CONTAINS A WARNING TO ALL CONSPIRATORS
This, if you have done me the favour to read it aright, has been a
chronicle of desperate heroism on the part of almost all the principal
personages represented. But not the Countess de Saldar, scaling the
embattled fortress of Society; nor Rose, tossing its keys to her lover
from the shining turret-tops; nor Evan, keeping bright the lamp of
self-respect in his bosom against South wind and East; none excel
friend Andrew Cogglesby, who, having fallen into Old Tom’s plot to
humiliate his wife and her sisters, simply for Evan’s sake, and without
any distinct notion of the terror, confusion, and universal upset he
was bringing on his home, could yet, after a scared contemplation of
the scene when he returned from his expedition to Fallowfield, continue
to wear his rueful mask; and persevere in treacherously outraging his
lofty wife.
He did it to vindicate the ties of blood against accidents of position.
Was he justified? I am sufficiently wise to ask my own sex alone.
On the other side, be it said (since in our modern days every hero must
have his weak heel), that now he had gone this distance it was
difficult to recede. It would be no laughing matter to tell his solemn
Harriet that he had been playing her a little practical joke. His
temptations to give it up were incessant and most agitating; but if to
advance seemed terrific, there was, in stopping short, an awfulness so
overwhelming that Andrew abandoned himself to the current, his real
dismay adding to his acting powers.
The worst was, that the joke was no longer his: it was Old Tom’s. He
discovered that he was in Old Tom’s hands completely. Andrew had
thought that he would just frighten the women a bit, get them down to
Lymport for a week or so, and then announce that matters were not so
bad with the Brewery as he had feared; concluding the farce with a few
domestic fireworks. Conceive his dismay when he entered the house, to
find there a man in possession.
Andrew flew into such a rage that he committed an assault on the man.
So ungovernable was his passion, that for some minutes Harriet’s
measured voice summoned him from over the banisters above, quite in
vain. The miserable Englishman refused to be taught that his house had
ceased to be his castle. It was something beyond a joke, this! The
intruder, perfectly docile, seeing that by accurate calculation every
shake he got involved a bottle of wine for him, and ultimate
compensation probably to the amount of a couple of sovereigns, allowed
himself to be lugged up stairs, in default of summary ejection on the
point of Andrew’s toe into the street. There he was faced to the lady
of the house, who apologized to him, and requested her husband to state
what had made him guilty of this indecent behaviour. The man showed his
papers. They were quite in order. “At the suit of Messrs. Grist.”
“My own lawyers!” cried Andrew, smacking his forehead; and Old Tom’s
devilry flashed on him at once. He sank into a chair.
“Why did you bring this person up here?” said Harriet, like a speaking
statue.
“My dear!” Andrew answered, and spread out his hand, and waggled his
head; “My—please!—I—I don’t know. We all want exercise.”
The man laughed, which was kindly of him, but offensive to Mrs.
Cogglesby, who gave Andrew a glance which was full payment for his
imbecile pleasantry, and promised more.
With a hospitable inquiry as to the condition of his appetite, and a
request that he would be pleased to satisfy it to the full, the man was
dismissed: whereat, as one delivered of noxious presences, the Countess
rustled into sight. Not noticing Andrew, she lisped to Harriet:
“Misfortunes are sometimes no curses! I bless the catarrh that has
confined Silva to his chamber, and saved him from a bestial
exhibition.”
The two ladies then swept from the room, and left Andrew to perspire at
leisure.
Fresh tribulations awaited him when he sat down to dinner. Andrew liked
his dinner to be comfortable, good, and in plenty. This may not seem
strange. The fact is stated that I may win for him the warm sympathies
of the body of his countrymen. He was greeted by a piece of cold boiled
neck of mutton and a solitary dish of steaming potatoes. The blank
expanse of table-cloth returned his desolate stare.
“Why, what’s the meaning of this?” Andrew brutally exclaimed, as he
thumped the table.
The Countess gave a start, and rolled a look as of piteous supplication
to spare a lady’s nerves, addressed to a ferocious brigand. Harriet
answered: “It means that I will have no butcher’s bills.”
“Butcher’s bills! butcher’s bills!” echoed Andrew; “why, you must have
butcher’s bills; why, confound! why, you’ll have a bill for this, won’t
you, Harry? eh? of course!”
“There will be no more bills dating from yesterday,” said his wife.
“What! this is paid for, then?”
“Yes, Mr. Cogglesby; and so will all household expenses be, while my
pocket-money lasts.”
Resting his eyes full on Harriet a minute, Andrew dropped them on the
savourless white-rimmed chop, which looked as lonely in his plate as
its parent dish on the table. The poor dear creature’s pocket-money had
paid for it! The thought, mingling with a rush of emotion, made his
ideas spin. His imagination surged deliriously. He fancied himself at
the Zoological Gardens, exchanging pathetic glances with a melancholy
marmoset. Wonderfully like one the chop looked! There was no use in his
trying to eat it. He seemed to be fixing his teeth in solid tears. He
choked. Twice he took up knife and fork, put them down again, and
plucking forth his handkerchief, blew a tremendous trumpet, that sent
the Countess’s eyes rolling to the ceiling, as if heaven were her sole
refuge from such vulgarity.
“Damn that Old Tom!” he shouted at last, and pitched back in his chair.
“Mr. Cogglesby!” and “In the presence of ladies!” were the admonishing
interjections of the sisters, at whom the little man frowned in turns.
“Do you wish us to quit the room, sir?” inquired his wife.
“God bless your soul, you little darling!” he apostrophized that
stately person. “Here, come along with me, Harry. A wife’s a wife, I
say—hang it! Just outside the room—just a second! or up in a corner
will do.”
Mrs. Cogglesby was amazed to see him jump up and run round to her. She
was prepared to defend her neck from his caress, and refused to go: but
the words, “Something particular to tell you,” awakened her curiosity,
which urged her to compliance. She rose and went with him to the door.
“Well, sir; what is it?”
No doubt he was acting under a momentary weakness he was about to
betray the plot and take his chance of forgiveness; but her towering
port, her commanding aspect, restored his courage. (There may be a
contrary view of the case.) He enclosed her briskly in a connubial hug,
and remarked with mad ecstasy: “What a duck you are, Harry! What a
likeness between you and your mother.”
Mrs. Cogglesby disengaged herself imperiously. Had he called her aside
for this gratuitous insult? Contrite, he saw his dreadful error.
“Harry! I declare!” was all he was allowed to say. Mrs. Cogglesby
marched back to her chair, and recommenced the repast in majestic
silence.
Andrew sighed; he attempted to do the same. He stuck his fork in the
blanched whiskerage of his marmoset, and exclaimed: “I can’t!”
He was unnoticed.
“You do not object to plain diet?” said Harriet to Louisa.
“Oh, no, in verity!” murmured the Countess. “However plain it be!
Absence of appetite, dearest. You are aware I partook of luncheon at
mid-day with the Honourable and Reverend Mr. Duffian. You must not look
condemnation at your Louy for that. Luncheon is not conversion!”
Harriet observed that this might be true; but still, to her mind, it
was a mistake to be too intimate with dangerous people. “And besides,”
she added, “Mr. Duffian is no longer ‘the Reverend.’ We deprive all
renegades of their spiritual titles. His worldly ones let him keep.”
Her superb disdain nettled the Countess.
“Dear Harriet!” she said, with less languor, “You are utterly and
totally and entirely mistaken. I tell you so positively. Renegade! The
application of such a word to such a man! Oh! and it is false, Harriet
quite! Renegade means one who has gone over to the Turks, my dear. I am
almost certain I saw it in Johnson’s Dictionary, or an improvement upon
Johnson, by a more learned author. But there is the fact, if Harriet
can only bring her—shall I say stiff-necked prejudices to envisage it?”
Harriet granted her sister permission to apply the phrases she stood in
need of, without impeaching her intimacy with the most learned among
lexicographers.
“And is there no such thing as being too severe?” the Countess resumed.
“What our enemies call unchristian!”
“Mr. Duffian has no cause to complain of us,” said Harriet.
“Nor does he do so, dearest. Calumny may assail him; you may utterly
denude him—”
“Adam!” interposed Andrew, distractedly listening. He did not disturb
the Countess’s flow.
“You may vilify and victimize Mr. Duffian, and strip him of the honours
of his birth, but, like the Martyrs, he will still continue the perfect
nobleman. Stoned, I assure you that Mr. Duffian would preserve his
breeding. In character he is exquisite; a polish to defy misfortune.”
“I suppose his table is good?” said Harriet, almost ruffled by the
Countess’s lecture.
“Plate,” was remarked in the cold tone of supreme indifference.
“Hem! good wines?” Andrew asked, waking up a little and not wishing to
be excluded altogether.
“All is of the very best,” the Countess pursued her eulogy, not looking
at him.
“Don’t you think you could—eh, Harry?—manage a pint for me, my dear?”
Andrew humbly petitioned. “This cold water—ha! ha! my stomach don’t
like cold bathing.”
His wretched joke rebounded from the impenetrable armour of the ladies.
“The wine-cellar is locked,” said his wife. “I have sealed up the key
till an inventory can be taken by some agent of the creditors.”
“What creditors?” roared Andrew.
“You can have some of the servants’ beer,” Mrs. Cogglesby appended.
Andrew studied her face to see whether she really was not hoisting him
with his own petard. Perceiving that she was sincerely acting according
to her sense of principle, he fumed, and departed to his privacy,
unable to stand it any longer.
Then like a kite the Countess pounced upon his character. Would the
Honourable and Reverend Mr. Duffian decline to participate in the
sparest provender? Would he be guilty of the discourtesy of leaving
table without a bow or an apology, even if reduced to extremest
poverty? No, indeed! which showed that, under all circumstances, a
gentleman was a gentleman. And, oh! how she pitied her poor
Harriet—eternally tied to a most vulgar little man, without the gilding
of wealth.
“And a fool in his business to boot, dear!”
“These comparisons do no good,” said Harriet. “Andrew at least is not a
renegade, and never shall be while I live. I will do my duty by him,
however poor we are. And now, Louisa, putting my husband out of the
question, what are your intentions? I don’t understand bankruptcy, but
I imagine they can do nothing to wife and children. My little ones must
have a roof over their heads; and, besides, there is little Maxwell.
You decline to go down to Lymport, of course.”
“Decline!” cried the Countess, melodiously; “and do not you?”
“As far as I am concerned—yes. But I am not to think of myself.”
The Countess meditated, and said: “Dear Mr. Duffian has offered me his
hospitality. Renegades are not absolutely inhuman. They may be
generous. I have no moral doubt that Mr. Duffian would, upon my
representation—dare I venture?”
“Sleep in his house! break bread with him!” exclaimed Harriet. “What do
you think I am made of? I would perish—go to the workhouse, rather!”
“I see you trooping there,” said the Countess, intent on the vision.
“And have you accepted his invitation for yourself, Louisa?”
The Countess was never to be daunted by threatening aspects. She gave
her affirmative with calmness and a deliberate smile.
“You are going to live with him?”
“Live with him! What expressions! My husband accompanies me.”
Harriet drew up.
“I know nothing, Louisa, that could give me more pain.”
The Countess patted Harriet’s knee. “It succeeds to bankruptcy,
assuredly. But would you have me drag Silva to the—the shop, Harriet,
love? Alternatives!”
Mrs. Andrew got up and rang the bell to have the remains of their
dinner removed. When this was done, she said,
“Louisa, I don’t know whether I am justified: you told me to-day I
might keep my jewels, trinkets, and lace, and such like. To me, I know
they do not belong now: but I will dispose of them to procure you an
asylum somewhere—they will fetch, I should think, £400,—to prevent your
going to Mr. Duffian.”
No exhibition of great-mindedness which the Countess could perceive,
ever found her below it.
“Never, love, never!” she said.
“Then, will you go to Evan?”
“Evan? I hate him!” The olive-hued visage was dark. It brightened as
she added, “At least as much as my religious sentiments permit me to. A
boy who has thwarted me at every turn!—disgraced us! Indeed, I find it
difficult to pardon you the supposition of such a possibility as your
own consent to look on him ever again, Harriet.”
“You have no children,” said Mrs. Andrew.
The Countess mournfully admitted it.
“There lies your danger with Mr. Duffian, Louisa!”
“What! do you doubt my virtue?” asked the Countess.
“Pish! I fear something different. You understand me. Mr. Duffian’s
moral reputation is none of the best, perhaps.”
“That was before he renegaded,” said the Countess.
Harriet bluntly rejoined: “You will leave that house a Roman Catholic.”
“Now you have spoken,” said the Countess, pluming. “Now let me explain
myself. My dear, I have fought worldly battles too long and too
earnestly. I am rightly punished. I do but quote Herbert Duffian’s own
words: he is no flatterer though you say he has such soft fingers. I am
now engaged in a spiritual contest. He is very wealthy! I have resolved
to rescue back to our Church what can benefit the flock of which we
form a portion, so exceedingly!”
At this revelation of the Countess’s spiritual contest, Mrs. Andrew
shook a worldly head.
“You have no chance with men there, Louisa.”
“My Harriet complains of female weakness!”
“Yes. We are strong in our own element, Louisa. Don’t be tempted out of
it.”
Sublime, the Countess rose:
“Element! am I to be confined to one? What but spiritual solaces could
assist me to live, after the degradations I have had heaped on me? I
renounce the world. I turn my sight to realms where caste is unknown. I
feel no shame there of being a tailor’s daughter. You see, I can bring
my tongue to name the thing in its actuality. Once, that member would
have blistered. Confess to me that, in spite of your children, you are
tempted to howl at the idea of Lymport—”
The Countess paused, and like a lady about to fire off a gun, appeared
to tighten her nerves, crying out rapidly:
“Shop! Shears! Geese! Cabbage! Snip! Nine to a man!”
Even as the silence after explosions of cannon, that which reigned in
the room was deep and dreadful.
“See,” the Countess continued, “you are horrified you shudder. I name
all our titles, and if I wish to be red in my cheeks, I must rouge. It
is, in verity, as if my senseless clay were pelted, as we heard of Evan
at his first Lymport boys’ school. You remember when he told us the
story? He lisped a trifle then. ‘I’m the thon of a thnip.’ Oh! it was
hell-fire to us, then; but now, what do I feel? Why, I avowed it to
Herbert Duffian openly, and he said, that the misfortune of dear Papa’s
birth did not the less enable him to proclaim himself in conduct a
nobleman’s offspring—”
“Which he never was.” Harriet broke the rhapsody in a monotonous low
tone: the Countess was not compelled to hear:
“—and that a large outfitter—one of the very largest, was in reality a
merchant, whose daughters have often wedded nobles of the land, and
become ancestresses! Now, Harriet, do you see what a truly religious
mind can do for us in the way of comfort? Oh! I bow in gratitude to
Herbert Duffian. I will not rest till I have led him back to our fold,
recovered from his error. He was our own preacher and pastor. He
quitted us from conviction. He shall return to us from conviction.”
The Countess quoted texts, which I respect, and will not repeat. She
descanted further on spiritualism, and on the balm that it was to
tailors and their offspring; to all outcasts from Society.
Overpowered by her, Harriet thus summed up her opinions: “You were
always self-willed, Louisa.”
“Say, full of sacrifice, if you would be just,” added the Countess;
“and the victim of basest ingratitude.”
“Well, you are in a dangerous path, Louisa.”
Harriet had the last word, which usually the Countess was not disposed
to accord; but now she knew herself strengthened to do so, and was
content to smile pityingly on her sister.
Full upon them in this frame of mind, arrived Caroline’s great news
from Beckley.
It was then that the Countess’s conduct proved a memorable refutation
of cynical philosophy: she rejoiced in the good fortune of him who had
offended her! Though he was not crushed and annihilated (as he deserved
to be) by the wrong he had done, the great-hearted woman pardoned him!
Her first remark was: “Let him thank me for it or not, I will lose no
moment in hastening to load him with my congratulations.”
Pleasantly she joked Andrew, and defended him from Harriet now.
“So we are not all bankrupts, you see, dear brother-in-law.”
Andrew had become so demoralized by his own plot, that in every turn of
events he scented a similar piece of human ingenuity. Harriet was angry
with his disbelief, or say, the grudging credit he gave to the glorious
news. Notwithstanding her calmness, the thoughts of Lymport had
sickened her soul, and it was only for the sake of her children, and
from a sense of the dishonesty of spending a farthing of the money
belonging, as she conceived, to the creditors, that she had consented
to go.
“I see your motive, Mr. Cogglesby,” she observed. “Your measures are
disconcerted. I will remain here till my brother gives me shelter.”
“Oh, that’ll do, my love; that’s all I want,” said Andrew, sincerely.
“Both of you, fools!” the Countess interjected. “Know you Evan so
little? He will receive us anywhere: his arms are open to his kindred:
but to his heart the road is through humiliation, and it is to his
heart we seek admittance.”
“What do you mean?” Harriet inquired.
“Just this,” the Countess answered in bold English and her eyes were
lively, her figure elastic: “We must all of us go down to the old shop
and shake his hand there—every man Jack of us!—I’m only quoting the
sailors, Harriet—and that’s the way to win him.”
She snapped her fingers, laughing. Harriet stared at her, and so did
Andrew, though for a different reason. She seemed to be transformed.
Seeing him inclined to gape, she ran up to him, caught up his chin
between her ten fingers, and kissed him on both cheeks, saying:
“You needn’t come, if you’re too proud, you know, little man!”
And to Harriet’s look of disgust, the cause for which she divined with
her native rapidity, she said: “What does it matter? They will talk,
but they can’t look down on us now. Why, this is my doing!”
She came tripping to her tall sister, to ask plaintively “Mayn’t I be
glad?” and bobbed a curtsey.
Harriet desired Andrew to leave them. Flushed and indignant she then
faced the Countess.
“So unnecessary!” she began. “What can excuse your indiscretion,
Louisa?”
The Countess smiled to hear her talking to her younger sister once
more. She shrugged.
“Oh, if you will keep up the fiction, do. Andrew knows—he isn’t an
idiot—and to him we can make light of it now. What does anybody’s birth
matter, who’s well off!”
It was impossible for Harriet to take that view. The shop, if not the
thing, might still have been concealed from her husband, she thought.
“It mattered to me when I was well off,” she said, sternly.
“Yes; and to me when I was; but we’ve had a fall and a lesson since
that, my dear. Half the aristocracy of England spring from shops!—Shall
I measure you?”
Harriet never felt such a desire to inflict a slap upon mortal cheek.
She marched away from her in a tiff. On the other hand, Andrew was half
fascinated by the Countess’s sudden re-assumption of girlhood, and
returned—silly fellow! to have another look at her. She had ceased, on
reflection, to be altogether so vivacious: her stronger second nature
had somewhat resumed its empire: still she was fresh, and could at
times be roguishly affectionate and she patted him, and petted him, and
made much of him; slightly railed at him for his uxoriousness and
domestic subjection, and proffered him her fingers to try the taste of.
The truth must be told: Mr. Duffian not being handy, she in her renewed
earthly happiness wanted to see her charms in a woman’s natural mirror:
namely, the face of man: if of man on his knees, all the better and
though a little man is not much of a man, and a sister’s husband is, or
should be, hardly one at all, still some sort of a reflector he must
be. Two or three jests adapted to Andrew’s palate achieved his
momentary captivation.
He said: “’Gad, I never kissed you in my life, Louy.”
And she, with a flavour of delicate Irish brogue, “Why don’t ye catch
opportunity by the tail, then?”
Perfect innocence, I assure you, on both sides.
But mark how stupidity betrays. Andrew failed to understand her, and
act on the hint immediately. Had he done so, the affair would have been
over without a witness. As it happened, delay permitted Harriet to
assist at the ceremony.
“It wasn’t your mouth, Louy,” said Andrew.
“Oh, my mouth!—that I keep for, my chosen,” was answered.
“’Gad, you make a fellow almost wish—” Andrew’s fingers worked over his
poll, and then the spectre of righteous wrath flashed on him—naughty
little man that he was! He knew himself naughty, for it was the only
time since his marriage that he had ever been sorry to see his wife.
This is a comedy, and I must not preach lessons of life here: but I am
obliged to remark that the husband must be proof, the sister-in-law
perfect, where arrangements exist that keep them under one roof. She
may be so like his wife! Or, from the knowledge she has of his
circumstances, she may talk to him almost as his wife. He may forget
that she is not his wife! And then again, the small beginnings, which
are in reality the mighty barriers, are so easily slid over. But what
is the use of telling this to a pure generation? My constant error is
in supposing that I write for the wicked people who begat us.
Note, however, the difference between the woman and the man! Shame
confessed Andrew’s naughtiness; he sniggered pitiably: whereas the
Countess jumped up, and pointing at him, asked her sister what she
thought of that. Her next sentence, coolly delivered, related to some
millinery matter. If this was not innocence, what is?
Nevertheless, I must here state that the scene related, innocent as it
was, and, as one would naturally imagine, of puny consequence, if any,
did no less a thing than, subsequently, to precipitate the Protestant
Countess de Saldar into the bosom of the Roman Catholic Church. A
little bit of play!
It seems barely just. But if, as I have heard, a lady has trod on a
pebble and broken her nose, tremendous results like these warn us to be
careful how we walk. As for play, it was never intended that we should
play with flesh and blood.
And, oh, be charitable, matrons of Britain! See here, Andrew Cogglesby,
who loved his wife as his very soul, and who almost disliked her
sister; in ten minutes the latter had set his head spinning! The whole
of the day he went about the house meditating frantically on the
possibility of his Harriet demanding a divorce.
She was not the sort of woman to do that. But one thing she resolved to
do; and it was, to go to Lymport with Louisa, and having once got her
out of her dwelling-place, never to allow her to enter it, wherever it
might be, in the light of a resident again. Whether anything but the
menace of a participation in her conjugal possessions could have
despatched her to that hateful place, I doubt. She went: she would not
let Andrew be out of her sight. Growing haughtier toward him at every
step, she advanced to the strange old shop. EVAN HARRINGTON over the
door! There the Countess, having meantime returned to her state of
womanhood, shared her shudders. They entered, and passed in to Mrs.
Mel, leaving their footman, apparently, in the rear. Evan was not
visible. A man in the shop, with a yard measure negligently adorning
his shoulders, said that Mr. Harrington was in the habit of quitting
the shop at five.
“Deuced good habit, too,” said Andrew.
“Why, sir,” observed another, stepping forward, “as you truly say—yes.
But—ah! Mr. Andrew Cogglesby? Pleasure of meeting you once in
Fallowfield! Remember Mr. Perkins?—the lawyer, not the maltster. Will
you do me the favour to step out with me?”
Andrew followed him into the street.
“Are you aware of our young friend’s good fortune?” said Lawyer
Perkins. “Yes. Ah! Well!—Would you believe that any sane person in his
condition, now—nonsense apart—could bring his mind wilfully to continue
a beggar? No. Um! Well; Mr. Cogglesby, I may tell you that I hold here
in my hands a document by which Mr. Evan Harrington transfers the whole
of the property bequeathed to him to Lady Jocelyn, and that I have his
orders to execute it instantly, and deliver it over to her ladyship,
after the will is settled, probate, and so forth: I presume there will
be an arrangement about his father’s debts. Now what do you think of
that?”
“Think, sir,—think!” cried Andrew, cocking his head at him like an
indignant bird, “I think he’s a damned young idiot to do so, and you’re
a confounded old rascal to help him.”
Leaving Mr. Perkins to digest his judgement, which he had solicited,
Andrew bounced back into the shop.