Volume I Part 14 (1/2)
Masters in German, music, and mathematics, and other little odds and ends, took a couple of pounds more; and I allowed myself ten s.h.i.+llings a week for what the doctor calls ”my little charities,” that now resolve themselves into threepenny whist, or a game of ninepins with the Professor of Oriental languages. Even _you_, Tom--”Joe” as you are about the budget--couldn't pick a hole in this! Not that I want to give myself credit for a measure absolutely imperative; for, to say the truth, our late performances in Brussels were of the very costliest, and even Lige ran away with a deal of money. Doctors have about the same ideas respecting your cash account as your const.i.tution. They never leave either in a state of plethora! Now, as I was saying, my letter, begun on Wednesday last, had all these details, and might have concluded with a flattering picture of James hard at his studies, and the girls not less diligently occupied with their music and embroidery,--the two resources by which modern ingenuity fancies it keeps female minds employed! As if Double-Ba.s.s or Berlin wool were disinfecting liquors! I could also have added that Mrs. D. had fallen into that peculiar condition which is natural to her whenever she finds a place stupid and unexciting, and what she fondly fancies to be a religious frame of mind; in other words, she took to reading her breviary, and worrying Betty Cobb about her duties; got up for five o'clock ma.s.s, and insisted upon Friday coming three times a week. I could bear all this for quietness' sake; and if fish diet could insure peace, I 'd be content to live upon isingla.s.s for the rest of my days.
Mrs. D., however, is not a woman to do things by halves; there's no John Russellism about her; and now that she had taken this serious turn, I saw clearly enough what was in store for us. I had actually ordered a small silk skull-cap, as a protection to my head, not knowing when I might be sent to do duty in a procession, when suddenly the wind veered round, and began to blow very fresh in exactly the opposite quarter.
You must know, Tom, that just before we left Cologne we chanced to make acquaintance with a certain very fas.h.i.+onable person,--a Mrs. Gore Hampton. She was standing disconsolately to be rained on, in the street, when Lord George brought her upstairs to our rooms, and introduced her to us. She was, I must say, what is popularly called a very splendid woman,--tall, dark-eyed, and das.h.i.+ng, with a bewitching smile, and that kind of voice that somehow makes commonplaces very graceful. She had, too, that wonderful tact--wherever it comes from I can't guess--to suit us all, without seeming to take the slightest trouble about the matter.
She talked to Mrs. D. about London fas.h.i.+onable life, just as if they had both been going out together for the last three or four seasons; ay, and stranger still, without even once puzzling her, or making her feel astray in the geography of this _terra incognita_. I conclude she was equally successful with the girls; and though she scarcely addressed a word to James, I suppose she must have made up for it by a look, for he has never ceased raving of her since.
I have n't told you how she ”landed” me, for I 'm not above confessing that I was as bad as the rest; but the truth is, Tom, I don't really know how I was caught. I am too old for these blandishments; they no more suit me now than a tight boot or a runaway hack; one gets too rheumatic and too stiff in the joints for homage after fifty; and besides that, there's a kind of croaking conscience that whispers, ”Don't be making a fool of yourself, Kenny James!” and, between you and me, Tom, 't is well for us when we 're not too deaf to hear it.
Besides this; Tom, it is only the fellows that never were in love when they were young that become irretrievably entangled in after life. If you want to see a true s.e.xagenarian victim, look out for some hang-dog, downcast, mopish creature, or some suspectful, wary, crafty, red-haired rascal, that thought every woman had a trap laid for him. These are your hopeless cases; these are the men that always die in some mysterious manner, and leave wills behind them to be litigated for half a century.
The Kenny Dodds of this world come into another category. They knew that love and the measles are mildest in young const.i.tutions, and so they began early. Maybe it was in a firm reliance on this that I felt so easy about the widow,--if widow she be; for, to tell the truth, I don't yet know if Mr. Gore Hampton be to the fore or only has left her a memory of his virtues.
I leave you to guess what impression she made upon me; for the more I go on trying to explain and refine upon it the less intelligible do I become. One thing, however, I must say,--these charming women are the ruin of Irishmen! Our own fair creatures, with a great share of good looks, and far more than ordinary agreeability, are not so dangerous as the English, and for this reason: in their demands for admiration they are too general; they--so to say--fire at the whole covey; now, your Englishwoman marks her bird,' and never goes home till she bags it!
We were to have left Cologne that morning for Bonn, but so agreeably did the time pa.s.s, that we did n't start till evening, and even then it was quite tearing ourselves away; for the delightful widow--for widow I must call her till she shows cause to the contrary--hourly gained on us.
She was obliged to wait there for some lawyers or men of business that were to follow her with papers to sign; and although Lord George did his best to persuade her that she might as well come on with us,--that Bonn was only fifteen miles farther,--she was firm, and said that ”Old Mr.
For-dyce was a great prig, and when she had once named Cologne for their meeting, she would have travelled from Naples rather than break the appointment.” I own to you, there was a tenacity and determination in all that which pleased me. Maybe the great charm of it was that it was very unlike what I 'd have done myself!
The whole way to Bonn we talked of nothing but her, the discussion being all the more unconstrained that Lord George had stayed behind, and was only to come up the next morning. We were agreed upon a number of points: her beauty, her elegance, the grace and fascination of her manner, and her high breeding; but we took different views as to her condition,--Mrs. D. and the girls thinking that she was married, James and I standing out for widowhood. Lord George joined us the next day; and although he could have resolved our doubts at once, Mary Anne stopped all inquiry, by a.s.suring us that nothing was so hopelessly vulgar as to display any ignorance about the family or connections of people of rank. ”If she be in the peerage, we ought to know her, and all about her. She is, of course, some Augusta Louisa, b. 18 and dash; m. to the Honorable Leopold Conway Gore Hampton, third son, and so on.” In a word, Tom, we had the whole family tree before us, from its old gnarled root to its last bud, and ours the shame if we were ignorant of its botanical properties!
A few quiet humdrum days of Bonn existence had almost obliterated our memory of the charming widow, and we were beginning to ”train off”
our attachments to fas.h.i.+onable life, when, in all the splas.h.i.+ng and whip-cracking of foreign posting, up dashes the dark green britschka to our hotel one fine evening; and before we could well recognize the carriage, the fair owner herself was making the tour of the Dodd family, embracing and hand-shaking, as age and s.e.x dictated!
I wish any physiologist would explain why the English, that are so proverbial for a cold and chilling demeanor at home, grow at once so cordial when they come abroad. Whether it be the fear of the damp, or the swell mob, I can't tell, but everybody in England goes about with his hands in his pockets, and only nods to a friend when he meets him; whereas here you start with a grin at fifty yards off, then off goes your hat with a flourish, that, if you have any tact, what with shaking your head, and looking overcome with delight, occupies you till you come up with him, when your greeting grows more enthusiastic,--lucky if it does not finish with a kiss on both cheeks.
I suppose it was the influence of habit betrayed me, for, in a fit of abstraction, I took the charming widow into my arms, and saluted her as if she were Mrs. Dodd. If this was in London, Tom, or even in Dublin, there 's no saying what mischief might not have grown out of it. I might have been fighting duels every day for the last week, not to mention still more formidable encounters of a domestic nature; but just to show you what the Continent does for us,--how instinctively, as it were, we rise above the little narrow prejudices of our insular situation,--she threw herself into a chair and laughed immoderately. Ay, and droller again, so did Mrs. D.! To tell you the truth, Tom, I could n't well believe my senses when I saw it. It would seem to be the same in morals as in murder,--you can dignify the offence by the rank of your victim; for if it had been one of the maids at home, Mrs. D. would have left my face like a piece of music paper!
[Ill.u.s.tration: 214]
There 's a great deal in how you open an acquaintance! You may be card-leaving, and bowing, and how-d'ye-doing for years, and never get farther; or, on the other hand, by some lucky accident, you come plump down into the right place, just as a chance sh.e.l.l will now and then drop into a magazine, and finish an engagement at once.
In less than an hour after her arrival, Mrs. Gore Hampton was one of ourselves. It was not that she was calling the girls dearest Cary, and darling Mary Anne, but she had got a regular sisterly tone with Mrs. D.
and myself--treating James all the while as if he was about twelve years old, and at home for the holidays. She had not only done all this, but before luncheon was on the table we had ratified a solemn league and covenant that she was to travel with us, and be one of us, going wherever we went, and living as we did. How the treaty was ever mooted, who proposed, and who signed it, I know no more than the man in the moon. It was done in a kind of rattling, bantering fas.h.i.+on; and when we rose from table it was all settled. Mrs. Gore Hampton was to take Cary and Mary Anne with her in the britschka; the ”dear boy”--viz.
James--would be the ”guard in the rumble.” There was a place for everybody and everything; and I believe, if any one had proposed that I should ride the leader, it would have been carried without opposition.
Never was there such unanimity! The whole arrangement was huddled up like a road-presentment on a Grand Jury, or a private bill before the House on a ”Wednesday afternoon. As for myself, if I had even the will, I could not have summoned the shamelessness to offer any opposition to the measure.
”Devilish good thing for you, Dodd!” whispered Lord George. ”Mrs. G.
knows everybody in the world, and doesn't care for money.”--”Oh, papa!
she is delightful; there never was such a piece of good fortune as our meeting with her,” cried Mary Anne. And Mrs. D. a.s.sured me that, for the very first time in her life, she had met a person thoroughly companionable to her in all respects; in fact, a ”kindred soul,” though not a ”blood relation.”
Now, Tom, considering that we came abroad to enjoy the advantages of high society, fas.h.i.+onable habits, and * refined a.s.sociations, this accident did indeed seem a propitious one; for, disguise it how we may, the great world is a dangerous ocean to venture upon without a pilot.
Our own little experiences might teach that lesson. We sailed out in all the confidence of a stout crew and a safe vessel, and a pretty voyage we made of it! Perhaps we did not make more mistakes than our neighbors, but a.s.suredly our blunders were neither few nor insignificant!
Mrs G., however, would soon rectify all this. ”No more making acquaintance with wrong people, K. I.” says Mrs. D.; ”no more getting into vulgar intimacies at the _caf_, and cementing friends.h.i.+ps over a game of dominos. James will know the cla.s.s of young men that he ought to mix with, and the girls will only dance with suitable partners.” It sounded well, Tom! It was a grand protective policy, that really secured the Dodd family in the possession of all home advantages, and relieved them of all aggressions ”from the foreigner.”
If we had fallen on a prize in the lottery, I don't think the joy of our circle could have been greater. I am not going to pretend that I did n't join in it! I make no affectation of prudent reserve and caution, and Heaven knows what other elegant qualities, that, however natural to other people, very seldom fall to the lot of an Irishman. I vow to you, Tom, I went off full cry like the rest of the pack. She is a fine woman, this Mrs. Gore Hampton; she has a low, soft voice, a very bewitching smile, and a way of looking at you while you are talking to her, that somehow half suggests to yourself that you must be making love without knowing it. Now, don't misunderstand me, Tom, and come out with one of your long whistles, as much as to say, ”Kenny James is as great a fool as ever!” No such thing! a suit in Chancery, the repeal of the corn laws, and the Estates Court, have made me an altered man. The very nature of me is changed, and changed so much that many's the time I ask myself, ”Is this Kenny Dodd? Where upon earth is that light-hearted, careless, hopeful vagabond, that always took the sunny road in life, though maybe it was n't exactly the way to the place he was going?” I'm another man now; I 'm wiser, as they call it; and, upon my conscience, I 'm mighty sorry for it!
But I hear you say, ”Have n't you just confessed that you were--what shall I call it?--fascinated by the widow?”
And if I did, Tom Purcell, do you mean to tell me that you would have escaped her? Not a bit of it. The brown wig would have been set a little more forward, so as to bring one of those silky curls over your right eye. I think I see you exchanging your spectacles for a double eye-gla.s.s, and turning out your toes so as to display to the best advantage that shapely calf in its trim brown silk stocking. Ah, Tom!