There now remained but one other person in Lord Harry's household whose
presence on the scene was an obstacle to be removed.
This person was the cook. On condition of her immediate departure
(excused by alleged motives of economy), she received a month's wages
from her master, in advance of the sum due to her, and a written
character which did ample justice to her many good qualities. The poor
woman left her employment with the heartiest expressions of gratitude.
To the end of her days, she declared the Irish lord to be a nobleman by
nature. Republican principles, inherited from her excellent parents,
disinclined her to recognise him as a nobleman by birth.
But another sweet and simple creature was still left to brighten the
sinister gloom in the cottage.
The good Dane sorely tried the patience of Fanny Mere. This countryman
of Hamlet, as he liked to call himself, was a living protest against
the sentiments of inveterate contempt and hatred, with which his nurse
was accustomed to regard the men. When pain spared him at intervals,
Mr. Oxbye presented the bright blue eyes and the winning smile which
suggested the resemblance to the Irish lord. His beardless face, thin
towards the lower extremities, completed the likeness in some degree
only. The daring expression of Lord Harry, in certain emergencies,
never appeared. Nursing him carefully, on the severest principles of
duty as distinguished from inclination, Fanny found herself in the
presence of a male human being, who in the painless intervals of his
malady, wrote little poems in her praise; asked for a few flowers from
the garden, and made prettily arranged nosegays of them devoted to
herself; cried, when she told him he was a fool, and kissed her hand
five minutes afterwards, when she administered his medicine, and gave
him no pleasant sweet thing to take the disagreeable taste out of his
mouth. This gentle patient loved Lord Harry, loved Mr. Vimpany, loved
the furious Fanny, resist it as she might. On her obstinate refusal to
confide to him the story of her life--after he had himself set her the
example at great length--he persisted in discovering for himself that
"this interesting woman was a victim of sorrows of the heart." In
another state of existence, he was offensively certain that she would
be living with him. "You are frightfully pale, you will soon die; I
shall break a blood-vessel, and follow you; we shall sit side by side
on clouds, and sing together everlastingly to accompaniment of
celestial harps. Oh, what a treat!" Like a child, he screamed when he
was in pain; and, like a child, he laughed when the pain had gone away.
When she was angry enough with him to say, "If I had known what sort of
man you were, I would never have undertaken to nurse you," he only
answered, "my dear, let us thank God together that you did not know."
There was no temper in him to be roused; and, worse still, on buoyant
days, when his spirits were lively, there was no persuading him that he
might not live long enough to marry his nurse, if he only put the
question to her often enough. What was to be done with such a man as
this? Fanny believed that she despised her feeble patient. At the same
time, the food that nourished him was prepared by her own hands--while
the other inhabitants of the cottage were left (in the absence of the
cook) to the tough mercies of a neighbouring restaurant. First and
foremost among the many good deeds by which the conduct of women claims
the gratitude of the other sex, is surely the manner in which they let
an unfortunate man master them, without an unworthy suspicion of that
circumstance to trouble the charitable serenity of their minds.