The Dodd Family Abroad, Vol. II

"You can also remember receiving a letter from me at that time?"

"No, – nothing of the kind!"

"No letter? – you received no letter of mine?"

"None!"

"Oh, then, this must really – " He paused, and, overcoming what I saw was a violent burst of indignation, he walked the room up and down for several minutes. "Mr. Dodd," said he to me, taking ray hand in both his own, "I have to entreat your forgiveness for a most mistaken impression on my part influencing me in my relations, and suggesting a degree of coldness and distrust which, owing to your manliness of character alone, has not ended in our estrangement forever. I believed you had been in possession of a letter from me; I thought until this moment that it really had reached you. I now know that I was mistaken, and have only to express my sincere contrition for having acted under a rash credulity." He went over this again and again, always, as it seemed to me, as if about to say more, and then suddenly checking himself under what appeared to be a quickly remembered reason for reserve.

I was getting impatient at last. I thought that the explanation explained little, and was really about to say so; but he anticipated me by saying, "Believe me, my dear sir, any suffering, any unhappiness that my error has occasioned, has fallen entirely upon me. You at least have nothing to complain of. The letter which ought to have reached you contained a proposal from me for the hand of your younger daughter; a proposal which I now make to you, happily, in a way that cannot be frustrated by an accident." He went on to press his suit, Tom, eagerly and warmly; but still with that scrupulous regard to truthfulness I have ever remarked in him. He acknowledged the difference in age, the difference in character, the disparity between Cary's joyous, sunny nature and his own colder mood; but he hoped for happiness, on grounds so solid and so reasonable that showed me much of his own thoughtful habit of mind.

Of his fortune, he simply said that it was very far above all his requirements; that he himself had few, if any, expensive tastes, but was amply able to indulge such in a wife, if she were disposed to cultivate them. He added that he knew my daughter had always been accustomed to habits of luxury and expense, always lived in a style that included every possible gratification, and therefore, if not in possession of ample means, he never would have presumed on his present offer.

I felt for a moment the vulgar pleasure that such flattery confers. I own to you, Tom, I experienced a degree of satisfaction at thinking that even to the observant eyes of Morris himself, – old soldier as he was, – the Dodds had passed for brilliant and fashionable folk, in the fullest enjoyment of every gift of fortune; but as quickly a more honest and more manly impulse overcame this thought, and in a few words I told him that he was totally mistaken; that I was a poor, half-ruined Irish gentleman, with an indolent tenantry and an encumbered estate; that our means afforded no possible pretension to the style in which we lived, nor the society we mixed in; that it would require years of patient economy and privation to repay the extravagance into which our foreign tour had launched us; and that, so convinced was I of the inevitable ruin a continuance of such a life must incur, I had firmly resolved to go back to Ireland at the end of the present month and never leave it again for the rest of my days.

I suppose I spoke warmly, for I felt deeply. The shame many of the avowals might have cost me in calmer mood was forgotten now, in my ardent determination to be honest and above-board. I was resolved, too, to make amends to my own heart for all the petty deceptions I had descended to in a former case, and, even at the cost of the loss of a son-in-law, to secure a little sense of self-esteem.

He would not let me finish, Tom, but, grasping my hand in his with a grip I did n't believe he was capable of, he said, —

"Dodd," – he forgot the Mr. this time, – "Dodd, you are an honest, true-hearted fellow, and I always thought so. Consent now to my entreaty, – at least do not refuse it, – and I 'd not exchange my condition with that of any man in Europe!"

Egad, I could not have recognized him as he spoke, for his cheek colored up, and his eye flashed, and there was a dash of energy about him I had never detected in his nature. It was just the quality I feared he was deficient in. Ay, Tom, I can't deny it, old Celt that I am, I would n't give a brass farthing for a fellow whose temperament cannot be warmed up to some burst of momentary enthusiasm!

Of my hearty consent and my good wishes I speedily assured him, just adding, "Cary must say the rest." I told him frankly that I saw it was a great match for my daughter; that both in rank and fortune he was considerably above what she might have looked for; but with all that, if she herself would n't have taken him in his days of humbler destiny, my advice would be, "don't have him now."

He left me for a moment to say something to his mother, – I suppose some explanation about this same letter that went astray, and of which I can make nothing, – and then they came back together. The old lady seemed as well pleased as her son, and told me that his choice was her own in every respect. She spoke of Cary with the most hearty affection; but with all her praise of her, she does n't know half her real worth; but even what she did say brought the tears to my eyes, – and I 'm afraid I made a fool of myself!

You may be sure, Tom, that it was a happy day with me, although, for a variety of reasons, I was obliged to keep my secret for my own heart. Morris proposed that he should be permitted to wait on us the next morning, to pay his respects to Mrs. D. upon her liberation, and thus his visit might be made the means of reopening our acquaintance. You'd think that to these arrangements, so simple and natural, one might look forward with an easy tranquillity. So did I, Tom, – and so was I mistaken. Mr. James, whose conduct latterly seems to have pendulated between monastic severity and the very wildest dissipation, takes it into his wise head that Morris has insulted him. He thinks – no, not thinks, but dreams – that this calm-tempered, quiet gentleman is pursuing an organized system of outrage towards him, and has for a time back made him the mark of his sarcastic pleasantry. Full of this sage conceit, he hurries on to his hotel, to offer him a personal insult. They fortunately do not meet; but James, ordering pen and paper, sits down and indites a letter. I have not seen it; but even his friend considers it to have been "a step ill-advised and inconsiderate, – in fact, to be deeply regretted."

I cannot conjecture what might have been Morris's conduct under other circumstances, but in his present relations to myself, he saw probably but one course open to him. He condescended to overlook the terms of this insulting note, and calmly asked for an explanation of it. By great good luck, James had placed the affair in young Belton's hands, – our former doctor at Bruff, – who chanced to be on his way through here; and thus, by the good sense of one, and the calm temper of the other, this rash boy has been rescued from one of the most causeless quarrels ever heard of. James had started for Modena, I believe, with a carpet-bag full of cigars, a French novel, and a bullet-mould; but before he had arrived at his destination, Morris, Belton, and myself were laughing heartily over the whole adventure.. Morris's conduct throughout the entire business raised him still higher in my esteem; and the consummate good tact with which he avoided the slightest reflection that might pain me on my son's score, showed me that he was a thorough gentleman. I must say, too, that Belton behaved admirably. Brief as has been his residence abroad, he has acquired the habits of a perfect man of the world, but without sacrificing a jot of his truly frank and generous temperament.

Ah, Tom! it was not without some sharp self-reproaches that I saw this young fellow, poor and friendless as he started in life, struggling with that hard fate that insists upon a man's feeling independent in spirit, and humble in manner, fighting that bitter battle contained in a dispensary doctor's life, emerge at once into an accomplished, well-informed gentleman, well versed in all the popular topics of the day, and evidently stored with a deeper and more valuable kind of knowledge, – I say, I saw all this, and thought of my own boy, bred up with what were unquestionably greater advantages and better opportunities of learning, not obliged to adventure on a career in his mere student years, but with ample time and leisure for cultivation; and yet there he was, – there he is, this minute, – and there is not a station nor condition in life wherein he could earn half a crown a day. He was educated, as it is facetiously called, at Dr. Stingem's school. He read his Homer and Virgil, wrote his false quantities, and blundered through his Greek themes, like the rest. He went through – it's a good phrase – some books of Euclid, and covered reams of foolscap with equations; and yet, to this hour, he can't translate a classic, nor do a sum in common arithmetic, while his handwriting is a cuneiform character that defies a key: and with all that, the boy is not a fool, nor deficient in teachable qualities. I hope and trust this system is coming to an end. I wish sincerely, Tom, that we may have seen the last of a teaching that for one whom it made accomplished and well-informed, converted fifty into pedants, and left a hundred dunces! Intelligible spelling, and readable writing, a little history, and the "rule of three," some geography, a short course of chemistry and practical mathematics, – that's not too much, I think, – and yet I 'd be easy in my mind if James had gone that far, even though he were ignorant of "spondees," and had never read a line of that classic morality they call the Heathen Mythology. I'd not have touched upon this ungrateful theme, but that my thoughts have been running on the advantages we were to have derived from our foreign tour, and some misgivings stinking me as to their being realized.

Perhaps we are not very docile subjects, perhaps we set about the thing in a wrong way, perhaps we had not stored our minds with the preliminary knowledge necessary, perhaps – anything you like, in short; but here we are, in all essentials, as ignorant of everything a residence abroad might be supposed to teach, as though we had never quitted Dodsborough. Stop – I'm going too fast – we have learned some things not usually acquired at home; we have attained to an extravagant passion for dress, and an inordinate love of grand acquaintances. Mary Anne is an advanced student in modern French romance literature; James no mean proficient at écarté; Mrs. D. has added largely to the stock of what she calls her "knowledge of life," by familiar intimacy with a score of people who ought to be at the galleys; and I, with every endeavor to oppose the tendency, have grown as suspicious as a government spy, and as meanly inquisitive about other people's affairs as though I were prime minister to an Italian prince.

We have lost that wholesome reserve with respect to mere acquaintances, and by which our manner to our friends attained to its distinctive signs of cordiality, for now we are on the same terms with all the world. The code is, to be charmed with everything and everybody, – with their looks, with their manners, with their house and their liveries, with their table and their "toilette," – ay, even with their vices! There is the great lesson, Tom; you grow lenient to everything save the reprobation of wrong, and that you set down for rank hypocrisy, and cry out against as the blackest of all the blemishes of humanity.

Nor is it a small evil that our attachment to home is weakened, and even a sense of shame engendered with respect to a hundred little habits and customs that to foreign eyes appear absurd – and perhaps vulgar. And lastly comes the great question, How are we ever to live in our own country again, with all these exotic notions and opinions? I don't mean how are we to bear Ireland, but how is Ireland to endure us! An American shrewdly remarked to me t' other day, "that one of the greatest difficulties of the slave question was, how to emancipate the slave owners; how to liberate the shackles of their rusty old prejudices, and fit them to stand side by side with real freemen." And in a vast variety of questions you 'll often discover that the puzzle is on the side opposite to that we had been looking at. In this way do I feel that all my old friends will have much to overlook, – much to forgive in my present moods of thinking. I 'll no more be able to take interest in home politics again than I could live on potatoes! My sympathies are now more catholic. I can feel acutely for Schleswig-Holstein, or the Druses at Lebanon. I am deeply interested about the Danubian Provinces, and strong on Sebastopol; but I regard as contemptible the cares of a quarter sessions, or the business of the "Union." If you want me to listen, you must talk of the Cossacks, or the war in the Caucasus; and I am far less anxious about who may be the new member for Bruff, than who will be the next "Vladica" of "Montenegro."

These ruminations of mine might never come to a conclusion, Tom, if it were not that I have just received a short note from Belton, with a pressing entreaty that he may see me at once on a matter of importance to myself, and I have ordered a coach to take me over to his hotel. If I can get back in time for post hour, I 'll be able to explain the reason of this sudden call, till when I say adieu.

LETTER XXXI. MISS CAROLINE DODD TO MISS COX, AT MISS MINCINGS ACADEMY,

BLACK ROCK, IRELAND

Florence.

My dearest Miss Cox, – It would be worse than ingratitude in me were I to defer telling you how happy I am, and with what a perfect shower of favors Fortune has just overwhelmed me! Little thought I, a few weeks back, that Florence was to become to me the spot nearest and dearest to my heart, associated as it is, and ever must be, with the most blissful event of my life! Sir Penrhyn Morris, who, from some unexplained misconception, had all but ceased to know us, was accidentally thrown in our way by the circumstance of mamma's imprisonment. By his kind and zealous aid her liberation was at length accomplished, and, as a matter of course, he called to make his inquiries after her, and receive our grateful acknowledgments.

I scarcely can tell – my head is too confused to remember – the steps by which he retraced his former place in our intimacy. It is possible there may have been explanations on both sides. I only know that he took his leave one morning with the very coldest of salutations, and appeared on the next day with a manner of the deepest devotion, so evidently directed towards myself that it would have been downright affectation to appear indifferent to it.

He asked me in a low and faltering voice if I would accord him a few moments' interview. He spoke the words with a degree of effort at calmness that gave them a most significant meaning, and I suddenly remembered a certain passage in one of your letters to me, wherein you speak of the inconsiderate conduct which girls occasionally pursue in accepting the attentions of men whose difference in age would seem to exclude them from the category of suitors. So far from having incurred this error, I had actually retreated from any advances on his part, not from the disparity of our ages, but from the far wider gulfs that separated his highly cultivated and informed mind from my ungifted and unstored intellect. Partly in shame at my inferiority, partly with a conscious sense of what his impression of me must be, I avoided, so far as I could, his intimacy; and even when domesticated with him, I sought for occupations in which he could not join, and estranged myself from the pursuits which he loved to practise.

Oh, my dear, kind governess, how thoroughly I recognize the truthfulness of all your views of life; how sincerely I own that I have never followed them without advantage, never neglected them without loss! How often have you told me that "dissimulation is never good;" that, however speciously we may persuade ourselves that in feigning a part we are screening our self-esteem from insult, or saving the feelings of others, the policy is ever a bad one; and that, "if our sincerity be only allied with an honest humility, it never errs." The pains I took to escape from the dangerous proximity of his presence suggested to him that I disliked his attentions, and desired to avoid them; and acting on this conviction it was that he made a journey to England during the time I was a visitor at his mother's. It would appear, however, that his esteem for me had taken a deeper root than he perhaps suspected, for on his return his attentions were redoubled, and I could detect that in a variety of ways his feelings towards me were not those of mere friendship. Of mine towards him I will conceal nothing from you. They were deep and intense admiration for qualities of the highest order, and as much of love as consisted with a kind of fear, – a sense of almost terror lest he should resent the presumption of such affection as mine.

You already know something of our habits of life abroad, – wasteful and extravagant beyond all the pretensions of our fortune. It was a difficult thing for me to carry on the semblance of our assumed position so as not to throw discredit upon my family, and at the same time avoid the dis-ingenuousness of such a part. The struggle, from which I saw no escape, was too much for me, and I determined to leave the Morrises and return home, – to leave a house wherein I already had acquired the first steps of the right road in life, and go back to dissipations in which I felt no pleasure, and gayeties that never enlivened! I did not tell you all this at the time, my dear friend, partly because I had not the courage for it, and partly that the avowal might seem to throw a reproach on those whom my affection should shield from even a criticism. If I speak of it now, it is because, happily, the theme is one hourly discussed amongst us in all the candor of true frankness. We have no longer concealments, and we are happy.

It may have been that the abruptness of my departure offended Captain Morris, or, possibly, some other cause produced the estrangement; but, assuredly, he no longer cultivated the intimacy he had once seemed so ardently to desire, and, until the event of mamma's misfortune here, he ceased to visit us.

And now came the interview I have alluded to! Oh, my dearest friend, if there be a moment in life which combines within it the most exquisite delight with the most torturing agony, it is that in which an affection is sought for by one who, immeasurably above us in all the gifts of fortune, still seems to feel that there is a presumption in his demand, and that his appeal may be rejected. I know not how to speak of that conflict between pride and shame, between the ecstasy of conquest and the innate sense of the unworthiness that had won the victory!

Sir Penrhyn thought, or fancied he thought, me fond of display and splendor, – that in conforming to the quiet habits of his mother's house, I was only submitting with a good grace to privations. I undeceived him at once. I confessed, not without some shame, that I was in a manner unsuited to the details of an exalted station, – that wealth and its accompaniments would, in reality, be rather burdens than pleasure to one whose tastes were humble as my own, – that, in fact, I was so little of a "Grande Dame" that I should inevitably break down in the part, and that no appliances of mere riches could repay for the onerous duties of dispensing them.

"In so much," interrupted he, with a half-smile, "that you would prefer a poor man to a rich one?"

"If you mean," said I, "a poor man who felt no shame in his poverty, in comparison with a rich man who felt his pride in his wealth, I say, Yes."

"Then what say you to one who has passed through both ordeals," said he, "and only asks that you should share either with him to make him happy?"

I have no need to tell you my answer. It satisfied him, and made mine the happiest heart in the world. And now we are to be married, dearest, in a fortnight or three weeks, – as soon, in fact, as maybe; and then we are to take a short tour to Rome and Naples, where Sir Penrhyn's yacht is to meet us; after which we visit Malta, coast along Spain, and home. Home sounds delightfully when it means all that one's fondest fancies can weave of country, of domestic happiness, of duties heartily entered on, and of affections well repaid.

Penrhyn is very splendid; the castle is of feudal antiquity, and the grounds are princely in extent and beauty. Sir Morris is justly proud of his ancestral possessions, and longs to show me its stately magnificence; but still more do I long for the moment when my dear Miss Cox will be my guest, and take up her quarters in a certain little room that opens on a terraced garden overlooking the sea. I fixed on the spot the very instant I saw a drawing of the castle, and I am certain you will not find it in your heart to refuse me what will thus make up the perfect measure of my happiness.

In all the selfishness of my joy, I have forgotten to tell you of Florence; but, in truth, it would require a calmer head than mine to talk of galleries and works of art while my thoughts are running on the bright realities of my condition. It is true we go everywhere and see everything, but I am in such a humor to be pleased that I am delighted with all, and can be critical to nothing. I half suspect that art, as art, is a source of pleasure to a very few. I mean that the number is a limited one which can enter into all the minute excellences of a great work, appreciate justly the difficulties overcome, and value deservingly the real triumph accomplished. For myself, I know and feel that painting has its greatest charm for me in its power of suggestiveness, and, consequently, the subject is often of more consequence than the treatment of it; not that I am cold to the chaste loveliness of a Raphael, or indifferent to the gorgeous beauty of a Giordano. They appeal to me, however, in somewhat the same way, and my mind at once sets to work upon an ideal character of the creation before me. That this same admiration of mine is a very humble effort at appreciating artistic excellence, I want no better proof than the fact that it is exactly what Betty Cobb herself felt on being shown the pictures in "the Pitti." Her honest worship of a Madonna at once invested her with every attribute of goodness, and the painter, could he only have heard the praises she uttered, might have revelled in the triumph of an art that can rise above the mere delineation of external beauty. That the appeal to her own heart was direct, was evidenced by her constant reference to some living resemblance to the picture before her. Now it was a saintly hermit by Caracci, – that was the image of Peter Delany at the cross-roads; now it was a Judas, – that was like Tom Noon of the turnpike; and now it was a lovely head by Titian, – the "very moral of Miss Kitty Doolan, when her hair was down about her." I am certain, my dearest Miss Cox, that the delight conveyed by painting and music is a much more natural pleasure than that derived from the enjoyment of imaginary composition by writing. The appeal is not alone direct, but it is in a manner the same to all, – to the highest king upon the throne, and to the lowly peasant, as in meek wonder he stands entranced and enraptured.

But why do I loiter within doors when it is of Florence itself, of its sunny Arno, of its cypress-crowned San Miniato, and of the villa-clad Fiezole I would tell you! But even these are so interwoven with the frame of mind in which I now enjoy them, that to speak of them would be again to revert to my selfishness.

Yesterday we made an excursion to Vallambrosa, which lies in a cleft between two lofty mountains, about thirteen miles from this. It was a strange transition from the warm air and sunny streets of Florence, with all their objects of artistic wonder on every side, to find one's self suddenly traversing a wild mountain gorge in a rude bullock-cart, guided by a peasant of semi-savage aspect, his sheepskin mantle and long ox-goad giving a picturesque air to his tall and sinewy figure. The snow lay heavily in all the crevices around, and it was a perfectly Alpine scene in its desolation; nor, I must say, did it recall a single one of the ideas with which our great poet has associated it. The thickly strewn leaves have no existence here, since the trees are not deciduous, and consist entirely of pines.

A straight avenue in the forest leads to the convent, which is of immense size, forming a great quadrangle. At a little distance off, sheltered by a thick grove of tall pines, stands a small building appropriated to the accommodation of strangers, who are the guests of the monks for any period short of three days, and by a special permission for even a longer time.

We passed the day and the night there, and I would willingly have lingered still longer. From the mountain peak above the convent the two seas at either side of the peninsula are visible, and the Gulf of Genoa and the Adriatic are stretched out at your feet, with the vast plain of Central Italy, dotted over with cities, every name of which is a spell to memory! Thence back to Florence, and all that gay world that seemed so small to the eye the day before! And now, dearest Miss Cox, let me conclude, ere my own littleness become more apparent; for here I am, tossing over laces and embroidery, gazing with rapture at brooches and bracelets, and actually fancying how captivating I shall be when apparelled in all this finery. It would be mere deceitfulness in me were I to tell you that I am not charmed with the splendor that surrounds me. Let me only hope that it may not corrupt that heart which at no time was more entirely your own than while I write myself yours affectionately,

Caroline Dodd.

LETTER XXXII. KENNY JAMES DODD TO THOMAS PURCELL, ESQ., OF THE GRANGE,

BRUFF

Florence.

Well, my dear Tom, my task is at last completed, – my magnum opus accomplished. I have carried all my measures, if not with triumphant majorities, at least with a "good working party," as the slang has it, and I stand proudly pre-eminent the head of the Dodd Administration. I have no patience for details. I like better to tell you the results in some striking paragraph, to be headed "Latest Intelligence," and to run thus: "Our last advices inform us that, notwithstanding the intrigues in the Cabinet, K. I. maintains his ascendency. We have no official intelligence of the fact, but all the authorities concur in believing that the Dodds are about to leave the Continent and return to Ireland."

Ay, Tom, that is the grand and comprehensive measure of family reform I have so long labored over, and at length have the proud gratification to see Law!

I find, on looking back, that I left off on my being sent for by Belton. I 'll try and take up one of the threads of my tangled narrative at that point. I found him at his hotel in conversation with a very smartly dressed, well-whiskered, kid-gloved little man, whom he presented as "Mr. Curl Davis, of Lincoln's Inn." Mr. D. was giving a rather pleasant account of the casualties of his first trip to Italy when I entered, but immediately stopped, and seemed to think that the hour of business should usurp the time of mere amusement.

Belton soon informed me why, by telling me that Mr. C. D. was a London collector who transacted the foreign affairs for various discounting houses at home, and who held a roving commission to worry, harass, and torment all such and sundry as might have drawn, signed, or endorsed bills, either for their own accommodation or that of their friends.