Part 8

Well, the next day, after Miss R——’s semi-nocturnal visit, when without giving me any particulars, she informed me I was to be set at liberty almost immediately, H—— came up, and was more explicit, for he was in a towering passion, fanning himself with a newspaper that he clutched vindictively. “’Pon my word,” said he, “those abominable papers are too bad! More especially the Somersetshire ones; to read their abusive tirades, one would really suppose, Lady L——, that instead of being surrounded with every comfort, you had been thrown into a dungeon.” “You forget, Mr. H——,” said I, “to the impartial public, who are not _paid_, and have no _interest_ in thinking otherwise, the infringement upon the liberty of the subject in _any_ way, much less in the brutal one of so unwarrantably kidnapping and seizing without judge or jury an inoffensive and defenceless woman, and incarcerating her in a lunatic asylum, is in itself a quite sufficient deed of iniquity—whatever the Sybarite surroundings of the locale may be—to raise a storm of public indignation far more easily evoked than quelled. And you also forget that, take a person nolens volens, and by force, to Buckingham Palace, or to the Tuileries, which is rather more like a palace—and nail down the windows, lock the doors, and put keepers to attend to them, and _presto_! you convert the palace into a prison, and the most terrible of all prisons, a Madhouse.” Finding he could get no sympathy from me, as he might have supposed! he began tapping that bay window of a paunch of his, and said he was so ill with all the uproar that was going on, that he was obliged to take “_shugger_” (sugar) in his tea!!!! which he never did but when he was ill! Having stated this highly interesting and physiological fact, he left the room as abruptly as he had entered it. Now really his coming to _me_ for sympathy and consolation, on the vituperations of the public against him, was almost as fine a piece of logical and inverse justice as Lord DUNDREARY, in _Punch_, saying in a fury to his wife upon getting his brother’s letter, “I tell you what, GEORGINA, if I had known you would have had such a beastht of a brother-in-law as THOM, I would not have married you.” Feeling very sure that Mr. L—— would return to the charge, I sat down and wrote him a letter, ready to be given to him when he came. Oh! if we have a Guardian Angel, why did mine desert his post on that day! of all days? I had nearly finished my letter, when that too odious Miss R—— marched in again informing me she had brought my Son down with her again; then, said I, “you may take him _back_ with you again; but just wait two minutes and my letter will be finished, which I am writing to him, and you can give it to him.” Whereupon this always vulgar, ill-bred, and unwarrantable person, pounces down her skinny, talon-like hand, seizes my letter, and tears it to pieces. I was indignant at such an impertinent outrage, and ordered her to leave the room. She had scarcely done so, before the door again opened, and in walked Mr. L——, while the door was locked on the outside! The next moment he was kneeling and kissing my feet in a paroxysm of tears—I cannot describe the scene that followed, and I would not, if I could. Enough, that at the end of three hours, he still found me _determined_ to seek legal redress, both in the Divorce Court and elsewhere, for the culminating outrage his Father had inflicted upon me. He said he thought his Father would destroy himself, rather than stand the disgrace. I laughed at _that_, and told him not to alarm himself, for that his Father was far too great a coward to die voluntarily, even a coward’s death; he might, indeed, said I, murder either you or me, if he thought he could lay the crime on anyone else, or make it appear that we had committed suicide. And to tell you the truth, I have _no_ compassion for that nice sense of honour which only shrinks from the public odium of exposure, but defies GOD, by never recoiling before the commission of any amount of evil doing that money can conceal, or hypocrisy varnish. “Then, mother,” said he solemnly and sadly,—“every prospect I have in life is ruined, I never _can_ stand the fearful, the horrible exposure of my Father that is inevitable.” Here, he had hit the mark; I leaned back in my chair, irresolute, and he saw it, while he continued kneeling with both my bands in his, and his pale tearful, agonized face, looking up to mine. “But don’t you know, don’t you see, ROBERT, that the _moment_ your Father has cleared this precipice with impunity; then shall I be debarred by ‘condonation’ from my redress, and left more at his mercy (who has none!) than ever.”

“No, no, my own angel darling Mother, then you will bind me to you for ever; he _cannot_, he _dare_ not, after owing his salvation to your generosity—prevent your having me to protect, and be devoted to you all my life, and if anything goes wrong in future, you will always have me to appeal to, and protect you. Oh, Mother! if you could but see into my heart, you would see that I would, that I have given up everything to get to you and to be with you. I know I am not worth it, that is, that I _have_ been far from worth it, but if you could, darling, make this great, great, noble sacrifice for me—your child—never, never, shall you repent it.” After a great deal in the same strain, striking the one chord in my heart that he knew he was _sure_ of, till he had brought it into perfect unison with his own wishes, he had conquered. I threw my arms about his neck and said, “Oh, ROBERT, had you asked me to tear my heart out bodily, and give it naked and unguarded into your keeping, it would not be half such a sacrifice as you require of me.” “I know it, mother darling, I know it;” and then, after a couple of the happiest and perhaps the most foolish hours I ever passed in my life, believing—as I firmly did—that out of such a Slough of Despond I had walked into the warm sheltering Paradise of my child’s heart, who at least _externally_ and in manner was all I could wish, which was in itself a great boon after the coarse, common clay I had so long been used to be knocked and bruised against. When he urged me to go abroad with him, to pass what he called our honeymoon, and to take Miss R——, as he might not be able to get sufficient leave of absence to return with me at the end of three or four months, “Oh! no, not Miss R——,” said I, “she is so very antipathic to me. I’ll give her any sum of money for any exertions she may have made in getting my incarceration made public, but we shall be so happy without her, and she is such a wet blanket, and a dirty wet blanket too.” “Well, that she certainly _is_, and when I first saw her I said to myself, ‘Heavens! _can_ this be a _friend_ of my mother’s?’ But when she told me all you had done for her, I then knew how it was. She seems to have set her heart upon going abroad with us, and after all she’s done, I don’t think we could well refuse her.” “Well, dear,” said I, very much annoyed at this, “you might have let me choose my own evils and not have extended your hospitality to my _bete noire_. But suppose I _do_ yield every point to you, in this way; you know I cannot possibly go abroad, whatever arrangements are made, without appointing one Trustee, and that is more easily said than done, as I know of old the great dislike people have to being brought into contact with your Father; knowing that they have either to abandon my rights, or quarrel with him, which before was what drove me to the _pis aller_ of appointing the do-nothing-goose, Sir THOMAS CULLUM.” After considering a little while, I said: “I have no great faith in public philanthropists, more especially of the Exeter Hall breed; but as he is one of the Commissioners in Lunacy, and knows the whole affair, I wonder if, under the circumstances, as a piece of good Samaritanship, Lord SHAFTESBURY would consent to be my Trustee? for he might be a check upon your Father.” “A very good person,” said he, “I’ll ask him, and let you know to-morrow, darling.” So, it being then seven o’clock, and he having to get back for his Father’s dinner, left me after this most harrowing day; though I then little dreamed of the red-hot ploughshares there were to come, after being kept full three months in a Fool’s Paradise about my son’s love and devotion to me; and when I used to chide him for being so demonstrative, even in public places, and say people would think I was some old woman whom he had married for money, he would say, “Oh, but Mother darling, we are not like ordinary Mother and Son; I love you in every possible way, and then I love you back all the love I’ve not been let to pay you for years; and then you have suffered _so_ much, and borne it so nobly, that you are to me something holy.” At other times he would cry out after hugging me, “Mamma,” as he always called me, “what I worship in you, is, that with a lion’s heart, you are so tender a woman!” All these demonstrations were, of course, music to my ears, and what tended materially to keep me in this Fool’s Paradise, was that there was a girl whom he was much attached to (not an English miss, thank GOD), and whom his vile Father was luring him on to suppose he would give him sufficient money to marry, and when I used to see him looking wretched, and thinking it was about her, he’d burst into tears, and throw himself into my arms, saying, “Oh, no! it’s not that, Mother, for I declare before GOD, if it were to be made a matter of alternative, which I would give up, her or you, I’d give her up to-morrow, if I might always have you with me.” Then, too, a very old and kind benefactor of his, an elderly gentleman, who had shown him much kindness, and whose large means, when ROBERT was a boy, had often atoned for his father’s sordid parsimony, wrote to me, saying, “I can answer for the deep love and yearning, dear, dear ROBERT has always had for his Mother; and oh! how sincerely do I rejoice in his happiness now.” Add to which my maid was always telling me that FLETCHER, ROBERT’S valet, used to say to her, “Oh! how Mr. L—— does adore his Mother. I often surprise him kissing her gloves, and slippers. Poor young gentleman! I never saw a happy face on him till now; he seems like a natural person now, which he never did with his Father, of whom he is mortally afraid.” So you will own that if this was fooling, I was _well_ fooled. But I must return to the horrors. The next day, after the first on which I had seen him, Mr. L—— returned to the lodge, and on coming into the room, said, “Well darling, you owe me a million of kisses, for I have good news for you; SHAFTESBURY consents to being your trustee, so _that’s_ settled.” I thought this exceedingly kind of Lord SHAFTESBURY, as I did not know him personally, and of course wrote to thank him, which note I gave to Mr. L—— to take to town; and, despite the almost universality of English bearishness and ill-breeding, still as anything in the shape of a gentleman or gentlewoman always answers a letter, more especially such a one as I had written, I was surprised at that evening, and the whole of the next day passing without my receiving any reply; and I said to Mr. L——, late on the following day, “Are you _sure_, ROBERT, that my note went to Lord SHAFTESBURY?” “I would not trust it to a servant, so I took it myself.” At this I felt quite satisfied and did not think any more of the matter. The next day the invasion increased; I was quite knocked up, and in bed. That vile fellow, H——, came down to see me. I told Miss R—— to say I could not see him, as I was in bed, and I added to her—though he was acting in my interest, I would not see him if I were not. Indeed, a friend of mine, Mrs. T——, told me, after my return from my trapped going abroad, that hearing —— was engaged, she had driven down to Miss R—— at 12 at night, to tell her, for Heaven’s sake to be on her guard, that that man, of such notoriously infamous character, retained by Sir E——, did not wreck me. But she having so completely done so, in order, as she thought, to play her own game, replied, like the double distilled ass she is, “Oh, —— is all on Lady L——’s side!” “Oh, Miss R——,” said Miss T——, “how can you believe such nonsense as that?”