ON THE BRIDGE.
While George Gilbert was thinking of Isabel Sleaford's pale face and
black eyes; while, in his long rides to and fro among the cottages of
his parish patients, he solemnly debated as to whether he ought to call
upon Mr. Raymond when next he went to Conventford, or whether he ought
to go to Conventford for the express purpose of paying his respects to
Mr. Raymond,--the hand of Fate turned the wavering balance; and the
makeweight which she threw into the scale was no heavier than the
ordinary half-ounce of original composition which Government undertakes
to convey, not exactly from Indus to the Pole, but from the Land's End
to the Highlands, for the small charge of a penny. While George Gilbert
hesitated and doubted, and argued and debated with himself, after the
manner of every prudent home-bred young man who begins to think that he
loves well, and sadly fears that he may not love wisely,--Destiny, under
the form of a friend, gave him a push, and he went souse over head and
ears into the roaring ocean, and there was nothing left for him but to
swim as best he might towards the undiscovered shore upon the other
side.
The letter from Sigismund was dated Oakbank, Conventford, May 23rd,
1853.
"Dear George," wrote the author of "The Brand upon the Shoulder-blade,"
"I'm down here for a few days with my uncle Charles; and we've arranged
a picnic in Lord Hurstonleigh's grounds, and we want you to join us. So,
if your patients are not the most troublesome people in the world, you
can give yourself a holiday, and meet us on Wednesday morning, at
twelve, if fine, at the Waverly Road lodge-gate to Hurstonleigh Park.
Mrs. Pidgers--Pidgers is my uncle's housekeeper; a regular old dear, and
_such_ a hand at pie-crusts!--is going to pack up a basket,--and I know
what Pidgers's baskets are,--and we shall bring plenty of sparkling,
because, when my uncle does this sort of thing, he _does_ do it; and
we're to drink tea at one of Lord Hurstonleigh's model cottages, in his
model village, with a model old woman, who's had all manner of prizes
for the tidiest dust-holes, and the whitest hearth-stones, and the
neatest knife-boards, and all that kind of thing; and we're going to
make a regular holiday of it; and I shall forget that there's such a
creature as 'the Demon of the Galleys' in the world, and that I'm a
number behind with him,--which I am,--and the artist is waiting for a
subject for his next cut.
"The orphans are coming, of course, and Miss Sleaford; and, oh, by the
bye, _I_ want you to tell me all about poisoning by strychnine, because
I think I shall do a case or two in 'The D. of the G.'
"Twelve o'clock, sharp time, remember! We come in a fly. You can leave
your horse at Waverly.--Yours, S.S."
* * * * *
Yes; Fate, impatient perhaps of any wavering of the balance in so
insignificant a matter as George Gilbert's destiny, threw this
penny-post letter into the scale, and, lo! it was turned. The young man
read the letter over and over again, till it was crumpled and soiled
with much unfolding and refolding, and taking out of, and putting back
into, his waistcoat-pocket. A picnic! a picnic in the Hurstonleigh
grounds, with Isabel Sleaford! Other people were to be of the party; but
George Gilbert scarcely remembered that. He saw himself, with Isabel by
his side, wandering along the winding pathways, straying away into
mysterious arcades of verdure, where the low branches of the trees would
meet above their heads, and shut them in from all the world. He fancied
himself talking to Mr. Sleaford's daughter as he never had talked, nor
was ever likely to talk, with any voice audible to mortal ears; he laid
out and arranged that day as we are apt to arrange the days that are to
come, and which--Heaven help our folly and presumption!--- are so
different when they do come from the dreams we have dreamed about them.
Mr. Gilbert lived that May holiday over and over again between the
Monday afternoon on which he received Sigismund's letter, and the
appointed Wednesday morning. He lay awake at night, when his day's work
was done, thinking of Isabel, and what she would say to him, and how she
would look at him, until those fancied words and looks thrilled him to
the heart's core, and he was deluded by the thought that it was all a
settled thing, and that his love was returned. His love! Did he love
her, then, already--this pale-faced young person, whom he had only seen
twice; who might be a Florence Nightingale, or a Madame de Laffarge, for
all that he knew either one way or the other? Yes, he loved her; the
wondrous flower that never yet "thrived by the calendar" had burst into
full bloom. He loved this young woman, and believed in her, and was
ready to bring her to his simple home whenever she pleased to come
thither; and had already pictured her sitting opposite to him in the
little parlour, making weak tea for him in a Britannia-metal teapot,
sewing commonplace buttons upon his commonplace shirts, debating with
Mrs. Jeffson as to whether there should be roast beef or boiled mutton
for the two o'clock dinner, sitting up alone in that most uninteresting
little parlour when the surgeon's patients were tiresome and insisted
upon being ill in the night, waiting to preside over little suppers of
cold meat and pickles, bread-and-cheese and celery. Yes; George pictured
Miss Sleaford the heroine of such a domestic story as this, and had no
power to divine that there was any incongruity in the fancy; no fineness
of ear to discover the dissonant interval between the heroine and the
story. Alas, poor Izzie! and are all your fancies, all the pretty
stories woven out of your novels, all your long day-dreams about Marie
Antoinette and Charlotte Corday, Edith Dombey and Ernest
Maltravers,--all your foolish pictures of a modern Byron, fever-stricken
at Missolonghi, and tended by you; a new Napoleon, exiled to St. Helena,
and followed, perhaps liberated, by you,--are they all come to this? Are
none of the wonderful things that happen to women ever to happen to you?
Are you never to be Charlotte Corday, and die for your country? Are you
never to wear ruby velvet, and diamonds in your hair, and to lure some
recreant Carker to a foreign hostelry, and there denounce and scorn him?
Are all the pages of the great book of life to be closed upon you--you,
who seem to yourself predestined, by reason of so many dreams and
fancies, to such a wonderful existence? Is all the mystic cloudland of
your dreams to collapse and shrivel into this,--a commonplace
square-built cottage at Graybridge-on-the-Wayverne, with a commonplace
country surgeon for your husband?
George Gilbert was waiting at the low white gate before the ivy-coloured
lodge on the Waverly Road when the fly from Conventford drove up, with
Sigismund Smith sitting beside the coachman, and questioning him about a
murder that had been committed in the neighbourhood ten years before;
and Mr. Raymond, Miss Sleaford, and the orphans inside. The surgeon had
been waiting at the gate for a quarter of an hour, and he had been up
ever since six o'clock that morning, riding backwards and forwards
amongst his patients, doing a day's work in a few hours. He had been
home to dress, of course, and wore his newest and most fashionable
clothes, and was, in fact, a living realization of one of the figures in
a fly-blown fashion-plate for June 1852, still exhibited in the window
of a Graybridge tailor. He wore a monthly rosebud in his button-hole,
and he carried a bunch of spring flowers,--jonquils and polyanthuses,
pink hawthorn, peonies, and sweet-brier,--which Mr. Jeffson had gathered
and tied up, with a view to their presentation to Isabel,--although
there were better flowers in Mr. Raymond's garden, as George reminded
his faithful steward.
"Don't thee tew thyself about that, Master Jarge," said the
Yorkshireman; "th' young wench 'll like the flowers if thoo givest 'em
til her."
Of course it never for a moment entered into Mr Jeffson's mind that his
young master's attentions could be otherwise than welcome and agreeable
to any woman living, least of all to a forlorn young damsel who was
obliged to earn her bread amongst strangers.
"I'd like to see Miss Sleaford, Master Jarge," Mr. Jeffson said, in an
insinuating manner, as George gathered up the reins and patted Brown
Molly's neck, preparatory to riding away from the low white gate of his
domain.
George blushed like the peonies that formed the centre of his nosegay.
"I don't know why you should want to see Miss Sleaford any more than
other girls, Jeff," he said.
"Well, never you mind why, Master Jarge; I _should_ like to see her; I'd
give a deal to see her."
"Then we'll try and manage it, Jeff. We're to drink tea at Hurstonleigh;
and we shall be leaving there, I suppose, as soon as it's dark--between
seven and eight o'clock, I dare say. You might ride the grey pony to
Waverly, and bring Brown Molly on to Hurstonleigh, and stop at the
alehouse--there's an alehouse, you know, though it _is_ a model
village--until I'm ready to come home; and you can leave the horses with
the ostler, you know, and stroll about the village,--and you're sure to
find us."
"Yes, yes, Master Jarge; I'll manage it."
So George was at his post a quarter of an hour before the fly drove up
to the gate. He was there to open the door of the vehicle, and to give
his hand to Isabel when she alighted. He felt the touch of her fingers
resting briefly on his arm, and trembled and blushed like a girl as he
met the indifferent gaze of her great black eyes. Nobody took any notice
of his embarrassment. Mr. Raymond and his nephew were busy with the
hampers that had been stowed under the seats of the fly, and the orphans
were employed in watching their elders,--for to them the very cream of
the picnic was in those baskets.
There was a boy at the lodge who was ready to take the basket
whithersoever Mr. Raymond should direct; so all was settled very
quickly. The driver received his instructions respecting the return
journey, and went rumbling off to Hurstonleigh to refresh himself and
his horse. The lad went on before the little party, with the baskets
swinging on either side of him as he went; and in the bustle of these
small arrangements George Gilbert found courage to offer Isabel his arm.
She took it without hesitation, and Sigismund placed himself on the
other side of her. Mr. Raymond went on before with the orphans, who
affected the neighbourhood of the baskets; and the three young people
followed, walking slowly over the grass.
Isabel had put off her mourning. She had never had but one black dress,
poor child; and that being worn out, she was fain to fall back upon her
ordinary costume. If she had looked pretty in the garden at Camberwell,
with tumbled hair and a dingy dress, she looked beautiful to-day, in
clean muslin, fresh and crisp, fluttering in the spring breezes as she
walked, and with her hair smoothly banded under a broad-leaved straw
hat. Her face brightened with the brightness of the sunshine and the
charm of the landscape; her step grew light and buoyant as she walked
upon the springing turf. Her eyes lit up by-and-by, when the little
party came to a low iron gate, beyond which there was a grove, a winding
woodland patch, and undulating glades, and craggy banks half hidden
under foliage, and, in a deep cleft below, a brawling waterfall for ever
rushing over moss-grown rockwork, and winding far away to meet the
river.
"Oh, how beautiful it is!" cried Isabel; "how beautiful!"
She was a Cockney, poor child, and had spent the best part of her life
amidst the suburban districts of Camberwell and Peckham. All this
Midlandshire beauty burst upon her like a sudden revelation of Paradise.
Could the Garden of Eden have been more beautiful than this woodland
grove?--where the ground was purple with wild hyacinths that grew under
beeches and oaks centuries old; where the sunlight and shadows flickered
on the mossy pathways; where the guttural warble of the blackbirds made
perpetual music in the air. George looked wonderingly at the girl's rapt
countenance, her parted lips, that were faintly tremulous with the force
of her emotion.
"I did not think there could be any place in England so beautiful," she
said by-and-by, when George disturbed her with some trite remark upon
the scene. "I thought it was only in Italy and in Greece, and those sort
of places--where Childe Harold went--that it was beautiful like this. It
makes one feel as if one could never go back to the world again, doesn't
it?" she asked naïvely.
George was fain to confess that, although the grove was very beautiful,
it inspired him with no desire to turn hermit, and take up his abode
therein. But Isabel hardly heard what he said to her. She was looking
away into mysterious vistas of light and shadow, and thinking that in
such a spot as this the hero of a woman's life might appear in all his
shining glory. If she could meet him now, this wonderful unknown
being--the Childe Harold, the Lara, of her life! What if it was to be
so? what if she was to meet him now, and the story was appointed to
begin to-day,--this very day,--and all her life henceforth was to be
changed? The day was like the beginning of a story, somehow, inasmuch as
it was unlike the other days of her life. She had thought of the
holiday, and dreamt about it even more foolishly than George had done;
for there had been some foundation for the young man's visions, while
hers had been altogether baseless. What if Lord Hurstonleigh should
happen to be strolling in his grove, and should see her and rescue her
from death by drowning, or a mad bull, or something of that sort, and
thereupon fall in love with her? Nothing was more life-like or likely,
according to Izzie's experience of three-volume novels. Unhappily she
discovered from Mr. Raymond that Lord Hurstonleigh was an elderly
married man, and was, moreover, resident in the south of France; so
_that_ bright dream was speedily shattered. But there is no point of the
compass from which a hero may not come. There was hope yet; there was
hope that this bright spring-day might not close as so many days had
closed upon the same dull record, the same empty page.
Mr. Raymond was in his highest spirits to-day. He liked to be with young
people, and was younger than the youngest of them in his fresh enjoyment
of all that is bright and beautiful upon earth. He devoted himself
chiefly to the society of his orphan _protégées_, and contrived to
impart a good deal of information to them in a pleasant easy-going
manner, that took the bitterness out of those Pierian waters, for which
the orphans had very small affection. They were stupid and
unimpressionable; but, then, were they not the children of that unhappy
consumptive niece of his, who had acquired, by reason of her many
troubles, a kind of divine right to become a burden upon happy people?
"If she had left me such an orphan as that girl Isabel, I would have
thanked her kindly for dying," Mr. Raymond mused "That girl has mental
imitation,--the highest and rarest faculty of the human
brain,--ideality, and comparison. What could I not make of such a girl
as that? And yet--"
Mr. Raymond only finished the sentence with a sigh. He was thinking
that, after all, these bright faculties might not be the best gifts for
a woman. It would have been better, perhaps, for Isabel to have
possessed the organ of pudding-making and stocking-darning, if those
useful accomplishments are represented by an organ. The kindly
phrenologist was thinking that perhaps the highest fate life held for
that pale girl with the yellow tinge in her eyes was to share the home
of a simple-hearted country surgeon, and rear his children to be honest
men and virtuous women.
"I suppose that _is_ the best," Mr. Raymond said to himself.
He had dismissed the orphans now, and had sent them on to walk with
Sigismund Smith, who kindly related to them the story of "Lilian the
Deserted," with such suppressions and emendations as rendered the
romance suitable to their tender years. The philosopher of Conventford
had got rid of the orphans, and was strolling by himself in those
delicious glades, swinging his stick as he went, and throwing up his
head every now and then to scent all the freshness of the warm spring
air.
"Poor little orphan child!" he mused, "will anybody ever fathom her
fancies or understand her dreams? Will she marry that good, sheepish
country surgeon, who has fallen in love with her? He can give her a home
and a shelter; and she seems such a poor friendless little creature,
just the sort of girl to get into some kind of mischief if she were left
to herself. Perhaps it's about the best thing that could happen to her.
I should like to have fancied a brighter fate for her, a life with more
colour in it. She's so pretty--_so_ pretty; and when she talks, and her
face lights up, a sort of picture comes into my mind of what she would
be in a great saloon, with clusters of lights about her, and masses of
shimmering colour, making a gorgeous background for her pale young
beauty; and brilliant men and women clustering round her, to hear her
talk and see her smile. I can see her like this; and then, when I
remember what her life is likely to be, I begin to feel sorry for her,
just as if she were some fair young nun, foredoomed to be buried alive
by-and-by. Sometimes I have had a fancy that if _he_ were to come home
and see her--but that's an old busybody's dream. When did a matchmaker
ever create anything but matrimonial confusion and misery? I dare say
Beatrice kept her word, and _did_ make Benedick wretched. No; Miss
Sleaford must marry whom she may, and be happy or miserable, according
to the doctrine of averages; and as for _him_--"
Mr. Raymond stopped; and seeing the rest of the party happily engaged in
gathering hyacinths under the low branches of the trees, he seated
himself upon a clump of fallen timber, and took a book out of his
pocket. It was a book that had been sent by post, for the paper wrapper
was still about it. It was a neat little volume, bound in glistening
green cloth, with uncut edges, and the gilt-letter title on the back of
the volume set forth that the book contained "An Alien's Dreams." An
alien's dreams could be nothing but poetry; and as the name of the poet
was not printed under the title, it was perhaps only natural that Mr.
Raymond should, not open the book immediately, but should sit turning
and twisting the volume about in his hands, and looking at it with a
contemptuous expression of countenance.
"An alien!" he exclaimed; "why, in the name of all the affectations of
the present day, should a young man with fifteen thousand a year, and
one of the finest estates in Midlandshire, call himself an alien? 'An
Alien's Dreams'--and such dreams! I had a look at them this morning,
without cutting the leaves. It's always a mistake to cut the leaves of
young people's poetry. Such dreams! Surely no alien could have been
afflicted with anything like them, unless he was perpetually eating
heavy suppers of underdone pork, or drinking bad wine, or neglecting the
ventilation of his bedroom. Imperfect ventilation has a good deal to do
with it, I dare say. To think that Roland Lansdell should write such
stuff--such a clever young man as he is, too--such a generous-hearted,
high-minded young fellow, who might be--"
Mr. Raymond opened the volume in a very gingerly fashion, almost as if
he expected something unpleasant might crawl out of it, and looked in a
sideways manner between the leaves, muttering the first line or so of a
poem, and then skipping on to another, and giving utterance to every
species of contemptuous ejaculation between whiles.
"Imogen!" he exclaimed; "'To Imogen!' As if anybody was ever called
Imogen out of Shakespeare's play and Monk Lewis's ballad! 'To Imogen:'
'Do you ever think of me, proud and cruel Imogen,
As I think, ah! sadly think, of thee--
When the shadows darken on the misty lea, Imogen,
And the low light dies behind the sea?'
'Broken!' 'Shattered!' 'Blighted!' Lively titles to tempt the general
reader! Here's a nice sort of thing:
'Like an actor in a play,
Like a phantom in a dream,
Like a lost boat left to stray
Rudderless adown the stream,--
This is what my life has grown, Ida Lee,
Since thy false heart left me lone, Ida Lee.
And I wonder sometimes when the laugh is loud,
And I wonder at the faces of the crowd,
And the strange fantastic measures that they tread,
Till I think at last I must be dead--
Till I half believe that I am dead.'
And to think that Roland Lansdell should waste his time in writing this
sort of thing! And here's his letter, poor boy!--his long rambling
letter,--in which he tells me how he wrote the verses, and how writing
them was a kind of consolation to him, a safety-valve for so much
passionate anger against a world that doesn't exactly harmonize with the
Utopian fancies of a young man with fifteen thousand a year and nothing
to do. If some rightful heir would turn up, in the person of one of
Roland's gamekeepers, now, and denounce my young friend as a wrongful
heir, and turn him out of doors bag and baggage, and with very little
bag and baggage, after the manner of those delightful melodramas which
hold the mirror up to nature so exactly, what a blessing it would be for
the author of 'An Alien's Dreams!' If he could only find himself without
a sixpence in the world, what a noble young soldier in the great battle
of life, what a triumphant hero, he might be! But as it is, he is
nothing better than a colonel of militia, with a fine uniform, and a
long sword that is only meant for show. My poor Roland! my poor Roland!"
Mr. Raymond murmured sadly, as he dropped the little volume back into
his pocket; "I am so sorry that you too should be infected with the
noxious disease of our time, the fatal cynicism that transforms youth
into a malady for which age is the only cure."
But he had no time to waste upon any regretful musings about Mr Roland
Lansdell, sole master of Lansdell Priory, one of the finest seats in
Midlandshire, and who was just now wandering somewhere in Greece, upon a
Byronic kind of tour that had lasted upwards of six months, and was
likely to last much longer.
It was nearly three o'clock now, and high time for the opening of the
hampers, Mr. Raymond declared, when he rejoined the rest of the party,
much to the delight of the orphans, who were always hungry, and who ate
so much, and yet remained so pale and skeleton-like of aspect, that they
presented a pair of perpetual phenomena to the eye of the physiologist.
The baskets had been carried to a little ivy-sheltered arbour, perched
high above the waterfall; and here Mr. Raymond unpacked them, bringing
out his treasures one after another; first a tongue, then a pair of
fowls, a packet of anchovy sandwiches, a great poundcake (at sight of
which the eyes of the orphans glistened), delicate caprices in the way
of pastry, semi-transparent biscuits, and a little block of Stilton
cheese, to say nothing of sundry bottles of Madeira and sparkling
Burgundy.
Perhaps there never was a merrier party. To eat cold chicken and drink
sparkling Burgundy in the open air on a bright May afternoon is always
an exhilarating kind of thing, though the scene of your picnic may be
the bleakest of the Sussex Downs, or the dreariest of the Yorkshire
Wolds; but to drink the sparkling wine in that little arbour of
Hurstonleigh, with the brawling of the waterfall keeping time to your
laughter, the shadows of patriarchal oaks sheltering you from all the
outer world, is the very acme of bliss in the way of a picnic. And then
Mr. Raymond's companions were so young! It was so easy for them to leave
all the Past on the threshold of that lovely grove, and to narrow their
lives into the life of that one bright day. Even Isabel forgot that she
had a Destiny, and consented to be happy in a simple girlish way,
without a thought of the prince who was so long coming.
It may be that the sparkling Burgundy had something to do with George
Gilbert's enthusiasm; but, by and bye, after the débris of the dinner
had been cleared away, and the little party lingered round the rustic
table, talking with that expansion of thought and eloquence of language
which is so apt to result from the consumption of effervescing wines in
the open air, the young surgeon thought that all the earth could
scarcely hold a more lovely creature than the girl who sat opposite to
him, with her head resting against the rustic wood-work of the arbour,
and her hat lying on her knee. She did not say very much, in comparison
with Sigismund and Mr. Raymond, who were neither of them indifferent
hands at talking; but when she spoke, there was generally something
vague and dreamy in her words,--something that set George wondering
about her anew, and made him admire her more than ever. He forgot all
the dictates of prudence now; he was false to all the grand doctrines of
young manhood; he only remembered that Isabel Sleaford was the loveliest
creature upon earth; he only knew that he loved her, and that his love,
like all true love, was mingled with modest doubtfulness of his own
merits, and exaggerated deference for hers. He loved her as purely and
truly as if he had been able to express his passion in the noblest poem
ever written; but not being able to express it, his love and himself
seemed alike tame and commonplace.
I must not dwell too long on this picnic, though it seemed half a
lifetime to George Gilbert, for he walked with Isabel through the lanes
between Hurstonleigh grove and Hurstonleigh village, and he loitered
with her in the little churchyard at Hurstonleigh, and stood upon the
bridge beneath which the Wayverne crept like a riband of silver, winding
in and out among the rushes. He lingered there by her side while the
orphans and Sigismund and Mr. Raymond were getting tea ready at the
model cottage, and putting the model old woman's wits into such a state
of "flustrification," as she herself expressed it, that she could
scarcely hold the tea-kettle, and was in imminent peril of breaking one
of her best "chaney" saucers, produced from a corner cupboard in honour
of her friend and patron, Charles Raymond.
George loitered on the little stone bridge with Isabel, and somehow or
other, still emboldened by the sparkling Burgundy, his passion all of a
sudden found a voice, and he told her that he loved her, and that his
highest hope upon earth was the hope of winning her for his wife.
I suppose that simple little story must be a pretty story, in its way;
for when a woman hears it for the first time, she is apt to feel kindly
disposed to the person who recites it, however poorly or tamely he may
tell his tale. Isabel listened with a most delightful complacency; not
because she reciprocated George's affection for her, but because this
was the first little bit of romance in her life, and she felt that the
story was beginning all at once, and that she was going to be a heroine.
She felt this; and with this a kind of grateful liking for the young man
at her side, through whose agency all these pleasant feelings came to
her.
And all this time George was pleading with her, and arguing, from her
blushes and her silence, that his suit was not hopeless. Emboldened by
the girl's tacit encouragement, he grew more and more eloquent, and went
on to tell her how he had loved her from the first; yes, from that first
summer's afternoon--when he had seen her sitting under the pear-trees in
the old-fashioned garden, with the low yellow light behind her.
"Of course I didn't know then that I loved you, Isabel--oh, may I call
you Isabel? it is such a pretty name. I have written it over and over
and over on the leaves of a blotting-book at home, very often without
knowing that I was writing it. I only thought at first that I admired
you, because you are so beautiful, and so different from other beautiful
women; and then, when I was always thinking of you, and wondering about
you, I wouldn't believe that it was because I loved you. It is only
to-day--this dear, happy day--that has made me understand what I have
felt all along; and now I know that I have loved you from the first,
Isabel, dear Isabel, from the very first."
All this was quite as it should be. Isabel's heart fluttered like the
wings of a young bird that essays its first flight.
"This is what it is to be a heroine," she thought, as she looked down at
the coloured pebbles, the floating river weeds, under the clear rippling
water; and yet knew all the time, by virtue of feminine second-sight,
that George Gilbert was gazing at her and adoring her. She didn't like
_him_, but she liked him to be there talking to her. The words she heard
for the first time were delightful to her because of their novelty, but
they took no charm from the lips that spoke them. Any other
good-looking, respectably-dressed young man would have been quite as
much to her as George Gilbert was. But then she did not know this. It
was so very easy for her to mistake her pleasure in the "situation;" the
rustic bridge, the rippling water, the bright spring twilight, even the
faint influence of that one glass of sparkling Burgundy, and, above all,
the sensation of being a heroine for the first time in her life--it was
so terribly easy to mistake all these for that which she did not
feel,--a regard for George Gilbert.
While the young man was still pleading, while she was still listening to
him, and blushing and glancing shyly at him out of those wonderful
tawny-coloured eyes, which seemed black just now under the shadow of
their drooping lashes, Sigismund and the orphans appeared at the distant
gate of the churchyard whooping and hallooing, to announce that the tea
was all ready.
"Oh, Isabel!" cried George, "they are coming, and it maybe ever so long
before I see you again alone. Isabel, dear Isabel! do tell me that you
will make me happy--tell me that you will be my wife!"
He did not ask her if she loved him; he was too much in love with
her--too entirely impressed with her grace and beauty, and his own
inferiority--to tempt his fate by such a question. If she would marry
him, and let him love her, and by-and-by reward his devotion by loving
him a little, surely that would be enough to satisfy his most
presumptuous wishes.
"Dear Isabel, you will marry me, won't you? You can't mean to say
no,--you would have said it before now. You would not be so cruel as to
let me hope, even for a minute, if you meant to disappoint me."
"I have known you--you have known me--such a short time," the girl
murmured.
"But long enough to love you with a love that will last all my life,"
George answered eagerly. "I shall have no thought except to make you
happy, Isabel. I know that you are so beautiful that you ought to marry
a very different fellow from me,--a man who could give you a grand
house, and carriages and horses, and all that sort of thing; but he
could never love you better than I, and he mightn't love you as well,
perhaps; and I'll work for you, Isabel, as no man ever worked before.
You shall never know what poverty is, darling, if you will be my wife."
"I shouldn't mind being poor," Isabel answered, dreamily.
She was thinking that Walter Gay had been poor, and that the chief
romance of Florence's life had been the quiet wedding in the little City
church, and the long sea voyage with her young husband. This sort of
poverty was almost as nice as poor Edith's miserable wealth, with
diamonds flung about and trampled upon, and ruby velvet for every-day
wear.
"I shouldn't mind so much being poor," repeated the girl; for she
thought, if she didn't marry a duke or a Dombey, it would be at least
something to experience the sentimental phase of poverty.
George Gilbert seized upon the words.
"Ah, then, you will marry me, dearest Isabel? you will marry me, my own
darling, my beautiful wife?"
He was almost startled by the intensity of his own feelings, as he bent
down and kissed the little ungloved hand lying on the moss-grown
stonework of the bridge.
"Oh, Isabel, if you could only know how happy you have made me! if you
could only know--"
She looked at him with a startled expression in her face. Was it all
settled, then, so suddenly--with so little consideration? Yes, it was
all settled; she was beloved with one of those passions that endure for
a lifetime. George had said something to that effect. The story had
begun, and she was a heroine.
"Good gracious me!" cried Mr. Smith, as he bounded on the parapet of the
little bridge, and disported himself there in the character of an
amateur Blondin; "if the model old woman who has had so many
prizes--we've been looking at her diplomas, framed and glazed, in a
parlour that I couldn't have believed to exist out of "Lilian the
Deserted" (who begins life as the cottager's daughter, you know, and
elopes with the squire in top-boots out of a diamond-paned window--and
I've been trying the model old woman's windows, and Lilian couldn't have
done it),--but I was about to remark, that if the old woman hasn't had a
prize for a model temper, you two will catch it for keeping the tea
waiting. Why, Izzie, what's the matter? you and George are both looking
as spooney as--is it, eh?--yes, it is: isn't it? Hooray! Didn't I see it
from the first?" cried Mr. Smith, striking an attitude upon the
balustrade, and pointing down to the two blushing faces with a
triumphant finger. "When George asked me for your letter, Izzie,--the
little bit of a letter you wrote me when you left Camberwell,--didn't I
see him fold it up as gingerly as if it had been a fifty-pound note and
slip it into his waistcoat-pocket, and then try to look as if he hadn't
done it? Do you think I wasn't fly, then? A pretty knowledge of human
nature I should have, if I couldn't see through that. The creator of
Octavio Montefiasco, the Demon of the Galleys, flatters himself that he
understands the obscurest diagnostic of the complaint commonly
designated 'spoons.' Don't be downhearted, George," exclaimed Sigismund,
jumping suddenly off the parapet of the bridge, and extending his hand
to his friend. "Accept the congratulations of one who, with a heart long
ber-lighted by the ber-lasting in-fer-luence of ker-rime, can-er yet-er
feel a generous ther-rob in unison with virr-tue."
After this they all left the bridge, and went straight to the little
cottage, where Mr. Raymond had been holding a species of Yankee levée,
for the reception of the model villagers, every one of whom knew him,
and required his advice on some knotty point of law, medicine, or
domestic economy. The tea was laid upon a little round table, close to
the window, in the full light of the low evening sun. Isabel sat with
her back to that low western light, and George sat next to her, staring
at her in a silent rapture, and wondering at himself for his own
temerity in having asked her to be his wife. That tiresome Sigismund
called Mr. Raymond aside, before sitting down to tea, on the pretence of
showing him a highly-coloured representation of Joseph and his Brethren,
with a strong family likeness between the brethren; and told him in a
loud whisper what had happened on the little bridge. So it was scarcely
wonderful that poor George and Isabel took their tea in silence, and
were rather awkward in the handling of their teacups. But they were
spared any further congratulations from Sigismund, as that young
gentleman found it was as much as he could do to hold his own against
the orphans in the demolition of the poundcake, to say nothing of a lump
of honeycomb which the model old woman produced for the delectation of
the visitors.
The twilight deepened presently, and the stars began to glimmer faintly
in an opal-tinted sky. Mr. Raymond, Sigismund, and the orphans, employed
themselves in packing the baskets with the knives, plates, and glasses
which had been used for the picnic. The fly was to pick them all up at
the cottage. Isabel stood in the little doorway, looking dreamily out at
the village, the dim lights twinkling in the casement windows, the lazy
cattle standing in the pond upon the green, and a man holding a couple
of horses before the door of the little inn.
"That man with the horses is Jeffson, my father's gardener; I scarcely
like to call him a servant, for he is a kind of connection of my poor
mother's family," George said, with a little confusion; for he thought
that perhaps Miss Sleaford's pride might take alarm at the idea of any
such kindred between her future husband and his servant; "and he is
_such_ a good fellow! And what do you think, Isabel?" the young man
added, dropping his voice to a whisper; "poor Jeffson has come all the
way from Gray bridge on purpose to see you, because he has heard me say
that you are very beautiful; and I think he guessed ever so long ago
that I had fallen in love with you. Would you have any objection to walk
over yonder and see him, Isabel, or shall I call him here?"
"I'll go to him, if you like; I should like very much to see him," the
girl answered.
She took the arm George offered her. Of course it was only right that
she should take his arm. It was all a settled thing now.
"Miss Sleaford has come to see you, Jeff," the young man said, when they
came to where the Yorkshireman was standing.
Poor Jeff had very little to say upon this rather trying occasion. He
took off his hat, and stood bareheaded, smiling and blushing--as George
spoke of him and praised him--yet all the while keeping a sharp watch
upon Isabel's face. He could see that pale girlish face very well in the
evening light, for Miss Sleaford had left her hat in the cottage, and
stood bareheaded, with her face turned towards the west, while George
rambled on about Jeff and his old school-days, when Jeff and he had been
such friends and playfellows.
But the fly from Conventford came rumbling out of the inn-yard as they
stood there, and this was a signal for Isabel to hurry back to the
cottage. She held out her hand to Mr. Jeffson as she wished him good
night, and then went back, still attended by George, who handed her into
the fly presently, and wished her good night in a very commonplace
manner; for he was a young man whose feelings hid themselves from
indifferent eyes, and, indeed, only appeared under the influence of
extreme emotion.