“Wounds, Dolly! this marrying be dear work!”

Doves in a Cage.

Curling was at his post next morning when I reached the bank. Marriage seemed to agree with him, for he looked uncommonly well. He greeted me nervously, but his embarrassment speedily fell before my cordial manner. Was I going to be haughty and distant? No, indeed! Infinitely more should I have preferred a good kicking to his suspicion that I was mortified by his triumph, and hated him because he had won Conny’s love. Good heavens! Wasn’t he welcome to it? He began to mumble something in my ear about a regret that his and Conny’s stratagem should have involved my feelings—but I cut him very short. No doubt Conny had instructed him in this apology, and I silenced him bluntly, expressly that she might learn how distasteful to me was all reference to distressing folly.

He smiled feebly and said,

“I beg your pardon; I wouldn’t have alluded to the subject had I not thought an explanation was due.”

“I understand,” I answered, “and now about Mr. Acorn’s promissory note?” And so the matter ended.

My uncle’s greeting to him was very gentle. He asked tenderly after Conny, and whether she was going to Grove End during the morning. Curling replied that as they were to dine there, he did not believe she would start before him. They then retired into the back office and left me to think of Theresa.

Now that she was at Grove End, it was delightful to feel that my residence, too, was there. I was very much in love with her, and what was strange, I could hug this passion without in any sense feeling that I was exhibiting surprising weakness in so speedily yielding to a new fascination whilst the corpse of the old one was still warm.

Not being a Scotchman, I am incapable of going into the metaphysics of this thing. However, I may point out that there was some difference between the love I had felt for Conny and the love that I now felt for Theresa. To begin with, I deny that I ever did love Conny. Oh yes, you may turn back to other chapters and point me out several most condemnatory phrases; but don’t judge people by phrases. There is only one alphabet, but there are a hundred passions; and admiration will express itself in the language of love, precisely as if it were the most perfect and enduring devotion.

I had loved Conny for her face and figure. VoilÀ tout. She had not one intellectual charm, that I can remember, to fascinate me. Reading her character in the light thrown upon it by her elopement, I found, let me tell you, a very great deal that was decidedly objectionable. This was enough to confirm my indifference.

Now it was quite otherwise with Theresa. I won’t pretend that I didn’t immensely admire her handsome face, and fine eyes, and noble figure, and that they were not the first cause of my loving her. But during my stay at Thistlewood, I had discovered many qualities in her which, had I not been influenced in a great measure by Conny, would have settled the question there and then, and dismissed me to Updown as much in love as ever man was. It was enough that Conny should turn out a regular little trickster, who had trifled with my feelings merely to fool me at last, to send my thoughts trooping to Theresa. Here was a foil upon which her fine qualities of head and heart could not fail to glisten brightly. Long before had the memory of her eccentric reception of me been transmuted by the alchemy of admiration into a pungent and a piquant reminiscence; so that could not deform my opinion of her. Here, then, my love was based upon altogether different ground from that on which I had built my first and unsubstantial passion. There were physical graces to charm me; there were mental characteristics to fascinate me. A love was now inspired that was every day to gain greater strength; and thus I could start on my new amatory career with a conviction that, whether I should win Theresa’s love or not, my devotion would never be met with a heartless betrayal.

I never left the bank to return to Grove End with more pleasure than I did on that day. Uncle Dick had returned to Thistlewood by the mid-day train, and I found Theresa thoroughly domiciled, sitting at the open drawing-room window with some work in her hand. A bright look lighted up her face when she saw me.

“When will Conny be here?” she asked.

“Very shortly, I expect. How have you been amusing yourself?”

“Aunt and I went for a drive this afternoon,” she answered, laying down her work, and joining me on the lawn. “Hasn’t uncle Tom returned with you?”

“He remained behind with the phaeton to drive the turtle doves over,” said I. “The truth is, he wants Updown to see him and them together. We all stand in awe of gossip.”

“Aunt is much more reasonable than she was last evening,” exclaimed Theresa. “The talking-to Papa gave her has done her no harm. She is, I think, slowly beginning to see that her husband’s view is the soundest, and that Conny might have done a very great deal worse, though she might also have done a very great deal better. Mothers are nearly always the last to come round in these matters. I wonder why?”

“Perhaps because they have more to do with their daughters than the papas have, and therefore the daughters’ mistakes touch them more nearly. That’s only one reason—and no reason at all. Women—I don’t say all women—no, no, Theresa, not all—are not very liberal in their views of life or of each other. Mothers and daughters are no exception.”

“You are quite right. Women are not liberal-minded.”

“In many things they are, and, queerly enough, in directions where men are bigoted. But in matters of dress and sentiment, they are often prodigiously intolerant.”

“Having been deceived by a girl,” said she, with a sweet laugh, “it is perfectly fair that you should have at the whole sex.”

“Pray,” I entreated earnestly, “pray don’t refer to that piece of folly. Had I met you before I met Conny, it never could have happened.”

She curtsied, perhaps to hide a little blush; and then asked me if I had ridden since my return from Thistlewood.

“I haven’t had time yet: but I shall hope to do so frequently now that you are here. And we’ll have some pistol-shooting too, if you like.”“Oh, Papa objects, so I mean to give up the unmaidenly pastime.”

“You are very dutiful. Perhaps, on the whole, it is rather unmaidenly, especially when you take aim at sober-minded and meditative young gentlemen.”

“Am I never to be allowed to forget my nonsense!” she exclaimed, looking annoyed.

“And am I never to be allowed to forget mine?” I answered. “But I’ll enter into an agreement with you, Theresa, never to remind you of your nonsense, if you will promise never to remind me of mine.”

“I agree.”

“So then, my wrong-headed penchant for Conny is to be forgotten as if no such a thing had ever been?”“Well, I’ll do my best to forget.”

“I am afraid you will never see anything to like in me until you do forget.”

“Why do you say that?” she asked, quickly.

“No girl can possibly have any respect or regard for a man she considers a flirt.”

“Oh, if you will have your theories about your sex, it is better, for your peace of mind, that they should not be contradicted.... Here’s the phaeton!”

Yes, there it was, Conny next the coachman, Curling and his beau-pÈre behind.

The two cousins kissed each other profusely—in short, as only young girls can kiss. Nothing could surpass Theresa’s gracefully cordial reception of little Conny, and her polite greeting to Mr. Curling. Conny looked bewitchingly pretty. She gave me her hand and smiled at me with her eyes. Ah, my child, those smiles can’t affect me now. Don your loveliest airs, strike your most irresistible attitude, you would find in me an unmoved spectator.

I can watch you as one at a puppet-show. Tender is the tint of your cheeks, heavenly the azure of your eyes, snow-like your pearly teeth; but to me, my dear, you are no more than a cunning contrivance of beauty; the sweetest dummy, from which I can turn away with the lightest sigh, to think that I could ever have been so weak as to bestow a thought upon you.

She left us to seek her mamma, and then we got talking, as people not absolutely at their ease will talk—about the weather. Theresa was admirably lady-like in her manner to Mr. Curling. The poor fellow was a good deal embarrassed, but all things considered acquitted himself very tolerably.

My uncle watched his niece narrowly. He evidently wanted her good opinion for his son-in-law, and smiled with ghastly approval every time the young man spoke.

I caught Curling regarding her with great admiration, and even awe; which put me into the best possible temper with him, so pleased was I that he should see what a splendid substitute fortune had provided me with in the room of the young lady he had married.

The trying moment presently came, when my aunt stepped out of the house, followed by Conny. Theresa and I fell back with the instinctive horror of people of sensibility who apprehend a shock. However, nothing very disagreeable happened. There was something, indeed, unpleasantly chilling in the hard smile with which my aunt gave Curling her hand and in the hasty manner with which she withdrew it; but the effect, to us lookers-on at least, was somewhat qualified by the broad, nervous smile with which my uncle superintended the greeting.

As for Curling, his politeness was cringing. He smiled if his mother-in-law turned her head, listened with painful eagerness to be agreeable if she opened her mouth, agreed with her before he well knew what she had said, and in every respect showed himself thoroughly afraid of her.

“I don’t think he is going the right way to work to make her respect him,” I whispered to Theresa.

“Poor fellow!” she answered. “I wonder Conny had the heart to bring him here. I should be sorry to subject my husband to such treatment.”

“What do you think of him?”

“He seems gentlemanly enough.”

“Could you have run off with him, Theresa?”

“As soon with O’Twist!”

I had made up my mind to have Conny given me to take into dinner; but to my great relief and pleasure, she took her papa’s arm, Curling conducted Mrs. Hargrave, and I was left to Theresa. Curling and his mother-in-law walked in front of us from the drawing-room, and I had great difficulty to retrain myself from bursting into a fit of laughter on catching sight of my aunt’s face, and watching the contemptuous air with which she waddled alongside her new connexion. Theresa begged me not to speak to her, lest she should lose her self-control. The sight was, indeed, ludicrous enough; and one of the servants, at all events, saw the joke, for she turned rapidly away as my aunt entered the dining-room and emitted a laugh over the sideboard, which made my uncle look smartly round under the impression, I believe, that a cork had flown.

The dinner was not a very lively affair. Nothing but the having Theresa at my side saved me from wishing myself a hundred miles away. In vain my uncle strove to be cheerful; in vain he told his best stories; in vain he indulged in little flirting allusions to matrimony, and winked out, so to speak, those little modest jokes which are universally held to be permissible on the occasion of the presence of a newly married couple. God knows no man ever tried to laugh more resolutely than I did; but my hoarse notes were as destitute of mirth as a raven’s croak. Had I wept I should have shown myself more sympathetic; for my uncle’s humour tottered on the very verge of tears.

Theresa did all she could: tried her relations on twenty different subjects, then out of sheer weariness took refuge in silence.

Curling was so nervous, he could scarcely eat. I felt for him—yes, my whole heart went out to him—when he knocked a wine-glass full of claret over the table-cloth. The wine wasn’t redder than his face, I promise you.

“Don’t bother,” said my uncle, seeing the poor fellow spoon the wine up.

“Sprinkle some salt over it,” said Conny, looking abject.

It was plain to everybody that Theodore had been scarcely able to handle his knife and fork for nervousness, that though he might have known how to behave with perfect propriety, fear of his mother-in-law bereft him of his knowledge and hurried him into grossiÈretÉs. For instance, he refused to begin until the others were helped; insisted upon passing whatever was set before him to Mrs. Hargrave; eat up his bread in a trice and hopelessly entangled himself in a wild complication of knives, forks, spoons, and glasses. I doubt if he would have committed a single blunder had my aunt been absent. Ah, Eugenio, you know what it is to have a mother-in-law watching you with a foregone prejudice of the bitterest kind rankling in her eyes. I know a young man whom his mother-in-law made so anxious and apprehensive that, before dinner was over, he had kicked both his boots off under the table, and would have joined the ladies in his socks had not a good-natured footman directed his attention to the state of his feet.

Tears were in Conny’s eyes before the dessert was brought in; and I felt so heartily sorry for the poor girl and her yet more-to-be-pitied husband, that addressing my uncle, I exclaimed,

“Aren’t we going to drink to the happiness of the bride and bridegroom?” hoping that the hearty expression of our good wishes would render them happier and force some of the acidity out of my aunt’s face.

“Certainly,” he replied.

We then filled our glasses and all spoke at once, to the effect that the young people would enjoy a long life and unbounded happiness: Theresa speaking very feelingly and my aunt nodding her head with a face that expressed everything but the prevailing sentiment.

Now I really believe this toast would have ended in putting us all into a better temper, had well been let alone; for even as we drank, Conny smiled and looked much gratified.

But judge my surprise, when, after an interval of not less than five minutes, I observed Mr. Curling, who had been pulling at his watchguard in a fashion that threatened to tear the waistcoat off his back, rise, and in rising knock his chair over, which however, nobody offered to pick up, that he might not be interrupted. In a very faint and difficult voice, he thanked us for our good wishes, which, he particularly desired his mother-in-law to believe, he should strive his utmost to deserve. He next informed us that he was never considered a good speaker, and that if he didn’t express all the gratitude he felt, it was not because he didn’t feel it, but because he hadn’t the words.

Here I hoped he would sit down. But there are two notorious difficulties in public and unpremeditated speaking, of which every nervous man who has ever got upon his legs is but too keenly sensible: the first difficulty is to know how to begin, and the second is to know when to stop. On such an occasion, and in such company, it would probably have taxed the wit of a Disraeli not to have said something offensive. Mr. Curling wanted Mr. Disraeli’s wit, and the result therefore was, he, to the confusion of everybody, began to apologise for eloping with Conny; assuring us, and the servants who stood choking at the door, that he never would have been guilty of such a mistake had he not worshipped the ground his ker-ker-Conny trod on.

This was too much for my aunt. It was bad enough that so delicate a matter should have been referred to at all: of its peculiar inopportuneness at that moment, one had only to glance at the giggling servants to understand. In a loud, angry voice, she begged him to cease, burst into tears, and rushed out of the room.

Curling did cease; and, forgetting in his nervousness that his chair was upset, sat down before any of us could cry out: the consequence of which was that he tumbled head over heels, pulling the table-cloth with him, and covering himself with his unique collection of glass and cutlery.

There was instantly a scramble. My uncle, who thought Curling had fainted, shouted to the servants for brandy. Conny, weeping bitterly, fell on her knees and picked the broken glass away from the carpet near her husband’s head. Theresa turned pale, and clasped her hands; but I, suspecting by the young fellow lying still that he couldn’t get up, laid hold of his arm and pulled him on to his legs.

Now then Conny’s affection displayed itself. She clung to her husband, kissed him, asked him if he was hurt and where, behaved herself altogether so pathetically that I felt myself a wretch for having laughed to see him fall.

“Do let us go home!” she cried, turning to her papa. “We are so much happier alone. Theodore never wanted to come, and mamma will break his heart.”

Ay, and his neck too, she might have added.

“Yes, yes! go home! go home!” exclaimed my poor uncle. “Tell James, one of you, to bring the phaeton round. I have acted cruelly in subjecting you both to this.”

“I’m not hurt,” said Curling, rubbing his back, obviously relieved by the prospect of an immediate release.

“Why didn’t somebody pick up that chair?” exclaimed my uncle.

“I should have done so,” replied Conny, “but I didn’t like to interrupt Theodore, for fear of breaking the thread of his ideas. Mary, go and get me my hat, it’s in mamma’s bed-room.”In a few minutes the phaeton was ready, the young couple, wearing now far cheerfuller faces than we who were left behind, jumped up, and off they drove.

“The next time they come to dinner,” said my uncle, wiping his forehead with a pocket handkerchief, “shall be at somebody else’s invitation. I’ll never subject the poor things to such treatment again whilst I have breath in my body.”