Frisk. “Relations aren’t always welcome: but a pretty cousin can never come too soon, nor stay too long.”

The Vagrant.

On reaching my lodgings, I wrote a letter to Theresa, in which I gave her all the news she had asked me for, and in which also, I am afraid, I was more jocose on the subject of my aunt’s hysterics than a strict sympathy would have sanctioned. However, the letter was entirely to my satisfaction, especially those portions of it in which I referred with proper obscurity to my feelings.

I then walked with it to the letter-box, returned, smoked a pipe, and went to bed, where I meditated without emotion on Conny, and finally fell asleep to dream of Theresa.

Next morning, whilst I was at breakfast, my uncle drove up to the gate.

“Charlie,” said he, on entering my sitting-room, “my wife has an idea, and I want to talk it over with you. But get on with your breakfast—don’t let me disturb you.”

“What is the idea, uncle?”

“Decent lodgings are not to be got in Updown,” he answered, looking around the room inquisitively; “my wife went everywhere before she settled upon these for you. But this appears a thoroughly comfortable house, with a very presentable and respectable exterior. Indeed it is a house fit for any lady or gentleman to live in.”

“That it is. It’s detached, you see, with nothing sordid on either side. The garden in front gives us a landed appearance. Nor are there any black-beetles, rats, or fleas on the premises.”

“Yes, there is a very great deal in its favour. However, what I have called to ask you, is, will you let Curling and Conny have these rooms for the present?”

“With the greatest pleasure,” I answered, promptly.

“Thank you, my boy, and you will live with us?”

“I don’t think I have any right to trouble you,” I replied, scarcely relishing the boundless prospect of arguments, reproaches, tears, and hysterics, which my uncle’s suggestion opened up to me.

“Oh, nonsense. You don’t think I would ask you to give up your rooms without finding you other accommodation? Conny’s old bed-room shall be prepared for you—it is the second best in the house. Is it settled?”

It was settled with him, I could see; objections would only make me appear ill-natured; and as it was out of my power to state any reasons for declining his hospitality, I consented with a mind agitated by misgivings.

The landlady was then summoned, and after my uncle had been shown over the house, the proposed change was told her. My vanity was not a little flattered by the good lady’s evident reluctance to part with me. My distinctive virtue was no doubt negative—I gave her no trouble. She raised her terms when she heard that a lady was to take my place, but this my uncle did not object to. So she was desired to get her rooms ready that afternoon for the reception of her new lodgers, and my uncle and I then started for the bank.

On the road he asked me what had made me hurry away, the night before.

“My aunt’s screams,” I answered. “My nerves disappear when a woman cries. I hope she is well this morning.”

“Moody, terribly moody. I very much fear that she will never be able to get over her prejudice against Curling.”

“They’ll have a kind of home of their own,” said I, “and I suppose before long you’ll furnish a house for them.”

“Oh, that I must do as soon as possible, if only for the sake of appearances. It would never do for people to say ‘Hargrave’s daughter is in lodgings. Depend upon it, Hargrave is not the substantial man we have thought him or he would never allow his child to live so meanly.’ A hint of this kind started by the first malicious person it occurred to, would run through the town, and ultimately, perhaps, injure the bank; for people naturally would object to trust their money to a man who, if he is too poor to assist his daughter, must be obviously living beyond his means by residing in such a house as mine.”

I quite appreciated this reasoning, which nevertheless had, I was persuaded, nothing whatever to do with his real motives. The fact was, he felt he had no business to forgive Conny too readily and make her as comfortable as if she had married with his full consent. But as, in spite of his conscience, he had forgiven her, and as he had determined, in defiance of his sense of justice, that she should be comfortable, there was nothing for him to do but to mask his fine instincts with worldly considerations, and pretend to find the inspiration of his kindness in the fear of gossip.

On reaching the bank, he was detained for some time in consultation with a client. When released, he told me he was now going to call on the rector to see about getting Conny married properly; and away he trudged, under a broiling sun, agitated, and energetic, and looking worried to death.

Ah, Eugenio, these are some of the little troubles people have to put up with who take wives and raise families. No doubt, if we had our way, we should marry our daughters to dukes, and our sons to maids of honour. But our children, most of us find, have their own original theories upon the subject of matrimony; and, as they are our masters and mistresses, what are we to do but to submit? follow them humbly, hat in hand? blubber our congratulations over the marriages contrived by themselves, and illustrate, by our meek faces, how sensible we are that we were put upon this earth for no other purpose than to make handsome settlements, welcome the poor and needy into our family circles, order wedding-breakfasts and bridesmaids’ lockets, fiddlers and waiters, champagne and carriages, that the events we deprecate may be celebrated with all proper magnificence? and, finally, half beggar ourselves to furnish those houses which we are never afterwards to enter without being made to feel that, “papa and mamma do interfere so?”

My poor uncle returned to the bank a little before four o’clock, covered with dust and perspiration.

“Never,” he gasped, sinking into a chair, “never whilst I live may I be called upon to do such a day’s work again.”

I listened to the catalogue of his performances with mingled emotions of astonishment and sympathy.

He had seen the rector, and arranged for a private service to take place on Monday.

He had then gone to Grove End, where he had found his wife, and Conny, and Curling, arguing furiously, the ladies in tears, had seized upon his son-in-law, borne him off to my old lodgings, and desired him to stop there to superintend the getting ready of the apartments.

He had again driven to Grove End, ordered Conny to get together the things she wanted, presided over the packing, meanwhile keeping his wife at bay by every species of entreaty, supplication, dehortation, and even menace, until Conny was ready, when the trunks were hoisted into the phaeton, and off they started for Updown.

Nor did my uncle’s labours cease with this; for judging that amid the excitement, heat, and confusion of the hour, Curling would entirely lose sight of his own and his wife’s domestic needs, he had performed a tour of the shops, whence he had sent to them wine, poultry, groceries—in short, everything he in his dizziness could think of, finally arriving at the bank in the condition I have just described; though not to find rest yet. For, scarcely was his panting narrative concluded, when in came a client—one of those thick-headed, dull-minded farmers, who spell their names thus: +, and grin as they pronounce themselves no scholards; who, taking a seat, with his hat between his legs, began in a tongue turbid with Z’s, to demonstrate some mental difficulty he was labouring under with regard to a bill which, his son having died since it came into his possession, he had nobody now to read to him; and his memory being weak, could not recollect the date, the sum, or the conditions.

“By the way,” I exclaimed to my uncle just before leaving the bank, “what has become of my clothes?”

“All your things are packed up, and gone to Grove End.”

“Who packed them?”

“The landlady.”

“All my papers?”

“Everything belonging to you.”

“I’ll just go and have a look round,” said I.

You will understand my uneasiness, when I tell you that, besides several letters I had written to Theresa, none of which had satisfied me, though I had not destroyed them, there were various hints for, and beginnings of, poems in the drawer of my dressing-table, which I would not have had Conny read for a very great deal. Suppose these poetical fragments were satires referring to the false and fickle Being whose initials were “C. H.:” now changed to “C. C.?” Suppose they were nothing of the kind? The most candid biographer is permitted to keep something back from the eye of a discerning public: and the contents of that dressing-table drawer are my secret.

“Make haste,” said my uncle: “I’ll wait for you.”

Off I started, not at all liking to intrude upon the young people, but resolute to save my papers. To my great relief, I found they had gone out for a walk, leaving directions with the landlady to have a chicken cooked by six o’clock. Likewise a pair of soles, and a cherry-pie.

I rushed up-stairs, and found—what I had expected: all my papers! What a narrow escape! Let me sit down, and take breath. But perhaps Conny had already peeped at them? Avaunt, odious thought! With eager hands I rolled them into a bundle, stared about me to see that no further memorial of mine encumbered the room, and then returned to the bank.

You may guess my amazement, when, on entering my uncle’s house at Grove End, I beheld in the hall an intimately familiar white hat, standing upon the table, and by its side, a lady’s parasol, and a travelling-bag.“Good gracious!” I exclaimed, grasping my uncle’s arm: “do you know whose hat that is?”

“Dick’s!” cried my uncle, and pushed open the drawing-room door.

What made my heart to beat when I saw thee, Theresa?

She and her papa left my aunt, and met us half-way.

“How are you, Dick?” “How are you, Tom?” “This is kind of you, Theresa!” “Delighted to see you, Charlie!” “What a blow! when did you come?” “How unexpected! where is Conny?”

These greetings having been got through, we all sat down, I close alongside of Theresa.

“This is a real pleasure,” said I. “Did you get my letter?”“Yes, and answered it.”

“I mean the one I posted last night.”

“No. We left before the mid-day post arrived. Papa thought we couldn’t do less than run over to Grove End and see how you were all enduring your trouble.”

“Do I look crushed?”

She smiled.

“Am I thinner, do you think? do I appear wasted? are my cheeks hollow, and is there anything approaching a broken-hearted expression in my eyes?”

“You look very well. I wish I could say as much for poor aunt. Troubles of this kind seem to agree with you.”

And how well and how handsome she was looking! how her fine eyes glittered! “Well,” said I, “though this trouble hasn’t disagreed with me, I feel very much for the father and mother. How long are you going to stop here?”

“We return to-morrow.”

“I shall be very much disgusted if you do,” I exclaimed.

“Why, what does Theresa mean by sitting in her hat?” cried uncle Tom.

“We have only been here ten minutes,” answered his brother.

“My dear, take off your hat,” said my aunt, leaving the sofa, with her eyes inflamed by tears. “Come up-stairs with me.”

“But we didn’t mean to stay,” answered Theresa.

“But you will, and you’ll sleep here, too,” exclaimed uncle Tom.

This observation provoked an argument which ended in Theresa’s defeat and departure with her aunt up-stairs.“I was never more amazed than when I read Charlie’s letter,” said uncle Dick. “The wife bears it badly.”

“Very badly,” groaned uncle Tom. “In fact she is the great difficulty now. Grieved and upset as I first was, I could very soon get used to the thing, if my wife would only stop crying and storming. Of course, Curling is a wretched match for my child, and the elopement makes the whole affair confoundedly humiliating. But it has its bright side. Curling is a first-rate clerk, and, as my son-in-law, can render himself invaluable to me as a right-hand man. Conny is devoted to him, and I have no doubt he’ll prove a good husband. If my wife would only view the matter a little cheerfully, it would lose half its gloom.”“It is a confounded upset,” said Dick: “but you are perfectly right to look at it cheerfully. My philosophy, when a bad thing happens, is, to think that it might have been worse, like the Dutchman in the ‘Spectator,’ who, on breaking his leg, thanked God it wasn’t his neck. What have you done with the young people?”

This question brought about a long and minute narrative, which was barely finished when my aunt and cousin returned.

You may conceive that nothing but Conny and her elopement was talked about till dinner was announced. My aunt was still most violent and irascible in her views and opinions, nor was her temper improved by her giving occasion more than once to her husband to call her to order. Uncle Dick hardly remembered Curling: and Theresa had never seen him; and from the description my aunt gave of the young man, I believe they were both prepared to be introduced to the most ugly, insignificant, vulgar specimen of human nature that ever afflicted the eyesight.

Fortunately, during dinner, the presence of the servants prevented us from discussing the elopement: and, to my great satisfaction, we were allowed to converse on topics that bore no reference whatever to Curling or to Conny.

I sat next to Theresa, and never felt happier. Over and over again I caught my aunt watching me, with a most melancholy expression in her eyes, as if she witnessed in my undissembled enjoyment of Theresa’s society, the dissolution of the last fragment that remained of her pretty hopes.

“Tom,” said uncle Dick, when the dessert was upon the table, and the servants had left the room, “I should like to see Conny. She would take it ill were I to go away without wishing her joy.”

“We’ll walk to Updown after dinner,” replied uncle Tom. “A kindly word is a great help to a young heart, isn’t it, Dick? and God forbid that I should prevent my girl winning what love she can at a time when the want of love would be bitter to her.”

“I should like to go too, papa,” said Theresa.

“And so should I,” observed the Hero of this story.

“I think too many of us would embarrass them,” answered Tom. “You will see her to-morrow, my dear.”

“But we leave to-morrow.”

“Your father may if he likes; but you shan’t,” exclaimed Tom warmly. “We want a cheerful face among us, Teazer; and it will be a god-send to our spirits if you will stop.”

“She shall stop,” said her father.

“Oh, yes, certainly, she must stop,” observed my aunt.

“I have no right to invite anybody,” said I: “but if my uncle wishes, I shall be happy to prevent Theresa from leaving by mounting guard at the gate.”

“With a pistol?” said uncle Dick.

I burst into a laugh.

“I have brought no dresses with me,” said Theresa, blushing and glancing at me with a sly look of mirth.“Give me a list and I’ll send you all you want,” exclaimed her papa.

“But who will look after you, dear?”

“Myself, to be sure.”

“Tut! tut! let us have no more discussion. Of course Theresa stops with us,” cried uncle Tom. “There is Conny’s bed-room—oh, I forgot! Charlie has that.”

“No he hasn’t,” said I. “Any room but that will suit him.”

The two brothers exchanged meaning glances. I knew very well what was in their minds, but not the shadow, not the ghost of a protest arose from my soul. As Theresa wasn’t going to see Conny, I did not press my society upon my uncles; so it ended in their leaving the house after dinner, whilst my aunt, Theresa, and your servant remained at home to look after one another.My aunt could talk of nothing but the dreadful blow Conny had dealt her pride, and the wretched person she had introduced into the family. I am very patient, and have never in my life been considered unsympathetic: but upon my word, I began to grow very sick of hearing my aunt twanging, eternally twanging, that one groaning string. Having fruitlessly endeavoured to get her to talk of something else, I began to cast about for some stratagem to induce her to leave my cousin and me alone. However, to my great delight, she burst into tears in the middle of a violent attack on Curling, and, probably feeling hysterical, and not choosing to show her ankles to Theresa, she hastened out of the room.

“This is very sad,” said Theresa.“To everybody,” I answered; “to those who have to feel and to those who have to hear.”

“I can’t conceive how my aunt could have been so completely tricked. Surely she must have known that Conny was attached to Mr. Curling.”

“We have all been made fools of,” I answered.

“I consider that you have been the worst treated,” she said, with a little laugh.

“Why do you think so?”

“Because I can’t imagine anything more mortifying than to be jilted.”

“My dear Theresa, you are labouring under an afflicting delusion. I have not been jilted. I don’t say I have been well treated; for Conny ought never to have permitted me to express my admiration for her face—an admiration,” I added, emphatically, gazing at her, steadily, “which I still preserve, absolutely indifferent as she is to me—she ought never to have encouraged me, I say, when she was all the time engaged to her clerk. But I have observed, several times, and will repeat the observation once more, that I forgive her. I forgive her entirely—without reservation—sans arriÈre pensÉe—which, I take it upon myself to say, would be impossible had I ever loved her. You would be amazed were you to know with what cold-blooded unconcern I received the news of her elopement. My sympathy was for her parents; not a pang of any kind or description visited me for myself.”

“I daresay she knew how completely you mistook your feelings.... Shall we go into the grounds. This room is very close.”

“With pleasure,” said I, and forth we strolled.

A warm August evening it was, but not untempered with cool draughts of air, which stirred the flowers from time to time and set the stray hairs about Theresa’s forehead dancing.

I admired her more than ever I had admired Conny. My admiration for our golden cousin had been immediate, but it had attained its full growth at once and never afterwards increased. It was otherwise with Theresa. I had begun by detesting her. Afterwards, when I found her womanly, the pleasure I had taken in watching her gained a new force day by day; and now, on this calm evening, I found myself regarding her in a manner which, but that it was qualified by the profound compliment that glistened in my eyes, she might have thought highly impertinent.

What we talked about as we strolled to and fro, I almost forget. I have a faint recollection of some unwilling laughter being wrung from her by my reference to the reception she had vouchsafed me at Thistlewood, and by a somewhat comical description of the state of my mind on that day and on the night that followed. I can also recall that she made various efforts to prove me fickle because of the change that had come over me respecting Conny, charges which I believe I rebutted with considerable ingenuity, considering that I was obliged to be sophistical to clear myself, and that she was extremely shrewd and logical in her reasoning. Further I can recollect that I was impressed with the idea that she found much pleasure in my society. I said to her “It is an understood thing that you are to remain for some time at Grove End.”

“I did not come here with that intention,” she answered, “but if my company is likely to be of use to my aunt, it is my duty to stop.”

“Yes, for me as well as for my aunt. My spirits want cheering up. You don’t consider them.”

“Nonsense! you are happy enough.”

“At this moment; but leave us, and then see where my spirits will be.”

Here universal darkness covers all, and nothing survives of the rest of that walk and talk but the memory of the little blush, the smile, the wise shake of the head, and the expressive silence that followed my observation.

We had been chatting with my aunt (whom we found in the drawing-room) for some twenty minutes, when my uncles entered.

Dick went up to his sister-in-law and exclaimed:

“You’re all anxiety to hear how Conny is, aren’t you? My dear, she is very well, very happy, and sent you her love. Are you aware that you are committing a dreadful mistake in abusing her husband? I can assure you I never wish to meet with a smarter-minded man. Why, I had made up my mind to be introduced to some coarse, country bumpkin; instead of which, Teazer,” addressing his daughter, “I was received by a gentlemanly youth with fine intelligent eyes, and very modest manners, who detained me for ten minutes with as shrewd a piece of reasoning on our commercial relations with Austria as ever I could wish to read in a newspaper.”

“It is true,” said uncle Tom, looking round him, with a broad smile, and addressing everybody. “Dick has taken a great fancy to the young fellow—and give me Dick’s opinion before anybody’s.”

“I don’t care a fig about his ideas of Austria,” cried my aunt, hotly. “I only feel that to my dying day I shall deplore the marriage as a heavy disgrace.”

“Upon my word you are wilful!” retorted Dick, with equal warmth. “Disgrace! I’ll tell you what—had Theresa fallen in love with Curling, she should have married him.”Theresa smiled.

“And how are you going to get over the elopement?” called out my aunt.

“By forgetting it!” replied the other. “Who cares about an elopement?” he added, contemptuously. “In my young days we were all of us running away with one another. Love was then a passion worth feeling—a smart, adventurous, dashing emotion, fed with stronger waters than the tea and negus you now give it; a heroical combination of enraged fathers and moonlit nights, postchaises and turnpikes, cloaks and swoons, brandy and bliss. I don’t mean to say that Curling had any right to walk off with your daughter in that manner; but since he did, give him the credit of having spirit. My dear woman, I really expected to meet some wretched, shrivelled mannikin, a poor fool with about fourpennyworth of soul in his composition, on no account to be introduced to your friends, and whom you were to hope would, at your evening parties, be mistaken for a waiter. Instead, my admiration is challenged by a gentleman, and my anticipative contempt converted into honest gratulations.”

“Dick is no humbug,” said his brother, looking into his wife’s dogged face, “and if he saw anything in Curling to despise he’d say so.”

“Right out,” responded Dick.

“Curling possesses a thorough knowledge of business,” I observed, thinking it incumbent upon me to say something in the youth’s praise.

“How Thomas can so easily forgive that double-dealing cashier of his, is horribly puzzling!” cried his wife; “for my part——”

“What would you have me do?” interrupted Thomas. “Suppose the bargain a bad one: is that a reason for making the worst of it? I don’t forgive him for running away with Conny: I consider that in doing so he was guilty of gross impertinence. But can I unmarry them? Teach me how, and I’ll make them single to-morrow. But since you can’t, and I can’t; since they are as utterly man and wife as you and I, what’s the use of storming and raging?”

“No use,” exclaimed uncle Dick, with deep emphasis.

“My argument,” continued Tom, “is, let us strive to make them comfortable—let us endeavour to find something in this unfortunate affair to qualify our disappointment and to teach us to believe that, as it has happened, it has happened for the best.”

“Sound philosophy!” cried Dick as triumphantly as if the speech had been his; “and worth more than the loudest shrieks with which human lungs could pierce the ear.”

“Ay, you can talk,” exclaimed my aunt, “but there sits your daughter—safe!”

“Not so safe as you think,” he answered turning shortly round and confronting his daughter and me, who sat unnecessarily close together.

Theresa didn’t change colour, but I flushed beautifully, I can promise you.

“Curling begins afresh at the bank to-morrow,” said uncle Tom to me.

“I am glad to hear it,” I answered, grateful to him for diverting the general attention.

“And they dine with us to-morrow,” he added, addressing his wife.

“Very proper,” broke in his brother; “and were it not for my rooted dislike to leave my house at the mercy of my servants, nothing would give me greater pleasure than to drink to their future happiness in a bumper of the best champagne you’ve got in your cellar. However, I’ll tell you what I mean to do, Tom, and I say it in the presence of witnesses, since it is a verbal agreement; when they have chosen a house I’ll furnish it for them.”

“No, no,” cried Tom.

“Yes, papa, you shall,” said Theresa.

My aunt hung her head.

“May I never set foot in this room again Tom, if I don’t,” exclaimed uncle Dick with great energy. “Aren’t I Conny’s uncle? and what’s the use of uncles if they don’t make presents? I like that young Curling, and mean to stick to him. Let him go and order what furniture he wants and send the bill in to me. Pooh! pooh! don’t interrupt, Tom. Curling has nothing against him that I can see, but his poverty; and if I choose to help him to furnish a house for his wife, you’ll not have so much reason to deplore the marriage in a pecuniary sense.”

“But it is my place to furnish their house,” said Tom.

His brother said it wasn’t, and Theresa said it wasn’t.

My aunt proved that it was nobody’s place but Curling’s.“And Curling shall do it—through me,” said Dick.

A hot argument followed, which ended in my aunt bursting into tears, and in my uncle Tom wringing his brother’s hand.

All this was sufficiently pleasant, and even my aunt grew more cheerful as the evening wore away. I heartily applauded uncle Dick’s untiring efforts to render the poor mother satisfied with her child’s choice. Suppose he was not so much in earnest as he seemed? so much the more praise is due to him. It is very easy to sneer, very easy to render people dissatisfied and wretched. (You can tell that by the number of stupid persons whom that sort of work gives employment to.) And detestable as Rochefoucauld’s philosophy always is, there is but too much truth in his assertion, that there is something in the misfortunes of our friends that seldom fails to please us. I honoured uncle Dick for the cheerful light his large kind heart streamed upon this family trouble. He talked so well, reasoned so clearly and honestly, that it was difficult to hear him and not consider that Conny had shown profound sagacity in selecting Curling for a husband; and that this alliance, so far from being a disgrace, was an affair which all Conny’s relations had every right to regard with emotions of ungovernable pride.