It's a heartless bad world we live in, Molly! and I never knew its badness, I may say, till now. You'll scarce believe me, when I tell you that it was n't from my own flesh and blood that I met comfort or sympathy, but from that good-for-nothing creature, Betty Cobb. Mary Anne and Caroline persisted in saying that K. I.'s journey was all innocence and purity,—that he was only gone in a fatherly sort of a way with her; but Betty knew the reverse, and I must own that she seemed to know more about him than I ever suspected.
"Ah, the ould rogue!—the ould villain!" she 'd mutter to herself, in a fashion that showed me the character he had in the servants' hall. If I had only a little command of my temper, I might have found out many a thing of him, Molly, and of his doings at Dodsborough, but how could I at a moment like that?
And that's how I was, Molly, with nothing but enemies about me, in the bosom of my own family! One saying, "Don't expose us to the world,—don't bring people's eyes on us;" and the other calling out, "We 'll be ruined entirely if it gets into the papers!" so that, in fact, they wanted to deny me the little bit of sympathy I might have attracted towards my destitute and forlorn condition.
Had I been at home, in Dodsborough, I'd have made the country ring with his disgrace; but they wouldn't let me utter a word here, and I was obliged to sit down, as the poet says, "like a worm in the bud," and consume my grief in solitude.
He went away, too, without leaving a shilling behind him, and the bill of the hotel not even paid! Nothing sustained me, Molly, but the notion of my one day meeting him, and settling these old scores. I even worked myself into a half-fever at the thought of the way I 'd overwhelm him. Maybe it was well for me that I was obliged to rouse my energies to activity, and provide for the future, which I did by drawing two bills on Waters for a hundred and fifty each, and, with the help of them, we mean to remove from this on Saturday, and proceed to Baden, where, according to Lord George, "there 's no such things as evil speaking, lying, or slandering;" to use his own words, "It's the most charitable society in Europe, and every one can indulge his vices without note or comment from his neighbors." And, after all, one must acknowledge the great superiority in the good breeding of the Continent in this; for, as Lord G. remarks, "If there's anything a man's own, it's his private wickedness, and there's no such indelicacy as in canvassing or discussing it; and what becomes of a conscience," says he, "if everybody reviles and abuses you? Sure, doesn't it lead you to take your own part, even when you're in the wrong?"
He has a persuasive way with him, Molly, that often surprises myself how far it goes with me, and indeed, even in the midst of my afflictions and distresses, he made me laugh with his account of Baden, and the strange people that go there. We're to go to the Hôtel de Russie, the finest in the place, and say that we are expecting some friends to join us; for K. I. and madam may arrive at any moment. As I write these lines, the girls and Betty are packing up the things, so that long before it reaches you we shall be at our destination.
The worst thing in my present situation is that I must n't mutter a syllable against K. I., or, if I do, I have them all on my back; and as to Betty, her sympathy is far worse than the silence of the others. And there 's the way your poor friend is in.
To be robbed—for I know Waters is robbing me—and cheated and deceived all at the same time, is too much for my unanimity! Don't let on to the neighbors about K. I.; for, as Lord G. says, "these things should never be mentioned in the world till they 're talked of in the House of Lords;" and I suppose he's right, though I don't see why—but maybe it's one of the prerogatives of the peerage to have the first of an ugly story.
I have done now, Molly, and I wonder how my strength has carried me through it. I 'll write you as soon as I get to Baden, and hope to hear from you about the wool. I 'm always reading in the papers about the improvement of Ireland, and yet I get less and less out of it; but maybe that same is a sign of prosperity; for I remember my poor father was never so stingy as when he saved a little money; and indeed my own conviction is that much of what we used to call Irish hospitality was neither more nor less than downright desperation,—we had so little in the world, it wasn't worth hoarding.
You may write to me still as Mrs. Dodd, though maybe it will be the last time the name will be borne by your Injured and afflicted friend,