Lizzie’s interview with the lawyer took place on the Wednesday afternoon, and, on her return to Hertford Street she found a note from Mrs. Carbuncle.
“I have made arrangements for dining out today, and shall not return till after ten. I will do the same tomorrow, and on every day till you leave town, and you can breakfast in your own room. Of course you will carry out your plan for leaving this house on Monday. After what has passed, I shall prefer not to meet you again.
“J. C.”
And this was written by a woman who, but a few days since, had borrowed ￡150 from her, and who at this moment had in her hands fifty pounds’ worth of silver-plate, supposed to have been given to Lucinda, and which clearly ought to have been returned to the donor, when Luanda’s marriage was postponed — as the newspapers had said. Lucinda, at this time, had left the house in Hertford Street, but Lizzie had not been informed whither she had been taken. She could not apply to Lucinda for restitution of the silver, which was, in fact, held at that moment by the Albemarle Street hotel-keeper as part security for his debt; and she was quite sure that any application to Mrs. Carbuncle for either the silver or the debt would be unavailing. But she might, perhaps, cause annoyance by a letter, and could, at any rate, return insult for insult. She therefore wrote to her late friend.
“MADAM: I certainly am not desirous of continuing an acquaintance into which I was led by false representations, and in the course of which I have been almost absurdly hospitable to persons altogether unworthy of my kindness. Yourself and niece, and your especial friend, Lord George Carruthers, and that unfortunate young man, your niece’s lover, were entertained at my country-house, as my guests, for some months. I am here, in my own right, by arrangement; and, as I pay more than a proper share of the expense of the establishment, I shall stay as long as I please, and go when I please.
“In the mean time, as we are about to part, certainly forever, I must beg you at once to repay me the sum of ￡150, which you have borrowed from me; and I must also insist on your letting me have back the present of silver which was prepared for your niece’s marriage. That you should retain it as a perquisite for yourself cannot for a moment be thought of, however convenient it might be to yourself.
“Yours, etc.,
“E. EUSTACE.”
As far as the application for restitution went, or indeed in regard to the insult, she might as well have written to a milestone. Mrs. Carbuncle was much too strong, and had fought her battle with the world much too long, to regard such word-pelting as that. She paid no attention to the note, and as she had come to terms with the agent of the house by which she was to evacuate it on the following Monday, a fact which was communicated to Lizzie by the servant, she did not much regard Lizzie’s threat to remain there. She knew, moreover, that arrangements were already being made for the journey to Scotland.
Lizzie had come back from the attorney’s chambers in triumph, and had been triumphant when she wrote her note to Mrs. Carbuncle; but her elation was considerably repressed by a short notice which she read in the fashionable evening paper of the day. She always took the fashionable evening paper, and had taught herself to think that life without it was impossible. But on this afternoon she quarrelled with that fashionable evening paper forever. The popular and well-informed organ of intelligence in question informed its readers, that the Eustace diamonds — etc., etc. In fact, it told the whole story; and then expressed a hope that, as the matter had from the commencement been one of great interest to the public, who had sympathised with Lady Eustace deeply as to the loss of her diamonds, Lady Eustace would be able to explain that part of her conduct which certainly, at present, was quite unintelligible. Lizzie threw the paper from her with indignation, asking what right newspaper scribblers could have to interfere with the private affairs of such persons as herself.
But on this evening the question of her answer to Lord Fawn was the one which most interested her. Lord Fawn had taken long in the writing of his letter, and she was justified in taking what time she pleased in answering it; but, for her own sake, it had better be answered quickly. She had tried her hand at two different replies, and did not at all doubt but what she would send the affirmative answer, if she were sure that these latter discoveries would not alter Lord Fawn’s decision. Lord Fawn had distinctly told her that, if she pleased, he would marry her. She would please; having been much troubled by the circumstances of the past six months. But then, was it not almost a certainty that Lord Fawn would retreat from his offer on learning the facts which were now so well known as to have been related in the public papers? She thought that she would take one more night to think of it.
Alas; she took one night too many. On the next morning, while she was still in bed, a letter was brought to her from Lord Fawn, dated from his club the preceding evening.
“Lord Fawn presents his compliments to Lady Eustace. Lady Eustace will be kind enough to understand that Lord Fawn recedes altogether from the proposition made by him in his letter to Lady Eustace dated March 28th last. Should Lady Eustace think proper to call in question the propriety of this decision on the part of Lord Fawn, she had better refer the question to some friend, and Lord Fawn will do the same. Lord Fawn thinks it best to express his determination, under no circumstances, to communicate again personally with Lady Eustace on this subject, or, as far as he can see at present, on any other.”
The letter was a blow to her, although she had felt quite certain that Lord Fawn would have no difficulty in escaping from her hands as soon as the story of the diamonds should be made public. It was a blow to her, although she had assured herself a dozen times that a marriage with such a one as Lord Fawn, a man who had not a grain of poetry in his composition, would make her unutterably wretched. What escape would her heart have had from itself in such a union? This question she had asked herself over and over again, and there had been no answer to it. But then why had she not been beforehand with Lord Fawn? Why had she not rejected his second offer with the scorn which such an offer deserved? Ah, there was her misfortune; there was her fault!
But, with Lizzie Eustace, when she could not do a thing which it was desirable that she should be known to have done, the next consideration was whether she could not so arrange as to seem to have done it. The arrival of Lord Fawn’s note just as she was about to write to him was unfortunate. But she would still write to him, and date her letter before the time that his was dated. He probably would not believe her date. She hardly ever expected to be really believed by anybody. But he would have to read what she wrote; and writing on this pretence, she would avoid the necessity of alluding to his last letter.
Neither of the notes which she had by her quite suited the occasion, so she wrote a third. The former letter in which she declined his offer was, she thought, very charmingly insolent, and the allusion to his lordship’s scullion would have been successful, had it been sent on the moment, but now a graver letter was required; and the graver letter, the date of which, it will be observed, was the day previous to the morning on which she had received Lord Fawn’s last note, was as follows:
“HERTFORD ST., Wednesday, April 3.
“MY LORD: I have taken a week to answer the letter which your lordship has done me the honour of writing to me, because I have thought it best to have time for consideration in a matter of such importance. In this I have copied your lordship’s official caution.
“I think I never read a letter so false, so unmanly, and so cowardly, as that which you have found yourself capable of sending to me.
“You became engaged to me when, as I admit with shame, I did not know your character. You have since repudiated me and vilified my name, simply because, having found that I had enemies, and being afraid to face them, you wished to escape from your engagement. It has been cowardice from the beginning to the end. Your whole conduct to me has been one long, unprovoked insult, studiously concocted, because you have feared that there might possibly be some trouble for you to encounter. Nobody ever heard of anything so mean, either in novels or in real life.
“And now you again offer to marry me — because you are again afraid. You think you will be thrashed, I suppose, if you decline to keep your engagement; and feel that if you offer to go on with it, my friends cannot beat you. You need not be afraid. No earthly consideration would induce me to be your wife. And if any friend of mine should look at you as though he meant to punish you, you can show him this letter, and make him understand that it is I who have refused to be your wife, and not you who have refused to be my husband.
“E. EUSTACE.”
This epistle Lizzie did send, believing she could add nothing to its insolence, let her study it as she might. And she thought, as she read it for the fifth time, that it sounded as though it had been written before her receipt of the final note from himself, and that it would, therefore, irritate him the more.
This was to be the last week of her sojourn in town, and then she was to go down and bury herself at Portray, with no other companionship than that of the faithful Macnulty, who had been left in Scotland for the last three months as nurse-inchief to the little heir. She must go and give her evidence before the magistrate on Friday, as to which she had already received an odious slip of paper — but Frank would accompany her. Other misfortunes had passed off so lightly that she hardly dreaded this. She did not quite understand why she was to be so banished, and thought much on the subject. She had submitted herself to Frank’s advice when first she had begun to fear that her troubles would be insuperable. Her troubles were now disappearing; and, as for Frank — what was Frank to her, that she should obey him? Nevertheless, her trunks were being already packed, and she knew that she must go. He was to accompany her on her journey, and she would still have one more chance with him.
As she was thinking of all this, Mr. Emilius, the clergyman, was announced. In her loneliness she was delighted to receive any visitor, and she knew that Mr. Emilius would be at least courteous to her. When he had seated himself, he at once began to talk about the misfortune of the unaccomplished marriage, and in a very low voice hinted that from the beginning to end there had been something wrong. He had always feared that an alliance based on a footing that was so openly “pecuniary”— he declared that the word pecuniary expressed his meaning better than any other epithet — could not lead to matrimonial happiness. “We all know,” said he, “that our dear friend, Mrs. Carbuncle, had views of her own, quite distinct from her niece’s happiness. I have the greatest possible respect for Mrs. Carbuncle, and I may say esteem; but it is impossible to live long in any degree of intimacy with Mrs. Carbuncle without seeing that she is — mercenary.”
“Mercenary! indeed she is,” said Lizzie.
“You have observed it? Oh, yes; it is so, and it casts a shadow over a character which otherwise has so much to charm.”
“She is the most insolent and the most ungrateful woman that I ever heard of!” exclaimed Lizzie with energy. Mr. Emilius opened his eyes, but did not contradict her assertion. “As you have mentioned her name, Mr. Emilius, I must tell you. I have done everything for that woman. You know how I treated her down in Scotland.”
“With a splendid hospitality,” said Mr. Emilius.
“Of course she did not pay for anything there.”
“Oh, no!” The idea of any one being called upon to pay for what one ate and drank at a friend’s house was peculiarly painful to Mr. Emilius.
“And I have paid for everything here. That is to say, we have made an arrangement, very much in her favour. And she has borrowed large sums of money from me.”
“I am not at all surprised at that,” said Mr. Emilius.
“And when that poor unfortunate girl, her niece, was to be married to poor Sir Griffin Tewett, I gave her a whole service of plate.”
“What unparalleled generosity!”
“Would you believe she has taken the whole for her own base purposes? And then what do you think she has done?”
“My dear Lady Eustace, hardly anything would astonish me.”
Lizzie suddenly found a difficulty in describing to her friend the fact that Mrs. Carbuncle was endeavouring to turn her out of the house, without also alluding to her own troubles about the robbery. “She has actually told me,” ............