BE,” AND DISCLOSES MRS. ARUNDEL’S OPINION OF RICHARD FRERE.
Lewis did not obtain any answer to his polite note, as Lord Belle-field
received on the following morning letters which he said required his
immediate presence in London, and in the hurry of departure he no doubt
forgot to refute the charge Lewis had seen fit to bring against him; and
as the young tutor preserved a strict silence on the subject, and Sam
Jones kept his own counsel with his accustomed closeness, there, for the
present, the matter appeared likely to rest. Some little surprise was
caused in the village by the sudden disappearance of Jane Hardy, the
poacher’s daughter, a girl of about nineteen; but as it was imagined
she had gone to take up her quarters in the town of H------, where her
father was imprisoned, her absence was soon forgotten. Lewis and Charles
Leicester alone, having ascertained her identity with the young person
who had assisted in the refreshment-room on the night of the party,
connected her flight with Lord Bellefield’s abrupt departure, and
although the subject was, for obvious reasons, avoided between them,
little doubt remained on their minds as to her probable fate. This
occurrence afforded Lewis a clue to Lord Bellefield’s sudden interest in
regard to Hardy’s capture: by her father’s imprisonment would be removed
the chief impediment to the success of his designs upon the daughter.
The event had proved the correctness of his calculation.
Weeks passed on; the wound in Lewis’s shoulder healed, despite the
aggravating attendance of Doctors Scalpel and Bistoury, and with youth
and health on his side he speedily regained his accustomed vigour.
General Grant’s recovery was a matter of greater difficulty. The
fracture had been by no means easily reduced, and the process by which
the bones re-united was a long and tedious one. His accident (as is
usually the case with such events) had occurred at a most inconvenient
moment. While he was yet confined to his room the election for the
county came on, and his opponent, taking advantage of his absence
to undermine his influence with the voters, was returned by a large
majority. The bribery by which he had obtained his seat was, however, a
matter of such notoriety, that, by De Grandeville’s advice, the General
was induced to petition Parliament to annul the election. The petition
failed, and the expenses, which, from the prolonged proceedings, were
unusually heavy, all fell upon the unsuccessful candidate. During the
progress of the affair, Lewis, by the General’s wish, acted as his
amanuensis and private secretary, a confidential servant being engaged
to wait on Walter and attend him during his rides, thus relieving his
tutor of much that was irksome in his situation. The London season was
at its height before General Grant had recovered sufficiently to leave
Broadhurst, but a fortnight before the day on which Charles Leicester’s
wedding was fixed to take place Annie and her father started for the
great metropolis.
During his attendance on the General, Lewis had been thrown much into
Annie’s society, and their intimacy had deepened, on the lady’s side,
into feelings of the warmest esteem and friendship, while the gentleman
became more and more convinced that his previous estimate of the fair
sex was a completely mistaken one, and altogether to be condemned as
the weakest and most fallacious theory that ever entered the brain of a
hot-headed boy--by which opprobrious epithet he mentally stigmatised his
six-months-ago self--and for at least a week after she had departed he
felt as if something had gone wrong with the sun, so that it never shone
properly.
The General had been away about a fortnight, when Lewis received a
letter from Rose informing him for the first time of her literary
pursuits. Since we have last heard of this young lady she had been
growing decidedly blue. Not only had she, under Bracy’s auspices,
published a series of papers in Blunt’s Magazine, but she had positively
written a child’s book, which, although it contained original ideas,
good sense, and warm feeling, instead of second-hand moral platitudes,
and did not take that particularly natural view of life which represents
it as a system of temporal rewards and punishments, wherein the
praiseworthy elder sister is always recompensed with an evangelical
young duke, and the naughty boys are invariably drowned on clandestine
skating expeditions, yet found an enterprising publisher willing
to purchase it; nay, so well did it answer, that the courageous
bibliopolist had actually expressed a wish to confer with the “talented
authoress,” as he styled poor Rose, in regard to a second work.
Whereupon Frere despatched a note to that young lady, telling her she
had better come up to town at once, offering her the use of his house
in a rough and ready way, just as if he had been writing to a man; and
though he did add in a postscript that if she fancied she should be
dull, she’d better bring her mother with her, the afterthought was quite
as likely to have arisen from sheer good-nature, as from any, even the
most faint, glimmering of etiquette. Owing, to a judicious hint thrown
out by Bracy, however, an invitation arrived, at the same time, from
Lady Lombard, which Mrs. Arundel had immediately decided on accepting,
and the object of Rose’s letter was to inquire whether there was the
slightest hope of Lewis being able to meet them.
By the same post arrived a note written by Annie from her father’s
dictation, saying that he found he was quite unable to get on without
Mr. Arundel’s assistance; that he considered change of scene might prove
beneficial to Walter, and that it was therefore his wish that Lewis and
his pupil should join them immediately after the bustle of the wedding
should be over; which scheme chimed in with the young tutor’s wishes
most admirably, and for the rest of the morning he was so happy as to be
quite unlike his usual grave and haughty self, and astonished Faust to
such a degree by placing his fore-paws against his own chest, and in
that position constraining him to waltz round the room on his hind-legs,
that the worthy dog would have assuredly taken out a statute of lunacy
against his master had he been aware of the existence of such a process.
Those who witnessed the marriage of the Hon. Charles Leicester to the
lovely and accomplished daughter of the late Peregrine Peyton, Esq.,
of Stockington Manor, in the county of Lancashire (they said nothing of
Ludgate Hill and ignored Plumpstern totally), describe it to have been a
truly edifying ceremony. The fatal knot was tied, and the wretched pair
launched into a married state by the Bishop of L--------, the unhappy
victims submitting to their fate with unexampled fortitude and
resignation, and the female spectators evincing by their tears that the
lesson to be derived from the awful tragedy enacting before them would
not be thrown away upon them. Nor were the good intentions thus formed
allowed to swell the list of “unredeemed pledges” whence that prince
of pawnbrokers, Satan, is popularly supposed to select his paving
materials, as, during the ball which concluded the evening, two fine
young men of property fell victims to premature declarations, and after
a rapid decline from the ways of good fellowship were carried off by
matrimony, and departed this (_i.e._, fashionable) life in less than two
months after their first seizure.
On Lewis’s arrival in town he found a small packet directed to him in
Leicester’s handwriting, containing, besides the glazed cards lovingly
coupled by silver twist, a remarkably elegant gold watch and chain for
the waistcoat pocket, together with a few lines from Charley himself,
saying that to Lewis’s good advice and plain speaking he felt he in a
great measure owed his present happiness, and that he hoped Lewis would
wear the enclosed trifle, the joint gift of himself and Laura, to remind
him of their mutual friendship and regard. Had he known that Annie Grant
had noticed the fact of his not possessing a watch, and suggested the
nature of the gift to her cousin, he would have valued it even more
highly than he did.
The happy pair had determined to test the endurance of their felicity by
starting for the Rhine, which popular river it was their intention to
go up as far as it was go-up-able, then proceed to Switzerland, do that
land of musical cows and icy mountains thoroughly, and finally take up
their quarters at Florence, where Leicester had succeeded in obtaining
a diplomatic appointment. A letter had been received from them dated
Coblentz, wherein it appeared their newfound happiness had stood the
voyage better than might have been expected; a fact mainly attributable
to their having had an unusually calm passage. Laura considered the
Rhine scenery exquisite; Charley thought it all very well for a change;
but for a constancy, he must confess he preferred the Serpentine. He
was disgusted with the German students, whom he stigmatised as “awful
tigers,” wondered why the women wore short petticoats if they hadn’t
better ankles to show, complained bitterly of the intense stupidity of
the natives for not understanding either French or English, and wound
up by a long, violent sentence quite unconnected with all that had gone
before it, setting forth his unalterable conviction that Laura was an
angel, which unscriptural assertion he reiterated four times in as many
lines.
A change had taken place in Rose Arundel, and Lewis, as he gazed with
affection on her calm, pensive brow, and marked the earnest, thoughtful
expression of her soft, grey eyes, felt that she was indeed altered: he
had left her little more than a child, he found her a woman in the best
and fullest sense of the expression. Reader, do you know all that phrase
implies? do you understand what is meant by a woman in the true and
fullest sense of the term?
“Eh? I should rather think I did, too, just a _very_ little,” replies
Ensign Downylip, winking at society at large; “know what a woman is?
yes, I consider that good, rather.”
“And what, oh! most exquisite juvenile, may be your definition of woman
as she should be?”
The Ensign strokes his upper lip where that confounded moustache is so
very “lang a comin’,” rubs his nose to arouse his intellect, which
he fails to do because that faculty is not asleep but wanting, and
replies--
“Ar--well, to begin with: woman is of course a decidedly inferiar
animal, but--ar--take the best specimen of the class, and you’ll find it
vewy pwitty, picquante, devoted to polking, light in hand, clean about
the pasterns, something like Fanny Elsler, with a dash of Lady--to
give it style (I can’t stand vulgawity), decidedly fast (I hate your
cart-horsey gals)! plenty of bustle to make it look spicy, ready to
go the pace no end, and able properly to--ahem! appweciate ‘Yours
truly’--ar--that’s about the time of day, eh, Mr. Author!”
“No such thing, sir,” replies Corulea Scribbler, who is so very superior
that she is momentarily expected to regenerate society singlehanded, “no
such thing, sir! I know what the author means: he justly considers woman
as a--that is, as _the_ concentrated essence of mind; nothing low, base,
earthy--but--in fact--definitions should be terse--you’ll excuse my
mathematical tastes, but--ahem!--three terms at Queen’s College, and
that dear Professor Baa-lamb! naturally produce a logical habit of
thought--you require a perfect woman.”
“No, madam, I am not so unreasonable.”
“I mean, you require a definition of a perfect woman; here you have it
then--the maximum of mind united to the minimum of matter; or, to speak
poetically, a ‘thing all soul.’” And having thus given her opinion, Miss
Corulea, who measures barely five feet, and is as thin as a lath, shakes
her straw-coloured ringlets and subsides into the Sixth Book of Euclid.
But neither the red-jacket nor the blue-stocking, albeit each the type
of a not unnumerous class, has exactly answered our question as we
would wish it replied to. We do not agree with Charley Leicester in
considering woman an angel; first, because our ideas with regard to
angels are excessively vague and undefined, wings and white drapery
being the only marked features which we have as yet succeeded in
realising; and secondly, because, to verify the resemblance, woman
should be faultless, and we have never yet met with one who had not some
fascinating little sin left to show that she was not too good for this
world. Our notion of a woman, in the best sense of the word, is a being
fitted to be a helpmeet for man; and this would lead us into another
disquisition, which we will dismiss summarily by stating that we mean a
man worthy of the name, not an ape in a red-coat like Ensign Downylip,
or an owl in a sad-coloured one like Professor Baalamb, but a man whom
it would not be mere satire to call a lord of the creation. A helpmeet
for such an one as this should possess a clear, acute intellect, or she
would be unable to comprehend his aspirations after the good, and true,
and beautiful--the efforts of his fallen nature to regain somewhat of
its original rank in the scale of created beings. She should have a
faithful, loving heart, that when, foiled in his worldly career,
his spirit is dark within him, and in the bitterness of his soul he
confesses that “the good that he would he does not, but the evil he
would not, that he does,” her affection may prove to him that in her
love he has one inestimable blessing yet remaining, of which death alone
can deprive him, and then only for a season; for, availing herself of
the fitting moment with the delicate tact which is one of the brightest
instincts of a loving woman’s heart, she can offer him the only true
consolation, by urging him to renew his Christian warfare in the hope
that _together_ they may attain the reward of their high calling, a
reward so glorious that the mind of man is impotent to conceive its
nature. But to be able to do this she must herself have realised, by
the power of faith, the blessedness of things unseen, and with this
requisite, without which all other excellencies are valueless, we
conclude our definition of “woman as she should be.”
Such an one was Rose Arundel, and countless others are there who, if not
sinless as the radiant messengers of heaven, are yet doing angels’ work
by many a fireside which their presence cheers and blesses. Happy is
the man who possesses in a wife or sister such a household fairy; and if
some there be who bear alone the burden of life--whose joys are few, for
we rejoice not in solitude--let those whose lot is brighter forgive the
clouded brow or the cynical word that at times attests the weariness of
a soul on which the sunlight of affection seldom beams.
No particular alteration was observable in Mrs. Arundel, who seemed to
possess the enviable faculty of never growing older, and who remained
just as gay and sparkling as when at sixteen she had enslaved the fancy
rather than the heart of Captain Arundel.
“My dear Lewis,” she exclaimed, after having asked a hundred questions
in a breath regarding the internal economy of General Grant’s family,
the affray with the poachers, Charles Leicester’s wedding, and every
other event, grave or otherwise, which occurred to her active and
versatile mind, “my dear Lewis, what an original your friend Frere is!
excessively kind and good-natured, but so very odd. He volunteered to
come and meet us at the coach-office, which I considered quite a work of
supererogation; but Rose had imbibed such a mistrust of London and its
inhabitants, whom she expected to eat her up bodily, I believe, that she
persuaded me to accept his offer. Well, when the coach arrived I looked
about, but nobody did I see who at all coincided with my preconceived
ideas of Mr. Frere, and I began to think he would prove faithless,
when I descried an individual in a vile hat and an old, rough greatcoat
perched on a pile of luggage, with a cotton umbrella between his
knees, reading some dirty little book, in which he appeared completely
immersed. He took not the slightest notice of the bustle and confusion
going on around him, and would, I believe, have sat there until now, if
a porter, carrying a heavy trunk, had not all but fallen over him;
upon which he started up, and for the first time perceiving the coach,
exclaimed, ‘By Jove, there’s the very thing I am waiting for!’ then
shouldering his umbrella, he advanced to the window, and thrusting
in his great head, growled out, ‘Are any of you Miss Arundel?’ Rose
answered the question, for I was so taken by surprise that I was dying
with laughter. As soon as he had ascertained our identity, he continued,
‘Well, then I should say the sooner you’re out of this the better.
I’ll call a cab.’ The moment it drew up he flung open the door, and
exclaiming, ‘Now, come along,’ he caught hold of Rose as if she’d been a
carpetbag, dragged her out, and pushed her by main force into the cab.”
“Oh, mamma,” interrupted Rose apologetically, “you really colour the
matter too highly. Mr. Frere was as kind as possible. He was a little
rough, certainly, and seemed to think I must be as helpless as a child;
but I dare say he’s not accustomed to act as squire to dames.”
“Indeed he’s not,” resumed Mrs. Arundel. “But I was determined he
shouldn’t paw me about like a bale of goods, so I rested my hand on a
porter’s shoulder and sprang from the coach into the cab while he was
stooping to pick up his wretched umbrella; and finely astonished he
looked, too, when he discovered what I had done. Then he dragged down
all the luggage, just as he had done Rose, and tried to put two trunks
that did not belong to us on the cab, only I raved at him till I obliged
him to relinquish them. Of course I was forced to offer him a seat
in the cab, but he coolly replied, ‘No, thank ye; there are too many
bandboxes--the squares of their bases occupy the entire area. I’ll sit
beside cabby.’ And to my horror he scrambled up to the driving-seat, and
taking the dirty book out of his pocket, was speedily absorbed in its
contents; and in this state we actually drove up to Lady Lombard’s door.
I could have beaten the man, I was so angry with him. And yet, with it
all, the creature is a gentleman.”
“Indeed he is,” returned Lewis, “a thorough gentleman in mind, though
from the extent to which he is engrossed by his literary and scientific
pursuits, and from the fact of living so much alone, he has not the
manners of society. But Frere is a very first-rate man; his is no
ordinary intellect.”
“It is impossible to watch the play of his features and doubt that for
a moment,” returned Rose eagerly. “Look at his speaking eye--his noble
forehead.”
“Oh! Rose is quite _emprise_ with the monster,” remarked Mrs. Arundel,
laughing. “It’s a decided case of love at first sight. Was it the old
greatcoat, or the dreadful hat, which first touched your heart, _ma
chere_?”
“I’m not bound to criminate myself,” was the reply, “so I shall decline
to answer that question.”
While she spoke a short, sharp, double knock, as of an agitated postman,
awoke the echoes and the porter in Lady Lombard’s “Marble Hall.” In
another minute the Brobdignagian footman, with prize calves to his legs,
flung open the drawing-room door and announced, in a stentorian voice,
“Mr. Frere.”
“_Quand on parle du diable on en voit la queue?_” whispered Mrs.
Arundel, rising quickly. “Positively, Rose, my nerves won’t stand the
antics of your pet bear this morning. Let me see you again before you
go, _Louis, mon cher_--you’ll find me in the boudoir.”
So saying, she glided noiselessly out of one door a moment before Frere
entered at the other. Lewis followed her retreating figure with a glance
half-painful, half-amused. “My mother grows younger and more gay every
time I see her,” he observed to Rose. A speaking glance was her only
answer, for at the moment Frere made his appearance--and a somewhat
singular one it was. The day being fine, he had discarded the obnoxious
greatcoat, and--thanks to his old female domestic, who had caught him
going out with a large hole in his sleeve and sent him back to put on
another garment, which she herself selected--the coat he wore was in
unusually good preservation, and not so very much too large for him; but
the heavy shoes, the worsted stockings, the shepherd’s plaid trousers,
and the cotton umbrella were all _in statu quo_; while his bright
eyes, sparkling out of a greater bush than ever of untrimmed hair and
whiskers, gave him a striking resemblance to some honest Scotch terrier,
worthy to be immortalised by Landseer’s pencil. Catching sight of
Lewis, he rushed towards him, and seizing both his hands (in order to
accomplish which act of friendship he allowed the umbrella to fall on
Rose’s toes), he shook them heartily, exclaiming, “Why, Lewis, old boy!
this is a pleasure! I hadn’t a notion you would be here so soon. How’s
General Grant? and how’s Walter? and how’s Faust? and how’s everybody?
Well, I _am_ glad to see you!”
All this time Frere had taken not the slightest notice of Rose, who,
having advanced a step or two to greet him, had resumed her seat, more
pleased to witness his delight in welcoming Lewis than any attentions
to herself could have rendered her. Having seated himself on a sofa and
pulled Lewis clown by his side, he for the first time appeared aware of
Rose’s presence, which he hastened to acknowledge by a nod, adding, “Ah!
how d’ye do? I’ve got something to tell you presently, as soon as I’ve
done with your brother.”
Then, turning to Lewis, he recommenced his string of questions, without
regarding Rose’s presence otherwise than by occasionally including
her in the conversation with such interjectional remarks as “_You_ can
understand that”--“I explained that to _you_ the other day,” until at
length he abruptly exclaimed, “Now I must go and talk to _her_--she and
I have got a little business together.”
“Perhaps I am _de trop_,” observed Lewis with a meaning smile.
In reply to this Frere merely clenched his fist, and having shaken it
within an inch of Lewis’s face, marched deliberately across the room,
and drawing a chair close to Rose, seated himself in it; then laying
hold of one corner of her worsted work, he said in a gruff voice, “Put
away this rubbish.”
“I can listen to you, Mr. Frere, and go on with my slipper at the same
time,” returned Rose, quietly releasing her work.
“You can’t do two things properly together,” was the reply; “nobody can;
for it’s all fudge about Cæsar’s reading and dictating at the same time.
What I’ve got to tell you is more important than a carpet shoe.”
Smiling at his pertinacity, Rose, not having a particle of obstinacy
in her disposition, put away her work, and demurely crossing her hands
before her, like a good child saying its lessons, awaited her tyrant’s
orders. That her attitude was not lost upon Frere that gentleman made
evident by catching Lewis’s eye and pointing backwards with his thumb,
as much as to say, “There! do you see that?” then producing a note from
his pocket, he coolly broke the seal, opened it, and handing it to Rose,
muttered, “Read that.”
The note ran as follows:--
“Mr. T. Bracy presents his compliments to Miss Arundel, and begs to
enclose a note of introduction to Mr. Nonpareil, the publisher, as
Mr. Frere agrees in thinking that the offer made by Mr. A--------, of
B------ Street, for the copyright of her interesting tale was quite
inadequate to its merits.”
“How very kind of Mr. Bracy!” exclaimed Rose, handing the note to her
brother, re re having quietly read it over her shoulder. “Lewis, I must
ask you to be good enough to go with me to Mr. Nonpareil’s whenever you
can spare the time.”
“You needn’t trouble him,” returned Frere gruffly; “I mean to take you
there myself; and as there’s never any good in putting things off, I
vote we go this morning. What do you say?”
“You are very kind,” replied Rose, smiling; “but really, now my brother
is in town I need not encroach on your valuable time.”
“Valuable fiddlestick!” was the courteous reply; “though, of course,
everybody’s time is valuable, if people did but know how to employ it
properly--which they never do. But you don’t suppose if I’d anything
very particular in hand I should be dawdling here, do you? I’ve got
to be at the Ornithological at four, and to call at Moore’s,
the bird-stuffer’s, first; but I can look in there on our way to
Nonpareil’s.”
“Yes; but I’m sure Lewis----” began Rose in a deprecatory tone of voice.
“Nonsense about Lewis!” was the surly rejoinder. “What do you imagine
he knows about dealing with publishers?--they’re ‘kittle cattle to shoe
behint,’ as a Scotchman would say. I’ve had dealings enough with ’em
to find out that, I can tell you. As for Lewis, if he were to walk into
one of their dens with his head up in the air, they’d take him for Lord
Octavo Shallowpate, come to negotiate for another new novel, written
with a paste-pot and scissors, and when they found he had not a handle
to his name with which to shove his rubbish down the public throat,
they’d kick him out of the shop again.”
“Then you really think I look as stupid as a literary lord, eh, Frere?”
inquired Lewis.
“Well, that’s too strong a term, perhaps,” answered Frere reflectively;
“but you don’t look like a man of business, at all events.”
“Where does this sagacious publisher reside?” asked Lewis; and when
Frere had given him the required information, he continued: “Then we’ll
settle the matter thus:--My tailor, with whom I am anxious to gain an
interview, lives in the adjoining street; accordingly, I’ll walk down
with Rose and you, and while you negotiate with the autocrat of folios,
I’ll take ‘fitting measures’ for getting myself ‘neatly bound in
cloth.’”
“So be it then, most facetious youth,” returned Frere, laughing; “and
the faster you can get ready, you know,” he continued, turning to Rose,
“the better.”
“I’m all obedience,” replied Rose, smiling; “but I think you’re rather
fond of tyrannising, Mr. Frere.”
“Who, I?” returned Frere in astonishment. “Not a bit of it; I’m the most
easily managed fellow in London--I am, upon my word.”
“You should see what perfect command his old housekeeper has him in,”
observed Lewis, with an arch glance at his sister; “the bear dares not
growl at her--she’s a perfect Van Amburgh to him.”
Now there was so much truth in this charge that it was rather a sore
subject with Frere. The old woman in question had lived with his mother
and had nursed him when a child; and for these reasons, as well as from
good nature and a certain easiness of disposition which lay beneath his
rough manner, Frere had allowed her gradually to usurp control over him,
till, in all the minutiae of his domestic life, she ruled him with a
rod of iron. Although her admiration of and respect for her master’s
learning was fully equal to her total ignorance of the arts and
sciences; and although her affection for him was boundless, nature
had gifted her with a crusty temper, which an interval of poverty and
hardship (extending from the death of Frere’s mother till the time when
his first act on obtaining a competence had been to seek her out and
take her into his service) had not tended to sweeten. The dialogues
which occasionally took place between the master and servant were most
amusing, and her power over him was exercised so openly, that his fear
of Jemima had become a standing joke among his intimates. Accordingly,
on hearing Lewis’s observation, Frere hastily jumped up and strode to
the fireplace, muttering, “Nonsense! psha! rubbish! don’t you believe a
word of it, Miss Arundel; but go and dress, there’s a good----” he
was going to add “fellow”; for be it known, the clue to his gruff,
unpolished behaviour towards the young lady in question was to be
discovered in the fact, that from her quiet composure, freedom from
affectation, clear, good sense, and the interest she took in subjects
usually considered too abstruse for female investigation, Frere looked
upon her as a kindred soul, and as all his other chosen intimates were
of the worthier gender, he was continually forgetting that she was not a
man. Checking himself, however, just in time, he substituted “creature”
for “fellow”; and as Rose left the room, he continued, “ ’Pon my word,
Lewis, your sister’s such a nice, sensible, well-informed, reasonable
being, that I am constantly forgetting she’s a woman.”
“Which speech shows that amongst your numerous studies that of the
female character has been neglected,” replied Lewis; “or that you have
taken your impressions from very bad specimens of the sex.”
Frere, who during the above remark had drawn from his pocket a lump of
crumbling sandstone, which, in order to examine more closely, he coolly
deposited on a small satin-wood work-table, looked up in surprise as he
rejoined, “Your opinions, touching the merits of womankind, seem to
have suffered a recovery, young man, seeing that the last time I had
the honour of discussing the matter with you, women were all
perfidious hyaenas, or thereabouts. What has wrought so remarkable a
transformation?”
Something appeared to have suddenly gone wrong with Lewis’s boot, for it
was not until he had thoroughly investigated the matter that he replied,
his face being still bent over the offending article, “The simple fact
that as one grows older one grows wiser, I suppose. No doubt Gretchen
behaved abominably, and rendered me for the time intensely wretched; but
it was folly in me ever to have placed my happiness in the power of such
a little, romantic, flirting, half-educated thing as she was; I should
not do so now, and to argue from such an individual instance, to the
disparagement of the whole sex, was one of the maddest notions that ever
entered the brain of a hot-headed boy.”
“Phew!” whistled Frere in astonishment, “you are not over civil to your
former self, I must say. If anybody else had spoken so disrespectfully
of you you’d have been for punching his head for him; however, I believe
your present frame of mind is the more sane of the two, though sweeping
assertions are always more or less untenable. The truth is, you can lay
down no general rule about it--women are human as well as men; there are
a few very good, a few very bad, and an immense number who are nothing
particular, in both sexes. There is no authority which would lead us to
suppose Adam’s rib was made of ivory more than any of his other bones.
There’s one vice belonging to the fair sex, though--they’re always
an unmerciful time putting on their bonnets; your sister’s been five
minutes already, and I’d lay a bet we don’t see her for five more.” As
he uttered the last words, Rose, fully equipped and looking the picture
of neatness, tripped into the room, to Frere’s intense discomfiture, who
scrambled his relic of the Era of the Old Red Sandstone into his pocket
with the air of some culprit schoolboy detected in his malpractices by
the vigilant eye of his pedagogue.