Mr. O’Donagough, who had by this time reached her side, stood with more nonchalance than was quite amiable, while his indignant wife thus exerted herself. Nay, some persons might even have suspected that he was base enough to quiz the vehement energy of her pleadings; for not only did he remain perfectly silent, but now and then exchanged such a look with the individual with whom she was contesting the legality of the transaction, as might have easily been construed into joining in the laugh against her. Fortunately for the preservation of the King’s peace, on the spot sacred to the collection of his own customs, Mrs. O’Donagough was too completely occupied to be aware of this, and it was only when at length she ceased to speak, that she perceived her husband beside her.
“I do wonder, Mr. O’Donagough,” she then began, “how you can stand there like a statue, without ever uttering a single syllable, good, bad, or indifferent! I do believe you are the only man in the whole civilised world who would let all the trouble of travelling fall upon his wife in this way. Pray, sir, do make the people understand that the coach is waiting for me, and that it is impossible I should go without my dressing-box!”
“Why, my dear, you and I don’t do business in the same way. Pray, sir, how long will it be before our things can be passed? These are the articles in this corner — just one dozen packages, great and small. When will they be looked over?”
“Within an hour, sir.”
“Now, then, my dear, make up your mind. Will you wait here yourself one hour, till you can see the whole lot sent off? Or will you go on to the Saracen’s Head, and leave me here to get it done? Or will you prefer my going with you, and returning here again after I have seen you and Martha safely lodged?”
There is hardly anything in the world so provoking, when one has worked oneself up to a considerable degree of energy, as to be made to perceive, as plainly as that two and two make four, that no energy at all was necessary. Mrs. O’Donagough would at that moment have given anything short of her dressing-box, if without danger she could have bestowed upon her husband a good cuff; but she restrained herself, and only replied, “Oh! pray do not trouble yourself to go with us — I am sure I hope there is nothing going to happen in which you could do any good. Stay, if you like, and as long as you like, and let all the things be seized One after another, without putting out your finger to prevent it. I don’t care a straw about it. It would be convenient, certainly, for me to get my dressing-box before I go, but as you do not choose to take any trouble about it, of course I must submit. Few gentlemen, I fancy, would like to see their wives treated in this sort of way, particularly about a thing that I took out of England myself, years and years ago. However, I shall say no more about it. I know the transaction to be perfectly infamous in every way, and that’s all I have to say on the subject. General Hubert, or Lady Elizabeth either, will he able to tell me whether it will be worth my while to take any further notice of it. The importance of the thing itself is comparatively nothing — but no man of spirit, I presume, would choose that his wife should be treated with fraud and indignity — that’s all I wish to observe.”
This speech was intended for all within hearing, but it is doubtful whether any one besides her husband heard a syllable of it. There is, perhaps, no place in which the constitutional propensity of the gentler sex to relieve their full hearts in words, is endured with more unresisting passiveness than in scenes of active public business. The stream is generally permitted to flow on without let or hindrance; and if, as usually happens, no attention is paid to it, the obvious reason lies in the judicious earnestness of the functionaries to perform the ladies’ wishes, without pausing even to listen to their eloquent expression of them.
Mrs. O’Donagough waited a few seconds for an answer, but receiving none, either from her husband or any one else, she turned suddenly round upon a person actively engaged in the examination of a host of trunks just arrived from France, and, said, “Am I to have my dressing-box, sir, or not?”
The man looked up at her for an instant, but pursued his employment without answering.
“What insufferable insolence!” she exclaimed, fronting round again to Mr. O’Donagough; “I am perfectly persuaded that there is no nation in the world where such conduct would be endured, except this! And I believe also,” she continued, somewhat in a lower voice, and preparing to leave the room, “I believe also that there is not another man in existence who would suffer his wife to be thus treated without resenting it.”
“You will get these things in the corner looked over next, will you?” said Mr. O’Donagough, with the most perfect composure.
“Yes, sir, I will,” replied the man he addressed, with such unalterable civility, that Mrs. O’Donagough began to suspect, no scolding, however violent, could do any good; and having fortunately arrived at this conclusion, she condescended to take her husband’s arm and walk off; muttering, however, the whole way some very biting observations on the difference between some men and other men. But Mr. O’Donagough was in no humour to make a fuss about it, and continued to whistle “Oh! the roast beef of Old England, and, oh! the old English roast beef,” till they reached the hackney-coach, in which they had left their young daughter.
Many papas and mammas would have felt some scruple, if not a little fear, at the idea of leaving a young lady of fourteen in a scene so noisy and so new, as the street in front of the London Custom-house: but it is more than probable that they both of them knew sufficiently well the excellent condition of the young Martha’s nerves, to prevent all notion of such idle alarms. They found her, as most likely they expected, still unsatiated with the delight of staring at all the people, and all the carts, and all the horses, and all the boxes, which were passing in a whirling maze before her view.
“Well, chicken!” cried her father, inserting his face between that of his wife and the window of the hackney-coach, “are you not tired of waiting for us?”
“Tired?” replied the young lady; “not I; never saw such fun in my life. What have you been doing, mamma, all this time? It is a thousand pities you should not have seen all these people pass. There must be some monstrous great arrival in England, to-day, I am sure.”
Mr. O’Donagough laughed. “I am glad you have been amused, chick,” said he, standing a little aside, while his lady was getting into the coach; “and I should like very well to hear all you have got to say about it. But you must tell me all when I come.”
“Lor, papa, you ain’t going to stay here, are you?” said Martha, in a voice that betokened disappointment.
“How can you be so absurd, child?” said her mother, sharply, drawing up the window of the coach within exactly one inch of her husband’s nose. “For God’s sake let us make him useful if we can. He is by no means too well inclined that way, I promise you.”
When a factious and rebellious spirit gets possession of a woman, it gives her a degree of courage that is often quite astonishing. Mrs. O’Donagough knew, as well as she did that the sun would rise on the morrow, that however enduringly her husband might receive for a time, the rebukes and scoffings of her contumacious spirit, he would settle the account fairly with her at last, and this with a manly preponderance of force, which to any woman possessed of less audacious vigour of mind, would have been really alarming. Perhaps, indeed, Mrs. O’Donagough herself, was not always entirely free from trepidation, when these moments of retribution arrived; yet it was very rarely that the fear of them was sufficiently powerful to check her conjugal vivacities.
Mr. O’Donagough did not like having the coach-window drawn up within an inch of his nose, and employing the skilful manœuvre by which servants outside a carriage let down a glass forgotten by the ladies within, he managed to remove the barrier thus interposed between himself and his “womankind.”
“What the devil is the matter with you, madam?” said he, in a voice that caused more than one passing eye to turn round upon him. “Don’t tire me, Mrs. O’Donagough,” he added, in a lower tone, “or by Jove you may wish
I had left you behind at Sydney.”
Mrs. O’Donagough was at this moment very advantageously situated for receiving the burst of wrath which she knew had been accumulating during the last half-hour. She dared not, indeed, attempt to draw up the window again, but raising herself on her feet as nearly as the roof of the carriage would let her, she sat down again in the corner with a degree of vehemence, which made the crazy springs of the vehicle dip under her as if never to rise again; and in lieu of her magnificent countenance, presented so broad, thick, and seemingly impregnable a shoulder to her spouse, that he felt he was worsted, and showing his large row of still white teeth to his daughter, as with a backward movement of his thumb he pointed to the massive shoulder, he stepped back upon the pavement, calling out at the same time to the coachman, to “Drive to the Saracen’s Head, Snow Hill.”
Martha made a movement that brought her face parallel to the opposite window, and her shoulders to those of her mamma’s, so that the laugh produced by her papa’s facetiousness was not observed.
“Brute!” exclaimed Mrs. O’Donagough, as the carriage drove off.
“Oh! my gracious — what a beautiful bonnet that is! And that — and that,” cried the young lady, as they passed a shop-window; “shouldn’t I look beautiful, mamma, with those green feathers?”
“Perhaps you might, my dear,” replied her mother; “and you must be as sharp as a needle, Patty, I can tell you that, to get what you want out of your skinflint father. He’ll be smart enough himself, I’ll answer for him, for he is as vain as an old peacock; but as for us, and our appearance, he won’t care much, I dare say; and a hard tug we shall have, before we get anything decent out of him. Mark my words, if we don’t.”
Of her two parents, Miss O’Donagough decidedly liked her papa the best; but she was already much too good a tactician to let this appear before the eyes of her mamma. She felt, indeed, her daily increasing power over both, and as deliberately determined to make the most of it, as if she had studied the curious and incalculable effect of skilfully-applied domestic influence for years.
One means which she had long ago discovered, as beyond all others effectual in promoting this, was the seizing of every safe opportunity of making each fond parent believe that she was quite willing, if she dared, to become his or her partisan, upon all occasions, against the other. Some idea of her acute and almost precocious talents may be gathered from the fact, that she had already persuaded her father of her perfect enjoyment of all the ridicule he from time to time slily threw upon his lady; and her mother, that she considered her as exceedingly ill-used, whenever she failed of having her own way in every contest she fell into, with her master and her lord.
* * * * *
Mrs. O’Donagough had changed but little in her feelings and principles of action, since the day when she arrived at the hotel at Exeter, with her niece Agnes and Betty Jacks. She still bore herself as one deserving of all deference and respect, and called about her on arriving at the Saracen’s Head, as if nobody so great had ever driven under its awful sign before.
The first waiter who met her passed on, exciting thereby her deepest indignation; but at length her loud and dignified demand, “Can we have beds and supper here?” produced something like the desired effect; and she was ushered into a little dusky, dirty, up-stairs sitting-room, from the window of which, however, Martha had the gratification of finding that she could look out upon the street. It was the latter end of the month of August, and no one perhaps but a young lady just escaped from the ship that had brought her from New South Wales, could have found such keen delight in gazing upon the hot and dusty precincts of Snow-hill. To her, however, it was a sort of opening paradise, in which she fancied she could dwell for ever without becoming weary.
“What quantities of carriages, mamma! And, oh! good gracious, the men! and such bonnets and flowers! If papa won’t give us some money, I am sure we shall grow wild.”
“Yes, to be sure we shall,” replied her mother, who, with her hand on her daughter’s shoulder, and her head protruded farther still than that of the young lady, hung over the pavement, enamoured of all the metropolitan splendour she saw passing there.
“London is a glorious place; there is no doubt of that, mamma,” said Martha.
“The finest in the world — everybody says so; and I am sure it is impossible to stand here and doubt it,” replied her mother. “But do you know, Patty, I am dying with hunger. I suppose your father would kill us if we ordered tea before he came.”
“I am sure it would be very savage of him to want to keep us starving here, while he is amusing himself with all the beautiful things as he comes along,” replied the young lady.
“Well, my dear, if you have courage to face it, I don’t care. He was in a brutal ill-humour when we drove off; but, I suppose, if you tell him that you were feeling so sick and feint that you thought you should die, he won’t say much about it. So, if you feel courage for it, I’ll ring.”
“Oh, lor! mamma, I feel courage enough, if that’s all. I’m sure I could eat a dozen rounds of buttered toast for my own share. Ring away, mamma, I’ll stop papa’s mouth when be comes. You see if I don’t.”
Thus encouraged, Mrs. O’Donagough did ring, and her liberal orders given quite in the Silverton-park style, for tea, toast, muffins, eggs, cold chicken, and ham, were obeyed with admirable promptitude, and the mother and daughter had got half through the tea-urn, and very nearly quite through all the eatables upon the table, when Mr. Allen O’Donagough made his appearance.
“Civil and obliging, upon my word,” he exclaimed, with “a touch of very natural feeling,” as he entered the room. “While I have been fagging like a blackamoor to get your cursed things through the customs, you two sit down and devour everything that is to be had, without troubling yourselves for a single instant to think of me.”
“If you say that, you are a very wicked man, because you will tell fibs,” replied his daughter. “We did think of you, and talk of you, too, a great deal, before we set to. And it was I told mamma that I was sure as sure, that you wouldn’t and couldn’t be angry. Just think, papa, the difference of sitting stock stone still up here, longing for a morsel of food to keep soul and body together, and being busy and blithe in the midst of all the beautiful sights like you have been.”
While saying these words, Martha employed herself in preparing on one fork a huge collop of ham, with a lump of fowl to match it, and on another, an equally full sized morsel of boiled beef, daintily covered with mustard.
“Now, here’s what I call two beautiful mouthfuls. Open your gills, papa. This one first, ‘cause the mustard is strongest. Well, how d’ye like it? Very good, is it? I thought so. Now this. And that’s very good, too, it seems, by your manner of munching it. Now say if I haven’t thought about you! I told mamma I’d stop your mouth; and all you’ve got to do is just to say which you like best, and more will come of it, I’ll be bound, as soon as you order it.”
There was something so exceedingly clever, and so prettily playful, in this device of the young Martha to restore her hungry father’s good humour, that both parents were delighted ‘with it. Mrs. O’Donagough got up laughing and rang the bell without being bid; and Mr. O’Donagough pinched his daughter’s cheek, called her a saucy hussy, and said that he’d be hanged if there was such another girl of her years in Europe, or out of it.
CHAPTER IX.
IT will easily be imagined that Mr and Mrs. O’Donagough, notwithstanding their occasional little tiffs, had found a sufficient number of tranquil moments on board ship, to discuss very fully the important question of what it would be best to do with themselves on first arriving in London. Mrs. O’Donagough very naturally declared, that her first and dearest object would be to throw herself into the arms of her beloved Agnes, and once more to embrace the brother of her fond young memory, Mr. Willoughby; for which reasons, Berkeley-square rose, as it were, spontaneously to her lips, every time the subject of settling themselves was mention
ed.
But Mr. O’Donagough, who in one way or another had contrived to learn more facts concerning the movements of the fashionable world, than had hitherto fallen within the scope of his wife’s observation, undertook to assure her, that in the month of August there was no chance whatever of finding either Mrs. Hubert or Mr. Willoughby in London. It was, therefore, necessary to consider what was most desirable in the second degree; and the affectionate Mrs. O’Donagough hinted, just before they left the vessel, that her feelings were becoming so strongly imperative for a reunion, that what she should best like would be, to follow her relatives wheresoever they might be, in town or country, sea-side or hill-side, amidst the enchanting dissipation of a watering-place, or the soberer joys of their own rural home. But Mr. O’Donagough thought it might be more prudent to decide for or against this, according to circumstances, and the discussion had been broken off unfinished, by the arrival of the custom-house officers on board.
It was now revived again, over the substantial tea-table, at the Saracen’s Head, both parties enjoying the advantage of restored good-humour, and the only difference in their mode of treating the subject being, that the lady truly believed the question as to whether they should follow General Hubert to his country-house to be in doubt, whereas the gentleman exceedingly well knew that it was not.
Collected Works of Frances Trollope Page 233