SUNDAY IN LONDON.
There is a late train from Maidenhead to Paddington that always reminds
me of Charon's bark chartered to carry deceased passengers across the
Styx. It seems, like that fatal ferry-boat, to fix a limit between two
separate stages of existence,--the river, the flowers, the cup, the
pleasant friends, the tender well-wisher, in short, "the bright
precincts of the cheerful day," and that dark region, forbidding though
unavoidable, where we meet our fellow-creatures on more equal, more
practical, more distant, and more uncomfortable terms.
Goldthred, who was obliged to be in London the same night, sank into the
lowest depths of despondency while bidding adieu to Mrs. Lascelles and
her party, as they embarked under a purple sunset for their homeward
voyage. He felt sadly alone in the world, even at the station, and
getting into a vast and gloomy compartment, of which he was sole
occupant, under a dim lamp, began to reflect seriously on life and its
vexations. His cigars were done, his boots were wet, he suffered from
headache, heartache, and premonitory symptoms of a dreadful disorder
called the fidgets. Had he only known that Frank Vanguard, who got in at
Slough, was in the very next carriage, how gladly would he have
communicated with that migratory young officer, by knocking, shouting,
or any other riotous mode of attracting attention; but, for aught he
could tell, there was no passenger in the train but himself, and the
sense of solitude became nearly insupportable. Passing Hanwell, he found
himself envying the unfortunate inmates their varied society, and the
liveliness of their manners. Goaded at last by his reflections, and
summoning that most daring of all courage which is furnished by despair,
he resolved to turn over a new leaf, to assert himself and his own
value, to push the siege briskly, and asking Mrs. Lascelles an important
question point-blank, stand or fall by her answer like a man. _Se faire
valoir_, he well knew, was the winning game; but, alas! the more
precious the heart the lower the price it seems to place on itself, and
Goldthred, with all his short-comings, possessed in his character a vein
of the true metal, which makes men honest servants if not successful
masters. Taking counsel, then, of his very fears, he determined to open
the trenches by organising another pic-nic, somewhere lower down the
river, to which he would invite all the party of to-day, and such other
additions from London as he considered worthy of the honour. Miss
Hallaton, of course. Nice girl, Miss Hallaton, and civil to _him_!
Distant, but that was manner. Ah! she would make a charming wife to a
fellow who admired that kind of beauty. It was not _his_ style, of
course; and with this reflection, the image of a lovely laughing face,
and a pair of kind blue eyes, seemed to brighten even the gloom of his
dismal railway carriage.
Thinking of Mrs. Lascelles somehow called Sir Henry unpleasantly to
mind. And he bethought him how that easy-going personage had expressed
certain vague intentions of starting on an expedition of his own, to see
some yearlings, leaving his daughter at The Lilies. "Then I'll write to
Miss Hallaton herself," thought Goldthred. "Why shouldn't I? That will
prevent the possibility of a mistake, and perhaps Mrs. Lascelles won't
quite like it. I wonder if she would care. I _couldn't_ make her
unhappy, the angel, to save my life, but I wish I was sure I had the
power."
By the time he reached Paddington, Goldthred's spirits had risen
considerably, as is usually the case with a man who has resolved to take
his own part; and, after extricating an overblown rose from his
button-hole, and planting it carefully in the neck of his water-bottle,
he went to bed, feeling keenly that the time was fast approaching to
decide his fate, and that the next week, or say, perhaps, ten days, must
settle his business and make him "a man or a mouse."
In pursuance of this desperate resolution he rose the following morning
in time for church, and betook himself after service to his usual Sunday
resort, the Cauliflower Club. Here, seated at a desert of writing-table,
in a vast and dismal library, he had an opportunity of comparing the
gloom that reigned within and without this sanctuary of his sex.
Foreigners can seldom recall unmoved the memories of a Sunday in London.
Whether it is because the shops are shut, or the streets unwatered, or
the upper classes invisible, I know not, but certainly on that holy day
of rest and rejoicing, our bustling metropolis looks grim and deserted
as a city of the dead. Doubtless, everybody goes out of town that can.
Those who remain, thinking it, I presume, either eccentric or wicked to
be seen abroad, hide themselves with extraordinary caution and success.
The same dulness seems to pervade all parts of the town, except,
perhaps, those very poor districts in which vice and want allow their
vassals no change, no relaxation from the daily round of dirt,
discomfort, and sin. You may traverse Tyburnia and scarce meet a human
creature. Belgrave Square is sombre and noiseless as the catacombs. A
single Hansom represents traffic, vitality, and commercial prosperity
throughout Mayfair, Piccadilly, and St. James's Street. Go into Hyde
Park, you will observe one solitary soldier, and his inevitable
maid-servant, carrying her prayer-book wrapped in a cotton
pocket-handkerchief. Search Kensington Gardens, you will find that
beautiful woodland occupied by a sleeping ragamuffin, a child with its
sister, and a wandering female of weak intellect. From Brompton to
Billingsgate, from Mary-le-bone to the Minories, you will discover as
few passengers as you would see flies on a pane of glass at Christmas.
What becomes of the winter bluebottles I do not pretend to say, but of
the two-legged insects pervading our earth, I imagine that on Sundays
the males retire, like Goldthred, in countless swarms to their clubs.
Nevertheless, while he wrote the invitations, particularly Miss
Hallaton's, with exceeding care and a hard-nibbed pen, he found himself
the only occupant but one of the magnificent apartment, devoted to
literary labour by a judicious committee presiding over the economy of
the Cauliflower. Of the student thus sharing his solitude, and who might
or might not be an intimate acquaintance, nothing was visible but the
back of a curly brown head, as its wearer lay buried in an enormous
sofa, reading, or more probably, asleep. Club-manners, except in certain
professional circles where members are bound by their trade in a common
brotherhood, forbidding such outrages, Goldthred, even had he been
inclined, must have forborne from hurling books across the room,
stealing behind to flirt ink on his face, or adopting other such playful
modes of attracting notice, and assuring himself of the gentleman's
identity, so he continued to write with precision and perseverance,
leaving the room when he had finished, without discovering that its
other occupant was Frank Vanguard.
The two men were scarcely twenty feet apart, they could have assisted
each other considerably in their respective objects, they were thinking
at the same moment of the same person, yet for all practical purposes
they might as well have been in different counties.
Frank was not asleep--far from it; neither was he reading, though
wrapped in a train of thought produced by a novel he had been perusing
with unusual avidity and attention. His duties at the barracks had
detained him all the previous evening, and catching the last train, not
without difficulty, he succeeded in spending his Sunday in London, to
find himself with nothing to do when he got there. Truth to tell, Frank
was unsettled and unlike himself. He breakfasted without appetite at his
cheerful little bachelor lodgings, which were always kept ready, even
when the regiment was in London, and in which he slept perhaps half a
dozen times in a month. He dressed in unseemly haste, he sallied out
tumultuously, with no definite object, and took refuge at last in the
library of the Cauliflower, from sheer weariness of body and vacuity of
mind. He was so unaccustomed to weigh matters seriously, as affecting
the course of a whole lifetime, so unused to reflection on anything less
obvious than the front of a squadron or the speed of a horse, that he
felt really oppressed by the great argument going on in his own mind, as
to whether he could, or could not, struggle through existence without
asking Miss Hallaton to be his wife.
Young gentlemen of the present day are not an uxorious race, and Frank
was like his fellows. He appreciated, nobody more, the liberty of a
single man, and had imbibed from his elders, by precept, example, and
warning, a certain dread of restraints and monotony that must accompany
married life. But then, to sit opposite such a woman as Helen every
morning at breakfast, to have her all to himself, without scheming for
invitations, and watching for carriages; without necessity for being
civil to a chaperon, or making up to a father, why it seemed a heaven
upon earth, to attain which he would--yes, hang him if he wouldn't--give
up even the regiment itself.
Such being the frame of mind in which he sat down to read his novel, it
was but natural that the progress of his studies should have confirmed
any previous tendency to sentiment and domestic subjugation. This
eloquent work, in three volumes, purporting to furnish a picture of real
life, painted up a little, but not overdrawn, represented, of course, an
impossible heroine, a combination of circumstances that never could have
taken place, and a _jeune premier_ beautiful as Endymion; nor, judging
from his vagaries, apparently much less under the influence of the moon.
To use Frank's own expression, the scene that "fetched him," somewhere
about the middle of the third volume, ran as follows:
"A sunset of the tropics, or of paradise, crimson, orange, gold, the
plumage of the flamingo, the tints of the dying dolphin, were all
reflected in the deep pure eyes of that fair girl, as she leaned one
snowy arm on the balustrade, and peered out over the lake, herself
radiant as the sunset, loving as the flamingo, stern and resolved as the
dolphin in his death-pangs. 'He cometh not,' she muttered, 'he cometh
not!' and her fairy fingers, closing on the parapet, broke off a morsel
of the stonework with the grip and energy of a blacksmith. It fell with
a splash in the lake. Could this be the expected signal? Was that
important splash but the result of blind accident? Nay, was it not
rather the summons of a relentless Fate? Ere the circles that it made in
the limpid element had wholly disappeared, a boat was heard to grate
upon the shingle beneath the castle. A cloaked figure stood in the prow,
masked, booted, belted, and armed to the teeth. But when was true love
yet deceived by belts, boots, masks, or pistols? ''Tis he!' she
exclaimed, ''tis he!' and in another moment Lady Clara was in Roland's
arms, sailing, sailing on towards the sunset, never to part on earth,
never to part perhaps in----"
"Quite right too!" said Frank, closing the book with a bang. "Good
fellow! plucky girl! I'll be hanged if I won't have a shy! She can but
say 'No.' And if worst comes to worst, there's always the other to fall
back upon!"
So with this exceedingly disloyal and uncomplimentary adaptation of Miss
Ross as a _pis-aller_, Frank sat himself down at the table lately
occupied by Goldthred, to concoct a letter in which, with as little
circumlocution as possible, he should ask Miss Hallaton to be his wife.
Much mutual surprise was expressed by these two gentlemen, when, meeting
an hour later in Pall Mall, they discovered that they had been
fellow-travellers the night before, each in his own mind having envied
the good fortune of the other in remaining at Windsor. With such a topic
as their past pic-nic to discuss, and a certain indefinable instinct
that they had some mysterious interests in common, they soon merged out
of mere acquaintance into friendship, or that which the world calls
friendship--an alliance for mutual support and convenience, originating
in discreet regard for self. Further to cement this bond of brotherhood,
they dined together solemnly at their club, and parted heartily tired of
each other before eleven o'clock, going straight to bed, I verily
believe, in sheer despair. And thus it was that these unfortunates,
ardent lovers in their way, spent their Sunday in London.