Bland. “Never mention what is past. The wranglings of married people about unlucky questions that break out between them is like the lashing of a top: it only serves to keep it up the longer.”

All in the Wrong.

Next day business was a little brisk at the bank, and, considering my short apprenticeship, I acquitted myself tolerably well. I took Curling’s place and paid or received the cheques, &c., as they were presented, and what was extremely wonderful, found at the end of the day that I had made no mistake. I also conferred with two or three customers in the manager’s private room, performing the simple duty of listening to them with a very grave face, and dismissing them in a style that excited Mr. Spratling, who had a slow and laborious mind, into applause.

When the bank was closed I went to my lodgings to get some dinner, not intending to call at Grove End until late in the evening. The fact was, my uncle had spoken of leaving London with the devoted couple at four o’clock; Updown would be reached by seven, and I had no wish to intrude until the violence and agitation of the meeting at Grove End should be in some degree calmed.

My dinner, composed of a mutton chop and a pint of red wine, was soon despatched. I pulled an arm-chair to the open window, lighted a pipe, and surrendered myself up to various reflections.

Among other things, I remember thinking how very pretty my landlady’s house was, how snugly it would accommodate a newly-married pair—and then I thought of Theresa.

In imagination I pictured her my wife, moving, at this sunset hour, with watering-pot in hand, among the flowers in the garden, ever and anon creeping up to the window, where I was seated, to give me a flower, and let me take a long look into her bright and speaking eyes.

Heavens! how the wheel goes round! Not very long before I had figured another young lady as my wife, offering me flowers through that very identical window, with all the sweetness of her spirit beaming like the moon in the dark azure of her eyes. That picture was blotted out. Did I care? A fiddle! I liked the other picture much better. Why, even that reverence, which, despite Conny’s indifference to me, I should ever have remembered her beauty with, was sunk, was destroyed by the consideration that her name was now Curling, and that the frizzy cashier was privileged to call her His!

His! Imagine that cockneyfied forefinger, that long forefinger with the olive-coloured nail and the dreadful ring, chucking Conny’s dimpled chin, playing with Conny’s golden hair! Faugh! The rose that makes the beauties of your sweetheart’s white bosom killing, becomes a sordid, vulgar flower when transferred on the morrow to the char-woman, and pinned by her against the dirt of the handkerchief about her chest. Though idealism has its limits, yet its circle had been a big one for Conny, and there was little she could have done in it alone that would have endangered her charms in my eyes. But she had chosen to lug Mr. Curling into the magic realm; and souse! the spell was broken.

It was like throwing a duck into a lake, in whose lucent serenity the stars of the heavens found their duplicates.

Now, whilst I thus sate, the postman came into the garden and handed me a letter. I caught sight of the initials “T. H.” at the corner of the envelope, and my heart beat quickly. I pulled out the enclosure. What a fine, free, dashing hand! How firm and honest and characteristic! How thoughtful to answer my letter so soon! Why, she could only have received it that morning, and must therefore have written her reply on the spot.

“My dear Charlie,” she began: and then went on to express her astonishment and grief at the news I had sent her of Conny’s elopement. She could scarcely credit I was in earnest.

“What mad impulse could have prompted her to take such a step! How grieved my uncle and aunt must be! Surely had they suspected that Conny was so fond of this young man, they would have allowed her to marry him, rather than drive her into an elopement by their refusal. Papa is perfectly stupefied; for he told me that uncle Tom had over and over again expressed his belief, that Conny would marry well.”“As for you, I am not so surprised as you fancied I should be, to hear that Conny’s rash act has not broken your heart. I told you plainly one day that you didn’t love her, and now you confess I was right. Again and again I tell you that your fickleness, as you call it, cannot affect my opinion of you. Had you sincerely loved her, taught her to love you, and then turned from her, no words of mine could possibly convey how greatly I should despise you. I don’t mean to say that I or any other woman could think the better of a man for not knowing his own mind. Judgment is a fine quality in a man, and without it he can never be devoted, or honest, or resolute.

“But I told you, during that rude fit of mine, that you were a boy—which you are—and are therefore to be laughed at and excused for falling into an ecstasy over the first pretty face you meet, and calling your silly transports, love! You have been punished severely enough through your self-conceit; and I can imagine that you will never care to be reminded, that at the time you were thinking you had made a conquest of Conny, she was encouraging you merely that you might serve her as a kind of dummy, with whom she might coquette whilst she indulged her real passion with her Theodore.”

Having written so far, she was pleased to suspend her raillery, to make way for large-hearted expressions of sympathy with Tom and his wife, and concluded a tolerably voluminous letter by signing herself “Your affectionate cousin.”

“P.S. Tell me all the news as it comes to hand, that is if you can find any time to waste upon T. H.”

I was so much piqued and so much pleased with this letter, that, had I had any further news to tell her—enough to find me an excuse for writing so promptly—I should there and then have sent her a reply. The part I liked most was where she had called me a boy. It was delightful to be rallied so familiarly, to be chided so saucily. And I noticed the dexterity with which she implied apologies and excuses for the conduct she seemed to reproach in me.

However, it was now about time that I made my way to Grove End. Nothing but a sense of duty could have driven me there, I assure you.

I reached the house a little before nine o’clock, and knocked very tremulously; I never remember feeling more nervous. What should I say to Conny—to Mrs. Curling, I mean? and what was Mrs. Curling to say to me?

When I entered the hall, I could scarcely do anything for some moments but wipe my feet. Then I knocked my uncle’s hat off a peg in trying to hang up my own. The servant opened the drawing-room door, and giving my faculties a twist, as it were, to make them resonant, I entered.

“Hallo!” said I, seeing the room empty, though the lamps were lighted, “where’s my uncle?”In truth, I had forgotten, in my nervousness, to inquire whether he had returned from London.

“I’ll go and see, sir.”

“Then he has come back?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Alone?”

“No; Mr. and Mrs. Curling have come with him.”

What adaptive aptitude servants have! How long would it take me to talk of “Mr. and Mrs. Curling” as glibly as if they had been man and wife ten years?

I sat down and pretended to feel at my ease, meanwhile watching the door anxiously. In about three minutes’ time it opened, and in came—everybody! Yes, I protest all my relations swarmed in at once. First came my uncle, with his shirt collars well up above his ears; then came my aunt with red eyes; then came Conny looking white as a sheet: and then came Curling—already a bruised and broken son-in-law, glancing with scared eyes about him, and stepping forward with the nervous, dubious air you may have observed in a decayed tradesman, who, having called four times with a subscription paper, is mistaken by your servant, and asked to “walk in.”

I stood up, not knowing whom to shake hands with first.

“How are you, Charlie?” said my uncle in a melancholy voice. “We were all in the library when you came.”

My aunt took an arm-chair, breathing noisily.

“I am glad to welcome you home,” said I, taking Conny’s hand, and feeling as if I were saluting a stranger.“Thank you,” she whispered, hanging her head; and then gave her husband a glance.

Poor little girl! I knew what she meant. The eyes of the mother were upon me; I was the Representative of the Family Gentility. My soul warmed to a magnanimous impulse, and, extending my hand cordially to Mr. Curling, I exclaimed in a loud, impressive voice,

“I heartily congratulate you on your choice of a wife; and I hope you will both be spared for many long years to be a comfort to each other.”

Boh! boh! Conny burst into tears, ran up to me, clung to my arm, and upturning her sweet, deceitful eyes, now with their rich blue deepened by tears, cried,“Oh, Charlie, I knew you would forgive me! I always felt you would! Do ask mamma to love me again, and to be friends with Theodore.”

“She will need no asking,” I answered, feeling perfectly patriarchal, and thinking what a mean figure I was involuntarily making Mr. Theodore cut. “Her heart is the kindest that ever beat in a woman’s bosom; and I shall be greatly mistaken if, after you have allowed her a little breathing time, to recover the shock, she does not clasp her only, her beloved child again to her breast, and forgive the man whose only sin has been that he has loved her daughter too well.”

Having uttered which surprising piece of eloquence, I was confounded by my uncle bursting into tears.

“Don’t mind me,” he sobbed, through his fingers; “I entreat—I implore that none of you will look at me.”

“Oh, my dear husband!” shrieked his wife, rushing up to him, and casting her arms around his neck.

“Oh, papa, papa!” cried Conny, likewise running up to him, casting herself on her knees and fondling his legs.

To complete the tableau nothing was wanting but for Mr. Curling and me to lock each other’s figure in a passionate embrace. But I would rather have been poisoned.

“There, there, there!” mumbled my poor uncle, releasing himself from his wife and child by struggling out of his chair. “I must apologise for my weakness. God knows how many years it is since I shed a tear. Charlie, my boy, pray be seated. Curling, raise your wife.”However, Conny saved her husband this trouble by getting up herself. My aunt resumed her chair; Curling took the music-stool, and my uncle and I shared the sofa.

The silence that followed was exquisitely embarrassing. I gasped and gulped about in my mind for something to say, but was as absolutely vacant of ideas as a foolish and nervous “best man,” who rises to propose “the bridesmaids,” and can do nothing for a long and awful pause but fix a fishy eye on the person immediately opposite.

Conny never looked at me. Her swollen blue eyes were glued to the carpet. As for my aunt, her face was as stony and hard as anything ever found by Mr. Layard at Nineveh. At last, feeling the silence too oppressive for my nerves to endure without something cracking, I asked my uncle, in a voice that appeared to me fearfully loud,

“How is London looking?”

“Very much as usual,” he replied.

And his tongue being loosened, he proceeded to inquire after the business that had been transacted at the bank during his absence. We were now upon a subject in which Curling would feel at home, and heartily sorry for the poor fellow whose position was, on the whole, as unenviable as any mortal man was ever placed in, I contrived to address some observations to him, which he answered with great diffidence. I then, from a laudable desire to diffuse a more pleasing social atmosphere than then overhung us, spoke to my aunt, taking care, on receiving her reply, to appeal to Conny.But my well-meant effort failed. My aunt was so dogged and tearful, I might as well have tried to set the pendulum of a clock wagging when the spring was broken, as have attempted to get her to be cheerful.

“We make a happy family party, don’t we,” said she to me with a ghastly smile.

“I don’t see why we shouldn’t,” I replied. “I for one am quite disposed to be comfortable,” and I looked at Conny.

“Ah!” said my aunt with a severe nod, “you are not a mother, Charlie.”

“No,” said I, “and I really hope there is no chance of my ever becoming one.”

Mr. Curling grinned faintly. Conny looked at me askew, as if she wondered how I could find the heart to be funny.

“Come, come, don’t let us get personal,” exclaimed my uncle. “What I told Conny and her husband in London I will repeat here; they have chosen to act foolishly and cruelly; but greatly as they have made us suffer, it is our duty, now that the action is irreparable, not only to wish to see them happy, but to strive to make them so. It is too late to show any temper, and all reproaches must be idle and foolish.”

“Ay, but flesh and blood must speak!” cried out my aunt.

“I regret the grief and pain I have caused you and Mrs. Hargrave,” said Curling. “But when I remember what I owe you, sir, when I know that I am not incapable of gratitude, and that the character I have always borne has been that of a man whom it needs a great deal to divert from the straight line of his duty, I think, I—I say I think at least—you, I mean—that is you should find in my elopement a proof—yes, a proof, Mrs. Hargrave, of my love for your daughter and—and—an endorsement—that is, a guarantee, I mean for—of—for our future—for her future happiness.”

Uttering which he threw a damp glance round the room.

Is that the genuine language of the heart, thought I? But suppose he had rehearsed the passage, what other kind of eloquence than gasps and expletives is to be expected from a man in his situation.

“It ought never to have taken place,” cried Mrs. Hargrave.

“Oh, mamma!” exclaimed Conny, “you are too severe, we are all to blame.”

I glanced at her pale face and thought, “Ah! She might have had me once. There would have been no hysterics then. Nothing but congratulations and new dresses.”

“We!” shrieked my aunt. “Did I ask you to elope with Mr. Theodore?”

“For heaven’s sake—!” interposed my uncle.

“You told me I should never marry him with your consent!” cried Conny.

“And you haven’t!” broke in my aunt.

“Good God!” shouted my uncle. “Isn’t the thing over? what’s the use of wrangling? what’s the use of snapping at each other like that?”

“No use at all,” said I. “And what’s more—though I’m a heretic for saying so—in my opinion a woman has a perfect right to choose for herself the man that the law compels her to live with.”

“Shame! shame!” groaned my aunt. “You can’t mean what you say. Aren’t you, too, grossly deceived?”

“No!” interrupted Conny, a sudden blush dyeing her face scarlet. “Charlie knew that I didn’t—that I couldn’t love him—greatly as I liked him.”

Oh! I thought, if you weren’t a young bride, if it weren’t incumbent upon me to respect your feelings, if it wouldn’t be unmanly to deliver myself of my sentiments, how I could make you writhe. But I’ll spare thee, Conny, which I could not do, had I truly loved thee.

“Conny’s quite right,” said I aloud, “she never gave me any encouragement, she always told me she only liked me. I was very impertinent to dare to have any hopes.”

She turned a look of triumph on her Theodore. Come, I was a sore point anyhow, which was better than being nothing at all.

“Why must we be personal?” cried my uncle.

“What are we to talk about if we mayn’t speak of this aw—this dread—this—this—thing?” sobbed my aunt.

“Well, you must excuse me for taking Charlie into the library,” said he, rising and laying hold of my arm. “I have many questions to ask him about the bank.”

Mr. Curling looked at us as if he should cry out, “For the love of heaven, don’t leave me!” But my uncle took no notice, and hurriedly walked me out of the room, not even giving me time to make a bow to the happy trio I left behind.

“I am sick of these squabbles!” he exclaimed, lighting a candle in the library and flinging himself into an arm-chair. “Sick of these personalities, hints, innuendos, and aspersions. Oh for the wings of a dove! Why can’t my wife leave them alone? My word is pledged to them, and she knows it, but is for ever bursting into our sense of honour with sharp charges and reckless attacks.”

“It was to be expected,” said I; “but give her time, and she will become inured to the new state of things.”

“So far as the comfort of my home is concerned, these rows can’t last longer than to-night. To-morrow Curling takes his wife into lodgings.”

“Small blame to him. He is really to be pitied. I have heard that mothers-in-law are bad enough company to live with, even when they have graced the marriage service with their consenting presence, and sobbed over the bridegroom’s impossible promises. But what they are when their daughters are married in defiance of them, I can only dimly and fearfully guess.”

“Ay, it is too true. Relations ought not to live together after they get married. Deeply offended as I am, I haven’t the heart to turn upon the young couple. Who are we to throw stones? Who are we to fill the judgment seat? Life stretches before them; there are, there must be, many sorrows on the road, and hard trials, and bitter tears. Whether we forgive them or not, it is unhappily only too certain that the future will make them more than expiate the vexation and disappointment they have caused us. No, no! I am not for exacting penances. I am not for grinding young hearts down because they have betrayed their owners into folly. Conny does love that young man amazingly. I see it in every movement of her head, in every look she gives him. He too is very fond of her. Argue as you will, there was sound truth in what he just now said. He is a plodding, mechanical-minded fellow, devoted to his interests, and a thorough business-man; and it could be no ordinary passion that turned his habits awry, and set him defying fortune for the privilege of possessing a pretty girl.”

“No, indeed; for he had no reason to suppose that you would give Conny a penny, or that you would allow him to resume his duties. He is no doubt sincere.”

“I found them in mean lodgings out of Bloomsbury,” said my uncle. “Yet, miserable as was their accommodation, and penniless as they avowed themselves to be, nothing could have induced them to return with me, but my repeated promises that they would be kindly received and forgiven. What a thing is love!” he cried, flinging open the window to get some air. “Imagine it not only powerful enough to drive a delicate girl, who has been coddled all her life, out of a luxurious country home, into squalid London lodgings, but to make her perfectly satisfied with her dirty quarters! Do you see anything in Mr. Curling to fall in love with? I’ll be hanged if I do.”

“Oh, woman’s caprice is an old song set to a tune to which men have been capering for many thousand years. Wasn’t Eve glad to be turned out of Paradise? we have only Milton’s word for it, that she cried. Conny finds her Theodore lovely—and there’s an end. Women, like birds, will build their nests in the queerest places. You can’t reason with them. They obey an instinct that was implanted, in order that the ugliest man might not be mateless.”

“I hope my wife is not scolding. She will make that young man hate her. And then good-bye to all our chances of persuading the neighbours that we don’t consider the marriage a calamity. What did you say to her last night?”

I told him as well as I could remember.

“My boy,” said he, having listened to me with great attention, “she has a high opinion of you, and I believe, upon a matter of this kind, would rather be influenced by you than by me. Never lose an opportunity, like a dear fellow, to impress upon her that Mr. Curling is not the shocking bad match she chooses to think him. He has been with me four years, and during that time has behaved himself like a gentleman. It is all very fine for my wife to abuse him now; but up to the moment when she suspected that he was paying Conny attention, she professed to like him very much. I might hunt a long time before I should find a man better suited for my work than Curling. And strange as it will strike you to hear, I can assure you that when my wife has been trying to frighten me about him and Conny, I have thought that he might make my child as good a husband as a richer man, and as my partner be of the greatest use to me.”

I nodded my head, comprehending his drift, and admiring his resolution to view the affair in the brightest light. This, indeed, was a quality that belonged in an especial degree to my father’s family—my father himself owning it largely. I don’t think anything could have made him feel degraded. Had a daughter of his married a sweep, he would have set to work to trace the sweep’s lineage, and not stopped until he had come to an aristocratic tributary. His philosophy was to deal with the events of life, as they befell him, splendidly; to make misfortune imperial with the crown of self-complacency; to distil a kind of essence of dignity out of humiliation, and diffuse the perfume where another man would have hidden the sordid rubbish in the dust-bin of his bosom, and pretended that there was nothing of the kind on the premises.

My uncle, who did not possess my father’s high self-opinion, allowed worthier motives to direct him to the same conduct. I don’t mean to say that the hints he had just dropped of his views regarding Curling were not owing largely to a wish to make the best of a bad bargain; but the wish to see the young people comfortable and happy, very powerfully operated.

“I won’t ask anybody’s advice,” said he, “upon my treatment of Mr. Curling; but think awhile, watch patiently, and act for myself. There is nothing like acting for yourself.”

“Nothing.”

“Curling shows a proper spirit in determining not to sleep in this house longer than a night. He and Conny consented to return with me on that understanding. To-morrow morning he will take lodgings in Updown, and there they will live, until I furnish them a house.”

“When are they to be re-married?”

“I’ll see about that to-morrow. The ceremony must be perfectly private. I don’t believe in registrars acting as clergymen. I would as soon they should administer the sacrament to me as marry me.”

Here came a feeble knock on the door.

“Come in,” said my uncle, and Conny entered.I gave her a chair, and her papa said,

“How can you leave your husband?”

“He is arguing with mamma, and it makes me miserable to listen to the hard things she says to him.”

“These arguments must be stopped!” cried my uncle, leaving his chair. “Can’t your mother leave him alone for to-night? You’ll be out of the house to-morrow. What good can reproaches do? Can they unmarry you? My wife must be made to understand this.”

And he left the room.

Finding myself alone with Conny, I kicked my feet about a little, and said, “I was quite in earnest when I hoped you would be happy.”

“I am sure you were. But I shall be happier when you tell me I am forgiven,” she answered, turning her face away from the light.

“Oh, you are forgiven. Your papa means to——.”

“I mean forgiven by you,” she interrupted.

“There is nothing to forgive.”

“Don’t say that, Charlie. I did not act honourably. I was not straightforward. But I couldn’t—I dared not be. I knew if mamma should learn that I flatly refused to encourage you, she would contrive to separate me for ever from Theodore.”

“Yes, yes. I quite understand. I heartily forgive you—I bear no resentment. I was a little surprised—shocked, I may say; but the wound is healed, Conny. I am as sound in health and mind as if I had never received a stab. I was quite sure that it was all up between us—that you hadn’t, that you never would have a spark of affection for me, when you allowed the letter I sent you from Thistlewood to remain unanswered. What might have been, my dear, we needn’t talk about—it hasn’t taken place. My dream is dreamt out. I have a practical mind; and being now wide awake, dismiss the little memory with a smile, and turn with all kindly wishes and greetings to the reality.”

She was too fond of, too engrossed with, and by, her husband, to be piqued by my cool remarks. She was not a flirt—I could see that. She had acted the coquette to suit her own purpose: and that being served, she had torn up the mask.

“I hope you will like Theodore,” she said, earnestly. “I know you despised him, but I daresay you were prejudiced, because you suspected I preferred him to you. Did you notice that he has taken off his ring, Charlie?”

“I can’t say I did.”

“He has, then; and his hand is wonderfully improved. Oh, he is so affectionate! some of these days mamma will feel heartily ashamed of herself for treating him so badly.”

“No doubt—but still your mother has a right to regard your elopement as a grievance.”

“I never would have eloped hadn’t mamma prevented Theodore from seeing me, and set her face so passionately against our marriage. She forgets that I have known Theodore for over three years, and that we have loved each other for two years out of that time. I got weary, Charlie, of having to meet him stealthily, and of carrying a heavy secret about; and I was driven into running away when I saw how earnestly mamma was working to bring about my marriage with you.”

“One question, Conny; do you remember one Sunday night leaving me hurriedly on hearing the clock strike seven?”

“Yes. I went to meet Theodore. Oh, Charlie, how I hated you for stopping at home that evening!”

“And on that evening I asked you to marry me!” I exclaimed, with a laugh like a groan. “What fools men sometimes make of themselves! But never mind. I’ve pulled the knife out of my side—the wound, I say, is healed. This is my little folly—but the farce is played out, and I am obliged to you for letting the curtain fall, and turning us all out before the tragedy began. Let us join the others. If your husband and I are to love each other, I mustn’t begin by making him jealous.”

“One word, Charlie—what do you think of Theresa?”

“I like her very much,” I answered, looking into those blue eyes of hers, in whose depths I had so often sank out of sight of common sense.

“Are you in love with her?”

“I am,” I exclaimed, emphatically.

Quite a bright smile shone in her face.

“That confession makes me happy,” said she; “for it satisfies me that I have not betrayed so very devoted a heart, after all!”She opened the door and passed out.

Hush! hark! what was that?

A scream, followed by a gurgle! Good heavens! my aunt was in hysterics again! My hat was within reach of my hand; two strides would take me to the door.

“I hate scenes!” I whispered, whilst Conny listened with a pale and frightened face. “I have no right to intrude on domestic troubles. Please apologise for my sudden departure. Good night.”

And out I rushed.