A de certains maris, faits d’an certain modelle,
Et qui donne à sa fille un homme qu’elle haït.
Est responsable au Ciel pour le mal qu’elle fait.”
Admirable Molière! you never penned a more striking truth. Parents, ponder it well.
The general, after the lapse of some years, with the characteristic valour of the Capsicums, boldly ventured, a short time before I knew him, on a second marriage; but here he caught a Tartar. Mrs. Capsicum the second was an Irish lady (woman I should perhaps say), who came out to India avowedly on spec., with the full determination of marrying a good establishment, with comfortable reversionary prospects, however they might happen to be encumbered. She made play at the general, sang “Erin mavourneen” and “Cathleen O’More,” talked of the Callaghans and Brallaghans, revived the general’s boyish reminiscences of the green hills of Sligo, and ultimately led him, or rather had him carried, to the hymeneal altar! Of love—the proper cement of the marriage-union—there was none, on her side at least.
But to return to my narrative.
The widow and I had not been long engaged in conversation (which, as I before hinted, was becoming rather interesting), when we heard the scrape of a violin outside in the passage.
“Oh, here is my father,” said Mrs. Delaval, “coming from his room. Now remember my caution.”
I was about to reply, but she laid her finger on her lip expressively, as much as to say, “Another time; he’s here.”
The old general now entered, with a black velvet sort of nightcap stuck rakishly on his head, and playing rather jauntily “St. Patrick’s Day in the Morning,” to which he hummed an accompaniment—his voice displaying, as usual, all that vigour in its tones which, as I have before remarked, afforded so striking a contrast to his dried-up and time-worn frame: as he entered with his spindle shanks, huge frill, voluminous upper works, pigtail, and velvet cap, I thought I never saw a droller figure. Still the gallant bearing and nonchalance of the little old Irishman, who evidently was unconscious of anything at all out of the way in himself, rather neutralized any feeling of disrespect which his figure was at first calculated to excite.