The good understanding with which the eagerness of curiosity on one
side, and the subjection of caution on the other, made the travellers
begin their journey, was of too frail a nature to be of long endurance.
'Tis only what is natural that flows without some stimulus; what is
factitious prospers but while freshly supplied with such materials as
gave it existence. Mrs Ireton, when she found that neither questions,
insinuations, nor petty artifices to surprise confessions, succeeded in
drawing any forth, cast off a character of softness that so little paid
the violence which its assumption did her humour; while the stranger,
fatigued by finding that not one particle of benevolence, was mixed with
the avidity for amusement which had given her a place in the chaise,
ceased all efforts to please, and bestowed no further attentions, than
such as were indispensably due to the mistress of the vehicle in which
she travelled.
At a little distance from Rochester, the chaise broke down. No one was
hurt; but Mrs Ireton deemed the mere alarm an evil of the first
magnitude; remarking that this event might have brought on her death;
and remarking it with the resentment of one who had never yet considered
herself as amenable to the payment of that general, though dread debt to
nature. She sent on a man and horse for another carriage, and was forced
to accept the arm of the stranger, to support her till it arrived. But
so deeply was she impressed with her own ideas of the hardships that she
endured, that she put up at the first inn, went to bed, sent for an
apothecary, and held it to be an indispensable tribute to the delicacy
of her constitution, to take it for granted that she could not be
removed for some days, without the most imminent hazard to her life.
Having now no other resource, she hung for comfort, as well as for
assistance, upon her fellow-traveller, to whom she gave the interesting
post of being the repository of all her complaints, whether against
nature, for constructing her frame with such exquisite daintiness, or
against fate, for its total insensibility to the tenderness which that
frame required. And though, from recently quitting objects of sorrow,
and scenes of woe, in the dreadful apparel of awful reality, the
Incognita had no superfluous pity in store for the distresses of
offended self-importance, she yet felt relief from experiencing milder
usage, and spared no assiduity that might purchase its continuance.
It was some days before Mrs Ireton thought that she might venture to
travel, without appearing too robust. And, in this period, one only
circumstance called forth, with any acrimony, the ill humour of her
disposition. This was a manifest alteration in the complexion of her
attendant, which, from a regular and equally dark hue, appeared, on the
second morning, to be smeared and streaked; and, on the third, to be of
a dusky white. This failed not to produce sundry inquisitive comments;
but they never succeeded in obtaining any explanatory replies. When,
however, on the fourth day, the shutters of the chamber, which, to give
it a more sickly character, had hitherto been closed, were suffered to
admit the sun-beams of a cheerful winter's morning, Mrs Ireton was
directed, by their rays, to a full and marvellous view, of a skin
changed from a tint nearly black, to the brightest, whitest, and most
dazzling fairness. The band upon the forehead, and the patch upon the
cheek, were all that remained of the original appearance.
The first stare at this unexpected metamorphosis, was of unmingled
amazement; but it was soon succeeded by an expression of something
between mockery and anger, evinced, without ceremony or reserve, by the
following speech: 'Upon my word, Ma'am, you are a very complete figure!
Beyond what I could have conjectured! I own that! I can't but own that.
I was quite too stupid to surmize so miraculous a change. And pray,
Ma'am, if I may take the liberty to enquire,--who are you?'
The stranger looked down.
'Nay, I ought not to ask, I confess. It's very indelicate, I own; very
rude, I acknowledge; but, I should imagine, it can hardly be the first
time that you have been so good as to pardon a little rudeness. I don't
know, I may be mistaken, to be sure, but I should imagine so.'
The Incognita now raised her eyes. A sense of ill treatment seemed to
endue her with courage; but her displeasure, which, though not uttered,
was not disguised, no sooner reached the observation of Mrs Ireton, than
she conceived it to be an insolence to justify redoubling her own.
'You are affronted, I hope, Ma'am? Nay, you have reason enough, I
acknowledge; I can't but acknowledge that! to see me impressed with so
little awe by your wonderful powers; for 'twas but an hour or two since,
that you were the blackest, dirtiest, raggedest wretch I ever beheld;
and now--you are turned into an amazing beauty! Your cheeks are all
bedaubed with _rouge_, and you are quite a belle! and wondering, I
suppose, that I don't beseech you to sit on the sofa by my side! And, to
be sure, it's very ill bred of me: I can't deny that; only as it is one
of the rudenesses that I conceive you to have had the goodness to submit
to before, I hope you'll forgive it.'
The young woman begged leave to retire, till she should be called for
the journey.
'O! what, you have some other metamorphosis to prepare, perhaps? Those
bandages and patches are to be converted into something else? And pray,
if it will not be too great a liberty to enquire, what are they to
exhibit? The order of Maria Theresa? or of the Empress of all the
Russias? If I did not fear being impertinent, I should be tempted to ask
how many coats of white and red you were obliged to lay on, before you
could cover over all that black.'
The stranger, offended and tired, without deigning to make any answer,
walked back to the chamber which she had just quitted.
The astonished Mrs Ireton was in speechless rage at this unbidden
retreat; yet anger was so inherently a part of her composition, that the
sight she saw with the most lively sensation was whatever authorized its
vent. She speedily, therefore, dispatched a messenger, to say that she
was taken dangerously ill, and to desire that the young woman would
return.
The Incognita, helpless for seeking any more genial mode of travelling,
obeyed the call, but had scarcely entered the apartment, when Mrs
Ireton, starting, and forgetting her new illness, exclaimed, in a
powerful voice, 'Why, what is become of your black patch?'
The young woman, hastily putting her hand to her cheek, blushed
extremely, while she answered, 'Bless me, it must have dropt off!--I
will run and look for it.'
Mrs Ireton peremptorily forbade her to move; and, staring at her with a
mixture of curiosity and harshness, ordered her to draw away her hand.
She resisted for some time, but, overpowered by authoritative commands,
was reduced, at length, to submit; and Mrs Ireton then perceived, that
neither wound, scar, nor injury of any sort, had occasioned the patch to
have been worn.
The excess of her surprize at this discovery, led her to apprehend some
serious imposition. She fearfully, therefore, rose, to ring the bell,
still fixing her eyes upon the face of the young woman, who, in her
confusion, accidentally touching the bandage which crossed her forehead,
displaced it, and shewed that feature, also, as free from any cause for
having been bound up, as the cheek.
It was now rather consternation than amazement with which Mrs Ireton was
seized, till the augmenting disorder, and increasing colour of her new
attendant, changed all fear of any trick into personal pique at having
been duped; and she protested that if such beggar-stratagems were played
upon her any more, she would turn over the impostor to the master of the
inn.
The paleness of terror with which this menace overspread the complexion
of the stranger, forced a certain, however unwilling conviction upon the
mind of Mrs Ireton, that _rouge_, at least, was not amongst the
artifices of which she had to complain. But, though relieved from her
own alarm, by the alarm which she inspired, she was rather irritated
than appeased in finding something less to detect, and, scoffingly
perusing her face, 'You are a surprising person, indeed!' she cried, 'as
surprising a person as ever I had the honour to see! So you had
disfigured yourself in that horrid manner, only to extort money from us
upon false pretences? Very ingenious, indeed! mighty ingenious, I
confess! Why that new skin must have cost you more than your new gown.
Pray which did you get the best bargain?'
The stranger did not dare risk any sort of reply.
'O, you don't chuse to tell me? But how could I be so indiscreet as to
ask such a thing? Will it be impertinent, too, if I enquire whether you
always travel with that collection of bandages and patches? and of black
and white outsides? or whether you sometimes change them for wooden legs
and broken arms?'
Not a word of answer was returned.
'So you won't tell me that, neither? Nay, you are in the right, I own.
What business is it of mine to confine your genius to only one or two
methods of maiming or defacing yourself? as if you did not find it more
amusing to be one day lame, and another blind; and, to-day, it should
seem, dumb? The round must be entertaining enough. Pray do you make it
methodically? or just as the humour strikes you?'
A fixed silence still resisted all attack.
'O, I am diving too deeply into the secrets of your trade, am I? Nay, I
ought to be contented, I own, with the specimens with which I have
already been indulged. You have not been niggardly in varying them. You
have been bruised and beaten; and dirty and clean; and ragged and whole;
and wounded and healed; and a European and a Creole, in less than a
week. I suppose, next, you will dwindle into a dwarf; and then, perhaps,
find some surprising contrivance to shoot up into a giantess. There is
nothing that can be too much to expect from so great an adept in
metamorphoses.'
The pleasure of giving vent to spleen, disguised from Mrs Ireton, that
by rendering its malignancy so obvious, she blunted its effect. She
continued, therefore, her interrogatories a considerable time, before
she discovered, that the stillness with which they were heard was
produced by resolution, not awe. Almost intolerably offended when a
suspicion of this truth occurred, she assumed a tone yet more imperious.
'So I am not worth an answer? You hold it beneath you to waste your
breath upon me? And do you know whom it is you dare treat in this
manner? Do you imagine that I am a fellow-adventurer?'
The hand of the young woman was now upon the lock of the door, but
there, trembling, it stopt, withheld by a thousand terrors from
following its first impulse; and the entrance of a waiter, with
information that a chaise was at the door, interrupted any further
discourse. The journey was resumed, and the rest of the way was only
rendered supportable to the stranger, from the prospect that its
conclusion would terminate all intercourse with one who, so wilfully and
so wantonly, seemed to revel in her powers of mockery and derision.