Volume I Part 3 (1/2)
James got down from the box, and helped to belabor them; it was raining torrents all this time. I got out, too, to help; for one of the beasts, although too tired to go, contrived to kick his leg over the pole, and couldn't get it back again; but the Count contented himself with uttering most unintelligible counsels from the window, which when he saw totally unheeded, he threw himself back in the coach, lighted his meerschaum, and began to smoke.
Imagine the scene at that moment, Tom. The driver was undressing himself coolly on the roadside, to examine a kick he had just received from one of the horses; James was holding the beasts by the head, las.h.i.+ng, as they were, all the time; I was running frantically to and fro, to seek for a stone to drive in the linch-pin, which was all but out; while Mrs. D. and the girls, half suffocated between smoke and pa.s.sion, were screaming and coughing in chorus. By dint of violent bounding and jerking, the wheel was wrenched clean off the axle at last, and down went the whole conveniency on one side, our Polish friend a.s.sisting himself out of the window by stepping over Mrs. D.'s head, as she lay fainting within. I had, however, enough to do without thinking of him, for the door being jammed tight would not open, and I was obliged to pull Mrs. D. and the girls out by the window. The beasts, by the same time, had kicked themselves free of everything but the pole, with which appendage they scampered gayly away towards Brussels; James shouting with laughter, as if it was the best joke he had ever known. When we began to look about us and think what was best to be done, we discovered that the Count had taken a French leave of us, or rather a Polish one; for he had carried off James's cloak and umbrella along with him.
We were now all wet through, our shoes soaked, not a dry st.i.tch on us,--all except the coachee, who, having taken off a considerable portion of his wearables, deposited them in the coach, while he ran up and down the road, wringing his hands, and crying over his misfortune in a condition that I am bound to say was far more pictorial than decent.
It was in vain that Mrs. D. opened her parasol as the last refuge of offended modesty. The wind soon converted it into something like a convolvulus, so that she was fain once more to seek shelter inside the conveyance, which now lay pensively over on one side, against a muddy bank.
Such little accidents as these are not uncommon in our own country; but when they do occur, you are usually within reach of either succor or shelter. There is at least a house or a cabin within hail of you.
Nothing of the kind was there here. This ”Bois de Cambre,” as they call it, is a dense wood of beech or pine trees, intersected here and there by certain straight roads, without a single inhabitant along the line.
A solitary diligence may pa.s.s once in the twenty-four hours, to or from Wvre. A Waterloo tourist party is occasionally seen in spring or summer, but, except these, scarcely a traveller is ever to be met with along this dreary tract These rea.s.suring facts were communicated to us by the coachee, while he made his toilet beside the window.
By great persuasions, much eloquence, French and English, and a Napoleon in gold, our driver at length consented to start on foot for Brussels, whence he was to send us a conveyance to return to the capital. This bargain effected, we settled ourselves down to sleep or to grumble, as fancy or inclination prompted.
I will not weary you with any further narrative of our sufferings, nor tell of that miserable attempt I made to doze, disturbed by Mrs. D.'s unceasing lamentations over her ruined bonnet, her shocked feelings, and her shot-silk. A little before daybreak, an empty furniture-van came accidentally by, with the driver of which we contracted for our return to Brussels, where we arrived at nine o'clock this morning, almost as sad a party as ever fled from Waterloo! I thought I 'd jot down these few details before I lay down for a sleep, and it is likely that I may still add a line or two before post-hour.
Monday.
My dear Tom,--We've had our share of trouble since I wrote the last postscript. Poor James has been ”out,” and was wounded in the leg, above the knee. The Frenchman with whom he had a dispute at Hougoumont sent him a message on Sat.u.r.day last; but as these affairs abroad are always greatly discussed and argued before they come off, the meeting did n't take place till this morning, when they met near Lacken. James's friend was Lord George Tiverton, Member for Hornby, and son to some Marquis,--that you'll find out in the ”Peerage,” for my head is too confused to remember.
He stood to James like a trump; drove him to the ground in his own phaeton, lent him his own pistols,--the neatest tools ever I looked at, I wonder he could miss with them,--and then brought him back here, and is still with him, sitting at the bedside like a brother. Of course it's very distressing to us all, and poor James is in terrible pain, for the leg is swelled up as thick as three, and all blue, and the doctors don't well know whether they can save it; but it's a grand thing, Tom, to know that the boy behaved beautifully. Lord G. says: ”I've been out something like six-and-twenty times, princ.i.p.al or second, but I never saw anything cooler, quieter, or in better taste than young Dodd's conduct.” These are his own words, and let me tell you, Tom, that's high praise from such a quarter, for the English are great sticklers for a grave, decorous, cold-blooded kind of fighting, that we don't think so much about in Ireland. The Frenchman is one Count Roger,--not p.r.o.nounced Roger, but Rogee,--and, they say, the surest shot in France. He left his card to inquire after James, about half an hour ago,--a very pretty piece of attention, at all events. Mrs. D. and the girls are not permitted to see James yet, nor would it be quite safe, for the poor fellow is wandering in his mind. When I came into the room he told Lord George that I was his uncle! and begged me not to alarm his aunt on any account!
I can't as yet say how far this unlucky event will interfere with our plans about moving. Of course, for the present, this is out of the question; for the surgeon says that, taking the most favorable view of his case, it will be weeks before J. can leave his bed. To tell you my mind frankly, I don't think they know much about gunshot wounds abroad; for I remember when I hit Giles Eyre, the bullet went through his chest and came out under the bladebone, and Dr. Purden just stopped up the hole with a pitch-plaster, and gave him a tumbler of weak punch, and he was about again, as fresh as ever, in a week's time. To be sure, he used to have a hacking kind of a short cough, and complained of a pain now and then; but everybody has his infirmities!
I mentioned what Purden did, to Baron Seutin, the surgeon here; but he called him a barbarian, and said be deserved the galleys for it! I thought to myself, ”It's lucky old Sam does n't hear you, for he's just the boy would give you an early morning for it!”
I was called away by a message from the Commissary of the Police, who has sent one of his sergeants to make an inquiry about the duel.
If it was to Roger he went, it would be reasonable enough; but why come and torment us that have our own troubles? I was obliged to sit quiet and answer all his questions, giving my Christian name and my wife's, our ages, what religion we were, if we were really married,--egad, it's lucky it was n't Mrs. D. was under examination,--what children we had, their ages and s.e.x,--I thought at one time he was going to ask how many more we meant to have. Then he took an excursion into our grandfathers and grandmothers, and at last came back to the present generation and the s.h.i.+ndy.
If it was n't for Lord George, we 'd never have got through the business; but he translated for me, and helped me greatly,--for what with the confusion I was in, and the language, and the absurdity of the whole thing, I lost my temper very often; and now I discover that we 're to have a kind of prosecution against us, though of what kind, or at whose suit, or why, I can't find out. This will be, therefore, number three in my list of law-suits here,--not bad, considering that I 'm scarce as many weeks in the country! I have n't mentioned this to you before, for I don't like dwelling on it; but it's truth, nevertheless.
I must close this at last, for we have Lord G. to dinner; and I must go and put Paddy Byrne through his facings, or there 'll be all kinds of blundering. I wish I'd never brought him with us, nor the jaunting-car.
The young chaps--the dandies here--have a knack of driving, as if down on us, just to see Mary Anne trying to save her legs; but I 'll come across them one day with the whip, in a style they won't like. Betty Cobb, too, was no bargain, and I wish she was back at Dodsborough.
We 're always reading in the newspapers how well the Irish get on out of Ireland,--how industrious they become, how thrifty, and so on; don't believe a word of it, Tom. There's Betty, the same lazy, good-for-nothing, story-telling, complaining, discontented devil ever she was; and as for Paddy Byrne, his fists have never been out of somebody's features, except when there were handcuffs on them,--_semper eadem!_ Tom, as we used to say at Dr. Bell's. Whatever we may be at home,--and the ”Times” won't say much for us there,--it's _there_ we 're best, after all. The doctors are here again to see James; so that I must conclude with love to all yours, and Remain ever faithfully your friend,
Kenny I. Dodd.
LETTER VI. MISS MARY AUNE DODD TO MISS DOOLAN, OF BALLYDOOLAN
Dearest Kitty,--What a dreadful fortnight have we pa.s.sed through! We thought that poor dear James must have lost his leg; the inflammation ran so high, and the pain and the fever were so great, that one night the Baron Seutin actually brought the horrid instruments with him, and I believe it was Lord George alone persuaded him to defer the operation.
What a dear, kind, affectionate creature he is! He has scarcely ever left the house since it happened; and although he sits up all night with James, he seems never tired nor sleepy, but is so full of life all day long, playing on the piano, and teaching us the mazurka! I should rather say teaching me, for Cary, bless the mark, has taken a prudish turn, and says she has no fancy for being pulled about, even by a lord! I may as well mention here, that there is nothing less like romping than the mazurka, when danced properly; and so Lord George as much as told her.
He scarcely touches your waist, Kitty; he only ”gives you support,” as he says himself, and he never by any chance squeezes your hand, except when there 's something droll he wants you to remark.
I must say, Kitty, that in Ireland we conceive the most absurd notions about the aristocracy. Now, here, we have one of the first, the very first young n.o.bleman of the day actually domesticated with us. For the entire fortnight he has never been away, and yet we are as much at home with him, as easy in his presence, and as unconstrained as if it were your brother Robert, or anybody else of no position. You can form no idea how entertaining he is, for, as he says himself, ”I 've done everything,” and I 'm certain so he has; such a range of knowledge on every subject,--such a ma.s.s of acquaintances! And then he has been all over the world in his own yacht. It's like listening to the ”Arabian Nights,” to hear him talk about the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn; and I'm sure I never knew how to relish Byron's poetry till I heard Lord G.'s description of Patras and Salamis. I must tell you, as a great secret though, that he came, the other evening, in his cloak to the drawing-room door, to say that James wanted to see me; and when I went out, there he was in full Albanian dress, the most splendid thing you ever beheld,--a dark violet velvet jacket all braided with gold, white linen jupe, like the Scotch kilt, but immensely full,--he said, two hundred ells wide,--a fez on his head, embroidered sandals, and such a scimitar! it was a ma.s.s of turquoises and rubies. Oh, Kitty! I have no words to describe him; for, besides all this, he has such eyes, and the handsomest beard in the world,--not one of those foppish little tufts they call imperials, nor that grizzly clothes-brush Young France affects, but a regular ”t.i.tian,” full, flowing, and squared beneath.
Now, don't let Peter fancy that he ought to get up a ”_moyen ge_ look,”
for, between ourselves, these things, which sit so gracefully on my Lord, would be downright ridiculous in the dispensary doctor; and while I 'm on the topic, let me say that nothing is so thoroughly Irish as the habit of imitating, or rather of mimicking, those of stations above our own. I 'll never forget Peter's putting the kicking-straps on his mare just because he saw Sir Joseph Vickare drive with them; the consequence was that the poor beast, who never kicked before, no sooner felt the unaccustomed enc.u.mbrance than she dashed out, and never stopped till she smashed the gig to atoms. In the same way, I 'm certain that if he only saw Lord George's dress, which is a kind of black velvet paletot, braided, and very loose in the sleeves, he'd just follow it, quite forgetting how inconvenient it might be in what he calls ”the surgery.”
At all events, Kitty, do not say that I said so. I'm too conscious how little power I have to serve him, to wish to hurt his feelings.
You could not believe what interest has been felt about James in the very highest circles here. We were at last obliged to issue a species of bulletin every morning, and leave it with the porter at the hotel door.