Harry could not give up shooting, Harry would not give up shooting, and
Harry did not give up shooting. On the contrary, he could, would, and
did shoot _every_ day, and all day long, except on Sundays, throughout
September and October; at least, there were so few exceptions that they
only proved the rule. Alice did not like it at all; at first she was
very miserable. One day Harry found her crying, and being considerably
surprised and greatly concerned at the unaccountable discovery, did
not rest until he had ascertained the cause, when he was particularly
shocked, and blamed himself so much, that he refrained from shooting
for two whole days, and really would have striven to reform his conduct,
only that, unfortunately, an invitation arrived to join a grand _battue_
at a certain Colonel Crossman’s. This, in his then frame of mind, he
would have refused; but there being a Mrs. Crossman in the case, Alice
was included in the invitation, and they were begged to stay three or
four days; which, as the Popem Park preserves were the best stocked
of any in the county, was an offer not lightly to be rejected. Thus,
unfortunately, they went--we say unfortunately, because Colonel Crossman
was, taken as a whole, a jovial, hot-tempered, selfish brute; and his
wife a quick-witted, worldly-minded, selfish fool. They did very well
together, because, as he usually lived out of the house, and she in it,
and both did exactly as they liked, when they liked, their faults seldom
clashed; if such a collision did take place, there was an awful tumult,
in which brutality had his way for the minute, and paid for it in minor
miseries which folly indicted upon him for the next fortnight. And yet
this amiable couple had a kind of theoretical and useless affection for
each other, which was engendered partly by habit, and partly by a deep
and essentially vulgar reverence for appearances, which, together with
going to church once on Sunday, stood them in the stead of religion
and of morality. Thus were they bad counsellors for our young married
couple. On the first morning of her visit, Alice was standing at the
drawing-room window, watching the figures of her husband and Colonel
Crossman striding through a turnip field about a quarter of a mile
distant, when Mrs. Crossman joined her.
“Ah! there they go,” she observed, in a vinegar-and-water voice; “we
shall see no more of them till seven o’clock, depend upon it.”
“Does Colonel Crossman never return to luncheon?” inquired Alice
timidly, for she stood slightly in awe of the female soldier beside her.
“Return to luncheon!” was the astonished reply, delivered in much such
a tone as might have been anticipated if Alice had inquired whether the
gallant colonel usually made his mid-day meal upon red-hot ploughshares;
“come home to luncheon! not he. He wouldn’t do such a thing to save my
life, I believe; certainly not if the scent was lying well. Why, Mr.
Coverdale does not spoil you in that way to be sure, does he? The
colonel told me he was a thorough sportsman.”
“So he is,” returned Alice with a sigh, which escaped her involuntarily.
“Ah! no woman with a heart should ever marry a sportsman,” rejoined
Mrs. Crossman, with rather more vinegar and less water in her tone than
before. “Out all day, from the first of September till the breeding
season comes round again; then the moment they’ve finished dinner and
their bottle of port-wine, asleep they go, and only wake to stamp and
swear with the cramp, and drop off again, till they tumble upstairs to
bed, and are no comfort to anybody. You are a young wife yet, my dear,
and your husband’s hardly grown tired of you, perhaps, but wait another
month or two and you’ll see--men are all alike!”
There was just enough applicability to her own case in this tirade to
make Alice feel rather angry and thoroughly uncomfortable; but the
idea of comparing Harry with Colonel Crossman was too bad, and anger
predominated as she replied, “Mr. Coverdale is not quite so selfish as
you imagine, my dear madam; certainly he left me a good deal alone when
the shooting season first began, but as soon as he was aware how dull
and lonely I felt, he gave up shooting for, for--”
“Half a day?” inquired Mrs. Crossman, sarcastically.
“He did not go out for two whole days; and since that he has generally
returned to luncheon,” replied Alice, colouring from vexation.
“Wonderful!” exclaimed Mrs. Crossman, with an affectation of extreme
surprise; “actually stayed at home for two whole days, when he’s been
married as many months--what a model man! Not that I believe Colonel
Crossman ever did so much as that even,” she continued, turning on the
vinegar. “I picked him up in India, you know--was actually weak enough
to fall in love with the creature! even went the length of refusing two
district judges and the resident at Bamboozel for his sake! And would
you believe it, we hadn’t been married above a week, when the man
was brute enough to go out hog-hunting, and leave me all by myself at
Boshbogie, on the borders of the great Flurry-yun-ghal Jungle, with
nothing more conversable than tawneys and tigers within thirty miles of
me; but, however, I was not long before I learned how to take care of
myself--and the sooner you do the same, my dear, the better for your
happiness. Men are easily enough managed if you do but set the right way
to work. If you choose to be always humble and meek to ’em, they’ll
let you lie down for them to wipe their boots on, but if you only show
them you’ve got a spirit of your own, and don’t care for ’em----
“But I don’t know that I have got what you call a spirit of my own,”
interrupted Alice, smiling at her companion’s vehemence, “and I
certainly do care about my husband.”
“Ah, my dear, that’s all very well now; but wait a bit--wait till some
day when he wants to go shooting, and you want him to do something else,
and then see of how much use your meekness and fondness will be to you.
He will think to himself, ‘Oh! she will be just as well pleased a couple
of hours hence, as if I had lost my day’s sport for her silly nonsense.’
I know he will, men are all alike. No; sooner or later you’ll find you
will have to pluck up a spirit, and treat your husband as he will treat
you. If he leaves you by yourself all day, fill your house with company;
if he goes out shooting and hunting with his friends, do you go out
riding or driving with yours; if he has his season in the country, do
you have yours in London; operas and shopping are amusements you’ve just
as good a right to, as he has to go popping at the partridges and
pheasants; and if you care so much about keeping him at home, hook some
young dandy (there will be plenty ready to nibble when such a bait as
your pretty face is hung out for them), and flirt with him steadily till
the desired effect is produced. That will bring your husband to his
senses, if anything will. I once settled the Colonel in three days by
going all respectable lengths with Adolphus Fitz-duckling. It led to a
duel, though; but that was because both Duck and Crossman were army men,
and mixed up with a fighting set. I took care never to go quite so far
again, except with a civilian; but then I hadn’t got such a quiet,
demure manner as you have. A set of impudent young puppies in the Old
43rd used to call me ‘Flirting Fan.’ However, I can tell you I was able
to keep the Colonel in much better order, ‘flirting him down,’ as I used
to call it, than I’ve ever managed to do since I grew old--that is, less
young than I was at that time.” And so this good woman, or rather this
woman who, despite her faults, had some good in her, whereby she
vindicated her title to humanity, ran on until Alice heartily wished her
back again amongst the tawneys, or the tigers: we are afraid that at
that especial moment our little heroine would decidedly have preferred
the latter.
In the meantime, Harry and the Colonel were blazing away at the
long-tails most unmercifully: Harry, who was a crack shot, bringing down
everything he pointed his gun at, while the Colonel, whose hand had
an awkward trick of shaking, as if its proprietor was in the habit of
imbibing too much port-wine, missed much oftener than was agreeable to
him, on each of which several occasions he attributed his failure to,
and condemned in no measured terms either the gun, or the bird, or
both. About two o’clock Harry pulled out his watch, and glancing at it
observed--“I don’t know what your arrangements may be, Colonel, but if
Mrs. Crossman is of as sociable a disposition as my little wife, she
will consider us great bears if we don’t return till dinner time.”
At this moment a splendid cock-pheasant rose, “whirring” into the air at
some considerable distance from the sportsmen, whereupon the Colonel,
considering it a difficult shot, called out, “Your bird, Coverdale.”
Harry, embarrassed with his watch, which he still held in his hand,
raised his gun, and catching his finger in the guard chain, pulled the
trigger too soon, and missed with both barrels, while the Colonel,
seeing that the pheasant was now so far off that it could be no
discredit to miss it, pulled at it, and by accident brought it down.
“Bravo! Colonel, that is the cleverest shot that has been made to-day by
long odds!” ejaculated Harry.
“Ah! that’s a trifle to what I used to do when I was your age,” was the
slightly apocryphal reply; “nothing with feathers or hair on it had
a chance, if I put my gun up at it, I can tell you. But what were you
saying about going home? why I’m just getting into shooting order;
you’re not knocking up, to be sure, already.”
“No; nor six hours’ more hard walking would not do it,” returned Harry,
laughing, as he mentally contrasted his own powers with those of the
Colonel, who, although he had carefully assigned all the toughest of
the work to his guest, was evidently beginning “to want his corn,”
as Coverdale metaphorically paraphrased the fact of his entertainer’s
requiring his luncheon. “I merely asked you whether Mrs. Crossman would
not disapprove of our remaining out all day?”
“Mrs. Crossman may go and----hang herself in her own petticoat strings!”
was the uncourteous rejoinder. “Ah! I see how it is,” continued the “old
soldier.”
“I see all about it: you’re a young hand yet, Coverdale, and I’m an old
one; take my advice. You’ve married a nice gal, and a pretty gal--don’t
you go and spoil her; it’s the nature of women to like to have their own
way; and one of their ways--and a most aggravating and unaccountable one
it is--is always to have a fellow dangling about after them, and there
they’ll keep him driving ’em out, or riding with ’em, or dawdling
in shops, and paying their bills for ’em--they don’t forget that, mind
you--or reading to ’em, or some such confounded humbug. Hang it, sir,
I’d sooner be a galley-slave, or a black nigger at once! Well, if you
begin by indulging a woman (they’re all alike in such points), she’ll
be your master ever after, and your life won’t be worth a----” (As we
do not know the exact value of the coin to which the Colonel alluded,
we abstain from a more particular mention of it). “No; if you’re to have
any peace or comfort in the married state, you must let your wife see
that you’re determined to show you’re the superior. The only way to do
it effectually is--come to heel, Countess, ah! would you then!” (and
whack, whack went the dog-whip against poor Countess’s sides)--“the only
way to break ’em in is--(whack)--to show ’em clearly whose will
is the strongest, and whose must yield. I had trouble enough with Mrs.
Crossman, I can assure you. She was not an easy woman to break in, sir;
but she found she’d met her match. If she scolded, I stormed; if she
raved, I swore; if she sulked, I whistled; if she cried, I lit a cigar;
if she fainted, I laid her on the hardest board that I could pick out in
the floor, and smoked till she came round again. The only time she went
into hysterics I flung a pail of cold water over her--that cured her
at once and for ever. I dare say you think me an old brute, but the day
will come when you’ll recollect my advice, and be glad enough to act
upon it. Women are all alike, more or less.”
Harry _did_ think him an old brute, and thanked his stars that neither
in mind nor in person did Alice in the smallest degree resemble Mrs.
Crossman; he also thought that he should never remember the Colonel’s
advice with any other feeling than disgust. Ah! Harry--Harry!