"Madam, to your question, the answer is No. There is no marriage between
Mr Dean and me. I have no claim on him that obstructs your own."
She looked up like one in a stupor of amazement--so dazed and white that I
repeated my words. Then, suddenly, she gathered herself into composure
like my own, but her poor lips trembled. I saw in her my girlhood long
dead.
"If I say I thank you, Madam, with all my heart and soul for thus opening
your mind to a most miserable woman, I say little. What is left of my life
shall be a study to deserve your compassion. What would you have me do?"
I replied: "I think you will not fail in what honour and conscience
dictate. 'Tis not for me to say. 'Tis between you and Mr Dean. And now,
Madam, will you give me leave to withdraw, for this hath been a painful
meeting for us both."
"Not before I bless you with all my broken heart," she cried, and took my
hand. "For I will now tell you that, for all these letters, I know he
loves not me, nor any. I may please him better than another in moments,
but there's no security. He hath a contempt for women that scorches, and
to hurt them--but 'tis not this I would say. I feared to find an exulting
rival when I came to you, Madam, and instead I find an angel of
compassion. Sure I read it in your eyes. In this life we shall meet no
more; but in my prayers you will be present, and I beseech you, as the
last favour, to give me an interest in yours, that I may know myself not
utterly forsook. My one sister is not long dead--I am utterly alone in the
world."
She could not continue, but kissed my hand, and her tears fell on it. I
told her that this meeting should remain secret, but she needed not
assurance. We embraced, and so, curtseying, separated, she departing
first. A good woman, if I have known one. 'Tis of good women men make
their victims. The ill women cannot and do not suffer; they but repay our
score. When I reached home I found her paper still in my hand.
I must now be brief. Mr Dean returned, and all was as before; but I
wearied yet more of the child's play and prattle he still continued for my
amusement. He was much engaged with writing. I thought him ill at ease.
I was seated by the window on a day he will recall, when he entered pale
and furious.
"What hath gone amiss?" I cried, starting up.
"This," says he, in a voice I scarce knew, so awful was it; and laid
before me the poor Vanessa's paper that I believed I had destroyed weeks
agone. O, what had I done? 'Twas another paper I had burned, and this had
lain in my pocket. 'Twas most certainly Mrs Prue--But what matter? He had
what for her sake and mine I had died to hide.
"Hath that vixen dared to come anigh you?" he cried. "Hath she ventured to
disquiet my friends, the wanton jade, the scheming--" and so on, pouring
horrid words upon her that chilled my blood. 'T was terrible in him, that
he could so swiftly change to these furies with one he had favoured, and
to a rage frightful to see.
I tried to moderate him, to speak for her; but nothing availed. Finally I
rose to withdraw, for he would hear nothing.
"But I'll break her spirit," he said, with clenched hands. "I'll ride to
Celbridge and face her with her crime--"
I held him back. "For God's sake, no. Have patience. She hath done no
harm, and no eye but mine saw the paper. I pitied her--we parted friends."
"Then you saw her? She came?"
But I can write no more. He tore his coat from me, and so down the stair
like a madman; and I heard his horse clatter down the street, while I
prayed for a soul in agony, and that she might not think I betrayed her.
Hours went by. He returned, still riding furiously, and told me how he had
dashed the paper on the table before her, and how she had sunk down
speechless when he so spoke as satisfied even his vengeance. And so
continued:--
"But I am resolved. Such sluts, such tongue-snakes shall not cross my
path. You have been obedient, Stella, through good and ill report, and
merit reward. I will speak with the Bishop of Clogher and he shall marry
us forthwith, though privately. And we will live apart, for I cannot bend
my will and habits to live with any woman; but Stella shall know she is my
wife, and the knowledge pierce that ----'s heart."
So, at last, the words I had once died to hear came and found me cold.
Indeed, I despised them, though still I honour my friend. I mused, while
he leaned against the window, breathing heavily and waiting my reply.
"It comes too late," I said. "There was a time when it had been welcome,
but not now. Also, my sympathies are engaged in a quarter where I think a
little mercy had become you. With your permission, Mr Dean, this is a
subject that shall detain us no more."
I pickt up my knotting as Dingley entered. He stared upon me and went out,
nor was it ever again mentioned.
After, she writ me a word: "Madam and my friend, I know 'twas not your
doing. That needs no words. I am very ill, and were it possible we should
meet, 'twould be my solace, but 'tis impossible. May the happiness the
good should enjoy attend you, as do my prayers. Your grateful humble
servant, E.V."
I answered thus: "Madam and my friend, God be with you in life and death.
The question you put to me I shall for ever answer as then. Comfort
yourself, for sure there is a world that sets this right, else were we of
all men most miserable."
She was dead in three weeks, of a broken heart, For me, my own hour draws
on. I have writ this paper, yet think to destroy it, and know not what is
best. No happiness lies before him in old age, for 'tis a plant he pulled
up by the roots for himself and others--alas! how many. Should I then
cause him to suffer more? He hath had the mercy of my silence for a
lifetime. 'Tis not so hard to be silent in the grave.
(_Stella died in the year 1727. The letters in this story to or from
Dean Swift are authentic._)
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
1689-1762
"I thank God witches are out of fashion," observes Lady Mary, in a letter
to her daughter, when spicy gossip about her doings abroad had been
circulated in London, "or I should expect to have it deponed, by several
credible witnesses, that I had been seen flying through the air on a
broomstick."
Conspicuous always, she was nominated a "toast" in the Kit-Kat Club when
she was eight, occupied herself with Latin at ten, was married when she
was twenty-three, began her campaign for smallpox inoculation when she was
twenty-nine, held salons in London, Constantinople, Brescia, Rome, and
Venice, and died when she was seventy-three, bequeathing a fortune and
twenty large manuscript volumes of prose and verse to her daughter, one
guinea to her son, and two volumes of correspondence to a gentleman in
Holland, with the request that the letters be published at once.
"Her family," writes Horace Walpole, "are in terror lest they should be,
and have tried to get them. Though I do not doubt but they are an olio of
lies and scandal, I should like to see them. She had parts, and had seen
much."
Admirers and foes alike will be pleased to note that Edward Wortley
Montagu, in the days of courtship, used to direct his love letters to her,
simply,--
_The Lady Mary Pierrpont
With Care and Speed._
[Illustration: Lady Mary Wotley Montague]