Though it was late when Repton took his departure, Mary Martin felt no inclination for sleep, but addressed herself at once to examine the letter bag, whose contents seemed more than usually bulky. Amid a mass of correspondence about the estate, she came at length upon the foreign letters, of which there were several from the servants to their friends or relations at Cro' Martin,—all, as usual, under cover to Miss Martin; and at last she found one in Lady Dorothea's own hand, for herself,—a very rare occurrence; nay, indeed, it was the first epistle her Ladyship had favored her with since her departure.
It was not, then, without curiosity as to the cause that Mary broke the large seal and read as follows:—
“Carlsruhe, Saturday Evening, Cour de Bade.
“My dear Niece,—It was only yesterday, when looking over your uncle's papers, I chanced upon a letter of yours, dated some five or six weeks back, and which, to my great astonishment, I discovered had never been communicated to me,—though this mark of deficient confidence will doubtless seem less surprising to you.
“To bring your letter to your mind, I may observe it is one in which you describe the condition of the people on the estate, and the fatal inroads then making upon them by famine and pestilence. It is not my intention here to advert to what may possibly be a very natural error in your account,—the exaggerated picture you draw of their sufferings; your sympathy with them, and your presence to witness much of what they are enduring, will explain and excuse the highly colored statement of their sorrows. It were to be wished that an equally valid apology could be made for what I am forced to call the importunity of your demands in their favor. Five of your six last letters now before me are filled with appeals for abatements of rent, loans to carry out improvements, stipends for schoolmasters, doctors, scripture-readers, and a tribe of other hangers-on, that really seem to augment in number as the pauperism of the people increases. However ungracious the task of disparaging the accuracy of your view, I have no other alternative but to accept it, and hence I am forced to pen these lines myself in preference to committing the office to another.
“It really seems to me that you regard our position as landed proprietors in the light of a mere stewardship, and that it is our bounden duty to expend upon the tenantry the proceeds of the estate, reserving a scanty percentage, perhaps, for ourselves to live upon. How you came to this opinion, and whence you acquired it, I have no means of knowing. If, however, it has been the suggestion of your own genius, it is right you should know that you hold doctrines in common with the most distinguished communists of modern times, and are quite worthy of a seat of honor beside those who are now convulsing society throughout Europe.
“I am unwilling to utter anything like severity towards errors, many of which take their rise in a mistaken and ill-directed benevolence, because the original fault of committing the management of this property to your hands was the work of another. Let me hope that sincere sorrow for so fatal a mistake may not be the primary cause of his present attack—”
When Mary read so far, she started with a sudden fear; and turning over the pages of the long letter, she sought for some allusion to her uncle. At length she found the following lines:—“Your cousin would have left this for Ireland, but for the sudden seizure your poor uncle has suffered from, and which came upon him after breakfast, in apparently his ordinary health. The entire of the left side is attacked,—the face particularly,—and his utterance quite inarticulate.”
For some minutes she could read no more; the warm tears rolled down her cheeks and dropped heavily on the paper, and she could only mutter to herself, “My poor, dear uncle,—my last, my only friend in the world!” Drying her eyes, with a great effort she read on:—
“The remedies have been so far successful as to arrest the progress of the malady, and his appetite is good, and his spirits, everything considered, are excellent. Of course, all details of business are strictly excluded from his presence; and your cousin has assumed whatever authority is necessary to the management of the property. We thought at one time your presence here might have been desirable, but, considering the distance, the difficulty of travelling without suitable companionship, and other circumstances, it would, on the whole, be a step we should not recommend; and, indeed, your uncle himself has not expressed any wishes on the subject.”