‘Are there any letters, Thomas?’ asked Mr. Peter Merton, as he returned from an abnormal walk at an unusual pace, in which he had indulged immediately after the departure of his nephew.
‘There are two, sir. They are in the study,’ was the answer.
Uncle Peter hurried thither at once. He was not usually very excited about his correspondence; but this morning he wished for business of some sort, and the receiving and answering letters was the chief one of his present life.
The two letters lay upon the study table. He knew the handwriting of one of them, and that he laid aside; the other proved to be an application for a subscription to some charity. He had many such, and answered then nobly. This however, was an unfortunate moment for such an application to arrive. He was flinging it aside impatiently without entering into the merits of the case, when he seemed to reconsider the matter, refolded it, and put it in the breast pocket of his coat, from whence he would probably take it out as he walked about the grounds, and weigh carefully its claims.
He now turned his attention to the first letter, which he did not seem to regard with much interest. It was written in a clear, large, bold Italian hand, and consisted of three sheets of ‘superfine cream-laid.’ The first was filled with inquiries about his own health, and flowing sentences of affectionate solicitude about himself and ‘dear Hursleigh;’ the second, with an abbreviated account of the yearly history of the lady’s family and herself; the third congratulated him on his nephew’s approaching nuptuals with Lady Helena, and concluded with the intimation, that certain jars of wine sours, the preserving of which had been superintended by the dear girls themselves, would follow this letter, which the lady begged that he would accept, and hoped that he would like.
The writer was a Mrs. Howard, a cousin, of whom Mr. Peter Merton had seen little, but sufficient to suspect that she was in every way antipathetic to himself. Their brief intercourse seemed to have produced a diametrically opposite impression on the lady, who overpowered him with presents of hams, turkeys, preserves, and letters expressive of the highest esteem and most affectionate regard. The presents were handed over to the housekeeper; and the letters were answered in a hard, curt style, which contrasted singularly with their own. Mrs. Howard was a widow, with two daughters. Her husband had been a physician, and had left her in affluent circumstances. But she lived in the county town, where it was the main object of the lives of many persons, unfortunately without any other occupation, to be esteemed of greater consideration than their neighbours. She had, accordingly, been endeavouring continually, but hitherto ineffectually, to lessen the distance between Hursleigh and Laurel Lodge, and convince the little world around her of the reality of her relationship to the rich but eccentric Mr. Merton; a fact which, from the little intercourse subsisting between them, persons less skilled in genealogy, than were the inhabitants of B-- might have reasonably doubted.
Peter Merton read the letter to the end. A grim smile passed over his face at times as he perused it; but he still held it in his hand after reading it; and the thoughts which passed through his mind as he sat thus were certainly less unfavourable to Mrs Howard than any which had succeeded the perusal of any of her former letters.
Yes, they might be interested and venal, all those expressions of solicitude and regard; but they somehow did not look at that moment so fulsome or so contemptible as they used to look. There is a silence and solitude of the heart in which we weigh not too nicely the truth or falsehood of those tones which break upon its dreariness and gloom. He sat down at once and answered the letter. He had generally left such letters for many days without reply; but now he wanted employment, and his heart was softened towards the writer. His reply was so different from all which she had hitherto received from him, that Mrs. Howard made a point of reading it aloud to all her morning visitors for the succeeding fortnight; and, as she altered all the positive into the superlative degrees throughout, as she read, and made one or two other extempore alterations, or rather exaggerations, with considerable address, it really did sound as cousinly and affectionate as could be desired, and much more so than could be expected.
Captain Merton saw little more of his uncle before his marriage; and after it, nothing. He was so happy in that early married life of his, that all which had preceded it seemed like some dark dream, from which he had emerged. His marriage with Lady Helena introduced him at once into a new and large circle of acquaintance; and he entered eagerly into the attractive pleasures of London society, of which he had before seen little. His house was small; but exquisitely appointed. His establishment was pronounced faultless, and his wife also, by a large circle of admirers, whose admiration he perhaps esteemed and courted more than it was worth. Every one protested that he was a lucky fellow; and there is nothing which more effectually convinces a man that he is a lucky fellow than the circumstance that he is pronounced so by everybody.
Two years flowed on - years of unanxious happiness to them both; of which there is nothing to tell, but that they were happy. And then came little clouds, darkening faintly the edge of the horizon, gathering slowly in the blackness and volume till they hung over their heads; and the storm fell, of which one of them had long forseen the approach, but for which the other was totally unprepared.
It is to the close of the third year of their married life that we must transport our readers. The London season was at its height, and though the evening was drawing to a close, Captain Merton and Lady Helena were in their own drawing-room, and alone - a circumstance unusual at such a time.
It was a lovely room, hung with exquisite drawings by the first artists of the day. One or two statues of white marble rose between the windows, which were all open; but not a breath of air stirred the curtains of delicate lace with which they were shadowed. The day had been intolerably hot, and now there was an oppression in the air which was almost overpowering. Captain Merton was lying upon a sofa; Lady Helena was at the piano. She was an admirable musician; but now, as her hands glided over the keys, they were calling forth from the instrument those old simple airs, which come over the heart sometimes like dreams of the far past with a power and tenderness often less felt in more elaborate compositions. She lent them, as she played, something of the charm which the human voice is alone able completely to impart; the clear notes rang out distinct and articulate. One who knew the words of what she played would have said that they had never been felt by him more vividly than now, as she played the air only. A sudden vivid flash of blue and forked lightning illuminated the apartment. Lady Helena rose from the instrument, and sat down upon a low seat beside the sofa where her husband lay.
He had been tossing uneasily about for some time among the cushions, not exactly listening to her music, for his thoughts were far away; but it soothed him; and whenever she had paused before, and seemed about to cease playing, he had said ‘Go on;’ and she had gone on accordingly, bringing out air after air, long unplayed and unheard, some only remembered from her childhood, but all fraught with the same tender melancholy which gathers about such music.
When the lightning came, he did not ask her to continue playing any more, and she came and sat beside him, leaning her brow for a moment upon his hand, that hung over one of the cushions. He did not speak nor did she; and flash after flash succeeded of the blue lightning, and the pealing thunder crashed over their heads almost without intermission. A servant entered with candles; but they ordered them to be taken out again, and sat thus watching the storm together. At last it subsided; and the clear blue summer evening sky appeared, marked here and there by a silver star; and the sweet smell of the flowers in the balcony, freshened by the rain, was wafted into the room.
Lady Helena had sat rapt in intense awe and admiration, absorbed in the sight before her. She had forgotten all else. Not so Captain Merton. No change in the aspect of the external world could give him then even a moment’s entire intermission from the anxiety which at that moment, and for long, had been struggling in his breast.
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br /> And yet, softened by the influence of the scene and hour, he did look up into the sky; and as the last dark confused masses of cloud were hurrying out of sight, he did long that some such favouring breeze as then passed over the world of nature would pass over that of his own life, bearing before it those clouds of trouble and desolation which seemed to weigh so heavy on his head.
He was not given to entertain such thoughts, much less to express them; but at this moment he did both. His tone was fretful and complaining; it was that, indeed, of a man who was endeavouring to blame circumstances where he was himself alone to blame, and who looked to circumstances for that relief for which he could only look safely to himself.
‘There is no trouble,’ said Lady Helena, calmly, ‘so hard to bear one’s self, or which I feel, dear Charles, so hard, as that which is indefinite; or if there be a worse trouble, it is to see another, whom one loves, bearing such indefinite sorrow, in which one is not permitted to participate.’
‘There is a worse trial,’ replied Captain Merton, bitterly: ‘to have to conceal from the being that one loves what it would be only misery to know.’
‘And this we have both been bearing and doing,’ said Lady Helena, in her soft, low voice.
And again they were silent; and she looked forth into the clear, calm heavens, and into the shining stars; and her spirit gathered strength, and she said at last -
‘Charles, I can bear anything you have to tell - anything but to hear,’ she added, gently, ‘that your silence has been because you loved me too little to let me sympathize with your grief; and that,’ she added, ‘I feel that I shall not hear.’
‘It is idle,’ he said, ‘to call it `my grief,’ or `my sorrow.’ It is your grief - your sorrow, Helena. It is my shame!’
Lady Helena grew pale; but she answered, and at once -
‘Then it is mine.’
The footman entered again with candles, which he placed upon the tables. He drew together the dark folds of the satin curtains, and disappeared. It was, as we have said, a lovely room. Cabinets were there inlaid with the costliest sevres; tables of marquetrie, of malachite, of Florentine mosaic; tall pier glasses, soft carpets, rich hangings, and more than all, gems of modern art - each dear, as such things grow to be, to those who, with a refined taste, have gathered them together, and grown to love them day by day.
Captain Merton rose from the sofa, and walked up and down the apartment.
‘This is a beautiful room!’ he said, at length. ‘It is a beautiful house!’ he said. ‘Could you leave it, Helena?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I could leave it. I could give up all, everything, if we were only to be, Charles, what we were to one another, and not to live on with this dark secret horror ever rising up between us, and separating us from each other. Only tell me all. Let us consult together, and, if it must be, suffer together. It will be lighter to us both.’
And he went to her and threw himself on a low cushion at her feet. He told her all, as a penitent before his confessor. He went back into the first beginnings of his sin. He laid bare his own motives to himself and her. He told her why, before his marriage, he had not made this confession: because he had then thought himself free for ever from the vice of his almost boyhood. How again, in the society in which he had been thrown in London, the old temptation had recurred, and he had sunk beneath it. He did not dwell on the fascinations of gambling, and say that it had been impossible to resist them; for he knew that this would have been a lie. He knew and recollected that there had been a point at which he could have resisted: that he did not, and was lost.
‘And yet, I almost fancy sometimes that I could have stayed in my headlong career had it not been for my love for you, dear Helena. I could have stayed when half was lost, I think, but for the agony of submitting you to anything like privation; and so, in the hope of winning all back, I risked all and lost all. Oh Helena,’ he went on, ‘It is now all for you I suffer. For me, what poverty, what degradation were not too good? But for you and our child! It seems to me now, sometimes, that I could wish you to go back to your father - that I would rather lose you from my sight than see you suffer.’
‘You shall not see it,’ she said. ‘How could think, Charles, such a thought - that even you could make me leave you at such a time, when by my presence I could aid - perhaps save you, now I know your danger? But what is to be done? That we must consider. Have we absolutely nothing?’
She had that clear, practical mind which is sometimes, though rarely, met with in persons of extreme sensibility. She could meet any trouble, if she only saw it; and she had the strength to wrestle with it when seen. She had, too, that almost unlimited capacity for suffering which exists in the heart of some women.
‘I have lost all I could lose,’ he replied; ‘I have nothing. You have what your father gave you; I should have lost that also if I could have staked it,’ he added, bitterly.
‘And our child?’ she asked.
‘Has a provision from my property which I could not touch.’
‘We shall have, then, three hundred a-year, Charles; we are not ruined at all,’ she said, smiling. ‘We can live on that.’
‘How? - where?’ he asked, bitterly.
‘Oh, in numberless ways, and numberless places,’ she answered. ‘There are lovely spots by the English coast, where we might have some cottage, and live happy and retired. We shall not want to see the gay world again; I am wearied of it already, and have been ever since I can remember it. We can part with all these things,’ she said, looking round the room, with a light heart. ‘They have not brought us peace.’
‘No,’ he answered, thoughtfully. ‘If it be possible for us, for you, to live on the sum, Helena, it is not possible to live on it here in England; we must go abroad.’
‘We will go abroad,’ she answered, gaily; ‘we will go into some cheap Belgian town, with its broad market-places, and gabled houses, and splendid churches, and quaint costumes. I shall be sketching all day long, Charles; we shall be very happy wherever we go - is it not so?’ she said, ‘if we go together.’
‘Helena, you are an angel - you are my angel,’ he murmured; ‘my good angel.’ And he looked into her face, the banded soft brown hair,the calm, holy quiet of her beauty, the sorrow, and the tenderness, and the love seemed so little like this earth, that a strange thought shot with a pang across his heart, that he should lose her, that she had so little of this world about her that she could not rest upon it long. It was a morbid thought, but it was some moments ere he could shake it from him. At last he mastered it, and turned again to review their situation.
‘And your father,’ he said next, ‘what will he think - what will he say, Helena? I have deceived him cruelly, as well as you.’
‘I will write to him,’ she answered, calmly; ‘he is at Florence, you know, with Alicia, by this time, so you will not see him, if that would be painful, just at present.’
It was all arranged that night; his commission was to be sold, everything they had was to be sold, his engagements were all to be cleared off, and they were to go into Belgium, that refuge for poverty like his, which shrinks from the hard eye that falls on it in England.
There was only one resource which had presented itself to him again and again in his difficulties, and had been again and again rejected, and that was, to write to his uncle Peter, and tell him all, and ask for his assistance. His pride revolted from the task, the more so as he had made no overtures to a reconciliation before; but that night, after his wife left him, he felt that he ought to shrink from no personal humiliation, if it were yet possible, to shield her from the future which he feared she would find so far more bitter than in her inexperience of the world she expected that it would be. He sat down, therefore, and wrote a letter, which he had a strong hopeful conviction would soften the old man’s heart towards them; his uncle had no other relations but himself, he knew, for whom he cared, and it seemed to him impossible but that he would come forward in some way to assist him in
his distress. The letter was sent by the first post; he carried it himself; and all arrangements were postponed until a reply to it could arrive.
We must go back for a few moments to Hursleigh. It was a bright summer evening, the air had been fraught with a delicious coolness from the storm of the preceding night. The climax of Mrs. Howard’s desires, the end of her long-drawn hopes was now accomplished. She was sitting as a guest in the house of her cousin, sitting in a large old-fashioned chair, drawn to one of the windows of the grand saloon, which had been uncovered and furbished up, as well as antique furniture and faded hangings admitted, for her reception.
‘Julia,’ she said, with that especial benignity of manner which had characterized her since her admission thus to Hursleight, ‘your uncle is fond of music; let us have a song.’
Why she called Mr. Peter Merton uncle to her daughter I do not know, as she was herself only his cousin; but she said that ‘uncle Peter’ cam so naturally, that they could and would address him by no other title.
It was quite true that Mr. Peter Merton was fond of music; he had an admirable ear, and considerable natural taste, but yet he winced considerably under the proposal; he had heard already more than one of Miss Julia’s songs, and ever since the first had been devising with himself some course by which he might silence the young lady’s singing without wounding her feelings. There was no escape, however, at least no immediate escape, so he leaned back resigned, and the young lady sat down, and running her hand over the keys, was about to commence her performance, when Mrs. Howard rose from her chair, advanced to the piano, and laid her hand on her daughter’s shoulder.
Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell Page 521
