Volume Ii Part 22 (1/2)
1 Does Mrs. D. mean Scylla and Charybdis?--Editor of ”Dodd Correspondence.”
There 's another thing fretting me, besides, Molly. It is what this same Lord George means about Mary Anne; for it's now more than six months since he grew particular; and yet there 's nothing come of it yet. I see it's preying on the girl herself, too,--and what's to be done? I am sure I often think of what poor old Jones McCarthy used to say about this: ”If I 'd a family of daughters,” says he, ”I 'd do just as I manage with the horses when I want to sell one of them. There they are,--look at them as long as you like in the stable, but I 'll have no taking them out for a trial, and trotting them here, and cantering them there; and then, a fellow coming to tell me that they have this, that, and the other.” And the more I think of it, Molly, the more I'm convinced it's the right way; though it's too late, maybe, to help it now.
As I mean to send you another letter soon, I 'll close this now, wis.h.i.+ng you all the compliments of the season, except chilblains, and remain your true and affectionate friend,
Jemima Dodd.
P. S. You 'd better direct your next letter to us ”Casa Dodd,” for I remark that all the English here try and get rid of the Italian names to the houses as soon as they can.
LETTER XXVIII. JAMES DODD TO ROBERT DOOLAN, ESQ., TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN.
Florence.
My dear Bob,--If you only knew how difficult it is to obtain even five minutes of quiet leisure in this same capital, you 'd at once absolve me from all the accusations in your last letter. It is pleasure at a railroad pace, from morning till night, and from night till morning.
Perhaps, after all, it is best there should be no time for reflection, since it would be like one waiting on the rails for an express train to run over him!
I can give you no better nor speedier ill.u.s.tration of the kind of life we lead here, than by saying that even the governor has felt the fascination of the place, and goes the pace, signing checks and drawing bills without the slightest hesitation, or any apparent sense of a coming responsibility. He plays, too, and loses his money freely, and altogether comports himself as if he had a most liberal income, or--terrible alternative--not a sixpence in the world. I own to you, Bob, that this recklessness affrights me far more than all his former grumbling over our expensive and wasteful habits. He seems to have adopted it, too, with a certain method that gives it all the appearance of a plan, though I confess what possible advantage could redound from it is utterly beyond my power of calculation.
Meanwhile our style of living is on a scale of splendor that might well suit the most ample fortune. Tiverton says that for a month or two this is absolutely necessary, and that in society, as in war, it is the first dash often decides a campaign. And really, even my own brief experience of the world shows that one's friends, as they are conventionally called, are far more interested in the skill of your cook than in the merits of your own character; and that he who has a good cellar may indulge himself in the luxury of a very bad conscience. You, of course, suspect that I am now speaking of a cla.s.s of people dubious both in fortune and position, and who have really no right to scrutinize too closely the characters of those with whom they a.s.sociate. Quite the reverse, Bob, I am actually alluding to our very best and most correct English, and who would not for worlds do at home any one of the hundred transgressions they commit abroad. For instance, we have, in this goodly capital of debt and divorce celebrity, a certain house of almost princely splendor; the furniture, plate, pictures, all perfection; the cook, an artist that once pampered royal palates; in a word, everything, from the cellar to the conservatory, a miracle of correct taste.
The owner of all this magnificence is--what think you?--a successful swindler!--the hero of a hundred bubble speculations,--the spoliator of some thousands of shareholders,--a fellow whose infractions have been more than once stigmatized by public prosecution, and whose rascalities are of European fame! You 'd say that with all these detracting influences he was a man of consummate social tact, refined manners, and at least possessing the outward signs of good breeding. Wrong again, Bob. He is coa.r.s.e, uneducated, and vulgar; he never picked up any semblance of the cla.s.s from whom he peculated; and has lived on, as he began, a ”low comedy villain,” and no more. Well, what think you, when I tell you that is ”_the_ house,” _par excellence_, where all strangers strive to be introduced,--that to be on the dinner-list here is a distinction, and that even a visitor enjoys an envied fortune,--and that at the very moment I write, the Dodd family are in earnest and active negotiation to attain to this inestimable privilege? Now, Bob, there's no denying that there must be something rotten, and to the core too, where such a condition of things prevails. If this man fed the hungry and sheltered the houseless, who had no alternative but his table or no food, the thing requires no explanation; or if his hospitalities were partaken of by that large floating cla.s.s who in every city are to be found, with tastes disproportionate to their fortunes, and who will at any time postpone their principles to their palates, even then the matter is not of difficult solution; but what think you that his company includes some of the very highest names of our stately n.o.bility, and that the t.i.tles that resound through his _salon_ are amongst the most honored of our haughty aristocracy! These people a.s.suredly stand in no want of a dinner. They are comfortably lodged, and at least reasonably well fed at the ”Italie” or the ”Grande Bretagne.” Why should they stoop to such companions.h.i.+p? Who can explain this, Bob? a.s.suredly, I am not the dipus!
I am nothing surprised that people like ourselves, for instance, seek to enjoy even this pa.s.sing splendor, and find themselves at a princely board, served with a more than royal costliness. One of these grand dinners is like a page of the Arabian Nights to a man of ordinary condition; but surely his Grace the Duke, or the most n.o.ble the Marquis has no such illusions. With _him_ it is only a question whether the Madeira over-flavored the soup, or that the ortolans might possibly have been fatter. _He_ dines pretty much in the same fas.h.i.+on every day during the London season, and a great part of the rest of the year afterwards.
Why then should he descend to any compromise to accept Count ”Dragonards's” hospitality? for I must tell you that ”Dives” is a Count, and has orders from the Pope and the Queen of Spain.
With the explanation, as I have said, I have nothing to do. It is beyond and above me. For the fact alone I am guarantee; and here comes Tiverton in a transport of triumph to say that ”Heaven is won,” or, in humbler phrase, ”Monsieur le Comte de Dragonards prie Phonneur,” &c, and that Dodd _pre_ and Dodd _mre_ are requested to dine with him on Tuesday, the younger Dodds to a.s.sist at a reception in the evening.
Tiverton a.s.sures me that by accepting with a good grace the humbler part of a ”refresher,” I am certain of promotion afterwards to a higher range of character; and in this hope I live for the present.
It is likely I shall not despatch this without being able to tell you more of this great man's house; meanwhile--”majora cantamus”--I am in love, Bob! If I did n't dash into the confession at once, as one springs into the sea of a chilly morning, I'd even put on the clothes of secrecy, and walk off unconfessed. She is lovely, beyond anything I can give you an idea of,--pale as marble; but such a flesh tint! a sunset sleeping upon snow, and with lids fringed over a third of her cheek.
You know the tender, languid, longing look that vanquishes me,--that's exactly what she has! A glance of timid surprise, like an affrighted fawn, and then a downcast consciousness,--a kind of self-reproaching sense of her own loveliness,--a sort of a--what the devil kind of enchantment and witchery, Bob? that makes a man feel it's all no use struggling and fighting,--that his doom is _there!_ that the influence which is to rule his destiny is before him, and that, turn him which way he will, his heart has but one road--and _will_ take it!
She was in Box 19, over the orchestra! I caught a glimpse of her shoulder--only her shoulder--at first, as she sat with her face to the stage, and a huge screen shaded her from the garish light of the l.u.s.tre.
How I watched the graceful bend of her neck each time she saluted--I suppose it was a salutation--some new visitor who entered! The drooping leaves and flowers of her hair trembled with a gentle motion, as if to the music of her soft voice. I thought I could hear the very accents echoing within my heart! But oh! my ecstasy when her hand stole forth and hung listlessly over the cus.h.i.+on of the box! True it was gloved, yet still you could mark its symmetry, and, in fancy, picture the rosy-tipped fingers in all their graceful beauty.
Night after night I saw her thus; yet never more than I have told you.
I made superhuman efforts to obtain the box directly in front; but it belonged to a Russian princess, and was therefore inaccessible. I bribed the ba.s.soon and seduced the oboe in the orchestra; but nothing was to be seen from their inferno of discordant tunings. I made love to a ballet-dancer, to secure the _entre_ behind the scenes; and on the night of my success _she_--my adored one--had changed her place with a friend, and sat with her back to the stage. The adverse fates had taken a spite against me, Bob, and I saw that my pa.s.sion must prove unhappy!
Somehow it is in love as in hunting, you are never really in earnest so long as the country is open and the fences easy; but once that the ditches are ”yawners,” and the walls ”raspers,” you sit down to your work with a resolute heart and a steady eye, determined, at any cost and at any peril, to be in at the death. Would that the penalties were alike also! How gladly would I barter a fractured rib or a smashed collar-bone for the wrecked and cast-away spirit of my lost and broken heart!
If I suffer myself to expand upon my feelings, there will be no end of this, Bob. I already have a kind of consciousness that I could fill three hundred and fifty folio volumes, like ”Hansard's,” in subtle description and discrimination of sensations that were not exactly ”_this_,” but were very like ”_that_;” and of impressions, hopes, fancies, fears, and visions, a thousand times more real than all the actual events of my _bona fide_ existence. And, after all, what balderdash it is to compare the little meaningless incidents of our lives with the soul-stirring pa.s.sions that rage within us! the thoughts that, so to say, form the very fuel of our natures! These are, indeed, the realities; and what we are in the habit of calling such are the mere mockeries and semblances of fact! I can honestly aver that I suffered--in the true sense of the word--more intense agony from the conflict of my distracted feelings than I ever did when lying under the pangs of a compound fracture; and I may add of a species of pain not to be alleviated by anodynes and soothed by hot flannels.
To be brief, Bob, I felt that, though I had often caught slight attacks of the malady, at length I had contracted it in its deadliest form,--a regular ”blue case,” as they say, with bad symptoms from the start. Has it ever struck you that a man may go through every stage of a love fever without even so much as speaking to the object of his affections? I can a.s.sure you that the thing is true, and I myself suffered nightly every vacillating sense of hope, fear, ecstasy, despair, joy, jealousy, and frantic delight, just by following out the suggestions of my own fancy, and exalting into importance the veriest trifles of the hour.
With what gloomy despondence did I turn homeward of an evening, when she sat back in the box, and perhaps nothing of her but her bouquet was visible for a whole night!--with what transports have I carried away the memory of her profile, seen but for a second! Then the agonies of my jealousy, as I saw her listening, with pleased attention, to some essenced puppy--I could swear it was such--who lounged into her box before the ballet! But at last came the climax of my joy, when I saw her ”lorgnette” directed towards me, as I stood in the pit, and actually felt her eyes on me! I can imagine some old astronomer's ecstasy, as, gazing for hours on the sky of night, the star that he has watched and waited for has suddenly shone through the gla.s.s of his telescope, and lit up his very heart within him with its radiance. I 'd back myself to have experienced a still more thrilling sense of happiness as the beams of her bright eyes descended on me.
At first, Bob, I thought that the glances might have been meant for another. I turned and looked around me, ready to fasten a deadly quarrel upon him, whom I should have regarded at once as my greatest enemy. But the company amidst which I stood soon rea.s.sured me. A few snuffy-looking old counts, with brown wigs and unshaven chins,--a stray Government clerk with a pinchbeck chain and a weak moustache, couldn't be my rivals. I looked again, but she had turned away her bead; and save that the ”lorgnette” still rested within her fingers, I'd have thought the whole a vision.
Three nights after this the same thing occurred. I had taken care to resume the very same place each evening, to wear the same dress, to stand in the very same att.i.tude,--a very touching ”pose,” which I had practised before the gla.s.s. I had not been more than two hours at my post, when she turned abruptly round and stared full at me. There could be no mistake, no misconception whatever; for, as if to confirm my wavering doubts, her friend took the gla.s.s from her, and looked full and long at me. You may imagine, Bob, somewhat of the preoccupation of my faculties when I tell you that I never so much as recognized her friend.