Mrs. Croaker. “Well, if they concealed their amour, they shan’t conceal their wedding; that shall be public, I’m resolved.”

The Good-natured Man.

My aunt afterwards apologised to us for having lost her temper, but I was heartily glad my uncle had resolved not to ask the young couple to dinner again. A few scenes of this kind would hardly fail to drive Theresa away, and without Theresa, what were life?

And to tell you the truth, the less I should see of Conny, the more, I felt, should I be pleased. I was so much in love with Theresa, that all reference to the past was peculiarly disagreeable. To have had Conny’s large, blue, surprised eyes watching me whilst I talked with her cousin, and cut my little jokes and looked happy, would have been more than I could bear.

Next morning my uncle suggested to me that I should remain at Grove End and amuse Theresa.

“She will be dull with my wife,” said he, “whose temper makes her bad company.” This proposal was perfectly agreeable to me, and I had the pleasure of spending a happier day than I firmly believe was ever passed even at Rosherville. Unfortunately, we could not ride, because Theresa’s habit had not arrived from Thistlewood; but we could walk, and talk, and pick the flowers, and lounge under the cool trees, and snatch Arcadian joys from the breezy quiet grounds.

I longed to find out whether it was amiability that kept her happy in my company, or some more complimentary, some tenderer feeling. Somehow or other, I couldn’t make love to her as I had made love to Conny. Nothing had been easier than to mutter my eternal devotion into the ears of the golden-haired maid; nothing was harder than to pay Theresa even a compliment. It was not that she was cold; on the contrary, she was very genial. She gave me every reason to believe that my society pleased her; and throughout the long day, during which we were constantly together, never once suggested that she had had enough of me. The fault was mine, not hers. I was diffident. I was shy, bashful, muffish. Conny and other young ladies (who shall be nameless, for they may still be single) I had been able to make love to, as I have said, easily; but Theresa awed me. She was so honest, so open-hearted and candid, so womanly, so superior in numberless points to the girls whose friendship or whose hearts I had had the honour of possessing, that I could as soon have deliberately insulted her, as indulged in any of those light and jocose strokes of sentimentality with which I had been heretofore used to pay my court.

One thing struck both of us that afternoon and made us laugh: she had stopped at Grove End to be a companion for my aunt.

“I am sure she has enjoyed your society very much,” said I, ironically.

And she blushed and averted her face with a self-conscious expression upon it that filled me with delight.

However, I don’t think my aunt wanted her. The good lady was very gloomy, and quite impenetrable to the attacks of cheerfulness. When we entered the house, we caught her helping a servant to pack a hamper, which she boldly avowed was for her daughter; and the moment the servant left the room she exclaimed,

“My daughter shan’t be starved by that man.”

Here was prejudice!

“Starved!” I cried; “why, poor fellow, he worships her.”

“And so he ought. But all young men of his kind are intolerably selfish and never think of their wives’ necessities, so long as their own are supplied.”“Why his kind particularly?” asked Theresa, with a glance at me.

“Because he is not a gentleman,” answered my aunt.

Nothing but time will cure this stubbornness, I thought, turning away.

The young people were to be married “properly” on Monday morning, at nine o’clock. This early hour was fixed that the people at Updown might not get scent of the proceedings. Curling, in my presence, had protested against the ceremony, as superfluous. But my uncle was firm.

“I shall never consider my daughter your wife, sir,” he exclaimed with some heat, “until the service as directed by the Church of England has been read over you.”“But we are married!” urged Curling. “Thoroughly married.”

“I say you are not!” shouted my uncle. “You dare not disobey me, sir!”

“I’ll do anything you want,” replied Curling: “but I shall go to my grave protesting against this second ceremony.”

I looked forward to the ceremony with many misgivings, having no doubt that my aunt would misconduct herself. When Monday morning came we all rose very early, and supplied, at the breakfast table, such an assemblage of dolorous faces, that more dejection could not have been expressed, had we been going to escort some favourite relation to the gallows. My uncle proposed that Theresa and I should walk to the church in advance of him and his wife, lest, should we go in a body, the attention of the people might be drawn, and a procession follow us to the altar.

“Anything to keep this matter secret,” said he.

So Theresa and I started alone.

It was a bright, fresh morning, so gay and sunny that all depression was out of the question.

“I know it is proper to look wretched on these occasions,” said I. “But what is a man to do if he can’t cry?”

“I don’t see any reason to be dull,” answered Theresa, “though aunt’s face makes cheerfulness rather difficult.”

“I wonder how we should feel if we were going to be married?” said I.

She did not answer.“Would you like to be going to be married?”

“Would you?”

“If you were the bride.”

She turned her head away and grew so nervous, that her step quickened, and I had to catch her hand to detain her.

“Theresa,” I exclaimed, whilst my heart beat violently, “I had no intention of frightening you with a declaration when we left the house. But—but, dearest—haven’t you foreseen that—that I should speak to you before long—that—that I should tell you——Oh Theresa!” I gasped, “I am so agitated I can scarcely speak. My impulse has taken my breath away. My darling, I am in love with you. I fell in love with you at Thistlewood, and I am able to think of nothing—of nobody but you.... Oh, tell me something.”

“It is quite impossible that you could have learnt to love me in this short time,” she answered in a low voice.

“How can it be impossible when I do love you? I know what you are thinking of—Conny. Don’t, pray don’t. If it were in my power to bare my heart, you’d know then that I loved you. No, no. I have been weak—all men are. I may have flirted—I may have played the fool, but all that is over, a deep and serious play is begun. Do you believe me?”

She looked at me steadily, let her eyes fall, and answered,

“Yes, I believe you are in earnest.”

I glanced around to see that nobody was in sight and, Eugenio, I kissed her. “Will you marry me?” I asked her.

She was so long silent that I feared my kiss had made her indignant.

“Charlie,” she answered presently, “I wish you had taken a longer time to consider your feelings before you spoke to me. Have I any right to depend upon your love when I see how quickly you can forget the old and take to the new?”

“Ah!” I exclaimed, bitterly; “I always feared that Conny would come between us.”

“It is not Conny, but your own heart. Can you be faithful?”

“Try me.”

“If I were to tell you I love you, would you abandon me for the first pretty girl you met?”

“Try me,” I groaned.

“I know,” she continued, “that it is papa’s wish I should marry you; but I would rather die than give my hand to a man on whose sincerity I could not rely.”To this, Eugenio, what did I answer? Credit me when I assure you that I answered her eloquently. I was inspired. It was not alone the beauty of her eyes, the rapture of the kiss I had stolen, her blushing face, the sense of security that is bred by solitude, the glorious blue of the morning heavens, and the sweetness of the breeze rich with odours from the fields and woods, which gave me power to speak; the impulse that had broken through my diffidence had also annihilated it. Why write down what I said to her? Why describe her appearance as she listened? We have jogged on so far very well without sentiment: let us not take a dose of it now.

I solemnly protest that I had left Grove End with Theresa, en route for the church, with no more intention of telling my love than of playing at leap-frog with the haystacks on the road. This has happened to others. Have I not seen? No rules govern the heart. At the most unexpected moment love is blurted out, proposals of marriage stammered through; emotion triumphs over fear, and even imbecility grows eloquent. Let the ladies be grateful for these little bursts of passion. Were it all premeditation, all rehearsal, few would be the offers made. Young Froth, adoring Lauretta, breaks into a cold sweat over the idea of a formal submission of his heart and fortune. To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow steals on this petty pace, and Froth has still to propose. Ah, nights of agony, days of ineffable meditation, how have ye worn this gentle shepherd! At last, a glass of champagne and a ten minutes’ lounge in the balcony after the feverish waltz, do the work. With a ghastly look at the man in the moon, Froth mumbles his feelings; he is accepted on the spot, and his fears are at an end. De te fabula, &c. Change the name, and the story is told of thee.

Had I begun to think when, how, where, and in what language I should propose, I might have been a bachelor to this day.

That walk to the church! (it took us three quarters of an hour) how sentimental was it! Did I enjoy it? was I happy? was Theresa happy? Surely such questions are in bad taste since they imply a doubt.

“Oh!” I exclaimed, “what would I give, Theresa, if instead of going to Conny’s marriage we were going to our own!”“We mustn’t look too pleased,” she answered, with a laugh, “or we shall grieve poor aunt.”

“I wonder,” said I, “if she will guess what this walk of ours has terminated in. How glad your father will be! how we shall delight uncle Tom! Wonderful is life! only the other day I was thinking you a rude, uncivilised female, fit only to shoot pistols and break horses; and now—and now!”

“And only the other day,” said she, “I was making up my mind to insult you as grossly as I possibly could, to disgust and drive you out of my sight, so odious was the notion of having a husband forced upon me.”

“And now?”

“And now it is otherwise.”We reached the church where we found nobody but the clerk, who, after inquiring our business, conducted us with a stealthy face to a seat. Scarcely three minutes after we had entered, Conny and her husband, both looking very pale and agitated, came up to us. The poor fellow shook hands with me and muttered,

“I consider this quite superfluous.”

“It’ll soon be over,” I replied.

“It can’t make Conny more my wife than she is?”

“My dear friend,” said I, “consider yourselves in the light of a book which is to be handsomely re-bound. The first plain binding keeps the leaves as securely together as the richer covers will, but the gilt and morocco are necessary to your importance.”Here my uncle and aunt entered, the former gazing about him, into the pews and up at the gallery, to make sure that no spectators were present. At the same moment the clock struck nine, forth stepped the rector in full dress out of the vestry, and the clerk beckoned to us to take our places.

The marriage service is always a trial to married people to hear, it is so full of reproaches. My aunt cried so abundantly that I every moment expected to see her bump upon the floor in hysterics. However she kept her feet stoutly, and I truly hoped that the tender and beautiful words she was listening to would soften her towards the young fellow whose reverential face and ardent glances at his little wife persuaded me that all would go well with them.On the completion of the ceremony, my uncle grasped my arm.

“Look!” he muttered.

I glanced in the direction he indicated and beheld the porch of the church crowded with women with here and there a man among them; while several females had pushed their way into the pews and were watching us with profound interest.

“I feared, I feared we should never be able to keep this a secret,” whispered my uncle, “but why weren’t the doors shut?”

The doors shut! what manner of woodwork, what manner of brickwork, would keep women away from a marriage? I believe were a wedding to be celebrated at the bottom of a well, two or three ladies would be found swinging in or holding on to the bucket, watching the proceedings. What, my dears, what is there in the spectacle of half a dozen or more or less people standing before a clergyman so astounding, so novel, so exciting as to cause you to abandon your babies, your wash-tubs, your lodgers, your cooking, to witness it? Positively this hungry and piercing curiosity fully justifies the remark my friend Adolphe Beau once made to me: “Either weddings in England are exceedingly rare, monsieur, or else they symbolise some hideous sacrifice compared to which the African celebration of their King’s nuptials are innocent childplay: or whence comes your morbid national love of witnessing these sights?”

“Well, thank God, this is over,” exclaimed my uncle, receiving Conny from her blubbering mamma, and kissing her.

Poor Conny! was she so perfectly satisfied with her husband that she could think without regret upon the breakfast she had missed, the speeches, the congratulations, the blonde and the tulle, the bouquets, the presents, and the triumphal drive to the railway station, she had forfeited? Ah, miss, you who are reading this, see what you will be infallibly deprived of if ever you dare to run away with a young man unknown to your parents. A midnight excursion may be romantic: but, take my word for it, a noontide festival, of which you are the heroine, is a great deal more comfortable. Don’t believe your Edward, who tells you that he despises the flummery of the marriage-show; that a registrar in his sight is as good as a parson; that friends are a nuisance, and speeches detestable. It is true that veils and champagne don’t make happiness; but they leave a good impression, which he for one won’t forget. Bridesmaids and flowers won’t prevent you from quarrelling; but they will put it out of his power to say several unpleasant things when you and he do quarrel. A wedding is a launch; and, depend upon it, there is no better way to slip into the ocean of life than with streamers flying, bands playing, and kindly hands to chase our flying feet with wine.

Conny and her husband returned to their lodgings with my uncle, who desired me to escort the ladies home. The first thing that I did after we were out of the town was to tell my aunt that Theresa had accepted me. She received the intelligence without an ejaculation. All she did was to force a smile and say,“I expected it would come to that. I am very pleased. Thomas will be delighted. Poor, poor Conny!”

Seeing how utterly engrossed she was by her daughter’s fate, I squeezed Theresa’s hand by way of apologising to her for dropping the subject of our engagement, and began a long and vigorous appeal for Curling. I think I must have grown warm; for I have a recollection of reproaching her for her behaviour, which, I pointed out, was not only calculated to make her daughter miserable, but to excite her contempt for her husband, and so create feelings which would result in rendering the elopement calamitous in a very different and sterner sense than it now was.

“I daresay I am wrong. I daresay I am to blame,” she kept on saying.Theresa at last silenced me by whispering:

“All the talk in the world will not make her see the matter in its true light, yet; it will probably dawn upon her in a few weeks; but arguments now will do nothing but harden her.”