The History of Emily Montague Part 13

I shall not, my dear, have above one more opportunity of writing to you by the s.h.i.+ps; after which we can only write by the packet once a month.

My Emily is every day more lovely; I see her often, and every hour discover new charms in her; she has an exalted understanding, improved by all the knowledge which is becoming in your s.e.x; a soul awake to all the finer sensations of the heart, checked and adorned by the native gentleness of woman: she is extremely handsome, but she would please every feeling heart if she was not; she has the soul of beauty: without feminine softness and delicate sensibility, no features can give loveliness; with them, very indifferent ones can charm: that sensibility, that softness, never were so lovely as in my Emily. I can write on no other subject. Were you to see her, my Lucy, you would forgive me. My letter is called for. Adieu!

Yours, Ed. Rivers.

Your friend Miss Fermor will write you every thing.

LETTER 43.

To Miss Montague, at Silleri.

Montreal, Nov. 14.

Mr. Melmoth and I, my dear Emily, expected by this time to have seen you at Montreal. I allow something to your friends.h.i.+p for Miss Fermor; but there is also something due to relations who tenderly love you, and under whose protection your uncle left you at his death.

I should add, that there is something due to Sir George, had I not already displeased you by what I have said on the subject.

You are not to be told, that in a week the road from hence to Quebec will be impa.s.sable for at least a month, till the rivers are sufficiently froze to bear carriages.

I will own to you, that I am a little jealous of your attachment to Miss Fermor, though no one can think her more amiable than I do.

If you do not come this week, I would wish you to stay till Sir George comes down, and return with him; I will entreat the favor of Miss Fermor to accompany you to Montreal, which we will endeavour to make as agreable to her as we can.

I have been ill of a slight fever, but am now perfectly recovered.

Sir George and Mr. Melmoth are well, and very impatient to see you here.

Adieu! my dear.

Your affectionate E. Melmoth.

LETTER 44.

To Mrs. Melmoth, at Montreal.

Silleri, Nov. 20.

I have a thousand reasons, my dearest Madam, for intreating you to excuse my staying some time longer at Quebec. I have the sincerest esteem for Sir George, and am not insensible of the force of our engagements; but do not think his being there a reason for my coming: the kind of suspended state, to say no more, in which those engagements now are, call for a delicacy in my behaviour to him, which is so difficult to observe without the appearance of affectation, that his absence relieves me from a very painful kind of restraint: for the same reason, 'tis impossible for me to come up at the time he does, if I do come, even though Miss Fermor should accompany me.

A moment's reflexion will convince you of the propriety of my staying here till his mother does me the honor again to approve his choice; or till our engagement is publicly known to be at an end. Mrs.

Clayton is a prudent mother, and a woman of the world, and may consider that Sir George's situation is changed since she consented to his marriage.

I am not capricious; but I will own to you, that my esteem for Sir George is much lessened by his behaviour since his last return from New-York: he mistakes me extremely, if he supposes he has the least additional merit in my eyes from his late acquisition of fortune: on the contrary, I now see faults in him which were concealed by the mediocrity of his situation before, and which do not promise happiness to a heart like mine, a heart which has little taste for the false glitter of life, and the most lively one possible for the calm real delights of friends.h.i.+p, and domestic felicity.

Accept my sincerest congratulations on your return of health; and believe me,

My dearest Madam, Your obliged and affectionate Emily Montague.

LETTER 45.

To Miss Rivers, Clarges Street.

Silleri, Nov. 23.

I have been seeing the last s.h.i.+p go out of the port, Lucy; you have no notion what a melancholy sight it is: we are now left to ourselves, and shut up from all the world for the winter: somehow we seem so forsaken, so cut off from the rest of human kind, I cannot bear the idea: I sent a thousand sighs and a thousand tender wishes to dear England, which I never loved so much as at this moment.

Do you know, my dear, I could cry if I was not ashamed? I shall not absolutely be in spirits again this week.

'Tis the first time I have felt any thing like bad spirits in Canada: I followed the s.h.i.+p with my eyes till it turned Point Levi, and, when I lost sight of it, felt as if I had lost every thing dear to me on earth. I am not particular: I see a gloom on every countenance; I have been at church, and think I never saw so many dejected faces in my life.

Adieu! for the present: it will be a fortnight before I can send this letter; another agreable circ.u.mstance that: would to Heaven I were in England, though I changed the bright sun of Canada for a fog!

Dec. 1.

We have had a week's snow without intermission: happily for us, your brother and the Fitz have been weather-bound all the time at Silleri, and cannot possibly get away.

We have amused ourselves within doors, for there is no stirring abroad, with playing at cards, playing at shuttlec.o.c.k, playing the fool, making love, and making moral reflexions: upon the whole, the week has not been very disagreable.

The snow is when we wake constantly up to our chamber windows; we are literally dug out of it every morning.

As to Quebec, I give up all hopes of ever seeing it again: but my comfort is, that the people there cannot possibly get to their neighbors; and I flatter myself very few of them have been half so well entertained at home.

We shall be abused, I know, for (what is really the fault of the weather) keeping these two creatures here this week; the ladies hate us for engrossing two such fine fellows as your brother and Fitzgerald, as well as for having vastly more than our share of all the men: we generally go out attended by at least a dozen, without any other woman but a lively old French lady, who is a flirt of my father's, and will certainly be my mamma.

We sweep into the general's a.s.sembly on Thursdays with such a train of beaux as draws every eye upon us: the rest of the fellows crowd round us; the misses draw up, blush, and flutter their fans; and your little Bell sits down with such a saucy impertinent consciousness in her countenance as is really provoking: Emily on the contrary looks mild and humble, and seems by her civil decent air to apologize to them for being so much more agreable than themselves, which is a fault I for my part am not in the least inclined to be ashamed of.

Your idea of Quebec, my dear, is perfectly just; it is like a third or fourth rate country town in England; much hospitality, little society; cards, scandal, dancing, and good chear; all excellent things to pa.s.s away a winter evening, and peculiarly adapted to what I am told, and what I begin to feel, of the severity of this climate.

I am told they abuse me, which I can easily believe, because my impertinence to them deserves it: but what care I, you know, Lucy, so long as I please myself, and am at Silleri out of the sound?

They are squabbling at Quebec, I hear, about I cannot tell what, therefore shall not attempt to explain: some dregs of old disputes, it seems, which have had not time to settle: however, we new comers have certainly nothing to do with these matters: you can't think how comfortable we feel at Silleri, out of the way.

My father says, the politics of Canada are as complex and as difficult to be understood as those of the Germanic system.

For my part, I think no politics worth attending to but those of the little commonwealth of woman: if I can maintain my empire over hearts, I leave the men to quarrel for every thing else.

I observe a strict neutrality, that I may have a chance for admirers amongst both parties. Adieu! the post is just going out.

Your faithful A. Fermor.