_Bland._ “Never mention what is past. The wranglings of married
people about unlucky questions that break out between them is like
the lashing of a top: it only serves to keep it up the longer.”
_All in the Wrong._
Next day business was a little brisk at the bank, and, considering
my short apprenticeship, I acquitted myself tolerably well. I took
Curling’s place and paid or received the cheques, &c., as they were
presented, and what was extremely wonderful, found at the end of the
day that I had made no mistake. I also conferred with two or three
customers in the manager’s private room, performing the simple duty
of listening to them with a very grave face, and dismissing them in a
style that excited Mr. Spratling, who had a slow and laborious mind,
into applause.
When the bank was closed I went to my lodgings to get some dinner, not
intending to call at Grove End until late in the evening. The fact was,
my uncle had spoken of leaving London with the devoted couple at four
o’clock; Updown would be reached by seven, and I had no wish to intrude
until the violence and agitation of the meeting at Grove End should be
in some degree calmed.
My dinner, composed of a mutton chop and a pint of red wine, was soon
despatched. I pulled an arm-chair to the open window, lighted a pipe,
and surrendered myself up to various reflections.
Among other things, I remember thinking how very pretty my landlady’s
house was, how snugly it would accommodate a newly-married pair--and
then I thought of Theresa.
In imagination I pictured her my wife, moving, at this sunset hour,
with watering-pot in hand, among the flowers in the garden, ever and
anon creeping up to the window, where I was seated, to give me a
flower, and let me take a long look into her bright and speaking eyes.
Heavens! how the wheel goes round! Not very long before I had figured
another young lady as my wife, offering me flowers through that very
identical window, with all the sweetness of her spirit beaming like
the moon in the dark azure of her eyes. That picture was blotted out.
Did I care? A fiddle! I liked the other picture much better. Why, even
that reverence, which, despite Conny’s indifference to me, I should
ever have remembered her beauty with, was sunk, was destroyed by the
consideration that her name was now CURLING, and that the frizzy
cashier was privileged to call her HIS!
His! Imagine that cockneyfied forefinger, that long forefinger with the
olive-coloured nail and the dreadful ring, chucking Conny’s dimpled
chin, playing with Conny’s golden hair! Faugh! The rose that makes the
beauties of your sweetheart’s white bosom killing, becomes a sordid,
vulgar flower when transferred on the morrow to the char-woman, and
pinned by her against the dirt of the handkerchief about her chest.
Though idealism has its limits, yet its circle had been a big one for
Conny, and there was little she could have done in it _alone_ that
would have endangered her charms in my eyes. But she had chosen to lug
Mr. Curling into the magic realm; and souse! the spell was broken.
It was like throwing a duck into a lake, in whose lucent serenity the
stars of the heavens found their duplicates.
Now, whilst I thus sate, the postman came into the garden and handed me
a letter. I caught sight of the initials “T. H.” at the corner of the
envelope, and my heart beat quickly. I pulled out the enclosure. What
a fine, free, dashing hand! How firm and honest and characteristic!
How thoughtful to answer my letter so soon! Why, she could only have
received it that morning, and must therefore have written her reply on
the spot.
“My dear Charlie,” she began: and then went on to express her
astonishment and grief at the news I had sent her of Conny’s elopement.
She could scarcely credit I was in earnest.
“What mad impulse could have prompted her to take such a step! How
grieved my uncle and aunt must be! Surely had they suspected that Conny
was so fond of this young man, they would have allowed her to marry
him, rather than drive her into an elopement by their refusal. Papa is
perfectly stupefied; for he told me that uncle Tom had over and over
again expressed his belief, that Conny would marry well.”
“As for _you_, I am not so surprised as you fancied I should be, to
hear that Conny’s rash act has not broken your heart. I told you
plainly one day that you didn’t love her, and now you confess I was
right. Again and again I tell you that your fickleness, as you call it,
cannot affect my opinion of you. Had you sincerely loved her, taught
her to love you, and then turned from her, no words of mine could
possibly convey how greatly I should despise you. I don’t mean to say
that I or any other woman could think the _better_ of a man for not
knowing his own mind. Judgment is a fine quality in a man, and without
it he can never be devoted, or honest, or resolute.
“But I told you, during that rude fit of mine, that you were a
boy--which you are--and are therefore to be laughed at and excused
for falling into an ecstasy over the first pretty face you meet, and
calling your silly transports, _love_! You have been punished severely
enough through your self-conceit; and I can imagine that you will never
care to be reminded, that at the time you were thinking you had made
a conquest of Conny, she was encouraging you merely that you might
serve her as a kind of dummy, with whom she might coquette whilst she
indulged her real passion with her Theodore.”
Having written so far, she was pleased to suspend her raillery, to make
way for large-hearted expressions of sympathy with Tom and his wife,
and concluded a tolerably voluminous letter by signing herself “Your
affectionate cousin.”
“P.S. Tell me all the news as it comes to hand, that is if you can find
any time to waste upon T. H.”
I was so much piqued and so much pleased with this letter, that, had
I had any further news to tell her--enough to find me an excuse for
writing so promptly--I should there and then have sent her a reply. The
part I liked most was where she had called me a boy. It was delightful
to be rallied so familiarly, to be chided so saucily. And I noticed the
dexterity with which she implied apologies and excuses for the conduct
she seemed to reproach in me.
However, it was now about time that I made my way to Grove End.
Nothing but a sense of duty could have driven me there, I assure you.
I reached the house a little before nine o’clock, and knocked very
tremulously; I never remember feeling more nervous. What should I say
to Conny--to _Mrs. Curling_, I mean? and what was Mrs. Curling to say
to me?
When I entered the hall, I could scarcely do anything for some moments
but wipe my feet. Then I knocked my uncle’s hat off a peg in trying to
hang up my own. The servant opened the drawing-room door, and giving my
faculties a twist, as it were, to make them resonant, I entered.
“Hallo!” said I, seeing the room empty, though the lamps were lighted,
“where’s my uncle?”
In truth, I had forgotten, in my nervousness, to inquire whether he had
returned from London.
“I’ll go and see, sir.”
“Then he has come back?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Alone?”
“No; Mr. and Mrs. Curling have come with him.”
What adaptive aptitude servants have! How long would it take me to talk
of “Mr. and Mrs. Curling” as glibly as if they had been man and wife
ten years?
I sat down and pretended to feel at my ease, meanwhile watching
the door anxiously. In about three minutes’ time it opened, and in
came--everybody! Yes, I protest all my relations swarmed in at once.
First came my uncle, with his shirt collars well up above his ears;
then came my aunt with red eyes; then came Conny looking white as a
sheet: and then came Curling--already a bruised and broken son-in-law,
glancing with scared eyes about him, and stepping forward with the
nervous, dubious air you may have observed in a decayed tradesman, who,
having called four times with a subscription paper, is mistaken by your
servant, and asked to “walk in.”
I stood up, not knowing whom to shake hands with first.
“How are you, Charlie?” said my uncle in a melancholy voice. “We were
all in the library when you came.”
My aunt took an arm-chair, breathing noisily.
“I am glad to welcome you home,” said I, taking Conny’s hand, and
feeling as if I were saluting a stranger.
“Thank you,” she whispered, hanging her head; and then gave her husband
a glance.
Poor little girl! I knew what she meant. The eyes of the mother were
upon me; I was the Representative of the Family Gentility. My soul
warmed to a magnanimous impulse, and, extending my hand cordially to
Mr. Curling, I exclaimed in a loud, impressive voice,
“I heartily congratulate you on your choice of a wife; and I hope you
will both be spared for many long years to be a comfort to each other.”
Boh! boh! Conny burst into tears, ran up to me, clung to my arm, and
upturning her sweet, deceitful eyes, now with their rich blue deepened
by tears, cried,
“Oh, Charlie, I knew you would forgive me! I always felt you would! Do
ask mamma to love me again, and to be friends with Theodore.”
“She will need no asking,” I answered, feeling perfectly patriarchal,
and thinking what a mean figure I was involuntarily making Mr. Theodore
cut. “Her heart is the kindest that ever beat in a woman’s bosom; and
I shall be greatly mistaken if, after you have allowed her a little
breathing time, to recover the shock, she does not clasp her only, her
beloved child again to her breast, and forgive the man whose only sin
has been that he has loved her daughter too well.”
Having uttered which surprising piece of eloquence, I was confounded by
my uncle bursting into tears.
“Don’t mind me,” he sobbed, through his fingers; “I entreat--I implore
that none of you will look at me.”
“Oh, my dear husband!” shrieked his wife, rushing up to him, and
casting her arms around his neck.
“Oh, papa, papa!” cried Conny, likewise running up to him, casting
herself on her knees and fondling his legs.
To complete the tableau nothing was wanting but for Mr. Curling and me
to lock each other’s figure in a passionate embrace. But I would rather
have been poisoned.
“There, there, there!” mumbled my poor uncle, releasing himself from
his wife and child by struggling out of his chair. “I must apologise
for my weakness. God knows how many years it is since I shed a tear.
Charlie, my boy, pray be seated. Curling, raise your wife.”
However, Conny saved her husband this trouble by getting up herself. My
aunt resumed her chair; Curling took the music-stool, and my uncle and
I shared the sofa.
The silence that followed was exquisitely embarrassing. I gasped and
gulped about in my mind for something to say, but was as absolutely
vacant of ideas as a foolish and nervous “best man,” who rises to
propose “the bridesmaids,” and can do nothing for a long and awful
pause but fix a fishy eye on the person immediately opposite.
Conny never looked at me. Her swollen blue eyes were glued to the
carpet. As for my aunt, her face was as stony and hard as anything
ever found by Mr. Layard at Nineveh. At last, feeling the silence too
oppressive for my nerves to endure without something cracking, I asked
my uncle, in a voice that appeared to me fearfully loud,
“How is London looking?”
“Very much as usual,” he replied.
And his tongue being loosened, he proceeded to inquire after the
business that had been transacted at the bank during his absence.
We were now upon a subject in which Curling would feel at home, and
heartily sorry for the poor fellow whose position was, on the whole, as
unenviable as any mortal man was ever placed in, I contrived to address
some observations to him, which he answered with great diffidence.
I then, from a laudable desire to diffuse a more pleasing social
atmosphere than then overhung us, spoke to my aunt, taking care, on
receiving her reply, to appeal to Conny.
But my well-meant effort failed. My aunt was so dogged and tearful, I
might as well have tried to set the pendulum of a clock wagging when
the spring was broken, as have attempted to get her to be cheerful.
“We make a happy family party, don’t we,” said she to me with a ghastly
smile.
“I don’t see why we shouldn’t,” I replied. “I for one am quite disposed
to be comfortable,” and I looked at Conny.
“Ah!” said my aunt with a severe nod, “you are not a mother, Charlie.”
“No,” said I, “and I really hope there is no chance of my ever becoming
one.”
Mr. Curling grinned faintly. Conny looked at me askew, as if she
wondered how I could find the heart to be funny.
“Come, come, don’t let us get personal,” exclaimed my uncle. “What
I told Conny and her husband in London I will repeat here; they have
chosen to act foolishly and cruelly; but greatly as they have made us
suffer, it is our duty, now that the action is irreparable, not only to
wish to see them happy, but to strive to make them so. It is too late
to show any temper, and all reproaches must be idle and foolish.”
“Ay, but flesh and blood must speak!” cried out my aunt.
“I regret the grief and pain I have caused you and Mrs. Hargrave,” said
Curling. “But when I remember what I owe you, sir, when I know that
I am not incapable of gratitude, and that the character I have always
borne has been that of a man whom it needs a great deal to divert from
the straight line of his duty, I think, I--I say I think at least--you,
I mean--that is you should find in my elopement a proof--yes, a
proof, Mrs. Hargrave, of my love for your daughter and--and--an
endorsement--that is, a guarantee, I mean for--of--for our future--for
her future happiness.”
Uttering which he threw a damp glance round the room.
Is that the genuine language of the heart, thought I? But suppose he
_had_ rehearsed the passage, what other kind of eloquence than gasps
and expletives is to be expected from a man in his situation.
“It ought never to have taken place,” cried Mrs. Hargrave.
“Oh, mamma!” exclaimed Conny, “you are too severe, we are all to blame.”
I glanced at her pale face and thought, “Ah! She might have had
_me_ once. There would have been no hysterics then. Nothing but
congratulations and new dresses.”
“WE!” shrieked my aunt. “Did _I_ ask you to elope with Mr. Theodore?”
“For heaven’s sake--!” interposed my uncle.
“You told me I should never marry him with your consent!” cried Conny.
“And you haven’t!” broke in my aunt.
“Good God!” shouted my uncle. “Isn’t the thing over? what’s the use of
wrangling? what’s the use of snapping at each other like that?”
“No use at all,” said I. “And what’s more--though I’m a heretic for
saying so--in my opinion a woman has a perfect right to choose for
herself the man that the law compels her to live with.”
“Shame! shame!” groaned my aunt. “You can’t mean what you say. Aren’t
you, too, grossly deceived?”
“No!” interrupted Conny, a sudden blush dyeing her face scarlet.
“Charlie knew that I didn’t--that I couldn’t love him--greatly as I
liked him.”
Oh! I thought, if you weren’t a young bride, if it weren’t incumbent
upon me to respect your feelings, if it wouldn’t be unmanly to deliver
myself of my sentiments, _how_ I could make you writhe. But I’ll spare
thee, Conny, which I could not do, had I truly loved thee.
“Conny’s quite right,” said I aloud, “she never gave me any
encouragement, she always told me she only liked me. I was very
impertinent to dare to have any hopes.”
She turned a look of triumph on her Theodore. Come, I was a sore point
anyhow, which was better than being nothing at all.
“Why _must_ we be personal?” cried my uncle.
“What _are_ we to talk about if we mayn’t speak of this aw--this
dread--this--this--thing?” sobbed my aunt.
“Well, you must excuse me for taking Charlie into the library,” said
he, rising and laying hold of my arm. “I have many questions to ask him
about the bank.”
Mr. Curling looked at us as if he should cry out, “For the love of
heaven, don’t leave me!” But my uncle took no notice, and hurriedly
walked me out of the room, not even giving me time to make a bow to the
happy trio I left behind.
“I am sick of these squabbles!” he exclaimed, lighting a candle in
the library and flinging himself into an arm-chair. “Sick of these
personalities, hints, innuendos, and aspersions. Oh for the wings of a
dove! Why can’t my wife leave them alone? My word is pledged to them,
and she knows it, but is for ever bursting into our sense of honour
with sharp charges and reckless attacks.”
“It was to be expected,” said I; “but give her time, and she will
become inured to the new state of things.”
“So far as the comfort of my home is concerned, these rows can’t last
longer than to-night. To-morrow Curling takes his wife into lodgings.”
“Small blame to him. He is really to be pitied. I have heard that
mothers-in-law are bad enough company to live with, even when they have
graced the marriage service with their consenting presence, and sobbed
over the bridegroom’s impossible promises. But what they are when
their daughters are married in defiance of them, I can only dimly and
fearfully guess.”
“Ay, it is too true. Relations ought not to live together after they
get married. Deeply offended as I am, I haven’t the heart to turn upon
the young couple. Who are we to throw stones? Who are we to fill the
judgment seat? Life stretches before them; there are, there must be,
many sorrows on the road, and hard trials, and bitter tears. Whether we
forgive them or not, it is unhappily only too certain that the future
will make them more than expiate the vexation and disappointment they
have caused us. No, no! I am not for exacting penances. I am not for
grinding young hearts down because they have betrayed their owners
into folly. Conny _does_ love that young man amazingly. I see it in
every movement of her head, in every look she gives him. He too is very
fond of her. Argue as you will, there was sound truth in what he just
now said. He is a plodding, mechanical-minded fellow, devoted to his
interests, and a thorough business-man; and it could be no ordinary
passion that turned his habits awry, and set him defying fortune for
the privilege of possessing a pretty girl.”
“No, indeed; for he had no reason to suppose that you would give Conny
a penny, or that you would allow him to resume his duties. He is no
doubt sincere.”
“I found them in mean lodgings out of Bloomsbury,” said my uncle.
“Yet, miserable as was their accommodation, and penniless as they
avowed themselves to be, nothing could have induced them to return with
me, but my repeated promises that they would be kindly received and
forgiven. What a thing is love!” he cried, flinging open the window to
get some air. “Imagine it not only powerful enough to drive a delicate
girl, who has been coddled all her life, out of a luxurious country
home, into squalid London lodgings, but to make her perfectly satisfied
with her dirty quarters! Do you see anything in Mr. Curling to fall in
love with? I’ll be hanged if I do.”
“Oh, woman’s caprice is an old song set to a tune to which men have
been capering for many thousand years. Wasn’t Eve glad to be turned out
of Paradise? we have only Milton’s word for it, that she cried. Conny
finds her Theodore lovely--and there’s an end. Women, like birds, will
build their nests in the queerest places. You can’t reason with them.
They obey an instinct that was implanted, in order that the ugliest man
might not be mateless.”
“I hope my wife is not scolding. She will make that young man hate her.
And then good-bye to all our chances of persuading the neighbours that
we don’t consider the marriage a calamity. What did you say to her last
night?”
I told him as well as I could remember.
“My boy,” said he, having listened to me with great attention,
“she has a high opinion of you, and I believe, upon a matter of this
kind, would rather be influenced by you than by me. Never lose an
opportunity, like a dear fellow, to impress upon her that Mr. Curling
is not the shocking bad match she chooses to think him. He has been
with me four years, and during that time has behaved himself like a
gentleman. It is all very fine for my wife to abuse him now; but up
to the moment when she suspected that he was paying Conny attention,
she professed to like him very much. I might hunt a long time before I
should find a man better suited for my work than Curling. And strange
as it will strike you to hear, I can assure you that when my wife has
been trying to frighten me about him and Conny, I have thought that
he might make my child as good a husband as a richer man, and as my
partner be of the greatest use to me.”
I nodded my head, comprehending his drift, and admiring his resolution
to view the affair in the brightest light. This, indeed, was a quality
that belonged in an especial degree to my father’s family--my father
himself owning it largely. I don’t think anything could have made _him_
feel degraded. Had a daughter of his married a sweep, he would have
set to work to trace the sweep’s lineage, and not stopped until he had
come to an aristocratic tributary. His philosophy was to deal with the
events of life, as they befell him, splendidly; to make misfortune
imperial with the crown of self-complacency; to distil a kind of
essence of dignity out of humiliation, and diffuse the perfume where
another man would have hidden the sordid rubbish in the dust-bin of his
bosom, and pretended that there was nothing of the kind on the premises.
My uncle, who did not possess my father’s high self-opinion, allowed
worthier motives to direct him to the same conduct. I don’t mean to say
that the hints he had just dropped of his views regarding Curling were
not owing largely to a wish to make the best of a bad bargain; but the
wish to see the young people comfortable and happy, very powerfully
operated.
“I won’t ask anybody’s advice,” said he, “upon my treatment of Mr.
Curling; but think awhile, watch patiently, and act for myself. There
is nothing like acting for yourself.”
“Nothing.”
“Curling shows a proper spirit in determining not to sleep in this
house longer than a night. He and Conny consented to return with me on
that understanding. To-morrow morning he will take lodgings in Updown,
and there they will live, until I furnish them a house.”
“When are they to be re-married?”
“I’ll see about that to-morrow. The ceremony must be perfectly private.
I don’t believe in registrars acting as clergymen. I would as soon they
should administer the sacrament to me as marry me.”
Here came a feeble knock on the door.
“Come in,” said my uncle, and Conny entered.
I gave her a chair, and her papa said,
“How can you leave your husband?”
“He is arguing with mamma, and it makes me miserable to listen to the
hard things she says to him.”
“These arguments must be stopped!” cried my uncle, leaving his chair.
“Can’t your mother leave him alone for to-night? You’ll be out of the
house to-morrow. What good can reproaches do? Can they unmarry you? My
wife _must_ be made to understand this.”
And he left the room.
Finding myself alone with Conny, I kicked my feet about a little, and
said, “I was quite in earnest when I hoped you would be happy.”
“I am sure you were. But I shall be happier when you tell me I am
forgiven,” she answered, turning her face away from the light.
“Oh, you are forgiven. Your papa means to----.”
“I mean forgiven by you,” she interrupted.
“There is nothing to forgive.”
“Don’t say that, Charlie. I did not act honourably. I was not
straightforward. But I couldn’t--I _dared_ not be. I knew if mamma
should learn that I flatly refused to encourage you, she would contrive
to separate me for ever from Theodore.”
“Yes, yes. I quite understand. I heartily forgive you--I bear no
resentment. I _was_ a little surprised--shocked, I may say; but the
wound is healed, Conny. I am as sound in health and mind as if I had
never received a stab. I was quite sure that it was all up between
us--that you hadn’t, that you never would have a spark of affection for
me, when you allowed the letter I sent you from Thistlewood to remain
unanswered. What _might_ have been, my dear, we needn’t talk about--it
hasn’t taken place. My dream is dreamt out. I have a practical mind;
and being now wide awake, dismiss the little memory with a smile, and
turn with all kindly wishes and greetings to the reality.”
She was too fond of, too engrossed with, and by, her husband, to be
piqued by my cool remarks. She was not a flirt--I could see that. She
had acted the coquette to suit her own purpose: and that being served,
she had torn up the mask.
“I hope you will like Theodore,” she said, earnestly. “I know you
despised him, but I daresay you were prejudiced, because you suspected
I preferred him to you. Did you notice that he has taken off his ring,
Charlie?”
“I can’t say I did.”
“He has, then; and his hand is wonderfully improved. Oh, he is so
affectionate! some of these days mamma will feel heartily ashamed of
herself for treating him so badly.”
“No doubt--but still your mother has a right to regard your elopement
as a grievance.”
“I never would have eloped hadn’t mamma prevented Theodore from seeing
me, and set her face so passionately against our marriage. She forgets
that I have known Theodore for over three years, and that we have loved
each other for two years out of that time. I got weary, Charlie, of
having to meet him stealthily, and of carrying a heavy secret about;
and I was driven into running away when I saw how earnestly mamma was
working to bring about my marriage with you.”
“One question, Conny; do you remember one Sunday night leaving me
hurriedly on hearing the clock strike seven?”
“Yes. I went to meet Theodore. Oh, Charlie, how I hated you for
stopping at home that evening!”
“And on that evening I asked you to marry me!” I exclaimed, with a
laugh like a groan. “What fools men sometimes make of themselves! But
never mind. I’ve pulled the knife out of my side--the wound, I say, is
healed. This is my little folly--but the farce is played out, and I am
obliged to you for letting the curtain fall, and turning us all out
before the tragedy began. Let us join the others. If your husband and I
are to love each other, I mustn’t begin by making him jealous.”
“One word, Charlie--what do you think of Theresa?”
“I like her very much,” I answered, looking into those blue eyes of
hers, in whose depths I had so often sank out of sight of common sense.
“Are you in love with her?”
“I am,” I exclaimed, emphatically.
Quite a bright smile shone in her face.
“That confession makes me happy,” said she; “for it satisfies me that
I have not betrayed _so very devoted_ a heart, after all!”
She opened the door and passed out.
Hush! hark! what was that?
A scream, followed by a gurgle! Good heavens! my aunt was in hysterics
again! My hat was within reach of my hand; two strides would take me to
the door.
“I hate scenes!” I whispered, whilst Conny listened with a pale and
frightened face. “I have no right to intrude on domestic troubles.
Please apologise for my sudden departure. Good night.”
And out I rushed.