A loud shriek interrupted the speech, and Mrs. Kennyf.e.c.k, in strong hysterics, took her place beside Olivia.
"It will do her good, my dear," said Aunt f.a.n.n.y to her niece, as she chafed the hands and bathed the temples of her mother. "I was only telling the truth; she"d never have married your father if Major Kennedy had n"t jilted her; and good luck it was he did, for he had two other wives living at the time--just as your friend, Mr. Cashel, wanted to do with your sister."
"Aunt--aunt--I entreat you to have done. Haven"t you made mischief enough?"
"Eaten up with vanity and self-conceit," resumed the old lady, not heeding the interruption. "A French cook and a coach-and-four,--nothing less! Let her scream, child--sure, I know it"s good for her--it stretches the lungs."
"Leave me--leave the room!" cried Miss Kennyf.e.c.k, whose efforts at calmness were rendered fruitless by the torrent of her aunt"s eloquence.
"Indeed I will, my dear: I"ll leave the house, too. Sorry I am that I ever set foot in it. What with the noise and the racket night and day, it"s more like a lunatic asylum than a respectable residence."
"Send her away--send her away!" screamed Mrs. Kennyf.e.c.k, with a cry of horror.
"Do, aunt--do leave the room."
"I"m going--I"m going, young lady; but I suppose I may drink my cup of tea first--it"s the last I "ll ever taste in the same house;" and she reseated herself at the table with a most provoking composure. "I came here," resumed she, "for no advantage of mine. I leave you without regret, because I see how your poor fool of a father, and your vain, conceited mother--"
"Aunt, you are really too bad. Have you no feeling?"
"That"s just what comes of it," said she, stirring her tea tranquilly.
"You set up for people of fashion, and you don"t know that people of fashion are twice as shrewd and "cute as yourself. Faith, my dear, they"d buy and sell you, every one. What are they at all day, but roguery and schemes of one kind or other, and then after "doing" you, home they go, and laugh at your mother"s vulgarity!"
A fresh torrent of cries from Mrs. Kennyf.e.c.k seemed to show that unconsciousness was not among her symptoms, and Miss Kennyf.e.c.k now hastened from the room to summon her father to her aid.
"Well, you"ve come to turn me out, I suppose?" said Aunt f.a.n.n.y, as the old gentleman entered in a state of perplexity that might have evoked the compa.s.sion of a less determined enemy.
"My dear Miss f.a.n.n.y--"
"None of your four courts blarney with me, sir; I"m ready to go--I "ll leave by the coach to-night. I conclude you "ll have the decency to pay for my place, and my dinner too, for I "ll go to Dawson"s Hotel this minute. Tell your mother, and that poor dawdle there, your sister, that they "d be thankful they"d have followed my advice. The rate you"re living, old gentleman, might even frighten you. There"s more waste in your kitchen than in Lord Clondooney"s.
"As for yourself, Caroline, you "re the best of the lot; but your tongue, darling!--your tongue!" And here she made a gesture of far more expressive force than any mere words could give.
"Is she gone?" said Mrs. Kennyf.e.c.k, as a slight lull succeeded.
"Yes, mamma," whispered Miss Kennyf.e.c.k; "but speak low, for Mr. Phillis is in the hall."
"I"ll never see her again--I"ll never set eyes on her," muttered Mrs.
Kennyf.e.c.k.
"I shouldn"t wonder, mamma, if that anonymous letter was written by herself," said Caroline. "She never forgave Mr. Cashel for not specially inviting her; and this, I"m almost sure, was the way she took to revenge herself."
"So it was," cried Mrs. Kennyf.e.c.k, eagerly seizing at the notion. "Hush, take care Livy doesn"t hear you."
"As for the yacht expedition, it was just the kind of thing Lady Kilgoff was ready for. She is dying to be talked of."
"And that poor, weak creature, Cashel, will be so flattered by the soft words of a peeress, he"ll be intolerable ever after."
"Aunt f.a.n.n.y--Aunt f.a.n.n.y!" sighed Miss Kennyf.e.c.k, with a mournful cadence.
"If I only was sure--that is, perfectly certain--that she wrote that letter about Cashel--But here comes your father--take Olivia, and leave me alone."
Miss Kennyf.e.c.k a.s.sisted her sister from the sofa, and led her in silence from the room, while Mr. Kennyf.e.c.k sat down, with folded hands and bent down head, a perfect picture of dismay and bewilderment.
"Well," said his wife, after a reasonable interval of patient expectation that he would speak--"well, what have you to say for yourself now, sir?"
The poor solicitor, who never suspected that he was under any indictment, looked up with an expression of almost comic innocence.
"Did you hear me, Mr. Kennyf.e.c.k, or is it you want to pa.s.s off your dulness for deafness? Did you hear me, I say?"
"Yes, I heard--but I really do not know--that is, I am unaware how--I cannot see--"
"Oh, the old story," sighed she--"injured innocence! Well, sir, I was asking you if you felt gratified with our present prospects? Linton"s intimacy was bad enough, but the Kilgoff friendship is absolute, utter ruin. That crafty, old, undermining peer, as proud as poor, will soon ensnare him; and my Lady, with her new airs of a viscountess, only anxious to qualify for London by losing her character before she appears there!"
"As to the agency--"
"The agency!" echoed she, indignantly, "do your thoughts never by any chance, sir, take a higher flight than five per cent.?--are you always dreaming of your little petty gains at rent-day? I told you, sir, how the patron might be converted into a son-in-law--did I not?"
"You did, indeed, and I"m certain I never threw any impediment in the way of it."
"You never threw any impediment in the way of your child"s succeeding to a fortune of sixteen thousand a year! You really are an exemplary father."
"I "d have forwarded it, if I only knew how."
"How good of you! I suppose you "d have drawn up the settlements if ordered. But so it is--all my efforts through life have been thwarted by you! I have labored and toiled day and night to place my children in the sphere that their birth, on one side at least, would ent.i.tle them to, and you know it."
Now this Mr. Kennyf.e.c.k really did not know. In his dull fatuity he always imagined that he was the honey-gatherer of the domestic hive, and that Mrs. Kennyf.e.c.k had in her own person monopolized the functions of queen bee and wasp together.
"Your low, pettifogging ambition never soared above a Softly or a Clare Jones for your daughters, while I was planning alliances that would have placed them among the best in the land--and how have I been rewarded?
Indifference, coolness, perhaps contempt!" Here a flood of tears, that had remained dammed up since the last torrent, burst forth in convulsive sobs. "Ungrateful man, who ought never to have forgotten the sacrifice I made in marrying him--the rupture with every member of my family--the severance of every tie that united me to my own."
She ceased, and here, be it remembered, Mrs. Kennyf.e.c.k seemed to address herself to some invisible jury empanelled to try Mr. Kennyf.e.c.k on a serious charge.
"He came like a serpent into the bosom of our peaceful circle, and with the arts that his crafty calling but too well supplied, seduced my young affections."
Mr. Kennyf.e.c.k started. It had never before occurred to him that Don Juan was among his range of parts.
"False and unfeeling both," resumed she. "Luring with promises never intended for performance, you took me from a home, the very sanctuary of peace!"
Mr. Kennyf.e.c.k wiped his forehead in perplexity; his recollection of the home in question was different. Sanctuary it might have been, but it was against the officers of the law and the sheriff, and so far as a well-fastened hall door and barricaded windows went, the epithet did not seem quite unsuitable.
"Ah!" sighed she--for it is right to remark that Mrs. Kennyf.e.c.k was a mistress of that domestic harmony which consists in every modulation, from the grand adagio of indignant accusation to the rattling andante of open abuse--"had I listened to those older and wiser than I, and who foretold the destiny that awaited me, I had never seen this unhappy day!
No, sir! I had not lived to see myself outraged and insulted, and my only sister turned out of the house like a discarded menial."
Had Mr. Kennyf.e.c.k been informed that for courteously making way for a Bencher in the Hall he was stripped of his gown and degraded from his professional rank, he could not have been more thoroughly amazed and thunderstruck.
He actually gasped with excess of astonishment, and, if breath had been left him, would have spoken; but so it was, the very force of the charge stunned him, and he could not utter a word.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Kennyf.e.c.k, who in the ardor of combat had imitated certain Spanish sailors, who in the enthusiasm of a sea-fight loaded their cannons with whatever came next to hand, was actually shocked by the effect of her own fire. For the grandeur of a peroration she had taken a flying leap over all truth, and would gladly have been safe back again at the other side of the fence.