instead of putting the kettle on, she hadn’t even taken the nasty, greasy gridiron on which she had done our pork chops off the fire.
This, I must confess, was more than common flesh and blood like mine could bear; so I flew at my duchess, and snatching out of her hand her grand works,—“which should be in every person’s library!” indeed,—I bundled them all into what, to my mind, was a much fitter place for them—the fire; and what’s more, I put the kettle right on top of them, and by the time I had done reading the minx such a lecture as she wont forget in a hurry, thank goodness I had the kettle boiling away quite nicely.
All this exertion—ill as I was—took such an effect on my delicate nerves, that I determined upon going to bed directly. So I told her to fill the warming-pan, and take it up stairs as quick as she could, while I went to make myself a glass of nice hot rum-and-water, with a bit of butter and plenty of sugar in it, and which, with a bit of tallow (despite all Mr. Edward’s low sneers) just the size of a pea rubbed over the bridge of my nose, is—as my lady readers will agree with me—as good a thing as one can fly to when one’s got a nasty cold coming on one.
When I got up stairs, there was my lady in her sulks, of course, warming the bed as if she had fallen asleep over it. So as I wasn’t going to put up with any of her tantrums, I went behind her, and telling her that I would show her how to warm the bed, I seized hold of her arm and pushed it backwards and forwards so fast that I could hear all the water wabble again in it—little dreaming at the time that the solder of the nasty twopenny halfpenny bit of goods had got melted, all through Miss Betsy’s standing it so long and so close to the fire as she had, and that I was actually shaking the water out of it all over my bed, as fast as if the thing had been a watering-pot. The worst of it was too, that the beastly new-fangled warming-pan must have held a gallon if it did a spoonful; and seeing that Miss Betsy wanted to get down stairs again, to some more of her trumpery novels, as I thought, I wouldn’t let her go, but made her stand shaking the leaky thing up and down the sheets—particularly on my side too—until I had tied my flannel petticoat nicely over my night-cap, and finished all my rum-and-water, and had put all my things by, just out of aggravation, to keep her up there as long as I could, and was quite ready to get into bed.
When Miss Betsy had gone, and I had let down the night-bolt—I declare I had been dawdling about so long in the cold, that I was quite frightened lest I should have taken another chill—putting out the candle, I jumped into bed as quick as ever I could. And then, oh lud-a’-mercy me! what a pretty pickle it was in, to be sure. If the linen sheets weren’t positively just like sheets of water, and the whole bed as wet as the bed of the River Thames. I tumbled out again like lightning, as any one may easily imagine, when, drat it! if all my night clothes weren’t as wet and cold as a dog’s nose, and the worst of it was, they would keep clinging to me as if they were so much wet blotting-paper. I rushed to the bell, and pulled, and pulled, and pulled away, until Mr. Sk—n—st—n must have thought either that I had set the house on fire, or overlaid my dear little lamb, or found a brute of a man under the bed; for up he came, gasping away, crying out, “What on earth is the matter, Caroline?” and five minutes afterwards, up Miss Betsy sauntered, as leisurely as if nothing at all had happened.
“The matter,” I cried, pulling off the bed-clothes, and throwing aside the sheet, that was so wet you might have wrung it—“Look here,” I said, holding up the soaking blanket; and which, when I let it go, I declare, fell with a flop upon the ground, for all the world as if it had been a batter-pudding—“And look here, too,” I cried, showing him the feather-bed tick, which really looked as dark as a slate with the wet—“Just come and feel it yourself, and say if it isn’t like a sponge, and then ask yourself how you’ll like to sleep upon it all night, for sleep upon it you must, as there isn’t another in the house. What’s more, too, these are the only sheets that you can have to lie upon to-night, for, thanks to that Miss Betsy there, she must not only think fit to give away all the clean ones I had home from the wash this very day, to the first person that chose to come and ask for them, but to make the thing complete, she must needs go burning a hole in the hot water warming-pan, and drenching my only remaining pair; and just because she knew I had caught a severe cold, and wanted a comfortable warm bed to set me right again. Oh, you wicked, abominable, novel-reading hussy you! you’ll be the death of me before you’ve done with me, you will! How you can have the impudence to stand there and look me in the face, and not expect the floor to open and swallow you up for your shameful goings on—and how you, too, Mr. Edward,” I continued, turning to Mr. Sk—n—st—n, “how you can stand there, as quiet as a common cab-horse, and see your poor wife worried into her grave in this way by that wicked woman, and not send her about her business this very moment, is beyond my limited powers to comprehend.”
But of course the only answer my gentleman could make me was to tell Miss Betsy to go down stairs; and then, if he didn’t turn round as cool as a cucumber, and tell me to my own face, that it was all my fault (my fault!—mark, if you please, gentle reader.) But it was just what I had expected—indeed, I had said as much to myself—of course, it was all my fault! I had done it all, I had—and that minx of a Betsy had had nothing to do with it—of course I had burnt the hole in the warming-pan, and filled it with water, to be sure; and more than that, I had warmed the bed, I suppose—though, as I very cleverly told my lord duke, if I had, I had done it in my sleep, and there was an end of it. Then I gave it Mr. Edward so soundly, and told him what I thought of him so plainly, and made him so heartily ashamed of himself, that, upon my word, at last he marched up to the drawers, and taking his razors and a clean nightgown and night-cap, with all the impudence in the world, told me to my face he was going to sleep out. So I told him very quietly that he might do just as he pleased about that, but if he did, to rest assured, that as sure as his and my name were Sk—n—st—n, I’d never pass another night under his roof. But my gentleman only turned on his heel and walked himself off as grandly down stairs as if he were doing some mighty fine action, and thinking, of course, that I should run after him and call him back. But, oh dear, no!—I wasn’t going to make such a silly of myself as that—no!—not if he were the only man in the world.
But, thank goodness, I’ve got a spirit of my own, and however much I might have felt the absence of the monster, still I was determined not to show it. So directly I heard the street-door slam, I marched up stairs, and ringing the bell for Betsy, made her carry down her own mattress and blankets for me to sleep on, telling her that she might lie upon the bare bedstead, if she pleased, and that if, in the morning, she got up and found herself striped all over with the marks of the bits of wood at the bottom of it, like a herring just taken off a gridiron, why she needn’t blame me, as she would have only herself to thank for it.
Not so much as a wink of sleep could I get, but did nothing but cry and fidget all that miserable night through. Not that I cared about Mr. Edward leaving me all alone in my distress at a time when he didn’t know whether I had a bed to lie down upon or not, or whether my severe cold might not take a serious turn, and end in a rheumatic fever, or goodness knows what,—it wasn’t this I cared about, I say; but it was the nasty, callous way in which he did it—not even so much as saying where a person might find him, supposing anything happened to one, and which I felt I never should be able to forget to my dying day. But I wasn’t going to submit to be treated worse than a parish orphan, so directly I heard the chimney-sweeps in the street, I tumbled out of bed, and merely taking the child and my hair-brush and such things as I couldn’t do without for a day or two, I went down stairs, and having cut off a slice of bread-and-butter, just to keep the wind out of my stomach, I wrote my lord a short letter, telling him that I had left his house
For Ever!!!