Kitabı oku: «The Dodd Family Abroad, Vol. II», sayfa 12
LETTER XVI. MISS MARY ANNE DODD TO MISS DOOLAN, OF BALLYDOOLAN
Parma
Dearest Kitty, – It is but seldom I have to bespeak your indulgence on the score of my brevity, but I must do so now, overwhelmed as I am with occupation, and scarcely a moment left me that I can really call my own. Mamma's letter to old Molly will have explained to you the great fortune which has befallen James, and, I might add also, all who belong to him. And really, dearest, with all the assurance the evidence of my own senses can convey, I still find it difficult to credit such unparalleled luck. Fancy beauty – and such beauty, – youth, genius, mind, rank, and a large fortune, thrown, I may say, at his feet! She is Spanish, by the mother's side; "Las Caldenhas," I think the name, whose father was a grandee of the first class. Her own father was the General Count de St. Amand, who commanded in the celebrated battle of Austerlitz in the retreat from Moscow. I 'm sure, dearest, you 'll be amazed at my familiarity with these historical events; but the truth is, she is a perfect treasury of such knowledge, and I must needs gain some little by the contact.
I am at a loss how to give you any correct notion of one whose universality seems to impart to her character all the semblance of contradictory qualities. She is, for instance, proud and haughty, to a degree little short of insolence. She exacts from men a species of deference little less than a slavish submission. As she herself says, "Let them do homage." All her ideas of life and society are formed on the very grandest scale. She has known, in fact, but one "set," and that has been one where royalties moved as private individuals. Her very trinkets recall such memories; and I have passed more than one morning admiring pearl ear-rings, with the cipher of the Czarawitsch; bracelets with the initials of an Austrian Archduke, and a diamond cross, which she forgot whether it was given her by Prince Metternich or Mehemet Ali. If you only heard her, too, how she talks of that "dear old thing, the ex-King of Bavaria," and with what affectionate regard she alludes to "her second self, – the Queen of Spain," you 'd feel at once, dearest Kitty, that you were moving amidst crowns and sceptres, with the rustle of royal purple beside, and the shadow of a thronely canopy over you. In one sense, this has been for us the very rarest piece of good fortune; for, accustomed as she has been to only one sphere, – and that the very highest, – she does not detect many little peculiarities in papa's and mamma's habits, and censure them as vulgar, but rather accepts them as the ways and customs among ordinary nobility. In fact, she thinks the Prince, as she calls papa, the very image of "Pozzo di Borgo;" and mamma she can scarcely see without saying, "Your Majesty," she is so like the Queen Dowager of Piedmont.
As to James, if it were not that I knew her real sentiments, and that she loves him to distraction, – merely judging from what goes on in society, – I should say he had not a chance of success. She takes pleasure, I almost think, in decrying the very qualities he has most pretension to. She even laughs at his horsemanship; and yesterday went so far as to say that activity was not amongst his perfections, – James, who really is the very type of agility! One of her amusements is to propose to him some impossible feat or other, and the poor boy has nearly broken his back and dislocated his limbs by contortions that nothing but a fish could accomplish. But the contrarieties of her nature do not end here! She, so grave, so dignified, so imperious, I might even call it, before others, once alone with me becomes the wildest creature in existence. The very moment she makes her escape to her own room, she can scarcely control her delight at throwing off the "Countess," as she says herself, and being once again free, joyous, and unconstrained.
I have told her, over and over again, that if James only knew her in these moods, that he would adore her even more than he does now; but she only laughs, and says, "Well, time enough; he shall see me so one of these days." It was not till after ten or twelve days that she admitted me to her real confidence. The manner of it was itself curious. "Are you sleepy?" said she to me, one evening as we went upstairs to bed; "for, if not, come and pay me a visit in my room."
I accepted the invitation; and after exchanging my evening robe for a dressing-gown, hastened to the chamber. I could scarcely believe my eyes as I entered! She was seated on a richly embroidered cushion on the floor, dressed in Turkish fashion, loose trousers of gold-sprigged muslin, with a small fez of scarlet cloth on her head, and a jacket of the same colored velvet almost concealed beneath its golden embroidery; a splendid scimitar lay beside her, and a most costly pipe, in pure Turkish taste, which, however, she did not make use of, but smoked a small paper cigarette instead.
"Come, dearest," said she, "turn the key in the door, and light your cigar; here we are at length free and happy." It was in vain that I assured her I never had tried to smoke. At first she would n't believe, and then she actually screamed with laughter at me. "One would fancy," said she, "that you had only left England yesterday. Why, child, where have you lived and with whom?" I cannot go over all she said; nor need I repeat the efforts I made to palliate my want of knowledge of life, which she really appeared to grieve over. "I should never think of asking your sister here," said she; "there is a frivolity in all her gayety – a light-heartedness, without sentiment – that I cannot abide; but you, ma chère, you have a nature akin to my own. You ought, and, indeed, must be one of us."
So far as I could collect, Kitty, – for remember, I was smoking my first cigarette all this time, and not particularly clear of head, – there is a set in Parisian society, the most exclusive and refined of all, who have voted the emancipation of women from all the slavery and degradation to which the social usages of the world at large would condemn them. Rightly judging that the expansion of intelligence is to be acquired only in greater liberty of action, they have admitted them to a freer community and participation in the themes which occupy men's thoughts, and the habits which accompany their moods of reflection.
Gifted, as we confessedly are, with nicer and more acute perceptions, finer powers of discrimination and judgment, greater delicacy of feeling, and more apt appreciation of the beautiful and the true, why should we descend to an intellectual bondage? As dearest Josephine says, "Our influence, to be beneficial, should be candidly and openly exercised, not furtively practised, and cunningly insinuated. Let us leave these arts to women who want to rule their husbands; our destiny be it – to sway mankind!" Her theory, so far as I understand it, is that men will not endure petty rivalries, but succumb at once to superior attainments. Thus, your masculine young lady, Kitty, – your creature of boisterous manners, slang, and slap-dash, – is invariably a disgust; but your true "lionne," gifted yet graceful, possessing every manly accomplishment and yet employing her knowledge to enhance the charms of her society and render herself more truly companionable, the equal of men in culture, their superior in taste and refinement, exercises a despotic influence around her.
Men will quit the salon for the play-table. Let us, then, be gamblers for the nonce, and we shall not be deserted. They smoke, that they may get together and talk with a freedom and a license not used before us. Let us adopt the custom, and we are no longer debarred from their intimacy and the power of infusing the refining influences of our sex through their barbarism! As Josephine says, "We are the martyrs now, that we may be the masters hereafter!"
I grew very faint, once or twice, while she was talking; and, indeed, at last was obliged to lie down, and have my temples bathed with eau-de-Cologne, so that I unluckily lost many of her strongest arguments and happiest illustrations; but, from frequent conversations since, and from reading some of the beautiful romances of "Georges Sand," I have attained to, if not a full appreciation, at least an unbounded admiration of this beautiful system.
Have I forgotten to tell you that we met the Prince of Pontremoli on our way here? – a Serene Highness, Kitty! but as easy and as familiar as my brother James. The drollest thing is that he has lived while in England with all the "fast people," and only talks a species of conventional slang in vogue amongst them; but for all that he is delightful, – full of gayety and good spirits, and has the wickedest dark eyes you ever beheld.
Dear Josephine's caprices are boundless! Yesterday she read of a black Arabian that the Imaum of somewhere was sending as a present to General Lamoricière, and she immediately said, "Oh, the General is exiled now, he can't want a charger, – send and get him for me." Poor James is out all the morning in search of some one to despatch on this difficult service; but how it is to be accomplished – not to speak of where the money is to come from – is an unreadable riddle to
Your affectionate and devoted
Mary Anne Dodd.
You will doubtless be dissatisfied, dearest Kitty, if I seal this without inserting one word about myself and my own prospects. But what can I say, save that all is mist-wreathed and shadowy in the dim future before me? He has said nothing since. I see – it is but too plain to see – the anguish that is tearing his very heart-strings; but he buries his sorrow within his soul, and I am not free even to weep beside the sepulchre! Oh, dearest, when you read what Georges Sand has written, – when you come to ponder over the misenes the fatal institution of marriage has wrought in the world, – the fond hearts broken, the noble natures crushed, and the proud spirits degraded, – you will only wonder why the tyranny has been borne so long! and exclaim with me, "When – oh, when shall we be free!"
LETTER XVII. KENNY JAMES DODD TO THOMAS PURCELL, ESQ., OF THE GRANGE BRUFF
Parma
My dear Tom, – The little gleam of sunshine that shone upon us for the last week or so has turned out to be but the prelude of a regular hurricane, and all our feasting and merriment have ended in gloom, darkness, and disunion. Mrs. D.'s letter to old Molly has made known to you the circumstances under which James returned home to us, without ever having gone to London. You, of course, know all about the lovely young widow, with her immense jointure and splendid connections. If you do not, I must say that from my heart and soul I envy you, for I have heard of nothing else for the last fortnight! At all events, you have heard enough to satisfy you that the house of Dodd was about to garnish its escutcheon with some very famous quarterings,: – illustrious enough even to satisfy the pride of the McCarthys. A Cardinal's daughter – niece I mean – with four thousand a year, had deigned to ally herself with us, and we were all running breast-high in the blaze of our great success.
She came here on a visit to us while some negotiations were being concluded with the Papal Court, for we were great folk, Tom, let me tell you, and have been performing, so to say, in the same piece with popes, kings, and cardinals for the last month; and I myself, under the style and title of the "Prince," have narrowly escaped going mad from the unceasing influences of delusions, shams, and impositions in which we have been living and moving.
Of our extravagant mode of life, I'll only say that I don't think there was anything omitted which could contribute to ruin a moderate income. Splendid apartments, grand dinners, horses, carriages, servants, opera-boxes, bouquets, were all put in requisition to satisfy the young Countess that she was about to make a suitable alliance, and that any deficiencies observable in either our manners or breeding were fully compensated for by our taste in cookery and our tact in wine. To be plain, Tom, to obtain this young widow with four thousand a year, we had to pretend to be possessed of about four times as much. It was a regular game of "brag" we were playing, and with a very bad hand of cards!
Hope led me on from day to day, trusting that each post would bring us the wished-for consent, and that at least a private marriage would ratify the compact Popes and cardinals, however, are too stately for fast movements, and at the end of five weeks we had n't, so far as I could see, gained an inch of ground!
At one time his Holiness had gone off to Albano to bless somebody's bones, or the bones were coming to bless him, I forget which. At another, the King of Naples, fatigued with signing warrants for death and the galleys, desired to enjoy a little repose from public business. Cardinal Antonelli, hearing that we were Irish, got in a rage, and said that Ireland gave them no peace at all. And so it came to pass that the old thief – procrastination – was at his usual knavery; and for want of better, set to work to ruin poor Kenny Dodd!
It is only fair to observe that, except Cary and myself, nobody manifested any great impatience at this delay; and even she, I believe, merely felt it out of regard to me. The others seemed satisfied to fare sumptuously every day; and assuredly the course of true love ran most smoothly along in rivulets of "mock turtle" and "potages à la fiancée." At last, Tom, I brought myself to book with the simple question, "How long can this continue? Will your capital stand it for a month, or even a week?" Before I attempted the answer, I sent for Mrs. D., to give her the honor of solving the riddle if she could.
Our interview took place in a little crib they call my dressing-room, but which, I must remark to you, is a dark corner under a staircase, where the rats hold a parliament every night of the season. Mrs. D. was so shocked with the locality that she proposed our adjourning to her own apartment; and thither we at once repaired to hold our council.
I have too often wearied you with our domestic differences to make any addition to such recitals pleasant to either of us. You know us both thoroughly, besides, and can have no difficulty in filling up the debate which ensued. Enough that I say Mrs. D. was more than usually herself. She was grandly eloquent on the prospect of the great alliance; contemptuously indifferent about the petty sacrifice it was to cost us; caustically criticised the narrow-mindedness by which I measured such grandeur; winding up all with the stereotyped comparison between Dodds and M'Carthys, with which she usually concludes an engagement, just as they play "God save the Queen" at Vauxhall to show that the fireworks are over.
"And now," said I, "that we have got over preliminaries, when is this marriage to come off?"
"Ask the Pope when he'll sign the Bull," said she, tartly.
"Do you know," said I, "I think the 'Bull is a mistake'?" but she did n't take the joke, and I went on. "After that, what delays are there?"
"I suppose the settlement will take some time. You 'll have to make suitable provision for James, to give him a handsome allowance out of the estate."
"Egad, Mrs. D.," said I, "it must be out of it with a vengeance, for there's no man living will advance five hundred upon it."
"And who wants them?" said she, angrily. "You know what I mean, well enough!"
"Upon my conscience, ma'am, I do not," said I. "You must just take pity on my stupidity and enlighten me."
"Isn't it clear, Mr. D.," said she, "that when marrying a woman with a large fortune he ought to have something himself?"
"It would be better he had; no doubt of it!"
"And if he has n't? if what should have come to him was squandered and made away with by a life of – No matter, I'll restrain my feelings."
"Don't, then," said I, "for I find that mine would like a little expansion."
It took her five minutes, and a hard struggle besides, before she could resume. She had, so to say, "taken off the gloves," Tom, and it went hard with her not to have a few "rounds" for her pains. By degrees, however, she calmed down to explain that by a settlement on James she never contemplated actual value, but an inconvertible medium, a mere parchmentary figment to represent lands and tenements, – just, in fact, what we had done before, and with such memorable success, in Mary Anne's case.
"No," said I, aloud, and at once, – "no more of that humbug! You got me into that mess before I knew where I was. You involved me in such a maze of embarrassments that I was glad to take any, even a bad road, to get away from them. But you 'll not catch me in the same scrape again; and rather than deliberately sit down to sign, seal, and deliver myself a swindler, James must die a bachelor, that's all!"
If I had told her, Tom, that I was going into holy orders, and intended to be Bishop of Madagascar, she could not have stared at me with more surprise.
"What's come over you?" said she, at last; "what 's the meaning of all these elegant fine sentiments and scruples? Are you going to die, Mr. D.? Is it making your soul you are?"
"However unmannerly the confession, Mrs. D.," said I, "I 'm afraid I 'm not going to die; but the simple truth is that I can't be a rogue in cold blood; maybe, if I had the luck to be born a M'Carthy, I might have had better ideas on the subject." This was a poke at Morgan James M'Carthy that was transported for altering a will.
She could n't speak with passion; she was struck dumb with rage, and so, finding the enemy's artillery spiked, I opened a brisk fire at musket-range; in other words, I told her that all we had been hitherto doing abroad rarely went beyond making ourselves ridiculous, but that, though I liked fun, I could n't push a joke as far as a felony. And, finally, I declared, in a loud and very unmistakable manner, that as I had n't a sixpence to settle on James, I 'd not go through the mockery of engrossing a lie on parchment; that I thought very meanly of the whole farce we were carrying on; and that if I was only sure I could make myself intelligible in my French, I 'd just go straight to the Countess and say, – I 'm afraid to write the words as I spoke them, lest my spelling should be even worse than my pronunciation, for they were in French, but the meaning was, – "I 'm no more a Prince than I 'm Primate of Ireland. I 'm a small country gentleman, with an embarrassed estate and a rascally tenantry. I came abroad for economy, and it has almost ruined me. If you like my son, there he is for you; but don't flatter yourself that we possess either nobility or fortune."
"You 've done it now, you old – ." The epithet was lost in a scream, Tom, for she went off in strong hysterics; so I just rang the bell for Mary Anne, and slipped quietly away to my own room. I trust it is a good conscience does it for me, but I find that I can almost always sleep soundly when I go to bed; and it is a great blessing, Tom, – for let me tell you, that after five or six and fifty, one's waking hours have more annoyances than pleasures about them; but the world is just like a man's mistress: he cares most for it when it is least fond of him!
I slept like a humming-top, and, indeed, there 's no saying when I should have awoke, if it had n't been for the knocking they kept up at my door.
It was Cary at last got admittance, and I had only to look in her face to see that a misfortune had befallen us.
"What is it, my dear?" said I.
"All kinds of worry and confusion, pappy," said she, taking my hand in both of hers. "The Countess is gone."
"Gone? – how? – where?"
"Gone. Started this morning, – indeed, before daybreak, – I believe for Genoa; but there 's no knowing, for the people have been evidently bribed to secrecy."
"What for? – with what object?"
"The short of the matter is this, pappy. She appears to have overheard some conversation – evidently intended to be of a private nature – that passed between you and mamma last night. How she understood it does not appear, for, of course, you did n't talk French."
"Let that pass. Proceed."
"Whatever it was that she gathered, or fancied she gathered, one thing is certain: she immediately summoned her maid, and gave orders to pack up; post-horses were also ordered, but all with the greatest secrecy. Meanwhile she indited a short note to Mary Anne, in which, after apologizing for a very unceremonious departure, she refers her to you and to mamma for the explanation, with a half-sarcastic remark 'that family confidences had much better be conducted in a measured tone of voice, and confined to the vernacular of the speakers.' With a very formal adieu to James, whom she styles 'votre estimable frère,' the letter concludes with an assurance of deep and sincere consideration on the part of Josephine de St. A."
"What does all this mean?" exclaimed I, with a terrible misgiving, Tom, that I knew only too well how the mischief originated.
"That is exactly what I want you to explain, pappy," said she, "for the letter distinctly refers to something within your knowledge."
"I must see the document itself," said I, cautiously; "fetch me the letter."
"James carried it off with him."
"Off with him, – why, is he gone too?"
"Yes, pappy, he started with post-horses after her, – at least, so far as he could make out the road she travelled. Poor fellow! he seemed almost out of his mind when he left this."
"And your mother, how is she?"
Cary shook her head mournfully.
Ah, Tom, I needed but the gesture to show me what was in store for me. My fertile imagination daguerreotyped a great family picture, in which I was shortly to fill a most lamentable part. My prophetic soul – as a novelist would call it – depicted me once more in the dock, arraigned for the ruin of my children, the wreck of their prospects, and the downfall of the Dodds. I fancied that even Cary would turn against me, and almost thought I could hear her muttering, "Ah, it was papa did it all!"
While I was thus communing with myself, I received a message from Mrs. D. that she wished to see me. I take shame to myself for the confession, Tom, but I own that I felt it like an order to come up for sentence. There could be no longer any question of my guilt, – my trial was over; there remained nothing but to hear the last words of the law, which seemed to say, "Kenny Dodd, you have been convicted of a great offence. By your blundering stupidity – your unbridled temper, and your gratuitous folly – you have destroyed your son's chance of worldly fortune, blasted his affections, and – and lost him four thousand a year. But your iniquity does not end even here. You have also – " As I reached this, the door opened, and Mrs. D., in her "buff coat," as I used to call a certain flannel dressing-gown that she usually donned for battle, slowly entered, followed by Mary Anne, with a whole pharmacopoeia of restoratives, – an "ambulance" that plainly predicted hot work before us. Resolving that our duel should have no witnesses, I turned the girls out of the room, and for the same reason do I preserve a rigid secrecy as to all the details of our engagement; enough when I say that the sun went down upon our wrath, and it was near nightfall when we drew off our forces. Though I fought vigorously, and with the courage of despair, I couldn't get over the fact that it was my unhappy explosion in French that did all the mischief. I tried hard to make it appear that her sudden departure was rather a boon than otherwise; that our expenses were terrific, and, moreover, that, as I was determined against any fictitious settlement, her flight had only anticipated a certain catastrophe; but all these devices availed me little against my real culpability, which no casuistry could get over.
"Well, ma'am," said I, at last, "one thing is quite clear, – the Continent does not suit us. All our experience of foreign life and manners neither guides us in difficulty nor warns us when in danger. Let us go back to where we are, at least, as wise as our neighbors, – where we are familiar with the customs, and where, whatever our shortcomings, we meet with the indulgent judgment that comes of old acquaintance."
"Where 's that?" said she. "I 'm curious to know where is this elegant garden of paradise?"
"Bruff, ma'am, – our own neighborhood."
"Where we were always in hot water with every one. Were you ever out of a squabble on the Bench or at the poorhouse? Were n't you always disputing about land with the tenants, and about water with the miller? Had n't you a row at every assizes, and a skirmish at every road session? Bruff, indeed; it's a new thing to hear it called the Happy Valley!"
"Faith, I know I 'm not Rasselas," said I.
"You're restless enough," said she, mistaking the word; "but it's your own temper that does it. No, Mr. D., if you want to go back to Ireland, I won't be selfish enough to oppose it; but as for myself, I 'll never set a foot in it."
"You are determined on that?" said I.
"I am," said she.
"In that case, ma'am," said I, "I 'm only losing valuable time waiting for you to change your mind; so I 'll start at once."
"A pleasant journey to you, Mr. D.," said she, flouncing out of the room, and leaving me the field of battle, but scarcely the victory. Now, Tom, I 've too much to do and to think about to discuss the point that I know you 're eager for, – which of us was more in the wrong. Such debates are only casuistry from beginning to end. Besides, at all events, my mind is made up. I 'll go back at once. The little there ever was of anything good about me is fast oozing away in this life of empty parade and vanity. Mary Anne and James are both the worse of it; who knows how long Cary will resist its evil influence? I'll go down to Genoa, and take the Peninsular steamer straight for Southampton. I 'm a bad sailor, but it will save me a few pounds, and some patience besides, in escaping the lying and cheating scoundrels I should meet in a land journey.
To any of the neighbors, you may say that I 'm coming home for a few weeks to look after the tenants; and to any whom you think would believe it, just hint that the Government has sent for me.
I conclude that I 'll be very short of cash when I reach Genoa, so send me anything you can lay hands on, and believe me,
Ever yours faithfully,
Kenny James Dodd.
P. S. I told you this was a cheap place. The bill has just come up, and it beats the "Clarendon"! It appears that his Serene Highness told them to treat us like princes, and we must pay in the same style. I'm going to settle' part of our debt by parting with our travelling-carriage, which, besides assisting the exchequer, will be a great shock to Mrs. D., and a foretaste of what she has to come down to when I 'm gone. It is seldom that a man can combine the double excellence of a great financier and a great moralist!
