THE LETTER ON WHICH RICHARD FAIRTHORN RELIED FOR THE DEFEAT OF THE
CONSPIRACY AGAINST FAWLEY MANOR-HOUSE. BAD ASPECTS FOR HOUSES. THE
HOUSE OF VIPONT IS THREATENED. A PHYSICIAN ATTEMPTS TO MEDICINE TO
A MIND DISEASED. A STRANGE COMMUNICATION, WHICH HURRIES THE READER
ONTO THE NEXT CHAPTER.
It has been said that Fairthorn had committed to a certain letter his
last desperate hope that something might yet save Fawley from demolition,
and himself and his master from an exile's home in that smiling nook of
earth to which Horace invited Septimius, as uniting the advantages of a
mild climate, excellent mutton, capital wine; and affording to Septimius
the prospective privilege of sprinkling a tear over the cinder of his
poetical friend while the cinder was yet warm; inducements which had no
charm at all to Fairthorn, who was quite satisfied with the Fawley
southdowns--held in just horror all wishy-washy light wines--and had no
desire to see Darrell reduced to a cinder for the pleasure of sprinkling
that cinder with a tear.
The letter in question was addressed to Lady Montfort. Unscrupulously
violating the sacred confidence of his master, the treacherous wretch,
after accusing her, in language little more consistent with the respect
due to the fair sex than that which he had addressed to Sophy, of all the
desolation that the perfidious nuptials of Caroline Lyndsay had brought
upon Guy Darrell, declared that the least Lady Montfort could do to
repair the wrongs inflicted by Caroline Lyndsay, was--not to pity his
master!--that her pity was killing him. He repeated, with some grotesque
comments of his own, but on the whole not inaccurately, what Darrell had
said to him on the subject of her pity. He then informed her of
Darrell's consent to Lionel's marriage with Sophy; in which criminal
espousals it was clear, from Darrell's words, that Lady Montfort had had
some nefarious share. In the most lugubrious colours he brought before
her the consequences of that marriage--the extinguished name, the
demolished dwelling-place, the renunciation of native soil itself. He
called upon her, by all that was sacred, to contrive some means to undo
the terrible mischief she had originally occasioned, and had recently
helped to complete. His epistle ended by an attempt to conciliate and
coax. He revived the image of that wild Caroline Lyndsay, to whom HE had
never refused a favour; whose earliest sums he had assisted to cast up--
to whose young idea he had communicated the elementary principles of the
musical gamut--to whom he had played on his flute, winter eve and summer
noon, by the hour together; that Caroline Lyndsay, who when a mere child,
had led Guy Darrell where she willed, as by a thread of silk. Ah, how
Fairthorn had leapt for joy when, eighteen years ago, he had thought that
Caroline Lyndsay was to be the sunshine and delight of the house to which
she had lived to bring the cloud and the grief! And by all these
memories, Fairthorn conjured her either to break off the marriage she had
evidently helped to bring about, or, failing that, to convince Guy
Darrell that he was not the object of her remorseful and affectionate
compassion.
Caroline was almost beside herself at the receipt of this letter. The
picture of Guy Darrell effacing his very life from his native land, and
destroying the last memorials of his birthright and his home--the
conviction of the influence she still retained over his bleak and
solitary existence--the experience she had already acquired that the
influence failed where she had so fondly hoped it might begin to repair
and to bless, all overpowered her with emotions of yearning tenderness
and unmitigated despair. What could she do? She could not offer
herself, again to be rejected. She could not write again, to force her
penitence upon the man who, while acknowledging his love to be
unconquered, had so resolutely refused to see, in the woman who had once
deceived his trust--the Caroline of old! Alas, if he were but under the
delusion that her pity was the substitute and not the companion of love,
how could she undeceive him? How say--how write--"Accept me, for I love
you." Caroline Montfort had no pride of rank, but she had pride of sex;
that pride had been called forth, encouraged, strengthened, throughout
all the years of her wedded life. For Guy Darrell's sake, and to him
alone, that pride she had cast away--trampled upon; such humility was due
to him. But when the humility had been once in vain, could it be
repeated--would it not be debasement? In the first experiment she had
but to bow to his reproach--in a second experiment she might have but to
endure his contempt. Yet how, with her sweet, earnest, affectionate
nature--how she longed for one more interview--one more explanation! If
chance could but bring it about; if she had but a pretext--a fair reason,
apart from any interest of her own, to be in his presence once more! But
in a few days he would have left England forever--his heart yet more
hardened in its resolves by the last sacrifice to what it had so sternly
recognised to be a due to others. Never to see him more--never to know
how much in that sacrifice he was suffering now--would perhaps suffer
more hereafter, in the reaction that follows all strain upon purpose--and
yet not a word of comfort from her--her who felt born to be his
comforter.
But this marriage, that cost him so much, must that be? Could she dare,
even for his sake, to stand between two such fair young lives as those of
Lionel and Sophy--confide to them what Fairthorn had declared--appeal to
their generosity? She shrunk from inflicting such intolerable sorrow.
Could it be her duty? In her inability to solve this last problem, she
bethought herself of Alban Morley; here, at least, he might give advice
--offer suggestion. She sent to his house entreating him to call. Her
messenger was some hours before he found the Colonel, and then brought
back but a few hasty lines--"impossible to call that day. The CRISIS had
come at last! The Country, the House of Vipont, the British Empire, were
trembling in the balance. The Colonel was engaged every moment for the
next twelve hours. He had the Earl of Montfort, who was intractable and
stupid beyond conception, to see and talk over; Carr Vipont was hard at
work on the materials for the new Cabinet--Alban was helping Carr Vipont.
If the House of Vipont failed England at this moment, it would not be a
CRISIS, but a CRASH! The Colonel hoped to arrange an interview with Lady
Montfort for a minute or two the next day. But perhaps she would excuse
him from a journey to Twickenham, and drive into town to see him; if not
at home, he would leave word where he was to be found."
By the beard of Jupiter Capitolinus, there are often revolutions in the
heart of woman, during which she is callous to a Crisis, and has not even
a fear for a CRASH!
The next day came George's letter to Caroline, with the gentle message
from Darrell; and when Dr. F------, whose apprehensions for the state of
her health Colonel Morley had by no means exaggerated, called in the
afternoon to see the effect of his last prescription, he found her in
such utter prostration of nerves and spirits, that he resolved to hazard
a dose not much known to great ladies--viz. three grains of plain-
speaking, with a minim of frightening.
"My dear lady," said he, "yours is a case in which physicians can be of
very little use. There is something on the mind which my prescriptions
fail to reach; worry of some sort--decidedly worry. And unless you
yourself can either cure that, or will make head against it, worry, my
dear Lady Montfort, will end not in consumption--you are too finely
formed to let worry eat holes in the lungs--no; but in a confirmed
aneurism of the heart, and the first sudden shock might then be
immediately fatal. The heart is a noble organ--bears a great deal--but
still its endurance has limits. Heart-complaints are more common than
they were;--over-education and over-civilisation, I suspect. Very young
people are not so subject to them; they have flurry, not worry--a very
different thing. A good chronic silent grief of some years standing,
that gets worried into acute inflammation at the age when feeling is no
longer fancy, throws out a heart-disease which sometimes kills without
warning, or sometimes, if the grief be removed, will rather prolong than
shorten life, by inducing a prudent avoidance of worry in future. There
is that worthy old gentleman who was taken so ill at Fawley, and about
whom you were so anxious: in his case there had certainly been chronic
grief; then came acute worry, and the heart could not get through its
duties. Fifty years ago doctors would have cried 'apoplexy!'--nowadays
we know that the heart saves the head. Well, he was more easy in his
mind the last time I saw him, and thanks to his temperance, and his
constitutional dislike to self-indulgence in worry, he may jog on to
eighty, in spite of the stethoscope! Excess in the moral emotions gives
heart-disease; abuse of the physical powers, paralysis; both more common
than they were--the first for your gentle sex, the second for our rough
one. Both, too, lie in wait for their victims at the entrance in middle
life. I have a very fine case of paralysis now; a man built up by nature
to live to a hundred--never saw such a splendid formation--such bone and
such muscle. I would have given Van Amburgh the two best of his lions,
and my man would have done for all three in five minutes. All the worse
for him, my dear lady--all the worse for him. His strength leads him on
to abuse the main fountains of life, and out jumps avenging Paralysis and
fells him to earth with a blow. 'Tis your Hercules that Paralysis loves;
she despises the weak invalid, who prudently shims all excess. And so,
my dear lady, that assassin called Aneurism lies in wait for the hearts
that abuse their own force of emotion; sparing hearts that, less vital,
are thrifty in waste and supply. But you are not listening to one! And
yet my patient may not be quite unknown to your ladyship; for in
happening to mention the other day, to the lady who attends to and nurses
him, that I could not call this morning, as I had a visit to pay to Lady
Montfort at Twickenham, she became very anxious about you, and wrote this
note, which she begged me to give you. She seems very much attached to
my patient--not his wife nor his sister. She interests me;--capital
nurse-cleverish woman too. Oh! here is the note."
Caroline, who had given but little heed to this recital, listlessly
received the note--scarcely looked at the address--and was about to put
it aside, when the good doctor, who was intent upon rousing her by any
means, said: "No, my dear lady, I promised that I would see you read the
note; besides, I am the most curious of men, and dying to know a little
more who and what is the writer."
Caroline broke the seal and read as follows: "If Lady Montfort remembers
Arabella Fossett, and will call at Clare Cottage, Vale of Health,
Hampstead, at her ladyship's earliest leisure, and ask for Mrs. Crane,
some information, not perhaps important to Lady Montfort, but very
important to Mr. Darrell, will be given."
Lady Montfort startled the doctor by the alertness with which she sprang
to her feet and rang the bell.
"What is it?" asked he.
"The carriage immediately," cried Lady Montfort as the servant entered.
"Ah! you are going to see the poor lady, Mrs. Crane, eh? Well, it is a
charming drive, and just what I should have recommended. Any exertion
will do you good. Allow me; why, your pulse is already fifty per cent.
better. Pray what relation is Mrs. Crane to my patient?"
"I really don't know; pray excuse me, my dear Dr. F-------."
"Certainly; go while the day is fine. Wrap up;--a close carriage,
mind;--and I will look in to-morrow."