Once, as we were going down stairs together, after I had disdainfully expressed my contempt of hypocrisy, and my firm belief that my plain truth would in the end prevail with Berenice against all his address, he turned upon me in sudden anger, beyond his power to control, and exclaimed, “Never! — She never shall be yours!”
It appeared as if he had some trick yet in store — some card concealed in his hand, with which he was secure, at last, of winning the game. I pondered, and calculated, but I could not make out what it could be.
One advantage, as he thought it, I was aware he had over me — he had no religious scruples; he could therefore manage so as to appear to make a great sacrifice to love, when, in fact, it would cost his conscience nothing. One evening he began to talk of Sir Charles Grandison and Clementina — he blamed Sir Charles Grandison; he declared, that for his part there was nothing he would not sacrifice to a woman he loved.
I looked at Miss Montenero at that instant — our eyes met — she blushed deeply — withdrew her eyes from me — and sighed. During the remainder of the evening, she scarcely spoke to me, or looked toward me. She appeared embarrassed; and, as I thought, displeased. Lord Mowbray was in high spirits — he seemed resolved to advance — I retired earlier than usual. Lord Mowbray stayed, and seized the moment to press his own suit. He made his proposal — he offered to sacrifice religion — every thing to love. He was refused irrevocably. I know nothing of the particulars, nor should I have known the fact but for his own intemperance of resentment. It was not only his vanity — his mortified, exasperated vanity — that suffered by this refusal; it was not only on account of his rivalship with me that he was vexed to the quick; his interest, as much as his vanity, had suffered. I did not know till this night how completely he was ruined. He had depended upon the fortune of the Jewess. What resource for him now? — None. In this condition, like one of the Indian gamblers, when they have lost all, and are ready to run amuck on all who may fall in their way, he this night, late, made his appearance at a club where he expected to find me. Fortunately, I was not there; but a gentleman who was, gave me an account of the scene. Disappointed at not finding me, with whom he had determined to quarrel, he supped in absolute silence — drank hasty and deep draughts of wine — then burst out into abuse of Mr. and Miss Montenero, and challenged any body present to defend them: he knew that several of their acquaintances were in company; but all, seeing that from the combined effects of passion and wine he was not in his senses, suffered him to exhale his fury without interruption or contradiction. Then he suddenly demanded the reason of this silence; and seemingly resolved to force some one into a quarrel, [Footnote: Strange as it may appear, this representation is true.] he began by the gentleman next to him, and said the most offensive and provoking things he could think of to him — and to each in turn; but all laughed, and told him they were determined not to quarrel with him — that he must take four-and-twenty hours to cool before they would take notice of any thing he should say. His creditors did not give him four-and-twenty hours’ time: a servant, before whom he had vented his rage against the Jewess, comprehended that all his hopes of her were over, and gave notice to the creditors, who kept him in their pay for that purpose. Mowbray was obliged the next day to leave town, or to conceal himself in London, to avoid an arrest. I heard no more of him for some time — indeed I made no inquiries. I could have no farther interest concerning a man who had conducted himself so ill. I only rejoiced that he was now out of my way, and that he had by all his treachery, and by all his artifices, given me an opportunity of seeing, more fully tried, the excellent understanding and amiable disposition of Berenice. My passion was now justified by my reason: my hopes were high, not presumptuous — nothing but the difficulty about her religion stood between me and happiness. I was persuaded that the change by which I had been alarmed in Miss Montenero’s manner towards me had arisen only from doubts of my love, or from displeasure at the delay of an explicit declaration of my passion. Determined, at all hazards, now to try my fate, I took my way across the square to Mr. Montenero’s — Across the square? — yes! I certainly took the diagonal of the square.
CHAPTER XIV.
When I arrived at Mr. Montenero’s I saw the window-shutters closed, and there was an ominous stillness in the area — no one answered to my knock. I knocked louder — I rang impatiently; no footsteps were heard in the hall: I pulled the bell incessantly. During the space of three minutes that I was forced to wait on the steps, I formed a variety of horrid imaginations. At last I heard approaching sounds: an old woman very deliberately opened the door. “Lauk, sir, how you do ring! There’s not a body to be had but me — all the servants is different ways, gone to their friends.”
“But Mr. and Miss Montenero—”
“Oh! they was off by times this morning — they be gone—”
“Gone?”
I suppose my look and accent of despair struck the old woman with some pity, for she added, “Lauk, sir, they be only gone for a few days.”
I recovered my breath. “And can you, my good lady, tell me where they are gone?”
“Somewhere down in Surrey — Lord knows — I forget the names — but to General somebody’s.”
“General B — —’s, perhaps.”
“Ay, ay, — that’s it.”
My imagination ran over in an instant all the general’s family, the gouty brother, and the white-toothed aide-de-camp.
“How long are they to stay at General B — —’s, can you tell me, my good lady?”
“Dear heart! I can’t tell, not I’s, how they’ll cut and carve their visitings — all I know is, they be to be back here in ten days or a fortnight or so.”
I put a golden memorandum, with my card, into the old woman’s hand, and she promised that the very moment Mr. and Miss Montenero should return to town I should have notice.
During this fortnight my anxiety was increased by hearing from Mrs. Coates, whom I accidentally met at a fruit-shop, that “Miss Montenero was taken suddenly ill of a scarlet fever down in the country at General B — —’s, where,” as Mrs. Coates added, “they could get no advice for her at all, but a country apothecary, which was worse than nobody.”
Mrs. Coates, who was not an ill-natured, though a very ill-bred woman, observing the terrible alarm into which she had thrown me by her intelligence, declared she was quite sorry she had outed with the news so sudden upon me. Mrs. Coates now stood full in the doorway of the fruit-shop, so as to stop me completely from effecting my retreat; and while her footman was stowing into her carriage the loads of fruit which she had purchased, I was compelled to hear her go on in the following style.
“Now, Mr. Harrington — no offence — but I couldn’t have conceived it was so re’lly over head and ears an affair with you, as by your turning as pale as the table-cloth I see it re’lly is. For there was my son Peter, he admired her, and the alderman was not against it; but then the Jewess connexion was always a stumbling-block Peter could not swallow; — and as for my Lord Mowbray, that the town talked of so much as in love with the Jewess heiress — heiress, says I, very like, but not Jewess, I’ll engage; and, said I, from the first, he is no more in love with her than I am. So many of them young men of the ton is always following of them heiresses up and down for fashion or fortin’s sake, without caring sixpence about them, that — I ask your pardon, Mr. Harrington — but I thought you might, in the alderman’s phrase, be of the same kidney; but since I see ’tis a real downright affair of the heart, I shall make it my business to call myself at your house to-morrow in my carriage. No — that would look odd, and you a bachelor, and your people out o’town. But I’ll send my own footman with a message, I promise you now, let ’em be ever so busy, if I hear any good news. No need to send if it be bad, for ill news flies apace evermore, all the world over, as Peter says. Tom! I say! is the fruit all in, Tom? — Oh! Mr. Harrington, don’t trouble yourself — you’re too polite, but I always get into my coach best myself, without hand or
arm, except it be Tom’s. A good morning, sir — I sha’n’t forget to-morrow: so live upon hope — lover’s fare! — Home, Tom.”
The next day, Mrs. Coates, more punctual to her word than many a more polished person, sent as early as it was possible “to set my heart at ease about Miss Montenero’s illness, and other matters.” Mrs. Coates enclosed in her note two letters, which her maid had received that morning and last Tuesday. This was the way, as Mrs. Coates confessed, that the report reached her ears. The waiting-maid’s first letter had stated “that her lady, though she did not complain, had a cold and sore throat coming down, and this was alarming, with a spotted fever in the neighbourhood.” Mrs. Coates’s maid had, in repeating the news, “turned the sore throat into a spotted fever, or a scarlet fever, she did not rightly know which, but both were said by the apothecary to be generally fatal, where there was any Jewish taint in the blood.”
The waiting-maid’s second epistle, on which Mrs. Coates had written, “a sugar plum for a certain gentleman,” contained the good tidings “that the first was all a mistake. There was no spotted fever, the general’s own man would take his Bible oath, within ten miles round — and Miss Montenero’s throat was gone off — and she was come out of her room. But as to spirits and good looks, she had left both in St. James’-square, Lon’on; where her heart was, fur certain. For since she come to the country, never was there such a change in any living lady, young or old — quite moped! — The general, and his aide-de-camp, and every body, noticing it at dinner even. To be sure if it did not turn out a match, which there was some doubts of, on account of the family’s and the old gentleman’s particular oaths and objections, as she had an inkling of, there would be two broken hearts. Lord forbid! — though a Jewish heart might be harder to break than another’s, yet it looked likely.”
The remainder of the letter, Mrs. Coates, or her maid, had very prudently torn off. I was now relieved from all apprehensions of spotted fever; and though I might reasonably have doubted the accuracy of all the intelligence conveyed by such a correspondent, yet I could not help having a little faith in some of her observations. My hopes, at least, rose delightfully; and with my hope, my ardent impatience to see Berenice again. At last, the joyful notice of Mr. and Miss Montenero’s return to town was brought to me by the old woman. Mr. Montenero admitted me the moment I called. Miss Montenero was not at home, or not visible. I was shown into Mr. Montenero’s study. The moment I entered, the moment I saw him, I was struck with some change in his countenance — some difference in his manner of receiving me. In what the difference consisted, I could not define; but it alarmed me.
“Good Heavens!” I exclaimed, “is Miss Montenero ill?”
“My daughter is perfectly well, my dear sir.”
“Thank Heaven! But you, sir?”
“I,” said Mr. Montenero, “am also in perfect health. What alarms you?”
“I really don’t well know,” said I, endeavouring to laugh at myself, and my own apprehensions; “but I thought I perceived some change in the expression of your countenance towards me, my dear Mr. Montenero. You must know, that all my life, my quickness of perception of the slightest change in the countenance and manner of those I love, has ever been a curse to me; for my restless imagination always set to work to invent causes — and my causes, though ingenious, unluckily, seldom happened to be the real causes. Many a vain alarm, many a miserable hour, has this superfluous activity of imagination cost me — so I am determined to cure myself.”
At the moment I was uttering the determination, I stopped short, for I felt that I could not keep it, on this occasion. Mr. Montenero sighed, or I thought he sighed, and there was such an unusual degree of gravity and deliberation in the mildness of his manner, that I could not believe my alarm was without cause. I took the chair which he placed for me, and we both sat down: but he looked so prepared to listen, that I could not articulate. There was a sudden revulsion in my spirits, and all my ideas were in utter confusion. Mr. Montenero, the kindness of whose manner was not changed towards me, I saw pitied my confusion. He began to talk of his excursion into the country — he spoke of General B —— and of the whole county of Surrey. The words reached my ears, but conveyed no ideas to my mind, except the general notion that Mr. Montenero was giving me time to recover myself. I was grateful for the kind intention, and somewhat encouraged by the softness of voice, and look of pity. But still there was something so measured — so guarded — so prepared! — At last, when he had exhausted all that he could say about the county of Surrey, and a dead silence threatened me, I took courage, and plunged into the middle of things at once. I cannot remember exactly the words, but what I said was to this effect.
“Mr. Montenero, you know so much of the human heart, and of my heart, that you must be aware of the cause of my present embarrassment and emotion. You must have seen my passion for your incomparable daughter.”
“I have seen it, I own — I am well aware of it, Mr. Harrington,” replied Mr. Montenero, in a mild and friendly tone; but there was something of self-accusation and repentance in the tone, which alarmed me inexpressibly.
“I hope, my dear good sir, that you do not repent of your kindness,” said I, “in having permitted me to cultivate your society, in having indulged me in some hours of the most exquisite pleasure I ever yet enjoyed.”
He sighed; and I went on with vehement incoherence.
“I hope you cannot suspect me of a design to abuse your confidence, to win, if it were in my power, your daughter’s affections, without your knowledge, surreptitiously, clandestinely. She is an heiress, a rich heiress, I know, and my circumstances — Believe me, sir, I have never intended to deceive you; but I waited till — There I was wrong. I wish I had abided by my own opinion! I wish I had followed my first impulse! Believe me, sir, it was my first thought, my first wish, to speak to you of all the circumstances; if I delayed, it was from the fear that a precipitate declaration would have been imputed to presumption. As Heaven is my judge, I had no other motive. I abhor artifice. I am incapable of the base treachery of taking advantage of any confidence reposed in me.”
“My good sir,” said Mr. Montenero, when at last I was forced to pause for breath, “why this vehemence of defence? I do not accuse — I do not suspect you of any breach of confidence. Pray compose yourself.”
Calmed by this assurance, I recovered some presence of mind, and proceeded, as I thought, in a most tranquil manner to express my regret, at all events, that I should not have been the first person to have explained to him my unfortunate circumstances. “But this,” I said, “was like the rest of Lord Mowbray’s treacherous conduct.”
I was going on again in a tone of indignation, when Mr. Montenero again begged me to compose myself, and asked “to what unfortunate circumstances I alluded?”
“You do not know then? You have not been informed? Then I did Lord Mowbray injustice.”
I explained to Mr. Montenero to what circumstances I had so unintelligibly alluded. I gained courage as I went on, for I saw that the history of my father’s vow, of which Mr. Montenero had evidently never heard till this moment, did not shock or offend him, as I had expected that it would.
With the most philosophic calmness and benevolence, he said that he could forgive my father for his prejudices the more readily, because he was persuaded that if he had ever become known to my father, it would not have been impossible to conquer this prepossession.
I sighed, for I was convinced this was a vain hope. There was some confusion in the tenses in Mr. Montenero’s sentence too, which I did not quite like, or comprehend; he seemed as if he were speaking of a thing that might have been possible, at some time that was now completely past. I recollect having a painful perception of this one instant, and the next accounting for it satisfactorily, by supposing that his foreign idiom was the cause of his confusion of speech.
After a pause, he proceeded. “Fortune,” said he, “is not an object to me in the choice of a son-in-law: considering
the very ample fortune which my daughter will possess, I am quite at ease upon that point.”
Still, though he had cleared away the two first great obstacles, I saw there was some greater yet unnamed. I thought it was the difference of our religion. We were both silent, and the difficulty seemed to me at this moment greater, and more formidable, than it had ever yet appeared. While I was considering how I should touch upon the subject, Mr. Montenero turned to me and said, “I hate all mysteries, and yet I cannot be perfectly explicit with you, Mr. Harrington; as far as I possibly can, however, I will speak with openness — with sincerity, you may depend upon it, I have always spoken, and ever shall speak. You must have perceived that your company is particularly agreeable to me. Your manners, your conversation, your liberal spirit, and the predilection you have shown for my society — the politeness, the humanity, you showed my daughter the first evening you met — and the partiality for her, which a father’s eye quickly perceived that you felt, altogether won upon my heart. My regard for you has been strengthened and confirmed by the temper, prudence, and generosity, I have seen you evince towards a rival. I have studied your character, and I think I know it as thoroughly as I esteem and value it. If I were to choose a son-in-law after my own heart, you should be the man. Spare me your thanks — spare me this joy,” continued he; “I have now only said what it was just to say — just to you and to myself.”
He spoke with difficulty and great emotion, as he went on to say, that he feared he had acted very imprudently for my happiness in permitting, in encouraging me to see so much of his daughter; for an obstacle — he feared an obstacle that — His voice almost failed.
Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth Page 183
