BUT WHAT happened in Bungay after my departure? What became of that family whom I brought such joy and such grief?
You must bear in mind that I am an ambassador to George IV and that I am writing in London in 1822 of what transpired in London in 1795.
Eight days ago, some business affairs obliged me to drop the thread of the narrative that I am picking up again today. One afternoon during this interval, my footman came to tell me that a carriage had stopped outside the door, and that an English lady was asking to speak with me. As I have made it a rule, considering my public position, never to turn anyone away, I said that the lady should be shown upstairs.
I was in my study when Lady Sutton was announced. I turned and saw a woman dressed in mourning, accompanied by two handsome boys also in mourning: one was about sixteen and the other about fourteen. I rose to meet the stranger and perceived that she was so overcome by emotion that she had difficulty walking. She said to me in a broken voice, “My Lord, do you recognize me?”
Yes, I recognized Miss Ives. The years that had passed over her head had left only their springtime behind. I took her hand, offered her a seat, and sat down beside her. I found myself unable to utter a word; my eyes welled up with tears, and through these tears I looked at her in silence. I felt, by the strength of what I was experiencing, just how deeply I had loved her. Finally I was able to say to her in turn, “And you, Madame, do you recognize me?”
She raised her eyes, which she had kept lowered, and appealed to me with a smiling and melancholy look that lingered like a long memory. Her hand was still between mine. Charlotte said to me: “I am in mourning for my mother. My father died several years ago. These young men are my children.”
At these words, she withdrew her hand and fell back into the armchair, covering her face with her handkerchief.
After a moment, she continued: “My Lord, I am speaking to you now in the language that I used to attempt with you in Bungay. I am nervous: forgive me. My children are the sons of Admiral Sutton, whom I married three years after you left England. But today I have no mind to go into details. Please, allow me to come again soon.”
I asked for her address, and I gave her my arm, leading her downstairs to her carriage. She was trembling, and I pressed her hand against my heart.
The next day I went to Lady Sutton’s house and found her alone. There then began between us a back and forth of Do you remember? that reanimated a whole lifetime. With each Do you remember? we gazed at one another, searching the other’s face for those marks of time that so cruelly measure our distance from the moment of parting and the length of the road we have traveled.
“How did your mother let you know—” I said to Charlotte.
Charlotte blushed and brusquely interrupted me: “I have come to London to beg that you intercede for Admiral Sutton’s children. The eldest wishes to go to Bombay. Mr. Canning, who has been named Governor-General of India, is your friend. He could take my son there with him. I would be very grateful, and I would love to owe my first child’s happiness to you.” She lingered on these last words.
“Ah, Madame,” I said to her. “You have recalled so many things to my mind. And this is such an extraordinary reversal of destinies! You, who received me so hospitably at your father’s table, when I was but a poor exile; you, who sympathized with that man’s sufferings; you, who perhaps may have thought of raising him to a glorious and unhoped-for rank: it is you who now come asking him for his protection in your own country! Of course I will go see Mr. Canning. Your son, much as it pains me to call him that—your son, if it is within my power, shall go to India. But please, tell me, Madame, what do you make of my changed fortune? How do you see me now? This phrase My Lord you keep repeating, it seems rather cold.”
Charlotte answered: “I find you unchanged, not even aged. When I used to talk about you with my parents during your absence, it was always by the title My Lord. It seemed to me you deserved to bear it. Were you not like a husband to me, my lord and master?”
As she uttered these words, this graceful woman had something of Milton’s Eve about her. Surely, I thought, she was not born of woman, for her beauty bore the imprint of the divine hand that had formed it.
I hastened to call on Mr. Canning and Lord Londonderry, who made as many difficulties about securing this little post as they would have made in France; but in the end they swore to help as men swear to tell the truth in court. I kept Lady Sutton abreast of my progress; I went to visit her three more times. On my fourth visit, she told me that she was going back to Bungay. This last conversation was sorrowful. Charlotte spoke to me once more of the past, our hidden life, our readings, our strolls, the music, the flowers of yesteryear, and the hopes of bygone times.
“When I knew you,” she said to me, “no one could pronounce your name. But who has not heard it today? Do you know that I have a work and several letters written in your hand? Here—”
And she placed a packet in my hand.
“Please, do not take offense if I want to keep nothing of you,” she told me, and she began to weep. “Farewell! Farewell!” she said to me, “and remember my son. I shall never see you again, for you shall not come calling on me in Bungay.”
“But I shall,” I cried. “I shall bring you your son’s commission!”
She shook her head doubtfully and withdrew.
When I returned to the embassy in Portland Place, I shut myself in my room and opened the packet. Inside were only a few insignificant notes and a course of study with remarks on English and Italian poets. I had hoped to find a letter from Charlotte, but there was no such thing. In the margins of the manuscripts, however, I did discover a few notes in English, French, and Latin, whose faded ink and youthful handwriting verified that they had been scratched in those margins long ago.
That is the story of Miss Ives and me. As I finish committing the tale to paper, it seems as if I am losing Charlotte a second time, on the same island where I first lost her. But between what I feel for her in this moment and what I experienced in the tender hours I have just recalled, there lies the whole expanse of innocence: the passions have interposed themselves between Miss Ives and Lady Sutton. No longer would I be bringing an ingenuous young woman all the naive desires and sweet ignorance of a love that remained within the realm of dreams. I wrote then on waves of sadness; but I am no longer tossed on the waves of life. In truth, if I had taken a wife and mother in my arms, a woman who was once destined to be my virgin bride, I would have done so with a sort of rage, a desire to undo, to fill with sorrow, to smother those twenty-seven years given over to another after having been offered to me.
I must regard the feelings that I have just recalled as the first such feelings that entered my heart. They were not at all suited, however, to my tempestuous nature, which would have corrupted them and have made me incapable of savoring any blessed delight for long. It was in those days, embittered by misfortunes, already a pilgrim overseas, and having already begun my solitary voyage—it was in those days that the mad ideas described in the mystery of René obsessed me and made me the most tormented being on earth. However that may be, the chaste image of Charlotte, by allowing a few rays of genuine light to penetrate the depths of my soul, had begun to dissipate my cloud of phantoms. My daemon, like an evil spirit, plunged again into the abyss, and lay there in wait, letting time do its work, until she made her next appearance.