Mr. Hazlehurst’s progress towards recovery was so satisfactory that Alice, when the carriage arrived to fetch her home, felt not the smallest scruple in leaving him. As Harry considered the distance between the Grange and Coverdale Park too great for his carriage-horses to perform twice in one day, the equipage had been dispatched the previous evening, and the servants were consequently unacquainted with the events of the past night. Having taken leave of her mother—who, roused by the necessity of becoming a nurse instead of a patient, appeared rather benefited than otherwise by the unusual demand upon her energies—and of Emily, now fast developing into a very pretty girl, Alice started on her return home, and accomplished the greater portion of the transit without let or hindrance. When within about five miles of the Park, however, one of the horses was discovered to have cast a shoe; and as it would have been worth more than his situation to have taken it farther in so defenceless a condition, the coachman drew up at a village blacksmith’s, where the evil might be remedied. Under these circumstances, Alice determined to walk on till the carriage should overtake her, which, as the morning was fine, she considered the reverse of a hardship. Pondering many things—for Alice was no longer the careless, light-hearted girl we once described her—she trudged on, at first briskly, then more leisurely, as the road began to ascend, until she might have proceeded some two miles; and yet the carriage did not make its appearance. Toiling up hill, attired as ladies usually are from November to April, with an amount of merino, velvet, and fur, which might defy the severities of a Siberian winter, and is clearly de trop under the influence of a sunshiny morning in March, not unnaturally rendered Alice hot and tired; and fancying, from her imperfect knowledge of the locality, that she must be upon her husband’s territory, she determined to make acquaintance with the inmates of a cottage which she perceived by the roadside a short distance higher up the hill, and, with their permission, to rest herself until the carriage should arrive. With this intention she approached the cottage, and finding the door closed, rapped at it with first her knuckles, then the handle of a most frivolous and ephemeral little parasol; but neither of these applications producing the desired effect, she, like little Red Riding-hood, raised the latch and opened the door. The sight which met her eyes was one calculated alike to stimulate her curiosity and interest her sympathies. In a cradle, on the opposite side of the room, lay an unconscious and remarkably pretty and comfortable-looking baby fast asleep, while near it, with the light from the casement streaming full upon her smooth dark hair, only partially concealed beneath her neat white cap, sat the young mother, her face hidden in her hands, weeping bitterly. Starting at the sound of the opening door, she removed her hands, and disclosed features which, swollen and disfigured as they were by grief, yet evinced tokens of unusual beauty. She rose as Alice entered, and hastily drying her tears, stood regarding her with a wild eager glance of inquiry.
“What have you come to tell me?” she said: “they have not relented—not set him at liberty again?—or the other one—he is not worse—oh, God!—not dead?”
Surprised and embarrassed by the strange eagerness of her manner, and interested by her appearance and evident distress, Alice hastened to assure her that she was not the bearer of any tidings, good or evil, and having explained the object of her intrusion, continued—
“But you are anxious or unhappy about something; will you not tell me why you were crying so bitterly when I came in—perhaps I may be able to assist you?”
Thus appealed to, the girl (for she appeared scarcely above twenty) fixed her dark eyes on Alice’s face, and reading therein her kind and loving nature, which indeed was so legibly depicted that the veriest dullard at deciphering character could scarcely fail to discover it, answered more gently than she had before spoken—
“I beg pardon, lady; but I’m amost crazy with grief this morning, and my head’s so a-running on it, that I hardly know what I’m a-saying or a-doing on. Ye’re welcome to rest, lady, as long as you please;” and as she spoke she dusted a chair with her apron, and placed it for Alice, who, seating herself, resumed—
“You say you are unhappy, but you do not tell me what about.”
The woman paused for a moment in thought, then continued—“I need make no secret of it; the whole country round is ringing with it by this time. Some poor fellows, lady, as had wives and children to feed, and no money to buy bread to give to ’em, went to get a few of the birds and things that’s running wild in the woods of them that’s rich, and don’t want ’em; and the keepers cum to stop ’em, and one of ’em got shot in the confusion; and the police have took my husband and my brother, and swear the’re the men that did it; and the’re to be had up to-day before them that’s sure to condemn ’em, innocent or guilty—gentlemen that chuses to keep the wild creatures that God sent for food for them as wants it, all for their own selfish amusement—begging your pardon, lady—but it’s the truth; and when one’s heart aches like mine does, the truth will out.”
“It is natural, perhaps, that you should think thus in your situation,” returned Alice, gravely; “but depend upon it your husband and your brother will not be punished unless they justly deserve it. The gamekeeper was not killed I hope?”
“Oh no, my lady! not hurt very serious neither I do hope; only they want to make the most of it, to get a chance to punish my poor fellows, don’t you see?” was the reply; “and if my husband is put in prison for long, and lays out of work, what’s to become o’ me and the children?”
“You have more than this one, then?” inquired Alice.
For answer the woman rose, and passing into the inner room of the cottage, in less than a minute returned, bearing in her arms a little girl, apparently about two years old, whose bright, rosy cheeks, and eyes evidently distressed by the vivid sunlight, gave unmistakeable tokens of having been roused out of a sound sleep. Alice possessed a thorough woman’s love of children, leading her to consider ugly ones pretty, and pretty ones “little angels;” so she immediately took this particular duodecimo angelic specimen on her knee, and won its celestial affections by allowing it to play with her watch, and a bunch of miscellaneous rubbish attached thereunto, and denominated, on the lucus a non lucendo principle, a chatelaine. This reinforcement of infantry having completely won the day (the “dear” sleeping baby had been a powerful, unconscious advocate of its parent’s cause), Alice began to consider how best she could assist the distressed mother. The first point was to learn to whom to apply in favour of the culprits, and she accordingly inquired on whose land they had been taken, and in whose service the wounded gamekeeper resided? The answer was at the same time embarrassing and satisfactory. Of course, if the offence had been committed upon her husband’s property, he could, if he would, decline to prosecute the offenders—if he would?—there lay the difficulty. Alice was well aware of the serious light in which Harry regarded the crime of poaching; and the attack on the gamekeeper even she was forced to reprobate; but if it should prove that the man was not seriously injured, she trusted to her newly-regained influence to enable her to place the matter in such a light that Harry would agree with her in overlooking the culprit’s offence for the sake of his family; or, at all events, if that was expecting too much of his penitence, she had only to ask it as a personal favour, and he surely could not refuse her. So, carried away by her feelings of kindly sympathy, and acting on the impulse of the moment, she put forth all her powers of consolation, and ended by disclosing her name, and the relation in which she stood towards that persecutor of poachers, Harry Coverdale, at the same time promising to use her influence, which she represented as all-powerful, to screen the culprits from the effects of their misdemeanors.
Before her consolatory harangue was well concluded, the carriage arrived, and Alice, having kissed the children (the unfortunate baby being aroused expressly for the performance of the affectionate ceremony, a violation of the rights of the subject which it resented by crying and slobbering with a twenty-infant power over Alice’s velvet mantle), left five shillings in the hands of their mamma, by way of a peace-offering, and departed, thoroughly satisfied with her début in the character of poor man’s friend and cottager’s comforter. All the way she drove home she was building castles in the air for the benefit and behoof of the ruined family, having mentally adopted the little girl as lady’s-maid, and apprenticed the baby, which was of the nobler sex, to a serious and immaculate carpenter, before she reached the Park.
Coverdale was absent when his wife arrived, having ridden over to H————, to assist at the committal of Jack Hargrave and his accomplice; but she received from Wilkins, who was, in more senses than one, a confidential servant, an over-full, untrue, and particularly-exaggerated account of the affray of the previous night, from which she acquired two facts, which tended considerably to disquiet her, viz.:—first, that the wounded man was Markum, her husband’s especial favourite; and secondly, that Harry had been personally involved in the affair; both of which considerations increased the difficulty of the negotiation for gaol-delivery to which she had incautiously pledged herself. Having taken off her things, she proceeded first to fraternise with her King Charles spaniel and the two canary-birds (which latter plumed bipeds celebrated her return in songs of shrill triumph, like a couple of inebriated penny whistles), then to put all the ornaments right, which the housemaid had dusted into uncomfortable and heterodox positions. She had just discovered a china cup, which nobody had broken, and which yet was divided in several places, having probably split its own sides laughing at the grotesque figures with which its manufacturer had seen fit to embellish it, and she was hunting for a bottle of diamond cement wherewith to repair the damage before her husband’s return, when the sound of horses’ feet announced that event to have taken place.
The first words that met her ear were, “Let one of the helpers go down to Markum’s cottage, wait till Mr. Gouger has seen him again, and bring me his report without a moment’s delay; if it should be unsatisfactory I’ll send for Brodie by electric telegraph. Is your mistress returned?”
A warm embrace, an expression of his delight at having her back again, a hurried enquiry after Mr. Hazlehurst, and then Harry rushed into his narrative of the poaching affair, and in his eagerness to detail every circumstance of a matter which interested him so deeply, did not notice the tameness of Alice’s sympathy, or the lukewarm manner in which she seconded his virtuous indignation against the miscreants who had all but murdered good, honest Markum: “And small thanks to them that it was ‘all but,’ for, if ever a scoundrel meant mischief, that scoundrel was Jack Hargrave.”
Alice saw this was no time to urge her suit, and so merely confined herself to the general remark, that it was a dreadful affair for all parties, and that she pitied the wives of the wretched men who had committed the rash act, as much as anybody concerned in the matter; to which Harry replied:—
“That it served them right for marrying poachers, and that they might think they were lucky not to be the victims themselves, for that a fellow who would take to poaching was capable of cutting his wife’s throat, or of any other enormity.”
Mr. Gouger’s report was, on the whole, satisfactory. Markum was going on well, though he (Gouger) could not pronounce him out of danger; the injury was very serious, and several days must elapse before the ulterior consequences would be apparent; or, as the doctor himself remarked, the effect of extraneous particles of plumbago, or lead, introduced into the vital system by the sudden expansion of saltpetre and other explosive compounds compressed within the narrow limits of a gun-barrel, and discharged thence by ignition, according to the natural laws of projectiles, was most subtle and deleterious, leading sometimes to the total destruction of animal life, at others to a concussion of the nervous system; or again, &c. &c.: from which sapient opinion Harry collected that Brodie need not be sent for immediately.
Days glided by, the prisoners were remanded till Markum’s chance of life or death should be ascertained, and Alice had not found a fitting moment in which to make her appeal. At length the surgeon, with grave looks, which might mean everything, anything, or nothing, advised, merely as a matter of precaution, that the wounded man should make a deposition before a magistrate, so that if anything were to happen, the jury might have the advantage of his statement of facts. Coverdale, therefore, having persuaded one of his brother magistrates to accompany him, proceeded to the cottage for the above purpose. Shortly after he had set off, Alice was informed that a poor woman was desirous of speaking to her; and on ordering her to be shown in, she was less surprised than embarrassed to recognise in the tearful applicant her cottage hostess, the wife of the culprit, Jack Hargrave. The result of the interview may be easily foreseen. Alice descanted on the greatness of the crime committed, Mr. Coverdale’s virtuous indignation against the offenders, and the consequent difficulty of persuading him not to prosecute them. Mrs. Jack brought forward, in reply, the baby and a flood of tears,—arguments so unanswerable that Alice, having kissed the one, and all but joined in the other, dismissed the afflicted matron, having renewed her pledge of exerting her whole influence in favour of the prisoners. It was with a feeling akin to desperation that she determined to plead her protégées’ cause the moment Harry should return, certain that if she again allowed her ardour to cool, she should never have courage to enter upon the subject to him. Accordingly, as soon as he had finished giving her an account of the clear and able manner in which Markum had detailed the proceedings of the eventful night on which the affray had occurred, she began:—
“I, too, have had rather a trying interview; the wife of one of the men who have been taken up on suspicion has been here—a frail, delicate-looking, young creature, scarcely more than a girl, with the dearest, sweetest, little baby imaginable. I do so wish you had seen it!”
Harry muttered a reply, which, though scarcely audible, conveyed the impression that he was perfectly content without having had ocular demonstration of its infantine perfections; and Alice continued—
“Yes, I wish you had seen both mother and child—its sweet, innocent looks, and the poor girl’s tears, would have pleaded her cause better than any arguments of mine can do, your kind heart could never have resisted them.”
“Plead her cause,” repeated Coverdale; “that means, because her husband and his accomplice have been so obliging as to destroy my game, and murder, or half murder, as the case may prove, my head keeper, she considers it my duty to support herself and family, I suppose; she has brought this irresistible baby as a safe dodge to work upon your feminine susceptibilities; and, with thorough woman’s logic, she has persuaded you to look upon her as a suffering innocent, and upon me as a tyannical oppressor. Now confess—is not this the truth?”
“No, really it is not,” replied Alice, eagerly. “I own I think you, from your passion for field-sports, take rather an exaggerated view of the crime of poaching; but I quite feel as you do, that wounding poor Markum was a cruel and cowardly act; still, revenging it upon this family will not benefit him nor ourselves.”
“I don’t wish the people to starve, of course,” returned Harry, moodily, “though I should imagine the young woman and her brats can scarcely have got through all the game in her larder yet. I should not mind starving on hashed hare and broiled pheasants’ legs myself for a week or two; however, if the poor girl really is in want, I have no objection to your relieving her, but do not be imposed upon, darling, that is all that I mean to say.”
The kindness of her husband’s manner, and the good-natured way in which he appeared willing to support the family of the man who had injured him, served alike to remove Alice’s fears, and to lead her to overrate the extent of her influence with her husband; so, leaning her arm on his shoulder, while with her other hand she smoothed back his clustering hair, she continued, “What a good, kind boy it is, though it does growl sometimes. But now, to show you that my protégée is not seeking to impose on me for the sake of obtaining money, I will tell you that her petition was for quite a different object, and one creditable alike to her feelings as a wife and a sister: she wants you to act as only a high and generous nature like your own would be capable of acting—she implores you to pardon her husband and her brother.”
“To do what!” exclaimed Harry sharply, a dark shade coming across his features.
“To let off two of the men who were engaged in this unlucky business—her husband and her brother—not to prosecute them, I mean,” returned Alice, removing her hand from her husband’s shoulder and preparing to “hold her own,” in the dispute she foresaw impending.
“And their names:” inquired Coverdale.
Alice repeated them.
“As I expected,” resumed Coverdale; “the man who fired the shot and his accomplice, who, more guilty than himself, urged him to do it. Now, ask your own good sense, Alice, and reflect a moment before you answer. Even were I willing, can I in common justice let these fellows off?”
“Oh, yes!” exclaimed Alice, without a moment’s deliberation; “it is so great—so noble to forgive an injury! Revenge is but a mean, petty feeling, after all.”
“An admirable reason for shaking hands with an individual who has knocked you down,” returned Coverdale, “but none whatsoever for screening two malefactors from the just punishment of their ill-deeds;” then, lapsing into the magistrate, he continued, “You mistake the whole scope and intention of our penal code, my dear Alice. We do not punish offenders as an act of revenge upon the individual, but in order to benefit society by deterring others from committing a like crime; thus, laying aside personal feeling, I should be doing an injury to the community at large, by refusing to prosecute these fellows. You see this clearly, do you not?”
Alice’s reasoning powers did see it, and had seen it all along, but Alice had also seen the poor wife and the meritorious and seductive baby, and she cared “fifty thousand times” (as she herself would have expressed it) more for them than for the community at large; so finding that the argument was going against her, she, woman-like, adroitly shifted her ground. “According to your reasoning, there would be no room for such a quality as mercy,” she began; “stern, inexorable justice would condemn every criminal, no matter what extenuating circumstances there might be; in each case punishment must follow sin, as effect follows cause. I, for one, should be very sorry always to be judged by such a cruel rule.”
“Oh, if you’re going to put German metaphysical sophistries in the place of English common-sense, I’ve no more to say about it,” returned Harry, gruffly; “only it seems to my simplicity that punishment always does follow crime in this world, as soon as it’s found out. If a brat steals the sugar, its mother slaps it; if a schoolboy prigs apples, the master flogs him; if an apprentice bolts with the till, the law transports him; if Jack murders Tom, the hangman stretches his neck for him:—and serve ’em all right say I; it would be a precious deal worse world to live in if it were not so, to my thinking.”
Alice paused to consider the justice of this remark—we will follow her example!
Mrs. Coverdale, resuming the matrimonial discussion broken off at the end of the last chapter, thus pursued the argument by which she hoped to induce her husband to let off her poaching protégé.
“In the present case the innocent must suffer with the guilty. I see no justice in ruining a poor family by imprisoning or transporting the only member who is able to work and support it.”
“The said member should have thought of that himself,” returned Harry; “if he had been working and supporting his family, he would have been safe from transportation, like any other honest man; but as he preferred to steal my game and shoot my keeper, he thereby deprived his family of the pleasure of his inestimable society; it is he, therefore, who has brought this evil upon them, not I; and when I consent to your relieving their necessities out of my pocket, I think I am doing, to say the least of it, as much as any reasonable woman ought to expect of me.”
Despite her prejudices in favour of the seraphic baby and its interesting mother, Alice felt the truth of her husband’s reasoning; but she had boasted of her power too confidently, and pledged herself to exert it too deeply, to retreat; so, perceiving that argument would avail her nothing, she was obliged to fall back upon woman’s last resource—personal influence, and strive to win from Harry’s affection that which his reason had denied her. A dangerous experiment, pretty Alice! and one in which, if your philosophy did but go deep enough to enable you to discern it, you would perceive success to be a greater evil than failure, for it would argue culpable weakness in him on whom you have to lean for support through life. But Alice was by no means in an ethical frame of mind at that moment, and cared only for obtaining her point by any means which occurred to her; so, drawing a stool close to Harry, she meekly seated herself at his feet, and looking up into his face with her large imploring eyes, began coaxingly, “Harry, dear, are you quite, quite determined to say No?”
An affirmative bend of the head was the only reply.
“But if I make it a personal request,” she continued, laying her soft cheek caressingly against his hand; “if I ask you to forgive these men for my sake, and so afford me the exquisite pleasure of making this poor woman happy? Oh! you will not refuse me. If you do, I shall think you do not love me. Come, you will say Yes.”
Poor Harry! he was sorely perplexed. Had it been any personal sacrifice—even a pledge to give up hunting or shooting—which she required of him, he would gladly have yielded, in the true and deep tenderness towards his wife which his late self-examination had aroused. But the serious thoughts which a review of his past errors had called forth, while they pointed out to him how he had failed in his duty to her whom he had vowed to love and protect, also proved to him that where Alice was inclined to act wrongly, or foolishly, he was bound to save her even from herself; and his clear, good sense instantly told him that this was a request which she ought not to have urged, since to grant it would necessitate a sacrifice of principle on his part. Accordingly, he replied—
“Alice love, listen to me; this is not a mere matter of personal feeling, or I would yield to you without a moment’s hesitation, but it involves a question of right and wrong. I could not refuse to prosecute these men without diffusing an amount of moral evil amongst the whole of my poorer tenantry, which years of the most careful supervision would fail to eradicate. The utmost I can promise you is, that the culprits shall have every opportunity afforded them of clearing themselves; and if, as I am convinced, that proves impossible, every palliating circumstance shall be brought forward and allowed its fullest weight. I have already given you my free permission to assist the poor woman and her children, and more than this you cannot expect me to say.”
“But I do, or rather I did, expect you to say more,” returned Alice, with flashing eyes and glowing cheeks; “I expected you to say what I would have said to you, if you had appealed to me thus—that there was NOTHING, even if it were life itself, that I would not give up for your sake. But I see how it is, you do not really care for me, or, if you do, man’s love is not like woman’s, it is merely the excitement of the pursuit that interests you—the prize once attained becomes valueless in your eyes: in fact, love, which makes the entire joy or sorrow of a woman’s life, is to men but a superior kind of sporting—more engrossing than a foxchase, or than hunting a poor stag to death, simply because the game is of a higher order.” She paused to give vent to a sob which she was unable entirely to repress, then continued in a sarcastic tone of voice: “However, mighty hunter as you are, I do not intend to give you the satisfaction of being in at my death; I have too much of the old Hazlehurst spirit about me to break my heart for a man who does not love me. There is a quiet way, as you call it, of arranging these affairs: you have your own pursuits and amusements, henceforward I shall have mine. You need not dread my again attempting to interfere either with your pleasures, or your graver occupations. I have had too severe a lesson on each point to forget it readily. But I expect you to exercise the same forbearance towards me. From this day forth we each follow our own line!” and, drawing her shawl over her shoulders, with an imperious gesture, as of an offended queen, Alice swept out of the room, leaving Harry in a frame of mind which may be more easily imagined than described.
A complete change, which might have been dated from the above conversation, appeared to have taken place in Alice Coverdale. Instead of shrinking, as she had hitherto done, from society, she rather courted it than otherwise—ordering the carriage, and visiting the different families in the neighbourhood, without consulting Harry on the subject, or seeming to care in the slightest degree whether he accompanied her or not. At first this conduct on his wife’s part occasioned Coverdale the greatest uneasiness; but, after a time, seeing that she was amused and interested by the new acquaintances she thus formed, he began to hope that good might perhaps come out of evil, and that the intimacies then commenced might afford sources of lasting pleasure when the feeling of pique which had led her to seek them should have long since died away. And so the time glided on, working its usual changes in men and things as it passed away.
Mr. Gouger having ventured one day to commit himself to the rash assertion that Markum was sinking rapidly, and could not possibly survive the week, from that hour the gamekeeper began to amend, and had sufficiently advanced in his progress towards recovery to be able to appear and give evidence in person, when Jack Hargrave and his accomplice took their trial at the next assizes. So unmistakeably was their guilt brought home to them, that they were each sentenced to seven years’ transportation, and would probably Have had fourteen allotted to them, but for the thorough good faith with which Harry redeemed his promise to Alice that every extenuating circumstance should be clearly placed before the jury. Indeed he laboured so strenuously to impress this point upon the counsel for the prisoners, that the learned brother, entertaining a proper degree of professional scepticism in regard to the purity of human motives, immediately settled, to his own satisfaction, that Jack Hargrave must be a natural son of the late Admiral Coverdale, commended, with his dying breath, to his nephew’s especial care and protection. Alice received the news of the verdict with great sang froid, merely remarking that she had felt certain all along that it would be so; but when she had gained the privacy of her own chamber, she indulged in a hearty flood of tears, occasioned as much by what she was pleased to consider her husband’s inhumanity, as by her compassion for the poor woman and her transcendental baby.
As these latter individuals exercise no further influence over the destinies of our principal dramatis personæ, we may as well, ere we finally take leave of them, add the information that Alice (having supported them much better than Jack Hargrave had done in his best days), at the expiration of two years sent them out at her own expense to join that worthy, who, reformed by seasickness and the amenities of convict discipline, had obtained a ticket of leave, by reason of which privilege he was enacting the part of a penitent bullock-driver, to the admiration of all right-minded settlers in Australia.
The month of May had begun to temper with a dash of sunshine the fine old English east winds of April, which annually sow their share of the seeds of consumption in the glorious British constitution—Harry Coverdale had ceased to oppress the brute creation, leaving foxes and pheasants to increase and multiply by antagonistic progression—and all London was flocking to the Royal Academy Exhibition, to see a great many very original portraits of gentlemen, who scarcely looked the character after all—when one fine morning Alice received a letter from the modern Babylon, in Mrs. Crane’s handwriting. Having eagerly perused it, she exclaimed,—
“Kate has written a most kind and pressing invitation to us to come and stay with them; Mr. Crane wishes it as much as she does.”
“Or as much as she orders him to do rather,” muttered Coverdale, sotto voce.
“Of course you can have no objection to my accepting it,” continued Alice; “for myself, at all events?”
“Am not I invited?” inquired Harry, gravely.
“Yes, certainly; only I did not know whether you could tear yourself away from your dearly beloved dogs and guns.”
“And you were willing to have gone without me?”
“I did not wish to be any tie upon you,” was Alice’s reply, though she coloured slightly, and turned away her head as she spoke. “You remember our compact; I am a great advocate for free will.”
“Between husband and wife such a question ought never to arise,” rejoined Harry, seriously but kindly; “there should be complete unanimity. I hoped you had forgotten all that folly.”
“I never forget unkindness,” was the cold reply; “but I see you are going to favour me with a specimen of your ‘quiet manner,’ and as I am not in the humour for a scene or a lecture, you really must excuse my leaving you;” and as she spoke she rose to quit the apartment.
For a moment Harry’s eyes flashed, then a look of pain passed across his features, and, taking his wife’s hand, he led her back to the sofa on which she had been seated, saying gently, but reproachfully,—
“Why will you misunderstand me thus? You wish to accept your cousin’s invitation?”
Alice bowed her head in token of assent.
“Then write and tell her we shall be happy to do so; I shall be ready and willing to accompany you at whatever time you and she like to arrange together.”
“Oh, that is very nice and kind of you!” returned Alice, delighted at getting her way so easily; “I thought you were going to be cross and disagreeable, as—as you sometimes are.”
“As usual, you were going to say,” rejoined Harry; “speak your thoughts honestly, whatever injustice they may do me. But if, in future, instead of condemning me unheard, you were to admit the possibility—nothing more—of my being willing occasionally to sacrifice my wishes to yours, it might save us both considerable pain and misconception; recollect this, and reflect upon it quietly and calmly.” So saying, he placed his wife’s writing-table before her, found her a footstool, and left the room.
As the sound of his retreating footsteps died away in the distance, Alice felt decidedly penitent, and wished she could unsay all the sharp things she had uttered at the beginning of the conversation; but this was a frame of mind too uncomfortable to last long, and so she consoled herself by the reflection that if, on this particular occasion, she had done her husband an injustice, it was his conduct at other times which had led her to do so. It was unfair to blame herself for the natural effect his selfishness and unkindness had produced upon her mind; she was sure there had been a period, before she was so rudely awakened from her “love’s young dream,” when she had given him credit for possessing every noble, heroic, and tender quality under the sun: it was not her fault that she could think so no longer—people must take the consequences of their own misdeeds. And so, consoling herself with these and many like arguments, and magnifying the mote in her husband’s eye, and ignoring the beam in her own, Alice talked herself into her former frame of mind, and sat down to write her acceptance of Kate’s invitation, convinced that if her husband had said “Yes” on this occasion, he would say “No” on every other.
That day week saw Alice, Harry, and Celeste (a little pert soubrette, whom Alice had brought back from Paris with her), on their way to the railway-station at H————; a groom and a couple of saddle-horses (without which Harry could not support the burden of a London life) having preceded them by a slower train. As Harry had a great horror of being too late, and had flurried and bustled Alice to such a degree that, if she had not been the most good-natured little woman in the world (except in matters connected with the feelings), she would assuredly have lost her temper, of course they were at least a quarter of an hour too soon, and were forced to promenade up and down beneath a Brobdignagian glass roof, open at each end, and enjoy the large supply of draughts afforded by this ingenious compromise between indoors and out of doors. Having paced up and down the platform for some ten minutes or so—lost Celeste and the trunks, and found them again—and narrowly escaped violent death from wild luggage-barrows, urged by reckless and excited porters, neatly bound in green corduroy, and numbered like the lots in a saleroom,—the train by which they were to fly to London crawled up ignominiously at the tail of a strong-minded cart-horse, which a heroic but unclean supernumary conducted in the way he should go. Just as Alice had taken her seat, and was imploring Harry to join her before a dreadful green dragon of a locomotive engine (which had been getting up its steam, and taking in its fuel, and wetting its whistle, and otherwise performing its awful toilet in a neighbouring cavern, whence it issued looking as vicious, and dangerous, and eager to burst in a tunnel, as a furious steam-devil could do) should get at him and do him a mischief, a tall, elegant-looking young man, who was seeking for an unoccupied place, suddenly exclaimed—
“I beg pardon, but surely I have the pleasure of seeing Harry—a—that is—Mr. Coverdale?”
“A true bill, sir,” replied Harry; “but just at present you’ve all the pleasure to yourself, for I must honestly confess that I do not recollect you; and yet—no—yes—why, it can’t be little Alfred Courtland?”
“As for the ‘little,’ I must leave you to judge for yourself; the copy-books tell us that ‘all weeds grow apace,’ and I’m afraid I’m a shocking example; but Alfred Courtland I most certainly am, and delighted to meet an old acquaintance—if an urchin in the under-school dare pretend to have been on such a footing with one of the sixth form.”
“Little Alfred Courtland, six feet high, and cultivating whiskers! Wonders will never cease,” resumed Harry, meditatively: “but are you going by this train? Jump in here, man, and I’ll introduce you to my wife. Alice, this is Alfred—I beg his pardon, but I can’t remember he’s not a little boy still—Lord Alfred Courtland. You remember Arthur Hazlehurst, my fidus Achates, don’t you, Courtland? my wife is his sister. Tickets! well, here they are. What a suspicious generation these railway officials are! anybody would suppose they had been accustomed to deal with thieves and pickpockets all their lives, instead of honest Englishmen. But I hate the railroads, root and branch, that’s a fact; they’ve ruined the breed of horses in this country.”
While Harry ran on in this style, Alice had time to observe her new acquaintance more attentively. He appeared very young, scarcely above nineteen or twenty. His figure, though tall and graceful, was slight and boyish; his head was small and well set on, and his pale, delicate features were shaded by a profusion of fair curling hair; while his bearing and appearance were singularly refined and aristocratic; or, as Harry afterwards observed, “He looked thorough bred, every inch of him.” His expression was good and amiable; but a want of firmness and resolution about the lines of his mouth belied the promise of intellect afforded by his high, smooth brow, and bright, speaking eyes.
“And what are you doing with yourself?” inquired Coverdale, after sundry mutual acquaintances had been talked over, and the reminiscences usual between old schoolfellows run through; “are you at either of the universities?”
“Yes, I’m a Cantab,” was the reply; “but scarcely more than nominally so, for during my first term I got a tumble into the Cam, boating—dined at Ely in my wet clothes, and was rewarded for my carelessness by an aguish low fever, which I am only now recovering from; so I am ordered to be perfectly idle and amuse myself—a prescription which I am afraid agrees but too well with my tastes and habits.”
“And finding country ingredients too mild, you are going to town to try and get a stronger dose there, I suppose?” inquired Harry.
“You must be a wizard,” was the reply. “The fact is, my people have wintered abroad, and Chiselborough became so dull the moment the hunting was over, that I found ennui was bringing my ague back again; so holding solemn conclave with the apothecary and my valet, we yesterday decided, nem. con., upon a couple of months’ sojourn in the modern Babylon.”
To this piece of intelligence Harry vouchsafed no further answer than a shrug of the shoulders, by which significant gesture he intended to telegraph to his wife his opinion as to the wisdom of trusting the young gentleman to his own sapient guidance amidst the shoals and quicksands of a London season. At this period the dragon, which had been drawing the train very quietly and peacefully, suddenly gave a prolonged scream (by courtesy termed a whistle), panted violently, hissed a good deal, and having by these manœuvres “blown off” its superfluous steam, it kindly postponed bursting for a short time, and condescended obligingly to stop at the Tearem and Smashingly Junction, without demanding any immediate sacrifice of human life. Coverdale and Lord Alfred instantly jumped out (although perfectly aware that they should be obliged to jump in again at the expiration of three minutes and a quarter), and, after the fashion of impatient male humanity, which, as Harry somewhat paradoxically observed, “Cannot stand sitting,” began stamping up and down the platform as though a legion of black-beetles, or some such entymological freebooters, had crept up their trousers’ legs, and they were striving to dislodge them. Some operation, however, which was going on under one of those queer kind of sheds peculiar to railway-stations, which give one an idea of a child’s toy magnified, attracted their attention, and caused them to discontinue their amusement. After gazing earnestly for a few seconds, Harry exclaimed,—
“They’ll never do it so, never! There, do you see, he’s standing right before him, dragging at his head, and yet expects the poor animal to go on; the man must be an idiot! Yes, of course, hit the poor thing for your own fault, and frighten him, so that you’ll be able to do nothing with him. Ah! I thought so; they’ll have an accident directly, the fools! as if there wasn’t a quiet manner of doing these things. Hold my great coat, Alfred; I shall be back in two seconds.” And suiting the action to the word, he tossed his coat to his companion and ran off.
“Where has he gone to?” inquired Alice, disconsolately, from the window of the railway-carriage.
“To assist a stupid groom to put a very fine horse into one of the horse-boxes,” was the reply. “He said he should be back in a minute.”
“Now, gentlemen, take your places; the train’s going to start—take your places,” vociferated an individual, who looked like a very oddly-dressed soldier, but who was the railway-guard.
“Oh! where can he be? We shall start without him!” exclaimed Alice in dismay.
“I’ll go and look for him,” rejoined Lord Alfred, good-naturedly.
“If you would be so very kind,” returned Alice, her lovely eyes sparkling with gratitude.
“Better not, sir; only lose your own place, without finding the gent—train’s agoin’ to start. I must shut the door,” grumbled a cynical porter.
“Pray keep it open till the last moment!” exclaimed Alice, drawing out her purse, while Lord Alfred, disregarding the porter’s advice, dashed off on his mission.
“Am I allowed to give you anything?” continued Alice, timidly, as a vague suspicion of the illegality of bribing railway porters flashed across her.
The man looked up and down the platform, and perceiving no informer near, did not commit himself by words, but partially closing the door, so as to conceal the action, held out his hand, with the palm turned suggestively upwards. As his fingers closed over the half-crown which Alice, with a strong idea that she was committing an indictable offence, placed within his grasp, an angry and imperative voice called out, “Now then, shut that door there!” and in spite of Alice’s remonstrances, the porter was about to obey, when, breathless with running, Lord Alfred sprang into the carriage, the door was slammed to, a bell rang furiously, the dragon gave a short, pert scream of delight at getting its head, and the train started. Unheeding, in fact scarcely hearing Lord Alfred’s mild remonstrance that he believed it was reckoned dangerous to put one’s head out of the window of a railway carriage, Alice immediately committed that folly, and was rewarded for her imprudence by seeing, just as the train was getting to its full speed, Harry rush distractedly on to the platform, shake his fist at the retreating carriages, and then, watch in hand, stride up to the station-master, and evidently afford him a specimen of his quiet manner. With a feeling half way between an inclination to laugh and a disposition to cry, Alice resumed her seat, and, under pretence of arranging her veil, took a glance round the carriage. Her only companion, besides Lord Alfred Courtland, was a species of prize old gentleman, who having spent his life hitherto in growing as fat as the nature of the case admitted, was evidently resolved to guard against the possibility of his shadow becoming less, by devoting the remainder of his existence to the duties of eating, drinking, and sleeping, which latter accomplishment he was then displaying to the admiration of all lovers of that science of which honest Sancho Panza so fervently blessed the inventor. Having mentally summed him up in the definition “wretched old thing,” Alice next took a survey of her new friend, and decided that he had such a good, innocent, child-like expression of countenance, that young and handsome as he was, she would not have minded even if the “wretched old thing” had not been present to play chaperone in dumb show.
“How very provoking for Mr. Coverdale to lose the train, and all through his good-nature, too,” began Lord Alfred; “I saw the affair as well as he did, but it would never have occurred to me to interfere.”
“Nor to any one else except Mr. Coverdale,” returned Alice, scornfully; “his devotion to horses and dogs is quite exemplary.”
“As a pattern or as a warning?” inquired Lord Alfred, favouring her with a look of intelligence for which she was scarcely prepared.
“You are laughing at me,” she said; “but I will honestly confess that it is rather trying to see Mr. Coverdale place himself and me in a ridiculous, if not actually an embarrassing situation, merely for the sake of a horse.”
“It was a very fine horse,” observed Lord Alfred, meditatively.
“And therefore the worthier animal of the two—thank you for the compliment, my lord,” was the slightly piqued reply, which of course produced a carefully veiled but teasing rejoinder; and with such-like light badinage did they beguile the time, until having rushed for some distance over acres of turnips, stubble, grass-land, and other such agricultural territory, changing as by some pantomimic agency to the roofs of houses, with elegant parterres of chimney-pots, they were surprised to find they had reached the London terminus.
The cessation of movement having roused the prize elder from his meritorious slumbers, Alice waited until, with many snorts and grunts he had aroused his legs (which were evidently each enjoying a separate and independent nap of its own) and toddled off upon them, ere she inquired in rather a forlorn tone, “And now I wonder what is to become of me? Would you kindly ascertain when the next train will be in?”
Lord Alfred made the inquiry, and obtained the cheering intelligence that the next train which stopped at the Tearem and Smashingly Junction would arrive in exactly two hours fifteen minutes and a quarter, at which time, as nearly as Alice could calculate, the Crane butler would be removing the fish and soup.
“It is impossible that you can wait here all that time, my dear Mrs. Coverdale!” exclaimed Lord Alfred. “What will you like me to do for you? You must tell me exactly what you wish.”
“You are very kind,” returned Alice, feeling much inclined to get into a fuss at the oddness of the situation which thus forced her to rely on a handsome young man, with whom she had been acquainted some two hours. Then submitting to her fate with a feeling of desperation, she continued, “First give me your arm, and conduct me to the ladies’ waiting-room; and then if you would be so kind as to look for Celeste, my maid, and—really I am ashamed to trouble you, my lord, but there are some trunks she ought to find, and she can’t speak a dozen words of English intelligibly; and—how you’re to recognize her I can’t tell; really how Mr. Coverdale could——”
But before she could finish her accusatory sentence, Lord Alfred, anxious to distinguish himself in his new capacity of squire of dames, had disappeared. In less time than Alice had deemed possible, he returned with Celeste and a bundle of shawls and wrappers on one arm, and carrying a carpet-bag with the other.
“My mission has been accomplished with the most signal success, I flatter myself: and now I hope your difficulties are ended, my dear Mrs. Coverdale; Celeste and I have found all the trunks. Fortunately, my brougham is here, and I need scarcely add, entirely at your service.” Seeing she hesitated, he continued, “Don’t be alarmed about the proprieties, I have been too well drilled in such matters by my sisters to intrude where I am not wanted.”
“Really your lordship is most kind,” exclaimed Alice, all her scruples vanishing before his good-nature and consideration. And there being nothing for it but to take his arm (relinquished somewhat hastily by Celeste when she discovered that it was a Milor Anglais with whom she had made so free) and allow him to put her into the well-appointed brougham, Alice did so with an interesting succession of smiles and blushes which made her look most dangerously pretty. Thereupon the two hundred guinea horse, which was so thoroughly stuffed with oats that it might almost as well have been a corn-bin, and which, being an animal of the highest breeding, had evinced such an amount of disgust and terror at the hissing, snorting, whistling, and other low habits of the steam dragon, that nothing but the strongest sense of propriety and a very severe curb-bit could have kept it from running away, stood on its hind legs like a Christian, vindicated its transcendentalism by salaaming like a Turk ere it resumed its quadrupedal attitude, and finally set off, at about the rate of fifteen miles an hour, with its head and tail as erect as if some invisible giant were attempting to lift it up by them.