_Puff._ “Now gentlemen, this scene goes entirely for what we call
situation and stage effect, by which the greatest applause may be
obtained without the assistance of ... sentiment or character. Pray
mark.”
_The Critic._
I returned to the Bank after seeing the ladies to Grove End, and going
straight into my uncle’s private room, told him that Theresa and I were
engaged.
“Engaged!” he cried, staring at me. “Are you in earnest?”
“Certainly I am.”
I never saw any man look so pleased.
“It is almost time,” he said, “that I had something to give my spirits
a turn. _This_ delights me. But, good gracious! how sudden! how
unexpected! I had no idea you were in love with her.”
“I came home from Thistlewood in love; but I never meant to ask her to
be my wife yet awhile. My feelings overpowered me this morning and out
came everything.”
“And does she love you, Charlie?”
“I don’t suppose she would accept me if she didn’t.”
“To be sure she wouldn’t. Of course she loves you. Well, well, this
_is_ cheering news after our late troubles. That old scheme of mine
was quite pushed out of my mind by this elopement. I have been able to
think of nothing else. Now at all events there will be _one_ marriage
after my heart. Has she written to Dick yet about it?”
“Why, you see, I only proposed to her this morning.”
“True, I forgot. You had better go to her. We can very well do without
you just now--far better than she can. Upon my word,” he cried,
grasping my hand, “your news is as good as a cordial. It throws quite
a bright light on the future, and I can see my way now as I never saw
it before. But I’ll not keep you. Get away to Grove End. We’ll talk the
thing over this evening.”
I left him, but stopped a moment to ask Curling, who was at his desk,
how he and Conny felt after the wedding.
“Very well thank you, Mr. Hargrave,” he replied: “but as I told
your uncle, I shall go to my grave protesting that it was entirely
superfluous.”
“No, no! come, you must confess that you feel more comfortable now that
you have been married correctly.”
“Not a bit,” he said, “and whilst I live I shall always say it was
superfluous.”
“By the way,” said I, halting as I was moving off, as though arrested
by an afterthought: “you might tell Conny when you see her that I am
engaged to be married.”
“Really!”
“Yes, my cousin Theresa has done me the honour to accept me. The news
will interest your wife.”
“And delight her too,” said Curling, “for she still worries now and
then over the trick we were unavoidably----”
“Tell her to forget everything as I have,” I interrupted quickly, for
I never could stand any reference to that trick from him. “She has
nothing to forget so far as I am concerned, as I hope my engagement
proves.”
And I left the bank.
I found Theresa alone--my aunt having been seized with an auspicious
fit of tenderness which had driven her (in her carriage) to her
daughter’s lodgings.
“It seems that I was destined to make love to you,” said I; “for I am
perpetually finding you by yourself all alone, as the song says, and
opportunity creates the thief.”
“I can hardly believe we are engaged,” she answered. “We have, I fear,
both been too hasty--you in proposing, I in accepting you.”
“If you mean to imitate Conny, I had better withdraw to my bed-room and
cut my gorge. What! accept me, and then break into lamentations?”
“_I_ can be true,” said she, firmly and proudly, “and do not speak of
myself. But----”
There was only one way of silencing her buts, and that was by stopping
her mouth. I leave you to guess how I did it. There was a vast deal of
blushing, tender charges of sauciness, assumptions of indignation which
the eyes vowed were terrible hypocrisies, and----
But, my Eugenio, even were love-making not an amusement in which no
breathing creature can take the faintest interest, save those who are
concerned in it, still ought I, and do I, politely but firmly decline
to set down the particulars of that dear, delightful morning. The very
respectable fear of growing sentimental is one check; but another and
a more violent restraint is that profound sense of what d’ye call it?
with which most men recur to the nonsense they are forced to emit when
the fit is on them.
However, I ought not to conceal that our conversation brought out some
little secrets of great value and moment to me; of which one was the
assurance that she had fallen in love with me before I left Thistlewood.
“I never suspected it,” said I.
“I don’t think,” she whispered, “that I should have been so easily
conquered had I not been resolved to atone for the cruel reception I
gave you, and the wicked story I told O’Twist.”
“You tried to harden your heart,” said I; “but the process that ought
to have made iron of it transformed it into wax.”
“I suppose so. I am a silly creature.”
“So much the better, dearest; for were you wise I might be miserable. A
woman must love a man for something; and providing he gains her love,
the means by which he wins her ought not to trouble either of them.”
That afternoon we each wrote to our respective fathers. What Theresa
said I don’t know; but my letter was a very candid confession of
happiness.
I _was_ happy. I loved this cousin of mine dearly. It is true that I
had had to undergo no ordeal for her. I had neither (to use a favourite
order of description) been tried by the fire, nor proved in the
furnace; “long years” had had nothing whatever to do with my love. I
had been guilty of no “passionate yearnings,” nor “wild and wistful
longings.” And I don’t think I had been “thrilled” once. In short, my
passion was totally unlike those which are heard of at Mr. Mudie’s.
And yet I am bold to say that no hero was ever fonder of the heroine
whom he wooes in chapter the first, and loses in chapter the second,
recovers in chapter the third, doubts in chapter the fourth, quarrels
with in chapter the fifth, grows sardonic over in chapter the sixth,
adores in chapter the seventh, flees in chapter the eighth, and finally
marries in chapter the sixty-fourth, than I was of Theresa whom I had
known only a few weeks, and whom, when I had first met her, I had
execrated.
Uncle Dick arrived at Grove End next day in high spirits. I remember
that after making me all manner of handsome compliments, he whispered,
“Nobody shall be miserable when my daughter is happy;” and unknown to
any of us left the house and after an hour’s absence returned--with
Curling and Conny.
“Here they are!” he cried, in great glee, joining us on the lawn. “I
was just in time. Conny had fetched her beloved at the bank and was on
the point of starting for a walk. They were very reluctant to come: but
I told them we couldn’t be happy without them.”
Conny turned a little pale when she met me, but soon recovered her
composure and whispered her congratulations with her deep blue eyes
fully upturned to mine. I gazed calmly into their depths.
“May you be very happy!” said she, and kissed me.
Eheu! when I wanted her kisses she wouldn’t give them.
Thanks to uncle Dick, our dinner-party that day was a very much
livelier one than the last at which the young couple had been present.
Without embarrassing Curling, he contrived to make a very great deal of
him, engaged him in a conversation on topics on which the young man was
well qualified to talk, and developed so many really good social points
in him, that not only was I never more favourably impressed, but I
actually caught my aunt regarding her son-in-law with a face absolutely
promising with a propitiatory expression.
Her Theodore’s success delighted poor little Conny, who, long before
the dinner was over, was chatting; and laughing as playfully as ever
she had done in the days when she was the darling of the house, and
life lay round her like a landscape of flowers and sunshine. She sat
next to her mother, and I assure you that I would rather have forfeited
the pleasure of having Theresa by my side at the table than missed the
satisfaction of seeing Conny slip her hand into her mother’s, and leave
it there to be nursed and petted.
That evening my uncles and myself had a long conversation on a great
variety of topics, all which were of prodigious interest to me, since
they all concerned me very closely. Besides a handsome settlement on
his daughter, Dick promised to make us a present of a large sum of
money, which was to procure me a partnership in uncle Tom’s, bank. But
though that sum was considerable, the income uncle Tom promised me, not
the most rapacious money-lender could have made it yield.
“Taking the capital Dick gives you at five per cent.,” said he, “your
income would be £0,000; the difference, then, between that income and
the sum you will draw, you will consider _my_ present.”
I was overpowered by so much generosity; and, utterly wanting words,
had to content myself with silently shaking their hands. It was a real
relief to me when they began to talk of Curling.
“I had always proposed,” said uncle Tom, “to make the man my daughter
married a partner in the bank; but of course I never anticipated that
she would marry a man like Curling. However, waiving the consideration
of his poverty, a fitter man than Curling to take in with us I don’t
think I could choose.”
“I don’t think you could,” said uncle Dick.
“He is extraordinarily active,” continued uncle Tom, “and were he to be
given an interest in the bank, would by his efforts and business habits
extend its influence to a degree that would abundantly compensate for
his want of capital.”
“Take him in by all means,” said uncle Dick.
“I won’t be in too great a hurry. There is plenty of time. He has
behaved ill, though I am willing to forgive him for my girl’s sake; but
there would be a want of moral propriety in my heaping benefits upon
him too suddenly.”
“Perhaps so,” said uncle Dick. “But Charlie grows uneasy and pines for
his sweetheart.”
“Quite true,” I answered, and without ceremony left the room.
Theresa received a letter next morning from my father, and a very
gorgeous epistle it was--a series of dignified and embroidered
congratulations and loftily-expressed good wishes. She was to let him
know the date of her marriage and he would join us two or three days
before at the house we should be married from. This letter was read
aloud and caused an argument. Which house _should_ we be married from?
It was soon shown that Thistlewood was out of the question. It was
impossible for uncle Tom to absent himself from Updown, owing to his
presence being necessary at the bank, and the same objection held good
with respect to Curling, whose presence and Conny’s at the breakfast
was regarded by us all as essential to the celebration.
“For,” said my uncle Dick, “the breakfast must be given as much in
their honour as in that of Charlie’s and Theresa’s; their healths
have never yet been properly drunk, and until that solemnity has been
gone through, they cannot, in spite of the double ceremony they have
endured, be considered correctly married yet.”
Both my uncles were impatient that the marriage should not be delayed,
and therefore not without a good deal of persuasion, I succeeded in
getting Theresa to fix the day for----which gave us exactly six weeks
to make our preparations. With less time we could hardly do. There were
not only two houses to be sought and furnished (Dick being resolved
that Theresa and Conny should both begin the duties of housekeeping
at the same time) but there were two trousseaux to be got ready, for
as one of us very properly observed, “It isn’t because a girl makes a
runaway marriage that she doesn’t want the same outfit that would be
given her had she been married correctly.”
A busy month that was! Theresa went to Thistlewood, but returned after
an absence of a fortnight; her father declaring that no nonsensical
fastidiousness should permit her to mope alone in a big house, which
would be all the more dull, not only because it was the home she was to
leave for ever, but because she would contrast it with the cheerfulness
of the house at Grove End.
One individual welcomed her back, trust me.
That, I say, was a busy month. Two houses had been found, exactly
“suited to the requirements of young married people,” as the landlords
pointed out: one house in Updown, which was for Conny; and one a mile
away, not very far from Grove End, which was for Theresa. These had to
be furnished; and as my uncle Tom had no time to devote to the work, I
was “told off” to assist uncle Dick.
And now at Grove End Conny was to be found every day, helping her
mother to prepare for Theresa’s marriage, to get together her own
trousseau, to sympathise with her cousin’s maidenly anxieties. She and
I were often together now; but so little did the memory of the past
affect our relations--in short, so dead was all sentiment between us,
that, though Theresa watched us narrowly (which she afterwards declared
was not true), not a glance, not a sigh was exchanged upon which the
most imaginative jealousy could have fastened as an excuse for a
quarrel.
My father arrived at Grove End a week before the marriage. Both my
uncles went to meet him with the phaeton. As I beheld his stately
figure I felt that I had never sufficiently admired him. He certainly
did look most imposing, dressed to perfection, his magnificent whiskers
taking a purple tint from the sun. He grasped both my hands, and I led
him at once to Theresa. Good heavens! with what inimitable grace did he
take and kiss her hand; with which chivalrous greeting, however, she
was by no means satisfied, for she insisted upon offering her cheek,
which he touched with the imperial air of a potentate saluting a queen.
And a queen she looked! and I noticed with happy pride the admiration
that kindled in his face as he regarded her. Indeed, I had very good
reason to be proud of both of them; for such a father and such a bride,
I will venture to say, it has been the lot of very few men to possess
at the same time.
My aunt, who had not seen the major for many years, was quite
overpowered by the reception he gave her; whilst honest Tom was so
vain of having his military brother under his roof, that for very
conceit he couldn’t sit down, but strode about the room, putting all
manner of questions about France, the Emperor, prospects of war with
that country, and so forth, positively as if my father were a returned
ambassador, whose intimacy with French affairs qualified him to raise
or depress the Funds with a shrug or a nod.
One thing I could predict: the presence of the major would entirely
nullify every lingering feeling of humiliation with which Tom and his
wife might still regard Conny’s marriage. So gorgeous a relation could
not but absorb out of the family circle the remnants of degradation
Conny’s elopement had left behind it; and uncle Tom might well
defy the neighbours to sneer after having set eyes on the military
representative of the Hargraves, with his magnificent whiskers and
aquiline nose, when he should sit by his sister-in-law in the carriage,
resembling a monarch on a _tour d’inspection_, or when he worshipped
with lofty solemnity in the family pew.
* * * * *
The following extract is from the _Updown Mercury_ of ----, 185--. I
subjoin it because the particulars it gives are expressed in language
which, whether we consider the beauty of its epithets, the elegance
of its construction, the ease of its periods, or the harmony of its
sentences, is equally provocative of lasting admiration, and is so
superior to anything I could write, that it would be injurious to the
reputation of this book to omit it.
“Fashionable Marriage,--On Thursday last our delightfully-situated town
was thrown into a state of unusual excitement by the solemnisation of
the marriage of Charles Hargrave, Esq., son of Major Hargrave, and
nephew of our respected fellow-townsman, Thomas Hargrave, Esq., to
Theresa, only child of Richard Hargrave, Esq., of Thistlewood. The
whole of the population turned out to celebrate the joyous occasion.
The noble and ancient gateway in High Street was elegantly draped
with flags, and a triumphal arch of great beauty was erected at the
bottom of Grove End Lane. The church was densely packed, and an immense
concourse of people assembled around the doors to witness the bridal
party leave the sacred edifice. The bride wore a magnificent robe of
white satin, and looked, to quote the words of a celebrated bard,
‘Beautiful exceedingly.’
The dresses of the bridesmaids were beyond praise, and elicited murmurs
of admiration. The service was read impressively by the rector,
assisted by the Reverend John Cattle, M.A.: Mr. Abrahams presided at
the organ. The bridal party left the church and were driven to Grove
End, where a recherché breakfast awaited the happy guests. The usual
toasts were eloquently proposed and eloquently responded to. We must
not forget to say that the breakfast involved a double celebration;
the other happy pair being Theodore Curling, Esq., of London, and
Constance, the only child of Thomas Hargrave, Esq. Much amusement was
created by the very droll speech delivered by Mr. Richard Hargrave in
proposing the health of Mr. and Mrs. Curling; and hearty and cordial
was the applause that greeted the few but graceful words with which Mr.
Curling acknowledged the honour that was done him and his fair bride.
“Mr. and Mrs. Charles Hargrave left Grove End for the railway station
at Updown at one o’clock, en route for the south of France, where we
believe it is their intention to pass the honeymoon. Our best wishes
follow them into their blissful though temporary retirement; nor can we
close this inadequate notice of the auspicious event, without tendering
our respectful congratulations to the parents of the young people whom
the marriage cements with new and indissoluble domestic ties.”
Here I lay down my pen, having brought as much of the story of my life
as I meant to relate, to an end.
Though I want you to accept the book as a work of fiction, who knows
whether there may not be a great deal of truth in it? But whether there
is or not, one thing is certain--there is no moral in the story: and
if this is not a literary excellence of a very high order, perhaps
somebody will tell me what is.
A little more, perhaps, might be said about Curling and his wife, if I
were not sure that you had long ago settled in your mind that Curling
would one day become good friends with his mother-in-law. If I add
that at this time of writing, he has been a partner for seven years in
the banking firm of Hargrave and Co., the sequel of _his_ matrimonial
adventure will be as fully related as if a volume were devoted to that
purpose.
THE END.
CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS, CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original.