“Harry! My dear Harry!--Wilkins, where _is_ your master? I _told_
you I must speak to him before he went out, and now you’ve let him go
without----”
“Wilkins! where the d------ Oh! Wilkins, what did you do with that bag
of snipe-shot I brought down from London?”
Thus apostrophised by an agitated _soprano_ at the drawing-room door,
and an impatient _tenore robusto_ in the entrance-hall, Wilkins, the
amiable and timid London butler, who had played the character of Job’s
comforter to Alice’s _Didone abandonata_ on the memorable evening of
the first of September, made two or three steps in the direction of the
drawing-room, then twisting round with a sudden jerk, as though he had
been worked by machinery with which somebody was playing tricks, rushed
frantically into the hall, and handing his master a wrong bag of shot
exclaimed, without any breath left--
“This--a--is them, sir; and my mistress--a--says----”
“Swan-shot, you fool--that is, Wilkins, big enough to roll over a
bullock! It’s the snipe-shot I’m looking for. No, not that. Don’t you
know snipe-shot when you see it? When the scent’s getting duller every
minute, too! I ought to have been out these two hours. That’s right, my
good fellow: don’t be a month about it--give it me. I shall be home to
dinner.”
“But my mistress particularly wishes to speak----” faltered poor
Wilkins. Harry, flinging down with an angry gesture the shot-belt he had
just filled, and muttering that he had better give up going out at all,
strode off to the drawing-room, and putting his head in through the
partially opened door, as though he were afraid of being taken prisoner
if he trusted himself bodily in the apartment, exclaimed--
“How, then, little woman, what is it? Quick, please, for I want to be
off.”
“There is an invitation just arrived from Allerton House for Tuesday
week. What am I to say?”
“Oh, we must go, of course. I want you to get intimate with Lady
Allerton, she’s a charming woman, and Lord George is a good little
fellow in his way, though an awfully bad shot. Dinner, I suppose?”
“Yes; but, Harry, wait one moment and listen to me!” exclaimed Alice.
“You need not be in such a hurry; you will have plenty of time for that
horrid shooting before six o’clock.”
“Horrid shooting, indeed! Much you know about it,” muttered the
victimised sportsman, inwardly chafing at the delay; “it will be horrid
shooting in one sense, if I am hindered much longer. The scent won’t lie
when the dew is off, and I may as well go out with a walking-stick as
with a gun, for there will be nothing to shoot at.”
“Well, I’ll let you go directly, you impatient, silly boy,” returned
Alice, smiling at the serious, business-like view her husband took of
his amusement. “The only thing I wish to say is, that if we accept this
invitation, we shall be almost certain to meet the Duke and Duchess of
Brentwood there; and you know I’ve been waiting for you to go with me,
day after day, and I’ve never returned their visit yet. You must take me
to call before Tuesday week; I’ve been quite rude already.”
“All right,” returned Harry; “we’ll go in style, and call on the old
duchess. I’ll wear a red coat, and stick a peacock’s feather in my hat,
if that will please you. It’s a pity she’s so like a Chimpanzee! Most
probably she is related to the monkey tribe--suppose we ask her when we
call; it will be a new and original style of conversation, eh? Well,
ta ta! It’s so late now that I’m afraid you won’t have the felicity of
seeing me again till dinner-time;” and without allowing his wife an
opportunity of remonstrating, Harry closed the door, and was soon paying
off the long-bills in a way in which they scarcely approved of having
their “little accounts” settled. Alice watched him depart with a smile,
which faded into a sigh as she turned to write an acceptance to the
dinner invitation, and then employ and amuse herself as best she might,
during the weary hours which must elapse ere her husband would return.
Lord Allerton was the eldest son of the Duke and Duchess of Brentwood,
who were the great people, _par excellence_, of the Coverdale Park
neighbourhood; and when the Duke and Duchess came to spend their
Christmas in the country, Alice, stimulated thereunto by the
conversation of the Mesdames Jones, Brown, and Robinson of those parts,
felt slightly curious to know whether these ancient and venerable
limbs of the aristocracy would deign to honour her by a call, and was
proportionably gratified and bored when, on a dreary morning, the dull
old Duchess came and paid her a singularly heavy and uninteresting
visit. To induce Harry to accompany her when she returned this equally
flattering and alarming civility, had been for several days the sole
object of Alice’s existence,--an object in which, as the reader
may perceive by the foregoing conversation, she had hitherto been
unsuccessful.
The next morning Alice once again made an attempt to entice her better
half away from the pleasures of the plains; but the rabbits had begun
barking the young ash-trees in a favourite plantation, and were to be
“pulled down” accordingly. This occupation lasted several days; at the
expiration of which period certain poachers, choosing to join in the
amusement uninvited, had to be “pulled up” for their iniquities--a
series of ups and downs which left only two days vacant before the
important Tuesday dedicated to the dinner-party at Allerton would
arrive. The first of these days it rained cats and dogs, and snowed
fragments of polar bears so decidedly, that even Harry could not get out
till about half-past three, when, in desperation, he enveloped himself
in a Macintosh, and galloped over to _the_ town, five miles off (as all
towns are from all country houses), to match some ribbon for Alice, and
look at the newspaper on his own account. The _County Press_ was
just out, and therein Harry perceived a leading article attacking the
decision arrived at by himself and his brother magistrates in the
case of the “pulled up” poachers. This being equally irritating and
interesting, he sat down in the reading-room of the library diligently
to peruse the same--phsa-ing, pish-ing, and “confounding the fellow”
at every second line. He had just got to a paragraph beginning,
“Mr. C--d--le may be well qualified to lead the way across a stiff line
of country after the hounds, or roll over unoffending hares and rabbits
in a _battue_--but that is no proof that he possesses an equal right
to ride rough-shod over the enactments of a British Parliament, or to
overturn the decrees of abler lawyers than are to be found among the
bench of magistrates at H--------,” when a large hand was placed over
his eyes, and a loud, jovial voice exclaimed--
“Never mind, Harry, my boy--little Flipkins the editor’s got a wife with
the devil’s own temper, and she helps him to write the leaders; she took
a dislike to you when she was Miss Jamby, and kept the confectioner’s
shop, when you neglected her, and flirted with the girl behind the
counter, because she happened to be the prettiest, and now she’s paying
you off; you can’t horsewhip a woman, you know, so you’d better take it
easy.”
Before the speaker had arrived at the conclusion of his advice gratis,
Coverdale had removed the hand which impeded his vision, and turning
round, exclaimed--
“Why, it’s Tom Rattleworth, by all that’s extraordinary--I thought you
were in Canada, with your regiment, man!”
“So I was till the gout carried off the governor, and left me a
miserable orphan with £15,000 a-year in my pocket. When that lamentable
event occurred I thought I was, for the first time in my life, worth
taking care of, so determined to cut the red cloth and pipe-clay
business, and come home and live virtuously ever after.”
“You seem to have recovered your spirits pretty well, if one may judge
by present appearances,” returned Coverdale, half-amused, half-disgusted
at his quondam friend’s sentiments--“at all events you’ve not grown thin
upon it.”
“No! but that’s the very fact which proves how deeply I feel my forlorn
condition; it’s old Falstaff--is it not--observes how grief swells a
man? I don’t ride a pound under twelve stone,” was the rejoinder. “By
the way,” continued Rattleworth, “that reminds me--it’s deucedly lucky
I met you; you’re the very man that can tell me all about it--Broomfield
is anxious to give up the fox-hounds; he is growing old and lazy, and he
wants me to take ’em.”
“My dear fellow, I’m delighted to hear it,” exclaimed Harry, eagerly;
“old Broomfield is completely past his work, and of all the men I know
you’re the fittest to succeed him--you will do the thing as it ought
to be done. I should have undertaken them myself, if I had not become a
Benedict: Broomfield tried to persuade me.”
“Well now look here,” resumed Rattleworth, meditatively; “I’ve promised
to meet Broomfield to-morrow, and take his horses and everything at a
valuation. Now there is not a man in the county whose opinion about a
horse I’d sooner have than yours; can you spare time to go with me? I
shall really consider it a personal favour if you will do so.”
“Of course I will,” returned Harry; for if he had a weak point on
which he was accessible to flattery, it was concerning his knowledge of
horse-flesh; “there can be nothing I should like better, in fact--what
time do you go?”
“I was to lunch with him at one,” was the reply; “and we were to look at
his stud afterwards.”
“Then I’ll meet you at the cross roads by Hanger Wood, at half-past
twelve,” returned Harry; and so, with a hearty shake of the hand, the
friends parted.
Tom Rattleworth was the only son of a man who had begun life as a
land-agent and attorney in H----------; but having very early in his
career dabbled in stock-jobbing till he made a considerable sum of
money, which his business connection enabled him to lay out to great
advantage, he grew rich, purchased an estate, married into one of the
county families, and brought his son up “as a gentleman”--that is, he
sent him to Eton, where he learned nothing but how to get into and out
of scrapes; and bought him a commission which he would have done better
without. Nature having thus placed a silver spoon in Tom’s mouth,
appeared to consider his head sufficiently furnished without going to
any unusual expense in the article of brains; so she gave him barely an
average quantity, and made up the deficiency by an actual passion for
horse-flesh. Thomas, thus endowed, was the schoolfellow and holiday
associate of Harry Coverdale; and having one, and only one taste in
common, they had kept up their intimacy, until Harry started on his
grand tour, and Tom was sent with his regiment to Canada, since which
period the interview we have just described was their first meeting.
As Coverdale cantered home through the mud, and rain, and sleet, it
suddenly flashed across him that the next was the only day remaining in
which to call on the Duke and Duchess of Brentwood before the dinner at
Allerton House; and his conscience smote him as he reflected that the
engagement he had formed would prevent him from accompanying Alice;
indeed, so annoyed did he feel at this unlucky coincidence, that for a
moment he was on the point of turning his horse’s head, and riding after
Tom Rattleworth to get off the engagement; but it was growing dusk, and
he reflected that Chase Hall, the residence of the renowned Thomas,
was so far out of his way that he should be unable to reach home by
dinner-time, and then Alice would get frightened about him, which would
annoy her more than being obliged to pay her visit alone; so with this
bit of sophistry he, for the moment, quieted his conscience. Before he
arrived at his own house, he had mentally decided that, as it would only
worry his wife, he should say nothing about the Rattleworth engagement
to her that evening, and that in the morning he should mention it as an
equally unfortunate and unavoidable necessity, and persuade her to pay
the first visit without him. Of course she would be a little
annoyed just at first, but she was so sweet-tempered and amiable,
that--that--and here his reflections refused to clothe themselves in
intelligible language;--had they done so honestly, the sentence would
have ended thus--“that she would submit without making a scene.” And
so he cantered home, where Alice, with her sunny smile and bright loving
eyes, was waiting to receive him, and made a vast fuss with the poor
dear because he must be so wet, which, thanks to Mr. Macintosh--his
admirable invention--he was not in the slightest degree, though he
appreciated the affectionate fuss Alice made about him all the same.
Harry! you blind, stupid Harry!--as if her little finger, bless it, were
not worth all the horse-flesh that ever was foaled, from Bucephalus,
down to the winner of the last Derby.
The next morning was a very fine one. Alice and Harry made their
appearance in the breakfast parlour about nine o’clock; each was a
little out of sorts. Alice, not having been able to get any air or
exercise on the previous day, had waked with a headache, which Harry
continually forgetting, would leave the door of his dressing-room open,
and attire himself to the tune of “A hunting we will go.” Then a new
morning gown, on which Miss Flippery, the dressmaker at H--------, had
staked her credit, did not fit, and in turning round to look at the
set of the back, Alice trod on the skirt, and tore it out of the
“gathers”--whatever they may be; and as women seldom swear, and the evil
was scarcely serious enough to cry over, poor little Mrs. Coverdale was
unable to vent her annoyance, and brought it down to breakfast with her
accordingly. Harry, on the other hand, conscious that he was about
to commit an act of injustice, on which (although he repented of it
sufficiently to feel very uncomfortable) he was still determined, tried
to keep up his courage by affecting a degree of hilarity which caused
him to make bad jokes about every subject mentioned, and to evince
such a total want of sympathy with his wife’s headache and consequent
depression of spirits, that Alice for the first time in her life
considered him tiresome and in the way, and felt inclined to say sharp
things to him and snub him. After a longish pause, interrupted only
when, on two occasions, Harry was pulled up for whistling, and a third
time for beating the devil’s tattoo on the chimney-piece, Alice
began, “Really Wilkins has taken to burning the toast so black, it is
impossible to eat it. I wish you would speak to him about it, Harry.”
“Certainly, my love,” was the cheerful reply; “what shall I say to him?
That although I approve of his blacking my boots, I disapprove of his
blacking my toast, and that I shall thank him to do it brown in future?”
“If you like to risk the chance, which is almost a certainty, that the
man will misunderstand you, for the sake of making a stupid slang pun, I
advise you to do so,” was the captious reply.
“Phew!” whistled Harry; “how solemn, and sensible, and serious we’ve
grown all of a sudden! I beg to inform you, Mrs. Coverdale that I expect
my wife to admire my puns, if nobody else does.”
“Then you must contrive to make better ones, and to time them rather
more appropriately,” rejoined Alice, so snappishly that her husband
looked up in surprise. Recalled to herself by the unmistakeable
astonishment depicted on the bright, good-natured countenance of her
better half, Alice continued in a milder tone, “You must not mind what I
say this morning, Harry, dear; my headache makes me so dreadfully cross
and stupid.”
“Poor little thing! you were shut up all yesterday, you know, and that
is enough to give anybody a headache,” returned Harry, who considered
houses were built only to dine and sleep in, and would have had Alice
spend her days _al fresco_, even as he delighted to do. “You must go out
as much as possible to-day; luckily it is very fine.”
“Yes; and I am to be honoured with my husband’s company too, which is
a most unaccustomed pleasure,” rejoined Alice, brightening up at the
recollection. “It is certainly very good policy to make yourself so
scarce, though I wish you did not adhere quite so strictly to it; why
you have not driven out with me since we returned from Popem Park! At
what time do you mean to order the carriage?”
“Why it’s an hour’s drive at least; James had better be at the door by
two o’clock,” replied Harry. Then turning towards the fire, and moving
the ornaments on the chimney-piece into wrong positions, he continued,
with an elaborate attempt at _nonchalance_, which veiled most
inefficiently his consciousness that he was about to perform an act
against which his moral sense rebelled, he resumed: “I’m afraid my love
that I must ask you to call upon the Duchess of Brentwood without me
this morning--a business engagement of--a--importance--that is, one that
I cannot avoid, will, I am afraid----”
And here he broke off abruptly, for, glancing at his wife, he perceived
an expression in her pretty face that he had never beheld there before;
the bright eyes were flashing, the soft cheeks burned, and the coral
lips pouted with unmistakeable anger. Harry had at length gone too far,
and his sweet-tempered, loving-hearted little wife was positively and
seriously angry with him. But so unusual a circumstance demands a fresh
chapter.