The capricious influences which combine to make us happy are never so
certain to be absent influences as when we are foolish enough to talk
about them. Amelius had talked about them. When he and Sally left the
cottage, the road which led them away from the park was also the road
which led them past a church. The influences of happiness left them at
the church door.
Rows of carriages were in waiting; hundreds of idle people were
assembled about the church steps; the thunderous music of the organ
rolled out through the open doors--a grand wedding, with choral service,
was in course of celebration. Sally begged Amelius to take her in to
see it. They tried the front entrance, and found it impossible to get
through the crowd. A side entrance, and a fee to a verger, succeeded
better. They obtained space enough to stand on, with a view of the
altar.
The bride was a tall buxom girl, splendidly dressed: she performed her
part in the ceremony with the most unruffled composure. The bridegroom
exhibited an instructive spectacle of aged Nature, sustained by Art.
His hair, his complexion, his teeth, his breast, his shoulders, and his
legs, showed what the wig-maker, the valet, the dentist, the tailor, and
the hosier can do for a rich old man, who wishes to present a juvenile
appearance while he is buying a young wife. No less than three
clergymen were present, conducting the sale. The demeanour of the rich
congregation was worthy of the glorious bygone days of the Golden Calf.
So far as could be judged by appearances, one old lady, in a pew close
to the place at which Amelius and Sally were standing, seemed to be the
only person present who was not favourably impressed by the ceremony.
“I call it disgraceful,” the old lady remarked to a charming young
person seated next to her.
But the charming young person--being the legitimate product of the
present time--had no more sympathy with questions of sentiment than
a Hottentot. “How can you talk so, grandmamma!” she rejoined. “He has
twenty thousand a year--and that lucky girl will be mistress of the most
splendid house in London.”
“I don’t care,” the old lady persisted; “it’s not the less a disgrace
to everybody concerned in it. There is many a poor friendless creature,
driven by hunger to the streets, who has a better claim to our sympathy
than that shameless girl, selling herself in the house of God! I’ll wait
for you in the carriage--I won’t see any more of it.”
Sally touched Amelius. “Take me out!” she whispered faintly.
He supposed that the heat in the church had been too much for her. “Are
you better now?” he asked, when they got into the open air.
She held fast by his arm. “Let’s get farther away,” she said. “That lady
is coming after us--I don’t want her to see me again. I am one of the
creatures she talked about. Is the mark of the streets on me, after all
you have done to rub it out?”
The wild misery in her words presented another development in her
character which was entirely new to Amelius. “My dear child,” he
remonstrated, “you distress me when you talk in that way. God knows the
life you are leading now.”
But Sally’s mind was still full of its own acutely painful sense of what
the lady had said. “I saw her,” she burst out--“I saw her look at me
while she spoke!”
“And she thought you better worth looking at than the bride--and quite
right, too!” Amelius rejoined. “Come, come, Sally, be like yourself. You
don’t want to make me unhappy about you, I am sure?”
He had taken the right way with her: she felt that simple appeal, and
asked his pardon with all the old charm in her manner and her voice.
For the moment, she was “Simple Sally” again. They walked on in silence.
When they had lost sight of the church, Amelius felt her hand beginning
to tremble on his arm. A mingled expression of tenderness and anxiety
showed itself in her blue eyes as they looked up at him. “I am thinking
of something else now,” she said; “I am thinking of You. May I ask you
something?”
Amelius smiled. The smile was not reflected as usual in Sally’s face.
“It’s nothing particular,” she explained in an odd hurried way; “the
church put it into my head. You--” She hesitated, and tried it under
another form. “Will you be married yourself, Amelius, one of these
days?”
He did his best to evade the question. “I am not rich, Sally, like the
old gentleman we have just seen.”
Her eyes turned away from him; she sighed softly to herself. “You will
be married some day,” she said. “Will you do one kind thing more for me,
Amelius, when I die? You remember my reading in the newspaper of the new
invention for burning the dead--and my asking you about it. You said
you thought it was better than burying, and you had a good mind to leave
directions to be burnt instead of buried, when your time came. When _my_
time has come, will you leave other directions about yourself, if I ask
you?”
“My dear, you are talking in a very strange way! If you will have it
that I am to be married some day, what has that to do with your death?”
“It doesn’t matter, Amelius. When I have nothing left to live for, I
suppose it’s as likely as not I may die. Will you tell them to bury me
in some quiet place, away from London, where there are very few graves?
And when you leave your directions, don’t say you are to be burnt.
Say--when you have lived a long, long life, and enjoyed all the
happiness you have deserved so well--say you are to be buried, and
your grave is to be near mine. I should like to think of the same trees
shading us, and the same flowers growing over us. No! don’t tell me I’m
talking strangely again--I can’t bear it; I want you to humour me and
be kind to me about this. Do you mind going home? I’m feeling a little
tired--and I know I’m poor company for you today.”
The talk flagged at dinner-time, though Toff did his best to keep it
going.
In the evening, the excellent Frenchman made an effort to cheer the two
dull young people. He came in confidentially with his fiddle, and
said he had a favour to ask. “I possess some knowledge, sir, of the
delightful art of dancing. Might I teach young Miss to dance? You see,
if I may venture to say so, the other lessons--oh, most useful, most
important, the other lessons! but they are just a little serious.
Something to relieve her mind, sir--if you will forgive me for
mentioning it. I plead for innocent gaiety--let us dance!”
He played a few notes on the fiddle, and placed his right foot in
position, and waited amiably to begin. Sally thanked him, and made
the excuse that she was tired. She wished Amelius good night, without
waiting until they were alone together--and, for the first time, without
giving him the customary kiss.
Toff waited until she had gone, and approached his master on tiptoe,
with a low bow.
“May I take the liberty of expressing an opinion, sir. A young girl who
rejects the remedy of the fiddle presents a case of extreme gravity.
Don’t despair, sir! It is my pride and pleasure to be never at a loss,
where your interests are concerned. This is, I think, a matter for the
ministrations of a woman. If you have confidence in my wife, I venture
to suggest a visit from Madame Toff.”
He discreetly retired, and left his master to think about it.
The time passed--and Amelius was still thinking, and still as far as
ever from arriving at a conclusion, when he heard a door opened behind
him. Sally crossed the room before he could rise from his chair: her
cheeks were flushed, her eyes were bright, her hair fell loose over her
shoulders--she dropped at his feet, and hid her face on his knees. “I’m
an ungrateful wretch!” she burst out; “I never kissed you when I said
good night.”
With the best intentions, Amelius took the worst possible way of
composing her--he treated her trouble lightly. “Perhaps you forgot it?”
he said.
She lifted her head, and looked at him, with the tears in her eyes. “I’m
bad enough,” she answered; “but not so bad as that. Oh, don’t laugh!
there’s nothing to laugh at. Have you done with liking me? Are you angry
with me for behaving so badly all day, and bidding you good night as if
you were Toff? You shan’t be angry with me!” She jumped up, and sat on
his knee, and put her arms round his neck. “I haven’t been to bed,” she
whispered; “I was too miserable to go to sleep. I don’t know what’s been
the matter with me today. I seem to be losing the little sense I ever
had. Oh, if I could only make you understand how fond I am of you! And
yet I’ve had bitter thoughts, as if I was a burden to you, and I had
done a wrong thing in coming here--and you would have told me so, only
you pitied the poor wretch who had nowhere else to go.” She tightened
her hold round his neck, and laid her burning cheek against his face.
“Oh, Amelius, my heart is sore! Kiss me, and say, ‘Good night, Sally!’”
He was young--he was a man--for a moment he lost his self control; he
kissed her as he had never kissed her yet.
Then, he remembered; he recovered himself; he put her gently away
from him, and led her to the door of her room, and closed it on her in
silence. For a little while, he waited alone. The interval over, he rang
for Toff.
“Do you think your wife would take Miss Sally as an apprentice?” he
asked.
Toff looked astonished. “Whatever you wish, sir, my wife will do. Her
knowledge of the art of dressmaking is--” Words failed him to express
his wife’s immense capacity as a dressmaker. He kissed his hand in
mute enthusiasm, and blew the kiss in the direction of Madame Toff’s
establishment. “However,” he proceeded, “I ought to tell you one thing,
sir; the business is small, small, very small. But we are all in the
hands of Providence--the business will improve, one day.” He lifted his
shoulders and lifted his eyebrows, and looked perfectly satisfied with
his wife’s prospects.
“I will go and speak to Madame Toff myself, tomorrow morning,” Amelius
resumed. “It’s quite possible that I may be obliged to leave London for
a little while--and I must provide in some way for Miss Sally. Don’t
say a word about it to her yet, Toff, and don’t look miserable. If I go
away, I shall take you with me. Good night.”
Toff, with his handkerchief halfway to his eyes, recovered his native
cheerfulness. “I am invariably sick at sea, sir,” he said; “but, no
matter, I will attend you to the uttermost ends of the earth.”
So honest Amelius planned his way of escape from the critical position
in which he found himself. He went to his bed, troubled by anxieties
which kept him waking for many weary hours. Where was he to go to, when
he left Sally? If he could have known what had happened, on that very
day, on the other side of the Channel, he might have decided (in spite
of the obstacle of Mr. Farnaby) on surprising Regina by a visit to
Paris.