Part 47
P. S. I find now that this town is not in Switzerland, but in Baden, for the police have been here to know "who we are?" and "why we have come?"--two questions that would take longer to answer than they suspect. How absurd these little bits of national prejudice sound, when the symbol of nationality is only a blue post or a white one, and no geographical limit announces a new country. Droll enough, too, they are most importunate in their inquiries after James; as if the appearance of his name in the passport requires that he should be forthcoming when asked for. Ah, Tom! if the fellows that knocked old Europe about in '48 had resolutely set their faces against these stumbling-blocks to civilization--passports, police spies, town dues, and gate imposts,--they 'd have won the sympathy of millions, who do not care a rush about Universal Suffrage and the Liberty of the Press,--and, what is more, the concessions could never have been revoked nor recalled!
To myself, individually, the system presents few annoyances; for I sit serene behind my ignorance of all continental languages, and say to myself, "Touch me if you dare." Maybe they half suspect the substance of my meditations, for they show the greatest deference towards my condition of passive resistance. The Brigadier has just bowed himself out of the room, with what sounded like a hearty curse, but what Mary Anne assures me was a sincere protestation of his sentiment of "high consideration and esteem." And now to dinner.
LETTER XLI. MARY ANNE DODD TO MISS DOOLAN, OF BALLYDOOLAN
Constance on the Lake.
Dearest Kitty,--With what rapture do I once more throw myself into the arms of your affection! How devotedly do I seek the sanctuary of my dearest Kitty's heart! It is all over, my sweet friend,--all over! I see you start,--your cheek is bloodless, and your lips tremble,--but reassure yourself, Kitty, and hear me. If there be anything against which I am weak and powerless,--if there be aught in life to oppose which I have neither strength nor energy,--it is the reproach of one I love! Already do I stand accused before you, even now have you arraigned me, and my condemnation is trembling on your lips. Avow it,--own it, dear girl. Your heart, at least, has said the words of my sentence: "All over! so then Mary Anne has jilted him,--changed her mind in the last hour,--trifled with his affections, and made a sport of his feelings." Yes, such is the charge against me; and, trembling as I stand before you, I syllable the word "Guilty." "Guilty, but with extenuating circumstances." Be calm then, be patient; and, above all, be merciful, while I plead before you.
I deny nothing, I evade nothing. I cannot even pretend that my altered feelings originated in any long process of reason or reflection. I will not affect to say that I struggled against conflicting doubts, and only yielded when powerless to resist them. No, dearest, I am above every such shallow artifice; and I own that it was on the very morning your letter arrived--at the moment when my hot tears were falling over the characters traced by your hand--as, enraptured, I kissed the lines that breathed your love--then there suddenly broke upon me a light illumining the dark horizon around me. Space became peopled with forms and images, voices and warnings floated around and above me, and as I read your words--"If, then, your whole heart be his"--I trembled, Kitty, my eyes grew dim, my bosom heaved in agony, and, in my heart-wrung misery, I cried aloud, "Oh, save me from this perfidy,--save me from myself!"
Save that the letter which my fingers grasped convulsively was the offspring of friendship and not of love betrayed, the scene was precisely like that which closes the second act of the "Lucia di Lammermoor." Mamma, the Baron, James, even to the priest, all were there; and, like Lucia, dressed in my bridal robe, the orange-flowers in my hair, and such a love of a Brussels veil fastened mantilla-wise to the back of the head, I stood pale, trembling, and conscience-stricken! the awful words of your question ringing in my ears, like the voice of an angel come to call me to judgment, "'If your whole heart be his!' But it is not," cried I, aloud,--"it is not, it never can be!" I know not in what wild rhapsody my emotions found utterance. I have no memory of that gushing cataract in which overwrought feelings found their channel. I spoke in that rapt enthusiasm in which, as we are told, the ancient priestesses delivered their dream-revealings, for I, too, was as one inspired, as agony alone can inspire. Of myself I know nothing, but I have since heard that the scene was harrowing to a degree that no words can convey. The Baron, mounted on his fastest courser, fled into the woods; James, spirited on by some imagined sense of injury, thirsting for a vengeance on he knew not what or whom, pursued him; mamma was seized with frantic screaming; and even papa himself, whose lethargic humor stands him like an armor of proof,--even he swore and imprecated in a manner that called forth a most impressive rebuke from the chaplain.
[Illustration: 541]
The scene changes,--we are away! The castle and its deep woods grow dim behind us; the wild mountains of the Schwartz Wald rise before and around us. The dark pines wave their stately tops, the wood-pigeon cries his plaintive note; rocky glen and rugged precipice, foaming waterfalls and wooded slopes, pass swiftly by, and on we hasten,--on and on; but, with all our speed, dark, brood-ing care can still outstrip us, and sorrow follows faster than the wind.
We arrived at Constance by midnight, when I soon betook me to bed, and cried myself to sleep. Sweet--sweet tears were they, flowing like the crystal drops from the margin of an overcharged fountain; for such was the heart of your afflicted Mary Anne.
It is not by any casuistry about the injustice I should have done, had I bestowed a moiety where I had promised a whole heart. It is not by any pretence that I felt this to be an unworthy artifice, that I now appeal to your merciful consideration. It is simply as one suddenly awakened to the terrible conviction that she cannot be loved as she is capable of loving; or, in other words, that she despairs of ever inspiring that passion which alone could requite her for the agony of love. Oh, Kitty, it is an agony, and such a one as no torture of human wickedness ever equalled. May you never feel it in that intensity of suffering which is alike its ecstasy and its woe!
Do not reproach me, Kitty; my heart has already done so, bitterly,--terribly! Again and again have I asked myself, "Who and what are you, that dare to reject rank, wealth, station, glorious lineage, and a noble name? If these and the most devoted love cannot move you, what are the ambitions that rise before you?" Over and over do I interrogate myself thus, and yet the only reply is, a heart-heaved sigh,--the spirit-wrung voice of inward suffering! You, dearest, who know your friend, will not accuse her of exaggerated or overwrought vanity. None so well as you are aware that these are not my characteristic failings.
An excess of humility may depreciate me, even to the lowliest condition of humble fortune; and if happiness be but there, I will not deem the choice a mean one! You will judge of the sincerity of my words, when I tell you that I have just been unpacking all my things, and putting them away in drawers and wardrobes; and oh, Kitty, if you could but see them! Papa was really splendid, and allowed me to order everything I could fancy. Of course his generosity fettered rather than stimulated my extravagance, so that I merely took the absolute _nécessaire_. Of these I may mention two cashmeres and three Brussels scarfs, one a perfect love; twelve morning, eighteen evening dresses, of which one for the altar is covered with Valenciennes, looped up with pearls and brilliants*, the corsage ornamented down the front with a bouquet of the same stones, arranged to represent lilies of the valley, with dewdrops,--a pretty device, and quite simple, to suit the occasion. The presentation robe is actually magnificent, and only needs a diamond _parure_ to be queenly. How I dote, too, on these dear little bonnets! I never weary of trying them on; they sit so coquettishly on the back of the bead, and make one look sly and modest, and gentle and saucy, all at once! In this walk of art the French are incomparably above us. Dress with them observes all the harmony of color and the keeping of a great picture. No lilac bonnets and blue shawls,--no scarlets and pinks alternately killing and marring each other,--none of that false heraldry of costume by which your Englishwoman displays her vulgar wealth and ill-assorted finery. All is graceful, well toned, and harmonious. Your _mise_ is, so to say, the declaration of your sentiments, just as the signal of a man-of-war proclaims her intention; and how ingenious to think that your stately cashmere suggests homage, your ermined mantle watchful devotion, your muslin peignoir confidence and intimate intercourse.
Now, your "English" must _look_ all these to be intelligible, and constantly converts herself into a great staring, ogling, leering machine, very shocking to contemplate.
I need scarcely remark to you, dearest, that the step I have just taken has made my position in the family like that of the young lady who refused Louis Napoleon before Europe. Our situations, if you come to consider them, are wonderfully alike; and there are extraordinary points of resemblance between the gentlemen, to which I cannot at present more fully allude. The ungenerous observations and slighting allusions to which I am exposed would actually wring your heart. Even James remarked that the whole affair reminded him of Joe Hudson, who, after accepting an Indian appointment, refused to sail when he had obtained the outfit. "Mary Anne only wanted the kit," was the vulgar impertinence by which he closed this piece of flattery; and this was in allusion to the _trousseau!_ Men are so shallow, so meanly minded, Kitty, and, above all, so ungenerous in the measure of our motives. They really think that we value dress for itself, and not as a means to an end,--that end being their own subjection! Mamma, I must say, is truly kind; she regrets, naturally enough you will think, the loss of a great alliance. She had pictured to herself the quartering of the M'Carthys with the house of W------, and ranged in imagination over various remote but ambitious contingencies; but, with true maternal affection, she has effaced all these memories from her heart, only to think of me and of my emotions. I have also been able to supply her with a consolation, no less great than unexpected, in this wise: papa, from one cause or other, had been of late seriously meditating a return to Ireland; I shame to say, Kitty, that he never valued, never understood the Continent; its habits, its ways, and its wines, all disagreed with him; financial reasons, too, influenced him; for somehow, up to this, we have been forced to overlook the claims of economy, and only regard those which refer to the station we are to maintain in society. Now, from all these causes, he had brought himself to think the only safety lay in a speedy retreat! Mamma had ascertained this beyond a doubt by some passages in Mr. Purcell's letters to papa; how obtained I know not. From these she gathered that at any moment he was capable of abandoning the campaign, and embarking the whole army! The misery such a course would entail upon us I have no need to enlarge upon; nor could I, if I tried, find words to depict the condition of suffering that would be ours if again domesticated in that dreadful island. Forgive me, dearest, if I wound one susceptibility of your tender heart,--I would not ruffle even a rose-leaf of your gentle nature; but I cannot refrain from saying that Ireland is very dreadful! Philosophers affect to tell us, Kitty, that from the chemical properties of meteoric stones we can predicate the nature of the planets from which they have fallen, and the most ingenious theories as to the structure, size, and conformation of their bodies are built upon such slender materials. Now, would it be too wide a stretch of ingenuity to apply this theory to home affairs, and argue, from the specimen one sees of the dear country, what must be the land that has reared them? And oh, Kitty, if so, what a sentence we should be condemned to pass!
But to the consolation of which I spoke, and which in this diversion I was nigh forgetting. Papa, as I mentioned, was bent on going home; and now these costly preparations of wedding finery offer the means of opposing him, for of what use could they possibly be at Dodsborough, Kitty? To what end that enormous outlay, if brought back to the regions of Bruff? Here is an expensive armament,--all the _matériel_ of a campaign provided; who would counsel the consigning it to rust and decay? who would advise giving over to moths what might be made the adornment of some brilliant capital? Whether we consider the question morally, financially, or strategically, we arrive at the same conclusion. Such a display as this, if exhibited at home, would revolutionize the whole neighborhood, disgust them with home-grown gowns and bonnets, and lead to irrepressible extravagance, debt, and ruin. So far for moral considerations. Financially, the cost is incurred, and it only remains to make the outlay profitable; this, it is needless to say, cannot be done at Dodsborough. And now for the strategy, the tactical part, Kitty. We all know that whenever a marriage is broken off, scandal seizes the occasion for any reports she likes to circulate, and the good-natured world always agrees in condemning "the lady." If her character or conduct be unimpeachable, then they make searches as to her temper. She was a termagant that ruled her whole family, scolded her sisters, bullied her brothers, and was the terror of everyone. If this indictment cannot be sustained, they find a flaw in her fortune; her twenty thousand was "only ten;" ten, Irish currency; perhaps on an Irish mortgage of an Irish property, mayhap charged with Heaven knows what of annuities to Irish relations! Now, Kitty, it is essential to avoid every one of these evil imputations, and I have supplied mamma with so good a brief in the cause, so carefully drawn up, and so well argued, that I don't think papa will let the case go to a jury, or, in other words, that he will give in his submission at once. I have much more to tell you, and will write again to-morrow.
Ever yours in affection,
Mary Anne Dodd.
LETTER XLII. MARY ANNE DODD TO MISS DOOLAN, OF BALLYDOOLAN
Lake of Constance
My dearest Kittt,--True to my pledge, I sit down to continue the revelations, the first volume of which is already before you; and as I left off in a chapter of _désagréables_, let me finish the theme ere I proceed to pleasanter paths and greener pastures.
Betty Cobb has gone and taken to herself a husband; and such a husband as really I did not fancy could be found nearer us than the Waterkloof, if that be the correct spelling of the pleasant locality in Kaffirland where some of the something--Fifth or Eighth--are always getting surprised and cut to pieces. The creature is a swineherd,--one of those dreadful semi-savages that Germany rears out of respect to its ancient traditions about wood demons and kobolds. So terrific an object I never beheld, and his "get up," as James would call it, equals his natural advantages.
You may remember the wretches who are thrusting the page into the furnace in Retsch's illustrations of Schiller's poem, "Der Gang auf den Eisenhammer,"--one of these is a flattering likeness of him. Betty, however, whose taste in manly beauty is not formed on the Antinous model, believes him to be perfection. At all events, no promise of double wages, presents, or other seductions could warp her allegiance from this seductive object; and as mamma suddenly discovered that she was quite indispensable to her, the consequence is that we have to accept the company and companionship of the graceful "Taddy," who is now part of our legation as a swineherd unattached. You must know, Kitty, that these worthy people, who are brought up from infancy to regard pigs as the most important part of the creation, are impressed with a profound contempt for the human species; that all their habits are imbued with swinish tastes, modes, and prejudices,--that they love to live in woods, sleep on the ground, and grunt their sentiments, when they have any. Whether these be the characteristics of conjugalism, or the features which, as the book says, "make home happy," time and Betty alone can tell. I must say that fear and disgust are, for the present, the impressions his appearance suggests to me; but Betty is clearly of a different mind.
Meanwhile, as regards ourselves, he is really a most embarrassing element of the state. He is totally unacquainted with all laws, divine and human, and only sufficiently gifted with speech to convey his commonest wishes; and, from what I can learn, Caspar Hauser was a man of the world in comparison to him. Papa is, of course, frantic at the thought of his pertaining to us,--but what is to be done? Betty has declared that she will follow him to Jericho; by which she means to some fabulous land of unreal geography; and mamma will not part with Betty. To-morrow, or next day, I expect to hear that Taddy protests he can't live without his pigs, and that a legion of swine become part of our travelling equipment. Already has his presence on our staff called for the attention of the authorities, who are, very naturally, curious to know what we mean by such a functionary. Papa, on his side, thinks it part of an Englishman's birthright to resist, oppose, and torment the police; and, of course, will give no information whatever as to why he is here, but avows his determination to retain him in his service just on that account.
These complications--to give them a mild name--have so absorbed me that I have forgotten to tell you about our present place of sojourn. The Lake of Constance sounds pretty, dearest. It seems to address itself at once to our sense of the beautiful, and our moral attachment to the true. As we approached it, I looked eagerly from the carriage, at each turning of the mountain road, for some glimpses of the scenery; but night fell suddenly, and closed all in darkness. Early on the following morning I arose, and taking Augustine with my sketch-book, hurried down to the border of the lake; for our most quaint and ancient "hostelry" stands in the very centre of the town, and fully fifteen minutes' walk from the water. We reached it suddenly, on turning the angle of a narrow lane, and came out upon a small stone pier projecting into the water, and this was the lake,--the Lake of Constance! Only think, Kitty, of a great wide expanse of bleak water, with low shores; no glaciers, no Alps, no sublimity! I could have cried with disappointment The custom-house people--very nice-looking men, with a becoming uniform of green and gold--assured me that at the upper end of the lake I should see the mountains of the Vorarlberg, and also the range of the Swiss Alps, and have abundant material for my pencil. Meanwhile they made an old boatman sit while I sketched him; he was mending his net, and with his long blue nightcap, and scarf of the same color, his snow-white beard, and fine Rembrandt color, he really made a charming study. The chief officer of the customs--a remarkably handsome man, with the very blackest moustaches--was in downright enthusiasm at the success of my little sketch; and really, as it was utterly valueless, I could not resist Augustine's entreaty to tear it out of my book and give it to him.
[Illustration: 1a024]
You can't think, Kitty' with what a graceful mixture of gratitude and dignity he accepted my worthless present. He might, so far as breeding went, have been a captain of hussars. He accompanied us all the way back to the hotel, having previously placed his boat and his boat's crew at my disposal during our stay here. Ah, Kitty, what a charm there is in the amiable tone of foreigners! How striking the contrast between their cultivated politeness and the rude barbarism of our own people! Fancy for a moment what is our home notion of a custom-house official!--a shabby genteel individual, with a week's beard and a brandy-and-water eye, that pokes into your trunk after French gloves, and searches your brother's pocket for cheroots. Imagine _him_ beside one of these magnificently dressed and really splendid-looking men, with all the air of an aide-de-camp to the Queen! How naturally we are led to estimate the style in which people live by the dress and appointment of their household; and should we not pass a similar judgment on states, and argue, from the appropriate costume of the functionaries, to their own completeness and perfection of system?
I said nothing to mamma of our newly made acquaintance; for as I entered the inn I learned that James and another gentleman had just arrived, but so tired and fatigued that they both had given orders that they should not be disturbed on any account. You may be sure, Kitty, I was intensely curious to know who the stranger was; but all my inquiries were only so many additional provocatives to my eagerness, without any satisfaction! I learned, indeed, that he was young, handsome, tall, and spoke French and German fluently; so much so, indeed, that the waiter hesitated whether to call him English or not! James and his fellow-traveller had arrived by the diligence from Schaffhausen, so that there was really nothing by which we could catch a clew to his friend; and I was left to my patience and my conjectures till breakfast time.