While she remained in the garden, her chamber was put to rights (a process which it much required, in consequence of her long confinement); and, at her earnest request, I superintended the performance. “Overlook them,” she said, “or they will rob me.” But oh! what a sight!—such dust, such confusion, such cobwebs! Never was a lady’s room seen before in such a condition: bundles, phials, linen, calico, silk, gallipots, clothes, étuis, papers, were all lying about on the floor, and in the corners, and behind and under the scanty furniture; for all this while she had been afraid to get the chamber put into order, lest her servants should take advantage of the opportunity to plunder her.
When she returned to her room from the garden, she was raving. “You had better leave me to die,” she cried, “if I am to die; and, if I am not, oh! God, only let me crawl to my own country” (by her own country she meant Arabia, among the Koreýsh), “and there, with not a rag on me, I may be fed by some good-natured soul, and not such cannibals as these servants! What are they good for? I will be obeyed; and you are not a man, to see me treated in this manner.”
Thus she went on, walking up and down her room, until she worked herself up into a state of madness. I was afraid she would rupture a blood-vessel. All my attempts to pacify her were in vain—indeed they only excited her the more. Seeing her in this way, I left the room, and sent Fatôom to her; but, before Fatôom could get there, she rang her bell violently, and I heard her say, “Where’s the doctor?—where’s the doctor?” so I returned again to her. “Don’t leave me;” she cried; and she expressed her sorrow for the excess of her passion. “I am much obliged to you, very much obliged to you, for the trouble you take on my account; but you must not be angry with me. Perhaps, if I get worse, I shall ask you to let Mrs. M. come and sit with me.” Soon after, as if her very violence had relieved her, she grew calmer.
Up to this time she had never seen my wife, since her second visit to Syria; nor my daughter nor the governess at all. I had, since her illness, said more than once that they would be happy to come and sit with her by day or by night, to relieve the tedium of her solitary situation. But her dismantled room, her ragged clothes, her altered appearance—and, above all, her pride, compromised as it was by these unfortunate circumstances—always made her turn off the subject, although her secret feelings must have often prompted her to avail herself of the solace thus frankly and cordially offered to her. The exclamation by which she usually evaded the proposal was, “Oh! how I hate everything Frankified! how I hate everything Frankified!” or, “I must not see them until I get into my saloon.” After about half an hour I left her. “I must see nobody this evening,” she added; “so good bye!”
I went home, and, for the first time, told my family how ill Lady Hester was. Alas! I had not dared to do so before: she had enjoined me not. “To say I am ill,” she would observe, “would be bringing a host of creditors upon me, and I should not be able to get food to eat.” Consequently, I had kept them and everybody, as much as I could, in ignorance of the real state of her health; indeed, there was too much truth in what she said not to make me see the mischief such a disclosure would entail. She had now only twenty pounds left in the house to provide for the consumption of two months; and, as her pension was stopped, there was every probability she would be left penniless, with the exception of a few dollars which I had by me. Yet, in spite of all this, she commissioned me, a day or two before, to give 150 piasters to a leper, 150 to a distressed shopkeeper, and some other small benefactions to other pensioners on her inexhaustible bounty.
It may be said that any one, like myself, might have represented, from time to time, the necessity of a little more economy—I did so once: but I received such a peremptory injunction never to give my advice on that subject again, that I took good care how I committed myself a second time. She fired up, and said, “You will give me leave to judge what I ought to do with my own money. There are various ways of spending: you may think it best to be just before being generous; but I, with my character and views, must be even munificent, and trust to God, as I have hitherto done, for helping me on in my difficulties. Never touch on that subject again: I will have no human being interfere with me as to what I am to do with my money.”
All I can say is that, like her grandfather, she was so intractable, that I never yet saw the mortal who could turn her an inch from her determinations. It was easy to lead the current of her bounty into one’s own pocket; for I believe any person who knew her foibles might have kept it flowing in that direction until he had enriched himself. It was only necessary to encourage her dreams of future greatness, to say the world was talking of her, to consider her as the associate of the Mahedi, the Messiah of nations, to profess a belief in visions, in aërial beings, in astrology, in witchcraft, and to bear witness to apparitions in which her coming grandeur was prognosticated, and then she would refuse nothing: but that was not my forte, and I never did so. I went to her with a small patrimony; was with her, off and on, for thirty years; and left her somewhat poorer than I went.
But it is not to be supposed that knaves, such as some I have alluded to above, were the only objects of her bounty. No; the widow, the orphan, the aged, the proscribed, the sick, the wounded, and the houseless, were those she sought out in preference: and time will show, when gratitude can speak out, the immeasurable benevolence of her nature.
It may not be useless to observe here that many stories have been circulated of Lady Hester’s harshness to petitioners who presented themselves at her door, which, if explained, would wear a very different aspect. Sometimes a suppliant, apparently unworthy of her commiseration, would gain admittance to her presence, and be dismissed with a handful of piasters; and sometimes another, known to be a fit object of benevolence, would receive nothing but a rude repulse. Lady Hester said to me, “Do you suppose, doctor, I don’t know that many people think I fool away my money in giving it to adventurers? that others say I am capricious? that some call me mad? Why, let them: I am not bound to give reasons for what I do to anybody. The good I do, first of all, I don’t wish to be known: and, again, many times the publicity of an act of charity would be injurious to him it was intended to serve. I’ll give you an instance. There was a merchant at Acre, who was avanized[23] by Abdallah Pasha, to whom he was obnoxious, until all his property was squeezed out of him, and nothing was left but a house, of which he was not generally known to be the proprietor—for, had it been known that the house was his, the Pasha, who fancied he had reduced him to beggary, would have persecuted him until he had got that also. The man wished to sell his house, and then to retire into Egypt; he therefore came to me, and told me his story, begging my assistance. As I was obliged to use an interpreter, who, I feared, would talk of any act of kindness of mine for the man, it appeared to me that the best thing I could do was to turn the applicant roughly out of doors, which I did at once, bawling out as he went, that I did not want to be pestered with beggars. Well, my strange harshness, of course, was talked of, and of course was repeated to the Pasha, who, thinking the object of his oppression was now an object of contempt also, was perfectly satisfied, and left the man, as he supposed, to utter ruin and degradation. But, after a few days, I privately sent to the poor distressed merchant, provided a purchaser for his house, smoothed the difficulties in the way of the sale, and, furnishing him from my own purse with a sum of money sufficient to begin the world with again, I shipped him off with his family to Egypt.”
Lady Hester was indeed generous and charitable, giving with a large hand, as Eastern kings are represented to have given. She would send whole suits of clothes, furnish rooms, order camels and mules to convey two or three quarters of wheat at a time to a necessitous family, and pay carpenters and masons to build a poor man’s house: she had a munificence about her that would have required the revenue of a kingdom to gratify. Hence, too, sprung that insatiable disposition to hoard—not money, but what money could buy: she seemed to wish to have stores of whatever articles were necessary for the apparel, food, and convenience of man. Beds, counterpanes, cushions, carpets, and such like furniture, lay rotting in her store-rooms. Utensils grew rusty, wine spoiled; reams of paper were eaten by the mice, or mildewed by the damp; carpenters’ work lay unserviceable from an over-supply; mats rotted; candles, almonds, raisins, dried figs, cocoa, honey, cheese—no matter what—all was laid by in destructive profusion; and every year half was consumed by rats, ants, and other vermin, or otherwise spoiled. One store-room, which was filled with locked-up trunks, full of what was most valuable, had not been entered for three years: and, oh! what ruin and waste did I not discover!