Luncheon—a dreadful hot luncheon—luncheon enough for four hungry men, at least; and Alice had a headache. Of course she could not touch a bit, so she listlessly nibbled a biscuit, and sipped half a glass of wine, and felt very lonely and uncomfortable, and sat down to think—which was just the very worst thing she could have done under the circumstances, for it brought on a second attack of the “neglected wife” state of feeling; and she had actually proceeded so far, that she was about mentally to convict Harry (that matrimonial phoenix) of positive selfishness, when the enormity of the idea horrified her, and produced an instantaneous re-action, and she told herself, roundly and sharply, that she was ungrateful in the extreme, and weak, and childish and vacillating, and altogether unworthy of such a blessing of a husband as Harry Coverdale. And thus, having taken herself severely to task, and repented and confessed, and promising amendment for the future, yet refused herself absolution, she recovered sufficiently to determine that she would do something energetic to dissipate reflection, though of what nature the deed was to be, she had not the smallest conception. Should she order the carriage, and pay visits?—no, impossible! they were all first visits to a set of total strangers, and she could no more call upon them alone than she could fly: besides she would be lost in that great carriage all by herself, and the horses would be sure to avail themselves of the opportunity to shy and run away, if Harry were not there to protect her. She knew the white-legged horse had a spite against her, for when she wanted to pat his nose one day, he tried to bite her—what a wonderful thing instinct was, to be sure! No, she would go and take a brisk walk, that would rouse her, and do her headache good; besides, she could have the dear dogs for company—oh, yes! a walk by all means. Where should she go?—why, across the fields to visit Mrs. Markum, and see how the little stranger looked in his gorgeous apparel, and learn whether mother or son wanted for anything. Harry would like her to do that, he was so fond of Markum. Ah, Alice! had you no mental reservation?—did not a hope lurk in the bottom of your heart that at the gamekeeper’s cottage you might possibly catch a glimpse of his master, calling in for dry shoes, or a relay of powder and shot? Poor, loving little Alice, ashamed to confess, even to herself, the depth and strength of her affection!—silly little Alice, jealous even of her involuntary rivals, the partridges, who would gladly have dispensed with the attentions her husband was paying them!—weak, foolish, little Alice!—and yet more truly wise in such loving folly, stronger in the weakness of such tender womanly devotion, nearer the Divine ideal, whence God who made man in his own image formed woman as a help meet for him, than the most self-engrossed esprit fort who ever confused herself and others by prating of things above her comprehension.
So Alice set out for her solitary ramble, taking with her Pepper and Ginger, which (although the former was often found in a pretty pickle, and would have been wholly inappropriate in a bream tart; and the latter, judging by the appearance of a very red tongue, was decidedly “hot i’ the mouth”) were not a couple of spicy condiments, but a brace of Skye terriers. The dogs were in charming spirits, which they displayed by running after and barking at respectable blackbirds seeking their frugal “diet of worms;” coming back in eccentric and violent circles, to twitch the ends of Alice’s boa and the corners of her shawl, only to dash away again and lose themselves, by forcing burglarious entrances into forbidden rabbit-burrows, with the vicious intention of worrying the timid inmates, in their little brown coats with practical jokes of tails. And here be it observed parenthetically, that of all the freaks of nature, the unexpected way in which she has seen fit to turn up rabbits’ tails, and to line them with white, to the great disfigurement and personal hazard of the owners, has always appeared to us one of the strangest, and only to be accounted for by the hypothesis of a chronic practical joke. Whether this idea enhanced the fun Pepper and Ginger had with the rabbits during that expedition, or whether it never occurred to them, is more than we can tell; but the extent to which those dogs persisted in burying themselves alive, and harassing their mistress by a succession of these amateur extramural interments, almost justifies us in supposing it must have done so.
Having at last succeeded in reducing her four-footed torments to such a measure of obedience that, when thoroughly tired of scampering and scratching, they condescended to follow her, Alice entered a grass field, and had walked half across it ere she discovered the alarming fact that there were some cows grazing in it; one of which she, to her intense discomposure, immediately decided to be a bull, because, as she afterwards graphically described it, “it moo’d so low down its throat that it almost growled at her.” Of course all bulls being mad, and a mad bull being enough to frighten anybody, Alice began to run; which feat of activity (or activity of feet, if any reader should prefer the phrase so transposed) charmed the dogs—who thought she did it for their express delectation—to such an extent, that they began to bark furiously, which frightened the cow (for despite her base voice, she was a “very” cow after all, and fortunately a quiet one into the bargain), so that, exalting her tail, and twisting it like a corkscrew for the greater effect, she also set off running, thereby adding to Alice’s terror to such a degree, that, if a providential stile had not mercifully rescued her, the consequences might have been serious. This last “spirt,” however, brought her to Markum’s cottage, where she found the baby in a great state of slobbering splendour—very red, ugly, and promising, and altogether (as an assistant old lady, not to say hag, rather the worse for something that had dropped into her tea out of the gin-bottle, and who, from the accident, was in an extensive condition of maudlin and inappropriate Christianity, piously observed), a “little crowing mercy.” Having done her duty by this young child—that is, having said it was very pretty, which, to speak mildly, was untrue—and a very fine child, which, as far as regarded its dress, it certainly was—and exactly like its father, which was an awful——well, never mind, pious fraud we’ll call it,—Alice tipped the inappropriate Christian half-a-crown (in exchange for which she received a tipsy blessing), and took leave, having obtained geographical instructions by which she might, on her homeward route, avoid the proximity of the basso profundo cow.
The walk back (with the trifling exception of an episode wherein Ginger disturbed the tenants of a wasps’-nest) proved singularly uneventful, and Alice, in her secret soul, pronounced the whole expedition a failure—which, as it had cured her headache, was very ungrateful of her; but she was so engrossed by a little pain about the heart, which nothing but her husband’s return could cure, that she had entirely forgotten her headache.
The hall clock struck four as its mistress entered—four o’clock, two long hours to dinner-time! the time when Harry would, that is, ought to, return; for she daresay’d he would be late, and that they should not sit down to table till half-past six, at the very earliest. What should she do to fill up this unharmonious interval? Why, as she had worked so hard all the morning, surely she had a right to amuse herself now. She would read some entertaining book, which would make her laugh and raise her spirits; for, despite her best endeavours, she was getting decidedly miserable. So to this end she opened a parcel of books from the library, and began upon a new novel, by that very talented lady, Mrs. Bluedeville, and read how a “fair and gentle girl,” brought up by a select coterie of fiendish relations, and subjected from infancy to a series of tortures, sufficient to have expended the stoutest negro, developed, under these favourable circumstances, into a perfect Houri of Paradise, with the “additional attraction” of possessing the mind, manners, erudition, and phraseology of an old Divine of the Church of England. This interesting young martyr, released from her educational Bastile, and turned out to grass for a brief space in a pleasant meadow, wherein pastured a gallant, but very moral, officer of dragoons, naturally falls in love with the same, who fortunately does not resent the liberty. Angelica, taken up from her month’s run and put to work much too heavy for her, becomes better and better, until, as might have been expected, she overdoes the thing, and getting too good to live, has nothing left for it but to die, which she accordingly does on the arrival of the post which brings an account of the bold dragoon (in whom, from a fancied resemblance to Harry, Alice had taken the deepest interest) having fallen a victim to his dauntless courage, which, leading him to kill sixteen mounted Sikhs in single combat, had failed to preserve him from the vindictive fury of the seventeenth evil-disposed survivor. Strange to say this talented work, delightful as it was, failed to render Alice much more cheerful; but it succeeded in occupying her till it was time to go and dress for dinner, and for this she was grateful to the genius of Mrs. Bluedeville.
By six o’clock Alice, ready for dinner in more senses than one, betook herself to the drawing-room, where she waited patiently for half-an-hour, reading up sundry parts of Mrs. Bluedeville, which, in her rapid flight through that lady’s instructive romance, she had failed to peruse. At seven o’clock she rang the bell, and inquired of the butler whether his master had come in, or whether, if not, anything definite was known of his whereabouts. The reply was unsatisfactory in the extreme.
Master had not returned, he (Wilkins) could form no idea where he was likely to be; but, as a general maxim, considered shooting to be a highly dangerous amusement. Would Mrs. Coverdale obligingly condescend to ring the bell when she wished the dinner to be brought up?
Shooting a dangerous amusement! Yes, of course, so it was—guns constantly went off of their own accord, and shot those who were carrying them. How was it she had never thought of this before? and she had been blaming Harry, when, perhaps——the idea was too horrible to clothe in words, but it had occurred to her, and for Alice now there was no peace.
Mrs. Bluedeville was thrown aside with no more ceremony than if she had been a penny-a-liner; and with flushed cheeks and a beating heart the anxious young wife began to pace up and down the apartment. As the minutes crept by (so slowly!) Alice’s fear increased, until, at half-past seven, the suspense grew intolerable; and, ringing the bell, she was just giving incoherent orders for two mounted grooms to set off in utterly useless directions, when bang! bang! went a double-barrelled gun in the stable-yard, and Wilkins (an amiable but timid London servant) and his mistress nearly jumped into each other’s arms.
Still haunted by the conviction that something untoward must have happened, Alice hastened to meet her husband as he entered the hall. “Oh, Harry dearest, how glad I am you are safe!” she exclaimed; “but tell me,” she continued, referring to the mysterious cause of his prolonged absence, “tell me—what is it?”
“Sixteen brace of birds, three hares, two couple of rabbits, a landrail, and a woodpigeon; and a very fair bag I call it for one gun,” was the unexpected reply.
Relieved, yet slightly provoked, Alice resumed: “But what has made you so late? I have been dreadfully frightened about you—”
“Frightened! what at? oh, you silly child! But come, let us have dinner; I shall be ready in less than ten minutes. The idea of being frightened!” and with a smile of compassionate derision, Harry marched off to dress, humming—
“A southerly wind and a cloudy sky
Proclaim it a hunting morning.”
And this was Alice’s recompense for a lonely day spent in looking forward to, and longing for, her husband’s return, ending in half-an-hour of breathless anxiety for his safety! She felt decidedly cross, and we think she had a right to be so. During dinner she was silent and dignified on principle—her husband should see that she felt his neglect. But Harry didn’t see it one bit, bless him! He was very hungry, so for some time kept strictly to business, and he was very happy, so when his appetite was appeased, he rattled on about anything and everything, and was so pleasant and cheerful that Alice felt dignity would be quite out of place, had a little struggle with her feelings, and then mentally forgave him.
To prove that she did so, she laid herself out to entertain and amuse him, and with this view, when the servant had left the room, she treated him to a comic account of her day’s adventures, and having talked herself into a great state of communicativeness and sociability, had just reached the bass cow episode, when a slight sound, not very unlike the voice of the cow itself, reached her ear—Harry had fallen fast asleep!
So Kate Marsden married the cotton-spinner, and old Mr. Hazlehurst repurchased his farm on very easy terms. We wonder which of the two was best pleased with the bargain! Kate turned very pale when she promised to love, honour, and obey a man whom she disliked, despised, and intended to rule; nor do we wonder at it, for, with all her faults, Kate perceived the intrinsic beauty of truth, and loved it, as she did everything beautiful. But though she loathed herself for what she was doing, though her bitterest enemy could not have taken a harsher view of her conduct than she herself took, she had gone too far to retract, and having swallowed the camel of crushing her own heart and that of Arthur Hazlehurst, she could not stultify herself by straining at the gnat of swearing falsely in the service for the solemnization of matrimony. Kate’s was one of that peculiar order of consciences which can commit a sin knowingly, on an emergency, but dare not be guilty of a blunder. In the one case, the end appears to justify the means; while in the other, the entire transaction is unworthy. Sophistry, Kate, sophistry! which, while you think it, and act upon it, fails to satisfy even your warped and distorted sense of right and wrong.
Kate Marsden married Mr. Crane—there was a union! On the one side youth and beauty; intellect, lofty enough to have aimed at any achievement which the mind of woman has accomplished; energy, sufficient to have gained the object striven for; ambition, that when all was won would have despised the trophies at her feet, and sighed for more worlds to conquer; and a deep passionate nature, combining the fiery elements of a southern temperament with the steady perseverance and inflexible resolution characteristic of a daughter of the sturdy north: on the other side, advancing age, mental weakness, timidity, and its natural concomitant—suspicion, together with a general paucity of ideas, centred in a vulgar pride of wealth. All Kate’s friends congratulated her, and many envied her good fortune; and Horace D’Almayne smiled on his future victim, as he surely reckoned her; and Arthur Hazlehurst sat alone in his dusky chambers, with bitter thoughts busy at his heart, struggling, like a brave and good man, against the tempting fiend that bade him rise up and curse her who had thus rendered desolate his young existence; and the minister of religion stood before the altar, and pronounced his blessing over this hollow mockery of marriage, which no amount of blessing could hallow; and the happy pair drove off to some fool’s paradise to enjoy the honeymoon.
Poor Mr. Crane! if he had dreamed of the volcano of feeling that smouldered at his side beneath that cold, calm exterior, he would assuredly have flung open the carriage-door, sprung out (albeit not accustomed to such feats of activity), and never ceased running until he had reached Manchester. Fortunately, however, his wife’s mind was a sealed book to him, and so he reached the end of his journey in peace and safety.
Having borne the honeymoon with resignation, Kate endured her bad bargain tête-à-tête at various watering-places, and amongst innumerable lakes and mountains of tourist notoriety, until she had taught him the only accomplishment she cared to inculcate, viz., obedience, which he learned very readily, seeing that it relieved him from all trouble and responsibility. This point accomplished, she took him to a fashionable hotel in St. James’s Street, where she wrote to her friend, Arabella Crofton, to join her. However, before that excellent young woman of the world had time to wind up the ends of a few trifling skeins of policy, with which she had been constructing nets for small birds at Baden-Baden, Horace D’Almayne found out the residence of the happy couple, and proceeded to call upon, dine with, and make himself generally useful and agreeable to them. Kate did not like him, but she had been for two months tête-à-tête with Mr. Crane, and Horace possessed this advantage over that devoted husband, that he was not a fool, and Mr. Crane was. Horace was not a fool; on the contrary, he was such a clever knave that it was really a pity that he was not something better: he saw the game he had to play, and he resolved to play it as skilfully as his faculties and experience would enable him. He possessed considerable insight into character, and sufficient tact to accommodate himself to the peculiarities, and avail himself of the weaknesses, he might thus discover. Accordingly, his first move was to endeavour to lull Kate’s suspicions of him, which he saw had been aroused; his next to make himself by degrees useful to her—necessary to her; then, let him win her confidence on any subject (he would have been delighted if she had told him the day of the month, or that she had dropped a pin, in confidence, for it would have been a beginning), until by word, look, or sign, she admitted her indifference towards her husband, and then the game would be his own.
With Mr. Crane D’Almayne’s course appeared very simple. The millionaire’s one clear idea was the omnipotence of wealth; he knew D’Almayne was poor, and that he had lent him money which he never expected to be repaid. He considered him in the light of a sort of Master of the Ceremonies, who could guide him in the ways of fashionable life, whereof he felt his ignorance—a kind of upper upper-servant—the Vizier to his Caliphship, and he lent him money as a delicate way of paying his wages. At present D’Almayne was in high favour with Mr. Crane; his wife was looking very handsome, quite a gem of a wife—equal to his pictures or his port wine; D’Almayne had negotiated his marriage for him, and the speculation had been a successful one; he lent D’Almayne £500 before he had been in town a week. Horace saw it all, but he was not proud; as he would have said, “It suited his book too well,” so he pocketed his wages meekly.
“My dear Kate, can you amuse yourself for a couple of hours or so alone? D’Almayne and I are going to look at a pair of carriage-horses—a—I shall bring him home to luncheon, and—a—now I think of it, I asked him to dine here and go to the concert at the Hanover Square Rooms with us afterwards;” and having thus unfolded his programme for the day, Mr. Crane glanced timidly towards his wife, to learn whether it would receive her sanction and approval. There was a moment’s silence, and then in a low, musical voice, Kate replied coldly—
“I have letters to write this morning, so the arrangement will suit me perfectly. If the horses are fine ones, I hope you will buy them.”
Mr. Crane stroked his chin (a habit in which he indulged when anything pleased him) and smiled. His wife was satisfied with him—happy man! But he had stroked his chin rather prematurely, for, in the same cold tone, Kate resumed—
“There is one point on which I am anxious clearly to understand you. Is it your wish that Mr. D’Almayne should virtually live with us? because, that he will do so, unless some decided measures are taken to discourage him, is self-evident.”
This was a straightforward and uncompromising way of putting the case which slightly discomposed poor Mr. Crane.
D’Almayne was, as we have said, eminently useful to his patron, so much so, that at that precise epoch the good gentleman would have been sorely puzzled how to get on without him; but the more he acknowledged this in his secret soul, the less did he desire that any one, and especially his young wife, should perceive it.
“Well, my dear Kate,” he began, “you see Mr. D’Almayne has turned his attention to points which, engaged as I have been for many years in commerce, I have never found time or opportunity to render myself acquainted with.”
“In fact, he has made himself necessary to you,” interposed Kate.
“No, my dear, no—by no means necessary—not at all so; but that he is useful, very useful to me, I confess. I am sorry to perceive that you have taken up a slightly unreasonable (if I may be permitted to say so) prejudice against this young man.”
“You are mistaken,” returned Kate, calmly. “I am perfectly indifferent to him. If it is your wish to make use of him, he will of course be here constantly; but as you have so kindly yielded to my desire that my friend, Miss Crofton, should reside with us, his presence or his absence will make little difference to me—only, if at any future time you should hear comments on the intimacy, you will remember that I have admitted it solely to gratify you.”
Mr. Crane, propitiated by this concession, and by the grounds on which Kate had placed it, was endeavouring to stroke some form of thanksgiving out of his chin, when the door opened, and the subject of their conversation was shown in. After a few desultory remarks, Horace, turning to Mr. Crane, observed—
“I called at the house-agent’s in my way here, and have obtained the particulars of two houses which it will be quite worth your while to look at; one is in Belgrave Square, the other in Park Lane.”
As he spoke, Kate raised her head and fixed her large eyes upon his face; but he appeared unconscious of having deserved her scrutiny, and was quietly examining some memoranda he had written on the back of a card, regarding the number of rooms and other particulars respecting the houses. So perfectly unconscious was his manner, that for once Kate’s penetration was at fault. She remembered having on one occasion, months before, at the Grange, mentioned in his presence that if she went to live in London she should prefer either Belgrave Square or Park Lane for her residence; but whether he also had recollected this, or whether his selection was the result of accident, she could not decide. Moreover, it was not easy for her to determine how to act in the matter. If he had made the selection intentionally, and she allowed it to pass unnoticed, it would be a sort of tacit admission that she was willing to receive such secret attentions from him, appreciating them as kindnesses rather than resenting them as impertinences; while, on the other hand, if by any chance it was a mere coincidence, she was unwilling to afford him even the minute triumph of perceiving that she felt sufficient interest in him to remember whether or not he had been present on an occasion, since which several months had elapsed, or that she cared to know if he had observed, or regarded her wishes. So she took a middle course, and, availing herself of a pause in the conversation, inquired carelessly—
“Where did you say the houses were situated, Mr. D’Almayne?” On obtaining the information she required, she added, “And how came you to select those particular localities?”
As he turned to reply, their glances met, but his face was perfectly inscrutable.
“If, as your tone implies, they do not meet your approval, my dear Mrs. Crane, we need take no farther trouble in regard to them,” was his ambiguous reply. “I chose them because I fancied situations so generally popular might not be displeasing to you.”
Kate was again foiled, and D’Almayne, as he quietly observed it, muttered inwardly, “Won the first trick, at all events!”
Mr. Crane, leaving the room to put on his great-coat, a precaution without which he was most careful not to stir from home, D’Almayne observed,—
“You would prefer bay carriage-horses to grey, or any more conspicuous colour, would you not?”
Surprised at his having thus discovered her taste, Kate was so far thrown off her guard as to exclaim,—
“How in the world do you know that?”
Horace smiled a quiet smile.
“I reasoned from analog,” he said; “your dress is always rich and striking, but never showy; and the effect is produced by its consistency as a whole.”
Kate involuntarily returned his smile; tact and keen intelligence were qualities she highly appreciated.
“You are a close observer,” she said, “and shall be rewarded by learning the interesting fact that I do prefer bay horses to those of any other colour.”
Before the week was over, Mr. Crane had purchased a magnificent pair of bay carriage-horses, and had taken a lease of a noble mansion in Park Lane. The only fault Kate could discover in either, was the conviction forced upon her that it was to the agency of Horace D’Almayne she was indebted for them.
Harry could not give up shooting, Harry would not give up shooting, and Harry did not give up shooting. On the contrary, he could, would, and did shoot every day, and all day long, except on Sundays, throughout September and October; at least, there were so few exceptions that they only proved the rule. Alice did not like it at all; at first she was very miserable. One day Harry found her crying, and being considerably surprised and greatly concerned at the unaccountable discovery, did not rest until he had ascertained the cause, when he was particularly shocked, and blamed himself so much, that he refrained from shooting for two whole days, and really would have striven to reform his conduct, only that, unfortunately, an invitation arrived to join a grand battue at a certain Colonel Crossman’s. This, in his then frame of mind, he would have refused; but there being a Mrs. Crossman in the case, Alice was included in the invitation, and they were begged to stay three or four days; which, as the Popem Park preserves were the best stocked of any in the county, was an offer not lightly to be rejected. Thus, unfortunately, they went—we say unfortunately, because Colonel Crossman was, taken as a whole, a jovial, hot-tempered, selfish brute; and his wife a quick-witted, worldly-minded, selfish fool. They did very well together, because, as he usually lived out of the house, and she in it, and both did exactly as they liked, when they liked, their faults seldom clashed; if such a collision did take place, there was an awful tumult, in which brutality had his way for the minute, and paid for it in minor miseries which folly indicted upon him for the next fortnight. And yet this amiable couple had a kind of theoretical and useless affection for each other, which was engendered partly by habit, and partly by a deep and essentially vulgar reverence for appearances, which, together with going to church once on Sunday, stood them in the stead of religion and of morality. Thus were they bad counsellors for our young married couple. On the first morning of her visit, Alice was standing at the drawing-room window, watching the figures of her husband and Colonel Crossman striding through a turnip field about a quarter of a mile distant, when Mrs. Crossman joined her.
“Ah! there they go,” she observed, in a vinegar-and-water voice; “we shall see no more of them till seven o’clock, depend upon it.”
“Does Colonel Crossman never return to luncheon?” inquired Alice timidly, for she stood slightly in awe of the female soldier beside her.
“Return to luncheon!” was the astonished reply, delivered in much such a tone as might have been anticipated if Alice had inquired whether the gallant colonel usually made his mid-day meal upon red-hot ploughshares; “come home to luncheon! not he. He wouldn’t do such a thing to save my life, I believe; certainly not if the scent was lying well. Why, Mr. Coverdale does not spoil you in that way to be sure, does he? The colonel told me he was a thorough sportsman.”
“So he is,” returned Alice with a sigh, which escaped her involuntarily.
“Ah! no woman with a heart should ever marry a sportsman,” rejoined Mrs. Crossman, with rather more vinegar and less water in her tone than before. “Out all day, from the first of September till the breeding season comes round again; then the moment they’ve finished dinner and their bottle of port-wine, asleep they go, and only wake to stamp and swear with the cramp, and drop off again, till they tumble upstairs to bed, and are no comfort to anybody. You are a young wife yet, my dear, and your husband’s hardly grown tired of you, perhaps, but wait another month or two and you’ll see—men are all alike!”
There was just enough applicability to her own case in this tirade to make Alice feel rather angry and thoroughly uncomfortable; but the idea of comparing Harry with Colonel Crossman was too bad, and anger predominated as she replied, “Mr. Coverdale is not quite so selfish as you imagine, my dear madam; certainly he left me a good deal alone when the shooting season first began, but as soon as he was aware how dull and lonely I felt, he gave up shooting for, for—”
“Half a day?” inquired Mrs. Crossman, sarcastically.
“He did not go out for two whole days; and since that he has generally returned to luncheon,” replied Alice, colouring from vexation.
“Wonderful!” exclaimed Mrs. Crossman, with an affectation of extreme surprise; “actually stayed at home for two whole days, when he’s been married as many months—what a model man! Not that I believe Colonel Crossman ever did so much as that even,” she continued, turning on the vinegar. “I picked him up in India, you know—was actually weak enough to fall in love with the creature! even went the length of refusing two district judges and the resident at Bamboozel for his sake! And would you believe it, we hadn’t been married above a week, when the man was brute enough to go out hog-hunting, and leave me all by myself at Boshbogie, on the borders of the great Flurry-yun-ghal Jungle, with nothing more conversable than tawneys and tigers within thirty miles of me; but, however, I was not long before I learned how to take care of myself—and the sooner you do the same, my dear, the better for your happiness. Men are easily enough managed if you do but set the right way to work. If you choose to be always humble and meek to ’em, they’ll let you lie down for them to wipe their boots on, but if you only show them you’ve got a spirit of your own, and don’t care for ’em——
“But I don’t know that I have got what you call a spirit of my own,” interrupted Alice, smiling at her companion’s vehemence, “and I certainly do care about my husband.”
“Ah, my dear, that’s all very well now; but wait a bit—wait till some day when he wants to go shooting, and you want him to do something else, and then see of how much use your meekness and fondness will be to you. He will think to himself, ‘Oh! she will be just as well pleased a couple of hours hence, as if I had lost my day’s sport for her silly nonsense.’ I know he will, men are all alike. No; sooner or later you’ll find you will have to pluck up a spirit, and treat your husband as he will treat you. If he leaves you by yourself all day, fill your house with company; if he goes out shooting and hunting with his friends, do you go out riding or driving with yours; if he has his season in the country, do you have yours in London; operas and shopping are amusements you’ve just as good a right to, as he has to go popping at the partridges and pheasants; and if you care so much about keeping him at home, hook some young dandy (there will be plenty ready to nibble when such a bait as your pretty face is hung out for them), and flirt with him steadily till the desired effect is produced. That will bring your husband to his senses, if anything will. I once settled the Colonel in three days by going all respectable lengths with Adolphus Fitz-duckling. It led to a duel, though; but that was because both Duck and Crossman were army men, and mixed up with a fighting set. I took care never to go quite so far again, except with a civilian; but then I hadn’t got such a quiet, demure manner as you have. A set of impudent young puppies in the Old 43rd used to call me ‘Flirting Fan.’ However, I can tell you I was able to keep the Colonel in much better order, ‘flirting him down,’ as I used to call it, than I’ve ever managed to do since I grew old—that is, less young than I was at that time.” And so this good woman, or rather this woman who, despite her faults, had some good in her, whereby she vindicated her title to humanity, ran on until Alice heartily wished her back again amongst the tawneys, or the tigers: we are afraid that at that especial moment our little heroine would decidedly have preferred the latter.
In the meantime, Harry and the Colonel were blazing away at the long-tails most unmercifully: Harry, who was a crack shot, bringing down everything he pointed his gun at, while the Colonel, whose hand had an awkward trick of shaking, as if its proprietor was in the habit of imbibing too much port-wine, missed much oftener than was agreeable to him, on each of which several occasions he attributed his failure to, and condemned in no measured terms either the gun, or the bird, or both. About two o’clock Harry pulled out his watch, and glancing at it observed—“I don’t know what your arrangements may be, Colonel, but if Mrs. Crossman is of as sociable a disposition as my little wife, she will consider us great bears if we don’t return till dinner time.”
At this moment a splendid cock-pheasant rose, “whirring” into the air at some considerable distance from the sportsmen, whereupon the Colonel, considering it a difficult shot, called out, “Your bird, Coverdale.” Harry, embarrassed with his watch, which he still held in his hand, raised his gun, and catching his finger in the guard chain, pulled the trigger too soon, and missed with both barrels, while the Colonel, seeing that the pheasant was now so far off that it could be no discredit to miss it, pulled at it, and by accident brought it down.
“Bravo! Colonel, that is the cleverest shot that has been made to-day by long odds!” ejaculated Harry.
“Ah! that’s a trifle to what I used to do when I was your age,” was the slightly apocryphal reply; “nothing with feathers or hair on it had a chance, if I put my gun up at it, I can tell you. But what were you saying about going home? why I’m just getting into shooting order; you’re not knocking up, to be sure, already.”
“No; nor six hours’ more hard walking would not do it,” returned Harry, laughing, as he mentally contrasted his own powers with those of the Colonel, who, although he had carefully assigned all the toughest of the work to his guest, was evidently beginning “to want his corn,” as Coverdale metaphorically paraphrased the fact of his entertainer’s requiring his luncheon. “I merely asked you whether Mrs. Crossman would not disapprove of our remaining out all day?”
“Mrs. Crossman may go and——hang herself in her own petticoat strings!” was the uncourteous rejoinder. “Ah! I see how it is,” continued the “old soldier.” “I see all about it: you’re a young hand yet, Coverdale, and I’m an old one; take my advice. You’ve married a nice gal, and a pretty gal—don’t you go and spoil her; it’s the nature of women to like to have their own way; and one of their ways—and a most aggravating and unaccountable one it is—is always to have a fellow dangling about after them, and there they’ll keep him driving ’em out, or riding with ’em, or dawdling in shops, and paying their bills for ’em—they don’t forget that, mind you—or reading to ’em, or some such confounded humbug. Hang it, sir, I’d sooner be a galley-slave, or a black nigger at once! Well, if you begin by indulging a woman (they’re all alike in such points), she’ll be your master ever after, and your life won’t be worth a——” (As we do not know the exact value of the coin to which the Colonel alluded, we abstain from a more particular mention of it). “No; if you’re to have any peace or comfort in the married state, you must let your wife see that you’re determined to show you’re the superior. The only way to do it effectually is—come to heel, Countess, ah! would you then!” (and whack, whack went the dog-whip against poor Countess’s sides)—“the only way to break ’em in is—(whack)—to show ’em clearly whose will is the strongest, and whose must yield. I had trouble enough with Mrs. Crossman, I can assure you. She was not an easy woman to break in, sir; but she found she’d met her match. If she scolded, I stormed; if she raved, I swore; if she sulked, I whistled; if she cried, I lit a cigar; if she fainted, I laid her on the hardest board that I could pick out in the floor, and smoked till she came round again. The only time she went into hysterics I flung a pail of cold water over her—that cured her at once and for ever. I dare say you think me an old brute, but the day will come when you’ll recollect my advice, and be glad enough to act upon it. Women are all alike, more or less.”
Harry did think him an old brute, and thanked his stars that neither in mind nor in person did Alice in the smallest degree resemble Mrs. Crossman; he also thought that he should never remember the Colonel’s advice with any other feeling than disgust. Ah! Harry—Harry!
“H arry! My dear Harry!—Wilkins, where is your master? I told you I must speak to him before he went out, and now you’ve let him go without——”
“Wilkins! where the d——— Oh! Wilkins, what did you do with that bag of snipe-shot I brought down from London?”
Thus apostrophised by an agitated soprano at the drawing-room door, and an impatient tenore robusto in the entrance-hall, Wilkins, the amiable and timid London butler, who had played the character of Job’s comforter to Alice’s Didone abandonata on the memorable evening of the first of September, made two or three steps in the direction of the drawing-room, then twisting round with a sudden jerk, as though he had been worked by machinery with which somebody was playing tricks, rushed frantically into the hall, and handing his master a wrong bag of shot exclaimed, without any breath left—
“This—a—is them, sir; and my mistress—a—says——”
“Swan-shot, you fool—that is, Wilkins, big enough to roll over a bullock! It’s the snipe-shot I’m looking for. No, not that. Don’t you know snipe-shot when you see it? When the scent’s getting duller every minute, too! I ought to have been out these two hours. That’s right, my good fellow: don’t be a month about it—give it me. I shall be home to dinner.”
“But my mistress particularly wishes to speak——” faltered poor Wilkins. Harry, flinging down with an angry gesture the shot-belt he had just filled, and muttering that he had better give up going out at all, strode off to the drawing-room, and putting his head in through the partially opened door, as though he were afraid of being taken prisoner if he trusted himself bodily in the apartment, exclaimed—
“How, then, little woman, what is it? Quick, please, for I want to be off.”
“There is an invitation just arrived from Allerton House for Tuesday week. What am I to say?”
“Oh, we must go, of course. I want you to get intimate with Lady Allerton, she’s a charming woman, and Lord George is a good little fellow in his way, though an awfully bad shot. Dinner, I suppose?”
“Yes; but, Harry, wait one moment and listen to me!” exclaimed Alice. “You need not be in such a hurry; you will have plenty of time for that horrid shooting before six o’clock.”
“Horrid shooting, indeed! Much you know about it,” muttered the victimised sportsman, inwardly chafing at the delay; “it will be horrid shooting in one sense, if I am hindered much longer. The scent won’t lie when the dew is off, and I may as well go out with a walking-stick as with a gun, for there will be nothing to shoot at.”
“Well, I’ll let you go directly, you impatient, silly boy,” returned Alice, smiling at the serious, business-like view her husband took of his amusement. “The only thing I wish to say is, that if we accept this invitation, we shall be almost certain to meet the Duke and Duchess of Brentwood there; and you know I’ve been waiting for you to go with me, day after day, and I’ve never returned their visit yet. You must take me to call before Tuesday week; I’ve been quite rude already.”
“All right,” returned Harry; “we’ll go in style, and call on the old duchess. I’ll wear a red coat, and stick a peacock’s feather in my hat, if that will please you. It’s a pity she’s so like a Chimpanzee! Most probably she is related to the monkey tribe—suppose we ask her when we call; it will be a new and original style of conversation, eh? Well, ta ta! It’s so late now that I’m afraid you won’t have the felicity of seeing me again till dinner-time;” and without allowing his wife an opportunity of remonstrating, Harry closed the door, and was soon paying off the long-bills in a way in which they scarcely approved of having their “little accounts” settled. Alice watched him depart with a smile, which faded into a sigh as she turned to write an acceptance to the dinner invitation, and then employ and amuse herself as best she might, during the weary hours which must elapse ere her husband would return.
Lord Allerton was the eldest son of the Duke and Duchess of Brentwood, who were the great people, par excellence, of the Coverdale Park neighbourhood; and when the Duke and Duchess came to spend their Christmas in the country, Alice, stimulated thereunto by the conversation of the Mesdames Jones, Brown, and Robinson of those parts, felt slightly curious to know whether these ancient and venerable limbs of the aristocracy would deign to honour her by a call, and was proportionably gratified and bored when, on a dreary morning, the dull old Duchess came and paid her a singularly heavy and uninteresting visit. To induce Harry to accompany her when she returned this equally flattering and alarming civility, had been for several days the sole object of Alice’s existence,—an object in which, as the reader may perceive by the foregoing conversation, she had hitherto been unsuccessful.
The next morning Alice once again made an attempt to entice her better half away from the pleasures of the plains; but the rabbits had begun barking the young ash-trees in a favourite plantation, and were to be “pulled down” accordingly. This occupation lasted several days; at the expiration of which period certain poachers, choosing to join in the amusement uninvited, had to be “pulled up” for their iniquities—a series of ups and downs which left only two days vacant before the important Tuesday dedicated to the dinner-party at Allerton would arrive. The first of these days it rained cats and dogs, and snowed fragments of polar bears so decidedly, that even Harry could not get out till about half-past three, when, in desperation, he enveloped himself in a Macintosh, and galloped over to the town, five miles off (as all towns are from all country houses), to match some ribbon for Alice, and look at the newspaper on his own account. The County Press was just out, and therein Harry perceived a leading article attacking the decision arrived at by himself and his brother magistrates in the case of the “pulled up” poachers. This being equally irritating and interesting, he sat down in the reading-room of the library diligently to peruse the same—phsa-ing, pish-ing, and “confounding the fellow” at every second line. He had just got to a paragraph beginning, “Mr. C—d—le may be well qualified to lead the way across a stiff line of country after the hounds, or roll over unoffending hares and rabbits in a battue—but that is no proof that he possesses an equal right to ride rough-shod over the enactments of a British Parliament, or to overturn the decrees of abler lawyers than are to be found among the bench of magistrates at H————,” when a large hand was placed over his eyes, and a loud, jovial voice exclaimed—
“Never mind, Harry, my boy—little Flipkins the editor’s got a wife with the devil’s own temper, and she helps him to write the leaders; she took a dislike to you when she was Miss Jamby, and kept the confectioner’s shop, when you neglected her, and flirted with the girl behind the counter, because she happened to be the prettiest, and now she’s paying you off; you can’t horsewhip a woman, you know, so you’d better take it easy.”
Before the speaker had arrived at the conclusion of his advice gratis, Coverdale had removed the hand which impeded his vision, and turning round, exclaimed—
“Why, it’s Tom Rattleworth, by all that’s extraordinary—I thought you were in Canada, with your regiment, man!”
“So I was till the gout carried off the governor, and left me a miserable orphan with £15,000 a-year in my pocket. When that lamentable event occurred I thought I was, for the first time in my life, worth taking care of, so determined to cut the red cloth and pipe-clay business, and come home and live virtuously ever after.”
“You seem to have recovered your spirits pretty well, if one may judge by present appearances,” returned Coverdale, half-amused, half-disgusted at his quondam friend’s sentiments—“at all events you’ve not grown thin upon it.”
“No! but that’s the very fact which proves how deeply I feel my forlorn condition; it’s old Falstaff—is it not—observes how grief swells a man? I don’t ride a pound under twelve stone,” was the rejoinder. “By the way,” continued Rattleworth, “that reminds me—it’s deucedly lucky I met you; you’re the very man that can tell me all about it—Broomfield is anxious to give up the fox-hounds; he is growing old and lazy, and he wants me to take ’em.”
“My dear fellow, I’m delighted to hear it,” exclaimed Harry, eagerly; “old Broomfield is completely past his work, and of all the men I know you’re the fittest to succeed him—you will do the thing as it ought to be done. I should have undertaken them myself, if I had not become a Benedict: Broomfield tried to persuade me.”
“Well now look here,” resumed Rattleworth, meditatively; “I’ve promised to meet Broomfield to-morrow, and take his horses and everything at a valuation. Now there is not a man in the county whose opinion about a horse I’d sooner have than yours; can you spare time to go with me? I shall really consider it a personal favour if you will do so.”
“Of course I will,” returned Harry; for if he had a weak point on which he was accessible to flattery, it was concerning his knowledge of horse-flesh; “there can be nothing I should like better, in fact—what time do you go?”
“I was to lunch with him at one,” was the reply; “and we were to look at his stud afterwards.”
“Then I’ll meet you at the cross roads by Hanger Wood, at half-past twelve,” returned Harry; and so, with a hearty shake of the hand, the friends parted.
Tom Rattleworth was the only son of a man who had begun life as a land-agent and attorney in H—————; but having very early in his career dabbled in stock-jobbing till he made a considerable sum of money, which his business connection enabled him to lay out to great advantage, he grew rich, purchased an estate, married into one of the county families, and brought his son up “as a gentleman”—that is, he sent him to Eton, where he learned nothing but how to get into and out of scrapes; and bought him a commission which he would have done better without. Nature having thus placed a silver spoon in Tom’s mouth, appeared to consider his head sufficiently furnished without going to any unusual expense in the article of brains; so she gave him barely an average quantity, and made up the deficiency by an actual passion for horse-flesh. Thomas, thus endowed, was the schoolfellow and holiday associate of Harry Coverdale; and having one, and only one taste in common, they had kept up their intimacy, until Harry started on his grand tour, and Tom was sent with his regiment to Canada, since which period the interview we have just described was their first meeting.
As Coverdale cantered home through the mud, and rain, and sleet, it suddenly flashed across him that the next was the only day remaining in which to call on the Duke and Duchess of Brentwood before the dinner at Allerton House; and his conscience smote him as he reflected that the engagement he had formed would prevent him from accompanying Alice; indeed, so annoyed did he feel at this unlucky coincidence, that for a moment he was on the point of turning his horse’s head, and riding after Tom Rattleworth to get off the engagement; but it was growing dusk, and he reflected that Chase Hall, the residence of the renowned Thomas, was so far out of his way that he should be unable to reach home by dinner-time, and then Alice would get frightened about him, which would annoy her more than being obliged to pay her visit alone; so with this bit of sophistry he, for the moment, quieted his conscience. Before he arrived at his own house, he had mentally decided that, as it would only worry his wife, he should say nothing about the Rattleworth engagement to her that evening, and that in the morning he should mention it as an equally unfortunate and unavoidable necessity, and persuade her to pay the first visit without him. Of course she would be a little annoyed just at first, but she was so sweet-tempered and amiable, that—that—and here his reflections refused to clothe themselves in intelligible language;—had they done so honestly, the sentence would have ended thus—“that she would submit without making a scene.” And so he cantered home, where Alice, with her sunny smile and bright loving eyes, was waiting to receive him, and made a vast fuss with the poor dear because he must be so wet, which, thanks to Mr. Macintosh—his admirable invention—he was not in the slightest degree, though he appreciated the affectionate fuss Alice made about him all the same.
Harry! you blind, stupid Harry!—as if her little finger, bless it, were not worth all the horse-flesh that ever was foaled, from Bucephalus, down to the winner of the last Derby.
The next morning was a very fine one. Alice and Harry made their appearance in the breakfast parlour about nine o’clock; each was a little out of sorts. Alice, not having been able to get any air or exercise on the previous day, had waked with a headache, which Harry continually forgetting, would leave the door of his dressing-room open, and attire himself to the tune of “A hunting we will go.” Then a new morning gown, on which Miss Flippery, the dressmaker at H————, had staked her credit, did not fit, and in turning round to look at the set of the back, Alice trod on the skirt, and tore it out of the “gathers”—whatever they may be; and as women seldom swear, and the evil was scarcely serious enough to cry over, poor little Mrs. Coverdale was unable to vent her annoyance, and brought it down to breakfast with her accordingly. Harry, on the other hand, conscious that he was about to commit an act of injustice, on which (although he repented of it sufficiently to feel very uncomfortable) he was still determined, tried to keep up his courage by affecting a degree of hilarity which caused him to make bad jokes about every subject mentioned, and to evince such a total want of sympathy with his wife’s headache and consequent depression of spirits, that Alice for the first time in her life considered him tiresome and in the way, and felt inclined to say sharp things to him and snub him. After a longish pause, interrupted only when, on two occasions, Harry was pulled up for whistling, and a third time for beating the devil’s tattoo on the chimney-piece, Alice began, “Really Wilkins has taken to burning the toast so black, it is impossible to eat it. I wish you would speak to him about it, Harry.”
“Certainly, my love,” was the cheerful reply; “what shall I say to him? That although I approve of his blacking my boots, I disapprove of his blacking my toast, and that I shall thank him to do it brown in future?”
“If you like to risk the chance, which is almost a certainty, that the man will misunderstand you, for the sake of making a stupid slang pun, I advise you to do so,” was the captious reply.
“Phew!” whistled Harry; “how solemn, and sensible, and serious we’ve grown all of a sudden! I beg to inform you, Mrs. Coverdale that I expect my wife to admire my puns, if nobody else does.”
“Then you must contrive to make better ones, and to time them rather more appropriately,” rejoined Alice, so snappishly that her husband looked up in surprise. Recalled to herself by the unmistakeable astonishment depicted on the bright, good-natured countenance of her better half, Alice continued in a milder tone, “You must not mind what I say this morning, Harry, dear; my headache makes me so dreadfully cross and stupid.”
“Poor little thing! you were shut up all yesterday, you know, and that is enough to give anybody a headache,” returned Harry, who considered houses were built only to dine and sleep in, and would have had Alice spend her days al fresco, even as he delighted to do. “You must go out as much as possible to-day; luckily it is very fine.”
“Yes; and I am to be honoured with my husband’s company too, which is a most unaccustomed pleasure,” rejoined Alice, brightening up at the recollection. “It is certainly very good policy to make yourself so scarce, though I wish you did not adhere quite so strictly to it; why you have not driven out with me since we returned from Popem Park! At what time do you mean to order the carriage?”
“Why it’s an hour’s drive at least; James had better be at the door by two o’clock,” replied Harry. Then turning towards the fire, and moving the ornaments on the chimney-piece into wrong positions, he continued, with an elaborate attempt at nonchalance, which veiled most inefficiently his consciousness that he was about to perform an act against which his moral sense rebelled, he resumed: “I’m afraid my love that I must ask you to call upon the Duchess of Brentwood without me this morning—a business engagement of—a—importance—that is, one that I cannot avoid, will, I am afraid——”
And here he broke off abruptly, for, glancing at his wife, he perceived an expression in her pretty face that he had never beheld there before; the bright eyes were flashing, the soft cheeks burned, and the coral lips pouted with unmistakeable anger. Harry had at length gone too far, and his sweet-tempered, loving-hearted little wife was positively and seriously angry with him. But so unusual a circumstance demands a fresh chapter.