THE STEP-DAME'S SUSPICIONS BEING AWAKENED, SHE LAYS A SNARE FOR OUR
ADVENTURER, FROM WHICH HE IS DELIVERED BY THE INTERPOSITION OF HIS GOOD
GENIUS.
Though the husband swallowed the bait without further inquiry, the
penetration of the wife was not so easily deceived. That same dialogue
in Wilhelmina's apartment, far from allaying, rather inflamed her
suspicion; because, in the like emergency, she herself had once profited
by the same, or nearly the same contrivance. Without communicating her
doubts to the father, she resolved to double her attention to the
daughter's future conduct, and keep such a strict eye over the behaviour
of our gallant, that he should find it very difficult, if not impossible,
to elude her observation. For this purpose she took into her pay an old
maiden, of the right sour disposition, who lived in a house opposite to
her own, and directed her to follow the young lady in all her outgoings,
whenever she should receive from the window a certain signal, which the
mother-in-law agreed to make for the occasion. It was not long before
this scheme succeeded to her wish. The door of communication betwixt
Wilhelmina's apartment and the staircase being nailed up by the
jeweller's express order, our adventurer was altogether deprived of those
opportunities he had hitherto enjoyed, and was not at all mortified to
find himself so restricted in a correspondence which began to be tiresome
and disagreeable. But the case was far otherwise with his Dulcinea,
whose passion, the more it was thwarted, raged with greater violence,
like a fire, that, from the attempts that are made to extinguish it,
gathers greater force, and flames with double fury.
Upon the second day of her misfortune, she had written a very tender
billet, lamenting her unhappiness in being deprived of those meetings
which constituted the chief joy of her life, and entreating him to
contrive some means of renewing the delicious commerce in an unsuspected
place. This intimation she proposed to convey privately into the hand of
her lover, during his next visit to the family; but both were so narrowly
eyed by the mother, that she found the execution of her design
impracticable; and next forenoon, on pretence of going to church,
repaired to the house of a companion, who, being also her confidant,
undertook to deliver the billet with her own hand.
The she-dragon employed by her mother, in obedience to the sign which was
displayed from the window immediately put on her veil, and followed
Wilhelmina at a distance, until she saw her fairly housed. She would not
even then return from her excursion, but hovered about in sight of the
door, with a view of making further observations. In less than five
minutes after the young lady disappeared, the scout perceived her coming
out, accompanied by her comrade, from whom she instantly parted, and bent
her way towards the church in good earnest, while the other steered her
course in another direction. The duenna, after a moment's suspense and
consideration, divined the true cause of this short visit, and resolved
to watch the motions of the confidant, whom she traced to the academy in
which our hero lodged, and from which she saw her return, after the
supposed message was delivered.
Fraught with this intelligence, the rancorous understrapper hied her home
to the jeweller's wife, and made a faithful recital of what she had seen,
communicating at the same time her own conjectures on that subject. Her
employer was equally astonished and incensed at this information. She
was seized with all that frenzy which takes possession of a slighted
woman, when she finds herself supplanted by a detested rival; and, in the
first transports of her indignation, devoted them as sacrifices to her
vengeance. Nor was her surprise so much the effect of his dissimulation,
as of his want of taste and discernment. She inveighed against him, not
as the most treacherous lover, but as the most abject wretch, in courting
the smiles of such an awkward dowdy, while he enjoyed the favours of a
woman who had numbered princes in the train of her admirers. For the
brilliancy of her attractions, such as they at present shone, she
appealed to the decision of her minister, who consulted her own
satisfaction and interest, by flattering the other's vanity and
resentment; and so unaccountable did the depravity of our hero's judgment
appear to this conceited dame, that she began to believe there was some
mistake in the person, and to hope that Wilhelmina's gallant was not in
reality her professed admirer, Mr. Fathom, but rather one of his
fellow-lodgers, whose passion he favoured with his mediation and
assistance.
On this notion, which nothing but mere vanity could have inspired, in
opposition to so many more weighty presumptions, she took the resolution
of bringing the affair to a fuller explanation, before she would concert
any measures to the prejudice of our adventurer, and forthwith despatched
her spy back to his lodgings, to solicit, on the part of Wilhelmina, an
immediate answer to the letter he had received. This was an expedition
with which the old maiden would have willingly dispensed, because it was
founded upon an uncertainty, which might be attended with troublesome
consequences; but, rather than be the means of retarding a negotiation so
productive of that sort of mischief which is particularly agreeable to
all of her tribe, she undertook to manage and effect the discovery, in
full confidence of her own talents and experience.
With such a fund of self-sufficiency and instigation, she repaired to the
academy on the instant, and inquiring for Mr. Fathom, was introduced to
his apartment, where she found him in the very act of writing a billet to
the jeweller's daughter. The artful agent having asked, with the
mysterious air of an expert go-between, if he had not lately received a
message from a certain young lady, and, being answered in the
affirmative, gave him to understand, that she herself was a person
favoured with the friendship and confidence of Wilhelmina, whom she had
known from her cradle, and often dandled on her knee; then, in the
genuine style of a prattling dry nurse, she launched out in encomiums on
his Dulcinea's beauty and sweetness of temper, recounting many simple
occurrences of her infancy and childhood; and, finally, desiring a more
circumstantial answer to that which she had sent to him by her friend
Catherina. In the course of her loquacity she had also, according to her
instructions, hinted at the misfortune of the door; and, on the whole,
performed her cue with such dexterity and discretion that our politician
was actually overreached, and, having finished his epistle, committed it
to her care, with many verbal expressions of eternal love and fidelity to
his charming Wilhelmina.
The messenger, doubly rejoiced at her achievement, which not only
recommended her ministry, but also gratified her malice, returned to her
principal with great exultation, and, delivering the letter, the reader
will easily conceive the transports of that lady when she read the
contents of it in these words:--
"ANGELIC WILHELMINA!--To forget those ecstatic scenes we have enjoyed
together, or even live without the continuation of that mutual bliss,
were to quit all title to perception, and resign every hope of future
happiness. No! my charmer, while my head retains the least spark of
invention, and my heart glows with the resolution of a man, our
correspondence shall not be cut off by the machinations of an envious
stepmother, who never had attractions to inspire a generous passion; and,
now that age and wrinkles have destroyed what little share of beauty she
once possessed, endeavours, like the fiend in paradise, to blast those
joys in others, from which she is herself eternally excluded. Doubt not,
dear sovereign of my soul! that I will study, with all the eagerness of
desiring love, how to frustrate her malicious intention, and renew those
transporting moments, the remembrance of which now warms the breast of
your ever constant FATHOM."
Had our hero murdered her father, or left her a disconsolate widow, by
effecting the death of her dear husband, there might have been a
possibility of her exerting the Christian virtues of resignation and
forgiveness; but such a personal outrage as that contained in this
epistle precluded all hope of pardon, and rendered penitence of no
signification. His atrocious crime being now fully ascertained, this
virago gave a loose to her resentment, which became so loud and
tempestuous, that her informer shuddered at the storm she had raised, and
began to repent of having communicated the intelligence which seemed to
have such a violent effect upon hex brain.
She endeavoured, however, to allay the agitation, by flattering her fancy
with the prospect of revenge, and gradually soothed her into a state of
deliberate ire; during which she determined to take ample vengeance on
the delinquent. In the zenith of her rage, she would have had immediate
recourse to poison or steel, had she not been diverted from her mortal
purpose by her counsellor, who represented the danger of engaging in such
violent measures, and proposed a more secure scheme, in the execution of
which she would see the perfidious wretch sufficiently punished, without
any hazard to her own person or reputation. She advised her to inform
the jeweller of Fathom's efforts to seduce her conjugal fidelity, and
impart to him a plan, by which he would have it in his power to detect
our adventurer in the very act of practising upon her virtue.
The lady relished her proposal, and actually resolved to make an
assignation with Ferdinand, as usual, and give notice of the appointment
to her husband, that he might personally discover the treachery of his
pretended friend, and inflict upon him such chastisement as the German's
brutal disposition should suggest, when inflamed by that species of
provocation. Had this project been brought to bear, Ferdinand, in all
likelihood, would have been disqualified from engaging in any future
intrigue; but fate ordained that the design should be defeated, in order
to reserve him for more important occasions.
Before the circumstances of the plan could be adjusted, it was his good
fortune to meet his Dulcinea in the street, and, in the midst of their
mutual condolence on the interruption they had suffered in their
correspondence, he assured her, that he would never give his invention
respite, until he should have verified the protestations contained in the
letter he had delivered to her discreet agent. This allusion to a billet
she had never received, did not fail to alarm her fears, and introduce a
very mortifying explanation, in which he so accurately described the
person of the messenger, that she forthwith comprehended the plot, and
communicated to our hero her sentiments on that subject.
Though he expressed infinite anxiety and chagrin at this misfortune,
which could not fail to raise new obstacles to their love, his heart was
a stranger to the uneasiness he affected; and rather pleased with the
occasion, which would furnish him with pretences to withdraw himself
gradually from an intercourse by this time become equally cloying and
unprofitable. Being well acquainted with the mother's temperament, he
guessed the present situation of her thoughts, and concluding she would
make the jeweller a party in her revenge, he resolved from that moment to
discontinue his visits, and cautiously guard against any future interview
with the lady whom he had rendered so implacable.
It was well for our adventurer that his good fortune so seasonably
interposed; for that same day, in the afternoon, he was favoured with a
billet from the jeweller's wife, couched in the same tender style she had
formerly used, and importing an earnest desire of seeing him next day at
the wonted rendezvous. Although his penetration was sufficient to
perceive the drift of this message, or at least to discern the risk he
should run in complying with her request, yet he was willing to be more
fully certified of the truth of his suspicion, and wrote an answer to the
billet, in which he assured her, that he would repair to the place of
appointment with all the punctuality of an impatient lover.
Nevertheless, instead of performing this promise, he, in the morning,
took post in a public-house opposite to the place of assignation, in
order to reconnoitre the ground, and about noon had the pleasure of
seeing the German, wrapped in a cloak, enter the door of his wife's
she-friend, though the appointment was fixed at five in the evening.
Fathom blessed his good angel for having conducted him clear of this
conspiracy, and kept his station with great tranquillity till the hour of
meeting, when he beheld his enraged Thalestris take the same route, and
enjoyed her disappointment with ineffable satisfaction.
Thus favoured with a pretext, he took his leave of her, in a letter,
giving her to understand, that he was no stranger to the barbarous snare
she had laid for him; and upbraiding her with having made such an
ungrateful return for all his tenderness and attachment. She was not
backward in conveying a reply to this expostulation, which seemed to have
been dictated in all the distraction of a proud woman who sees her
vengeance baffled, as well as her love disdained. Her letter was nothing
but a succession of reproaches, menaces, and incoherent execrations. She
taxed him with knavery, insensibility, and dissimulation; imprecated a
thousand curses upon his head, and threatened not only to persecute his
life with all the arts that hell and malice could inspire, but also to
wound him in the person of her daughter-in-law, who should be enclosed
for life in a convent, where she should have leisure to repent of those
loose and disorderly practices which he had taught her to commit, and of
which she could not pretend innocence, as they had it in their power to
confront her with the evidence of her lover's own confession. Yet all
this denunciation was qualified with an alternative, by which he was
given to understand, that the gates of mercy were still open, and that
penitence was capable of washing out the deepest stain of guilt.
Ferdinand read the whole remonstrance with great composure and
moderation, and was content to incur the hazard of her hate, rather than
put her to the trouble of making such an effort of generosity, as would
induce her to forgive the heinous offence he had committed; nor did his
apprehension for Wilhelmina in the least influence his behaviour on this
occasion. So zealous was he for her spiritual concerns, that he would
have been glad to hear she had actually taken the veil; but he knew such
a step was not at all agreeable to her disposition, and that no violence
would be offered to her inclinations on that score, unless her stepmother
should communicate to the father that letter of Fathom's which she had
intercepted, and by which the German would be convinced of his daughter's
backsliding; but this measure, he rightly supposed, the wife would not
venture to take, lest the husband, instead of taking her advice touching
the young lady, should seek to compromise the affair, by offering her in
marriage to her debaucher, a proffer which, if accepted, would overwhelm
the mother with vexation and despair. He therefore chose to trust to the
effects of lenient time, which he hoped would gradually weaken the
resentment of this Penthesilea, and dissolve his connexion with the other
parts of the family, from which he longed to be totally detached.
How well soever he might have succeeded in his attempts to shake off the
yoke of the mother, who by her situation in life was restrained from
prosecuting those measures her resentment had planned against his
fortitude and indifference, he would have found greater difficulty than
he had foreseen, in disengaging himself from the daughter, whose
affections he had won under the most solemn professions of honour and
fidelity, and who, now she was debarred of his company and conversation,
and in danger of losing him for ever, had actually taken the resolution
of disclosing the amour to her father, that he might interpose in behalf
of her peace and reputation, and secure her happiness by the sanction of
the church.