The Dodd Family Abroad Volume I Part 23

"I think, however," said she, after a pause, "if you confided the matter to _my_ management, if you leave _me_ to explain to Mrs. Dodd, I shall be able, without revealing more than I wish, to satisfy her as to the object of our journey."

I heartily a.s.sented to an arrangement so agreeable; I even promised not to see Mrs. D. before we started, lest any unfortunate combination of circ.u.mstances might interfere with our project.

The pecuniary embarra.s.sment I communicated to Lord George. He quite agreed with me that I could n't possibly allude to it to Mrs. G. "In all likelihood," said he, "she will just hand you a book of blank checks, or Herries's circulars, and say, 'Pray do me the favor to take the trouble off my hands.' It is what she usually does with any of her friends with whom she is sufficiently intimate; for, as I told you, she is a 'perfect child about money.'" I might have told him that, so far as having very little of it, so was I too.

"But supposing," said I, "that, in the bustle of departure, and in the preoccupation of other thoughts, she should n't remember to do this; such is likely enough, you know?"

"Oh, nothing more so," said he, laughing. "She is the most absent creature in the world."

"In that case," said I, "one ought to be, in a measure, prepared."

"To a certain extent, a.s.suredly," said he, coolly. "You might as well take something with you,--a hundred pounds or so."

You can imagine the choking gulp in my throat as I heard these words.

Why, I had n't twenty--no, not ten; I doubt, greatly, if I had fully five pounds in my possession. I was living in the daily hope of that remittance from you, which, by the way, seems always tardier in coming in proportion as Ireland grows more prosperous.

Tiverton, however, does not limit his services to good counsel; he can act as well as think. For a bill of three thousand francs, at thirty-one days, I received, from the landlord of the hotel, something short of a hundred Napoleons,--a trifle under six hundred per cent per annum, but, of course, not meant to run for that time. Lord George said, "Everything considered, it was reasonable enough;" and if that implied that I 'd never repay a farthing of it, perhaps he was correct. "I 'm sorry,"

said he, "that the 'bit of stiff,'" meaning the bill, "was n't for five thousand francs, for I want a trifle of cash myself, at this moment." In this regret I did not share, Tom, for I clearly saw that the additional eighty pounds would have been out of _my_ pocket!

I have now, as briefly as I am able, but, perhaps, tediously enough, told you of all the preliminary arrangements of our journey, save one, which was three lines that I left for Mrs. D. before starting,--not very explanatory, perhaps, but written in "great haste."

It was a splendid morning when we started. The sun was just topping the Drachenfels, and sending a perfect flood of golden glory over the Rhine, and that rich tract of yellow corn country along its left bank, the right being still in deep shadow. From the Kreutzberg to the Seven Mountains it was one gorgeous panorama, with mountain and crag, and ruined castles, vine-clad cliffs, and plains of waving wheat, all seen in the calm splendor of a still summer's morning.

I never saw anything as beautiful; perhaps I never shall again. Of my rapturous enjoyment of the scene, as we whirled along with four posters at a gallop, the best criterion I can give you is that I totally forgot everything but the enchanting vision around me. Ireland, home, Dodsborough, petty sessions, police and poor-rates, county cess, Chancery, all my difficulties, down even to Mrs. D. herself, faded away, and left me in undisturbed and unbounded enjoyment.

I have often had to tell you of my disappointment with the Continent; how little it responded to my previous expectations, and how short came every trait of nationality of that striking effect I had once foreshadowed. The distinctive features of race, from which I had antic.i.p.ated so much amus.e.m.e.nt, all the peculiarities of dress, custom, and manner which I had speculated on as sources of interest, had either no existence whatever, or demanded a far shrewder and nicer observation than mine to detect. These have I more than once complained of to you in my letters; and I was fast lapsing into the deep conviction that, except in being the rear-guard of civilization, and adhering to habits which have long since been superseded by improved and better modes with us, the Continent differs wonderfully little from England.

The reason of this impression was manifestly because I was always in intercourse with foreigners who live and trade upon English travellers, who make a livelihood of ministering to John Bull's national leanings in dress, cookery, and furniture; and who, so to say, get up a kind of artificial England abroad, where the Englishman is painfully reminded of all the comforts he has left behind him, without one single opportunity for remembering the compensations he is receiving in return. To this cause is attributable, mainly, the vulgar impression conveyed by a first glance at the Continent It is a bad travesty of a homely original.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 304]

What a sudden change came over me now, as we swept along through this enchanting country, where every sight and every sound were novel and interesting! The little villages, almost escarped from the tall precipice that skirted the river, were often of Roman origin; old towers of brick, and battlemented walls, displaying the S. P. Q. R.,--those wonderful letters which, from school days to old age, call up such conceptions of this mighty people. A great wagon would draw aside to let us pa.s.s; and its giant oxen, with their ma.s.sive beams of timber on their necks, remind one of the old pictures in some ill.u.s.trated edition of the "Georgics." The splash of oars, and the loud shouts of men, turn your eyes to the Rhine, and it is a raft, whole acres of timber, slowly floating along, the evidence of some primeval pine forest hundreds of miles away, where the night winds used to sigh in the days of the Csars. And now every head is bare, and every knee is bowed, for a procession moves past, on its way to some holy shrine, the zigzag path to which, up the mountain, is traceable by the white line of peasant girls, whose voices are floating down in mellow chorus. Oh, Tom!

the whole scene was full of enchantment, and didn't require the consciousness that would haunt me to make it a vision of perfect enjoyment. You ask what was that same consciousness I allude to? Neither more nor less, my dear friend, than the little whisper within me, that said, "Kenny Dodd, where are you going, and for what? Is it Mrs. D.

is sitting beside you? or are you quite sure it's not some other man's wife?"

You 'll say, perhaps, these were rather disturbing reflections, and so they would have been had they ever got that far; but as mere flitting fancies, as pa.s.sing shadows over the mind, they heightened the enjoyment of the moment by some strange and mysterious agency, which I am quite unable to explain, but which, I believe, is referable to the same category as the French d.u.c.h.ess's regret "that iced water was n't a sin, or it would be the greatest delight of existence."

If my conscience had been unmannerly enough to say, "Ain't you doing wrong, Kenny Dodd?" I 'm afraid I 'd have said "Yes," with a chuckle of satisfaction. I'm afraid, my dear Tom, that the human heart, at least in the Irish version, is a very incomprehensible volume.

Let us strive to be good as much as we may, there is a secret sense of pleasure in doing wrong that shows what a hold wickedness has of us.

I believe we flatter ourselves that we are cheating the devil all the while, because we intend to do right at last; but the danger is that the game comes to an end before we suspect, and there we are, "cleaned out,"

and our hand full of trumps.

You'll say, "What has all this to say to the Rhine, or Mrs. Gore Hampton?" Nothing whatever. It only shows that, like the Reflections on a Broomstick, your point of departure bears no relation to the goal of your voyage.

"What's the name of this village, Mr. Dodd?" whispers a soft voice from the deep recesses of the britschka.

"This is Andernach, Madam," said I, opening my "John," for I find there's no doing without him. "It is one of the most ancient cities of the Rhine. It was called by the Romans--"

"Never mind what it was called by the Romans; isn't there a legend about this ancient castle? To be sure there is; pray find it."

And I go on mumbling about Drusus, and Roman camps, and vaulted portals.

"Oh, it's not that," cries she, laughing.

"There are two articles of traffic peculiar to this spot Millstones--"

She puts her hand on my lips here, and I am unable to continue my reading, while she goes on: "I remember the legend now. It was a certain Siegfried, the Count Palatine of the Rhine, who, on his return from the Crusades, was persuaded by slanderous tongues to believe his wife had been faithless to him."

"The wretch!--the Count, I mean."

"So he was. He drove her out a wanderer upon the wide world, and she fled across the Rhine into that mountain country you see yonder, which then, as now, was all impenetrable forest There she pa.s.sed years and years of solitary existence, unknown and friendless. There were no Mr.

Dodds in those days, or, at least, she had not the good fortune to meet with them."

I sigh deeply under the influence of such a glance, Tom, and she resumes,--

"At last, one day, when fatigued with the chase, and separated from his companions, the cruel Count throws himself down to rest beside a fountain; a lovely creature, attired gracefully but strangely in the skins of wild beasts--"

"She did n't kill them herself?" said I, interrupting.

"How absurd you are! Of course she did n't;" and she draws her own ermine mantle across her as she speaks, smoothing the soft fur with her softer hand. "The Count starts to his feet, and recognizes her in a moment, and at the same instant, too, he is so struck by the manifest protection Providence has vouchsafed her, that he listens to her tale of justification, and conducts her in triumph home,--his injured but adored wife. I think, really, people were better formerly than they are now,--more forgiving, or rather, I mean, more open to truth and its generous impulses."

"Faith, I can't say," replied I, pondering; "the skins may have had something to say to it." Here she bursts into such a fit of laughter that I join from sheer sympathy with the sound, but not guessing in the least why or at what.

We soon left Andernach behind us, and rolled along beside the rapid Rhine, on a beautiful road almost level with the river, which now for some miles becomes less bold and picturesque.

At last we arrived at Coblentz to dinner, stopping at a capital inn called the "Giant," after which we strolled through the town to stare at the shops and the quaintly dressed peasant girls, whose embroidered head-gear, a kind of velvet cap worked in gold or silver, so pleased Mrs. G. that we bought three or four of them, as well as several of those curiously wrought silver daggers which they wear stuck through their black hair.

I soon discovered that my fair friend was a "child" about other things besides "money." Jewelry was one of these, and for which she seemed to have the most insatiable desire, combined with a most juvenile indifference as to cost. The country girls wear ma.s.sive gold earrings of the strangest fas.h.i.+on, and nothing would content her but buying several sets of these. Then she took a fancy to their gold chains and rosaries, and, lastly, to their uncouth shoe-buckles, all of which she a.s.sured me would be priceless in a fancy dress.

In fact, my dear Tom, these minor preparations of hers, to resemble a Rhine-land peasant, came to a little over seventeen pounds sterling, and suggested to me, more than once, the secret wish that our excursion had been through Ireland, where the habits of the natives could have been counterfeited at considerably less cost.

As "we were in for it," however, I bore myself as gallantly as might be, and pressed several trifling articles on her acceptance, but she tossed them over contemptuously, and merely said, "Oh, we shall find all these things so much better at Ems. They have such a bazaar there!" an announcement that gave me a cold shudder from head to foot. After taking our coffee, we resumed our journey, Ems being only distant some eleven or twelve miles, and, I must say, a drive of unequalled beauty.

Once more on the road, Mrs. G. became more charming and delightful than ever. The romantic glen, through which we journeyed, suggested much material for conversation, and she was legendary and lyrical, plaintive and merry by turns, now recounting some story of tragic history, now remembering some little incident of modern fas.h.i.+onable life, but all, no matter what the theme, touched with a grace and delicacy quite her own. In a little silence that followed one of these charming sallies, I noticed that she smiled as if at something pa.s.sing in her own thoughts.

"Shall I tell you what I was thinking of?" said she, smiling.

"By all means," said I; "it is a pleasant thought, so pray let me share in it."

"I'm not quite so certain of that," said she. "It is rather puzzling than pleasant. It is simply this: 'Here we are now within a mile of Ems.

It is one of the most gossiping places in Europe. How shall we announce ourselves in the Strangers' List?"

The difficulty had never occurred to me before, Tom; nor indeed, did I very clearly appreciate it even now. I thought that the name of Kenny Dodd would have sufficed for me, and I saw no reason why Mrs. Gore Hampton should not have been satisfied with her own appellation.

"I knew," said she, laughing, "that you never gave this a thought. Isn't that so?" I had to confess that she was quite correct, and she went on: "Adolphus "--this was the familiar for Mr. Gore Hampton--"is so well known that you could n't possibly pa.s.s for him; besides, he is very tall, and wears large moustaches,--the largest, I think, in the Blues."

"That's clean out of the question, then," said I, stroking my smooth chin in utter despair.

"You 're very like Lord Harvey Bruce, could n't you be _him?_"