Staggering forward under this burden--a burden equally active and
heavy--who should I encounter at the head of the stairs, but the
liege lord of the lady--my poor imbecile uncle. As soon as she
beheld him--foaming and almost unintelligible in her rage--she
screamed for succor--cried "murder" "rape," "robbery," and heaven
knows what besides. A moment before, though she scratched and
scuffled to the utmost, she had not employed her lungs. A momentary
imprecation alone had broken from her, as it were, perforce and
unavoidably. Now, nothing could exceed the stentorian tumult which
her tongue maintained. She called upon her husband to put me to
death--to tear me in pieces--to do anything and everything for the
punishing of so dreadful an offender as myself. In thus commanding
him, she did not forbear uttering her own unmeasured opinion of
the demerits of the man whose performances she required.
"If you had the spirit of a man, Clifford--if you were not a poor
shoat--you'd never have submitted so long as you have to this
viper's insolence. And there you stand, doing nothing--absolutely
still as a stock, though you see him beating your wife. Ah! you
monster!--you coward!--that I should ever have married a man that
wasn't able to protect me."
This is a sufficient sample of her style, and not the worst. I am
constrained to confess that some portions of the good lady's language
would better have suited the modes of speech common enough among
the Grecian housekeepers at the celebration of the Eleusinian
mysteries. I have omitted not a few of the bad words, and forborne
the repetition of that voluminous eloquence poured out, after
the Billingsgate fashion, equally upon myself, her daughter, and
husband. During the vituperation she still kicked and scuffled;
my face suffered, and my eyes narrowly escaped. But I grasped her
firmly; and when her husband, my worthy uncle, in obedience to her
orders, sprang upon me, with the bludgeon which he now habitually
carried, I confronted him with the lusty person of his spouse, and
regret to say, that the first thwack intended for my shoulders,
descended with some considerable emphasis upon hers. This increased
her fury, and redoubled her screams. But it did not lessen my
determination, or make me change my mode of proceeding. I resolutely
pushed her before me.
The husband stood at the head of the stairs
and my object was to carry her down to the lower story. The stairs
were narrow, and by keeping up a good watch, I contrived to force
him to give ground, using his spouse as a sort of battering-RAM--not to
perpetrate a pun at the expense of the genders--which, I happened
to know, had always been successful in making him give ground on all
previous occasions. His habitual deference for the dame, assisted
me in my purpose. Step by step, however, he disputed my advance;
but I was finally successful; without any injury beyond that which
had been inflicted by the talons of the fair lady, and perhaps
a single and slight stroke upon the shoulder from the club of her
husband, I succeeded in landing her upon the lower flat in safety.
Beyond a squeeze or two, which the exigency of the case made
something more affectionate than any I should have been otherwise
pleased to bestow upon her, she suffered no hurt at my hands.