MISS SLEAFORD'S ENGAGEMENT.
Isabel Sleaford was "engaged." She remembered this when she woke on the
morning after that pleasant day in Hurstonleigh grove, and that
henceforward there existed a person who was bound to be miserable
because of her. She thought this as she stood before the modest
looking-glass, rolling the long plaits of hair into a great knot, that
seemed too heavy for her head. Her life was all settled. She was not to
be a great poetess or an actress. The tragic mantle of the Siddons might
have descended on her young shoulders, but she was never to display its
gloomy folds on any mortal stage. She was not to be anything great. She
was only to be a country surgeon's wife.
It was very commonplace, perhaps; and yet this lonely girl--this
untaught and unfriended creature--felt some little pride in her new
position. After all, she had read many novels in which the story was
very little more than this,--three volumes of simple love-making, and a
quiet wedding at the end of the chapter. She was not to be an Edith
Dombey or a Jane Eyre. Oh, to have been Jane Eyre, and to roam away on
the cold moorland and starve,--wouldn't _that_ have been delicious!
No, there was to be a very moderate portion of romance in her life; but
still some romance. George Gilbert would be very devoted, and would
worship her always, of course. She gave her head a little toss as she
thought that, at the worst, she could treat him as Edith treated Dombey,
and enjoy herself that way; though she was doubtful how far Edith
Dombey's style of treatment might answer without the ruby velvet, and
diamond coronet, and other "properties" appertaining to the rôle.
In the meanwhile, Miss Sleaford performed her duties as best she could,
and instructed the orphans in a dreamy kind of way, breaking off in the
middle of the preterperfect tense of a verb to promise them that they
should come to spend a day with her when she was married, and neglecting
their fingering of the overture to "Masaniello" while she pondered on
the colour of her wedding-dress.
And how much did she think of George Gilbert all this time? About as
much as she would have thought of the pages who were to support the
splendid burden of her trailing robes, if she had been about to be
crowned Queen of England. He was the bridegroom, the husband; a
secondary character in the play of which she was the heroine.
Poor George's first love-letter came to her on the following day--a
vague and rambling epistle, full of shadowy doubts and fears; haunted,
as it were, by the phantom of the poor dead-and-gone Joe Tillet, and
without any punctuation whatever:
"But oh dearest ever dearest Isabel for ever dear you will be to me if
you cast me from you and I should go to America for life in Graybridge
would be worse than odious without you Oh Isabel if you do not love me I
implore you for pity sake say so and end my misery I know I am not
worthy of your love who are so beautiful and accomplished but oh the
thought of giving you up is so bitter unless you yourself should wish it
and oh there is no sacrifice on earth I would not make for you."
The letter was certainly not as elegant a composition as Isabel would
have desired it to be; but then a love-letter is a love-letter, and this
was the first Miss Sleaford had ever received. George's tone of mingled
doubt and supplication was by no means displeasing to her. It was only
right that he should be miserable: it was only proper that he should be
tormented by all manner of apprehensions. They would have to quarrel
by-and-by, and to bid each other an eternal farewell, and to burn each
other's letters, and be reconciled again. The quietest story could not
be made out without such legitimate incidents in the course of the three
volumes.
Although Isabel amused herself by planning her wedding-dress, and
changed her mind very often as to the colour and material she had no
idea of a speedy marriage. Were there not three volumes of courtship to
be gone through first?
* * * * *
Sigismund went back to town after the picnic which had been planned for
his gratification, and Isabel was left quite alone with her pupils. She
walked with them, and took her meals with them, and was with them all
day; and it was only of a Sunday that she saw much of Mr. Raymond.
That gentleman was very kind to the affianced lovers. George Gilbert
rode over to Conventford every alternate Sunday, and dined with the
family at Oakbank. Sometimes he went early enough to attend Isabel and
the orphans to church. Mr. Raymond himself was not a church-goer, but he
sent his grand-nieces to perform their devotions, as he sent them to
have their hair clipped by the hairdresser, or their teeth examined by
the dentist. George plunged into the wildest extravagance in the way of
waistcoats, in order to do honour to these happy Sundays; and left off
mourning for his father a month or so earlier than he had intended, in
order to infuse variety into his costume. Everything he wore used to
look new on these Sundays; and Isabel, sitting opposite to him in the
square pew would contemplate him thoughtfully when the sermon was dull,
and wonder, rather regretfully, why his garments never wore themselves
into folds, but always retained a hard angular look, as if they had been
originally worn by a wooden figure, and had never got over that
disadvantage. He wore a watch-chain that his father had given him,--a
long chain that went round his neck, but which he artfully twisted and
doubled into the semblance of a short one; and on this chain he hung a
lucky sixpence and an old-fashioned silver vinaigrette; which trifles,
when seen from a distance, looked almost like the gold charms which the
officers stationed at Conventford wore dangling on their waistcoats.
And so the engagement dawdled on through all the bright summer months;
and while the leaves were falling in the woods of Midlandshire, George
still entreating that the marriage might speedily take place, and Isabel
always deferring that ceremonial to some indefinite period.
Every alternate Sunday the young man's horse appeared at Mr. Raymond's
gate. He would have come every Sunday, if he had dared, and indeed had
been invited to do so by Isabel's kind employer; but he had sensitive
scruples about eating so much beef and mutton, and drinking so many cups
of tea, for which he could make no adequate return to his hospitable
entertainer. Sometimes he brought a present for one of the orphans,--a
work-box or a desk, fitted with scissors that wouldn't cut, and
inkstands that wouldn't open (for there are no Parkins and Gotto in
Graybridge or its vicinity), or a marvellous cake, made by Matilda
Jeffson. Once he got up a little entertainment for his betrothed and her
friends, and gave quite a dinner, with five sweets, and an elaborate
dessert, and with the most plum-coloured of ports, and the brownest of
sherries, procured specially from the Cock at Graybridge. But as the
orphans, who alone did full justice to the entertainment, were afflicted
with a bilious attack on the following day, the experiment was not
repeated.
But the dinner at Graybridge was not without its good effect. Isabel saw
the house that was to be her home; and the future began to take a more
palpable shape than it had worn hitherto. She looked at the little china
ornaments on the mantel-piece, the jar of withered rose-leaves, mingled
with faint odours of spices--the scent was very faint now, for the hands
of George's dead mother had gathered the flowers. George took Isabel
through the little rooms, and showed her an old-fashioned work-table,
with a rosewood box at the top, and a well of fluted silk, that had once
been rose-coloured, underneath.
"My mother used to sit at this table working, while she waited for my
father; I've often heard him say so. You'll use the old work-box, won't
you, Izzie?" George asked, tenderly.
He had grown accustomed to call her Izzie now, and was familiar with
her, and confided in her, as in a betrothed wife, whom no possible
chance could alienate from him. He had ceased to regard her as a
superior being, whom it was a privilege to know and worship. He loved
her as truly as he had ever loved her; but not being of a poetical or
sentimental nature, the brief access of romantic feeling which he had
experienced on first falling in love speedily wore itself out, and the
young man grew to contemplate his approaching marriage with perfect
equanimity. He even took upon himself to lecture Isabel, on sundry
occasions, with regard to her love of novel-reading, her neglect of
plain needlework, and her appalling ignorance on the subject of
puddings. He turned over her leaves, and found her places in the
hymn-book at church; he made her follow the progress of the Lessons,
with the aid of a church service printed in pale ink and a minute type;
and he frowned at her sternly when he caught her eyes wandering to
distant bonnets during the sermon. All the young man's old notions of
masculine superiority returned now that he was familiar with Miss
Sleaford; but all this while he loved her as only a good man can love,
and supplicated all manner of blessings for her every night when he said
his prayers.
Isabel Sleaford improved very much in this matter-of-fact companionship,
and in the exercise of her daily round of duty. She was no longer the
sentimental young lady, whose best employment was to loll in a
garden-chair reading novels, and who was wont to burst into sudden
rhapsodies about George Gordon Lord Byron and Napoleon the First upon
the very smallest provocation. She had tried George on both these
subjects, and had found him entirely wanting in any special reverence
for either of her pet heroes. Talking with him on autumn Sunday
afternoons in the breezy meadows near Conventford, with the orphans
loitering behind or straggling on before, Miss Sleaford had tested her
lover's conversational powers to the utmost; but as she found that he
neither knew nor wished to know anything about Edith Dombey or Ernest
Maltravers, and that he regarded the poems of Byron and Shelley as
immoral and blasphemous compositions, whose very titles should be
unknown to a well-conducted young woman, Isabel was fain to hold her
tongue about all the bright reveries of her girlhood, and to talk to Mr.
Gilbert about what he did understand.
He had read Cooper's novels, and a few of Lever's; and he had read Sir
Walter Scott and Shakespeare, and was fully impressed with the idea that
he could not over-estimate these latter writers; but when Isabel began
to talk about Edgar Ravenswood and Lucy, with her face all lighted up
with emotion, the young surgeon could only stare wonderingly at his
betrothed.
Oh, if he had only been like Edgar Ravenswood! The poor, childish,
dissatisfied heart was always wishing that he could be something
different from what he was. Perhaps during all that engagement the girl
never once saw her lover really as he was. She dressed him up in her own
fancies, and deluded herself by imaginary resemblances between him and
the heroes in her books. If he was abrupt and disagreeable in his manner
to her, he was Rochester; and she was Jane Eyre, tender and submissive.
If he was cold, he was Dombey; and she feasted on her own pride, and
scorned him, and made much of one of the orphans during an entire
afternoon. If he was clumsy and stupid, he was Rawdon Crawley; and she
patronized him, and laughed at him, and taunted him with little scraps
of French with the Albany-Road accent, and played off all green-eyed
Becky's prettiest airs upon him. But in spite of all this the young
man's sober common sense exercised a beneficial influence upon her; and
by-and-by, when the three volumes of courtship had been prolonged to the
uttermost, and the last inevitable chapter was close at hand, she had
grown to think affectionately of her promised husband, and was
determined to be very good and obedient to him when she became his wife.
But for the pure and perfect love which makes marriage thrice holy,--the
love which counts no sacrifice too great, no suffering too bitter,--the
love which knows no change but death, and seems instinct with such
divinity that death can be but its apotheosis,--such love as this had no
place in Isabel Sleaford's heart. Her books had given her some vague
idea of this grand passion, and on comparing herself with Lucy Ashton
and Zuleika, with Amy Robsart and Florence Dombey and Medora, she began
to think that the poets and novelists were all in the wrong, and that
there were no heroes or heroines upon this commonplace earth.
She thought this, and she was content to sacrifice the foolish dreams of
her girlhood, which were doubtless as impossible as they were beautiful.
She was content to think that her lot in life was fixed, and that she
was to be the wife of a good man, and the mistress of an old-fashioned
house in one of the dullest towns in England. The time had slipped so
quietly away since that spring twilight on the bridge at Hurstonleigh,
her engagement had been taken so much as a matter of course by every one
about her, that no thought of withdrawal therefrom had ever entered into
her mind. And then, again, why should she withdraw from the engagement?
George loved her; and there was no one else who loved her. There was no
wandering Jamie to come home in the still gloaming and scare her with
the sight of his sad reproachful face. If she was not George Gilbert's
wife, she would be nothing--a nursery-governess for ever and ever,
teaching stupid orphans, and earning five-and-twenty pounds a year. When
she thought of her desolate position, and of another subject which was
most painful to her, she clung to George Gilbert, and was grateful to
him, and fancied that she loved him.
The wedding-day came at last,--one bleak January morning, when
Conventford wore its barest and ugliest aspect; and Mr. Raymond gave his
nursery-governess away, after the fashion of that simple Protestant
ceremonial, which is apt to seem tame and commonplace when compared with
the solemn grandeur of a Roman Catholic marriage. He had given her the
dress she wore, and the orphans had clubbed their pocket-money to buy
their preceptress a bonnet as a surprise, which was a failure, after the
usual manner of artfully-planned surprises.
Isabel Sleaford pronounced the words that made her George Gilbert's
wife; and if she spoke them somewhat lightly, it was because there had
been no one to teach her their solemn import. There was no taint of
falsehood in her heart, no thought of revolt or disobedience in her
mind; and when she came out of the vestry, leaning on her young
husband's arm, there was a smile of quiet contentment on her face.
"Joe Tillet's wife could never have smiled like that," thought George,
as he looked at his bride.
The life that lay before Isabel was new; and, being little more than a
child as yet, she thought that novelty must mean happiness. She was to
have a house of her own, and servants, and an orchard and paddock, two
horses, and a gig. She was to be called Mrs. Gilbert: was not her name
so engraved upon the cards which George had ordered for her, in a
morocco card-case, that smelt like new boots, and was difficult to open,
as well as on those wedding-cards which the surgeon had distributed
among his friends?
George had ordered envelopes for these cards with his wife's maiden name
engraved inside; but, to his surprise, the girl had implored him, ever
so piteously, to counter-order them.
"Oh, don't have my name upon the envelopes, George," she said; "don't
send my name to your friends; don't ever tell them what I was called
before you married me."
"But why not, Izzie?"
"Because I hate my name," she answered, passionately. "I hate it; I hate
it! I would have changed it if I could when--when--I first came here;
but Sigismund wouldn't let me come to his uncle's house in a false name.
I hate my name; I hate and detest it."
And then suddenly seeing wonderment and curiosity plainly expressed in
her lover's face, the girl cried out that there was no meaning in what
she had been saying, and that it was only her own romantic folly, and
that he was to forgive her, and forget all about it.
"But am I to send your name, or not, Isabel?" George asked, rather
coolly. He did not relish these flights of fancy on the part of the
young lady he was training with a view to his own ideal of a wife. "You
first say a thing, and then say you don't mean it. Am I to send the
envelopes or not?"
"No, no, George; don't send them, please; I really do dislike the name.
Sleaford is such an ugly name, you know."