Justice. “Why, you little truant, how durst you wander so far from the house without my leave?”

The Scheming Lieutenant.

Whether it was because Theresa had told her papa that I was in love with Conny, or because he was too fastidious to refer to the subject, my uncle never once throughout my visit had a word to say about his brother’s scheme. He was highly gratified—as was plainly visible in his broad countenance—to see how well I got on with Theresa; but this satisfaction I considered entirely the result of his hospitable feelings. Whilst his daughter misbehaved herself and snubbed me, he had spoken in her praise, for then she stood in need of it; but on her dropping her mocking manners and exhibiting herself as an agreeable, lady-like girl, he said no more about her, good nor bad. It was indeed as if he had exclaimed—“There she is, my boy: she is now herself; and you must find out what you want to know without any help from me. If you fall in love with her, bon; if she falls in love with you, bon again. If you don’t fall in love with each other, still bon. I’ll not trumpet her praises. I am entirely at your service when you want a companion; but I am decidedly unwilling to lose time I might be very usefully employing, in helping a young man and a young woman to love each other.”I thought none the worse of him for holding aloof from his daughter’s and my business.

When the day at last came on which I believed it necessary to return to Updown, he was heartily grieved to part with me. We had been much together, and I knew he would miss me. He had always found me a good listener, ready to laugh loudly at his stories, whether I had heard them before or not. I invariably, moreover, exhibited a great interest in his books, of which he was even prouder than he was of his recollections of the great men of his young days. There was certainly no one in the neighbourhood who could take my place after I was gone.

Theresa was also very sorry to part with me; but there was nothing in her behaviour to cause me to imagine I had produced the least sentimental impression. As I stood talking to her in the hall, while the carriage was preparing to drive me to the station, I said:

“If I write to you, Theresa, will you answer my letter?”

“Certainly I will,” she answered. “I hope you will write. I shall be very glad to hear from you.”

“I have passed a most delightful time,” said I, looking into her expressive eyes.

“I am glad to hear you say so. Before you leave me, you must let me know that I am thoroughly forgiven for the outrageous reception I gave you.”

“Do you think it possible I could bear resentment against you? You must forgive me for ever having given you the trouble to assume so disagreeable a part.” I added a little bashfully: “it would have been better for my peace of mind, perhaps, had you persisted in being disagreeable.”

The faintest flush came into her cheeks, and she immediately said:

“Write to me when Conny has forgiven you for the wrong construction you have put upon her silence.”

“I won’t promise that,” I replied, quite appreciating the little rebuff that was implied in her remark. “She may make up her mind not to forgive me, and I should be sorry to depend upon her caprice in order to write to you.”

At this moment the carriage drove up, and I had no opportunity for saying more; which was perhaps fortunate, as I might have committed myself.

“Mind you come and see us again soon,” my uncle said to me as we rattled towards the station. “We shall remain here for the next two months; after that we may, perhaps, go to Scotland for a short time. Come to us, if only for a night. You may depend upon a hearty welcome.”

It was four o’clock when I arrived at Updown. How was it that, on alighting on the platform, my heart didn’t throb wildly at the prospect of seeing Conny? How was it that, instead of my heart throbbing wildly, I found myself thinking, with a positive feeling of regret, of the girl I had left behind me? Had anybody asked me which I would rather do: go to Grove End or return to Thistlewood, how would I have answered?

Don’t call me heartless. Suppress your sneers. Do people in this world never mistake their feelings? are our impulses always right? do we never find they have directed us the wrong road? Let the secure despise: they are in so small a minority as to be contemptible. The many are with me. Yes, there are men who, having fallen in love, have never had reason to suppose they made a mistake. But how many millions have blundered into spooning with the wrong creatures?

For six revolving moons, Sempronius dallied and adored: Clorinda was his goddess, and a hundred poems distributed among the magazines may, by the diligent explorer, be found to survive his error. But even whilst the seventh moon was a mere line in the heavens—as delicate a curve, my dear, as your eyebrow—Sempronius the base met Sacharissa the sweet. Hey, presto, pass! cried the Magician we all know. Sempronius’ heart sped with miraculous speed from the white bosom of Clorinda to the whiter bosom of Sacharissa. There it still is—there it will probably remain. Sempronius the base is engaged to Sacharissa, and Clorinda sailed for India last week along with her husband, Major O’Ulysses. No hearts were broken, no tears were shed—no eyes became bloodshot—no hair was torn out by the roots; the fact being, that heaven in its mercy hath qualified humanity with a marvellous power of forgetting its mistakes, and of accommodating itself to the first new condition events impose.

I walked to my lodgings and there found a long letter from my father. It was all about my uncle’s scheme, Tom had written a full account of his fine idea for making my fortune, and on receipt of it, down had sat my father, to urge me, as I respected myself, to fall in with Tom’s views, marry Theresa, and become a partner in two senses.

A fortnight before I should have glowered over the parental scribble with bilious eyes; I could now read it with complacency and appreciate the philosophy that illuminated the illegible, but very aristocratic scrawl. There was no Longueville news in the letter. It was all about my marriage with Theresa.

“My horror of the sea,” said my father in a postscript, “is as great as ever it was, and not even Tom’s hospitable entreaties could induce me to set foot on the steamboat. But you may depend upon my being present at your marriage with Theresa; for so great is my anxiety to see you in a secure and affluent position, that I would brave the fiercest gale rather than miss the marriage ceremony.”

Having read this letter, and had a short chat with my landlady, I pulled out my watch, and saw that I should have time to walk to Grove End before they began dinner. I had not written to tell them of my return; but I assumed that they would expect me, as in my letter to Conny I had told her, that on no account could I endure to be away longer than a fortnight from Updown.

The bank was closed as I passed it; but as it was market-day, I had no doubt Mr. Curling was still hard at work within. I was very meditative as I walked. What would Conny answer, I wondered, when I asked her why she had not replied to my letter? She would be pert, of course. That would make me bitter. I should talk with a bold face of Theresa’s beauty, of Theresa’s talents, of Theresa’s figure; if she was the least bit in love with me, I would render her violently jealous. I would humble her with comparisons. I would let her know there were other charming women in the world besides her, that I had a catholic taste, and could admire brown hair and tall figures as well as yellow locks and blue eyes. What! was my heart to be trampled upon? No, by heavens! if she loved me, let her tell me so; if she didn’t, let her marry Curling, and suffer me to seek, unmolested, some bosom on which to repose my well-shaped head and aching brows.

I reached the house and knocked at the door. My heart thumped an echo to the summons. I nodded to the servant, and strode in as a man might into his own house. I hung my hat on a peg, and turning round to enter the drawing-room, faced my uncle.

“Good gracious!” I exclaimed, taking his hand and staring at his melancholy, haggard face, “what is the matter? what has happened?”

“Come in,” he answered, and drawing me into the room, closed the door. My aunt, who stood near the window, ran up to me.

“Oh, Charlie!” she cried, “what do you think has happened? Conny has left us! she has run away with Mr. Curling! Think of her deserting us in our old age! the cruel, undutiful, ungrateful child!”

“What!” I gasped, staring at my uncle, and scarce crediting my own ears. “Conny gone!”

“Sit down,” he answered. “Don’t cry, my dear,” to his wife, “it unmans me. This is a dreadful blow, but it has happened to many besides ourselves, and we must be resigned to the common lot. Yes,” he exclaimed, addressing me, his lips twitching with emotion as he spoke, “our child has left us. She went out last night under pretence of spending the evening with the Maddison girls. James walked with her as far as the town, and Conny then told him he could return home. At half-past ten we sent the phaeton for her, and James came galloping back to say that the Maddisons had not seen anything of her that evening.”

“Instantly,” interrupted my aunt sobbing wildly, “I feared the worst.”

“I seized my hat,” continued my uncle, “jumped into the phaeton, and drove to the Maddisons, who assured me that my daughter had not been to their house. I then drove to Mr. Curling’s lodgings, acting upon a suggestion my wife had made before I started, and learned that the young man had gone out two hours and a half before, carrying a bag with him. Hearing this, I went to the railway station, and there learnt that Mr. Curling and my child had started for London by the train that left at twenty minutes to eight. My intention, then, was to send a telegram to the London terminus, desiring that my daughter should be detained on her arrival; but, I was told that by that time the train had reached London. Nothing remained but for me to return home and break the news to my wife.”

I was too astounded to speak.

“Oh, Charlie,” cried my aunt, clasping her hands, “I so wanted you! You would have followed her and brought her back! but oh! it is too late now—she is ruined—degraded! she has shamed our name for ever! To think that the baby I have nursed, that I have loved and watched over with pride and hope from the hour of her birth, should abandon her poor father and me in our old age! Oh, shame, shame! My poor Thomas—my poor husband! it is too much for us—too much for us to bear!”

“Nay, nay, have patience—have faith,” answered her husband, seizing her hand and caressing her. “Mr. Curling has acted wildly, but he is an honourable man. They both knew we should never consent to their marriage, and they have done as thousands have done before them—defied father and mother, and eloped. To-morrow we shall get a letter, telling us they are married, and begging our forgiveness.”

“Of course they have run away to get married,” I gasped.

“But oh! what a man to marry! Oh, what a man to have for a son-in-law!” raved my aunt. “I felt—I knew all along that Conny was in love with him, and so I wanted her to marry you. I was certain that she would never be safe from that wicked wretch until she was married. All along I was certain of that.”

“We never went to bed all last night,” groaned my uncle.

“Oh, Thomas, Thomas!” cried my aunt. “Why did you discourage my efforts to marry her to Charlie? Why did you tell him you could never sanction his marriage with her? Didn’t I assure you, night after night, that there was no other way of saving her from that wretch! My child, my child! where is she now? Will she ever come back to me?”

“She will, believe me, she will,” I said. “She will tell you that she never could have been happy without Curling, and nothing you could have said or done would have prevented this thing from happening sooner or later.”

“But to be deceived by one’s only child!” burst out my aunt. “Has she no heart? Didn’t she fear that such conduct would break her papa and me down, and put us into our graves? And how cruelly you have been deceived!”

“Oh, don’t think of me—I am nowhere in this grief. What can I do to serve you? Give me some commission.”

“If I knew where to find her,” cried my uncle, “I wouldn’t seek her. What! bring her back alone, after she has been away from us two days? If she returns at all, she must return with her husband.”

“You are quite right,” said I. “We can do nothing but be patient. Depend upon it you will receive a letter from her to-morrow morning.”

And then as the whole truth burst upon me, in one of those successive shocks, with which an astounding event thunders its way, so to speak, into the mind, I shouted: “What a villain! what a trickster! what a hypocrite! Never by word or look, often as I have tried to get the truth out of him, has he given me reason to believe he cared a fig for Conny!”

And then her treachery smote me, and I gasped—I gasped!

At this juncture my aunt went into hysterics.

What an evening that was! I wouldn’t go through such a time again, not for the love of all the fair women Mr. Tennyson dreamt about. Dinner! We had no dinner. It was served—we were summoned to it—but my aunt was in bed, and the sight of food made my uncle speechless. I swallowed some soup, quite unconsciously, because it was set before me; but my grief revolted at solids. I could as soon have eaten the cook as the slice of beef which my uncle, with the tears standing in his eyes, blindly hacked off for me.

Oh daughters, dear! what do you mean by making your papas and mammas wretched? Can’t you love decently, and marry becomingly? Do you think it fun to go running off o’ nights with men, and wringing tears out of hearts you were sent into this world to soothe and bless? Is romance spiced by a mother’s lamentations? Is love sweetened by a father’s groans? If you think this, get along with you, do, to the Cannibal Islands, where the people who marry, first propitiate the gods by the sacrifice of a relation.

As I beheld my uncle’s tears, I cried to myself: “Does a man marry for this? Does he soothe and sue, make presents, and receive them back, grow cynical, and leave his beard unshorn, laugh at papa’s stale stories, and submit to mamma’s acidity, for this? Does he take upon himself the responsibilities of a British housekeeper, write cheques for landlords, wrangle with tradespeople, be interfered with by his wife’s connections, hunt after monthly nurses, sit up all night with windy babies—to be made miserable in his old age?”

Art thou a bachelor who readest this? I warn thee—leave well alone. Hast thou a landlady? Incline thine ear over the staircase when thou hearest her wearied husband enter, listen to her greeting, withdraw to thy one room, flop upon thy knees, and breathe thy little prayer of gratitude that the hat thou puttest on thy head covereth thy family, and crowneth thee lord of thyself. Accept this chapter as a tombstone, under which moulder the bones of an Experience. If there be no epitaph, it is because I choose not to write thee a lie. Ponder and pause, then go thy ways, moralising on the lot of others, and grateful for thine own.