Collected Works of Frances Trollope

by Frances Milton Trollope

  Nothing could have been more judicious than this proposal; Patty appeared to forget all her sorrows in a moment, and springing forward with a bound that seemed to send her half-way up the stairs before its impulse was exhausted, exclaimed —

  “That’s the best thing you ever said in your life, pap. Come along, Don? I’d rather go to a play, any time, than be made a-queen.”

  A few minutes’ quiet walking through the dean and orderly streets of Philadelphia, brought them to the handsome Chesnut street Theatre, and a few minutes more found Patty seated to her heart’s content in the front row of a box very near the stage, and her still dearly-beloved Don close beside her. The major, however, who had taken his station behind, could not control the spirit of busy activity which was ever at work within him beyond the first act. He might pay himself for their tickets, he thought, at any rate, if he could but find a billiard-table; and saying, as he laid a hand upon the shoulder of both son and daughter, “You two can take care of one another,” he slid out of sight and escaped.

  Though the yellow-faced Don was neither so young nor so fresh as his wife, he enjoyed the amusement which he was thus peaceably left in possession of, quite as much as she did. The piece was Beaumarchais and Mozart’s “Barbiere di Sevigllia,” adapted to the American stage, and despite the doubtful improvement of sundry alterations, the Spaniard was in ecstasies. He was himself by no means a bad performer on the flute, and such a longing seized him as he watched the performer on that instrument, who sat almost immediately under him, once more to listen to his own notes upon it, that for some minutes after the opera ended, he was lost in revery.

  “What is the matter with you, Tornorino?” said his delighted wife, clapping her hands as she recollected that there was still another piece to be performed. “You don’t enjoy it half as much as I do.”

  The Don looked silently in her handsome face for about a minute, and then said ——

  “Vat should you say, Pati, if—” the rest was whispered. But whatever he said pleased her so well, that the thoughts of it seemed to divide her attention with the gay afterpiece, for she eagerly renewed the conversation at intervals during the whole time it lasted. Nor did the discussion thus begun, end here; it appeared to have equal charms for both; it lasted them through their fingering walk back to Mrs. Simcoe’s, kept them long awake after they retired to rest, and was renewed the very moment they were awake in the morning. The subject of these interesting conversations shall be explained hereafter.

  CHAPTER XXXI.

  No sooner were John Williams and his loving wife left to themselves by the departure of Mrs. Allen Barnaby, after one of the longest and most confidential tea-drinkings ever indulged in, than they exchanged looks full of pleasant meaning; and while the gentle woman sat silent from habitual reverence to her husband, the thoughtful man sat silent too for some short space, feeling half afraid of committing a folly by expressing how very greatly he was pleased by the adventure which had befallen them.

  At length, however, the smiling silence was broken by his saying —

  “Tell me, Rachel, without fear or favour, what dost thee think of our new acquaintance?”

  Thus encouraged, Rachael Williams meekly replied —

  “I rejoice because I see thee rejoice, John Williams, at finding ‘ that one has come amongst us who takes to heart the cause of the oppressed negro; but the joy of my own heart would be more full, and my confidence in the promised good more firm, if this help and aid came not in so gaudy a clothing. Besides, I think not that it is quite seemly, John Williams, to see a woman of such ripened age with ringlets and love-locks fluttering with every breeze that blows. But if thee dost tell me that this is prejudice, John Williams, it shall go hard with me but I will amend it, and for the future see only the woman’s purpose, and not the woman.”

  “No, Rachel, no,” replied the worthy quaker; “I should be loath that thy dutiful submission to thy husband’s word should be put to so hard a trial, or that thy faithful love should cost thee thy honest judgment. I like not the aged Englishwoman’s lovelocks better than thee dost, my good Rachel; but shall we quarrel with the help that the Lord has sent us, because it comes in a shape that is not comely to our eyes? What need is there that this foreign woman-writer should be as goodly and as gracious in my sight as thee art, Rachel? With her looks we have little to do; but trust me, if she knows how to write, she comes amongst us armed with a power which we who have a battle to fight would do wrong to treat lightly. This power she frankly offers to range on our side, and in my judgment it would be folly to reject it. How it comes to pass I know not, Rachel,” continued John Williams, after pausing a minute or two in meditation, “but certain it is, that notwithstanding all the abuse and belittling which the Union from Georgia to Maine pours forth without ceasing against the old country, notwithstanding all this, there is not an English goose-quill that can be wagged about us, right or wrong, witty or dull, powerful in wisdom, or mawkish in folly, but every man Jonathan in the States is rampant as a hungry wolf that seeks his food till he gets hold of it, and straightway it is devoured as if his life depended upon his swallowing the whole mess, let him find it as nauseous as he may. Such being the case, Rachel, it behoves those who, like us, have undertaken to fight the good fight in the cause of an oppressed race, to welcome with joy and gladness the aid of every English pen likely to be bold enough to set down the truth in this matter. If the best written treatise that ever was penned were to come forth to-morrow in favour of universal emancipation by John Williams of Philadelphia, thee dost know right well, Rachel, that it would only go to line trunks and wrap candles. But if this curly-wigged fat lady verily and indeed sets to work and prints a volume or two about the enormities she has seen in the Slave States, and the Christian good sense she will be able to listen to in the Free ones, we know, at any rate, that the books will be read, and that is something, Rachel.”

  “Yes, truly is it,” replied his faithful wife; “and woe betide the folly that would stop so godly a work, because its agent came from a foreign land, where old women wear unseemly head-gear.

  It shall not be thy wife, John Williams, that shall show any such untimely attention to outward apparel.”

  “Thee speaks even as I expected to hear thee, Rachel, after the first effect of this large lady’s finery was passed off; and now, dear wife, we will go on, hand in hand together, in helping and urging forward the good work.”

  Such being the state in which Mrs. Allen Barnaby had left the minds of her quaker friends, it scarcely need be doubted that with her penetrating powers of observation, she took her leave of them, extremely well satisfied with the result of her first Philadelphian experiment.

  It was not, however, without a pretty considerable degree of fatigue that she had reached the point at which she had aimed. It is a wearying, and in truth a very exhausting occupation to go on through a whole evening labouring to appear precisely what you are not; and so perseveringly had Mrs. Allen Barnaby done this during the hours she had passed with the good quakers, that when she reached her own room she could not resist the temptation of going immediately to bed and to sleep, although the major was not yet returned from his search after sporting men and a billiard-table, and although she felt not a little impatient to report progress to him. But nature would have her way, and for that night Major Allen Barnaby heard nothing more from his admirable wife but her snoring.

  Less silent and less sleepy were the pair that occupied the chamber on the opposite side of the corridor. It is quite time that the conversation which demonstrated the consequences of their evening at the theatre should now be recorded, as the results which followed upon it came so quickly, that I may otherwise be reduced to the necessity of narrating effects first and their causes after.

  “And if you will do just exactly what you have said, my own beautiful darling,” exclaimed Madame Tornorino, as soon as the door of their sleeping apartment was closed, “I will love and dote upon you as long as ever I live. An
d won’t we have fun, Don? And won’t we make the old ones stare? And, I say, Tornorino, won’t we enjoy eating and drinking, and waking and sleeping, without being obliged to care a cent for any body, and with money of our very own, own, own, without saying thank ye for it, to any mortal living? Won’t it be fun, Torni?”

  “I no contradict you, ma belle,” returned Tornorino. “It would be fun, if fun means bien beau, to do what we like, sans contredit from nobody. But we must tink, my beautiful Pati, vraiment, we must tink considerable before we give up the papa and the mamma and all that they have got to make us pardon quelques désagrémens.”

  “Don’t be an idiot, Don,” replied his animated wife. “Upon my life and soul, Tornorino, if you do turn out a coward and a fool, I will run away from you as sure as my name’s Patty. Do you think I don’t know the papa and the mamma, as you call them, better than you do? And do you think I want to creep about half-starved, as you used to do in London, my fine Don? Not a bit of it, I promise ye. What the old ones have got, I shall have, you may depend upon that, let me do what I will to affront them — and I won’t be kept in leading-strings any longer, I tell you. So just choose between living with me or without me. I WILL go on the stage, Tornorino, that’s the long and the short of it, in one word. If you choose to stand by me, good; that is what I shall like best, because, as you know, I dote upon you so; but if you plague me the least bit in the world by way of making me give up the scheme, I’ll run away from you before you can say Jack Robinson.”

  “No, no, no, my Pati beauty,” replied her husband, with a very tender caress, “I shot myself directly if you run away your beauty from me, I will indeed.”

  “And will you let me go upon the stage without trying to coax me out of it?” said Patty, shaking her head expressively.

  “Yes, my angel, I will; only I would not have no pleasure at all, if we were only to get on just as I did once before myself when I tried in the orchestra of Drury Lane. I was very much near starving, my Pati!” said poor Tornorino, mournfully.

  “Stuff and nonsense, darling,” replied his wife; “you in the orchestra of Drury Lane was one thing, and I on the stage at Philadelphia shall be another. Besides I tell you, Don, that pap would no more bear to see me want anything, than he would bear to want it himself. Mamma likes me well enough, I believe, and is as proud of me as a peacock is of his tail; but pap is my sheet-anchor, and as I must know him rather better than you, Mr. Don, I’ll just beg you not to trouble me any more by talking of starvation and such like agreeable conversation, for it’s what I most abominate; and I’ll just trouble you to remember that if you please, and never let me hear such a word again as long as you live.” —

  The amiable Tornorino did but mutter one little word or two under his breath, which would have signified, if interpreted, that he thought he knew Major Allen Barnaby as well as most people, and then he pledged the honour of an hidalgo that Ins charming Patty should never again be tormented by any vulgar doubts, or fears on the subject of daily bread; and then they proceeded to discuss, in the most animated and agreeable manner, what sort of dress would best become the fair débutante, and this most important question decided, that of character followed after; in short, half the night was passed in arranging the preliminaries of Madame Tornorino’s appearance upon the Philadelphian stage, which she felt confident would terminate her tiresome dependence upon “Pa and Ma,” and make both her fortune and fashion for ever.

  “Pa and Ma,” meanwhile, were on their parts as meritoriously intent upon turning their talents to account as their enterprising-daughter, and the early dawn found them in very animated discussion upon the best mode of effecting this.

  The major had returned from his search after “some opening in his own way,” in very ill-humour with the noble city of Philadelphia, declaring that, since he was born, he had never seen such a collection of broad-brimmed quizzes; and as to billiards, they .knew no more about it than so many children.

  “Then you should be the more rejoiced, my dear, that I am likely to make a good thing of it,” replied his wife, after very attentively listening to this melancholy account. “If they don’t know much about billiards, they do about books; and the broadbrims have their eyes open wide enough, I promise you, on the enormous importance of securing on their side a person who is master of the pen, or mistress either, my dear, if you like the phrase better.”

  “That is all vastly well, Mrs. Allen Barnaby,” replied the major, giving way to the rather strong feeling of ill-humour which his own abortive attempts had generated. “It is vastly well for you to strut and crow, because you find a parcel of idiots ready to be gulled by all the rhodomontade nonsense you are pleased to talk to them; but will that enable us all to go on living in the style we have lately been used to?”

  “I never talk to you when you are in a passion, my dear,” returned Mrs. Allen Barnaby, composedly, “for I know it does not answer.” —

  “God knows, my dear, I don’t want you to talk,” was the conjugal reply; “what I do want is, that you should understand that I mean to be off, and the sooner the better, for the place seems to be about equally dull, costly, and unprofitable — so you may set about packing as soon as you will. I shall be ready to start to-morrow at the very latest.”

  Mrs. Allen Barnaby remained silent for a minute or two, but the pause was not altogether occasioned by obedience to her husband’s hint; she was balancing in her able mind, during the interval, the comparative advantages of trusting to a good breakfast to ameliorate his ill-humour, or of disregarding his uncourt eons wish for silence, and pouring forth upon him at once the brilliant history of her last night’s success. Being a little afraid of him when he was in a passion (which to do him justice did not often happen), it is most likely that she would have chosen the former course, had he not suddenly said when preparing to leave the room —

  “There is no good in mincing the matter; I shall go at once and tell Mrs. Simcoe that we don’t much like the place, and mean to be off to-morrow.”

  “Nay, then, I can keep silent no longer, Donny!” exclaimed my heroine, in the most Siddonian tone imaginable. “You know not what you say, major — you know not what you are about to do! Alas! how weak and wilful is the mind of man! How short, how very short a time ago was it, that you vowed you never would decide on anything without consulting me! Yet now, because you find a society of black — of gentlemen, who might be quite as likely to win money as to lose it, you resolutely tell that you are determined to leave the place, though I have every reason on earth to believe that I may speedily rake a very considerable sum here.”

  Major Allen Barnaby was by no means the most unreasonable man in the world, and, therefore, instead of bouncing out of the room upon hearing these reproaches, he turned round while in the very act of leaving it, and said, with something almost approaching to a smile —

  “Come along then, wife, sit down, and tell me all about it at once, but don’t make it very long, there’s a good soul.”

  This uncivil restraint upon her eloquence was certainly painful; nevertheless Mrs. Allen Barnaby knew better than to notice it — nay, she even complied with the rude condition upon which she had been permitted to unburden her full heart, and did so as succinctly as possible, only permitting herself, after concluding her statement, to say —

  “Now then, Major Allen Barnaby, I leave it to you to decide whether the chance of profit is greater from our remaining among these very particularly rich people, who are ready to worship the very ground I tread upon, or from our setting off again upon a wild-goose chase in the hope of meeting some fool or other who may be cajoled into losing money to you.”

  “I should vote for the staying beyond all doubt, wife,” replied the mollified major, “if you could but contrive to make me see my way through all the theeing and thouing you have been so amusingly repeating to me, and to the solid cash that you expect to find at the end of it. We want the ready, wife — the cash, the rhino, the Spanish wheels, as they cal
l their sprawling dollars, and, unless you can manage to clutch this, I’ll tell you fairly that I would not give a gooseberry for all their civility, because, my dear, I don’t know any stock in any land that I can buy into with it.”

  “Major Allen Barnaby,” replied his wife, after having listened to him in resolute silence till he had ceased to speak, “wise as you are, you don’t know the value of ready money one bit better than I do. That No. I comes first, I well know, and No. 2, let it be what it will, comes a long way after it. So you need not talk any more, if you please, about giving gooseberries in return for such breakfasts and dinners as we got at Big-Gang Bank. But, in justice to my own honest earnings, I think it is but fair to remind you that you do love a good dinner, Major Allen Barnaby, and that the getting it, day after day, as you did from the Beauchamps, and capital good lodgings into the bargain for nothing, will save dollars if it does not make them.”

  “All quite true, Mrs. Allen Barnaby,” returned her spouse, mimicking a little her Siddonian dignity of tone “But, nevertheless, you must please to observe that at the present moment, we are not one single cent the richer for all your palavering with the slave-holders, but that my little games of piquet and écarte have left their traces very comfortably in my pocket-book.”

  “And much you would have enjoyed the comfort, Donny,” said his wife, relaxing into a laugh, “if I had declined the poisoning, and left you to abide the second settling of your play account with the honourable Mr. Themistocles Joseph John Hapford.”

  “Yes, my dear,” he replied, returning her laugh: “your poisoning was first-rate, and worth all your preaching, you may take my word for it. And once for all, wife, without any more joking and squabbling about the matter, you must make up your mind to understand that it won’t suit my views, to go on travelling through the country, dressing as fine as lords and ladies, and playing agreeable from morning to night, without getting any more by it than just bed and board. I am not so young as I was, my good Barnaby, and I feel the necessity of looking forward a little, and making up something like a purse against old age and a rainy day. If I find that they are too much in my own way here, I’ll be off to Madrid, or to Paris, or Baden-Baden. It’s all one to me. I really don’t care the value of a straw in what kingdom of the earth I set up my coining machine, but coin I must, wife, somewhere or other. If you will be so obliging as to give me the pleasure of your company through all these possible ins and outs by sea and by land, of course I shall be delighted; but if you unhappily decline it, and prefer remaining here, writing books for and against negro slavery, I am sorry to say it, but I shall be under the necessity of sacrificing your charming society, and setting off without you.”