_Hardcastle._ “I believe, sir, you must be sensible, sir, that no man
alive ought to be more welcome than your father’s son, sir. I hope
you think so?”
_Marlow._ “I do, from my soul, sir. I don’t want much entreaty, I
generally make my father’s son welcome wherever he goes.”--_She
Stoops to Conquer._
I returned to my uncle and the ladies in the drawing room. By this time
I felt quite at home, a feeling to which the improvement effected by
the hair-brush and towel in the _coup-d’œil_ of my personal appearance
did not a little contribute; and I could stop to admire. Addressing
myself to my aunt, I complimented her upon the beauty of the grounds,
a glimpse of which I could catch through the windows, and entered
easily into a conversation, in which my uncle and Conny joined with
great readiness.
My uncle gained upon me. Yellow, and spare, and shrewd as his face was,
a great deal of heart and amiability were mixed up in it. He was five
years younger than my father, but was one of those men who look fifty
when they are thirty, and forty when they are sixty. He had lank black
hair, and a long nose, and a spasmodic way of speaking, as if, after
delivering himself of a few sentences, he found difficulty in breathing.
I asked him what time the bank closed.
“At four,” he answered. “The clerks generally get away by half-past.”
“Do you like the idea of being a banker’s clerk?” inquired Conny, with
a gleam of mischief in her blue unfathomable eyes.
“I haven’t the least notion,” I replied. “All that I know about banks
is that they are places where you offer cheques and receive money for
them.”
“True,” said my uncle, with a laugh; “but people must work very hard in
order to induce the banks to change those cheques into money.”
“I wonder your papa didn’t put you into the army,” said Conny. “Would
not you have liked to be a soldier?”
“It is immaterial to me what I am, provided I am easy in my mind, and
have time now and then to smoke a cigar,” answered I, with the lofty
languor of an exquisite of the first water.
Conny laughed merrily; but, being afraid that my answer was a rather
ungracious one, all things considered, I changed the subject by asking
my uncle if he smoked. Yes, he did smoke, incessantly, Mrs. Hargrave
told me; which meant that he had a cigar after dinner and a cigar
with his grog before going to bed. I should have probably pointed
out that my uncle was extraordinarily moderate in his consumption of
tobacco, and have proceeded to give a sketch of our club in the Rue des
Chiens, and the immense quantity of _tabac fin_ and cigars that were
smoked there at a sitting, had not dinner been announced. I gave my
arm to my aunt, and, followed by Conny and her papa, marched into the
dining-room, a charming apartment with a large window conducting on to
the lawn, and glass doors leading into the conservatory, the walls hung
with good paintings, and the whole of the furniture in happy taste.
The setting sun was shining in front, and filled the room with long
slanting rules of pink light, the effect of which was to make Conny,
who took a seat fronting me, bewitchingly pretty. I had tasted no food
since eight o’clock that morning, and therefore did abundant justice
to the very good dinner that had been provided for me. My uncle was
a capital host. He allowed me to eat instead of disturbing me with
remarks, and damaging my appetite by obliging me to talk. His wines
were capital; his cook, like Bayard, _sans reproche_; I said to him,
holding up a glass of Madeira, “My father would appreciate this.”
“Yes,” he answered; “why doesn’t he come and see us? I should find him
aged, no doubt; but he was always a handsome man.” And he began to tell
us stories of his and his brother’s young days, and how a certain young
lady broke her heart when my father went to India, and how another
young lady turned Roman Catholic, and faded into a white veil, when my
father married. I thought Conny looked sentimental whilst she listened.
I caught her eye once, during these startling revelations, but saw that
she was not thinking of me by her abstracted air.
By the time the sweets were on the table, I was qualified for any
amount of conversation. I talked of Longueville, and of the Emperor’s
bow to my father, the major, described the Empress and her style,
as well as I could, her fine taste and sweet face, and graceful
manners--indeed, I talked so much of the imperial pair, whom I
had only seen once or twice at Longueville, that my aunt got the
extraordinary impression in her head that I was an intimate friend of
theirs, as I afterwards learned, by her boasting to a friend that,
“Charlie was often with the Emperor and Empress of the French at
Longueville.” True to my resolution to deal with life as splendidly
as I could, and not a little excited into a disposition to dazzle
by Conny’s intoxicating eyes, I talked of some titled acquaintances
of mine at Longueville, and, I believe, dove-tailed their valuable
names into my remarks, with surprising effect. I spoke of the capital
cigars Lord Towers used to give me; of the gambling propensities of
the Honourable Mr. Spadille, Lord Shallowman’s brother, who tried to
induce the members of our club to play for guinea points; of the
Marchioness of Cliffeton’s little suppers in the Rue de Ville, &c.,
&c. Do you think I told them that Lord Towers skulked in Longueville,
because he durst not show his face in London for fear of Mr. Sloman?
That the Honourable Mr. Spadille, Lord Shallowman’s brother, had
bolted from Leamington with Colonel Corney’s wife? That the Countess
of Cliffeton--bah! What’s in a name? sometimes a blackguard. What’s
in a lion’s skin? very often an ass. The characters of certain of
the English nobility residing in Longueville were nothing to nobody.
All that _I_ wanted was, that my uncle, and aunt, and Conny of the
celestial eyes, should understand that a young gentleman, named Charles
Hargrave, who, out of respect for his father, the major, and out of
regard for his own prospects, had condescended to become a banker’s
clerk, had frequently waltzed with a marchioness, and pledged her at
her own table in unpaid champagne, had invariably addressed an English
baron by a convivial nickname, and had very often helped to put the
intoxicated brother of a North British nobleman to bed.
I don’t know if my uncle was impressed; but my aunt was, and I rather
think Conny was, too. An irresistible thrill of pride ran through me,
when my aunt, leaning across the table, said with great earnestness,
“I am afraid, Mr. Charles, you will despise the position Thomas has
offered you; but though the profession of banking has sunk rather low
since our day, there are still plenty of gentlemen engaged in it.”
There was no sneer in this; I should have instantly felt it had there
been.
“Banking may have sunk low in other places,” said Conny, with a
heightened colour, “but I am sure papa’s clerks are gentlemen.”
“I am not so sure,” replied my aunt, who every moment was proving
herself to be a deliciously candid woman.
“Oh, Curling’s a gentleman,” said my uncle, “and so is Spratling,
though his name might be grander.”
“Mr. Curling is gentlemanly, I admit, but I don’t consider him to be a
gentleman,” exclaimed my aunt.
Conny picked at a bit of bread and twisted the fragments into little
balls.
“Oh, I am sure I shall like banking, Mrs. Hargrave,” said I, with fine
condescension. “Of course,” I continued, waving my hand in imitation of
my father, who would gesticulate in that manner in a very impressive
and polished way: “if I had an income of my own, however small, I
should have preferred to continue as I was. But necessity is one of
those things to which noblemen as well as ploughmen must submit.”
“True,” said my uncle with a nod. “Help yourself to more wine.”
“I should have thought,” observed my candid aunt with a face full of
sober honesty, and in a tone that quite forbade all notion that any
irony was intended, “that you would have been able to marry very well.”
“Oh, oh! give him time--give him time!” chuckled my uncle.
“I have never been in love,” said I.
Conny’s deep eyes, full of mournfulness, met mine.
“I have a great horror, Mrs. Hargrave,” I went on, “of men who marry
only for money.”
“And so have I,” said Conny.
“Eh? you?” cried her papa, fondly. “What do you know of these matters?”
“Money,” I observed--a sucking Daniel come to judgment!--“is no doubt
very necessary; but I never will admit that it can be the foundation of
married happiness.”
Nobody at that table had said that it was; and the observation
was therefore uncalled for. But I used to be a lover of slashing
commonplaces.
“I quite agree with you,” said Conny, looking, as she spoke, a
thorough child of sensibility.
“Mayn’t love and money be sometimes combined?” suggested my aunt
deferentially, as if henceforth and for ever she never meant to be sure
of anything until I had given judgment.
“I doubt it,” I replied, and I gave her my reasons: firstly, because,
if the woman had money, she would always be suspicious of the man’s
sincerity; and secondly--but why print myself an ass? I spoke much
indescribable folly; though, let me tell you, I never saw anybody look
more pleased than Conny as she listened to me. She and I, and my aunt,
had now all the conversation to ourselves; for my uncle, after having
assured me that he was deaf with dyspepsia, had become silent, and did
nothing but make faces and sip a _petit goût_ of brandy. There could
be no question that I had succeeded in making a very good impression
on my aunt, and I rather fancied that Conny seemed well pleased with
me. I was gentlemanly in my manners--I must really be permitted to say
that; and I was not bad looking--which is an observation I should not
dream of making did I not think it due to the public; and I possessed
the art, in some degree of perfection, of talking a large amount of
froth, in a manner that ladies, in those days, were obliging enough to
think very agreeable and diverting. Putting these facts together, it is
not very surprising that my aunt, whom I treated with all imaginable
courtesy, should have been favourably prejudiced; and I need not say,
therefore, that I was _not_ very greatly astonished when she said to
me, before she left the table,
“I do wish, Mr. Charles, that you would change your mind, and make this
house your home.”
“I am deeply sensible of the kindness and value of your offer, Mrs.
Hargrave,” I replied, with a bow my father might have envied, “but I
cannot think that I should have any right to inflict my presence upon
you until you know me better. My habits,” I continued, magnificently,
“have been formed in a school that might clash with the prejudices of
English provincial life; for our philosophy at Longueville is of the
_laissez-aller_ sort; we are there, indeed, a species of lotus-eaters,
whose hardest physical work is limited to dealing cards, and whose
hardest mental work consists in playing them. When I have become more
Anglicised, I may then, with your hospitable permission, accept your
very great kindness.”
She appeared overpowered by this speech, and felt, I daresay, very much
as though she had just kissed hands at the Tuileries. I glanced at
Conny, who, catching my eye, said saucily,
“All men like their freedom; but what a freedom it is! it is a horrid
slavery to tobacco, late hours, and to everything bad for the health.”
Here was an opportunity for saying something singularly neat and smart;
but I missed it from sheer want of wit.
The ladies now left the table. The sun had sunk behind the hills, but
many gorgeous tints lingered behind, and made the quiet sky beautiful.
My uncle, lifting his head out of his cravat, fixed a dyspeptic eye
upon me, and bade me draw my chair near his and fill my glass. I cannot
express how much I liked the honest, homely amiability of his manner.
He seemed to me the very essence of kindness. We had a long chat about
my father, of whom he was very proud and fond, and asked me many
questions about his habits and opinions and means. He then talked of
my other uncle, Richard, and his daughter Theresa, whom he described
as a very fine girl, but so eccentric in her conduct as to cause some
uneasiness to her father, who was anxious to get her married.
“If she is handsome and has money,” I observed, “surely a husband ought
to be easily got for her.”
“Dick tells me she has had several admirers,” answered my uncle, “but
she is so confoundedly fastidious that nobody is able to please her.
What do you think of Conny?”
“She is a cousin to boast of. She is the prettiest girl I have ever
seen.”
My uncle looked immensely gratified.
“Yes, yes,” said he with a broad smile. “She is pretty enough. I have
nothing to complain of. An only child is not always so well favoured.
When nature is mean, she is generally mean with a vengeance. But Conny
is a sly puss; she has made her mamma and me a little uneasy latterly.”
“Indeed!”
“My cashier, Curling, is a rather good looking young fellow, and Mrs.
Hargrave has got an idea in her head that Conny admires him.”
“Oh, there is no harm in that.”
“She is afraid that Conny likes him.”
“Women often have the queerest tastes,” said I uneasily. Why was I
irritated by my aunt’s suspicion?
“Did you notice that my wife rather poo-pooh’d bankers’ clerks?”
“I did.”
“That was done for a motive,” said my uncle with a twinkling eye. “My
wife is a shrewd woman. I have no right to be her trumpeter, but I must
say that very few women have my wife’s sagacity.”
“Is Mr. Curling a gentleman?”
“I believe so. He is a London man. But he’s no match for my daughter, I
can tell you.”
“I should think not,” said I jealously and warmly; “very few men are.”
“However,” continued my uncle, twisting a wine-glass round upon the
table, “all this may be a mere delusion on the part of your aunt.”
[_Your aunt!_ Do you mark the flattering identification?] “It would
certainly never do to appear suspicious. Trifles are easily made
significant and important. Curling used to be asked here sometimes, but
my wife won’t have him now; and I think she’s right. Eh? What do you
think?”
I fully agreed with him; and we then rose to join the ladies.
Whilst we talked I had heard the sound of a piano, and on entering the
drawing-room found Conny alone, playing very prettily. She instantly
jumped up when she saw her father and me. I begged her to keep her
place, but she refused.
“Do you play?” she asked.
“A waltz or two,” said I; “that’s all.”
“Let me hear you.”
The little haughty command was delightful. I went at once and dashed
into a piece of dance-music; then looked up, thinking it was Conny who
stood near, but found it was my aunt.
“You have a charming touch, Mr. Charles,” said she. “Of course you
sing.”
Of course I didn’t. She wouldn’t believe me, so conquering and clever
did she consider her nephew. I dropped my assurances to the contrary
after a little, being perfectly satisfied to be included in the rank of
those who have honour thrust upon them, and went up to Conny and asked
her to play.
“You would much rather smoke a cigar with papa than listen.”
“Before I grow eloquent,” said I, with a smile, “I should like to know
if I may call you Constance?”
“Oh, I believe cousins are privileged.”
“And after I have called you Constance a few times, just for form’s
sake, may I address you as Conny?”
“Call me what you please,” she replied, with the loveliest flush of
pink in her fair cheeks.
“Then,” said I, “Constance, so far from wishing to smoke, I would be
perfectly content to give up that habit for ever, if you would but
consent to play the piano to me, every time a longing came across me
for a cigar.”
“That’s a little story,” she said in a whisper.
Oh! what lovely eyes! oh, what glorious hair! Come, Pauline, come
quickly, and snatch me from this peril! Or, since Pauline has
grown too fat to come quickly, rise ye recollections of defeat and
humiliation, of rage and despair, and steel my heart against the
bewildering memories that make it languish as I write.
“It is solemn truth,” said I. Whereupon she went to the piano, and
played “Il segréto per esse felice,” whilst mamma kept time with her
head, and papa warbled an accompaniment at the other end of the room.
“I wonder if it is too cold to smoke a cigar out of doors,” said my
uncle, opening one of the windows and thrusting his hand out to test
the temperature.
“Oh yes, much too cold, I am sure. Why can’t you and Mr. Charles smoke
in the library? We’ll keep you company,” observed my aunt.
“Very well,” answered my uncle. “Charlie, I hope you won’t mind the
ladies joining us?”
Mind! oh irony, where is thy sting? And this was a house I durst not
live in, for fear I shouldn’t be allowed to have my liberty! This
was a house where smoking was forbidden! Where “Emma” and “Cœlebs”
were read aloud, whilst Miss tatted! Where lights were put out at a
quarter before ten! Dolt! numskull! but it was too late: my honour was
involved; my dignity was at stake! my importance must not be tarnished.
I had said I would go into lodgings, and there was an end.
We all repaired to the library, where my aunt lighted some candles,
and where my uncle produced a box of cigars, whilst Conny struck a wax
match, and shaded the flame with her hand (whereby the light shone in
her eyes, and made her hair sparkle like the sea at night), ready to
hold to my cigar when I wanted it. I asked Mrs. Hargrave if she didn’t
object to the smell of tobacco. Oh no; she liked it. She owned that she
didn’t much care about pipes, but she knew no smell so fragrant as that
of a good cigar.
“Don’t you think my brother the major would enjoy this?” said my uncle,
lying back in a capacious arm-chair.
“It would be his ideal of happiness,” I answered.
And I believed it would. The room, though large, was wonderfully snug,
furnished with book-cases filled with volumes, and the walls ornamented
with rich old engravings. My aunt sat near the table sewing, but not
busily; and Conny occupied a chair near her papa, with her hands
folded on her lap, doing nothing. What could be more homely than such a
scene? Oh, ladies, do you not know that your presence makes the cigar
doubly soothing and fragrant, and choice beyond the wildest advertising
dreams of the tobacconist? There are men--call them Ogres, Bluebeards,
Turks, Ashantees--who profess to think that the one great charm of
tobacco is, that it gives them an excuse to get away from your society.
But take the word of a man who loves, admires, reverences your sex with
the ardour of a Frenchman and the loyalty of a Briton--that to all
good men Havannah fumes never taste so sweet as when your white hands
present the lighted spill, and when your fair presences are enthroned
in the ambrosial cloud. No, madam, don’t--pray don’t pretend that
good tobacco-smoke is objectionable. I speak not of mundungus, of the
poisonous negro-head, of the raw, coarse cavendish. These, I admit,
discharge fumes fit only for hothouses. I have in my mind the dry, the
nutty, the aromatic cigar, to which, give me leave to ask, did ever an
engaged woman object? Fie! you liked it, Julia, when James was courting
you. Didn’t you give him a silver match-box? It is wifely tyranny,
I say, that drives him and his _intimidads_ into a back-room; it is
caprice that kecks at his comforts, not at his cigars. Go! thou art not
my wife. I would not own thee. The true, the faithful, the fond, sits
at her husband’s feet, whilst he exhales the blue smoke in rings to the
ceiling. I call a blessing on her. May her sons be honest men, and may
they never know the want of a good cigar!
It was eight o’clock, when my uncle suddenly sitting bolt upright, said,
“I don’t want to hurry you, Charlie; but as you have a two miles’ drive
before you, and as I believe your landlady has been expecting you since
eight o’clock this morning, what say if I order the phaeton to be got
ready?”
I assented with a stoical face, but with an inward deep reluctance.
What a fool I was to permit my ridiculous fears to prevent me living at
Grove End! My uncle rung the bell, and ordered the trap, whilst my aunt
expressed her regrets that it was necessary for me to leave so early,
and her hopes that I would find my lodgings comfortable.
I caught Conny smiling once or twice; and when, at last, meeting her
blue eyes full, I said, “Something amuses my cousin;” she answered, “I
know why you wouldn’t live here--you were afraid you would not be able
to smoke.” It would not do to admit such an impeachment as this; I must
either deal with the matter splendidly, or say nothing. So I assured
Conny, in my loftiest manner, that she was quite in error; that I never
for a moment doubted that I should be received and treated--as I had
been--with delightful kindness; that my reason for declining her papa’s
and mamma’s offer, was my disinclination to burden their home with the
presence of a bachelor, whose ways and habits--here I repeated what
I had before said to my aunt; taking care, however, to exhibit those
“ways and habits,” to which I alluded in a light that could not fail
to make them imposing and lordly, and precisely such characteristics
as would naturally belong to a young gentleman who had mingled all his
life in the society of men of high birth and distinguished positions.
My uncle wanted to accompany me to my lodgings, and “see me comfortable
for the night,” as he said; and my aunt encouraged him to do so. But I
was firm--I said no. I would not hear of his leaving the house to be my
companion in a long drive through the night-air. I had my way; and my
portmanteau being hoisted into the phaeton, I followed it amid a chorus
of good-nights, and hopes that I would sleep well.
The road to Updown was pretty hilly, but smooth and good: and, in a
very short time, the little mare had rattled us into the High Street.
James had his directions, and presently pulled up before a detached
house, in which, he informed me, were my lodgings. I pushed open the
garden gate and knocked at the door. After a pretty long interval, a
key was turned, a chain unslipped, a bolt withdrawn, and an elderly
woman, with a candle over her head, stood forth. I told her who I was;
whereupon she dropped me a curtsey, and said she had quite given me up
for that day. James brought in my portmanteau, and went away, thanking
me for a little trifle I gave him. The elderly woman then conducted
me into a good-sized parlour, which she said was my sitting-room,
very comfortably furnished, with a good large sofa in it, that took
my fancy mightily. She then led me to my bed-room, and this apartment
I also found unexceptionable in all points. She asked me if I would
take tea, and on my saying yes, she went away to prepare it, whilst
I unpacked my portmanteau. When I returned to the parlour, I found
it cheerful and brilliant, with a fine old-fashioned oil lamp; the
tea-things were on the table, and the pretty crockery made me feel as
much at home as if I had lodged with Mrs. Reeves a year.
So far everything that had befallen me was entirely to my taste. My
uncle’s reception of me had been overpowering; my aunt, it was plain,
thought me a very fine and splendid person; my cousin was pretty enough
to make Updown a paradise; and nothing could be more comfortable than
my lodgings. After tea I lighted a pipe and stretched myself along the
sofa and thought over matters. It was, perhaps, all for the best that I
had decided not to live at Grove End. I could keep up my dignity better
by residing at a distance. No doubt I should be asked there as often as
I cared to be; and I should certainly enjoy my kind-hearted relations’
hospitality not the less because I could combine my privileges with
personal independence.
Conny ran in my head a good deal. What a little pet she was! I could
love that girl, I thought. Who was Curling? Did she like him? He must
be a very impertinent sort of fellow to think about her. I supposed
that he had paid her attention, and as perhaps he was not entirely
ugly, and as young men didn’t abound in these parts, she had talked a
little nonsense about him to her mamma, which had frightened the old
lady. Pshaw! thought I, what chance would Curling stand against me if
I took it into my head to unseat him? What! a banker’s clerk, a man of
pass-books and cancelled cheques against a gentleman who knew nothing
of business, who thought money an insufferable bore, and credit the
easiest and most courtly way of supplying one’s needs; who was a man
of the world, a great favourite with women, a good billiard player,
and the friend, the intimate friend, of men who, were it not for their
tailors and hatters, would be making brilliant with their presence
and wit the high society from which the heartless dun or the yet more
inexorable bailiff had obliged them to beat a precipitate retreat.
I laughed at the absurdity of the idea. Why, in all probability,
Conny was already in love with me. Of course they were talking about
me at Grove End. Couldn’t I hear my uncle exclaim, with pardonable
exultation, “_My_ nephew!” which meant, “See, my dears, what _our_
side has produced!” And what could my aunt do but praise me and abuse
Curling, and contrast my manners with the cashier’s (Oh, humiliating
comparison!), and wonder, with a sneer, whether Louis Napoleon would
have pulled off his hat to Curling’s papa?
_Risum teneatis, amici?_ asks Maunder’s Treasury of Knowledge. I was
Mr. Bottom, of the ass’s ears, in those days. Behold my magnanimity! I
pull my ancient character out of obscurity, as I would an old coat to
dress a scarecrow withal, that it may be a warning and a horror to men.
Only please don’t confound the high-minded being who addresses you with
the senseless, conceited dummy that idly flaps his useless arms about
the fields.