The Dodd Family Abroad Volume I Part 19

"It is a devilish good letter, though, I must say," broke in George; who, to do him justice, Bob, never deserts a friend in difficulties.

"It's all very fine of this fellow to talk of his inability to do this, that, and t' other. Sure, we all know how they chop and barter their patronage with one another. One says, you may have that thing at Pernambuco, and then another says, 'Very well, there 's an ensigncy in the Fifty-ninth.' And that's only gammon about the appointment made out yesterday; he wants to ride off on that. A sharp fellow your friend Vickars! He 'd look a bit surprised, however, if you were to say that this letter of 'Jem's' was a forgery, and that you most gratefully accept the nomination he alludes to, and which, of course, is not yet filled up."

"Eh, what! how do you mean?" cried my father, eagerly, for he caught at the very shadow of a chance with desperate avidity.

"I was only in jest," said Lord George, who merely wanted, as he afterwards said, "to hustle the governor through the deep ground" of his anger. "I was in jest about them, for 'Jem's' letter is so good, so exceedingly well put, that it would be downright folly to disavow it.

You have no idea," continued he, gravely, "what excellent policy it is always to ask for a high thing. They respect you for it, even when they give you nothing; and then, when you do at last receive some appointment, it is so certain to be beneath what you solicited, it establishes a claim for your perpetual discontent. You go on eternally boring about neglect, and so on. You accepted the humble post of Envoy at Stuttgard, for instance, under an implied pledge about Vienna or Constantinople. Besides these advantages, it is also to be remembered that every now and then they actually do take a fellow at his own valuation, and give him what he asks for."

"Lord George is quite right," chimed in Mrs. Gore Hampton; "half of these things are purely accidental. I remember so well my uncle writing to beg that the tutor of his boys might get some small thing in the Church, just at the moment when the bishop of the diocese had died, and the minister, reading the letter carelessly,--my uncle's hand is very hard to decipher,--mistook the object of the request, and appointed him to the bishopric."

"In that case," remarked my father, dryly, "I think Mrs. D. had better indite an epistle to the Home Office."

And, although this was said in a sneer, the laughter that followed went far to restore us all to good-humor, particularly as Lord George took the opportunity of explaining to Mrs. Gore Hampton what had occurred, bespeaking her aid and influence in our behalf.

"It is so absurd," said she, "that one should have any difficulty about these things, but such is the case. The d.u.c.h.ess will be certain to make excuses; she cannot ask for something, because she _is_ 'in waiting,' or she is not in waiting. Lord Harrowcliff is sure to tell me that he has just been refused a request, and cannot subject himself to another humiliation; but I always reply, these are most selfish arguments, and that I really must have what I want; that a refusal always attacks my nerves, and that I will not be ill merely to indulge a caprice of theirs. What is it Mr. James wants?"

There was something so practical in this short question, Bob, something so decisive, that had she been talking the rankest absurdity but the moment before, we should have forgotten it all in an instant.

"A mere nothing," replied Lord George. "You'll smile when you hear what we 're making such a fuss about." As he said these words, he muttered in the governor's ear, "It's all right now; she detests asking a favor, but, if she _will_ stoop to it--" An expressive gesture implied that success was certain.

"Well, you have n't told me what it is," said she again.

Lord George pa.s.sed round to the back of her chair, and whispered a few words. She replied in the same low tone, and then they both laughed.

"You don't mean to say," cried she, turning to my father, "that you have experienced any difficulty about this trifle?"

The governor blundered out some bashful confession, that he had encountered the most extraordinary obstacles to his wishes.

"I really think," said she, sighing, "they do these things just to provoke people. They wanted Augustus t' other day to go out to the Cape, and I a.s.sure you it was as much as Lady Mary could do to have the appointment changed. They said his 'regiment' was there. '_Tant pis_ for his regiment!' replied she. 'It must be a most disgusting station.' And that is, I must say, the worst of the Horse Guards; they are always so imperative,--so downright cruel. Don't you agree with me, Mrs. Dodd?"

"They could n't be worse than the regiment I 've heard my father speak of," replied my mother. "They were called the 'North Britains,' and were the wickedest set of wretches in the rebellion of '98."

This unhappy blunder set my father into a roar of laughter, for latterly it is only on occasions like this that he is moved to any show of merriment. Mrs. Gore Hampton, of course, never noticed the mistake, but saying, "Now for my letters," ordered her writing-desk to be brought: a sign of prompt.i.tude that at once diverted all our thoughts into another channel.

"Shall I write to the Duke or to Lady Mary first?" said she, pondering; and her eyes, accidentally falling upon my mother, she thought herself the person addressed, and replied,--

"Indeed, ma'am, if you ask _me_, I'd say the Duke."

"I'm for Lady Mary," interposed Lord George. "There's nothing like a woman to ferret out news, and find a way to profit by it. The duke will just say, casually, 'I've got a letter somewhere--I hope I have not mislaid it--about a vacancy in the "Coldstreams;" if you hear of anything, just drop me a hint. By the way--is Fox in the Fusiliers still?'--or, 'I hope they'll change that shako, it's monstrous!' Now, my Lady Mary will go another way to work. She'll remember the name of everybody that can be possibly useful. She 'll drive about, and give little dinners, and talk, and flatter, and cajole, and intrigue, and, growing distant here, and jealous there, she'll bring into action a thousand forces that mere men-creatures know nothing of."

"I'm for the Duke still," said my mother; and Mary Anne, by an inclination of her head, showed that she seconded the motion.

It became now an actual debate, Bob, and you would be amazed were I to tell you what strong expressions and angry feelings were evoked by mere partisanship, on a subject whereupon not one of us had the slightest knowledge whatsoever. My father and I were with Tiverton, and as "Caroline walked into the lobby," as George phrased it, we carried the question. Mrs. G., however, declared that, beside the casting voice, she had a right to a vote, and, giving it to my mother's side, we were equal. In this stage of the proceedings a compromise alone could be resorted to, and so it was agreed that she should write to both by the same post; but the discussion had already lost us a day, for the mail went out while my mother was "left speaking."

I have probably been prolix, my dear friend, in all this detail, but it will at least show you how the Dodd family conduct questions of internal policy; and teach you, besides, that Cabinets and Councils of State have no special prerogative for folly and absurdity, since even small and obscure folk like ourselves can contest the palm with them.

Neither could you well believe what small but bitter animosities, what schisms, and what divisions grew out of a matter so insignificant as this. The remainder of the day was pa.s.sed gloomily enough, for we each of us avoided the other, with that misgiving that belongs to those who have uneasy consciences.

They say that a good harvest often saves a bad administration; certainly a fine day will frequently avert a domestic broil. Had the morning which followed our debate been a favorable one, the chances are we should have been away to the Seven Mountains, or the village of Konigswinter, or some such place; bad luck would have it that the rain came down in torrents from daybreak, heavy clouds gathered over the Rhine, shutting out the opposite bank from view, so that nothing remained to us but home resources, which is but too often a brief expression for row and recrimination.

Breakfast over, each of us, as if dreading a "call of the House,"

affected some peculiarly pressing duty that he had to perform. The governor retired to pore over his accounts, and tried to make out that the debit against him in his bankbook was a balance in his favor. My mother retreated to her room to hold a grand inspection of her wardrobe; a species of review that always discovers several desertions, and a vast amount of "unserviceables." Leaving her and Mary Anne in court-martial over Betty Cobb, who, as usual, when brought up for sentence, claimed the right to be sent home, I pa.s.s on to Lord George, whose wet days are generally devoted to practising some new "hazard off the cushion,"

or the investigation of that philosopher's stone, a martingale at Rouge-et-Noir, and I arrive at my own case, which invariably resolves itself into a day of gun and pistol cleaning,--an occupation mysteriously linked with gloomy weather, as though one ought to have everything in readiness to blow his brains out, if the mercury continued to fall.

Mrs. G. had a headache, and Caroline was in pursuit of one over the pages of the "Thirty Years' War." Such was the tableau of the Dodd family on this agreeable day. I don't give myself much up to reflection, Bob. I have always thought that as life is a road to be travelled, one step forward is worth any number in the opposite direction; but I vow to you that, on this occasion, I did begin to ponder a little over the past and the present, with a half-glance at the future. What the governor had said the day before was no more than the truth,--we _were_ living at a tremendous rate. If all belonging to us were sold, the capital would scarcely afford six or seven years of such expenditure. These were serious, if not stunning reflections, and I heartily wished they had occupied any other head than my own.

To _you_--who have always given your brains their own share of work--thinking is no labor. It's like a gallop to a horse in hard bunting condition, and only serves to keep him in wind; but to _me_, whose faculties are, so to say, fresh from gra.s.s, the fatigue of thought is no trifling infliction. Slow men, I take it, suffer more than your clever fellows on these occasions, since their minds are not suggestive of expedients, and they go on plodding over the same ground, till they make a beaten course in their poor brains, like an old race-ground.

Something in this fashion must have occurred to me; for by dint of that dreary morning's rumination, I half made up my mind to emigrate somewhere, and if I did n't exactly know where, the fault lies more in my geography than my spirit of enterprise.

The only book I could lay my hands on likely to give me any information was "Cook's Voyages;" and this, I remembered, was in the governor's room. I at once descended the stairs, and had just reached the little conservatory outside of it, when I caught sight of a woman's dress beneath the thick foliage of the orange-trees. I crept noiselessly onward, and after a very devious series of artful dodges, I detected Mrs. D. playing eavesdropper at the governor's door.

I tried to persuade myself that I was mistaken. I did my best to fancy that she was botanizing or "bouquet" gathering; but no, the stubborn fact would not be denied. There she was, bent down, with ear and eye alternately at the keyhole. Neither the act nor the situation were very dignified, and determining that she should not be detected by any other in this predicament, I kicked down a flower-pot, and, before I had well time to replace it, she was gone.

I 'm quite prepared for the laugh you 'll give, Bob, when I own to you that no sooner had I seen her vanish from the horizon than I deliberately took my place exactly where she had been. Of course, my sense of honor and delicacy suggested that I had no other object in view than to ascertain what it was that bad drawn her to the spot. Any curiosity that possessed me was strictly confined to this.

I accordingly bent my ear to the keyhole, and had just time to recognize Mrs. Gore Hampton's voice, when the noise of chairs being drawn back, and the scuffling sounds of feet, showed that the interview had come to an end. Scarcely a moment was left me to shelter myself among the leaves, when the door opened, "discovering," as stage directions would say, Mr. Dodd and Mrs. Gore Hampton in conversation.

There was really a dramatic look in the situation too. The governor's flowered dressing-gown and velvet skullcap, decorated in front by his up-raised spectacles, like a portcullis over his nose, contrasted so well with the graceful morning robe of Mrs. G., all floating and gauzy, and to which her every gesture imparted some new character of vapory lightness.

"Dear Mr. Dodd," said she, pressing his hand with extreme cordiality, "you have been so very, very kind, I really have no words to express what I feel towards you. I have long felt that I owed you this explanation--I have tried to summon courage for it for weeks past--then I sometimes doubted how you might receive it."

"Oh, madam!" interrupted he, gracefully closing his drapery with one hand, while he pressed the other on his heart.

"You kind creature!" cried she, enthusiastically. "I can now wonder at myself that I should ever have admitted a doubt on the question. But if you only knew what sorrows I have seen--if you only knew with what severe lessons mistrust and suspicion have become graven on this heart, young as it is--"

"Ah, madam!" murmured he, as though the last few words had made the deepest impression upon him.

"Well, it's over now," cried she, in her more natural tone of gayety.

"The weary load is off me, and I am myself again,--thanks to you, dear, dear kind friend."

Faith, Bob, from the enthusiasm of the utterance of this last speech, I thought that a stage embrace ought to have followed; and I believe that the governor was of my mind too, and only restrained by some real or fancied necessity to keep his toga closed in front of him. Mrs.

G., however, as though fearing that he might ultimately forget the "unities," again pressed his hand with both her own, and murmuring, "With you, then, my secret is safe,--to _you_ all is confided," she hurried away, as if overcome by her feelings.

I could not guess what might have reached my mother's ears, but I thought to myself, if she only had heard even this much, and witnessed the fervor with which it was uttered, the governor's life for the next few weeks needs not be envied by any one out of a condemned cell. Not that to _me_ the scene admitted of any interpretation which should warrant her suspicions; but so it is, she takes a jealous turn every now and then, and he can't take a pinch of snuff without her peering over his shoulder to see if he has not got a miniature in the lid of the box.

He used to try to reason her out of these notions,--his vindications even took the dangerous length of certain abstract opinions about the s.e.x in general, very far from complimentary; but latterly he has sought refuge in drink, which usually ends in an illness, so that an attack of jealousy was the invariable premonitory symptom of one of gout; and my mother's temper and tincture of colchic.u.m seemed inseparably connected by some unseen link.

From these thoughts I followed on to others about the scene itself, and what possible circ.u.mstance could have led Mrs. G. H. to visit the governor in his own room, and what was the prodigious mystery she had just confided to his keeping. Probability, I fear, takes up little s.p.a.ce in any speculation about a woman. I am sure that if I were to recount to you one-half of the absurd and extravagant fancies that occurred to me on this occasion, you would infallibly set me down as mad. I 'll not tax your patience with the recital, but frankly confess to you that I have not a clew, even the slightest, to the mystery; nor from the manner in which I have learned its existence, can I venture to ask Lord George to aid me.

The incident had one effect,--it totally banished emigration, clearings, and log huts from my mind, and set my thoughts a rambling upon all the strange people and extraordinary events that travelling abroad introduces one to; and with this reflection I strolled back to my room, and sat brooding over the fire till it was time to dress for dinner.

Although you may not have the vaguest notion of what is pa.s.sing in the minds of certain people, the very fact that they are fully occupied with certain strong feelings is a reason for observing them with an extraordinary interest; and so was it that our party at table that day was full of meaning to me. There was a kind of languid repose about Mrs. Gore Hampton's manner which seemed especially a.s.sumed towards the governor, and a certain fidgety consciousness in _his_, sufficiently noticeable; while my mother, dressed in one of her war turbans, looked unutterably fierce things on every side. It was easy enough to see that all this additional weight upon the safety-valves of her temper threatened a terrible explosion at last, and it required all the tact I could muster to my aid to defer the catastrophe. Lord George gave me, too, his willing aid, and by the help of an old Professor of Oriental Languages, we made up her rubber of whist in the evening.

Alas, Bob! even four by honors couldn't console her for the "odd trick" she suspected the governor was playing her; and she broke up the card-table, and retired with that swelling dignity of manner that is the accompaniment of injured feelings.

It had been our plan to proceed from this place direct to Baden-Baden, which, from everything I can learn, must be a perfect paradise; but now, to my great surprise, I discovered that for some secret reason we should first go to Ems, and remain there a week or two before proceeding further. This arrangement was Mrs. G's, and Lord George seemed to give it his hearty concurrence; alleging, but for the first time, that it was absurd to think of Baden before the middle of July. I could easily perceive that this change of purpose contained some mysterious motive; but, as Tiverton persisted in averring that it was "all on the square,"

and "no double," I had to accept it as such.

Such is, therefore, our position as I write these lines; and although to-morrow might develop the first movement of the campaign, I cannot keep my letter open to communicate it You will see that we are as divided as a Ministerial Cabinet. Some of us, doubtless, have their honest convictions, and others are, perhaps, plastic enough to receive impressions from without, but how we are to work together, and how, as the great authority said, the "Government is to be carried on," is more than yet appears to

Your ever attached friend,