| "I’m not going to contradict you, Caudle; you may say
what you like—but I think I ought to know my own feelings better than you.
I don’t wish to upbraid you neither; I’m too ill for that; but it’s not
getting wet in thin shoes,—oh, no! it’s my mind, Caudle, my mind, that’s
killing me. Oh, yes! gruel, indeed—you think gruel will cure a woman of
anything; and you know, too, how I hate it. Gruel can’t reach what I suffer;
but, of course, nobody is ever ill but yourself. Well, I—I didn’t mean
to say that; but when you talk in that way about thin shoes, a woman says,
of course what she doesn’t mean; she can’t help it. You’ve always gone
on about my shoes; when I think I’m the fittest judge of what becomes me
best. I dare say,—’twould be all the same to you if I put on ploughman’s
boots; but I’m not going to make a figure of my feet, I can tell you. I’ve
never got cold with the shoes I’ve worn yet, and ‘tisn’t likely I should
begin now.
"No, Caudle; I wouldn’t wish to say anything to accuse
you: no, goodness knows, I wouldn’t make you uncomfortable for the world,—but
the cold I’ve got, I got ten years ago. I have never said anything about
it—but it has never left me. Yes; ten years ago the day before yesterday.
How
can I recollect it? Oh, very well: women remember things you never
think of: poor souls! they’ve good cause to do so. Ten years ago, I was
sitting up for you,—there now, I’m not going to say anything to vex you,
only do let me speak: ten years ago, I was waiting for you, and I fell
asleep, and the fire went out, and when I woke I found I was sitting right
in the draught of the key-hole. That was my death, Caudle, though don’t
let that make you uneasy, love; for I don’t think you meant to do it.
"Ha! it’s all very well for you to call it nonsense; and
to lay your ill conduct upon my shoes. That’s like a man, exactly! There
never was a man yet that killed his wife, who couldn’t give a good reason
for it. No: I don’t mean to say that you’ve killed me: quite the reverse:
still, there’s never been a day that I haven’t felt that key-hole. What?
Why
won’t I have a doctor? What’s the use of a doctor? Why should I put
you to expense? Besides, I dare say you’ll do very well without me, Caudle:
yes, after a very little time, you won’t miss me much—no man ever does.
"Peggy tells me, Miss Prettyman called to-day. What
of it? Nothing, of course. Yes; I know she heard I was ill, and that’s
why she came. A little indecent, I think, Mr. Caudle; she might wait; I
sha’n’t be in her way long; she may soon have the key of the caddy, now.
"Ha! Mr. Caudle, what’s the use of your calling
me your dearest soul now? Well, I do believe you. I dare say you do mean
it; that is, I hope you do. Nevertheless, you can’t expect I can lie quiet
in this bed, and think of that young woman—not, indeed, that she’s near
so young as she gives herself out. I bear no malice towards her, Caudle,—not
the least. Still, I don’t think I could lay at peace in my grave if—well,
I won’t say anything more about her; but you know what I mean.
"I think dear mother would keep house beautifully for
you, when I’m gone. Well, love, I won’t talk in that way if you desire
it. Still, I know I’ve a dreadful cold; though I won’t allow it for a minute
to be the shoes—certainly not. I never would wear ‘em thick, and you know
it, and they never gave me cold yet. No, dearest Caudle, it’s ten years
ago that did it; not that I’ll say a syllable of the matter to hurt you.
I’d die first.
"Mother, you see, knows all your little ways; and you
wouldn’t get another wife to study you and pet you up as I’ve done—a second
wife never does ; it isn’t likely she should. And after all, we’ve been
very happy. It hasn’t been my fault, if we’ve ever had a word or two, for
you couldn’t help now and then being aggravating; nobody can help their
tempers always,—especially men. Still we’ve been very happy haven’t we,
Caudle?
Good night Yes this cold does tear me to pieces; but for
all that, it isn’t the shoes. God bless you, Caudle ; no,—it’s not the
shoes. I won’t say its the key hole; but again I say, it’s not the shoes.
God bless you once more—But never say it’s the shoes."
The above significant sketch is a correct copy of a drawing
from the hand of Caudle at the end of this lecture. It can hardly, we think,
be imagined that Mrs. Caudle, during her fatal illness, never mixed admonishment
with soothing as before; but such fragmentary Lectures were, doubtless,
considered by her disconsolate widower as having too touching, too solemn
an import to be vulgarised by type. They were, however, printed on
the heart of Caudle; for he never ceased to speak of the late partner of
his bed but as either "his sainted creature," or "that angel now in heaven."
POSTSCRIPT.
Our duty of editorship is closed. We hope we have honestly
fulfilled the task of selection from a large mass of papers. We could have
presented to the female world a Lecture for Every Night in the Year. Yes,—three
hundred and sixty-five separate Lectures! We trust, however, that we have
done enough. And if we have armed weak woman with even one argument in
her unequal contest with that imperious creature, man—if we have awarded
to a sex, as Mrs. Caudle herself was wont to declare, "put upon from the
beginning," the slightest means of defence— if we have supplied a solitary
text to meet any one of the manifold wrongs with which woman, in her household
life, is con-tinually pressed by her tyrannic task-master, man,—we feel
that we have only paid back one grain, hardly one, of that moun-tain of
more than gold it is our felicity to owe her.
During the progress of these Lectures, it has very often
pained us, and that excessively, to hear from unthinking, inexperienced
men—bachelors of course—that every woman, no matter how divinely composed,
has in her ichor-flowing veins, one drop—" no bigger than a wren’s eye"—of
Caudle; that Eve herself may now and then have been guilty of a lecture,
murmuring it balmily amongst the rose-leaves.
It may be so; still be it our pride never to believe it.
NEVER!
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