she was no more. To think that she
was blotted out of existence was agony, when the imagination had
been long employed to expand her faculties; yet to suppose her
turned adrift on an unknown sea, was scarcely less afflicting.
After being two days the prey of impetuous, varying emotions,
Maria began to reflect more calmly on her present situation, for
she had actually been rendered incapable of sober reflection, by
the discovery of the act of atrocity of which she was the victim.
She could not have imagined, that, in all the fermentation of
civilized depravity, a similar plot could have entered a human
mind. She had been stunned by an unexpected blow; yet life, however
joyless, was not to be indolently resigned, or misery endured
without exertion, and proudly termed patience. She had hitherto
meditated only to point the dart of anguish, and suppressed the
heart heavings of indignant nature merely by the force of contempt.
Now she endeavoured to brace her mind to fortitude, and to ask
herself what was to be her employment in her dreary cell? Was it
not to effect her escape, to fly to the succour of her child, and
to baffle the selfish schemes of her tyrant—her husband?
These thoughts roused her sleeping spirit, and the
self-possession returned, that seemed to have abandoned her in the
infernal solitude into which she had been precipitated. The first
emotions of overwhelming impatience began to subside, and
resentment gave place to tenderness, and more tranquil meditation;
though anger once more stopt the calm current of reflection when
she attempted to move her manacled arms. But this was an outrage
that could only excite momentary feelings of scorn, which
evaporated in a faint smile; for Maria was far from thinking a
personal insult the most difficult to endure with magnanimous
indifference.
She approached the small grated window of her chamber, and for a
considerable time only regarded the blue expanse; though it
commanded a view of a desolate garden, and of part of a huge pile
of buildings, that, after having been suffered, for half a century,
to fall to decay, had undergone some clumsy repairs, merely to
render it habitable. The ivy had been torn off the turrets, and the
stones not wanted to patch up the breaches of time, and exclude the
warring elements, left in heaps in the disordered court. Maria
contemplated this scene she knew not how long; or rather gazed on
the walls, and pondered on her situation. To the master of this
most horrid of prisons, she had, soon after her entrance, raved of
injustice, in accents that would have justified his treatment, had
not a malignant smile, when she appealed to his judgment, with a
dreadful conviction stifled her remonstrating complaints. By force,
or openly, what could be done? But surely some expedient might
occur to an active mind, without any other employment, and
possessed of sufficient resolution to put the risk of life into the
balance with the chance of freedom.
A woman entered in the midst of these reflections, with a firm,
deliberate step, strongly marked features, and large black eyes,
which she fixed steadily on Maria’s, as if she designed to
intimidate her, saying at the same time “You had better sit down
and eat your dinner, than look at the clouds.”
“I have no appetite,” replied Maria, who had previously
determined to speak mildly; “why then should I eat?”
“But, in spite of that, you must and shall eat something. I have
had many ladies under my care, who have resolved to starve
themselves; but, soon or late, they gave up their intent, as they
recovered their senses.”
“Do you really think me mad?” asked Maria, meeting the searching
glance of her eye.
“Not just now. But what does that prove?—Only that you must be
the more carefully watched, for appearing at times so reasonable.
You have not touched a morsel since you entered the house.”—Maria
sighed intelligibly.—“Could any thing but madness produce such a
disgust for food?”
“Yes, grief; you would not ask the question if you knew what it
was.” The attendant shook her head; and a ghastly smile of
desperate fortitude served as a forcible reply, and made Maria
pause, before she added—“Yet I will take some refreshment: I mean
not to die.—No; I will preserve my senses; and convince even you,
sooner than you are aware of, that my intellects have never been
disturbed, though the exertion of them may have been suspended by
some infernal drug.”
Doubt gathered still thicker on the brow of her guard, as she
attempted to convict her of mistake.
“Have patience!” exclaimed Maria, with a solemnity that inspired
awe. “My God! how have I been schooled into the practice!” A
suffocation of voice betrayed the agonizing emotions she was
labouring to keep down; and conquering a qualm of disgust, she
calmly endeavoured to eat enough to prove her docility, perpetually
turning to the suspicious female, whose observation she courted,
while she was making the bed and adjusting the room.
“Come to me often,” said Maria, with a tone of persuasion, in
consequence of a vague plan that she had hastily adopted, when,
after surveying this woman’s form and features, she felt convinced
that she had an understanding above the common standard, “and
believe me mad, till you are obliged to acknowledge the contrary.”
The woman was no fool, that is, she was superior to her class; nor
had misery quite petrified the life’s-blood of humanity, to which
reflections on our own misfortunes only give a more orderly course.
The manner, rather than the expostulations, of Maria made a slight
suspicion dart into her mind with corresponding sympathy, which
various other avocations, and the habit of banishing compunction,
prevented her, for the present, from examining more minutely.
But when she was told that no person, excepting the physician
appointed by her family, was to be permitted to see the lady at the
end of the gallery, she opened her keen eyes still wider, and
uttered a—“hem!” before she enquired—“Why?” She was briefly told,
in reply, that the malady was hereditary, and the fits not
occurring but at very long and irregular intervals, she must be
carefully watched; for the length of these lucid periods only
rendered her more mischievous, when any vexation or caprice brought
on the paroxysm of phrensy.
Had her master trusted her, it is probable that neither pity nor
curiosity would have made her swerve from the straight line of her
interest; for she had suffered too much in her intercourse with
mankind, not to determine to look for support, rather to humouring
their passions, than courting their approbation by the integrity of
her conduct. A deadly blight had met her at the very threshold of
existence; and the wretchedness of her mother seemed a heavy weight
fastened on her innocent neck, to drag her down to perdition. She
could not heroically determine to succour an unfortunate; but,
offended at the bare supposition that she could be deceived with
the same ease as a common servant, she no longer curbed her
curiosity; and, though she never seriously fathomed her own
intentions, she would sit, every moment she could steal from
observation, listening to the tale, which Maria was eager to relate
with all the persuasive eloquence of grief.
It is so cheering to see a human face, even if little of the
divinity of virtue beam in it, that Maria anxiously expected the
return of the attendant, as of a gleam of light to break the gloom
of idleness. Indulged sorrow, she perceived, must blunt or sharpen
the faculties to the two opposite extremes; producing stupidity,
the moping melancholy of indolence; or the restless activity of a
disturbed imagination. She sunk into one state, after being
fatigued by the other: till the want of occupation became even more
painful than the actual pressure or apprehension of sorrow; and the
confinement that froze her into a nook of existence, with an
unvaried prospect before her, the most insupportable of evils. The
lamp of life seemed to be spending itself to chase the vapours of a
dungeon which no art could dissipate.—And to what purpose did she
rally all her energy?—Was not the world a vast prison, and women
born slaves?
Though she failed immediately to rouse a lively sense of
injustice in the mind of her guard, because it had been
sophisticated into misanthropy, she touched her heart. Jemima (she
had only a claim to a Christian name, which had not procured her
any Christian privileges) could patiently hear of Maria’s
confinement on false pretences; she had felt the crushing hand of
power, hardened by the exercise of injustice, and ceased to wonder
at the perversions of the understanding, which systematize
oppression; but, when told that her child, only four months old,
had been torn from her, even while she was discharging the
tenderest maternal office, the woman awoke in a bosom long
estranged from feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to
alleviate all in her power, without hazarding the loss of her
place, the sufferings of a wretched mother, apparently injured, and
certainly unhappy. A sense of right seems to result from the
simplest act of reason, and to preside over the faculties of the
mind, like the master-sense of feeling, to rectify the rest; but
(for the comparison may be carried still farther) how often is the
exquisite sensibility of both weakened or destroyed by the vulgar
occupations, and ignoble pleasures of life?
The preserving her situation was, indeed, an important object to
Jemima, who had been hunted from hole to hole, as if she had been a
beast of prey, or infected with a moral plague. The wages she
received, the greater part of which she hoarded, as her only chance
for independence, were much more considerable than she could reckon
on obtaining any where else, were it possible that she, an outcast
from society, could be permitted to earn a subsistence in a
reputable family. Hearing Maria perpetually complain of
listlessness, and the not being able to beguile grief by resuming
her customary pursuits, she was easily prevailed on, by compassion,
and that involuntary respect for abilities, which those who possess
them can never eradicate, to bring her some books and implements
for writing. Maria’s conversation had amused and interested her,
and the natural consequence was a desire, scarcely observed by
herself, of obtaining the esteem of a person she admired. The
remembrance of better days was rendered more lively; and the
sentiments then acquired appearing less romantic than they had for
a long period, a spark of hope roused her mind to new activity.
How grateful was her attention to Maria! Oppressed by a dead
weight of existence, or preyed on by the gnawing worm of
discontent, with what eagerness did she endeavour to shorten the
long days, which left no traces behind! She seemed to be sailing on
the vast ocean of life, without seeing any land-mark to indicate
the progress of time; to find employment was then to find variety,
the animating principle of nature.