Collected Works of Frances Trollope

by Frances Milton Trollope

  “Insolent wretch!” exclaimed her ladyship, pausing in the act of collecting various little articles for which she had not found room in the basket, “have you the audacity to bring me this as a message?”

  “My father says, Lady Clarissa, that as you are going to leave him to-morrow, he should wish to see you once more,” replied Martha.

  “Monster!” screamed Lady Clarissa stamping her foot upon the floor, “he, see me again? he, dare to lift his bankrupt eyes upon the noble woman he has so basely injured? — Tell him, you bold messenger who fear not to face the descendant of a dozen earls to convey to her the words of a bankrupt cotton-spinner, tell him, that the only atonement he can make, is TO DIE. Tell him this from me! — and may the ostentatious settlement his unprincipled pride made on me. excuse me in some degree in the eyes of my noble brother, for the degradation I brought upon him by accepting it!” These last words were uttered with clasped hands, raised eyes, fervent accents, and all other ordinary indications of uttering a prayer.

  Indignant and disgusted, Martha felt no scruple in employing the means her father had given her for obtaining the interview he desired, and quietly said in reply to this burst, “My father stated that his motive for asking to see you, Lady Clarissa, proceeded from his wish to present to you, as a parting gift, the diamond ring which he wears on his right hand.”

  The effect of these words was as sudden as that produced by the magic touch of a hand employed in turning off gas.

  “That indeed is a most natural wish! Unhappy, guilty man! I can well believe that had he the crown jewels at command, he would deem them all too poor an offering to atone for the offence he has committed against me! I thank God, Martha Dowling, that my noble blood has never taught me to forget that I am a Christian! There are many women, believe me there are, of less exalted rank than myself, who would not deign to obey such a summons. But I feel what my duties are, and I shall nerve my courage to perform them. Come with me to my dressing-room, Martha, carry that basket for me, and then I will go with you to the bedside of Sir Matthew.”

  Martha attempted to obey, but the basket was too heavy for her to carry, and she set it down again, declaring that the task was beyond her strength.

  “A tolerably good joke that,” said Lady Clarissa, endeavouring to laugh, “considering your origin; but this is the last day of such pleasant jestings, and therefore I must bear it with good humour I suppose.” Then applying her own much stronger hand, she lifted her treasure, and was stalking off with it; but stopped short ere she reached the door, saying, “No, I will stay here while you go and fetch my faithful Mistress Saunderson. She enters into all my feelings! thank God! and is as strong as a Highland pony into the bargain.” Having obediently performed this commission, and brought back the faithful Scotch waiting-worn an, who had adhered very steadfastly to her mistress through all the vicissitudes of her fortune, Martha at length succeeded in marshalling the Lady Clarissa Dowling into the bedroom of her husband.

  No signet-ring ever made a deeper impression on wax, than the diamond one of Sir Matthew had done on the memory of his noble wife; and her first glance, as she entered the room, was directed to the hand which lay on the bedclothes, that she might see if it had been already removed; but no! there it sparkled still, and with a gentler aspect than she had been seen to wear since the tremendous hour when the declension of Sir Matthew, from the richest commoner in the county into a bankrupt, had been announced to her, she said, “You wish to see me, Sir Matthew — Martha says you wish to see me.” —

  “Yes my beloved!” replied the knight. “I do wish to see you; Angelic sweetness! How can I do otherwise? Look at yourself in the mirror, most beautiful Clarissa? Look in the mirror before that broker there carries it off, and tell me if you think it possible that any man could bear to part with so much beauty, without having one final gaze upon it? And see, my dear, here is your amiable neighbour Mrs. Gabberly! Is it not kind of her to leave all other visitings, that she may come to nestle herself here, among the very brokers, in the very centre of our misery? It is so heavenly-minded of her, isn’t it? I guessed indeed that one great reason for her making such a tremendous sacrifice was the hope of edification from beholding the Christian spirit with which your ladyship bears your ladyship’s overthrow; and besides her own improvement from it, she wishes to have it in her power to describe it to the whole neighbourhood. Very right of her, isn’t it, my dear? And that is the reason why I sent for you.”

  In general the nose of Lady Clarissa greatly outblushed her cheeks, which had more of the jonquil than the rose in them; but now, from the tip of-her high forehead, to that of her long chin, she became crimson; and but from the remarkable length of her throat, which seemed to rear itself in defiance of such danger, a fit of apoplexy might have been expected.

  “Begone! you vulgar gossip-picker!” she cried, turning in uncontrollable rage upon the terrified little woman, “and tell the contemptible neighbourhood through which you are going to crawl in your donkey-cart, like a snail in his shell, leaving your slime as you go, tell them all, from me, that the best consolation under my remorse at having forgotten my own dignity by condescending to hold a place among them, arises from being released from the degradation of associating with so contemptible a being as yourself, and all who are capable of listening to you!” And having uttered these words in a piercing voice, she rushed to the door, threw it with great violence wide open, and so left it, as she paced, with rapid but tragic strides, to the shelter of her own boudoir, and the sympathy of Mistress Saunderson.

  It was, perhaps, because the door was open, and that he knew the sound would follow her, that Sir Matthew burst into the most violent shout of laughter that ever made itself heard from mortal lungs; it terrified Martha, made Michael Armstrong shudder, and caused Mrs. Gabberly herself to wish she were any where else, notwithstanding the very valuable information this extraordinary scene would enable her to communicate. Long did this frightful laugh continue, and when strength seemed to fail, and the boisterous merriment could be sustained no longer, a vehement and reiterated hissing followed, which at length ended in such complete exhaustion that Sir Matthew fell back pale, and apparently motionless, upon his pillow.

  “Mrs. Gabberly,” said Martha, “I must beg you to leave us now. You must perceive that my poor father ought to be alone. It is very important — fearfully important, I am afraid — that he should be kept perfectly quiet! Give me leave to wish you good morning.”

  “I must say that it does seem very odd in you, Miss Martha, to per-

  sist in calling me company. Good gracious! To think of the terms on which I have always been in this house before your poor papa’s unfortunate marriage! I cannot and I will not leave you in such a condition. It would be perfectly monstrous, and every body would call me a brute for it. Till Dr. Crockley has been here, I really neither can nor will go. I am quite determined that I will hear what he says about him.”

  “Let her stay,” said Sir Matthew, in a hollow whisper, which proved that he was neither asleep nor dead, though his closed eyes, and ghastly countenance, might have been mistaken for one state or the other.

  Martha went to him, took his hand, wiped the profuse perspiration from his brow, and then placing herself in a chair beside him, continued to watch his altered countenance, alike unmindful as it seemed of the presence of Mrs. Gabberly, or that of Michael either.

  The lady, perfectly contented to be thus quietly established as a looker-on, determined, for the present, neither to move nor speak, lest she might lose the valued privilege thereby; but Michael became so conscious of the awkwardness of his situation, and so fearful lest Martha, from forgetting him, might get into a scrape likewise, that he ventured to approach the foot of the bed on tiptoe, merely for the purpose of recalling himself to her recollection, and then, on seeing her start at the sight of him, he said in a whisper, “I suppose I had better go down stairs now, Miss Martha?”

  Martha in reply to this nodded affirmatively
, and in the same low tone added, “I shall have other business to speak to you about. Do not go away till you have seen me.”

  Michael’s eyes were naturally turned to Martha while this passed; but when he withdrew them, and was about to make his retreat, he caught the large, wide open, wild-looking eyes of Sir Matthew fixed earnestly upon him. The young man involuntarily dropped his eyelids, for the gaze was a frightful one, and turned to leave the room.

  “Stay!” roared a hoarse but loud and stunning voice from the bed. “Stay! devil! demon! hell-bird! what do you come here for? Cowardly blackguard! Do you think I do not know you? You never dared to come till it was too late for me to hold you! I have heard of your purring round the place weeks ago. But you escaped me then, base runaway! What do you come spying here for? Did you think I should not know ye? Did you think I should forget those d — d hypocritical eyes, and that hateful curly hair, of the devil’s own colour? No, my pretty ‘prentice, I have not forgotten your crocodile looks, and never shall. I suppose you thought you should bring me to repentance by sending home word that you were dead. Was that it, eh?”

  “I am able now, Sir Matthew, to pay for leaving the mill before my time, and I am quite ready to do it, if you please,” replied Michael, gently. But he spoke to one who heard him not. Sir Matthew had a neck as short and thick as that of his lady was long and thin. His last interview with her had not been a salutary one for a man in his state of mind and body; and the subsequent discovery of Michael, of whose visit to the factory he had heard from Parsons, and at whose escape he expressed the most unbridled rage, accelerated symptoms which had before threatened him, and sent such a rush of blood to the brain as instantly produced apoplexy, and left him totally deprived of sense and motion.

  Martha, whose eyes were fixed upon him, uttered a fearful shriek, and threw herself on the body, believing that he was dead. But Mrs. Gabberly knew better. She had practised too long as an amateur not to know a fit of apoplexy when she saw it, and promptly exclaimed, “Get away, Martha! Get off of him, child! He is not dead, I tell you, and, if we could but bleed him, he would open his eyes again fast enough.”

  With the rapidity of lightning poor Martha obeyed. She withdrew herself from the bed, endeavoured to raise her father in her arms, and, by the help of Michael, succeeded. She then bared his arm, bound her own waist-belt tightly round it, and with unshrinking courage had thrust a sharp penknife which she drew from her pocket into a vein, before the skilful lady who had prescribed the measure had half recovered her astonishment on perceiving that the poor girl had conceived the project of putting it into immediate execution.

  The old adage that “where there is a will, there is a way,” was never better illustrated than by this act of the tender-hearted and invalided Martha. She felt that her father’s life hung on the promptness with which the operation was performed; she felt too, that if she shrunk from it, there was no one else who would perform it, and totally forgetful of herself and her own feelings conquered the rebellious weakness that would have held her hand, and did what two minutes before she would have believed it utterly impossible she could have done. The result did honour to the skill of Mrs. Gabberly. The lazy current flowed, though reluctantly. Sir Matthew opened his large eyes, rolled them from side to side, heaved a deep and heavy sigh, and presently attempted to speak, but this was beyond his power.

  “What more should be done?” said the pale, and now trembling Martha, turning towards Mrs. Gabberly.

  “Why now, my dear, you must just let him alone for a little bit,” replied the physician by hereditary right. “Well now!” she added, “Wasn’t it a blessing that I was here? If I had not staid, he would have been as dead as mutton by this time.”

  CHAPTER XXXI.

  A FRIENDLY CONSULTATION — A DANGEROUS EMBASSY — LADY CLARISSA RECEIVES SOME DISAGREEABLE INTELLIGENCE — AN AWKWARD CONTEST — UNPLEASANT VISIONS — A FITTING TERMINATION TO THE CONFIDENTIAL UNION BETWEEN MASTER AND MAN.

  SUCH was the state of affairs in the bedroom of Sir Matthew Dowling, when Dr. Crockley entered it. Were all the words which Mrs. Gabberly then uttered in explanation of what she had done, why she had done it, and how her doings had answered, to be written down here, my waning pages would hardly suffice to contain them. Dr. Crockley nodded, winked, approved, and applauded a great deal, joked a little, and finally felt the patient’s pulse, observing at the same time that it was necessary at any rate to bring him round sufficiently to get a little talk on business out of him, before he popped off for good and all.

  “Very right and proper if you can manage it, doctor,” sagaciously observed Mrs. Gabberly. “But you may depend upon it, that—” and here she whispered something, that it was especially intended Martha should be neither the better nor the worse for. The doctor nodded and winked, and nodded again; and then turning to the poor girl who was not only the one who alone in that presence cared any thing for the prostrate millocrat, but the one of all created beings who would alone have felt his death to be a cause of mourning. Dr. Crockley turned to her, and with very little of even the external decency of sympathy said, “Do you think you can manage to get some mustard, my dear, out of the clutches of the bailiffs? — because that is what we want here.”

  Without answering, Martha moved towards the door; and Michael, not conceiving that the physician’s words were but a brutal jest, and fancying that Martha might really have to petition those who now held authority in the household for the article wanted, stepped after her, to request that he might execute the commission in her place.

  “You shall come down with me, Michael,” she replied, “and I doubt not you will be able to procure what we want without difficulty. But alas! Michael, It will avail nothing — I am sure by their whispering, that they both know it will avail nothing! Nevertheless it shall be tried. But is it not dreadful that of all his numerous family there should be only one to receive his dying breath? O God!” she added with clasped hands and streaming eyes, “if it be a judgment, let it atone for all that has been wrong! For surely it is a heavy one!”

  On reaching the hall, the pitying Michael, who in the sufferings of his friend forgot all the cruelty of his enemy, insisted upon going alone into the thronged and noisy offices, while she sat down to wait for his return. He did his errand promptly, and was by her side again in a minute or two; but be found that she had left the chair on which he had placed her, and was now pacing up and down the hall in violent agitation.

  “I am overpowered, I am borne down by all this horror — this deep and bitter grief!” she exclaimed. “And there is not a single human being near me, but your ill-used self, Michael, from whom I am likely to find any real kindness! The conduct of all with whom I have had intercourse since my poor father’s distresses came upon him, has been such as to make me wish rather to shun, than seek them at this awful moment, yet I want some one to tell me how I ought to act. I know that fearful man Parsons, who is greatly in his confidence, had business of importance to settle with him; for again and again my father has said to me, since the execution has been in the house, that let what would happen, he must find time to speak to him. Ought I not then to send to him in this extremity?”

  “Would to Heaven I were fitter to advise you, my dear Miss Martha!” replied Michael, with equal respect and tenderness. ‘Certainly if such were your father’s words, it is very right to remember them. Shall I go to the factory and summon Mr. Parsons hither?”

  “Oh! It is hateful to me,” replied poor Martha, “to call such a being to his deathbed! But it may be that the interests of others are at stake, and when I recall my father’s earnestness as he spoke of the necessity of seeing him, I tremble at the idea of disobeying him. Go then, Michael! hasten to the factory, and tell this man that his master is very ill, but that if he recovers his senses and his speech, it is probable he may wish to speak to him.”

  Michael lost no time in obeying her; and on reaching the mills found the superintendent, as usual, at his post. At the first glance
he did not recognise the messenger, for the appearance of the young man was greatly changed by the style of equipment which, under the advice of Mr. Bell, had been provided for him. No sooner did Michael speak, however, than the man started, as if he had been shot.

  “Sir Matthew send you?” he exclaimed, “what mountebank tricks are you got at now, you young villain? What! did you think that this fine toggery could bamboozle me? Has it really bamboozled him? Have you, faith and troth, contrived to pass yourself off upon your dearly-beloved benefactor as a gentleman of fashion and fortune who was come to make him a visit of condolence upon his misfortunes? A capital fellow, ain’t you? or, perhaps, my nice young grandee, you fancy his grinders are drawn, and that he can’t, or won’t, maybe, have any thing to do, now that he has fallen into trouble, with putting such an elegant young gentleman to inconvenience? Is that it? But it is just possible that other people may be more at leisure. Who knows?”

  “Never mind me now, Mr. Parsons,” replied Michael, utterly indifferent, at that moment, to any thing, and every thing, that his old enemy might attempt for the purpose of annoying him. “Never think of me or my affairs, at such a time as this. You have given me no opportunity to speak, or you would have understood that it was not Sir Matthew who sent me here, but his daughter. Sir Matthew was too ill, when I left the house, to know any thing about it; but Miss Martha thinks that, if he recovers his speech and senses, he may wish to speak to you.”

  “Like enough!” replied the superintendent with a sneer. “Sir Matthew’s troubles have nowise changed his nature. The young lady is quite right: but I shouldn’t have thought as he’d have told her any thing about it, either. Not but what she might approve the job, too, if she had got any spirit in her. But she is but a poor, puling sort of a cretur, much as she was when she used to cosset you, may beautiful master runaway apprentice. However, never mind that now, as you say, my pretty master; there’s a time for all things. You may just step in here while I change my coat. It bean’t the first time as you have entered this pleasant building, Master Mike, is it?”