‘A moment, my dear; you have not asked your dear uncle what he would like. What style of music do you prefer, sir? my daughter sings all - French, German, Italian, Scotch, Irish, or English; which shall it be?’
Mrs. Howard was not often mistaken in her knowledge of people’s tastes; she confidently expected, when she gave this imposing announcement, that Mr. Peter Merton’s choice would be for an English ballad, and she was prepared to exclaim on the superiority of English ballads to every other style of music; but she was disappointed - he said, shortly, ‘German, then, if you please.’
Miss Julia Howard blushed, and looked from one end of the book of songs to another, and then back again. ‘I fear I have not a German song for you, uncle,’ she said.
‘Not got a German song!’ said Mrs. Howard, with the slightest approach to acrimony in her benignant tones. ‘Where are all your German songs?’
‘I never had but one, you know, mamma,’ said Miss Julia, simply - ‘the one, you know, that I learned from my singing master.’
‘Surprising!’ muttered Mrs. Howard. She was endeavouring to represent her daughter at Hursleigh as a highly accomplished young lady, which Miss Julia had neither the good fortune to be, nor the deception to pretend to be.
‘Sing whatever you have, then, my dear,’ she said.
Miss Howard commenced ‘Annie Laurie,’ which she sang throughout a semitone too low. Mr Peter Merton rose at the conclusion; he had letters to write, and was going to his study. A servant entered as he was leaving the room, with letters by the second post.
‘Any letters for me, Thomas?’ he said.
‘No, sir; I think they are all for Mrs. Howard.’
Mr. Peter Merton left the room. Mrs. Howard took the letters; there were three. She was indefatigable in writing and receiving letters. She laid these aside for one moment, while she gave a short, sharp reprimand to her daughter, for what she called ‘the disgraceful exposure she had just made of her ignorance.’ Miss Julia left the room to digest the maternal reproof. Mrs. Howard was left alone - alone with her letters; no, not her letters - there was one of the three directed, not to herself but to Peter Merton, Esq. She was about to ring the bell, and tell a servant to take it to Mr. Merton’s study, when her eye was arrested by the handwriting; it was the same, a very remarkable one, which she had noticed in a manuscript book the day before, and been told that it was Captain Merton’s. Her hand was half-way to the bell-rope, but she arrested it, and gathering up the three letters, retired to her own room.
Her first proceeding, when she found herself there, was to lock the door; her next, to sit down and examine the exterior of the letter; but, thanks to the patent adhesive envelope, its contents were impenetrable even to her skilful manipulation. She felt an intuitive conviction that they must be important: Peter Merton had confided to her much of what the reader already knows; she knew that no communication had taken place between them since his marriage, and it by no means suited the plans now maturing in her brain that any should now be commenced. But it was a dangerous thing to withold a letter, and it might not, after all, be worth incurring the risk; it might be perfectly innocuous. ‘What did it contain?’ if she only knew that, she might give it or withold it. She sat some moments in profound thought, and then rang the bell.
It was answered by her maid.
‘Hannah, will you bring me a jug of hot water?’ was her order. ‘I want it very hot, for I have a headache, and wish to take some salvolatile.’
The mandate was soon obeyed.
‘Shall I mix it for you, ma’am?’ asked Hannah, standing in the middle of the apartment.
‘No, thank you, Hannah,’ said Mrs. Howard, blandly; ‘if you will only give me the bottle from my dressing-case there, that will do.’
Hannah again departed, and the door was again locked. Mrs. Howard took the letter in her hands, and laid it upon the narrow aperture of the jug, over the boiling water. In a few moments the cement upon the envelope gave way, and she was able to extract the contents without fear of detection, should she deem it desirable to replace them, and present the letter to uncle Peter.
She read it throughout: the touching description of his own misery and his wife’s heroism, the affectionate appeal to his uncle’s kindness, the full, unextenuated confession of his own guilt and folly; not a word of it was lost; Mrs. Howard read it all. She refolded it, and then laid it in the bottom drawer of her dressing-case, which she locked carefully. She ran through her other letters, and descended to the saloon to make tea for Mr. Peter Merton, with a calm face and her usual imperturbable smile; she was a little more loquacious than was her wont, but that was all; Mr Peter Merton thought, as the day closed that with all her little faults, some of which he saw with singular penetration, she was a very agreeable, well disposed sort of woman.
We must again pass onward some years in our story; four have elapsed since the events last related; each year Mrs. Howard has paid a longer visit than the last to Hursleigh, and yet, strange to say, much as the above fact may militate against the assertion, she has not grown upon the affections of Peter Merton. Deception never answers in the long run; it may succeed on any one particular occasion, as at the time did the suppression of Captain Merton’s letter; but the daily, hourly, little falsehoods and concealments of a woman like Mrs. Howard must destroy every feeling of regard and respect in an honest, truthful mind like that of uncle Peter.
She erred, too, in protracting her visits to such a length as she did; she was more fitted to stay a week than a month in a house; for one week you might have been charmed with her, in a month you were disgusted. Why, then, did Mr. Merton invite her? Because he was a lonely man, and needed, he felt, as he grew older, kindness of some sort to make life more supportable. He saw the worth of hers, but he thought bought kindness better than none at all; and the vast echoing rooms of the old mansion, untenanted the whole year through, had become dreary and distressing to him in the extreme.
Mrs. Howard has been now nearly three months at Hursleigh, and shows the symptoms of an intention of taking up her quarters there altogether. Mr. Merton has become intensely weary this year of her society, and is vainly seeking for a pretext for getting rid of his visitor, who, on her part, is occupied in seeking for one to remain in her present quarters. It is somewhat odd that they should each choose the same pretext for such various designs.
The health of Mr. Peter Merton had been visibly declining; he looked much older than he really was, for in truth he could scarcely yet in years be called an old man; he was nervous and irritable; he had neither sleep nor appetite; indeed he was becoming anything but an agreeable host for visitors less pertinacious than Mrs. Howard and her daughters. How could they leave him - ‘the dear old man’ - in such a state? It was impossible. They had many engagements for the summer, but all must give way to the paramount duty of remaining at Hursleigh. This Mrs. Howard was continually saying or implying. Uncle Peter, on his part, was the last man to turn people violently out of his house who were bent on staying in it. At last he hit upon an expedient. He was really growing unwell - worse and worse; he was wearied, not only of Mrs. Howard and the Misses Howard, but of Hursleigh - of life altogether. There was something decidedly wrong somewhere. Mrs. Howard begged him to see Mr. Evans, the medical man of the neighbourhood, but he had no confidence in Mr. Evans, and would not see him. He determined at last to go to town, and consult Dr. A--, whose advice he had found of great use in an earlier period of his life.
Mr. Merton had not been in London for years; it must have been a strong motive power that could move him from Hursleigh. Soon after breakfast, however, one morning, to Mrs. Howard’s astonishment, the carriage drove round to the door. Mr. Merton had not signified his intentions to her, lest she should insist upon accompanying him. The carriage had not waited many moments when he appeared in the morning room, equipped for his journey.
‘Well, ladies,’ he said, ‘you will be able to amuse yourselves, I hope, for a day or two without your host.
I am going to town, Mrs Howard, to consult Dr A--. I have long thought of it, and determined upon it at last.’
‘To town, sir, and alone!’ exclaimed Mrs. Howard. ‘Julia, Eleanor, my dears, we must not permit it; we will go with you, my dear sir - one or all of us. If you had given us notice of your intention, we should have been ready at this moment.’
‘And now it is too late. Dear me!’ - looking at his watch, he exclaimed, ‘I shall but just have time to save the train, if that. Goodbye, Mrs. Howard; goodbye, girls.’ And he hurried away before it was possible to arrest him, to promise an impossible promptitude in getting ready to accompany him, or to suggest waiting for the next train, or anything of the sort. Mrs. Howard saw the carriage wheel round and sweep along the avenue, with a dark anticipation of some impending calamity, from this singular exception to all the ordinary habits of his life.
The train proceeded on rapid wings to London; it was almost the first Mr. Merton had travelled by, and the clear morning and the rapid motion already made him forget for an hour that there was anything the matter with him. He was soon in London, and a cab conveyed him from the station to the house of Dr. A--, with whom he had made an appointment.
Dr. A-- received him with courtesy; they were old friends, and he expressed much regret at seeing him look so thin and ill. After hearing all the symptoms of his case, he promised to write a prescription for him. ‘But,’ he said, ‘what I should chiefly recommend to you is to get as soon as possible change of air, change of scene, change of society, change of everything.’
‘That is precisely what I wish to get,’ said Uncle Peter, ‘and find impossible to procure.’
‘Impossible! - my dear sir, to whom is it possible, if not to you?’
A sudden accession of communicativeness came over Uncle Peter, and he related his present situation to the kind physician.
It is extraordinary what singular communications physicians do receive from their patients. Dr. A-- received more than most others. He had an immense practice, and unlimited sympathies. This did not surprise him at all. He smiled, and paused for a few moments.
‘If you will take my advice, my dear friend, you will not go back to Hursleigh at all; you will sit down, and write from here to say that I wish to have you for a few days under my eye, after which it is probable that you will go to some watering-place for a few weeks for change of air. If you will be guided by me, you will go on the continent; to Spa, in Belgium, for instance, the air and waters of which would, I am sure, set you up in no time.’
Mr Merton sat transfixed; he could scarcely take in the notion of leavying Hursleigh, and going on the continent; but Dr. A-- made light of all difficulties. There were but two hours of sea passage; he knew that he was a good sailor, and that he talked French; everything now was so easy to the traveller, that he would be as comfortable, he assured him, as at an English watering place; while he would have a change of life more complete than he could procure in England, and enjoy the advantage of the iron waters, from which Dr. A-- anticipated much benefit in his case.
‘I am going out myself,’ said Dr. A--, ‘but I leave you all implements of letter-writing, and you will find Mrs A-- above, in the drawing-room. Where is your carpet bag?’
‘My servant has taken it to the Clarendon.’
‘I will call there as I pass,’ said Dr. A-- in a decisive tone which admitted of no denial, ‘and send him here with it.’
He was out of his room and into his carriage before Uncle Peter had well time, if he had been disposed to do so, to object to the arrangement.
It was an awkward letter to write; but Uncle Peter did write it, and sent it to Hursleigh by his servant, with orders to pack up and get all in readiness for an absence of some weeks.
When the letter was written, he sat in Dr. A--’s study with a continental Bradshaw in his hand, over and over again following with his eye the line of the Belgian railways: he could not make out that Brussels was exactly in the necessary route to Spa, but he had never seen Brussels, and he wished to see it, and by a very slight detour he might see it. But then Captain Merton and Lady Helena were residing there, and he did not wish to see them; no, certainly he did not wish to see them; they had shown no great wish for his society - why should he manifest any for theirs? No, he certainly would not see them, but he might see Brussels notwithstanding; everybody went to Brussels - why not he?
He had heard from public rumour something of his nephew’s history since his marriage; but public rumour had not got quite hold of the right story; there was the patent fact that Captain Merton was done up, that he had sold his commission, and his furniture, and pictures, and gone to economise abroad. So far the world could see, but the world is never content with seeing such simple, straightforward results, without knowing, or pretending to know, the cause or causes which led to them. Now it had seen in this case the expensive elegance of Lady Helena Merton’s furniture, carriages, dresses, jewels, and entertainments - all certainty above their means; and the current account of poor Merton’s misfortunes was mixed up for the most part with blame of the extravagance of Lady Helena. The world judged from what it saw; how could it see or know that it was Captain Merton who was thoughtless and extravagant; that his wife had been ever shrinking from a display which his less refined taste was continually forcing upon her? Mrs Howard, from certain information which she possessed, might have corrected the history which came to the ears of Uncle Peter of his nephew’s disasters; but, for obvious reasons, she forebore to do so, and exaggerated, on the contrary, the slight floating reports she had heard against the worldly prudence of Lady Helena.
‘The first act is over,’ Uncle Peter had been continually saying to himself since the news reached him. He had made up his mind from the first that Charles Merton would run precisely the same career as his father had done, and he had determined that if ever, with blighted hopes and ruined fortune, as his father, he should seek his assistance and society, Hursleigh should then be his home. His own experience of society had been very limited, and his obstinate prepossessions against a class had so blinded him to what might be the varying character of the individuals which composed it, that he was considerably astonished that Lady Helena, after ruining his nephew, had not proceeded at once to leave him.
But years now had passed on since ‘the first act’ of the drama Uncle Peter had long since played out in his own mind had terminated, and there seemed no prospect of the second being accomplished. He heard that the Mertons were living at Brussels, that they had one child, and that they were not very well off, and that was all. He had been all along disappointed that his nephew had not applied to him for assistance; he did not think that he should have helped him, but he should have liked to have been asked to do so. And now he felt a sort of curiosity, blended, doubtless, with more of lingering affection than he chose to acknowledge to himself to take advantage of the coincidence of having been himself ordered to Belgium, and his nephew’s residing there, to reconnoitre their proceedings without introducing himself to them, and judging somewhat more by his own observation than by the reports of others.
Great was the consternation at Hursleigh when Mr. Merton’s note arrived. Mrs. Howard read it and re-read it, but she could extract no comfort from it; it was very kind and very polite - it begged her, indeed, not to hurry her departure, but gave it, at the same time, no encouragement for that indefinite prologation of her visit which she had contemplated, still less did it give her a clue to Mr. Merton’s destination, or a pretext for offering to accompany him on his travels.
As Mrs Howard had, in point of fact, no engagements at all, and as she had intimated to all her correspondents of the town where she resided, that it would be probably some considerable time before she should be able to return to her ‘sweet home,’ and relinquish ‘the dear but arduous duty which she had undertaken,’ she thought it best, to save appearances, to take her daughters for a month to the seaside, after which she could return to Laurel Lodge with tolerable propriety. This
she accordingly did; and explaining to her friends that this change in her plans had been caused by her own health having broken down by under the charge which she had too rashly undertaken, she recived the due commiseration which such an announcement was calculated to produce.
Late one summer evening, when the darkness had begun to descend upon the town, and the lights long since to appear in the shops, an elderly gentleman might have been seen walking about in a purposeless kind of way in the streets of Brussels; whilst the daylight lasted, he had confined his perambulations chiefly to the neighbourhood of the church of St. Gudule; he had walked round and round it, and wandered for some time inside it, and yet the peculiar beauty of its exterior and interior had been much lost upon him, for his mind was full the while of other thoughts, from which the new scenes wherein he now found himself could not at that time divert it. At last, when it grew darker, he walked slowly to quite another quarter of the town, and might have been seen for some time pacing backwards and forwards before a row of tall white houses on the opposite side of the street. He looked anxiously into the upper windows of one of these, but no light appeared in them, nor any sign of human habitation in the house, except in the lower part of it, which was fitted up as a shop.
At last, having gazed earnestly upwards, as he walked, for some time, he seemed to come to a sudden determination, stopped short, crossed the road, and entered the shop.
When he had done this, he stood transfixed for a few moments in the presence of a tall, elegantly dressed-woman, who looked at him, without rising, from the opposite side of the counter.
The lady evidently imagined that his silence and confusion resulted from inability to express his wants in a language which she would understand. She therefore, with a good-natured smile, but very indifferent English, made a suggestion about ‘gloves,’ which were the usual purchase made in her shop by her male customers.
Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell Page 522
