that I pretend to have had for it that extravagant tenderness of which
I believe I might have been capable under other circumstances; but I
resolved, in every instance, to discharge the duty of the tenderest
mother; and this care prevented me from feeling the weight of that
heaviest of all things, when it can be at all said to lie heavy on our
hands.
"I had spent full ten weeks almost entirely by myself, having seen
nobody all that time, except my servants and a very few visitors, when
a young lady, a relation to my husband, came from a distant part of
Ireland to visit me. She had staid once before a week at my house, and
then I gave her a pressing invitation to return; for she was a very
agreeable woman, and had improved good natural parts by a proper
education. indeed, she was to me a welcome guest.
"A few days after her arrival, perceiving me in very low spirits,
without enquiring the cause, which, indeed, she very well knew, the
young lady fell to compassionating my case. She said, 'Though
politeness had prevented me from complaining to my husband's relations
of his behaviour, yet they all were very sensible of it, and felt
great concern upon that account; but none more than herself.' And
after some more general discourse on this head, which I own I could
not forbear countenancing, at last, after much previous precaution and
enjoined concealment, she communicated to me, as a profound
secret- that my husband kept a mistress.
"You will certainly imagine I heard this news with the utmost
insensibility- Upon my word, if you do, your imagination will mislead
you. Contempt had not so kept down my anger to my husband, but that
hatred rose again on this occasion. What can be the reason of this?
Are we so abominably selfish, that we can be concerned at others
having possession even of what we despise? or are we not rather
abominably vain, and is not this the greatest injury done to our
vanity? What think you, Sophia?"
"I don't know, indeed," answered Sophia; "I have never troubled
myself with any of these deep contemplations; but I think the lady did
very ill in communicating to you such a secret."
"And yet, my dear, this conduct is natural," replied Mrs.
Fitzpatrick; "and, when you have seen and read as much as myself,
you will acknowledge it to be so."
"I am sorry to hear it is natural," returned Sophia; "for I want
neither reading nor experience to convince me that it is very
dishonourable and very ill-natured: nay, it is surely as ill-bred to
tell a husband or wife of the faults of each other as to tell them
of their own."
"Well," continued Mrs. Fitzpatrick, "my husband at last returned;
and, if I am thoroughly acquainted with my own thoughts, I hated him
now more than ever; but I despised him rather less: for certainly
nothing so much weakens our contempt, as an injury done to our pride
or our vanity.
"He now assumed a carriage to me so very different from what he
had lately worn, and so nearly resembling his behaviour the first week
of our marriage, that, had I now had any spark of love remaining, he
might, possibly, have rekindled my fondness for him. But, though
hatred may succeed to contempt, and may perhaps get the better of
it, love, I believe, cannot. The truth is, the passion of love is
too restless to remain contented, without the gratification which it
receives from its object; and one can no more be inclined to love
without loving, than we can have eyes without seeing. When a
husband, therefore, ceases to be the object of this passion, it is
most probable some other man- I say, my dear, if your husband grows
indifferent to you- if you once come to despise him- I say- that is-
if you have the passion of love in you- Lud! I have bewildered myself
so- but one is apt, in these abstracted considerations, to lose the
concatenation of ideas, as Mr. Locke says:- in short, the truth is- in
short, I scarce know what it is; but, as I was saying, my husband
returned, and his behaviour, at first, greatly surprized me; but he
soon acquainted me with the motive, and taught me to account for it.
In a word, then, he had spent and lost all the ready money of my
fortune; and, as he could mortgage his own estate no deeper, he was
now desirous to supply himself with cash for his extravagance, by
selling a little estate of mine, which he could not do without my
assistance; and to obtain this favour, was the whole and sole motive
of all the fondness which he now put on.
"With this I peremptorily refused to comply. I told him, and I
told him truly, that, had I been possessed of the Indies at our
first marriage, he might have commanded it all; for it had been a
constant maxim with me, that where a woman disposes of her heart,
she should always deposit her fortune; but, as he had been so kind,
long ago, to restore the former into my possession, I was resolved
likewise to retain what little remained of the latter.
"I will not describe to you the passion into which these words,
and the resolute air in which they were spoken, threw him: nor will
I trouble you with the whole scene which succeeded between us. Out
came, you may be well assured, the story of the mistress; and out it
did come, with all the embellishments which anger and disdain could
bestow upon it.
"Mr. Fitzpatrick seemed a little thunderstruck with this, and more
confused than I had seen him, though his ideas are always confused
enough, heaven knows. He did not, however, endeavour to exculpate
himself; but took a method which almost equally confounded me. What
was this but recrimination? He affected to be jealous:-- he may, for
aught I know, be inclined enough to jealousy in his natural temper:
nay, he must have had it from nature, or the devil must have put it
into his head; for I defy all the world to cast a just aspersion on my
character: nay, the most scandalous tongues have never dared censure
my reputation. My fame, I thank heaven, hath been always as spotless
as my life; and let falsehood itself accuse that, if it dare. No, my
dear Graveairs, however provoked, however ill-treated, however injured
in my love, I have firmly resolved never to give the least room for
censure on this account.- And yet, my dear, there are some people so
malicious, some tongues so venomous, that no innocence can escape
them. The most undesigned word, the most accidental look, the least
familiarity, the most innocent freedom, will be misconstrued, and
magnified into I know not what, by some people. But I despise, my dear
Graveairs, I despise all such slander. No such malice, I assure you,
ever gave me an uneasy moment. No, no, I promise you I am above all
that.- But where was I? O let me see, I told you my husband was
jealous- And of whom, I pray?- Why, of whom but the lieutenant I
mentioned to you before! He was obliged to resort above a year and
more back, to find any object for this unaccountable passion, if,
indeed, he really felt any such, and was not an arrant counterfeit, in
order to abuse me.
"But I have tired you already with too many particulars. I will
now bring my story to a very speedy conclusion. In short, then,
after many scenes very unworthy to be repeated, in which my cousin
engaged so heartily on my side, that Mr. Fitzpatrick at last turned
her out of doors; when he found I was neither to be soothed nor
bullied into compliance, he took a very violent method indeed. Perhaps
you will conclude he beat me; but this, though he hath approached very
near to it, he never actually did. He confined me to my room,
without suffering me to have either pen, ink, paper, or book: and a
servant every day made my bed, and brought me my food.
"When I had remained a week under this imprisonment, he made me a
visit, and, with the voice of a schoolmaster, or, what is often much
the same, of a tyrant, asked me, 'If I would yet comply?' I
answered, very stoutly, 'That I would die first.' 'Then so you
shall, and be d--n'd!' cries he; 'for you shall never go alive out of
this room.'
"Here I remained a fortnight longer; and, to say the truth, my
constancy was almost subdued, and I began to think of submission;
when, one day, in the absence of my husband, who was gone abroad for
some short time, by the greatest good fortune in the world, an
accident happened.- I- at a time when I began to give way to the
utmost despair-- everything would be excusable at such a time- at that
very time I received-- But it would take up an hour to tell you all
particulars.- In one word, then (for I will not tire you with
circumstances), gold, the common key to all padlocks, opened my
door, and set me at liberty.
"I now made haste to Dublin, where I immediately procurred a passage
to England; and was proceeding to Bath, in order to throw myself
into the protection of my aunt, or of your father, or of any
relation who would afford it me. My husband overtook me last night
at the inn where I lay, and which you left a few minutes before me;
but I had the good luck to escape him, and to follow you.
"And thus, my dear, ends my history: a tragical one, I am sure, it
is to myself; but, perhaps, I ought rather to apologise to you for its
dulness."
Sophia heaved a deep sigh, and answered, "Indeed, Harriet, I pity
you from my soul!-- But what could you expect? Why, why, would you
marry an Irishman?"
"Upon my word," replied her cousin, "your censure is unjust. There
are, among the Irish, men of as much worth and honour as any among the
English: nay, to speak the truth, generosity of spirit is rather
more common among them. I have known some examples there, too, of good
husbands; and I believe these are not very plenty in England. Ask
me, rather, what I could expect when I married a fool; and I will tell
you a solemn truth; I did not know him to be so."- "Can no man," said
Sophia, in a very low and altered voice, "do you think, make a bad
husband, who is not a fool?" "That," answered the other, "is too
general a negative; but none, I believe, is so likely as a fool to
prove so. Among my acquaintance, the silliest fellows are the worst
husbands; and I will venture to assert, as a fact, that a man of sense
rarely behaves very ill to a wife who deserves very well."
Chapter 8
A dreadful alarm in the inn, with the arrival of an unexpected
friend of Mrs. Fitzpatrick
Sophia now, at the desire of her cousin, related- not what follows,
but what hath gone before in this history: for which reason the reader
will, I suppose, excuse me for not repeating it over again.
One remark, however, I cannot forbear making on her narrative,
namely, that she made no more mention of Jones, from the beginning
to the end, than if there had been no such person alive. This I will
neither endeavour to account for nor to excuse. Indeed, if this may be
called a kind of dishonesty, it seems the more inexcusable, from the
apparent openness and explicit sincerity of the other lady.- But so
it was.
Just as Sophia arrived at the conclusion of her story, there arrived
in the room where the two ladies were sitting a noise, not unlike,
in loudness, to that of a pack of hounds just let out from their
kennel; nor, in shrillness, to cats, when caterwauling; or to
screech owls; or, indeed, more like (for what animal can resemble a
human voice?) to those sounds which, in the pleasant mansions of
that gate which seems to derive its name from a duplicity of
tongues, issue from the mouths, and sometimes from the nostrils, of
those fair river nymphs, ycleped of old the Naiades; in the vulgar
tongue translated oyster-wenches; for when, instead of the antient
libations of milk and honey and oil, the rich distillation from the
juniper-berry, or, perhaps, from malt, hath, by the early devotion
of their votaries, been poured forth in great abundance, should any
daring tongue with unhallowed license prophane, i.e., depreciate,
the delicate fat Milton oyster, the plaice sound and firm, the
flounder as much alive as when in the water, the shrimp as big as a
prawn, the fine cod alive but a few hours ago, or any other of the
various treasures which those water-deities who fish the sea and
rivers have committed to the care of the nymphs, the angry Naiades
lift up their immortal voices, and the prophane wretch is struck
deaf for his impiety.
Such was the noise which now burst from one of the rooms below;
and soon the thunder, which long had rattled at a distance, began to
approach nearer and nearer, till, having ascended by degrees upstairs,
it at last entered the apartment where the ladies were. In short, to
drop all metaphor and figure, Mrs. Honour, having scolded violently
below-stairs, and continued the same all the way up, came in to her
mistress in a most outrageous passion, crying out, "What doth your
ladyship think? Would you imagine that this impudent villain, the
master of this house, hath had the impudence to tell me, nay, to stand
it out to my face, that your ladyship is that nasty, stinking wh-re
(Jenny Cameron they call her), that runs about the country with the
Pretender? Nay, the lying, saucy villain had the assurance to tell me,
that your ladyship had owned yourself to be so; but I have clawed
the rascal; I have left the marks of my nails in his impudent face. My
lady! says I, you saucy scoundrel; my lady is meat for no
pretenders. She is a young lady of as good fashion, and family, and
fortune, as any in Somersetshire. Did you never hear of the great
Squire Western, sirrah? She is his only daughter; she is--, and
heiress to all his great estate. My lady to be called a nasty Scotch
wh-re by such a varlet!- To be sure I wish I had knocked his brains
out with the punchbowl."
The principal uneasiness with which Sophia was affected on this
occasion, Honour had herself caused, by having in her passion
