The Letter That Was Sent to Brighton
Monday morning came and Madame Goesler had as yet written no answer
to the Duke of Omnium. Had not Lady Glencora gone to Park Lane on
the Sunday afternoon, I think the letter would have been written on
that day; but, whatever may have been the effect of Lady Glencora’s
visit, it so far disturbed Madame Goesler as to keep her from her
writing-table. There was yet another night for thought, and then the
letter should be written on the Monday morning.
When Lady Glencora left Madame Goesler she went at once to the Duke’s
house. It was her custom to see her husband’s uncle on a Sunday, and
she would most frequently find him just at this hour,--before he went
up-stairs to dress for dinner. She usually took her boy with her, but
on this occasion she went alone. She had tried what she could do with
Madame Goesler, and she found that she had failed. She must now make
her attempt upon the Duke. But the Duke, perhaps anticipating some
attack of the kind, had fled. “Where is his Grace, Barker?” said Lady
Glencora to the porter. “We do not know, your ladyship. His Grace
went away yesterday evening with nobody but Lapoule.” Lapoule was
the Duke’s French valet. Lady Glencora could only return home and
consider in her own mind what batteries might yet be brought to
bear upon the Duke, towards stopping the marriage, even after the
engagement should have been made,--if it were to be made. Lady
Glencora felt that such batteries might still be brought up as would
not improbably have an effect on a proud, weak old man. If all other
resources failed, royalty in some of its branches might be induced
to make a request, and every august relation in the peerage should
interfere. The Duke no doubt might persevere and marry whom he
pleased,--if he were strong enough. But it requires much personal
strength,--that standing alone against the well-armed batteries of
all one’s friends. Lady Glencora had once tried such a battle on
her own behalf, and had failed. She had wished to be imprudent when
she was young; but her friends had been too strong for her. She had
been reduced, and kept in order, and made to run in a groove,--and
was now, when she sat looking at her little boy with his bold face,
almost inclined to think that the world was right, and that grooves
were best. But if she had been controlled when she was young, so
ought the Duke to be controlled now that he was old. It is all very
well for a man or woman to boast that he,--or she,--may do what he
likes with his own,--or with her own. But there are circumstances in
which such self-action is ruinous to so many that coercion from the
outside becomes absolutely needed. Nobody had felt the injustice of
such coercion when applied to herself more sharply than had Lady
Glencora. But she had lived to acknowledge that such coercion might
be proper, and was now prepared to use it in any shape in which it
might be made available. It was all very well for Madame Goesler
to laugh and exclaim, “Psha!” when Lady Glencora declared her real
trouble. But should it ever come to pass that a black-browed baby
with a yellow skin should be shown to the world as Lord Silverbridge,
Lady Glencora knew that her peace of mind would be gone for ever. She
had begun the world desiring one thing, and had missed it. She had
suffered much, and had then reconciled herself to other hopes. If
those other hopes were also to be cut away from her, the world would
not be worth a pinch of snuff to her. The Duke had fled, and she
could do nothing to-day; but to-morrow she would begin with her
batteries. And she herself had done the mischief! She had invited
this woman down to Matching! Heaven and earth!--that such a man as
the Duke should be such a fool!--The widow of a Jew banker! He, the
Duke of Omnium,--and thus to cut away from himself, for the rest of
his life, all honour, all peace of mind, all the grace of a noble
end to a career which, if not very noble in itself, had received
the praise of nobility! And to do this for a thin, black-browed,
yellow-visaged woman with ringlets and devil’s eyes, and a beard on
her upper lip,--a Jewess,--a creature of whose habits of life and
manners of thought they all were absolutely ignorant; who drank,
possibly; who might have been a forger, for what any one knew;
an adventuress who had found her way into society by her art and
perseverance,--and who did not even pretend to have a relation in
the world! That such a one should have influence enough to intrude
herself into the house of Omnium, and blot the scutcheon, and,--
what was worst of all,--perhaps be the mother of future dukes! Lady
Glencora, in her anger, was very unjust to Madame Goesler, thinking
all evil of her, accusing her in her mind of every crime, denying
her all charm, all beauty. Had the Duke forgotten himself and his
position for the sake of some fair girl with a pink complexion and
grey eyes, and smooth hair, and a father, Lady Glencora thought that
she would have forgiven it better. It might be that Madame Goesler
would win her way to the coronet; but when she came to put it on, she
should find that there were sharp thorns inside the lining of it. Not
a woman worth the knowing in all London should speak to her;--nor a
man either of those men with whom a Duchess of Omnium would wish to
hold converse. She should find her husband rated as a doting fool,
and herself rated as a scheming female adventuress. And it should go
hard with Lady Glencora, if the Duke were not separated from his new
Duchess before the end of the first year! In her anger Lady Glencora
was very unjust.
The Duke, when he left his house without telling his household
whither he was going, did send his address to,--the top brick of the
chimney. His note, which was delivered at Madame Goesler’s house late
on the Sunday evening, was as follows:--“I am to have your answer on
Monday. I shall be at Brighton. Send it by a private messenger to the
Bedford Hotel there. I need not tell you with what expectation, with
what hope, with what fear I shall await it.--O.” Poor old man! He had
run through all the pleasures of life too quickly, and had not much
left with which to amuse himself. At length he had set his eyes on a
top brick, and being tired of everything else, wanted it very sorely.
Poor old man! How should it do him any good, even if he got it?
Madame Goesler, when she received the note, sat with it in her
hand, thinking of his great want. “And he would be tired of his new
plaything after a month,” she said to herself. But she had given
herself to the next morning, and she would not make up her mind that
night. She would sleep once more with the coronet of a duchess within
her reach. She did do so; and woke in the morning with her mind
absolutely in doubt. When she walked down to breakfast, all doubt was
at an end. The time had come when it was necessary that she should
resolve, and while her maid was brushing her hair for her she did
make her resolution.
“What a thing it is to be a great lady,” said the maid, who may
probably have reflected that the Duke of Omnium did not come here so
often for nothing.
“What do you mean by that, Lotta?”
“The women I know, madame, talk so much of their countesses, and
ladyships, and duchesses. I would never rest till I had a title in
this country, if I were a lady,--and rich and beautiful.”
“And can the countesses, and the ladyships, and the duchesses do as
they please?”
“Ah, madame;--I know not that.”
“But I know. That will do, Lotta. Now leave me.” Then Madame Goesler
had made up her mind; but I do not know whether that doubt as to
having her own way had much to do with it. As the wife of an old man
she would probably have had much of her own way. Immediately after
breakfast she wrote her answer to the Duke, which was as follows:--
Park Lane, Monday.
MY DEAR DUKE OF OMNIUM,
I find so great a difficulty in expressing myself to your
Grace in a written letter, that since you left me I have
never ceased to wish that I had been less nervous, less
doubting, and less foolish when you were present with me
here in my room. I might then have said in one word what
will take so many awkward words to explain.
Great as is the honour you propose to confer on me, rich
as is the gift you offer me, I cannot accept it. I cannot
be your Grace’s wife. I may almost say that I knew it
was so when you parted from me; but the surprise of the
situation took away from me a part of my judgment, and
made me unable to answer you as I should have done. My
lord, the truth is, that I am not fit to be the wife of
the Duke of Omnium. I should injure you; and though I
should raise myself in name, I should injure myself in
character. But you must not think, because I say this,
that there is any reason why I should not be an honest
man’s wife. There is none. I have nothing on my conscience
which I could not tell you,--or to another man; nothing
that I need fear to tell to all the world. Indeed, my
lord, there is nothing to tell but this,--that I am not
fitted by birth and position to be the wife of the Duke of
Omnium. You would have to blush for me, and that no man
shall ever have to do on my account.
I will own that I have been ambitious, too ambitious, and
have been pleased to think that one so exalted as you are,
one whose high position is so rife in the eyes of all men,
should have taken pleasure in my company. I will confess
to a foolish woman’s silly vanity in having wished to be
known to be the friend of the Duke of Omnium. I am like
the other moths that flutter near the light and have their
wings burned. But I am wiser than they in this, that
having been scorched, I know that I must keep my distance.
You will easily believe that a woman, such as I am, does
not refuse to ride in a carriage with your Grace’s arms on
the panels without a regret. I am no philosopher. I do not
pretend to despise the rich things of the world, or the
high things. According to my way of thinking a woman ought
to wish to be Duchess of Omnium;--but she ought to wish
also to be able to carry her coronet with a proper grace.
As Madame Goesler I can live, even among my superiors, at
my ease. As your Grace’s wife, I should be easy no longer;
--nor would your Grace.
You will think perhaps that what I write is heartless,
that I speak altogether of your rank, and not at all of
the affection you have shown me, or of that which I might
possibly bear towards you. I think that when the first
flush of passion is over in early youth men and women
should strive to regulate their love, as they do their
other desires, by their reason. I could love your Grace,
fondly, as your wife, if I thought it well for your Grace
or for myself that we should be man and wife. As I think
it would be ill for both of us, I will restrain that
feeling, and remember your Grace ever with the purest
feeling of true friendship.
Before I close this letter, I must utter a word of
gratitude. In the kind of life which I have led as a
widow, a life which has been very isolated as regards
true fellowship, it has been my greatest effort to obtain
the good opinion of those among whom I have attempted to
make my way. I may, perhaps, own to you now that I have
had many difficulties. A woman who is alone in the world
is ever regarded with suspicion. In this country a woman
with a foreign name, with means derived from foreign
sources, with a foreign history, is specially suspected.
I have striven to live that down, and I have succeeded.
But in my wildest dreams I never dreamed of such success
as this,--that the Duke of Omnium should think me the
worthiest of the worthy. You may be sure that I am not
ungrateful,--that I never will be ungrateful. And I trust
it will not derogate from your opinion of my worth, that
I have known what was due to your Grace’s highness.
I have the honour to be,
My Lord Duke,
Your most obliged and faithful servant,
MARIE MAX GOESLER.
“How many unmarried women in England are there would do the same?”
she said to herself, as she folded the paper, and put it into an
envelope, and sealed the cover. The moment that the letter was
completed she sent it off, as she was directed to send it, so
that there might be no possibility of repentance and subsequent
hesitation. She had at last made up her mind, and she would stand
by the making. She knew that there would come moments in which she
would deeply regret the opportunity that she had lost,--the chance
of greatness that she had flung away from her. But so would she
have often regretted it, also, had she accepted the greatness. Her
position was one in which there must be regret, let her decision have
been what it might. But she had decided, and the thing was done. She
would still be free,--Marie Max Goesler,--unless in abandoning her
freedom she would obtain something that she might in truth prefer to
it. When the letter was gone she sat disconsolate, at the window of
an up-stairs room in which she had written, thinking much of the
coronet, much of the name, much of the rank, much of that position
in society which she had flattered herself she might have won for
herself as Duchess of Omnium by her beauty, her grace, and her wit.
It had not been simply her ambition to be a duchess, without further
aim or object. She had fancied that she might have been such a
duchess as there is never another, so that her fame might have been
great throughout Europe, as a woman charming at all points. And she
would have had friends, then,--real friends, and would not have lived
alone as it was now her fate to do. And she would have loved her
ducal husband, old though he was, and stiff with pomp and ceremony.
She would have loved him, and done her best to add something of
brightness to his life. It was indeed true that there was one whom
she loved better; but of what avail was it to love a man who, when he
came to her, would speak to her of nothing but of the charms which he
found in another woman!
She had been sitting thus at her window, with a book in her hand, at
which she never looked, gazing over the park which was now beautiful
with its May verdure, when on a sudden a thought struck her. Lady
Glencora Palliser had come to her, trying to enlist her sympathy for
the little heir, behaving, indeed, not very well, as Madame Goesler
had thought, but still with an earnest purpose which was in itself
good. She would write to Lady Glencora and put her out of her misery.
Perhaps there was some feeling of triumph in her mind as she returned
to the desk from which her epistle had been sent to the Duke;--not of
that triumph which would have found its gratification in boasting of
the offer that had been made to her, but arising from a feeling that
she could now show the proud mother of the bold-faced boy that though
she would not pledge herself to any woman as to what she might do or
not do, she was nevertheless capable of resisting such a temptation
as would have been irresistible to many. Of the Duke’s offer to her
she would have spoken to no human being, had not this woman shown
that the Duke’s purpose was known at least to her, and now, in her
letter, she would write no plain word of that offer. She would not
state, in words intelligible to any one who might read, that the Duke
had offered her his hand and his coronet. But she would write so that
Lady Glencora should understand her. And she would be careful that
there should be no word in the letter to make Lady Glencora think
that she supposed herself to be unfit for the rank offered to her.
She had been very humble in what she had written to the Duke, but
she would not be at all humble in what she was about to write to the
mother of the bold-faced boy. And this was the letter when it was
written:--
MY DEAR LADY GLENCORA,
I venture to send you a line to put you out of your
misery;--for you were very miserable when you were so good
as to come here yesterday. Your dear little boy is safe
from me;--and, what is more to the purpose, so are you and
your husband,--and your uncle, whom, in truth, I love. You
asked me a downright question which I did not then choose
to answer by a downright answer. The downright answer was
not at that time due to you. It has since been given, and
as I like you too well to wish you to be in torment, I
send you a line to say that I shall never be in the way of
you or your boy.
And now, dear Lady Glencora, one word more. Should it
ever again appear to you to be necessary to use your zeal
for the protection of your husband or your child, do not
endeavour to dissuade a woman by trying to make her think
that she, by her alliance, would bring degradation into
any house, or to any man. If there could have been an
argument powerful with me, to make me do that which you
wished to prevent, it was the argument which you used. But
my own comfort, and the happiness of another person whom
I value almost as much as myself, were too important to
be sacrificed even to a woman’s revenge. I take mine by
writing to you and telling you that I am better and more
rational and wiser than you took me to be.
If, after this, you choose to be on good terms with me, I
shall be happy to be your friend. I shall want no further
revenge. You owe me some little apology; but whether you
make it or not, I will be contented, and will never do
more than ask whether your darling’s prospects are still
safe. There are more women than one in the world, you
know, and you must not consider yourself to be out of the
wood because you have escaped from a single danger. If
there arise another, come to me, and we will consult
together.
Dear Lady Glencora, yours always sincerely,
MARIE M. G.
There was a thing or two besides which she longed to say, laughing
as she thought of them. But she refrained, and her letter, when
finished, was as it is given above.
On the day following, Lady Glencora was again in Park Lane. When she
first read Madame Goesler’s letter, she felt herself to be annoyed
and angry, but her anger was with herself rather than with her
correspondent. Ever since her last interview with the woman whom she
had feared, she had been conscious of having been indiscreet. All her
feelings had been too violent, and it might well have been that she
should have driven this woman to do the very thing that she was so
anxious to avoid. “You owe me some little apology,” Madame Goesler
had said. It was true,--and she would apologise. Undue pride was not
a part of Lady Glencora’s character. Indeed, there was not enough
of pride in her composition. She had been quite ready to hate this
woman, and to fight her on every point as long as the danger existed;
but she was equally willing to take the woman to her heart now that
the danger was over. Apologise! Of course she would apologise. And
she would make a friend of the woman if the woman wished it. But she
would not have the woman and the Duke at Matching together again,
lest, after all, there might be a mistake. She did not show Madame
Goesler’s letter to her husband, or tell him anything of the relief
she had received. He had cared but little for the danger, thinking
more of his budget than of the danger; and would be sufficiently at
his ease if he heard no more rumours of his uncle’s marriage. Lady
Glencora went to Park Lane early on the Tuesday morning, but she did
not take her boy with her. She understood that Madame Goesler might
perhaps indulge in a little gentle raillery at the child’s expense,
and the mother felt that this might be borne the more easily if the
child were not present.
“I have come to thank you for your letter, Madame Goesler,” said Lady
Glencora, before she sat down.
“Oh, come ye in peace here, or come ye in war, or to dance at our
bridal?” said Madame Goesler, standing up from her chair and
laughing, as she sang the lines.
“Certainly not to dance at your bridal,” said Lady Glencora.
“Alas! no. You have forbidden the banns too effectually for that, and
I sit here wearing the willow all alone. Why shouldn’t I be allowed
to get married as well as another woman, I wonder? I think you have
been very hard upon me among you. But sit down, Lady Glencora. At any
rate you come in peace.”
“Certainly in peace, and with much admiration,--and a great deal of
love and affection, and all that kind of thing, if you will only
accept it.”
“I shall be too proud, Lady Glencora;--for the Duke’s sake, if for no
other reason.”
“And I have to make my apology.”
“It was made as soon as your carriage stopped at my door with
friendly wheels. Of course I understand. I can know how terrible it
all was to you,--even though the dear little Plantagenet might not
have been in much danger. Fancy what it would be to disturb the
career of a Plantagenet! I am far too well read in history, I can
assure you.”
“I said a word for which I am sorry, and which I should not have
said.”
“Never mind the word. After all, it was a true word. I do not
hesitate to say so now myself, though I will allow no other woman
to say it,--and no man either. I should have degraded him,--and
disgraced him.” Madame Goesler now had dropped the bantering tone
which she had assumed, and was speaking in sober earnest. “I, for
myself, have nothing about me of which I am ashamed. I have no
history to hide, no story to be brought to light to my discredit.
But I have not been so born, or so placed by circumstances, as make
me fit to be the wife of the Duke of Omnium. I should not have been
happy, you know.”
“You want nothing, dear Madame Goesler. You have all that society can
give you.”
“I do not know about that. I have much given to me by society, but
there are many things that I want;--a bright-faced little boy, for
instance, to go about with me in my carriage. Why did you not bring
him, Lady Glencora?”
“I came out in my penitential sheet, and when one goes in that guise,
one goes alone. I had half a mind to walk.”
“You will bring him soon?”
“Oh, yes. He was very anxious to know the other day who was the
beautiful lady with the black hair.”
“You did not tell him that the beautiful lady with the black hair was
a possible aunt, was a possible--? But we will not think any more of
things so horrible.”
“I told him nothing of my fears, you may be sure.”
“Some day, when I am a very old woman, and when his father is quite
an old duke, and when he has a dozen little boys and girls of his
own, you will tell him the story. Then he will reflect what a madman
his great-uncle must have been, to have thought of making a duchess
out of such a wizened old woman as that.”
They parted the best of friends, but Lady Glencora was still of
opinion that if the lady and the Duke were to be brought together at
Matching, or elsewhere, there might still be danger.