She here began to cry and wring her hands, presenting a most melancholy picture of despair. When she had recovered a little, she went on: “To look upon me now, what a lesson against vanity! Look at this arm, all skin and bone, so thin, so thin, that you may see through it; and once, without exaggeration, so rounded, that you could not pinch the skin up. My neck was once so fair that a pearl necklace scarcely showed on it; and men—no fools, but sensible men—would say to me, ‘God has given you a neck you really may be proud of: you are one of nature’s favourites, and one may be excused for admiring that beautiful skin.’ If they could behold me now, with my teeth all gone, and with long lines in my face—not wrinkles, for I have no wrinkles when I am left quiet, and not made angry: but my face is drawn out of its composure by these wretches. I thank God that old age has come upon me unperceived. When I used to see the painted Lady H. dressed in pink and silver, with her head shaking, and jumped by her footman into her sociable, attempting to appear young, I felt a kind of horror and disgust I can’t describe. I wonder how Lady Stafford dresses, now she is no longer young: but I can’t fancy her grown old.”
She paused, and then resumed. “I have,” she said, “been under the saw” (drawing the little finger of her right hand backward and forward across the forefinger of her left) “for many years, and not a tooth but what has told; but it is God’s will, and I do not repine: it is man’s ingratitude that wounds me most. How many harsh answers have even you given me, when I have been telling you things for your good: it is that which hurts me.”
I confessed my fault, and expressed my deep regret that I had ever caused her any pain.
She went on. “When I see people of understanding moidering away their time, losing their memory, and doing nothing that is useful to mankind, I must be frank, and tell them of it. You are in darkness, and I have done my best to enlighten you: if I have not succeeded, it is not my fault. As for pleasing or displeasing me, put that out of your head: there is no more in that than in pleasing or displeasing that door. I am but a worm—a poor, miserable being—an humble instrument in the hands of God. But, if a man is benighted, and sees a light in a castle, does he go to it, or does he not? Perhaps it may be a good genius that guides him there, perhaps it may be a den of thieves: but there he goes.”
In this mournful strain Lady Hester went on for some time. Every thing around me presented so affecting a picture, that, unable to restrain my emotions, I burst into tears. She let me recover myself, and then, making me drink a finjàn of coffee, with a little orange-flower water in it, to restore my spirits, she advised me to go and take a walk.
An hour or two afterwards I saw her again. She was much better, and was sitting up in her bed, cutting out articles of clothing, and fixing on patterns for new gowns for her maids. “I hate money,” she said, “and could wish to have nothing to do with it but saying, ‘Take this, and lay it out so and so.’” Ever sanguine, she was forming plans of what she should do in the spring, when she purposed remodelling her household, and replacing her present servants by a fresh set. The world was to be convulsed by revolutions, nations were to be punished by sickness and calamities; and her object was to secure, for those in whose welfare she felt interested, an asylum in the coming days of trouble.
FOOTNOTES:
[14] An abah is either a long cloak, or else a woollen frock-coat, sometimes brocaded in a triangle of gold thread (the base going from shoulder to shoulder, and the apex pointing at the waist), on a marone-coloured ground, as this was, and presenting a very brilliant appearance.
[15] It was by such speeches as these that Lady Hester sometimes left an impression on her hearers that she was insane. The reader must judge for himself. There are, however, strong reasons for believing that there was a profound and deeply-planned method in all her actions, and those who said she was unsound in her intellects would have had great difficulty in proving it before a competent tribunal. The vast combinations of her mind, when it was possible to get a glimpse of them, filled one with surprise, and set at naught all previous conjecture or conception; whilst separate and particular conversations and reasonings wore the stamp of great oddity and sometimes of insanity. Let Mr. Dundas, Lord Hardwicke, Mr. Way, Lord St. Asaph, Count Delaborde, Count Yowiski, if still alive, Count de la Porte, Dr. Mills, M. Lamartine, Count Marcellus, and a hundred others who have conversed with her, say what was the impression she left on their minds; and not till then let persons who have never held intercourse with her of late years pronounce her mad.