Twenty-one--what a change from fourteen! How the pulse of life beats and
bounds! I was running a tilt at the pastimes, and doffing aside the
cares of early manhood, when for the second time, I came across Mary
Verner. Plump upon her, I would say, if I thought you would pardon the
coarseness of the expression. At any rate--and to be genteel--it was
unexpectedly. Twenty-one gives very few thoughts to fourteen. It may be
a much longer distance thither, when one starts at seventy to go back;
but it is surprising how much more quickly you get over the intermediate
ground. Let that be; only I don't believe I had given a thought to Mary
Verner, since the week or two that followed my first interview with her.
"Do come and dine with us on Monday," said my friend Mrs. F.; "there
will be a very charming girl here, whom you would like to see."
"Positively?"
"_Sans faute!_"
"Then keep a place for me; I'll come."
I went. It was a formal dinner-party. In the drawing-room, before going
to table, Mrs. F. came across to me.
"Now I'll introduce you to our belle of the evening. You may escort her
down to dinner. There she is, half-hidden behind that drapery. You can't
have noticed her."
"Miss Verner, let me present Mr. Cuthbert."
I should have recognized Mary Verner, as she looked up, with those
widely-opening brown eyes of hers, if her name had not been mentioned.
As it was, it was quite natural for me to remark that I believed I had
had the pleasure of seeing Miss Verner before.
And so in a few moments we were gossipping cosily about "old times," as
we, not very old people, called them.
The beautiful child had expanded into a very lovely woman, preserving
still the same characteristics of person and expression. The charm of
her voice was the same. You may be sure that when seated by her side,
with the becoming glow of lamp-light overhead heightening, if possible,
those attractions which I rather hint than attempt to describe--you may
be sure, I say, that I found her very captivating.
We talked of her brother George; of the pleasant house wherein I first
met her, and which was still her home; of her amiable and lady-like
mother who was still living; of the old pony now gathered to his sires;
of the old chestnut-trees even--in short, of all those unimportant
associations, out of which, under such circumstances, one endeavours to
establish a trivial and flitting but very pleasant little bond of
sympathy.
I declare I was half ready to fall head over ears in love with her. And
she took it all with a simple unaffected grace, that seemed to be her
very nature.
But we did not have all the talk to ourselves. I had not the presumption
to engross her entirely. Nor would it have been possible. She was--there
is no need to go over it all again--she was Mary Verner.
Nearly opposite to us at table sat a Mr. Easton, a young
barrister--young, that is professionally, for he was apparently a man of
thirty or thereabouts. He would not have been singled out as a
lady-killer, for he was none of your regular Adonises, such as hang by
dozens, in portraiture, upon the walls of our Royal Academy Exhibitions,
and lounge complacently in our Fop's Alley at the Opera. When, however,
the excitement of conversation--in which he took an active and most
intelligent part--developed the fine play of his features, you would
have pronounced him a man who added, to a cultivated and superior mind,
a look that bespoke such gift. In fact there was a manly air about him,
that claimed respect, if it did not challenge attention.
About the time when I made this notable discovery, I recollected that at
the moment of my introduction to Miss Verner, Mr. Easton was gossipping
with her in the secluded corner half-hidden by the drapery, though he
moved away, with perfect good breeding, to give place to the new-comer.
About this time, too, there began--at which end of the table, I
forget--an occasional play of badinage, whereof Mr. Easton was the
subject. For a grave and earnest man, he seemed to receive it all in
exceedingly good part. To my surprise also--to say nothing of
annoyance--my fair neighbour was brought, after a while, within its
scope. Neither did she--I was forced to acknowledge within
myself--evince either _mauvaise honte_ or sensitiveness. The truth was
plain. They were engaged.
As a child's card-built house tumbles down when the table is shaken, so
down went one of the prettiest little castles-in-the-air, that ever
simpleton built out of cards of his own shaping.
Down it went; though I flatter myself I was too much a man of the world,
to let a glimpse of its dislocated plan be apparent. Indeed, in a few
seconds, I had rallied myself on my own absurdity; gulped down my
disappointment; and resigned myself again to the charm that Mary Verner
still shed around her, if its tint was somewhat changed. Besides, I
availed myself of the sudden opportunity thus afforded, for testing the
practical value of one of my favourite theories, when I was a young
fellow and affected to bask in the sunshine of human nature: to wit,
that, apart from serious love-making, when a woman in either married or
betrothed, she has therefrom an additional feather in her social cap. So
have I found it through life--always provided that the attractive and
companionable qualities were otherwise in abundance. And this theory has
at least given heartiness to my good wishes for my fairer acquaintances
and friends. Is it not better to come to such a philosophical
conclusion, than to be always envying other people's good fortune?
Shifting, therefore, my ground, I was rapidly possessed by a strong
interest in Miss Verner's future welfare--much of which was undoubtedly
genuine.
Delicately, and by gently leading her on, I gathered something of the
story of her courtship, though I must needs confess that I cannot now
call to mind a word of it. It may be of more interest to state that she
was to make Mr. Easton the happiest of men, within six weeks or so of
that time; and that the honey-moon was to be spent in a ramble on the
Continent. Very emphatically and very sincerely did I wish her a
pleasant time of it.
But the most agreeable evenings will come to a close. This one--with its
revival of a boy's casual acquaintance, with its momentary
castle-building, and its subsequent benevolence of feeling--this one,
like all others, passed away. It did not die out, as the fag-end of a
dinner-party sometimes will; it was cut short to me by the "good night!"
of Mary Verner, as she took her departure, leaning on Mr. Easton's arm,
in the train of an elderly female relative.
When the drawing-room door closed upon her graceful figure, I felt for a
moment as though the gas had been suddenly turned off. I recollect,
however, the hostess's observation, dropped to the accompaniment of a
playfully malicious smile:
"Didn't I tell you, you would like my friend Mary Verner?"
"Yes," was the reply, "and I have passed a most delightful evening; but
I don't think it quite fair, Mrs. F."--here there was a terrible smash
of the theory--"to open the gates of Paradise, and then slam them in a
poor fellow's face?"
I was to have gone, that night, to a ball in Devonshire Place, expressly
to meet--Never mind; I was not in the humour for dancing or flirting. I
went straight home, and to bed. I tossed about a good deal, and finally
dreamed about George and the pony, and that I was climbing the old
chestnut-trees. As for Mary Verner, I couldn't in my sleep conjure up
her image. When I thought I had it--as is the way in dreams, you know,
if you ever studied them--I couldn't get nearer to her than the plaguy
old family coachman. It was only when broad awake, the next morning,
that I found myself strongly impressed by this, my second meeting. But
again--such is life and such is youth--the impression was soon stowed
away on an upper shelf in memory's garret.