Saturday, February 17.—During the whole of this day I did not see Lady Hester, and I was not sorry for it. Her thoughts were now constantly running on the inexplicable silence of Sir Francis Burdett. “He is a man of honour,” she would say. “I suppose he has to write to Ireland, and to the right and left about my property; or perhaps they have got hold of him, too;—who knows? I am sure something must have happened.” As each succeeding steamboat arrived, a messenger was sent to Beyrout, but still no answer. Then she reflected what she should do, if Sir Francis at last should furnish her with proofs that no property had been left her:—beggary stared her in the face. In the mean time she had no means of raising a single farthing before the first of March, when she could draw for £300. But of this sum £200 were due to Mr. Dromacaiti, a Greek merchant at Beyrout, who had lent her money at an exorbitant interest, but on her word, and this, therefore, she would pay, I knew, if possible. During all this time, my family remained in almost total ignorance of what was going on within Lady Hester’s walls as much as if they had been living in China. I was also, as I have said above, obliged to conceal, in a great measure, her illness from them. They rode and walked out on the mountains, fed their bulbuls, enjoyed the fine climate, and wondered what made me look so thin and careworn: for thought and care preyed on my spirits, and I wasted away almost as perceptibly as Lady Hester herself.
Sunday, February 18.—To-day Lady Hester was sitting up in the corner of her bed-room. Her look was deadly pale, and her head was wrapped up in flannels, just like her grandfather the last day he appeared in the House of Lords. Without intending it, everything she did bore a resemblance to that great man.
Ali had returned from Beyrout without a letter. “Did Ali Hayshem,” she asked me, “set off at sunrise on Friday? I am glad he did. Do you know, I once sent Butrus to Beyrout to fetch money; and I said to him, ‘If you get in on Monday night, don’t come away on Tuesday or Wednesday; for those are unlucky days; loiter away those two days, and be here on Thursday night. However, he paid no attention to my instructions, and on Wednesday evening he made his appearance. ‘Why did you come before Thursday?’ I asked him. He answered, ‘That the bag of money having been delivered to him, he had brought it immediately, and you see, Mylady, here it is: nobody, thank God! has robbed me.’—‘That does not signify,’ I told him; ‘you will see there is no bereky [blessing] in it.’ Do you know, doctor, I paid the people’s wages immediately, and it was well I did; for some ten or twelve thousand piasters, chest and all, disappeared the next day. ‘There, look!’ said I to him; ‘I told you that money never would turn to account.’”
The conversation reverted to Colonel Campbell’s letter. “I have told the secretary,” said she, “to tell his father, that, if he dares make his appearance here again, I’ll send a bullet through his body. Not one of them shall lay their vile hands on me or mine. I have strength enough to strangle him, and I would do it, though it should cost me my life. As for Mr. Moore, he may perhaps have a habeas corpus by him; but it is good for twenty-four hours only, and I should know how to manage. Consuls have no right over nobility; they may have over merchants, and such people: but they never shall come near me, and I would shoot the first that dared to do it. The English are a set of intermeddling, nasty, vulgar, odious people, and I hate them all. The very Turks laugh at them. Out of ridicule, they told one, if he was so clever, to straiten a dog’s tail. Yes, he might straiten and straiten, but it would soon bend again; and they may bend me and bend me, if they can, but I fancy they will find it a difficult matter: for you may tell them that, when I have made up my mind to a thing, no earthly being can alter my determination. If they want a devil, let them try me, and they shall have enough of it.
“When the steamboat came, and brought no letter to-day from Sir Francis Burdett, you thought I should be ill on receiving the news: but I am not a fool. I suppose he is occupied with his daughter’s legacy, or with parliamentary business.”
I had received a letter from a lady, which I had occasion to read to her. When I had done, and she had expressed her thanks for the flower-seeds sent her, she added, “What I do not like in Mrs. U.’s letter is that foolish way of making a preamble about her not liking to leave so much white paper in all its purity, and all those turns and phrases which people use. That was very well for a Swift or a Pope, who, having promised to write to somebody once a fortnight, and having nothing to say, made a great number of points to fill up the paper; but a letter that has matter in it should be written with a distinct narration of the business, and that’s all. Do you think such people as Mr. Pitt or Lord Chatham, my grandfather, liked those nonsensical phrases? No, they threw the letter aside, or else cast their eyes over it to see if, on the other page, there was anything to answer about.”
February 19.—I was riding this morning with my family beyond the village, which is separated by a deep valley from Lady Hester’s residence, when I saw two servants on the verge of the opposite hill, vociferating—“Come directly, come instantly!” and waving their white turbans. I reflected that, if I put my horse into a gallop, the people of the village would immediately conclude that Lady Hester was dying; and the news (as news always gains by distance) would be the next day at Sayda that she was dead: I therefore continued the same pace; and, although the servants redoubled their signs and cries, I steadily retraced my steps. When I had dismounted, I was told her ladyship was in a deplorable way, unlike any thing they had ever seen. I hurried to her bed-room. She was sitting on the side of her bed, weeping and uttering those extraordinary cries, which I have before compared to something hardly human. She clasped her hands and exclaimed repeatedly, “Oh God! oh, God! what misery! what misery!” When she was a little calmed, and I could collect from her what was the matter, she told me that, having fallen into a doze, she awoke with a sense of suffocation from tightness across her chest, and, being unable to ring or call, she thought she should have died: “thus,” said she, “am I treated like a dog, with nobody to administer to my wants;” and so she went on in the usual strain. I was suffering at this time from the nettlerash, but treated it lightly, and thought Lady Hester would do so too: until, having unluckily alluded to it, a fresh source of uneasiness was inadvertently started. “Good God, doctor!” she cried, “to come out of doors with a nettlerash on you! go to your house immediately; get to bed, keep yourself warm, and remain there until it is cured. After four or five days, take such and such things; then go to the bath, then take some bark, &c., &c. How many persons have I known go mad and die from it! You treat it as nothing? why, you will drive me crazy. In God’s name, never mind me; only go and take care of yourself. You will act in your own usual inconsiderate manner, and I shall have to bury another in this house. Oh, God! oh, God! what am I doomed to!” and then followed fresh cries and fresh lamentations.
Could Sir Francis Burdett have seen all this, and have known that five words of a letter, sent a month or two sooner, in answer to her inquiries about the property she thought was left her, would have probably saved all this excitement, he would have found reason to reproach himself for his long silence. I knew the workings of her mind full well, and that her proud spirit, wounded by the general neglect she met with, vented itself in tears, seemingly, for other causes than the real ones. I recollected a succession of similar scenes about twenty years before at Mar Elias, when she was expecting letters from the Duke of Buckingham; but then she was sounder in bodily health, and could better bear such convulsive paroxysms of grief: now, she was labouring under pulmonary disease, was old, was in distress, and the consequences might prove fatal.
I left her before dinner. “Good by, doctor!” she said, in a kind tone: “I cannot tell you how much I am obliged to you for everything you do for me; and send me a servant twice a day to let me know how you are. I shall be uneasy about you: I can’t help it: from my childhood I have been so. How many times in my life have I spent days and days in trying to make others comfortable! I have been the slave of others, and never got any thanks for it.”
I went to my house, collected all the money that remained, which was about eleven pounds, and sent it to her to meet the current expenses of the household: for so she wished, that I might not be annoyed, she said, and have the rash driven in on my brain.