Outalissi; a Tale of Dutch Guiana

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Chapter II. Plantation.

‘And yet, loved England! when thy name I trace
In many a pilgrim's tale, and poet's song,
How can I choose but wish for one embrace
Of them the dear unknown, to whom belong
My mother's looks-perhaps her likeness strong.
* * * * * *
Yet deem not Gertrude sigh'd for foreign joy:
To sooth a father's couch her only care,
And keep his sacred head from all annoy.’
     Campbell.

The only resident planter near Edward's outpost was an Englishman of the name of Cotton, a man of unbounded wealth and almost equally unbounded profligacy. He was a widower of eight and forty, with only two surviving legitimate children, Matilda the eldest a girl of about seventeen, and Charles a child of about six. His wife, a lady of great natural abilities and the best English education, had died two years before of a broken heart,

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owing to her husband's unbridled and irreclaimable indulgence of his passions, and the total consequent neglect, more than any express ill treatment into which she had ultimately fallen, but not before she had completely imparted to her daughter, all her own accomplishments, especially those of drawing, music, and the Italian and French tongues, as the old school books used to call them, and besides making her a very considerable proficient in botany, had pursued with her a course of varied and extensive reading uninterrupted by many of those tiresome etiquettes, the attention to which is indispensable, but which are often a great tax in more crowded societies. So that in point of general information she would have had nothing to fear from a comparison of her daughter with the daughter of any English nobleman of the same age. The person of Matilda, which was at least five feet eight inches, would have been too tall if the height had not been entirely carried off to the eye by the most perfect symmetry of form, and a corresponding ease and grace and dignity of every motion; indeed it was scarcely possible for the eye, as she approached or receded from it, to analyse the figure as it does when every limb seems to obey a separate act of volition, and to be caught up in succession like those of an automaton by a separate set of wheels.

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But whatever Matilda did, wherever she bent her steps, grace seemed by stealth to follow and furtively compose her,^* so that such was the unity of her progress whenever she moved, that it seemed rather a change of attitude than a movement of limbs. Matilda's features were perhaps more open to criticism than her person; her nose was not exactly what a sculptor would select as a study, but was in perfect unison with the beautiful contour of her head, and between sweet lips and good teeth, and eye-lashes that, like the rich foliage that fringes the edge of her own native and magnificent rivers, (for Matilda was a Creole,) were designed to give shade and reserve to a full supply of light and intelligence, which whenever she thoughtfully raised them, her eyes seemed to flash upon all subjects, was never critically examined. Her hair was lightbrown, arranged always in the simplest taste, and with scarcely any other art than that of the most exquisite cleanliness. Her complexion, like that of most other tropical ladies, was pallid and soft, almost without colour, but not in the least sickly; her dress exactly like that of a lady of her own rank

* ‘Illam, quicquid agit, quoquo vestigia flectit,
Componit furtim, subsequiturque decor.’
     Tibullus of Sulpicia, IV, ii. 7.
Note by the Author.

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and age in Europe, always in the best taste and almost always without any other ornament than perhaps a rose in the bosom, or a sprig of orange or some other simple wild flower, playfully intermixed with the hair.

Some of my readers, perhaps, from the foregoing description of Matilda Cotton, will think that she did not require the prospect of one hundred thousand pounds fortune to make her sufficiently attractive, but as such a combination of interesting circumstances although rare will sometimes take place, and I cannot accommodate the facts of my story to the reader's ideas of probability, I am obliged to declare, that so it was. Not that this prospect ever formed an item in the ingredients of her self-estimation; utterly secluded from all society that could exemplify, like the beau mondes and haut tons of London and Paris, the voracious demand for money of rivalships in ostentation and display, she scarcely knew either the value or extent of her father's riches; the supplies of an elegant retirement, and of the pursuits and studies of a rational and cultivated mind, having never failed her, she had never been very inquisitive into the nature or extent of their source, or induced to examine its stability. From what she heard others say sometimes, she had some indefinite notions of

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her father's wealth, but the effect of it which she had observed upon his own happiness, and those whose happiness ought to have been as dear to him as his own, disposed her rather to a superstitious fear of it. Matilda too was a sincere and earnest Christian; she had seen her mother, to whom she owed every thing, pine herself to death from the neglect of her husband, and the total alienation of his affections, from which the influence upon him of a sincere belief in Christianity, however occasionally overborne, would have saved her; and she ascribed, to the facilities of self-indulgence which his affluence had afforded him, his abjuration (for she knew that he made no scruple in general of avowing his infidelity in revelation, although he had never shocked her by such a confession) from a faith which could allow him no peace of conscience, whilst his daily practice was in total variance from both the letter and spirit of its directions, and gladly would she have relinquished all her interest in his wealth, for an alteration in her father's principles and practice. Not that Mr. Cotton's character, although far gone indeed from consistent morality, or even consistent humanity, was entirely monstrous and without any touch of natural affection and generosity; on the contrary, he doated on his daughter, and possibly from some

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remorse of conscience for his conduct towards her mother, and partly to atone fur it, he was to her all kindness and delicacy; and with a jealousy of libertinism, which superficial observation perhaps might call inconsistent, but which in fact is by no means uncommon in such a character, he would scarcely allow an equivocal observation to pass unreproved in her company, or an eye ‘relaxed to love’ to profane her presence.