CHAPTER XV.—RELATES THE UNEXPECTED BENEVOLENCE OF HORACE D’ALMAYNE.
Arthur Hazlehurst, with an aspect graver than his wont, replied to Harry’s appeal—“It certainly is very unfortunate that you should have selected last night, of all others, to displease my father; because, owing to the Crane offer, time is of the greatest importance; but for that I should not have cared; you would only have had to wait for a week or two, taking pains to be especially polite and deferential in the interval, and he would have totally forgotten his anger. As it is, perhaps I had better speak to him,—he is sure to tell me about the cotton-spinner, and I can avail myself of that opportunity to come to the point; and now, if you have nothing better to propose, we’ll go in to breakfast. Love may possibly destroy the appetite, but a railroad journey has a directly contrary effect.”
Harry had nothing better to propose—(for a vague suggestion in regard to punching old Crane’s head, if he (Crane) did not mind what he was about, could scarcely be considered in the light of a serious, practical amendment)—so they went in to breakfast accordingly.
This meal appeared to be a most unsatisfactory one to “all who assembled within those walls;” for, despite the presence of every delicacy of the season, and a few over, each individual seemed labouring under some secret sorrow, and a general wet blanket damped, and hung heavy on, the spirits of the whole party; with the exception, perhaps, of Horace D’Almayne, who was unusually animated, and watched the proceedings with a look of quiet penetration.
When the ladies quitted the room, Mr. Crane called Mr. Hazlehurst aside, and informed him that he wished for the honour of an interview; to which request that gentleman acceded in his most gracious manner, and they adjourned together to the library.
Harry, with a significant glance to Arthur to remain on the look out and watch proceedings, strolled off with Tom on some horse-or-dog-inspecting pretext, but really to keep himself out of harm’s way till he was wanted,—so low an estimate had he now acquired of his own diplomatic abilities.
D’Almayne and Arthur being thus left tête-à-tête, the former accosted the latter after the following fashion:—
“Hazlehurst, mon cher, I shall die of ennui if we have many such tristes affaires as this meal of which we have just partaken, Now, without being more inquisitive than my neighbours, you cannot suppose I have remained entirely in the dark in regard to the little amusements your friends and relations have devised to vary the monotony of life withal.”
“And the result of these your observations?” inquired Arthur, coldly.
“Is, that the various interests clash, and that delicate dilemmas innumerable must, ere long, present their horns;—now I, being an easy-tempered fellow, like to be happy myself, and to see every brother man, and sister woman, happy also. I shall, therefore, have much pleasure in doing mon petit possible to smooth away these difficulties—an endeavour in which my influence with our good friend Crane will greatly assist me; but to enable me to do this, you must of course take me so far into your confidence, as to tell me whether I am right in my preconceived ideas—che dice, Signor?”
Arthur reflected for a moment—he knew D’Almayne to be quick-sighted, clear-headed, and fertile in expedient, at the same time he believed he was designing and self-interested; in the present emergency, however, he might, from his influence with Mr. Crane, be possibly of some use, while he could scarcely, with the worst intentions, render the aspect of affairs more complicated and unsatisfactory than it now appeared.
Accordingly, he replied,—“It cannot involve any alarming stretch of confidence on my part, merely to tell you whether your ‘guesses at truth’ have hit the mark, or flown wide of it. So you have only to propound your queries, and I will answer them as clearly and concisely as in me lies.”
“C’est bon!” was the reply. “A—to begin with—I am correct, am I not, in supposing that last night my worthy friend Crane offered his hand and £20,000 per annum (in which latter item his heart is of course wrapped up and included) to your amiable and accomplished sister?” Hazlehurst nodded assent, and D’Almayne continued,—“The young lady, however, or I am much mistaken, greatly prefers your excellent and energetic friend, Mr. Coverdale (who, you must pardon me for saying, reminds me of a well-intentioned, enthusiastic bull in a chinashop), which preference the gentleman returns to such a degree, that I am inclined to believe he has told, or in some other manner rendered the fair Alice aware of, his love. Her manner at breakfast this morning, was compounded of such an elaborate endeavour to conceal the conscious and confiding, behind the most transparent eidolon of indifference, that no one at all acquainted with woman’s nature could doubt about the matter.”
“You are indeed a close observer!” exclaimed Arthur, surprised out of his caution. “Coverdale’s attachment was a thing I never even suspected till—a—till this morning.”
“Mr. Crane tells me, your father is intensely anxious to purchase one of his farms adjoining your estate, which he (Crane) is unwilling to part with,” resumed D’Almayne; “thence, I imagine, proceeds your respected progenitor’s anxiety to bring about the match. To finish the catalogue of my observations up to the present time, I conceive Mr. Crane to be now in the act of urging his suit to Mr. Hazlehurst, and complaining that ‘Miss Alice’ as he calls her (he always talks on such subjects like an underbred greengrocer, or second footman), rather kicked, than jumped, at him when he offered her—ahem—his income and his affections.”
“Your surmises are so wonderfully correct,” rejoined Arthur (determining to make a merit of necessity, and appear open with one who seemed thus well acquainted with all the family secrets), “that in telling you that as soon as Mr. Crane leaves the study, I mean to appeal to my father in my friend’s behalf, I shall, probably, only forestall you in expressing another of your judicious anticipations.”
“I rather imagined that would be the next move,” was the easy, self-satisfied reply.—“Mr. Coverdale, with all his surprising freshness and naïveté of character, could scarcely propose to urge his suit in person, after having quarrelled with your father over his wine last night; for which reason, by the way, it requires no very great tact to divine that Mr. Crane’s proposal will find favour in Mr. Hazlehurst’s eyes, and Mr. Coverdale’s be rejected.”
“And the remedy?” inquired Arthur, eagerly.
D’Almayne paused, then a meaning but disagreeable smile passed across his handsome features, as he replied,—“If I can induce Mr. Crane to withdraw his suit of his own accord, yet continue his amicable relations towards this family, and be willing to sell the farm to your father at his own price, and by these means lead Mr. Hazlehurst to regard your friend’s offer favourably, shall I be acting in accordance with your wishes.”
“Nay, my dear D’Almayne, if you can indeed persuade Mr. Crane to perform so magnanimous a part, I shall consider you the best and cleverest fellow in the world. As to my wishing you to do so, I should as soon have thought of wishing you to appoint me First Lord of the Treasury—one only wishes for such things as one, in some degree, expects to obtain. But surely you over-calculate your powers of persuasion,” returned Hazlehurst, scarcely knowing whether D’Almayne might not be amusing himself at his expense.
“I will remain here and await the result of your interview with your father, and if it terminate as I predict, I will attempt my little bit of diplomacy;—the result will prove to you whether or not I overrate my Machiavelian talents,” was the confident reply—and so they parted.
Mr. Hazlehurst, senior, was by no means in an amiable frame of mind when his son entered the library—the gout, considerably increased by the wine-bibbing of the previous evening, pervaded his entire system, mental and bodily; and through the atrabilious medium of a disordered stomach, he looked back upon his disagreement with Coverdale, till it became magnified into a serious quarrel. Mr. Crane had just informed him that, on renewing his offer to Alice on the previous evening, the young lady muttered a few words, incoherent indeed, but, as he conceived, of a negative tendency, and instantly conveyed herself away without affording him an opportunity of obtaining an explanation. Whereupon Mr. Hazlehurst, waxing wroth, declared she should accept him that very morning; begged him to retire until he should have seen his daughter, and, as he was pleased to term it, brought her to her senses; and having just dispatched a summons to the poor girl, was waiting her arrival to perpetrate an act of parental tyranny, when his son entered. The consequences may readily be imagined:—Coverdale was angrily and unceremoniously refused; Alice anathematized, excommunicated, and ordered magisterially to be imprisoned in her own room till farther notice, and Arthur severely reprimanded for having introduced Coverdale to the family (which, be it remembered, he had done at his father’s particular request), and cautioned against venturing to countenance Alice in her disobedience, or ever again to refer to the subject in his (Mr. Hazlehurst’s) sovereign presence, on pain of being cut off with the trilling patrimony of one shilling sterling. Arthur attempted a mild remonstrance, whereby he obtained a particular request instantly to leave the room, and a general order in regard to the entire alteration of his conduct, and abnegation of his present opinions on all subjects, human and divine. Returning to the breakfast-room in the frame of mind naturally consequent upon such a reception, he discovered D’Almayne comfortably lounging in an easy-chair, and perusing a handsomely bound copy of the Pleasures of Memory.
Glancing up as Hazlehurst entered, he observed coolly—“I need not ask you how it has gone, mon ami, your face tells me.”
Hazlehurst strode impatiently up and down the apartment; then stopping short in front of his companion, he exclaimed abruptly—“Try your plan, whatever it may be; for common sense is thrown away upon a man so prejudiced and positive as my father has shown himself to be; and common patience cannot bear the irritating speeches he makes, when all the time one feels that one is striving for the right, and that he is totally and entirely wrong.”
“You are warm, mon cher,” was the calm reply. “Papas have been wrong-headed time out of mind, and will probably continue so till time shall have passed away, together with all other sublunary weights and measures; so why afflict yourself at the inevitable? But I will now proceed without delay to try my eloquence upon the dear, rejected Mr. Crane—a—by the way, you must give me one promise. ‘On their own merits modest men are dumb;’ now my modesty is so outrageously sensitive, that I am not only dumb myself, but require my friends to be so likewise; in plain English, if I do this thing to oblige you, you must promise me to keep my share in the transaction a secret; the change must appear to emanate from the united kind regards and amiable self-sacrifice of your father and Mr. Crane.” Seeing Arthur hesitate, he continued—“Without this assurance, you must excuse my declining to interfere.”
“Be it as you will then,” began Arthur.
As he spoke the door flew open, and Alice, eager and tearful, hurried in, exclaiming,—“You have seen my father! Can it be true that he is so cruel as to refuse his consent. He has just written me such a dreadful note, ordering me not to quit my room!”
Here, catching sight of D’Almayne, she stopped short in confusion and alarm. That individual hastened to relieve her by walking to the door; but as he passed Arthur he whispered, “You may make an exception in your sister’s favour. I absolve you from your vow of secrecy as far as she is concerned. I am a tender-hearted fellow, and beauty in tears is always too many for me.” As he spoke, he left the apartment, and closed the door behind him.
Alice heard Arthur’s account of D’Almayne’s unexpected access of benevolence with surprise; but not having witnessed the quiet confidence with which he asserted his power of influencing Mr. Crane, she put but little trust in his assurances, merely setting them down as the vain boasting of a conceited youth, who was actuated by a good-natured desire to help them out of their difficulties. That she did him injustice may be gathered from the fact, that later in the day Mr. Crane sought a second interview with Mr. Hazlehurst., after which the latter gentleman summoned Harry Coverdale to his august presence; and when that happy but much confused young man entered the sanctum sanctorum of the library, sent for his daughter Alice likewise, and having pronounced a strongly acidulated, not to say, crabbed, benediction upon their youthful heads, dismissed them in time to write by that day’s post to his man of business, to prepare the purchase-money for the Hazlecroft farm, then the property of Jedediah Crane, Esq. The dinner-party that evening passed off much more agreeably than the breakfast had done. Coverdale sat by his lady-love, looking the picture, or better still, the reality of happiness; but Arthur Hazlehurst wore a gloomy brow when he perceived that his cousin, Kate Marsden, had paired off with the cotton-spinner, and that they appeared mutually satisfied with the arrangement.
CHAPTER XVI.—TREATS OF THINGS IN GENERAL.
It must be confessed that Harry Coverdale was of a somewhat impetuous disposition. No sooner had he obtained Mr. Hazlehurst’s consent to the match, than he commenced a system of alternate petting and persecution, whereby he contrived to render the lives of Alice and her mother scarcely endurable, until he had induced them to fix an early day for his “execution,” as Tom irreverently paraphrased the solemnisation of the marriage ceremony. This object happily accomplished, a journey to London was proposed, whereat Mr. Hazlehurst looked very black; but when Alice seated herself on his knee, and, stroking his bald head, called him a dear, good, kind, papa (on speculation, probably, for at that moment he did not in the slightest degree look the character), his heart softened, and he consented to the plan. Then somebody told Arthur of a wonderful doctor, who had found out a new system of curing everything, and especially complaints analogous to that under which Mrs. Hazlehurst laboured; accordingly, he determined his mother should form one of the London party, and consult this fashionable fee-taker; and when Arthur had determined on a thing, it generally came to pass. Therefore, after considerable pro-ing-and con-ing, and macadamizing of difficulties, the matter was finally arranged by Mrs. Hazlehurst, her son, and her two daughters, taking up their abode at Cherry’s Hotel, in Jermyn Street, while Coverdale established himself in his old quarters at the Tavistock, in Covent-garden.
Then they began to be overwhelmed with business. First, the infallible doctor was to be consulted; so poor Mrs. Hazlehurst was dragged out of bed some three hours sooner than usual, breakfasted in a nervous tremor, which rendered the ceremony a most unreal mockery, was transported from her carriage to a stately dining-room, where some twenty fellow-victims were already incarcerated, whence (having waited two hours, because, in her ignorance of London rascalities, she had omitted to fee the noble creature in plush and powder who had admitted her) she was at length (his nobleness not being able longer to exclude her) ushered into the presence of the potentate of pills himself. This erudite individual was a short, stiff man, with a short, stiff appearance,—the result of the most severe application of starch and hair-brushes,—and a short, stiff manner, assumed, as are the stare and swagger of Van Amburg and other tiger-tamers, for the purpose of browbeating and mentally subduing refractory or sceptical patients. Seeing at a glance, however, that poor Mrs. Hazlehurst was already subdued, he obligingly let off a little superfluous starch, slightly disarranged his hair, smiled, to show a fine set of false teeth, put in at trade-price by a friendly dentist, and having thus brought himself somewhat nearer the limpness of average humanity, added (as he would have probably expressed it) a couple of drachms syrupi saccarinis to his manner, ere he proceeded to catechise his patient as to her symptoms, and the remedies that had been applied to remove them. To each fact thus elicited, he replied by frowning portentously, screwing round his mouth, and muttering, “I knew it,” in a gloomy and mysterious manner, as though he had acquired the knowledge by some awful and supernatural course of study; and, indeed, as Mrs. Hazlehurst’s confessions involved her having had a dangerous fall from her horse at a period when he, the doctor, must have been about five years old, and that she had been laid up with a bilious fever exactly two calendar months and four days before he was born, he can scarcely be supposed to have come by his information honestly and lawfully. In fact, to a logical mind, the question resolved itself into the following hypothesis—that he must either be a true prophet, or a lying doctor.
Having elicited all the facts he cared to learn (which, if he knew them before, he might as well have saved himself the trouble of doing), he drew himself up to his extreme altitude,—which was nothing very tremendous after all,—got his starch up to high-pressure pitch, judiciously tempering its stiffness with soothing syrup, and delivered himself of the following opinion:—“Madam, you have told me nothing that, the moment I beheld you, I was not prepared to hear. I do not in the slightest degree impugn the judgment and skill of Mr. Smithers” (the Hazlehurst general practitioner), “but the instant I glanced at his first prescription I saw he had taken a wrong view of our case. Superacetate of Euroclydon and bi-carbonate of Hydrocephalus would never remove the pain and palpitation on our right side—”
“The left is the side on which I usually feel the pain,” began Mrs. Hazlehurst, mildly.
“Eh! left—yes, of course; I said left, didn’t I? I believe I observed to you before, madam, that the moment I set eyes on you I became aware of—in fact, I felt (if I may so express myself) that pain and palpitation on our left side; and I said to myself, if that very talented practitioner, Mr. Smithers, has administered Superacetate of Euroclydon, and bi-carbonate of Hydrocephalus to that pain of ours—with the highest respect for Smithers (he was walking St. Bartholomew’s when I was dresser to the late celebrated and lamented Flayflesh), I must say he has mistaken our case. Now, I shall just—I make no secret of my practice—I shall just throw in three grains of extr. Borealis Aurorae, with equal proportions of Astri caninis, Geminorum siamesiæ, and sesqui-carbonate (mind that) sesqui-carbonate of Pantapolion, and our pain will lapse (as Byron so beautifully expresses it) into ‘a happy memory of the past.’ You will take the mixture six times in the twenty-four hours, and the pills immediately before dinner. With regard to diet, everything you have been accustomed to eat is wrong; your appetite is weak, and you like delicacies, as they are called, better than substantial joints, I dare say?”
Mrs. Hazlehurst acknowledged that his penetration had not failed him; and he resumed sharply—
“Madam, we musn’t touch them! they are poison in such a case as ours. No; we must restrict ourselves to plain beef and mutton, very much underdone; stale bread, no vegetables, no fruit, no nice things, very bitter beer, with plenty of the camomile in it (that’s the brewer’s secret, strychnine’s all a delusion), and stick to the sesqui-carbonate of Pantapolion, and we shall be a different woman in a short time. Let me see you again on Friday. Good morning.” And so, pocketing his guinea with less respect than many men pay to a fourpenny-piece, the fashionable quack allowed his victim to escape.
Then there was shopping. There are a good many shops in Regent Street, and those that are not there are in Bond Street, at least a fair sprinkling of them; but Harry solemnly declared (after his marriage) that during the fortnight the party were in London, they went into them all, and every man knows what that involves. Give a woman her head, so far as to allow her to put it into a shop, and he must indeed be a clever fellow who can coax or coerce her out of it under half-an-hour. But Harry was in love, and love is blind (though it has an awkward trick of recovering its eyesight after marriage and making up for lost time, by spying out all kinds of things to which it had far better had remained blind); besides, Alice was not more exigeante than a lover generally desires his mistress should be: too much independence of character in a young girl being by no means an attractive quality.
Then there was a good deal of sight-seeing to be got through. Emily had never been in London before, and Alice only once for a week. So they “did” Westminster Abbey, which they really enjoyed; and St. Paul’s, which they pretended to admire, and didn’t; and the Tower, where Emily called the figures in the horse-armoury a set of quizzical old things; and the Polytechnic, where they saw a man go down in a diving-bell, to pick up nothing at the bottom of a large wash-hand-basin, and come up again half suffocated, which they considered curious and highly satisfactory, as no doubt it was to everybody but that unfortunate martyr to popular science himself, who (taking the most cheerful view of his amphibious occupation) can scarcely be regarded in the light of a jolly young waterman. Then they went to the National Gallery to see the pictures, which, as it was not an unusually bright and clear day, of course they were unable to do; but they had the pleasure of seeing the building itself, and the fountains in Trafalgar Square, which they all agreed they had never beheld anything like before; and Harry added, that in his travels he had not met with anything to equal the whole affair in its peculiar style, and that he thought foreigners must be very strongly impressed by it, and that it must at once give them a clear idea of English taste; which remarks it was a pity the architect was not there to hear, as they might possibly have been of use to him. Emily had never beheld a play, so they went to the I-see-um Theatre, where they witnessed the performance of a very long melodrama, adapted from the French (that is, all that was national and peculiar—without which the plot became a mere silly tissue of improbable events and impossible situations—omitted, and the place supplied by worn-out and conventional clap-traps). This pièce de résistance, which was to last the play-going public for some four or six months, according to the degree in which it suited their appetites, was so well put on the stage, and so well acted, that the false sentiment and worse morality which pervaded it were for the time forgotten, and it was not till Arthur called his attention to the fact, that Harry recollected this un-English jumble of crimes and follies, was played night after night to crowded houses, while the masterpieces of Shakspere, the greatest dramatist who ever lived, were banished to an obscure theatre in the outskirts of London, or were forced to be translated into a foreign language, and acted by a foreign company, ere the “ears polite” of London fashionables could be persuaded to listen to them. The two young men argued the question in all its bearings, and arrived at this conclusion, viz. either that if Shakspere were better acted it would be better attended, or that if Shakspere were better attended, better actors would soon be found to perform the characters; though which of these statements might be regarded as the cause, and which as the effect, they could by no means agree. And by that time, the play being concluded, Emily declared that it was quite perfect, really charming; and that, as to Shakspere, he was an obsolete old slow-coach, and very wicked too—or else, why did they want a family edition of him? Whereas, if there had ever been any harm in this play, which she did not believe could have been the case, dear Mr. Kingsby Florence had translated it so beautifully that it might have been acted anywhere—in a church almost. Then she turned and appealed to her sister, to support her in her girlish and unorthodox enthusiasm.
Alice replied gravely, and with a pseudo-matronly air which was highly amusing, that although she must confess she had been interested and entertained by the play she had just witnessed, yet that she had listened to Arthur’s argument with Mr. Coverdale, and quite agreed in the view taken by the latter gentleman; for which sympathy of opinion Harry possessed himself of the lovely sympathiser’s hand, and pressed it gratefully; while he inwardly thanked heaven for having bestowed upon his future wife such a correct taste and sound understanding.—And so, between doctoring, and shopping, and sight-seeing, and hurrying dressmakers, and tailors, and coach-builders, and a host of minor tradesmen, all the wedding paraphernalia were purchased, a vast amount of business transacted, settlements prepared, and money spent; and a fortnight passed away so quickly, that it appeared like two or three days to the actors in the genteel comedy thus performed.
Then they all returned to the country, Harry going to the Park to make arrangements for the incoming of house-decorators and furnishers innumerable, who were to put to the rout all the old admiral’s bachelor abominations, and prepare the mansion for the reception of its fair mistress. That amiable young lady was beginning to find, by experience, that to be “going to be married” is very hard work indeed, the wear and tear of the feelings being a marked and alarming feature in the case. Thus, whenever Harry was away for a day, she found herself anxious, low-spirited, and a prey to innumerable misgivings lest evil should befall him. On one evening in particular, when he returned full twenty minutes later than he should have done, she felt so convinced that “dreadful trotting-mare” had by some means compassed his destruction, that she received him with a gentle shower of tears, which of course he kissed away, as he whispered that very soon she would be his dear little wife, and then nothing should part them even for an hour; and Alice smiled through her tears as she thought how, with every taste and feeling in common, they should trip gaily along the pathway of life, hand in hand, like a conjugal couple of Siamese twins. Dreams! pretty Alice, dreams! which many a young girl’s loving heart has framed ere this, only to awaken to a far different reality, and weep over the departure of such bright illusions.
But there was not much time for dreaming or romance at the Grange, for the “fatal day” came nearer and nearer with alarming velocity, until at last it actually arrived; and everybody was in such a state of excitement, that an uninitiated spectator might have imagined the whole household, instead of merely one member of it, was going to be married. As every one expected a most fatiguing day, of course no one slept a wink during the previous night; and as the match was in every way most desirable, and Alice enjoyed as fair a prospect of happiness as those who loved her best could wish her, of course all the women, the moment it was light, indulged in the feminine luxury of “a hearty cry;” after which libation to sensibility, they set to work in real earnest to dress themselves and each other as becomingly as they possibly could. On the bride’s dressing-table was found a set of pearl ornaments, supposed by the learned in such matters to have cost at least £500, together with a slip of paper, representing Mr. Crane’s best wishes for her happiness; which piece of generosity Alice thought very amiable and pretty of him, as indeed it was. Kate (wearing a splendid bracelet, giver unknown) and Emily were to be bridesmaids, and four of the prettiest bosom friends the bride possessed made up the team. These six susceptible young creatures turned out in light blue, and very nice they looked, only (as Master Tom, reprieved for a week from Eton in order to be present at the ceremony, observed), they did not step well together—a deficiency for which he accounted by remarking that his cousin Kate carried her head so high, without a bearing rein, and had such grand action, that it naturally made the other girls look rather screwy; and indeed Master Tom’s descriptive powers so far exceed our own, that we shall violate confidence by availing ourselves of a letter he dispatched the next morning to one of his friends at Eton, in which he gave his own impressions of the eventful day. It ran as follows:—
“Dear Tipsby,—If this blessed hot weather does not make dripping of a fellow prematurely, you will have an opportunity of weeping on the affectionate bussing of ‘Yours, truly,’ by the 5 p.m. train on Monday next. The cause of my shirking a week is not, as you impertinently insinuate, my having ‘over-goose-berried myself,’ but the no less alarming fact that my eldest sister has been and gone and committed matrimony, and I have waited to see her turned off. The ‘shocking event’ arrived at a climax (that’s grammar, ain’t it?) yesterday. I rose with the lark (i.e. Arthur, my big brother, came and dragged me out of bed at seven o’clock), and dressed myself. Yes, I should think I did—rather! Kerseymere sit-upons, made precious loose in the leg, and with a large pink check on a lavender ground—stunnin! satin vest, colours to sympathize; silk necktie, pink ground, lavender pattern, once round—ends at least a quarter of a yard long, and such a bow!—there’s high art for you, my boy!—and last, not least, real Oxford bang-tail coatee (none of your blackguard boys’ jackets), bright blue, with only two buttons and button-holes about it, and all sorts of jolly pockets in original places; but, don’t fret, you shall see it. Well, to return to our mutton, as the French say: very few showed at early breakfast, sensibilities superseding appetites in a general way, though I can’t say I perceived much difference as regarded number one: yet, when I come to think of it, I recollect I only eat three eggs; but then the ham was a real brick. Nothing particular occurred till we were to go to church; but when the traps came round, you may fancy there was something to look at. My brother-in-law, Coverdale—oh, Tips, he really is a fine fellow, as handsome as fun—can ride anything you like to put him across—a dead shot—A1 with his fists (’gad, I should be sorry to get even a left-hander from him), and as good-tempered and jolly as a cock; but you shall see him some day: well, he came up with his own horses, a pair of blood bays, he gave £350 for ’em, and they’re dirt cheap at the money; he is a first-rate judge of a horse; but I’ll tell you all about the traps when we meet. Then down came the girls; Ally (that’s my eldest sister), was smothered with veils, and flounces, and pearls, and that sort of nonsense; and looked precious pale and interesting, and like to blub; so we bundled her into the family-coach, and Coverdale jumped into his own trap, and away we all scuttled to church. We’ve got a good, sharp parson, that can go the pace slap up when he likes; and, knowing that the Champagne was waiting for him, he put the harness on ’em in no time; and the women did the water-cart business in style—where all their tears come from I can’t think—but they laid the dust beautifully. Then there was signing names in the vestry, and a lot of chaff about kissing the bride, which so upset that muff, Lambkin, the parson’s apprentice (curate, I suppose, is what they call the chap), that he fairly turned tail and bolted. Next, we all bundled home again; Ally in Coverdale’s trap this time (and precious handsome he looked, as he handed her in, I can tell you); and then came the ‘crowning mercy’ (as Lambkin said in his sermon last Sunday), the wedding breakfast. The governor had done the thing well for once in his life, I will say that for the old boy. There were all the delicacies of all the four seasons (one only wished one had four stomachs, like a camel, to pay them proper attention; though I didn’t do badly, in spite of my mono-stomachic conformation). Then the Champagne;—my dear Tips, I am not using a mere figure of rhetoric when I say the supply was unlimited;—how much I drank I literally cannot tell, but, in mentioning the affair to inquiring friends, you had better restrict your statement to half-a-dozen bottles—as a general rule, a gentleman should not take more on such occasions—it is not every man who possesses my strength of head and self-control. I sat next to one of the bridesmaids—
“‘A little, laughing fairy thing,
Just like an angel on the wing;’
A rosebud ’neath the moon’s pale ring;
A playful zephyr, whispering
Some secret to the early Spring.
As Tennyson has it—stunning poet, Tennyson! At first my modesty prevented my getting on with her quite as fast as I could have wished; in fact, till after my fourth glass of Champagne, I had not gone beyond asking if she liked roast chicken, and saying ‘Bless you,’ when she sneezed; which I have since thought might not be quite etiquette, for she certainly looked surprised. However, ‘in vino jollitas,’ as Cicero says; after imbibing the ‘rosy,’ I went ahead like beans, and I flatter myself—ahem!—made a very considerable impression; but then recollect the expense with which I was got up! the woman who could look on that bang-tail coatee with indifference must be a heartless tigress. At all events, Juliana Georgina (sweet, poetical name! aint it, Tips?) didn’t; and if my mother invites her here during the Christmas holydays—which, betwixt you and me and the post, is not impossible—I should not be surprised if the affair were to assume quite a serious complexion. It is some time since I have experienced what the mounseers call a ‘grande passion.’ When the party generally had pitched into the grub, till the powers of nature wore forced to cry ‘Hold, enough!’ (though, for my part, I don’t think one’s bread-basket does by any means hold enough on such occasions) everybody drank everybody’s health, and everybody returned thanks. My brother-in-law, Coverdale, made a stunning speech, the best that was made, by long odds; though Master Arthur didn’t disgrace his profession in the jawing line either. The governor did the pathetic and paternal; but it was precious slow, and all his jokes old ones. Mr. Crane (he’s a rich old buffer that was nibbling after Ally, but it wasn’t likely she’d have anything to say to him when she’d a chance of taking such a trump-card as my brother-in-law, Coverdale, into her hand) followed in the benevolent and philanthropic line; but he made a regular mull of it, worse than the daddy; and when they’d done making fools of themselves, the sitting broke up, and my brother-in-law and Alice started for the Continent. And the last thing before they were off, Coverdale, while he was waiting in the hall for his wife (women are always too late for everything), tipped me a flimsy to the tune of ten pounds, and told me not to forget I was to come to the Park in the hunting season, and he’d take care to find me a good mount; but if ever there was a real brick, my brother-in-law Coverdale is the identical article, and no mistake. And that this is a full, true, and particular account of this wonderful wedding, sayeth and attesteth,
“Yours, in the bonds of jollity,
“Tom Hazlehurst.”
“P.S.—Advice to cricketers! Mind your batting, old fellow; for I’ve been put up to some first-rate bowling dodges by my brother-in-law, Coverdale (he’s one of the top-sawyers at Lord’s), that will send your stumps flying about your ears, if you don’t mind your eye. “Verbum sat. slow-coachici!”
CHAPTER XVII.—PLOTTING AND COUNTER-PLOTTING.
The same post-bag in which Tom Hazlehurst dispatched his letter to his schoolfellow, conveyed also two other epistles written by inmates of the Grange. For the reader’s benefit we will take the same liberty with them, which we have already taken with the Etonian’s literary effusion. The first was from Kate Marsden to Miss Arabella Crofton, a lady some three or four years older than herself, who had been one of the teachers at the school at which Kate had been brought up, and was now governess in a German family. Miss Crofton was a woman of unusual mental ability, and having in a great degree moulded Kate’s character, was now her sole confidante and mentor. It ran thus:—
“Dear Arabella,—Since I finally determined on following your advice, fate seems to have played my game for me, and I now consider it as secure as anything which has not actually come to pass can be. I told you, when I wrote to you at Baden-Baden, that his friend, Mr. Coverdale, and my cousin Alice, were evidently becoming attached; you will therefore be the less surprised to hear that they were married yesterday; the matter came about thus:—Soon after I wrote to you, Mr. Crane, by my advice, offered; Alice of course refused him, but so equivocally (she is quite a child in such things) that the poor, dear, dull creature scarcely caught her meaning. I immediately took him in hand, and, availing myself of the situation, flattered his vanity to such a degree, that ere the evening finished he believed not only that Alice would accept him, but that I, Kate Marsden, was hopelessly in love with him. Accordingly, when he learned unmistakably next morning that Alice meant to refuse him, my good taste stood out in very favourable contrast. In the meantime, Mr. Crane’s offer brought Mr. Coverdale to the point, and Alice gladly accepted him, in doing which she acted wisely, for he is a good, amiable, sterling man! and when the romance has worn off, and they have got over the bore of awakening from ‘Love’s young dream,’ I believe they will settle down into a very happy couple. My uncle at first refused his consent, for Coverdale has only five, instead of twenty thousands a-year; and Mr. Crane sulked in a corner; but that strange Mr. D’Almayne, about whom I told you before, and who possesses a degree of influence over Mr. Crane of which I by no means approve, went to him, and persuaded him not only to give up Alice good-humouredly, but actually to play a generous part, and talk my uncle over to give his consent to my cousin’s union with Mr. Coverdale. Thus, you see, as I began by saying, my game was played for me, and I had only to sit still and avail myself of the moves as the others made them.
“I am much puzzled by this Mr. D’Almayne. He is, unless I am much deceived, a complete adventurer, scheming for his own advantage (I ought to be able to recognise such a character); but what his object can have been in this affair I cannot possibly conjecture. Pure philanthropy had nothing to do with it, of that I am certain. Again, how he contrived to influence Mr. Crane to behave so amiably I cannot conceive. Sometimes I fancy he has divined my intention of marrying the millionaire; but, if so, why should he aid me in my project?—for I know by his manner (although he is very cautious) that he admires me himself. Certain it is, that since the conversation I have alluded to, Mr. Crane has been at my feet, and is only waiting to offer till he imagines time enough shall have elapsed to prevent the transfer of his affections (?) from Alice to me appearing too ridiculous. However, the affair will unravel itself some day. And now that my plans are likely to be crowned with success, you will ask me how I feel on the subject. Determined as ever! that which I have begun I will carry through; but, Arabella, I am most miserable. For myself alone I should not care; to rescue my family from poverty, I should be happy to sacrifice my personal hopes and wishes; but to see Arthur suffer is indeed bitterness, and that he does suffer frightfully, I, who can read his every look and gesture, cannot for a moment doubt. Oh, that I had known the depth and reality of his affection sooner, or that the necessity were less cogent! Then he bears it with such manly endurance his manner to his family is exactly the same as usual; not one of them suspects that anything has occurred to pain him. Again, it is such an aggravation of my sorrow that he blames me so deeply! Sometimes, when I am talking to Mr. Crane, I catch his stern, penetrating glance fixed upon me with a calm earnestness of rebuke, which affects me more deeply than could the most vehement reproaches; and when I have acted my part for the day, and, in the solitude of my chamber, I recall all that has passed between us, and reflect that it is I who have brought this sorrow upon him—I who even now feel that I love him better than my own soul—I who would gladly have died for him, I sit, night by night, like a cold statue of despair, or lie sleepless, shedding such tears as I trust God’s mercy permits not to flow quite in vain! Yet it is my duty—you know, you cannot doubt for a moment, it is my duty—you could never have dared to counsel such a sacrifice of the only thing which can make the burden of life endurable, a real, deep, true affection, if you had not felt certain it was my duty.
“You have set me a cruel task, Arabella, but I do not flinch from it; you shall find your pupil worthy the trouble you have bestowed upon her. I shall write again when anything conclusive is settled. If all goes well, I shall be in a position to fulfil my old promise, and offer you a home on your return to England. Would to God it were likely to be a happier, though a humbler one! But that is past now. Farewell.
“Yours, in many senses of the word,
“Kate Marsden.”
The third epistle was from Horace D’Almayne to a friend and ally in Paris. “We transcribe it verbatim:—
“Alphonse, mon cher,—I enclose you a draft for 3000 francs, wherewith I beg you to satisfy Carreau, the tailor, et tous les autres brigands, who render Paris an unsafe residence for me. You will naturally ask how I have obtained the money; not at the gaming-table, nor on the highway, like Claude Duval. Railroads and police have freed England from highwaymen. No; I have for the present filled my purse by studying the great game of life; in which, like all other games, you must either pillage, or be pillaged. You and I, men of wit and of action, naturally belong to the former class, and have meritoriously laboured to fulfil our destiny. Since I have been in England this time I have sedulously cultivated the millionaire I introduced to you last season, whose pocket you so obligingly relieved of £500 at piquet. I made a bad bargain there in only claiming one-third of the spoil; I should have demanded half, for without my assistance you could have done nothing with him; but I understand them, these cautious islanders, some of their blood runs in my veins—my mother, as you know, having been an Englishwoman. However, the time spent on my millionaire has turned out a more profitable investment than I at all calculated upon. He is a weak, vacillating character, one of those feeble-minded mortals who always require some intelligence stronger than their own to lean upon. This support he has found in your humble servant; and so convinced has he become of my diplomatic powers, that just at present he can do nothing without my approval and sanction. His great object in life is to marry, and it is to assist him in obtaining a wife that my counsel is required. When I first arrived here, I found he was dangling after a charming little country girl, the daughter of a landed proprietor in these parts. I soon discovered that the said proprietor, for mercenary reasons, desired the match; but with the young lady I could do nothing. I gave her the full benefit of my eyes, which, as you know, are not wont to look in vain; but it was no use—even ‘les petites moustaches noires,’ usually so irresistible, were thrown away upon her; nor had friend Crane’s £20,000 per annum (mon Dieu, Alphonse, quelle somme merveilleuse!) any more effect upon her. But I soon found a clue to her obduracy—the silly child was enamoured of her brother’s friend, a fox-hunting squire, a true specimen of young John Bull. I saw how the game would go, John Bull returned her affection; he is a real type of his class. Rich, obstinate, and impetuous, he was resolved to marry the pretty rustic; she was equally determined; her brother befriended him; the thing was to be, so I arranged my hand accordingly. There is in the family a belle cousine—such a splendid creature, Alphonse! beautiful as an angel, the contour of a Juno, the port of an empress. She has tact and talent; a soul of fire beneath an exterior of ice; she is poor and ambitious. I could not have hoped to find one better suited to my purpose. She shall marry Crane; his purse will be in her hands; he will become her slave; and, Alphonse, she shall be mine! Do you doubt my success, mon ami? Bah! the game is as simple as child’s play. She is young, ardent; she will marry an old man to satisfy her ambition—she will despise him. Her heart will pine for an object on which to lavish its tenderness; I shall present myself, become her friend, her counsellor—and the result? Oh, you cannot doubt it. So I have pulled the strings, and my marionnettes have danced, and are dancing. My millionaire offered—the little rustic refused him. While he was smarting from this insult, I suggested to him that la belle cousine pined for love of him; praised her wit and beauty; and advised him to revenge himself by transferring his attentions to her. The bait took; I worked out all the minor incidents admirably; the young fox-hunter has married the pretty rustic, and taken her out of my way yesterday. The lovely Kate, playing her own game, labours indefatigably for my interest also. My friend Crane is delighted, and shows his gratitude by urging me to borrow money of him—(I have mortgaged my farm in Brittany to him for six times its value; when the three prior claims upon it are satisfied, and he brings forward his, this fact will surprise him, and teach him prudence for the future)—I avail myself of his liberality with caution, for I must not cut up my golden goose too quickly. But it is well to have more than one resource to rely upon; so if your rich young German countess should resolve on visiting England, send me timely notice. I feel that my star is in the ascendant. Cher Alphonse, wish your friend the success which should reward talent, in the use of which you have so well instructed your devoted,
“Horace.”