LOVEL’S MOTHERS
Or rather, I may say, I read that part of it which the bleeder and blisterer had flung down. It was but a fragment of a letter—a fragment—oh! how bitter to swallow! A lump of Epsom salt could not have been more disgusting. It appeared (from Bedford’s statement) that Æsculapius, on getting into his gig, had allowed this scrap of paper to whisk out of his pocket—the rest he read, no doubt, under the eyes of the writer. Very likely, during the perusal, he had taken and squeezed the false hand which wrote the lines. Very likely the first part of the precious document contained compliments to him—from the horrible context I judge so—compliments to that vendor of leeches and bandages, into whose heart I daresay I wished ten thousand lancets might be stuck, as I perused the False One’s wheedling address to him! So ran the document. How well every word of it was engraven on my anguished heart. If page three, which I suppose was about the bit of the letter which I got, was as it was—what must page one and two have been? The dreadful document began, then, thus:—
“——dear hair in the locket, which I shall ever wear for the sake of him who gave it”—(dear hair! indeed—disgusting carrots! She should have been ashamed to call it “dear hair”)—“for the sake of him who gave it, and whose bad temper I shall pardon, because I think, in spite of his faults, he is a little fond of his poor Lizzie! Ah, Edward! how could you go on so the last time about poor Mr. B.! Can you imagine that I can ever have more than a filial regard for the kind old gentleman?” (Il était question de moi, ma parole d’honneur. I was the kind old gentleman!) “I have known him since my childhood. He was intimate in our family in earlier and happier days; made our house his home; and, I must say, was most kind to all of us children. If he has vanities, you naughty boy, is he the only one of his sex who is vain? Can you fancy that such an old creature (an old muff, as you call him, you wicked, satirical man!) could ever make an impression on my heart? No, sir!” (Aha! So I was an old muff, was I?) “Though I don’t wish to make you vain too, or that other people should laugh at you, as you do at poor dear Mr. B., I think, sir, you need but look in your glass to see that you need not be afraid of such a rival as that. You fancy he is attentive to me? If you looked only a little angrily at him, he would fly back to London. To-day, when your horrid little patient did presume to offer to take my hand, when I boxed his little wicked ears and sent him spinning to the end of the room—poor Mr. Batch was so frightened that he did not dare to come into the room, and I saw him peeping behind a statue on the lawn, and he would not come in until the servants arrived. Poor man! We cannot all of us have courage like a certain Edward, who I know is as bold as a lion. Now, sir, you must not be quarrelling with that wretched little captain for being rude. I have shown him that I can very well take care of myself. I knew the odious thing the first moment I set eyes on him, though he had forgotten me. Years ago I met him, and I remember he was equally rude and tips——”
Here the letter was torn. Beyond “tips” it did not go. But that was enough, wasn’t it? To this woman I had offered a gentle and manly, I may say a kind and tender heart—I had offered four hundred a year in funded property, besides my house in Devonshire Street, Bloomsbury—and she preferred Edward, forsooth, at the sign of the Gallipot: and may ten thousand pestles smash my brains!
You may fancy what a night I had after reading that scrap. I promise you I did not sleep much. I heard the hours toll as I kept vigil. I lay amidst shattered capitals, broken shafts of the tumbled palace which I had built in imagination—oh! how bright and stately! I sate amongst the ruins of my own happiness, surrounded by the murdered corpses of innocent-visioned domestic joys. Tick—tock! Moment after moment I heard on the clock the clinking footsteps of wakeful grief. I fell into a doze towards morning, and dreamed that I was dancing with Glorvina, when I woke with a start, finding Bedford arrived with my shaving water, and opening the shutters. When he saw my haggard face he wagged his head.
“You have read it, I see, sir,” says he.
“Yes, Dick,” groaned I, out of bed, “I have swallowed it.” And I laughed I may say a fiendish laugh. “And now I have taken it, not poppy nor mandragora, nor all the drowsy syrups in his shop (hang him) will be able to medicine me to sleep for some time to come!”
“She has no heart, sir. I don’t think she cares for t’other chap much,” groans the gloomy butler. “She can’t, after having known us”—and my companion in grief, laying down my hot-water jug, retreats.
I did not cut any part of myself with my razor. I shaved quite calmly. I went to the family at breakfast. My impression is I was sarcastic and witty. I smiled most kindly at Miss Prior when she came in. Nobody could have seen from my outward behaviour that anything was wrong within. I was an apple. Could you inspect the worm at my core! No, no. Somebody, I think old Baker, complimented me on my good looks. I was a smiling lake. Could you see on my placid surface, amongst my sheeny water-lilies, that a corpse was lying under my cool depths? “A bit of devilled chicken?” “No, thank you. By the way, Lovel, I think I must go to town to-day.” “You’ll come back to dinner, of course?” “Well—no.” “Oh, stuff! You promised me to-day and to-morrow. Robinson, Brown, and Jones are coming to-morrow, and you must be here to meet them.” Thus we prattle on. I answer, I smile, I say, “Yes, if you please, another cup,” or, “Be so good as to hand the muffin,” or what not. But I am dead. I feel as if I am under ground, and buried. Life, and tea, and clatter, and muffins are going on, of course; and daisies spring, and the sun shines on the grass whilst I am under it. Ah, dear me! it’s very cruel: it’s very, very lonely: it’s very odd! I don’t belong to the world any more. I have done with it. I am shelved away. But my spirit returns and flitters through the world, which it has no longer anything to do with: and my ghost, as it were, comes and smiles at my own tombstone. Here lies Charles Batchelor, the Unloved One. Oh! alone, alone, alone! Why, Fate! didst ordain that I should be companionless? Tell me where the Wandering Jew is, that I may go and sit with him. Is there any place at a lighthouse vacant? Who knows where is the Island of Juan Fernandez? Engage me a ship and take me there at once. Mr. R. Crusoe, I think. My dear Robinson, have the kindness to hand me over your goatskin cap, breeches, and umbrella. Go home, and leave me here. Would you know who is the solitariest man on earth? That man am I. Was that cutlet which I ate at breakfast anon, was that lamb which frisked on the mead last week (beyond yon wall where the unconscious cucumber lay basking which was to form his sauce)—I say, was that lamb made so tender, that I might eat him? And my heart, then? Poor heart! wert thou so softly constituted only that women might stab thee? So I am a Muff, am I? And she will always wear a lock of his “dear hair,” will she? Ha! ha! The men on the omnibus looked askance as they saw me laugh. They thought it was from Hanwell, not Putney, I was escaping. Escape? Who can escape? I went into London. I went to the Clubs. Jawkins, of course, was there; and my impression is that he talked as usual. I took another omnibus, and went back to Putney. “I will go back and revisit my grave,” I thought. It is said that ghosts loiter about their former haunts a good deal when they are first dead; flit wistfully among their old friends and companions, and I daresay, expect to hear a plenty of conversation and friendly tearful remark about themselves. But suppose they return, and find nobody talking of them at all? Or suppose, Hamlet (Père, and Royal Dane) comes back and finds Claudius and Gertrude very comfortable over a piece of cold meat, or what not? Is the late gentleman’s present position as a ghost a very pleasant one? Crow, Cocks! Quick, Sun-dawn! Open, Trap-door! Allons: it’s best to pop underground again. So I am a Muff, am I? What a curious thing that walk up the hill to the house was! What a different place Shrublands was yesterday to what it is to-day! Has the sun lost its light, and the flowers their bloom, and the joke its sparkle, and the dish its savour? Why, bless my soul! what is Lizzy herself—only an ordinary woman—freckled certainly—incorrigibly dull, and without a scintillation of humour: and you mean to say, Charles Batchelor, that your heart once beat about that woman? Under the intercepted letter of that cold assassin, my heart had fallen down dead, irretrievably dead. I remember, àpropos of the occasion of my first death, that perpetrated by Glorvina—on my second visit to Dublin—with what a strange sensation I walked under some trees in the Phœnix Park beneath which it had been my custom to meet my False One Number 1. There were the trees—there were the birds singing—there was the bench on which we used to sit—the same, but how different! The trees had a different foliage, exquisite amaranthine; the birds sang a song paradisaical; the bench was a bank of roses and fresh flowers, which young Love twined in fragrant chaplets around the statue of Glorvina. Roses and fresh flowers? Rheumatisms and flannel-waistcoats, you silly old man! Foliage and Song? O namby-pamby driveller! A statue?—a doll, thou twaddling old dullard!—a doll with carmine cheeks, and a heart stuffed with bran——I say, on the night preceding that ride to and from Putney, I had undergone death—in that omnibus I had been carried over to t’other side of the Stygian Shore. I returned but as a passionless ghost, remembering my life-days, but not feeling any more. Love was dead, Elizabeth! Why, the doctor came, and partook freely of lunch, and I was not angry. Yesterday I called him names, and hated him, and was jealous of him. To-day I felt no rivalship; and no envy at his success; and no desire to supplant him. No—I swear—not the slightest wish to make Elizabeth mine if she would. I might have cared for her yesterday—yesterday I had a heart. Psha! my good sir or madam. You sit by me at dinner. Perhaps you are handsome, and use your eyes. Ogle away. Don’t balk yourself, pray. But if you fancy I care a threepenny-piece about you—or for your eyes—or for your bonny brown hair—or for your sentimental remarks, sidelong warbled—or for your praise to (not of) my face—or for your satire behind my back—ah me!—how mistaken you are! Peine perdue, ma chère dame! The digestive organs are still in good working order—but the heart? Caret.
I was perfectly civil to Mr. Drencher, and, indeed, wonder to think how in my irritation I had allowed myself to apply (mentally) any sort of disagreeable phrases to a most excellent and deserving and good-looking young man, who is beloved by the poor, and has won the just confidence of an extensive circle of patients. I made no sort of remark to Miss Prior, except about the weather and the flowers in the garden. I was bland, easy, rather pleasant, not too high-spirited, you understand.—No: I vow you could not have seen a nerve wince, or the slightest alteration in my demeanour. I helped the two old dowagers; I listened to their twaddle; I gaily wiped up with my napkin three-quarters of a glass of sherry which Popham flung over my trowsers. I would defy you to know that I had gone through the ticklish operation of an excision of the heart a few hours previously. Heart—pooh! I saw Miss Prior’s lip quiver. Without a word between us, she knew perfectly well that all was over as regarded her late humble servant. She winced once or twice. While Drencher was busy with his plate, the grey eyes cast towards me interjectional looks of puzzled entreaty. She, I say, winced; and I give you my word I did not care a fig whether she was sorry, or pleased, or happy, or going to be hung. And I can’t give a better proof of my utter indifference about the matter, than the fact that I wrote two or three copies of verses descriptive of my despair. They appeared, you may perhaps remember, in one of the annuals of those days, and were generally attributed to one of the most sentimental of our young poets. I remember the reviews said they were “replete with emotion,” “full of passionate and earnest feeling,” and so forth. Feeling, indeed!—ha! ha! “Passionate outbursts of a grief-stricken heart!”—Passionate scrapings of a fiddlestick, my good friend. “Lonely,” of course, rhymes with “only,” and “gushes” with “blushes,” and “despair” with “hair,” and so on. Despair is perfectly compatible with a good dinner, I promise you. Hair is false: hearts are false. Grapes may be sour, but claret is good, my masters. Do you suppose I am going to cry my eyes out, because Chloe’s are turned upon Strephon? If you find any whimpering in mine, may they never wink at a bee’s-wing again.