We stayed all that night at Waterflag, as we always did when we dined
with the Sedgwicks, and of course I was subjected to a long private and
confidential conversation with Mrs. Harley in my dressing-room, when we
both ought to have been at rest. She poured out her anxieties upon me as
she had done many a long year ago, when all these young people were
unconscious little children, and Dr. Harley, poor good man, was newly
dead. Only Time had changed both of us since then--she had become an old
woman with silver-white hair under her snowy cap. I was old too, though
my boy was but a child, and kept me nearer to youth than belonged to my
years; but Mrs. Harley was as glad of this outlet to her anxieties, and
felt as much relief in pouring these anxieties forth upon somebody
else’s shoulders as ever.
“Ah, Clare!” she said, “you have only one, to be sure, and he’s nobly
provided for; but we’re never so happy, though we don’t think it, as
when they’re all children. There’s nothing but measles and such things
to frighten one _then_--but _now_!--dear, dear! the charge of all these
grown up young people, Clare, is far too much for a poor woman like me.
I believe I shall break down all at once, one of these days.”
“Let us take it quietly,” said I, “they are very good, sensible,
well-educated young people--they know what they are doing--don’t you
think you might trust them to act for themselves?”
“They will, whether I trust them or not,” sighed poor Mrs. Harley. “Ah
dear! to think how one toils and denies one’s self for one’s family, and
how little account they make of one’s wishes when all is done! I think
mine have quite set themselves--all but Clara, dear girl, who is so
perfectly satisfactory in every way--to thwart and cross me, Alice--you
know how unreasonable she is--I can do nothing with her. Just the thing
of all others that I could have chosen for her, and such a nice,
excellent, judicious young man. You saw how she behaved to him
to-night.”
“But really, Mrs. Harley, if Alice doesn’t like him”--I interposed with
humility.
“Oh, nonsense--she does like him--at least, she doesn’t like anybody
else that I know of--and why shouldn’t she like him?” asked the
exasperated mother. “You know, Mrs. Crofton, that my poor income dies
with me--and there is Johnnie, poor child, to make some provision for,
and when I die what will she do?--though to be sure,” concluded Mrs.
Harley, drawing herself up a little, “I am not the sort of person to
marry my daughters merely for an establishment--that never was my way.
This case, you must perceive, Clare, is quite different. He is such a
very nice--such an entirely satisfactory person; and the position--I was
a clergyman’s wife myself, and I would choose that sphere rather than
any other for Alice; and as for liking, I really cannot see a single
reason why she should not like him, do you?”
“Why, no--except just, perhaps, that--I fear--she doesn’t,” said I, with
hesitation; for I confess this superlative mother’s argument quite
nonplused me. After all, why shouldn’t she like that good, young,
handsome Rector? I reserved the question for private consideration, but
was a little staggered by the strength of Mrs. Harley’s case.
“My opinion is that Alice thinks it rather a merit to refuse an eligible
person,” said Mrs. Harley--“like all these young people. There is
Maurice, too--you will not believe it, Clare--but Maurice has actually
had the folly to fall in love with Francis Owen’s sister in
Simonborough. I could not believe my ears when I heard of it first.
Maurice, who has always been such a very prudent boy! She is a very
nice, pretty girl, but, of course has not a penny--and Maurice has
nothing but his fellowship. It is a pretty mess altogether. In the very
best view of the case, if Maurice even had been content to think like
other people, and had a nice living waiting for him, they might both
have done better--_he_ might have done a _great_ deal better at least.
But, no!--when they find somebody quite unsuitable, that is the very
thing to please young people in these days; and there is my son,
Clare--my eldest son--who was never intended for any profession but the
Church--actually broaching all kinds of wild schemes about work, and
talking of going to Australia, or taking a laborer’s hod, or any other
wild thing he can think of; it is enough to break my heart!”
“Then do you mean that Maurice intends to throw up his fellowship, and
marry?” said I, thinking this too good news to be true.
Mrs. Harley shook her head.
“It is all a muddle,” she said, “there is no satisfaction at all in it;
she thought he flirted with Miss Reredos, and he thought she flirted
with some of the officers; and Miss Reredos has such a grudge at him
for falling in love with anybody but herself, that she did all she could
to help them to a quarrel; and a very good thing, too, for of course
they never would have been so mad as to marry, and I dislike long
engagements exceedingly; only since then it is really almost impossible
to endure Maurice in the house. He is _so_ ill-tempered, it is really
quite dreadful. I am sure, when I was young, I never gave my parents any
uneasiness about me, yet my two eldest children seem to think it quite
an amusement to worry me out of my life.”
“Let us believe they don’t do it on purpose,” said I; “troubles never
come single, you know--and I daresay this is the most critical time of
their life.”
“Ah, Alice should have had all these affairs over long ago!” said Mrs.
Harley, disapprovingly; “Alice is seven and twenty, Mrs. Crofton--she
ought to have been settled in life years ago. I am sure, considering all
the opportunities she has had, it is quite disgraceful. I can’t help
feeling that people--her father’s friends, for instance--will blame me.”
I found it difficult not to smile at this refinement of maternal
anxiety, but after a while succeeded in soothing the good mother, whose
mind was evidently eased by the utterance, and persuading her that
everything would come right. She went away shaking her head, but smiling
through her anxious looks. She laid down her burden at my door, and left
it there. When she had gone I took up my portion of it with sundry
compunctions. Bertie Nugent had been seven years away--when he went away
Alice was scarcely twenty. They had of course been very much in each
other’s society before this, but seven years is a long break, even for
lovers. These two were not lovers; and was not Clara right when she
stigmatized as the merest foolish romance any interest which Alice might
have in her long-departed and indifferent playfellow? I began to blame
myself for cherishing in my own mind the lingering hope that my wishes
might still be accomplished concerning them. Perhaps that hope had, by
some subtle means, betrayed itself to Alice, and had helped to
strengthen her in her natural perversity and the romance of that vague
visionary link which existed only in her mind and mine. I have known
very similar cases more than once in my life--cases in which a childish
liking, kept up only by chance inquiries or friendly messages at long
intervals on one side or the other, has forestalled the imagination of
the two subjects of it so completely, that both have kept from all
engagements for years, until at long and last, encountering each other
once again, they have discovered themselves to have loved each other all
this time, and married out of hand. This vague sort of tie, which is no
tie, has a more captivating hold upon the mind than a real engagement;
but then it might come to nothing. And after an interval of seven years,
was it not everybody’s duty to turn the dreamer away from that romantic
distance to the real ground close at hand? I had considered the question
many times with too strong a regard for Bertie (who, to be sure, had no
particular solicitude about the matter, or he might have been home long
ago) in my thoughts. Now I rather changed my point of view. If Alice
liked Bertie, it was purely a love of the imagination. Why, for that
Will-o’-the-wisp, was she to keep dreaming in the twilight while the
broad daylight of life and all its active duties were gliding out of her
reach? I resolved to bestir myself and startle Alice into common sense
and ordinary prudence. Here was she, letting youth pass her, not
perceiving how it went, looking so far away out of her horizon to that
fantastic, unreal attraction at the other end of the world. Thinking
over it I grew more and more dissatisfied. She was wrong to entertain,
I was wrong to encourage, so uncomfortable a piece of self-delusion. It
is true, Bertie was in danger, and surrounded with a flush of interest
and anxiety which doubled his claims on everybody who knew him. Still it
must not be permitted to continue--she must be roused out of this vain
imaginary attachment which blinded her to the love that sought her close
at hand. Why did she not like the Rector? I resolved to be at the bottom
of that question, which I could not answer, before twenty-four hours
were out.