"I must have left it on my table," said she, still searching, "or
perhaps dropped it as I came along."
"Maybe in the conservatory, ma'am," said I, with a piercing glance.
"I never go there," said she, calmly. "One is sure to catch cold in it,
with all the draughts."
The audacity of this speech gave me a sick feeling all over, and I
thought I 'd have fainted. "The effrontery that could carry her through
that," thought I, "will sustain her in any wickedness;" and I sat there
powerless before her from that minute.
"The letter," said she, "was from old Madame de Rougemont,
who is in waiting on the Duchess, and mentions that they will reach Ems
by the 24th at latest. It's full of gossip. You know the old Rougemont,
what wonderful tact she has, and how well she tells everything."
She rattled along here at such a rate, Molly, that even if I knew every
topic of her discourse, I could not have kept up with her. There was the
Emperor of Russia, and the Queen of Greece, and Prince this of Bavaria,
and Prince that of the Asturias, all moving about in little family
incidents; and what between the things they were displeased at, and
others that gratified them,--how this one was disgraced, and that got
the cross of St. Something, and why such a one went _here_ to meet
somebody who could n't go _there_--my head was so completely addled that
I was thankful to Providence when she concluded the harangue by
something that I could comprehend. "Under these circumstances, my dear
Mrs. Dodd," said she, "you will, I am sure, agree with me, there is no
time to be lost."
"I think not, ma'am," said I, but without an inkling of what I was
saying.
"I knew you would say so," said she, clasping my hand. "You have an
unerring tact upon every question, which reminds me so strongly of Lady
Paddington. She and the Great Duke, you know, were said to be never in
the wrong. It is therefore an unspeakable relief to me that you see this
matter as I do. It will be, besides, such a pleasure to the poor dear
Duchess to have us with her; for I vow to you, Mrs. Dodd, I love her for
her own sake. Many people make a show of attachment to her from selfish
motives,--they know how gratified our royal family feel for such
attentions,--but I really love her for herself; and so will you, dearest
Mrs. Dodd. Worldly folk would speculate upon the advantages to be
derived from her vast influence,--the posts of honor to be conferred on
sons and daughters; but I know how little these things weigh with _you_.
Not, I must add, but that I give you less credit for this independence
of feeling than I should accord to others. You and yours are happily
placed above all the accidents of fortune in this world; and if it ever
_should_ occur to you to seek for anything in the power of patronage to
bestow, who is there would not hasten to confer it? But to return to
the dear Duchess. She says the 24th at latest, and to-day we are at the
22nd, so you see there is not any time to lose."
"Not a great deal indeed, ma'am," said I, for I suddenly remembered all
about her with K. I., as she laid her hand on my arm exactly as I saw
her do upon his.
"With a sympathetic soul," cried she, "how little need is there of
explanation! You already see what I am pointing at. You have read in my
heart my devotion and attachment to that sweet princess, and you see
how I am bound by every tie of gratitude and affection to hasten to meet
her."
You may be sure, Molly, that I gave my heartiest concurrence to the
arrangement. The very thought of getting rid of her was the best tidings
I could hear; since, besides putting an end to all her plots and devices
for the future, it would give me the opportunity of settling accounts
with K. I., which it would be impossible to do till I had him here
alone. It was, then, with real sincerity that my "sympathetic soul"
fully assented to all she said.
"I knew you would forgive me. I knew that you would not be angry with
me for this sudden flight," said she.
"Not in the least, ma'am," said I, stiffly.
"This is true kindness,--this is real friendship," said she, pressing my
band.
"I hope it is, ma'am," said I, dryly; for, indeed, Molly, it was hard
work for me to keep my temper under.
She never, however, gave me much time for anything, for off she went
once more about her own plans; telling me how little luggage she would
take, how soon we should meet again, how delighted the Duchess would be
with me and Mary Anne, and twenty things more of the same sort.
At last we separated, but not till we had embraced each other three
times over; and, to tell you the truth, I had it in my heart to strangle
her while she was doing it.
The agitation I went through, and my passion boiling in me, and no vent
for it, made me so ill that I was taking Hoffman and camphor the whole
evening after; and I could n't, of course, go down to dinner, but had
a light veal cutlet with a little sweet sauce, and a roast pigeon with
mushrooms, in my own room.
K. I. wanted to come in and speak to me, but I refused admission, and
sent him word that "I hoped I'd be equal to the task of an interview in
the course of a day or so;" a message that must have made him tremble
for what was in store for him. I did this on purpose, Molly, for I often
remarked that there's nothing subdues K. I. so much as to keep something
hanging over him. As he said once himself, "Life isn't worth having, if
a man can be called up at any minute for sentence." And that shows you,
Molly, what I oftentimes mentioned to you, that if you want or expect
true happiness in the married state, there's only one road to it,
and that is by studying the temper and the character of your husband,
learning what is his weakness and which are his defects. When you know
these well, my dear, the rest is easy; and it's your own fault if you
don't mould him to your liking.
Whether it was the mushrooms, or a little very weak shrub punch that
Mary Anne made, disagreed with me, I can't tell, but I had a nightmare
every time I went to sleep, and always woke up with a screech. That's
the way I spent the blessed night, and it was only as day began to
break that I felt a regular drowsiness over me and went off into a good
comfortable doze. Just then there came a rattling of horses' hoofs,
and a cracking of whips under the window, and Mary Anne came up to
say something, but I would n't listen, but covered my head up in the
bedclothes till she went away.
It was twenty minutes to four when I awoke, and a gloomy day, with a
thick, soft rain falling, that I knew well would bring on one of my bad
headaches, and I was just preparing myself for suffering, when Mary Anne
came to the bedside.
"Is she gone, Mary Anne?" said I.
"Yes," said she; "they went off before six o'clock."
"Thanks be to Providence," said I. "I hope I 'll never see one of them
again."
"Oh, mamma," said she, "don't say that!"
"And why wouldn't I say it, Mary Anne?" said I. "Would you have me nurse
a serpent,--harbor a boa-constrictor in my bosom?"
"But, then, papa," said she, sobbing.
"Let him come up," said I. "Let him see the wreck he has made of me. Let
him come and feast his eyes over the ruin his own cruelty has worked."
"Sure he's gone," said she.
"Gone! Who's gone?"
"Papa. He's gone with Mrs. Gore Hampton!"
With that, Molly, I gave a scream that was heard all over the house.
And so it was for two hours--screech after screech--tearing my hair
and destroying everything within reach of me. To think of the old
wretch--for I know his age right well; Sam Davis was at school with
him forty-eight years ago, at Dr. Bell's, and that shows he's no
chicken--behaving this way. I knew the depravity of the man well enough.
I did n't pass twenty years with him without learning the natural
wickedness of his disposition, but I never thought he 'd go the length
of this. Oh, Molly! the shock nearly killed me; and coming as it did
after the dreadful disappointment about Jones M'Carthy's affairs, I
don't know at all how I bore up against it. I must tell you that
James and Mary Anne did n't see it with my eyes. They thought, or they
pretended to think, that he was only going as far as Ems, to accompany
her, as they call it, on a visit to the Princess,--just as if there was
a princess at all, and that the whole story wasn't lies from beginning
to end.
Lord George, too, took their side, and wanted to get angry at my unjust
suspicions about Mrs. G., but I just said, what would the world think of
_me_ if I went away in a chaise and four with _him_ by way of paying a
visit to somebody that never existed? He tried to laugh it off, Molly,
and made little of it, but I wouldn't let him, in particular before Mary
Anne,--for whatever sins they may lay to my charge, I believe that they
can't pretend that I did n't bring up the girls with sound principles of
virtue and morality,--and just to convince him of that, I turned to and
exposed K. I. to James and the two girls till they were well ashamed of
him.
It's a heartless bad world we live in, Molly! and I never knew its
badness, I may say, till now. You'll scarce believe me, when I tell
you that it was n't from my own flesh and blood that I met comfort or
sympathy, but from that good-for-nothing creature, Betty Cobb. Mary Anne
and Caroline persisted in saying that K. I.'s journey was all innocence
and purity,--that he was only gone in a fatherly sort of a way with her;
but Betty knew the reverse, and I must own that she seemed to know more
about him than I ever suspected.
"Ah, the ould rogue!--the ould villain!" she 'd mutter to herself, in a
fashion that showed me the character he had in the servants' hall. If
I had only a little command of my temper, I might have found out many a
thing of him, Molly, and of his doings at Dodsborough, but how could I
at a moment like that?
And that's how I was, Molly, with nothing but enemies about me, in
the bosom of my own family! One saying, "Don't expose us to the
world,--don't bring people's eyes on us;" and the other calling out, "We
'll be ruined entirely if it gets into the papers!" so that, in fact,
they wanted to deny me the little bit of sympathy I might have attracted
towards my destitute and forlorn condition.
Had I been at home, in Dodsborough, I'd have made the country ring with
his disgrace; but they wouldn't let me utter a word here, and I was
obliged to sit down, as the poet says, "like a worm in the bud," and
consume my grief in solitude.
He went away, too, without leaving a shilling behind him, and the bill
of the hotel not even paid! Nothing sustained me, Molly, but the notion
of my one day meeting him, and settling these old scores. I even worked
myself into a half-fever at the thought of the way I 'd overwhelm him.
Maybe it was well for me that I was obliged to rouse my energies to
activity, and provide for the future, which I did by drawing two bills
on Waters for a hundred and fifty each, and, with the help of them,
we mean to remove from this on Saturday, and proceed to Baden, where,
according to Lord George, "there 's no such things as evil speaking,
lying, or slandering;" to use his own words, "It's the most charitable
society in Europe, and every one can indulge his vices without note or
comment from his neighbors." And, after all, one must acknowledge the
great superiority in the good breeding of the Continent in this; for,
as Lord G. remarks, "If there's anything a man's own, it's his
private wickedness, and there's no such indelicacy as in canvassing or
discussing it; and what becomes of a conscience," says he, "if everybody
reviles and abuses you? Sure, doesn't it lead you to take your own part,
even when you're in the wrong?"
He has a persuasive way with him, Molly, that often surprises myself how
far it goes with me, and indeed, even in the midst of my afflictions and
distresses, he made me laugh with his account of Baden, and the strange
people that go there. We're to go to the Hôtel de Russie, the finest in
the place, and say that we are expecting some friends to join us; for K.
I. and madam may arrive at any moment. As I write these lines, the girls
and Betty are packing up the things, so that long before it reaches you
we shall be at our destination.
The worst thing in my present situation is that I must n't mutter a
syllable against K. I., or, if I do, I have them all on my back; and as
to Betty, her sympathy is far worse than the silence of the others. And
there 's the way your poor friend is in.
To be robbed--for I know Waters is robbing me--and cheated and deceived
all at the same time, is too much for my unanimity! Don't let on to the
neighbors about K. I.; for, as Lord G. says, "these things should
never be mentioned in the world till they 're talked of in the House of
Lords;" and I suppose he's right, though I don't see why--but maybe
it's one of the prerogatives of the peerage to have the first of an ugly
story.
I have done now, Molly, and I wonder how my strength has carried me
through it. I 'll write you as soon as I get to Baden, and hope to hear
from you about the wool. I 'm always reading in the papers about the
improvement of Ireland, and yet I get less and less out of it; but maybe
that same is a sign of prosperity; for I remember my poor father was
never so stingy as when he saved a little money; and indeed my own
conviction is that much of what we used to call Irish hospitality was
neither more nor less than downright desperation,--we had so little in
the world, it wasn't worth hoarding.
You may write to me still as Mrs. Dodd, though maybe it will be the last
time the name will be borne by your Injured and afflicted friend,
Jemima.
P. S. I 'm sure Paddy Byrne is in K. I.'s secret, for he goes about
grinning and snickering in the most offensive manner, for which I am
just going to give him warning. Not, indeed, that I'm serious about
discharging him, for the journey is terribly expensive, but by way of
alarming the little blaguard. If Father Maher would only threaten to
curse them, as he used, we'd have peace and comfort once more.