If our readers, gentle or simple, will obligingly stretch their imaginations sufficiently to depict for themselves the happiness of Alice and Harry during the first month of their married life, popularly denominated the honeymoon, and be content to permit us to resume our office of chronicler at the termination of that mellifluous (though, to all but the parties concerned, especially insipid) season, the readers aforesaid will merit our eternal gratitude, which we hereby beg to present them with.
Alice and Harry, then, having been married one calendar mouth, during which period they had been “up” the Rhine, and one or two of the Swiss mountains—having seen a great many strange things and strange people—having talked a vast amount of bad French and worse German, and narrowly escaped an attack of cholera from listening to the dissonance of that arch-delusion the Ranz-des-Vaches—having eaten such wonderful articles, cooked in such wonderful fashion, that if the genus Bimana were not providentially omnivorous, they would infallibly have been poisoned—having travelled over land and water by every species of conveyance known to the annals of locomotion, except perhaps a balloon, or the back of an elephant—had at length made their way to Paris; and as the inhabitants of that skittish and inconstant capital were then figuratively patting each other on the back, by way of congratulation on the fortunate accident which had preserved those that remained alive after the latest revolution from having shot each other through the head, our bride and bridegroom, established in a comfortable hotel, had determined to remain there till such time as they should mutually agree upon for their return to England. For, be it observed, that enough of the halo of the honeymoon yet lingered around this young couple, to keep them in the misty delusion that they possessed but one “will of their own” between them. They had yet to learn that there is a higher, truer, nobler state of association to be arrived at, even here on earth—a state in which we recognise the deep happiness of being privileged to sacrifice our own desires to those of the being we love better than ourselves. A logician may stigmatise this as merely a refined phase of selfishness; but it is such selfishness as might cling to us in heaven, and we yet remain sinless. Be this as it may, Alice, who had never been abroad before, found every pleasure enhanced by the charm of novelty, and was in a perfect Elysium of happy excitement. Harry had seen and done it all, and a great deal more besides; and would have found it a bore, only it was sufficient amusement to him to watch his young wife’s delight at all she saw and heard. Whether this amusement of watching, petting, and spoiling Alice, was at all beginning to lose its charm, may be gathered from the following conversation:—
“Harry, you sleepy old thing, this is the third time I’ve asked you whether Madame de Beauville is certain of getting us an invitation to Lord N————’s picnic at Versailles; do rouse yourself and answer me!”
Thus apostrophised, Coverdale—who was stretched at full length on (and beyond) a brocaded sofa, and had been lazily watching his wife, as with a vast deal of unnecessary energy she stitched away at a button, which, according to button-nature, had “come off” her husband’s glove the very first moment he attempted to draw it on—half-raised himself on his elbow as he replied—
“There is nothing certain under the sun; except that my little wife has the prettiest hand and arm of any woman (I don’t care who she may be—Jew, Turk, infidel, heretic, or Christian) in the known world. But that old humbug, Madame de Beauville, promised me faithfully to do her best for us—not that I’d believe her on her oath; she tried to book me for one of her scraggy daughters, the last time I was here; but it wouldn’t act—the trap was too visible, and the bait not sufficiently tempting. What very high action you have with that needle-hand of yours! you’ll overreach yourself, or get sprained in the back sinews, some of these days, if you don’t look out.”
“I will not allow you to ‘talk stable’ in that way, sir,” returned Alice, playfully shaking her finger at her recumbent spouse; “you shall not go to the picnic at all, you naughty boy, unless you behave better. Come, get up,” she continued, “if you lie down again you’ll be asleep in a minute; you’re so idle, you’re actually growing fat!”
“Nonsense, you don’t really mean it!” exclaimed Harry, springing up with a bound which shook the room, and startled Alice so much that she dropt the glove, needle, thread, button, and all, pricking her finger into the bargain. “By Jove,” he continued, regarding himself anxiously in a large pier-glass, “so I am! I tell you what, Mrs. Coverdale, this is getting serious, and must be put a stop to!”
“My dearest Harry, how dreadfully impetuous you are!—you’ve made me jump so, that I’ve dropt my work, and been and gone and pricked my favourite finger, as you say in your horrid slang—look!” So saying, the pretty Alice pouted like a spoilt child, as she then most assuredly was, and held up the injured finger to excite her husband’s commiseration. When a proper degree of pity had been shown, and the necessary amount of matrimonial felicity transacted, Alice resumed: “What a dreadfully conceited fellow you are, to be so alarmed at growing fat! Are you afraid of losing your beauty?”
“My how much?” was the astonished reply. “What funny ideas do come into a woman’s head to be sure! Why, you silly child, do you think I ever set up for a ‘beauty’ man? or care two straws what I look like? Such follies are very well for got up puppies, like Horace D’Almayne; but they’re not in my line.”
“I’m sure you’re fifty times as handsome as Mr. D’Almayne,” was Alice’s eager rejoinder; “but” she continued reflectively “if you are not afraid of your good looks, why are you so horrified at the idea of growing fat?”
Harry coloured slightly, and tried to evade the question; but his wife’s curiosity, being by this time excited, was not so easily baffled, and Coverdale had nothing for it but to confess the truth, which he did thus:—
“Well, if you must know, little wife, I’ve a bay colt by Fencer out of a Harkaway mare, and a chesnut filly by Hercules out of Bulfinch, both rising five (I refused 600 guineas for the pair of ’em a year ago), which I expect to do most of my work next hunting season; but as they’re both young unmade horses, I would not ride over twelve stone for anything; nothing cows a young horse more than overweighting him at starting.”
“Oh, Harry!” exclaimed Alice reproachfully, “I thought you meant to give up hunting now—I’m sure you said so when you were——, that is, before we were married. Why, you would be away from me more than half the day every time you went out! besides, it’s so dangerous! Oh, no; you may go shooting sometimes, and I can ride a pony and mark for you, as I used to do with papa and Arthur, but you must not hunt.”
“And can’t you ride and see the hounds throw off, darling? It’s one of the prettiest sights in the world. The first thing I mean to do when we get back, is to buy you a perfect lady’s horse; something rather different from that brute poor old Crane gave you.”
“Then you won’t promise to give up hunting, you naughty boy—not even when I ask you to do so to please me?”
And, confident in her own power, the young wife cast a look, half-imploring, half-commanding, on her lord and master, which he would have found it no easy matter to resist to a degree which should vindicate his right to such a title, when the opportune entrance of the valet, with a packet of letters, extricated him from his dilemma.
“A note from Madame de Beauville, containing an invitation to the picnic!—how delightful!” exclaimed Alice, appealing for sympathy to her better half; but he was engaged in perusing the following epistle, which, owing to the peculiarities both of diction, writing, and spelling, it was not too easy to decypher:—
“Honoured Sur,—I remain your humbel survunt and gaim-keepur as wos, John Markum, whech I would not ’ave intruded on you injoying of yourself in furring parts as is most fit, having married a beutiful yung English lady, as they do tell me, and the darter of Squire Hazlehurst likewise; which having caused a many things to go rong at home, I thort you would be glad to hear on it, and so rite, which I ’ope is no offence, the same being unintenshonal on my part; but the new stewart is agoin on oudacious, a ordering of me to kill gaim for him to sell, which, refusing to do, agin your ordurs, Honoured Sur, and he putting the money in his durty pocket, savin your presents, am discharged with four small childring, and a little stranger expected, which would have been welcome, but now must be a birding on the parish with his poor mother; which, knowin Honoured Sur, as injustice to unborn innocents is not in your line, nor in that of any gents but dishonest stewarts spoken agen in Scriptur, I umbly takes the liburty of trustin in Providence, which supports his poor mother agen the thorts of workous baby-linen, that hangs heavy on a woman accustomed to wash for the family and keep herself respectabul; so do not give up all hope of seeing you home, Honoured Sur, before every hed of gaim is destroyed, in which case Mr. stewart may larn that honesty is the best politics arter all; and so remain,
“Your humbel survunt to commarnd,
“John Markujm.”
“P.S.—The rabbids is agoin to town in the carriur’s cart, frightful, likewise the peasants.”
“My dearest Harry, there is to be a bal costumé after the picnic, and that kind Madame de Beauville sends us tickets for both! How charming!” exclaimed Alice, so engrossed in her pleasant anticipations that she had not observed the gloom gathering upon her husband’s brow, and was, therefore, quite unprepared when he broke out suddenly—
“’Pon my word, it’s enough to drive a man distracted! the moment one turns one’s back everything goes to———Ahem!—
“Here’s a scoundrel, who lived eight years with Lord Flashipan, and who came to me with a character fit for a bishop, and now he’s not only selling my game by cart-loads, but has actually dared to discharge Markum!—as honest, trustworthy a fellow, and as good a keeper as man need to require. Oh, if I was but near him with a horse-whip, I wouldn’t mind paying for the assault! I’d give him something to remember Harry Coverdale by—he might thank his stars if I didn’t break every bone in his skin. And that poor fellow Markum turned out, and all his little curly-headed brats, too—that makes me as mad as any of it!” He strode up and down the room angrily, his wife watching him in terrified amazement. At length he exclaimed abruptly—“Alice, my dear, we must start for England to-morrow morn——”
“But the picnic and the bal costumé, Harry, dearest, do not come off till the day after that; and Madame de Beauville has just sent me tickets for them both!” urged his wife, timidly.
“I’m sorry, my love, that it should have happened so, but go we must,” was the unyielding reply.
“But Madame de Beauville has taken so much trouble, and been so kind,” murmured Alice.
“The devil fly away with the old hag and her kindness too!” was the angry rejoinder. “I wish to heaven she’d attend to her own affairs, and not try to inspire you with a taste for dissipation. However, there is a quiet way of settling this question: if you choose to stay and go to this party, stay; and when I’ve been to Coverdale, and settled scores with that rascal Cribbins, I’ll come back and fetch you; so please yourself.”
Poor Alice! this was her first experience of Harry’s “quiet way;” the implied indifference was more than she could bear, and murmuring, in a broken voice, “Do you wish to leave me already!” she burst into a flood of tears.
Of course, that settled the question. Harry called himself a brute, and thought he was one, and felt as if he could have cried too, when he saw the bright drops glistening in Alice’s soft, loving eyes, and so set himself to work in earnest to console her; and succeeded to such an extent that ere a quarter of an hour had elapsed, Alice pronounced herself to be a silly child, and wondered how she could have been so foolish as to cry because Harry, the kindest and most affectionate of husbands, had evinced his just indignation on learning how the miscreant Cribbins had tyrannized over the faithful and unfortunate Markum, and his dear little interesting, curly-pated family. Then, as a personal favour to herself, she begged Harry would let her give up the picnic, and start for England next morning; she would be quite ready to go at five A.M., or earlier, if he wished it. To which Harry replied that nothing should induce him to deprive her of a pleasure he knew she had set her heart on; that a French picnic and bal costumé were things she could never see in England, and that as they were there it would be really a pity not to avail themselves of so good an opportunity; and he begged she would instantly sit town and write his thanks, as well as her own, to that thoroughly friendly, kind-hearted woman, Madame de Beauville.
While Alice was thus engaged, Harry took pen in hand, and dashed off a hurried epistle to Arthur, begging him to run down to Coverdale Park by the next train, and in his name cashier Cribbins, and re-instate the ill-used Markum and his much-enduring wife, if possible, before the arrival of the expected little stranger should add another small item to his embarrassments.
The picnic was a very gay one, and the bal costumé all that Alice’s “fancy had painted it,”—and a few over, as her slang husband was pleased to express it. The young couple went dressed as Romeo and Juliet. Harry, if left to himself, would have chosen a clown’s suit of motley; but Alice considered the romantic preferable to the ridiculous, and so he yielded; though it must be confessed that he afforded the most stalwart, robust, and cheerful representation of the forlorn Veronese lover that can well be imagined. Alice (although she also would have looked the part better if her damask cheek had not glowed quite so brightly with health and happiness) made an extremely fascinating little Juliet, and produced a sensation which delighted her husband, and bid fair to turn her own pretty head.
The bal and picnic being safely accomplished, and Alice perceiving that, although he did not again openly broach the subject, Harry’s thoughts were continually wandering to Coverdale Park, pretended (like a loving little hypocrite as she was) that she also began to feel home-sick; and that, although Paris was all very charming and agreeable for a little while, she should be very sorry to stay there long. Thus, the day of their departure was fixed, so that Harry should be enabled to reach home before the first of September,—as Alice (choosing the lesser of two evils) meant to encourage his shooting (occasionally for a few hours), as a bribe to induce him to give up that senseless and dangerous pastime, hunting; and she actually believed that her influence could accomplish all this—dear, innocent little Alice!
On the morning before they were to start, a letter arrived from the Grange. Alice read it eagerly.
“Oh, Harry!” she exclaimed, “what do you think Emily tells me? What a strange, extraordinary, wretched thing!—it seems quite impossible!”
“What is it, little wife?” returned Harry. “Has your father turned free-trader, and invited Messrs. Cobden and Bright to stay with him; or has Arthur been made Lord Chancellor?”
“Something almost as wonderful,” was the rejoinder. “Mr. Crane has proposed for my cousin Kate’s hand, and she has positively accepted him!”
“And a very sensible thing, too,” replied Harry, who, leaning over the back of his wife’s chair, was wickedly and surreptitiously attaching an ornamental pen-wiper to the end of one of her long, silky ringlets; “I dare say, now, you’re bitterly repenting your own folly in having allowed her the chance.”
Alice, turning her head quickly to administer condign punishment for this speech, by a tug at her lord and master’s ample whiskers, became aware of the scheme laid against her unconscious ringlet by reason of a twitch, which Harry, unprepared for her sudden movement, was unable to avoid giving it.
“You silly boy! what are you doing to me? oh! you’ve tied a horrid thing to my pet curl; take it off directly, sir! But seriously, now, about Kate;—dearest Harry—do be sensible, please, and let me talk to you.” This exhortation was called forth by the fact of the incorrigible Coverdale having placed the pen-wiper—which was a sort of cross between a three-barrelled cocked hat and an improbable pyramid—on the top of his wife’s head, just where the cross-roads in the parting of her hair occurred.
“Talk away, darling; I’m about as sensible as it’s at all likely you’ll ever find me,” was the reply.
“‘Well, don’t you really and truly think it very shocking that such a girl as Kate—so clever and handsome, so unusually superior in every point—should throw herself away upon that silly old man, whom she cannot even respect?” rejoined Alice.
“If I must speak the plain truth,” replied Harry, “I should say that a girl who could make such a sacrifice of her own free will isn’t worth pitying for it; she must be both mercenary and ambitious—serious faults in a man, but positive vices in a woman, because in yielding to them she is sinning against all the better instincts of her nature: for such a character I can feel no sympathy.”
“But indeed, Harry, she is not such a dreadful heartless creature as you imagine her; at least, she never used to be. On the contrary, when we were all children together, she was rather high-flown and romantic. It was during the time that she was at school, and under the care of a horrid woman, a Miss Crofton—”
“A Miss how much?” inquired Harry.
“Miss Crofton.”
“What was her Christian name?” continued Harry.
“Arabella,” was the reply.
“By Jove! did you ever see her? Was she a tall, dark-looking creature, with great flashing eyes like a gipsy’s?”
“Yes, that is an exact description of her,” returned Alice, in surprise; “but why do you ask? What do you know of her?”
“No good,” returned Harry, mysteriously, shaking his head; “but never mind, go on.”
“I was only going to say that I feel sure Kate must have some better reason than a mere wish to become a great lady, to induce her to marry Mr. Crane. You know her father and mother are very poor, and she has several younger brothers and sisters; perhaps she wishes to help them.”
“I dare say she does,” replied Harry, turning away to conceal a yawn; “nobody is all bad, any more than they are all the other thing. Characters are like zebras—alternate stripes of black and white; the only difference is, that in some one colour predominates, in some the other.”
There was a pause, then in a lower voice Alice resumed—
“Harry, did it ever occur to you (of course, I do not want you to betray confidence even to me), but did you ever suspect that Arthur was attached to Kate?”
“Never in my life,” was the unhesitating reply. “Arthur always laughed the tender passion, as he used to call it, to scorn.”
“I felt almost certain it was so,” continued Alice; “but I most earnestly hope, for his sake, that I was mistaken; if not, only conceive how wretched this engagement will make him!”
“Judging by my own feelings, when I fancied you had accepted the irresistible cotton-spinner,” returned Coverdale, “I should say that Prometheus, who had a perennial vulture making ‘no end’ of a meal on his liver (which I take to be simply a metaphorical method of stating that the unfortunate Titan was afflicted with hepatic disease), was, by comparison, ‘a gentleman who lived at home at ease.’”
“I used to fancy sometimes,” pursued Alice, “that Kate returned his affection; but she was so reserved, and her manner was always so calm and self-possessed, that it was impossible to judge, with any degree of certainty, what her feelings might be. However, this settles the point so far as she is concerned; if she had really cared about him, she could never have consented to marry Mr. Crane.”
“Hum! well I don’t know that,” returned Harry, meditatively; “it is not all women who have such simple, true, loving hearts as you, my own darling; and a pupil of Arabella Crofton’s may very well be capable of loving one man and marrying another.”
“Why, how came you to know anything about Miss Crofton, Harry?” exclaimed Alice, her curiosity being thoroughly roused by her husband’s second allusion to some previous acquaintance with her cousin’s ci-devant governess.
“I met her in Italy, if you must know,” returned Coverdale “She lived as governess in a family where I visited, and I saw a good deal of her at one time.”
There was something so odd and conscious in his manner of speaking, that Alice exclaimed, “She fell in love with you, I am certain of it. Come, confess now that I am right.”
“Do you think that every woman must needs be as foolish as yourself, you silly child?” was the uncomplimentary reply. “I can assure you, Miss Crofton is as utterly unlike you in tastes, habits, and opinions, as she is in person; and that is a pretty considerable assertion, I take it. And now it is time for you to get ready for our last drive in the Bois de Boulogne, and I must go out and buy a clean pair of gloves; so for ten minutes I shall wish you an affectionate farewell.”
Thus saying, Harry quitted the apartment; and Alice, going to prepare for her drive, forgot, for the time, her husband’s mysterious intimacy with Miss Crofton—it occurred to her afterwards, indeed, when——, but we must not anticipate. The next morning saw them en route. As they were about to embark at Boulogne, a sensation was created, at the hotel at which they waited till the tide served for the packet to start, by the arrival of a travelling carriage drawn by four horses, with a lady inside, and her soubrette, and an outlandish, courier-like creature in the rumble.
“By Jove!” exclaimed Harry, who, ensconced behind a window-curtain, had been examining the turn out with all the interest with which a position of enforced idleness invests every trifle. “By the powers there’s a foreign coronet on the carriage, and ditto on Don Whiskerando’s buttons! I wonder what she is like! Young and pretty, by all that is interesting and romantic! I dare say she is going to cross in the same boat as we are. Yes! Whiskerandos is gesticulating and explaining, and the landlord waves his hand in the direction of the pier. Now comes the bore of being a married man: what a splendid adventure I am shut out from! If I were but single, an opportunity now offers of captivating a lovely and accomplished foreign Countess, with a dowry of diamonds in her dressing-box, and a gold mine in her precious pocket: there’s a good opening for a nice young man!”
“Pray avail yourself of it,” returned Alice. “Don’t let me be any obstacle; carry off the Countess, and I will remain behind with that noble creature whom you style Don Whiskerandos. I prefer him infinitely to you, he is so like a very well-trained baboon.”
Harry’s conjecture that the mysterious Countess meant to cross in the same vessel with, himself and his wife proved correct; for, scarcely had he seen Alice comfortably established on a snug bench, where, if the sea-fiend should be so uncourteous as to attack her, she could on an emergency lie down, when daintily tripped along the human chicken-ladder which connected the vessel with the shore, the graceful, bien chaussé, little feet of the Countess. Then ensued a grand scene. Whiskerandos either did not comprehend, or refused to comply with some demand of the hotel commissionaire, who had taken upon himself the charge of the baggage, and who accordingly resisted his conveying his mistress’s luggage on board. Whiskerandos grimaced and chattered in a polyglot jargon, apparently compounded of every language under heaven, and utterly incomprehensible to the deepest philologist extant: the commissionaire was immovable. Whiskerandos implored—the commissionaire was deaf to his entreaties. Whiskerandos stormed—the commissionaire was inexorable. Whiskerandos, unable to endure his fate with calmness, went raving mad—he swore oaths so replete with improbable consonants that it is only a wonder they did not smash every tooth in his head; he stumped, shrieked, clenched his fists, and shook them in the face of his adversary—in vain; the commissionaire remained adamant, and prepared actually to carry off the offending luggage.
“Look at that ape,” observed Harry to his wife, who was watching the scene, half in amusement, half in terror; “he’s going into sky-blue fits apparently: of all absurd sights an angry foreigner is the most ridiculous. Do you see his moustaches?—they actually stand on end with fury, like the hairs on the tail of an excited cat. But see, the Don appeals to his mistress; the Countess will have to settle the affair in propriâ personâ.” This affair, however, was not to be arranged so easily; for the inflexible commissionaire proved as deaf to the entreaties of the mistress as he had shown himself to the threatenings of the man; and the Countess, if countess she was, having remonstrated to no purpose in a gentle, timid voice, looked helplessly round, as though she would appeal to society at large to aid her in her difficulty.
“Poor thing! those men have frightened her; she looks ready to cry!” exclaimed Alice. “Harry, dear, do go and see if you cannot assist her—you understand how to manage those people so well; besides, they always attend to a gentleman.”
Thus urged, Harry crossed the deck, and Alice saw him take off his hat and address the interesting foreigner; she bowed her head, and was evidently making a grateful answer; then Harry turned to the disputants, who both assailed him with a volley of words, upon which he first silenced Whiskerandos, then he exchanged a few cabalistic sentences with the commissionaire, and slipped a talisman into his hand, whereupon, with the celerity of some harlequinade trick, he changed into an amiable, obliging creature, only too anxious to please everybody, and went off, patting Whiskerandos on the back, and calling him a brave garçon, to assist with his own silver-absorbing fingers in conveying the Countess’s luggage on board. Then the Countess overwhelmed Harry with thanks, and Harry smiled benignantly upon the Countess, and they “talked conversation” for a few minutes; after which they both looked at Alice, and Harry with his best company manner on (which was merely his own natural manner brushed smooth), crossed over to her.
“She is really a Countess,” he began, “and a very charming, refined style of young woman too. She wants to be introduced to you, so come along.”
“But, Harry, dear, I shall break my neck, or tumble into the sea, if I attempt to walk; just look how its rolling about!” remonstrated Alice, whose essentially terrestrial education had given her rather a horror of all nautical matters.
“We’ll fall in together then,” returned Harry, laughing; “at all events don’t let us fall out about it. Come along, little wife, and trust yourself to me; I’ve paced a vessel’s deck when the sea’s shown rather a different sort of surface from that which it wears to-day.”
As he spoke, he placed his arm round his wife’s slender waist, and half supported, half led her across the deck in safety.
“What is her name, Harry?” inquired Alice, as they were effecting the transit.
“Bertha seems to be her Christian name—of course her surname is something unpronounceable and appalling; but if you call her Countess Bertha that will do; at all events, as long as our acquaintance with her is likely to last,” was the reply.
Alice having never before encountered a real, live Countess, felt a little shy at first; but the young foreigner’s manner, which was perfectly easy without being too familiar, soon re-assured her, and the two girls (for the Countess appeared little older than Alice) chatted away, at first in French, but when it came out that the stranger likewise understood English, in that language, to their mutual satisfaction. But in about half-an-hour a breeze (not metaphorical, but literal) sprung up, and the Countess signified her wish to retire to the cabin, upon which Coverdale summoned her maid, and then assisted her to effect the desired change of locality.
“T There now, I consider I’ve done the polite in the first style of fashion and elegance,” observed Harry, self-complacently, as he rejoined his wife; “Horace D’Almayne himself could not have polished off the young woman more handsomely, for all his moustaches.”
“How you do hate that poor Mr. D’Almayne!” returned Alice, laughing. “Do you know, I think you are jealous of him.”
“I was once, and that’s the truth—very savage it made me too; for if you could have been fascinated by such a puppy as that, I felt I had mistaken your character in toto, and that the Alice I loved was a creature of my own imagination, not a reality—but I soon saw my error.”
Alice glanced at him archly. “Are you quite sure you did not fall into a greater mistake when you fancied yourself so certain of my indifference?” she inquired.
Harry fixed his eyes upon her with a look of inquiry, which, when he saw that she was joking, changed to an expression of tenderness;—“I could not look in that dear face, where every thought can be read as in a book, and remain jealous for five minutes,” he answered.
Alice made no reply, unless placing her little hand in that of her husband, with a confiding gesture, can be called so.
The wind continuing fresh, the unfortunate Countess did not re-appear; but Coverdale and his wife, being so happily constituted that the tossing produced no ill effects upon them, remained upon deck till the vessel reached Dover. Amid the scene of confusion attending the arrival of a steamer, Harry, having secured his luggage, was standing sentinel over a moderately-sized pyramid, which he had caused to be erected of the same, when Alice, then seated upon a large black trunk, which she had seduced her husband into buying in the Rue St. Honoré, and which would very easily have held her, bonnet, cloak, and all, suddenly exclaimed, “Oh, Harry! do look at that young exquisite who has just come on board; why he’s the very moral, as the old women say, of the person we’ve been discussing—Mr. D’Almayne!”
“By Jove, he’s more than the moral!” returned Coverdale, as the individual thus alluded to advanced towards them bowing and smiling, “it’s the veritable Horace himself, I vow—talk of the devil——. My dear fellow, how are you? who’d have thought of seeing you here! You’ve not turned Custom-house officer, have you? I’ve nothing contraband about me, except this morning’s Galignani; if you are inclined to make a seizure of that, you’re very welcome.”
“You’re nearer the mark than you imagine, my dear sir,” was the reply; “though not exactly a professional attaché to the Customs, I must own that I am here as an amateur in that capacity—my object being to facilitate the transmission of a lady’s luggage.”
“Yes?—how interesting! I hope she’s young and pretty,” observed Alice. “Come Mr. D’Almayne, having let us so far into the secret, it’s no use to affect the mysterious, so tell us who and where she is.”
“Where she is, perhaps you may be able to inform me, my dear Mrs. Coverdale,” replied D’Almayne, smoothing his moustaches. “The object of my search is a young German lady, the Countess Bertha von Rosenthal, to whom I have promised my friend, the Honourable Mrs. Botherby, to act as preux chevalier. Accordingly I came down by train this morning, provided with an order from the Board of Customs to the people here to pass the Countess’s luggage unexamined, and show her every attention which may facilitate her transit; thence I am to escort her and her property to Park Lane; by all which ‘double, double, toil and trouble,’ I secure an early introduction to, and confer a favour upon, a young and lovely heiress.”
“That’s my Countess, as sure as fate!” exclaimed Harry. “She said her name was Bertha”—and he then related to D’Almayne the circumstances with which the reader has already been made acquainted. “And,” he continued in conclusion, as a female figure, leaning on the arms of the soubrette and Don Whiskerandos, emerged from the ladies’ cabin—“and here she comes, looking rather poorly still—nothing of the water-witch about her, at all events. Have you met before, or shall I introduce you?”
“Do, by all means, mon cher; we are total strangers to each other,” was the reply. And with an injunction to Alice to remain where she was till he should return, Harry seized D’Almayne’s arm, and hurried him away. Before two minutes had elapsed, Coverdale returned alone.
“It’s all right,” he said: “but come along; D’Almayne’s order will clear our luggage also, and we can all get away together.”
Then ensued a grand scena of bustle and confusion, during which, supported by her husband’s stalwart arm, Alice caught glimpses of D’Almayne smiling to show his white teeth, and striving vigorously to enact the part of guardian angel to the rich young heiress.
“That puppy is in his glory now,” observed Coverdale, snappishly; “I dare say that silly woman will take him at his own price, and believe in him to any extent to which he may like to lead her—perhaps marry him after all, and make him Count von Rosenthal: that would suit his complaint exactly, the fortune-hunting young humbug!”
“My dear Harry, what words!” exclaimed Alice. “You are really quite savage to-day; I shall be obliged to take Mr. D’Almayne under my protection, if you go on so.”
“No need to do that, my dear,” returned Harry, his face resuming its usual bright, kind expression, as his glance fell upon his wife; “your protégé is quite certain to take the best possible care of himself—now come along;” and in another five minutes they had left the vessel and entered a railroad-carriage, in which the Countess and D’Almayne had already established themselves.
The journey to London was a very agreeable one;—the Countess, having recovered with marvellous celerity the moment she placed her pretty little foot on terra firma, exerted herself to make up for lost time, and succeeded so well that D’Almayne, who became more and more empressé and devoted every moment, determined, if he should be able to ascertain beyond a doubt that her fortune was as large as it had been represented, to give up every other speculation, and devote all his energies to secure the hand and purse of this fascinating foreigner. As they approached the London Bridge terminus the Countess, turning to her new guardian, inquired whether it was very far to Park Lane:
“About half an hour’s drive. The carriage will, I trust, be there to meet this train; though, owing to our having avoided all delay at the Custom-house, we shall be in town some two hours sooner than the other steam-boat passengers. However, if we arrive earlier than is expected, it will only be an agreeable surprise to our kind friend, Mrs. Botherby.”
“Mais oui!” returned the Countess with a look of innocent perplexity; “and who may be cette chere Madame Bodairebie?”
“Mrs. Botherby, my dear Countess,” returned D’Almayne, who began to think his charming friend must be slightly insane, “Mrs. Botherby—the Honourable Mrs. Botherby—is the lady who obtained for me the pleasure of rendering you this slight service.”
“Quelle drôle de chose. I shall not know some Mrs. Bodairebie no veres,” was the astounding reply.
“But—but—” stammered D’Almayne, as an idea occurred to him sufficiently alarming to surprise him out of his usual sang froid, “excuse me—but surely you are the Countess Bertha von Rosenthal?”
A peal of silvery laughter was the only reply the unhappy exquisite was at first able to obtain; but, as soon as she could recover herself, the mysterious lady began: “Milles pardons! I am so rude to make a laugh at you, but I am so gay I alvays must laugh ven I see a ridiculous thing in front of—bah—vot you call before me. Mon cher Monsieur, you have, I know not how, tumbled into a delusion. I am not at all zie Countess Bertha von Rosenthal, but zie Countess Bertha Hasimoff, en route to stay viz my friend, Lady St. Clare, in Park Lane, London, till my hosband shall capture zie permission of die Czar to leave Petersburg and transport himselfs after me.”
Coverdale, Alice, and the Countess Hasimoff, glanced first at D’Almayne, then at one another, and then—but if they were heartless enough to laugh consumedly, we will draw a veil over such unfeeling conduct.
THE first of September! No wonder if we were a covey of partridges what we should think about the first of September, and how, generalizing from that idea, we should feel towards the race of men,—sons of guns, as in partridge parlance we should, doubtless, metaphorically term them! We wonder from what point we should regard pointers (disappointers, as a witty friend of ours called a couple of “wild young dogs” who ran in upon their game, and cheated him of a promising shot), or how we should look upon a setter making a “dead set” at us! Reasoning by analogy, and not supposing partridges to be better Christians than Christians themselves, we fear we should consider sportsmen (the very name is an addition of insult to injury) greater brutes than their four-footed allies; and that the idea of standing fire (either kitchen or gun), the notion of the roasting we must undergo after we have been plucked,—of the way in which we should be cut up by a set of blades, who are, after all, ready enough to pick our brains, and avail themselves of our merry-thoughts, would put us in such a flutter that it would be a mercy if we were not to show the white feather, and refuse to die game after all.
Such, however, were by no means the sentiments with which Harry Coverdale looked forward to the first of September. On the contrary, although he endeavoured to disguise the fact from his wife, and indeed from himself, as far as in him lay, the truth was that he was as much delighted at the prospect of a good day’s partridge shooting, as the veriest school-boy released from the drudgery of dictionary and grammar. Markum, that trustworthy custodian of game, and original specimen of a polite letter-writer, who had been safely re-instated in his office, and received such handsome presents of baby-linen and other infantry accoutrements that the illustrious “little stranger,” who had wisely postponed his arrival till the evil day had departed, bid fair to be clothed in a style befitting the heir-apparent to a dukedom rather than to a double-barrelled gun—Markum reported that although the hares and pheasants (which he persisted in calling peasants) had suffered some diminution from the practice of the dishonest steward, yet that he’d never “in all his born days seen such a blessed sight o’ partridges.” Stimulated by this information, and by the recollection that on the preceding first of September he had been kicking his heels and cursing his evil fortune, as he performed quarantine in a red-hot port of the Mediterranean, Harry—having greatly amused Alice by the earnest zeal with which, on the 31st of August, he examined and re-examined his “Joe Manton,” and the exact and stringent orders he gave in regard to the feeding of his dogs, than which the most fastidious invalid could not have been more delicately and precisely dieted—awoke at four o’clock on the eventful morning, and, without disturbing Alice, who was sleeping as calmly as a child, rose and dressed himself in a thoroughly workmanlike shooting costume. Having accomplished this feat without waking Alice, he wrote on a bit of paper, “Good morning and good-bye, dearest. As I intend to have a glorious day of it, do not expect me till near dinner-time, when I hope to return with a full bag and an awful appetite. Yours, ever, H. C.,” and placing it on his wife’s dressing-table, stole on tiptoe to the door, closed it noiselessly after him; and when, three hours afterwards, Alice opened her eyes, he was striding through stubble on the farther side of the estate, having bagged four brace of birds and a well-conditioned and respectable Jack hare.
Mrs. Coverdale was some few minutes before she was, literally, awake to a sense of her situation; and the lady’s-maid entering while she was still between sleeping and waking, she half unconsciously asked the not unnatural question—“What has become of your master?”
“If you please, Mem, Master’s been out shooting partringers ever since five o’clock, Wilkins says. If you please, Mem, there’s a note for you, Mem, lying on your dressing-table, in Master’s handwriting.”
Rousing herself, Alice read it eagerly. The contents did not seem particularly to please her, for, as she refolded the paper, she looked grave, and gave vent to a mild sigh. “Do not undraw the curtain,” she said: “come again in an hour, Ellis; I feel sleepy, and there is nothing to get up for,” she added, in a slightly pettish tone. Falling asleep the moment she laid her head upon the pillow, Alice dreamed that when she came down to breakfast she found Harry had returned, saying that he could not bear to leave her alone all day, and so had come back and wished to drive her to call upon that agreeable woman, Mrs. Felicia Tabinette (a name with which she was inspired for the occasion, as no such neighbour existed), to which proposition she gladly assenting, they had gone out in a pony-chaise made of coral and mother-of-pearl, and drawn by two lovely little sea-green ponies with lilac manes and tails, and harness made of the best point lace. And she was just advancing the unanswerable proposition that, as lace was the fittest material of which to make a lady’s collar, it must also be the most proper fabric for that of a horse, when the inexorable Ellis appeared for the second time, and dispelled all her bright visions by awakening her to the dull reality. Alice, however, took her revenge upon that “dis-illusioning”—as a Frenchman would have called it—lady’s-maid, for she was more fastidious and difficult to please, and almost snappish, than Ellis had ever known her before, insomuch that the excellent Abigail afterwards propounded her opinion in the servants’ hall, that “Missus was tuter fay outer sorts,” which disheartening fact she accounted for by the hypothesis that she—Mrs. Coverdale—must have got out of bed with the wrong foot foremost.
While the tea for her solitary breakfast was drawing, Alice, having no one else to look at, amused herself by regarding her own natural—no term could be more appropriate—face in a large pier-glass, and was quite startled to behold the unmistakeably cross expression which characterized it. Taking herself to task for this, she, sipping her tea, which did not taste nearly so good as when Harry was at home, mentally decided that she was very unreasonable, and childish, and ridiculous—that when Harry had been devoting himself for the last month to her pleasure and amusement, going to balls and all sorts of places which he did not care a pin about, solely to please her, it was horribly selfish in her to grudge him a few hours to devote to a favourite pursuit—though how men could find delight in killing those poor birds, she could not tell. She did not so much wonder about other people; she believed men were generally cruel; but Harry was so unusually kind-hearted. She supposed it must be the excitement, and the beautiful scenery, and the interest in watching those dear, clever dogs stick out their long tails to point at the partridges with—which, looking at it in a Chesterfieldian point of view, was decidedly impolite, if not positively rude, of them; and yet she had heard gentlemen talk about their sporting dogs being so well-bred.
Having thus reasoned herself into a wiser frame of mind, she resolved to make the best of it; and suddenly recollecting she had at least a thousand things to do, which she was continually putting aside till some time or other when Harry should be out, she decided that this was the time, and that now or never must they all be done. Accordingly, she set vigorously to work, and wrote three letters one after another, to three former schoolfellows, wherein she described her husband as a species of modern demi-god, compounded of equal parts of Solomon and Adonis, with a dash of Achilles thrown in to do justice to his heroic qualities; and depicted matrimonial felicity in such glowing colours, that the richest and prettiest of her correspondents eloped the next week with her music-master; and one of the others, who was neither rich nor pretty, turned pious out of spite, and went into a sort of High Church Protestant nunnery-and-water, to punish the men, who, it must be confessed, appeared to submit to the trial with the most cheerful resignation. Then Alice brought out a large roll of bills, and a thick house-keeping book, ruled with blue lines, and having a business-like smell of new leather about the binding, which Alice flattered herself would impress even the stately housekeeper (who was old enough to be her mother, and stiff enough for anything; and of whom Alice, in her secret soul, stood very much in dread) with a deep sense of her being a very dragon of housewifery, prepared to be down upon the slightest attempt at peculation like an avenging fury. But the bills were so complicated, and never would add up twice alike, and the butcher was so inconsistent and slippery about his prices, sometimes charging 7d. and sometimes 7½d. as “if once a pound of mutton, always a pound of mutton,” were not an incontrovertible axiom; and the baker was as bad, besides choosing to spell dough, d.o.e., which at first made her think that he was the butcher and sold venison; and the hams seemed always to come from the tallow-chandler’s with the candles, which wasn’t by any means an agreeable association of ideas; and the footman was evidently of Esquimaux descent, and lived sumptuously upon lamp-oil at 8s. the gallon; and the coachman appeared to feed the carriage-horses with sponges, wash-leather, and rotten-stone, which she was sure could not be good for them; and she thought the under-housemaid had ordered herself a “Turk’s-head” dessert-cake, for her own private eating, but it turned out to be a particular species of broom; while the amount of hearth-stones and house-flannels that girl consumed would have served to build an “Albert pattern” model cottage once a quarter, and furnish the pauper inhabitants thereof with winter clothing: so that by the time luncheon arrived poor Alice, tired and confused, with inky fingers and an aching head, had come to the conclusion that she had nothing in common with Joseph Hume, M.P., and that for the future she should resign the glory of managing the housekeeper’s book to Mrs. Gripples, and restrict her department to the equally dignified, but less onerous, duty of making Harry sign the cheques, and handing them over to that august domestic to pay the bills with.