interrupted by the entrance of dinner, greatly to the concern of
Sophia; for the misfortunes of her friend had raised her anxiety,
and left her no appetite but what Mrs. Fitzpatrick was to satisfy by
her relation.
The landlord now attended with a plate under his arm, and with the
same respect in his countenance and address which he would have put on
had the ladies arrived in a coach and six.
The married lady seemed less affected with own misfortunes than
was her cousin; for the former eat very heartily, whereas the latter
could hardly swallow a morsel. Sophia likewise showed more concern and
sorrow in her countenance than appeared in the other lady; who, having
observed these symptoms in her friend, begged her to be comforted,
saying, "Perhaps all may yet end better than either you or I expect."
Our landlord thought he had now an opportunity to open his mouth,
and was resolved not to omit it. "I am sorry, madam," cries he,
"that your ladyship can't eat; for to be sure you must be hungry after
so long fasting. I hope your ladyship is not uneasy at anything,
for, as madam there says, all may end better than anybody expects. A
gentleman who was here just now brought excellent news; and perhaps
some folks who have given other folks the slip may get to London
before they are overtaken; and if they do, I make no doubt but they
will find people who will be very ready to receive them."
All persons under the apprehension of danger convert whatever they
see and hear into the objects of that apprehension. Sophia therefore
immediately concluded, from the foregoing speech, that she was
known, and pursued by her father. She was now struck with the utmost
consternation, and for a few minutes deprived of the power of
speech; which she no sooner recovered, than she desired the landlord
to send his servants out of the room, and then, addressing herself
to him, said, "I perceive, sir, you know who we are; but I beseech
you-nay, I am convinced, if you have any compassion or goodness, you
will not betray us."
"I betray your ladyship!" quoth the landlord; "no (and then he swore
several very hearty oaths); I would sooner be cut into ten thousand
pieces. I hate all treachery. I! I never betrayed any one in my life
yet, and I am sure I shall not begin with so sweet a lady as your
ladyship. All the world would very much blame me if I should, since it
will be in your ladyship's power so shortly to reward me. My wife
can witness for me, I knew your ladyship the moment you came into
the house: I said it was your honour, before I lifted you from your
horse, and I shall carry the bruises I got in your ladyship's
service to the grave; but what signified that, as long as I saved your
ladyship? To be sure some people this morning would have thought of
getting a reward; but no such thought ever entered into my head. I
would sooner starve than take any reward for betraying your ladyship."
"I promise you, sir," says Sophia, "if it be ever in my power to
reward you, you shall not lose by your generosity."
"Alack-a-day, madam!" answered the landlord; "in your ladyship's
power! Heaven put it as much into your will! I am only afraid your
honour will forget such a poor man as an innkeeper; but, if your
ladyship should not, I hope you will remember what reward I
refused- refused! that is, I would have refused, and to be sure it
may be called refusing, for I might have had it certainly; and to be
sure you might have been in some houses;-but, for my part, I would
not, methinks, for the world have your ladyship wrong me so much as to
imagine I ever thought of betraying you, even before I heard the
good news."
"What news, pray?" says Sophia, something eagerly.
"Hath not your ladyship heard it, then?" cries the landlord; "nay,
like enough, for I heard it only a few minutes ago; and if I had never
heard it, may the devil fly away with me this instant if I would
have betrayed your honour! no, if I would, may I-" Here he subjoined
several dreadful imprecations, which Sophia at last interrupted, and
begged to know what he meant by the news.- He was going to answer,
when Mrs. Honour came running into the room, all pale and breathless,
and cried out, "Madam, we are all undone, all ruined, they are come,
they are come!" These words almost froze up the blood of Sophia; but
Mrs. Fitzpatrick asked Honour who were come? "Who?" answered she,
"why, the French; several hundred thousands of them are landed, and we
shall be all murdered and ravished."
As a miser, who hath, in some well-built city, a cottage, value
twenty shillings, when at a distance he is alarmed with the news of
a fire, turns pale and trembles at his loss; but when he finds the
beautiful palaces only are burnt, and his own cottage remains safe, he
comes instantly to himself, and smiles at his good fortunes: or as
(for we dislike something in the former simile) the tender mother,
when terrified with the apprehension that her darling boy is
drowned, is struck senseless and almost dead with consternation; but
when she is told that little master is safe, and the Victory only,
with twelve hundred brave men, gone to the bottom, life and sense
again return, maternal fondness enjoys the sudden relief from all
its fears, and the general benevolence which at another time would
have deeply felt the dreadful catastrophe, lies fast asleep in her
mind; so Sophia, than whom none was more capable of tenderly feeling
the general calamity of her country, found such immediate satisfaction
from the relief of those terrors she had of being overtaken by her
father, that the arrival of the French scarce made any impression on
her. She gently chid her maid for the fright into which she had thrown
her, and said "she was glad it was no worse; for that she had feared
somebody else was come."
"Ay, ay," quoth the landlord, smiling, "her ladyship knows better
things; she knows the French are our very best friends, and come
over hither only for our good. They are the people who are to make Old
England flourish again. I warrant her honour thought the duke was
coming; and that was enough to put her into a fright. I was going to
tell your ladyship the news.- His honour's majesty, Heaven bless him,
hath given the duke the slip, and is marching as fast as he can to
London, and ten thousand French are landed to join him on the road."
Sophia was not greatly pleased with this news, nor with the
gentleman who related it; but, as she still imagined he knew her
(for she could not possibly have any suspicion of the real truth), she
durst not show any dislike. And now the landlord, having removed the
cloth from the table, withdrew; but at his departure frequently
repeated his hopes of being remembered hereafter.
The mind of Sophia was not at all easy under the supposition of
being known at this house; for she still applied to herself many
things which the landlord had addressed to Jenny Cameron; she
therefore ordered her maid to pump out of him by what means he had
become acquainted with her person, and who had offered him the
reward for betraying her; she likewise ordered the horses to be in
readiness by four in the morning, at which hour Mrs. Fitzpatrick
promised to bear her company; and then, composing herself as well as
she could, she desired that lady to continue her story.
Chapter 7
In which Mrs. Fitzpatrick concludes her history
While Mrs. Honour, in pursuance of commands of her mistress, ordered
a bowl of punch, and invited my landlord and landlady to partake of
it, Mrs. Fitzpatrick thus went on with her relation.
"Most of the officers who were quartered at a town in our
neighbourhood were of my husband's acquaintance. Among these there was
a lieutenant, a very pretty sort of man, and who was married to a
woman, so agreeable both in her temper and conversation, that from our
first knowing each other, which was soon after my lying-in, we were
almost inseparable companions; for I had the good fortune to make
myself equally agreeable to her.
"The lieutenant, who was neither a sot nor a sportsman, was
frequently of our parties; indeed he was very little with my
husband, and no more than good breeding constrained him to be, as he
lived almost constantly at our house. My husband often expressed
much dissatisfaction at the lieutenant's preferring my company to his;
he was very angry with me on that account, and gave me many a hearty
curse for drawing away his companions; saying, 'I ought to be d--n'd
for having spoiled one of the prettiest fellows in the world, by
making a milksop of him.'
"You will be mistaken, my dear Sophia, if you imagine that the anger
of my husband arose from my depriving him of a companion; for the
lieutenant was not a person with whose society a fool could be
pleased; and, if I should admit the possibility of this, so little
right had my husband to place the loss of his companion to me, that
I am convinced it was my conversation alone which induced him ever
to come to the house. No, child, it was envy, the worst and most
rancorous kind of envy, the envy of superiority of understanding.
The wretch could not bear to see my conversation preferred to his,
by a man of whom he could not entertain the least jealousy. O my
dear Sophy, you are a woman of sense; if you marry a man, as is most
probable you will, of less capacity than yourself, make frequent
trials of his temper before marriage, and see whether he can bear to
submit to such a superiority.- Promise me, Sophy, you will take this
advice; for you will hereafter find its importance." "It is very
likely I shall never marry at all," answered Sophia; "I think, at
least, I shall never marry a man in whose understanding I see any
defects before marriage; and I promise you I would rather give up my
own than see any such afterwards." "Give up your understanding!"
replied Mrs. Fitzpatrick; "oh, fie, child! I will not believe so
meanly of you. Everything else I might myself be brought to give up;
but never this. Nature would not have allotted this superiority to the
wife in so many instances, if she had intended we should all of us
have surrendered it to the husband. This, indeed, men of sense never
expect of us; of which the lieutenant I have just mentioned was one
notable example; for though he had a very good understanding, he
always acknowledged (as was really true) that his wife had a better.
And this, perhaps, was one reason of the hatred my tyrant bore her.
"Before he would be so governed by a wife, he said, especially
such an ugly b-- (for, indeed, she was not a regular beauty, but very
agreeable and extremely genteel), he would see all the women upon
earth at the devil, which was a very usual phrase with him. He said,
he wondered what I could see in her to be so charmed with her company:
since this woman, says he, hath come among us, there is an end of your
beloved reading, which you pretended to like so much, that you could
not afford time to return the visits of the ladies in this country;
and I must confess I had been guilty of a little rudeness this way;
for the ladies there are at least no better than the mere country
ladies here; and I think I need make no other excuse to you for
declining any intimacy with them.
"This correspondence, however, continued a whole year, even all
the while the lieutenant was quartered in that town; for which I was
contented to pay the tax of being constantly abused in the manner
above mentioned by my husband; I mean when he was at home; for he
was frequently absent a month at a time at Dublin, and once made a
journey of two months to London: in all which journeys I thought it
a very singular happiness that he never once desired my company;
nay, by his frequent censures on men who could not travel, as he
phrased it, without a wife tied up to their tail, he sufficiently
intimated that, had I been never so desirous of accompanying him, my
wishes would have been in vain; but, Heaven knows, such wishes were
very far from my thoughts.
"At length my friend was removed from me, and I was again left to my
solitude, to the tormenting conversation with my own reflections,
and to apply to books for my only comfort. I now read almost all day
long.- How many books you think I read in three months?" "I can't
guess, indeed, cousin," answered Sophia. "Perhaps half a score." "Half
a score! half a thousand, child!" answered the other. "I read a good
deal in Daniel's English History of France; a great deal in Plutarch's
Lives, the Atalantis, Pope's Homer, Dryden's Plays, Chillingworth, the
Countess D'Aulnois, and Locke's Human Understanding.
"During this interval I wrote three very supplicating, and, I
thought, moving letters to my aunt; but, as I received no answer to
any of them, my disdain would not suffer me to continue my
application." Here she stopt, and, looking earnestly at Sophia,
said, "Methinks, my dear, I read something in your eyes which
reproaches me of a neglect in another place, where I should have met
with a kinder return." "Indeed, dear Harriet," answered Sophia,
"your story is an apology for any neglect; but, indeed, I feel that
I have been guilty of a remissness, without so good an excuse.-Yet
pray proceed; for I long, though I tremble, to hear the end."
Thus, then, Mrs. Fitzpatrick resumed her narrative:- "My husband
now took a second journey to England, where he continued upwards of
three months; during the greater part of this time I led a life
which nothing but having led a worse could make me think tolerable;
for perfect solitude can never be reconciled to a social mind, like
mine, but when it relieves you from the company of those you hate.
What added to my wretchedness was the loss of my little infant: not
