The Dodd Family Abroad Volume Ii Part 13

I had n't more than time to put my cap straight on my head, when I heard them on the stairs; and then, with a loud bang of the folding-doors, the landlord himself ushered them into the room. She was leaning on James's arm, but the minute she saw me, she rushed forward and kissed my hand!

I never was so ashamed in my life, Molly. It was making me out such a great personage at once, that I thought I 'd have fainted at the very notion. As to Mary Anne, they were in each other's arms in a second, and kissed a dozen times. Cary, however, with a coldness that I'll never forgive her for, just shook hands with her, and then turned to embrace James a second time.

While Mary Anne was taking off her shawl and her bonnet, I saw that she was looking anxiously about the room.

"What is it?" said I to Mary Anne,--"what does she want?" "She's asking where's the Prince; she means papa," whispered Mary Anne to me; and then, in a flash, I saw the way James represented us. "Tell her, my dear," said I, "that the Prince was n't very well, and has gone to bed."

But she was too much engaged with us all to ask more about him, and we all sat down to tea, the happiest party ever you looked at. I had time now to look at her; and really, Molly, I must allow, she was the handsomest creature I ever beheld. She was a kind of a Spanish beauty, brown, and with jet-black eyes and hair, but a little vermilion on her cheeks, and eyelashes that threw a shadow over the upper part of her face. As to her teeth, when she smiled,--I thought Mary Anne's good, but they were nothing in comparison. When she caught me looking at her, she seemed to guess what was pa.s.sing in my mind, for she stooped down and kissed my hand twice or thrice with rapture.

It was a great loss to me, as you may suppose, that I could n't speak to her, nor understand what she said to me; but I saw that Mary Anne was charmed with her, and even Cary--cold and distant as she was at first--seemed very much taken with her afterwards.

When tea was over, James sat down beside me, and told me everything.

"If the governor will only behave handsomely for a week or two," said he,--"I ask no more,--that lovely creature and four thousand a year are all my own." He went on to show me that we ought to live in a certain style--not looking too narrowly into the cost of it--while she was with us. "She can't stay after the fourteenth," said he, "for her uncle the Cardinal is to be at Pisa that day, and she must be there to meet him; so that, after all, it's only three weeks I 'm asking for, and a couple of hundred pounds will do it all. As for me," said he, "I'm regularly aground,--haven't a ten-pound note remaining, and had to sell my 'drag'

and my four grays at Milan, to get money to come on here."

He then informed me that her saddle-horses would arrive in a day or two, and that we should immediately provide others, to enable him and the girls to ride out with her. "She is used to every imaginable luxury,"

said he, "and has no conception that want of means could be the impediment to having anything one wished for."

I promised him to do my best with his father, Molly: but you may guess what a task that was; for, say what I could, the only remark I could get out of him was, "It's very strange that he never went to London."

After all, Molly, I might have spared myself all my fatigue and all my labor, if I had only had the common-sense to remember what he was,--what he is,--ay, and what he will be--to the end of the chapter. He was n't well in the room with her the next morning, when I saw the old fool looking as soft and as sheepish at her as if he was making love himself.

I own to you, Molly, I think she encouraged it. She had that French way with her, that seems to say, "Look as long as you like, and I don't mind it;" and so he did,--and even after breakfast I caught him peeping under the "Times" at her foot, which, I must say, was beautifully shaped and small; not but that the shoe had a great deal to say to it.

"I hope you 're pleased, Mr. Dodd?" said I, as I pa.s.sed behind his chair.

"Yes," said he; "the funds is rising."

"I mean with the prospect," said I.

"Yes," said he; "we 'll be all looking up presently."

"Better than looking down," said I, "you old fool!"

I could n't help it, Molly, if it was to have spoiled everything,--the words would come out.

He got very red in the face, Molly, but said nothing, and so I left him to his own reflections. And it is what I'm now going to do with yourself, seeing that I 've come to the end of all my news, and carefully jotted down everything that has occurred here for your benefit. Four days have now pa.s.sed over, and they don't seem like as many hours, though the place itself has not got many amus.e.m.e.nts.

The young people ride out every morning on horseback, and rarely come back until time to dress for dinner. Then we all meet; and I must say a more elegant display I never witnessed! The table covered with plate, and beautiful colored gla.s.s globes filled with flowers. The girls in full dress,--for the Countess comes down as if she was going to a Court, and wears diamond combs in her head, and a brooch of the same, as large as a cheese-plate. I too do my best to make a suitable appearance,--in crimson velvet and a spangled turban, with a deep fall of gold fringe,--and, except the "Prince,"--as we call K. I.,--we are all fit to receive the Emperor of Russia. In the evening we have music and a game of cards, except on the opera nights, which we never miss; and then, with a nice warm supper at twelve o'clock, Molly, we close as pleasant a day as you could wish. Of course I can't tell you much more about the Countess, for I 'm unable to talk to her, but she and Mary Anne are never asunder; and, though Cary still plays cold and retired, she can't help calling her a lovely creature.

It seems there is some new difficulty about the dispensation; and the Cardinal requires her to do "some meritorious works," I think they call them, before he 'll ask for it. But if ever there was a saintly young creature, it is herself; and I hear she's up at five o'clock every morning just to attend first ma.s.s.

Here they are now, coming up the stairs, and I have n't more than time to seal this, and write myself

Your attached friend,

Jemima Dodd.

Mary Anne begs you will tell Kitty Doolan that she has not been able to write to her, with all the occupation she has lately had, but will take the very first moment to send her at least a few lines. As James's good luck will soon be no secret, you may tell it to Kitty, and I think it won't be thrown away on her, as I suspect she was making eyes at him herself, though she might be his mother!

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 a.s.surance 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 cla.s.s. 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 pa.s.sed 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 n.o.bility. 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 horsemans.h.i.+p; 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 amus.e.m.e.nts 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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: 176]

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 cus.h.i.+on on the floor, dressed in Turkish fas.h.i.+on, 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 a.s.sured 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 chre_, 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 emanc.i.p.ation 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 partic.i.p.ation 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 succ.u.mb 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 s.e.x 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 ill.u.s.trations; 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 Lamoricire, 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 inst.i.tution of marriage has wrought in the world,--the fond hearts broken, the n.o.ble 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 circ.u.mstances 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,:--ill.u.s.trious 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.