“Where,” I cried, “did you get that gown from, I should like to know, sir,” for I no sooner saw the creature’s face, than, from the whiskers, I at once knew that it was the young man who had come down with me in the train, and who was sitting there with his coat off, and my beautiful best gown tied by the sleeves in a knot round his neck; and directly he took my plaid shawl off his head, I saw he had split the dress somehow or other all down the back.
“Never mind the gown,” he answered, “what business had you to go meddling with my trunk?”
“I meddle with your trunk!” I exclaimed, “what right had you to go running away with mine in the shameful way you have?”
However, I was too glad to get back my things, to stand asking questions of a person, who, if it hadn’t been for his civility in sharing his umbrella with me, I certainly should have given into custody on the spot. Though when I looked over my box, I declare if the brute hadn’t so tossed about and tumbled all my clean things, and so torn and ruined my beautiful Barège, that as soon as I had sufficiently recovered myself, and put on some dry things, I packed up my box again and made the best of my way back to town; for I saw that it was useless to think of spending a fortnight in Guildford, with nothing but a morning-wrapper to put on—especially as by so doing there could be no chance of Edward’s knowing a word about the occurrence, which I felt convinced he would be certain to say was entirely my fault.
Directly I set foot in my own house again, I had Miss Emma into the parlour, and showing her the state that my gown was in, all through her abominable stupidity, I told her that she really was so dangerous a blockhead to have near one, that although I wouldn’t thrust her into the wide world without a place to put her head in that night, still she would be pleased to quit my service first thing in the morning—which I took very good care she did.
And thus ended my acquaintance with Miss Emma, and I very naturally made a vow that the next woman I had in my service should have some little learning in her head, at least. Though positively, it was only jumping out of the frying-pan into the fire, for when the other creature came in she was, if possible, harder to put up with than the good-for-nothing hussey that I had just turned out of the house. Bless us and save us! if her head wasn’t crammed brim full of trumpery penny novels and rubbishing romantic melo-dramas. Was there ever such a woman—a great big, fat thing, with a currant-jelly complexion, and always marching about the house with a broom in her hand, either fancying herself “Ada the Betrayed,” or “Amy,” in “Love and Madness”—or else sitting for hours, after the parlour dinner was over, all among the dirty plates and dishes, with her feet on the fender, crying her eyes out, over “The Murder at the Old Smithy,” or “The Heads of the Headless,” just, for all the world, as you see her in the picture,—which I will tell the gentle reader all about in the next chapter—and a pretty chapter of accidents it will be—for, of all the plagues of servants I ever had anything to do with, that woman certainly was the greatest, and she got me into one scrape, that I’m sure I shall never forget to my dying hour—but more of this hereafter.
CHAPTER XIII.
I SHA’N’T SAY ANYTHING AT ALL ABOUT WHAT’S COMING IN THE PRESENT CHAPTER. ALL I KNOW IS, THAT IT NEARLY DROVE ME STARK STARING MAD, AND OFTEN AND OFTEN I HAVE IN MY AGONY OF MIND BEEN FORCED TO EXCLAIM, IN THE WORDS OF THAT SWEET SINGER, MR. BRAHAM, AS FOLLOWS:—
“Oh! (goodness gracious me) I can bear my fate no longer,
E’en hope (’pon my word) is banish’d from my soul!”
Recitative to that beautiful ballad of “Through the forests, through the meadows,” in “Der Freischutz,” and which, indeed, I once had the music of, for that charming girl, Miss Emily B-yl-s, was kind enough to copy it out for me, but where it’s gone to now, goodness only knows; most likely some of my beauties of servants have taken it to light the fire, or put the candles up with, or something equally pretty. All I know is, it isn’t to be found in my Canterbury, and it can’t have walked out of the house by itself, that’s clear.
Before taking up the thread of my story from where I dropped it last month, I should like the gentle reader to know what a dreadful fidget Mr. Sk—n—st—n is. Though it is but right to add, that I have comparatively little or nothing to say against my beloved Edward in other respects. But even if I had been blessed with an angel for a husband, and he had unfortunately been a knag, still, I do verily believe that I should have found my lot just as hard to bear with as I do at present. For if there is one thing more trying than another to one’s good temper, or more calculated to rumple the natural smoothness of one’s amiable disposition, and to put one out of sorts with the whole world, and everybody in it, it is to have a man always at one, worry worry, fidget fidget, knag knag, from the first thing when he gets up in the morning, to the last thing when he goes to bed at night. Really any unprejudiced person like myself would believe that Mr. Sk—n—st—n was never happy unless he was trying to see how miserable he could make me; for literally and truly, without exaggeration, the man’s chief enjoyment seemed to lie in finding fault with, first this thing, then that thing, and then the other. I declare it’s my firm opinion to this very day, that he used to think of nothing else all the way home, but what he could make a noise about directly he set foot in the house. Only just let him be able to write his trumpery name in the dust on the hall chairs, or let the cloth not be laid for dinner ready to receive my fine, greedy gentleman, or let me be in my morning wrapper, and not dressed to the very moment that he knocked at the door (of course it was no matter to him how much I had been slaving all through the hot day, just to make him comfortable, oh, no, of course it wasn’t!)—or even if he couldn’t find fault with any of these, only just let the forks be a little dirty between the prongs, or the soup be cold, or a little twopenny-halfpenny caterpillar be in the greens, and then, oh dear me, there were fine nuts indeed for my lord to crack—he never knew such a house—he didn’t—like a pigstye—of course it always was—be better treated at a common tavern, he would (then why didn’t he go there, I should like to know, instead of coming home always grumbling away, like an old Smellfungus as he is). Then of a morning, too, he had no sooner swallowed his breakfast, than he must go dancing down stairs, and stand fiddling for half an hour in the cellar, pretending to be getting his filthy wine out, though of course I knew what my gentleman was after, as well as he himself did, for up stairs he’d trot, with a face as long as my arm, with a whole pack of trumpery complaints, and, as pleased as Punch with the mare’s-nests that my Mr. Clever thought he had discovered. Then out they would come, one after another—first, why weren’t the blacking brushes in their proper place, instead of on the kitchen dresser?—or else, hadn’t he told me over and over again, that he wouldn’t have the servants’ candlesticks put into the fire?—or, why were the cinders all about the passage?—or else, he declared the stones were as black as his hat, and had never been cleaned for a twelvemonth,—in fact, the whole place was a perfect disgrace to me, and positively, he would go on fidgeting and knagging about this, that, and the other, until I lost all patience with him, and told him as plainly as I could, “that he had no business at all down in the kitchen, poking his nose into what didn’t concern him, and that all I wished to goodness gracious was, that the cook would pin a dishclout to his coat tails, and then, nothing would give me greater pleasure than to let him go down to the court at Westminster with it dangling at his heels, if it was only that the Lord Chief Justice of England might see what a mollycoddle and poking meddling thing he was”—and the beauty of it was, that I used to put him in such a passion by telling him that there was a party I knew, who was not a hundred miles from where I was standing, and who was one of the greatest fidgets that I ever came near, and saying in my most tantalising way, “Well, I wouldn’t be a fidget, no, not if anybody was to make me a present of all the gold in the mines of Peru that very moment.”