CHAPTER XXII. — A SPECTRE.
The surgeon who was to attend Lady Delacour was prevented from going to her on the day appointed; he was one of the surgeons of the queen’s household, and his attendance was required at the palace. This delay was extremely irksome to Lady Delacour, who had worked up her courage to the highest point, but who had not prepared herself to endure suspense. She spent nearly a week at Twickenham in this anxious state, and Belinda observed that she every day became more and more thoughtful and reserved. She seemed as if she had some secret subject of meditation, from which she could not bear to be distracted. When Helena was present, she exerted herself to converse in her usual sprightly strain; but as soon as she could escape, as she thought, unobserved, she would shut herself up in her own apartment, and remain there for hours.
“I wish to Heaven, Miss Portman,” said Marriott, coming one morning into her room with a portentous face, “I wish to Heaven, ma’am, that you could any way persuade my lady not to spend so many hours of the day and night as she does in reading those methodistical books that she keeps to herself!—I’m sure that they do her no good, but a great deal of harm, especially now when her spirits should be kept up as much as possible. I am sensible, ma’am, that ‘tis those books that have made my lady melancholy of a sudden. Ma’am, my lady has let drop very odd hints within these two or three days, and she speaks in a strange disconnected sort of style, and at times I do not think she is quite right in her head.”
When Belinda questioned Marriott more particularly about the strange hints which her lady had let fall, she with looks of embarrassment and horror declined repeating the words that had been said to her; yet persisted in asserting that Lady Delacour had been very strange for these two or three days. “And I’m sure, ma’am, you’d be shocked if you were to see my lady in a morning, when she wakens, or rather when I first go into the room—for, as to wakening, that’s out of the question. I am certain she does not sleep during the whole night. You’ll find, ma’am, it is as I tell you, those books will quite turn her poor head, and I wish they were burnt. I know the mischief that the same sort of things did to a poor cousin of my own, who was driven melancholy mad by a methodist preacher, and came to an untimely end. Oh, ma’am! if you knew as much as I do, you’d be as much alarmed for my lady as I am.”
It was impossible to prevail upon Marriott to explain herself more distinctly. The only circumstances that could be drawn from her seemed to Belinda so trifling as to be scarcely worth mentioning. For instance, that Lady Delacour, contrary to Marriott’s advice, had insisted on sleeping in a bedchamber upon the ground floor, and had refused to let a curtain be put up before a glass door that was at the foot of her bed. “When I offered to put up the curtain, ma’am,” said Marriott, “my lady said she liked the moonlight, and that she would not have it put up till the fine nights were over. Now, Miss Portman, to hear my lady talk of the moon, and moonlights, and liking the moon, is rather extraordinary and unaccountable; for I never heard her say any thing of the sort in her life before; I question whether she ever knew there was a moon or not from one year’s end to another. But they say the moon has a great deal to do with mad people; and, from my own experience, I’m perfectly sensible, ma’am, it had in my own cousin’s case; for, before he came to the worst, he took a prodigious fancy to the moon, and was always for walking by moonlight, and talking to one of the beauty of the moon, and such melancholy nonsense, ma’am.”
Belinda could not forbear smiling at this melancholy nonsense; though she was inclined to be of Marriott’s opinion about the methodistical books, and she determined to talk to Lady Delacour on the subject. The moment that she made the attempt, her ladyship, commanding her countenance, with her usual ability, replied only by cautious, cold monosyllables, and changed the conversation as soon as she could.
At night, when they were retiring to rest, Marriott, as she lighted them to their rooms, observed that she was afraid her lady would suffer from sleeping in so cold a bedchamber, and Belinda pressed her friend to change her apartment.
“No, my dear,” replied Lady Delacour, calmly. “I have chosen this for my bedchamber, because it is at a distance from the servants’ rooms; and when the operation, which I have to go through, shall be performed, my cries, if I should utter any, will not be overheard. The surgeon will be here in a few days, and it is not worth while to make any change.”
The next day, towards evening, the surgeon and Dr. X—— arrived. Belinda’s blood ran cold at the sight of them.