THE SINGULAR WOOING
He looked very nice--it is a principle of mine to tell the truth
always, or, at least, nearly always; so I will go so far as to assert
that he looked positively delicious. Because he did. He wore no
overcoat. As he stood at the open door, with his hat in his hand, and
just that flavour of impertinence about his smile and bearing and
general deportment which does become some men, he struck me--even in
that moment of so many agitations--not only as being extremely
good-looking, which he undoubtedly was, but also as one of those
recklessly, and criminally, delightful persons with whom one could
hardly help having a really first-rate time. His manner, when he
spoke, was suavity itself. He had a pleasant voice, and a
take-it-for-granted air which was in keeping with his mischievous eyes
and his moustache and his white waistcoat.
“I thought it was you.” Did he? How good of him! What business had he
to think about it at all? “There has been a misunderstanding. My
sister directed you to the wrong carriage. This is my sister’s
carriage. May I ask you to take the trouble to transfer yourself to
it.”
I hesitated, or I should have hesitated, had it not been for that
wicked and presumptuous old man.
“Who are you, sir? What do you mean by detaining my carriage, sir? Go
away, sir, and shut the door, and allow my carriage to proceed. This
lady is with me.”
She might be, but not intentionally, and the even dim suggestion that
she was, was sufficient to settle the question on the spot. I paid no
attention to him whatever. I addressed myself solely and entirely to
the brown man.
“So kind of you to take so much trouble, and so sweet of your sister
to let me have her carriage. I expect that the mistake was mine.”
Though, considering the care she had taken to particularise the
vehicle which I was to enter, I did not see how that could be, but
that was by the way. “If I may intrude.”
I proceeded to descend. My ancient companion endeavoured to stop me.
“My dear young lady, don’t leave me--only too delighted--take you
anywhere!” Then he descended to the vernacular, altogether oblivious
of the solemn truth that the fact of his having nearly, if not quite,
attained to the Psalmist’s span should have induced him to pay some
regard to the proprieties. “It’s hard lines your throwing me over like
this--uncommonly hard lines--especially considering the row I’m booked
for anyhow. I don’t call it a ladylike thing to do!”
His notions of what was, and of what was not, a ladylike thing to do
were probably so distinctly his own that they could hardly be expected
to interest me. At any rate, they did not. I just crossed over to the
brown man’s sister’s carriage, and left him to formulate--I believe
that is the proper word, but if not I cannot help it--his views on
ladies and things at his leisure.
It was an odd sensation passing from one brougham to the other.
Broughams with us are represented by vehicles from the livery stables.
People sometimes, indeed often, take mamma and the girls in their
broughams; but no one, since I was the merest child, ever betrayed the
slightest desire to take me--not even to play the part of gooseberry.
This unwonted actual anxiety to place absolutely charming conveyances
at my disposal was most refreshing--to say no more. I had already been
in a private omnibus--which, after all, was not so bad; in that bad
old man’s wife’s carriage--which was a pet; and now I was in the most
scrumptious little vehicle you could possibly imagine--and all in the
course of a single evening. If I progressed at this rate I might find
myself riding in the Lord Mayor’s coach before I went to bed.
Before many moments had elapsed, however, it began to dawn upon me
that, so far as company was concerned, from certainly one point of
view, I might not have made an altogether felicitous exchange. The
brown man moved in seven-league boots. Compared to the rapidity of his
advance, my previous companion had merely stumbled along. But then, of
course, he was very much older.
We had been bowling along in silence, and I was beginning to wonder if
I could possibly be in for a Quaker’s meeting, when my new companion
put an end to any fears I might have had on that point by saying, in
the calmest voice in the world, the sort of voice in which he would
have referred to the possibility of a shower of rain:
“I wonder if we can get married in the morning.”
I jumped, not boisterously, perhaps, but I certainly did jump.
“I beg your pardon?” I observed.
“I say that I was wondering if we can get married in the morning. My
uncle’s the Bishop of Battersea. I believe that you can get special
licences from Bishops and persons of that sort while you wait. I’ve a
suspicion that he turns in early: he’s that kind of character. The
question is, whether I shall assail him at this hour of the night, or
rout him out with the milk in the morning--which would he dislike
least? I don’t want to hurt the poor dear man’s feelings more than I
can help.”
It was as if a drop of ice-cold water had gone trickling down my
spinal column. I had to shiver. Could the brown man be insane? And so
good-looking! I endeavoured--if such were the case--to lead him back
to lines of comparative sanity.
“It’s wonderfully good of your sister to lend me her beautiful
carriage.”
His answer did startle me.
“She didn’t. Don’t suppose it.”
“But--she offered it to me herself.”
“That’s her artfulness. Louisa is artful. When I told her I wanted her
brougham--for you; her brougham gives the thing an air--she said she’d
see me farther first. So, when I went off to nobble it, waylaying you,
she carted you off in someone else’s. Very neat indeed--Louisa’s no
fool.”
This statement of the facts of the case, as they appeared to him, took
my breath away. It might be true.
“Then am I to understand that your sister does not know that I am in
her brougham?”
“She knows. You may bet on Louisa’s knowing.”
“Then am I here contrary to her wish?”
“What’s the use of worrying about trifles? never do. What’s troubling
me is the much more serious question as to whether we can be married
in the morning. The Bishop’s an unmanageable creature. Used to be my
tutor. Short of throwing things at him, you never could get him to
behave with decency. You can’t throw things at a Bishop. It’s not good
form. Do you know anything about that sort of thing?”
“About what sort of thing?”
“Special licences, and so on.”
“Will you have the kindness to ask your coachman to stop the next cab
we come to, and I will get into it.”
“I say! Really! You mustn’t talk like that!”
“It seems to me very much as if I must talk like that. I appear to be
riding in your sister’s carriage against her wish, and you certainly
are talking in a strain which would seem to hint at there being
something the matter with your mental balance. I should be sorry to
seem discourteous, but I prefer a cab.”
He looked at me with his impertinent eyes in a way which made me
thrill all over. It is entirely impossible for a person like me--who
hardly knows one end of a pen from the other, and does not want to--to
give an adequate impression of the perfectly charming way in which he
said the most ridiculous and disgraceful things. I had every intention
and desire to be angry, but I had to smile.
“That’s the unreasonableness of the world. Everybody--including
Louisa, who practically is everybody--has been urging me for ever so
long to marry. But I have felt that I had a vocation. Women have
seemed to me to be good for everything but marrying. Louisa weeps.
Then, to-night, when I see you at the Imperial, I not only fall in
love with you--which is nothing, because I am constantly falling in
love and out again--but I am seized with an instant conviction that
marriage is my vocation. I rush after you to the theatre, where Louisa
has a box. I say to her, ‘Louisa, I am going to do as you wish, I am
about to marry!’ She gives a movement which may or may not signify
satisfaction, and ejaculates, ‘No!’ I retort, ‘Yes! there is the lady
who is to be my wife!’ And I point you out to her in your place in the
stalls. She focusses you with her glass, and exclaims ‘Good heavens!’
Then adds, ‘Who is she?’ ‘I have not the faintest notion who she is,’
I explain, ‘I only know that she is going to be--my wife.’ Louisa
looks up at me and demands, ‘Are you mad?’ There--to return to my
former position--is the unreasonableness of the world. Louisa hints
insanity because I am unable to accede to her wishes; when I am, she
calls me mad. I ask you if there is any reason why you should not be
my wife?”
“Rather! To enter for a moment into your mood--is there any reason why
I should?”
“Manifold obvious reasons. First, I love, which is a bourgeois reason
perhaps. Then, I am rich, which again is a little bourgeois; but still
sound reason. I am young, sound of mind, hale of body, not
ill-looking, of decent reputation, easy temper. Happiness is but a
word, meaning different things in different mouths. Yet it’s but the
simple truth that I can offer you all that the heart of a woman can
desire--when she marries.”
“You seem to have a tolerable opinion of yourself.”
“Why not? Yet I have a higher opinion still of you.”
“I doubt it. I am wondering if you are supposing that I have recently
escaped from a lunatic asylum, or if it is the fact that you have.”
“Don’t say that you see sanity only in the commonplace. That were to
rank yourself too violently with Louisa.”
“And this is Louisa’s carriage, if, as you pretend, that is your
sister’s name. I have already asked you to let me get out of it into a
cab. Where is the man driving? I don’t believe that this is the way to
Kensington.”
“Why should it be the way to Kensington?”
“Why! Because I live there. Didn’t you hear the address I gave you?”
“But my address is in Berkeley Square.”
“_Your_ address! What has _your_ address to do with me?”
“Since it is also to be yours, does not the question seem a trifle
crude?”
“Your address is to be mine? What do you mean?”
“I trust that you are sufficiently old-fashioned to consent to share
your husband’s home.”
“My husband’s home! Have you dared to tell the man to drive me to your
house?”
“The notion’s this: that you will consent to accept the shelter of my
roof while I rout out the Bishop, so that we may be married in the
morning. It may seem to be pressing matters on a trifle hastily, to
ask you to permit yourself to be ‘wooed and married and all’ inside of
half-a-dozen hours. But I’ve a feeling strong upon me that this is a
business which were well done if it were done quickly. If we delay
there’ll be a hundred thousand reasons buzzing about our ears, to
sting us as if they were mosquitoes. While, if we’re married, there’ll
be no sting left in them. They’ll only buzz. And of that they’ll soon
grow tired.”
“I believe that you’re stark mad. You’re worse than that wicked old
man. And I thought you were a gentleman. Will you tell the
coachman--at once!--to drive me straight home.”
“My dear lady, permit me to ask your name. It’s a disadvantage to a
man not to know the name of the lady he’s about to marry.”
“I certainly will not tell you my name. Will you do as I ask you?”
“I am your devoted slave, only do not treat me with too much
harshness. This is a critical moment in my life: my fate hangs in the
balance. Let us approach the consideration of our respective destinies
with dispassionate calmness, with open minds. Let us be careful to
avoid anything which may have the appearance of heat.”
As I caught his eye, I was surer than ever that he was laughing at me.
He might have been an altogether delightful individual--I am offering
no suggestion that he was not; but his barefaced impudence and brazen
audacity were beyond anything I had ever conceived as possible. I saw
that I should find myself in a pretty position if I did not look
out--and quickly too. I had had such a dry-as-dust existence; here was
the promise of adventure, if you liked. And I do not mind owning that
there flashed through my mind a wild idea of seeing the adventure to a
finish, of trusting him, of allowing him to take the arbitrament of my
fate in his two hands, if that avuncular Bishop could only be
persuaded to prove amenable--of permitting him to marry me in the
morning. What a courtship it would have been! and what a wedding! What
a nine days’ wonder! What would the girls have said? and mamma? and
the five--particularly Walter Hammond, when he learnt how somebody
else had taken a leaf out of his very own book, and made the running
with a vengeance? His sister’s face--what sort of an expression would
have been on that when she learnt the use which had been made of her
brougham?--and what kind of an opinion would she have had of me?
He was a very magnetic person--by far the most magnetic I ever had
encountered. As one became more and more conscious of his supremely
attractive personality--as one could not help but do--there was
something fascinating even about his topsy-turvy way of putting
things. If I had surrendered myself to the magic of his influence,
what would have happened? What would have been the issue of the
night’s adventures? If I had! But I did not. I gave myself, as it
were, a mental pinch, and I put my head out of the window, and I
called to the driver.