John C. Hutcheson

“ Ah, Mr Lorton,” went on Lady Dasher, with a sad expressive shake of her head, “marriage is a sad lottery, a sad lottery! I once thought of marrying into the church, too, when my poor dear papa was alive. Perhaps it would have been a happier lot for me if I had done so! He was such a dear, nice clergyman, and looked so well in his canonicals—such a truly evangelical minister! I could listen to his sermons for hours without feeling the slightest fatigue!”
“Thank goodness, then, he wasn’t our papa!” exclaimed the saucy Seraphine. ”

“ No, Lorton, ’pon honah; didn’t see ’em, I asshaw you. Was it Baby Blake and her moth-ah, now, ah?” and he smiled complacently, as if he had given me a fund of information.
“Baby Blake!” I ejaculated in disgust—“why, Horner, you’re quite absurd. Do you take me for a fool? I think I ought to know Baby Blake as well as yourself by this time, my Solon!”
“Yaas; but, my deah fellah, I don’t know who you know, you know. Bai-ey Je-ove! there’s Lizzie Dangler. Who’s that man she’s got in tow, ah?” ”

“ There were the usual number of young ladies, all of whose faces I knew so well, engaged in the pious work; with Horner, Mr Mawley the curate, and one or two other attendant male aides, to minister to their needs—such as stripping off leaves for wreath making—and help them to flirt the dull hours away. Dear little Miss Pimpernell, our vicar’s maiden sister and good right hand, presided, also, to preserve order and set an example for industrious souls to follow, just as she had been in the habit of presiding as far back as I could recollect. ”

“ Were any fresh people coming to reside in the neighbourhood that they had heard of?
“No,” said Lady Dasher, with a melancholy shake of her head. “No; how should they? It is not very likely that any new residents would come here! The place may suit poor people like me, but would not take the fancy of persons having plenty of money to spend, who can select a house where they like. Ah! the miseries of poverty, Mr Lorton, and to be poor but proud! ”

“ When I first took up Vanity Fair I could not let it out of my hands until I finished it.”
“That’s more than I can say,” said the curate. “I don’t like Thackeray. He cuts up every one and everything. Is not that a cynic for you?”
“Not everybody,” said Min—I cannot call her anything else now—coming to my assistance, “not everybody, Mr Mawley. I think Thackeray, with all his satire and kindly laughter in his sleeve at persons that ought to be laughed down, has yet given us some of the most pathetic touches of human nature existing in English literature. ”

“ Why don’t you tell her yourself, Frank, what you wish me to say for you?”
“So I would, Miss Pimpernell, at once,” I replied, “if I only had an opportunity; but I never get a chance of seeing her alone.”
“Why don’t you make one, Frank?” said she. “For a young fellow of the day, you are wonderfully bashful and shy, not to be able to tell the girl of your heart that you love her! I declare, if I had only done what they wanted me, I would have proposed for half of the wives of the present married men of my acquaintance! ”

“ Sending him to Coventry is a poor punishment in comparison with the offender’s own remorse. He finds the “labor et opus redintegrare gradum” hard enough, without that Rhadamanthus, “society,” making the ascent slippery for him!
As I recalled the incidents of the evening, I could not help allowing to my conscience that Mr Mawley the curate, whom I disliked, had shown himself a gentleman, where I had only acted like a snob; while Horner, a man whom I, in my conceit, had looked down upon and affected to despise as an empty-headed fop and nonentity, was a prince beside me! ”

“ What creeping, crawling, wretched insects we all are, taken collectively; and, of all of us, the blindest, the most insignificant, and most grub-like, are, so-called men and women “of the world!”
Cold, heartless, in a general sense, and worldly as Mrs Clyde was, I could easily have excused it in her and tried to like her, for, was she not the mother of my darling, whom with all her faults she loved very dearly—her affection being judiciously tempered by those considerations paramount in the clique to which she belonged? But, Mrs Clyde did not like me. ”

“ The tone of Min’s voice pained me. It was full of grief and reproach: I knew its every intonation. “He’s always worrying me and rubbing against me the wrong way!”
“That does not matter, Frank,” she replied in the same grave accents, as coldly as if she was speaking to a stranger—“a gentleman should be a gentleman always. I tell you what,”—she continued, turning away as she spoke—“I will never speak to you again, Frank, until you apologise to Mr Mawley for the language you have used!”
She then left my side, taking Miss Pimpernell’s arm and saying something about having a long chat with her. ”

“ I saw Mr Shuffler yesterday, and asked if that house which he has to let in The Terrace were yet taken, but he said, ‘not that he knew of;’ he had ‘heard of nobody coming’—had I? I assure you he was quite impertinent about it. He would not have spoken to me so uncivilly had poor dear papa been alive, I know! But it is always the way with that class of people:—they only look upon you in the light of how much you are worth!”
“Oh, ma!” said Bessie Dasher, “I think Mr Shuffler very civil and polite. He always makes me quite a low bow whenever he sees me.” ”

“ She was quite vexed now.
“You are very unkind,” she said. “You speak ill-naturedly of everybody, and are cross with me on my birthday! I won’t speak to you, Frank, again this evening; there, see if I do!” and she turned away from me with a tremble in her voice, and an indignant look in the, now, flashing, grey eyes.
She kept her promise.
Much as I tried, when my ill-temper had subsided, to get speech with her, I was not allowed a word. Even when leaving the house, I only received a bow. She would not shake hands, to show that I was forgiven. ”

“ How very obtuse some persons are!
Why, by The Terrace, of course. Was it not there that Min lived; and might I not chance to get a glance from her love-speaking, soft grey eyes? Only one glance—and I would be amply repaid!
I passed by her house. Yes, there she was at the window, attending to her flowers and carefully shielding a much-prized little maidenhair fern with a bell glass from the rays of the sun, which beamed as though Phoebus had mistaken the season and thought it a summer day. ”

“ In addition to Horner and Mawley, there was also an odious cousin of hers, called “Jack,” or “Tom,” or “Ned,” or some other abominably familiar abbreviation, who hung over the piano stool, and said “Min, do this,” and “Min, do that,” in a way that drove me to frenzy.
I hate cousins! I don’t see the necessity for them. I’m sure people can get along very well without their existence. I would do away with them to-morrow by act of Parliament, if I only had the power.
When everybody else who had a voice at all had exercised their vocal powers, Mrs Clyde at last asked me to sing. ”

“ I worship the very ground you walk on; and, if you were cruel to me, I think I would die to-morrow!”
“Poor fellow!” she said, pressing closer to my side.
“O, Min,”—I went on,—“if you only knew the agony I have suffered in thinking that you cared for some one else! I love you so much, that I am jealous of every word you speak, every glance of your darling eyes which is not directed to me. I envied my very dog the other day because you caressed him!”
“What!” she exclaimed, “Jealous of poor Catch! Do you know, Frank, that made me ove you first, your fondness for your dog and little Dicky Chips!” ”

“ Winter made way for spring, spring gave place to summer. The halcyon hours sped brighter and brighter for me, from the time of violets—when nature’s sweetest nurslings modestly blossomed beneath the hedge-rows.
Then came “the month of roses,” as the Persians appropriately style that duodecimal portion of the year. It was a happier time still; for, I loved Min, and I thought that Min loved me. ”

“ I heard the maid wishing me a cheery “Merry Christmas, sir!” as she left my hot water; so, it is not to be wondered that, after I had had the moral courage to plunge into my cold tub, dressing afterwards in a subsequent glow, I became infected with the buoyant spirit of all these social surroundings; and felt as light-hearted and “seasonable” as Santa Claus and his wintry comrades, the church bells, little robin redbreast, dog Catch, and Bridget the maid, could either inspire or expect. ”

“ I think it’s the most affecting thing in fiction I ever read in my life.”
“And I, too, dear Miss Pimpernell,” said Min, in her soft, low voice, which had a slight tremor as she spoke, and there was a misty look in her clear grey eyes—silent witnesses of the emotion that stirred her heart. “I shed more tears over poor Gyp than I can bear to think of now—except when I cried over little Tiny Tim, in the ‘Christmas Carol,’ where, you remember, the spirit told Uncle Scrooge that the cripple boy would die. ”

“ You are too sanguine, like all young people.”
“Oh, ‘never’ is a long day,” I said; “we should all be hopeful and merry, I think, at least on this one day in the year.”
“I could never be merry again, Mr Lorton,” she said, with a prodigious sigh, which seemed to come from the depths of her heart, “since poor dear papa died;” and she then passed on mournfully homewards, with Bessie and Seraphine in her wake. Their cheerful faces, as they nodded back and smiled at Horner and myself, contrasted strongly with their mother’s lugubrious visage. I wonder if anybody ever saw her laugh? ”

“ Our duty, Mawley, as I hold my commission, is to preach Christ’s gospel in all its truth and simplicity and love. We do not want to run down this or that creed, however reprehensible we may think it. Let us be judged by our deeds, and acts, and words. Let us show forth our way of salvation, as we have learnt it: another authority, greater than us, will tell the world in his own good time which is the faith! ”

“ In another minute or two we were in the middle of a wild romp, wherein little Miss Pimpernell and the vicar were the most active participants—they showing themselves to be quite as active as the younger hands; while Miss Spight and Lady Dasher were the only idle spectators. Min at first did not join in, as she was not accustomed to the ways of us old habitués, but she presently participated, being soon as gay and noisy as any. What fun we had in blindfolding Horner, and manoeuvring so that he should rush into the arms of Miss Spight! ”

“ Can’t they see all that is going on well enough; don’t your very looks, much less your actions, betray you? Why, Frank, I knew all about your case weeks ago, my boy!—without any information from you or anybody else! Besides, you know, I ought to have some little experience in such matters by this time; for, every boy and girl in the parish has made me their confidante for years and years past!” and she laughed again.
Miss Pimpernell was once more her cheery old self, quite restored to her normal condition of good humour. ”

“ I think we shall be happy there, each in our several ways, as we are on earth, and be in the company of those we love: heaven would be miserable without that, I think.”
“And what do you say, Miss Pimpernell?” next asked Seraphine.
“I do not say anything at all, my dear: the subject is beyond me. I leave it to One who is wiser than us all to tell me in his own good time.”
“And you, Mr Mawley?” continued our fair questioner.
“We should not seek to understand the mysteries of the oracles of God,” said the curate pompously. ”

“ She looked at me so kindly that I made a clean breast of all my troubles.
“Well, Frank!” she exclaimed, when I had got to the end of my story, “you are a big stupid, in spite of all your cleverness! You are not a bit sharper than the rest of your sex:—a woman has twice the insight of any of you lords of creation! Did I not tell you, not to believe that absurd story about Mr Mawley long ago—that it was only a silly tale of Shuffler’s, and not worth a moment’s credence? ”

“ Many men are diffident of speaking earnestly and showing their feelings, from the fear of being laughed at, or ridiculed, as solemn prigs and book-worms. Ladies should think of this, and encourage us.”
“Yet, some of you,” she replied, undauntedly, “are not so reticent and retiring. There is Mr Mawley, for instance. He always talks to me about literature and art, and politics, too—although I do not care much about them—just as if I were a man like himself, and blessed with the same understanding!”
“Oh,” said I, “the curate is usually fond of hearing himself talk!” ”

“ Grows old with the year,
That dies in December.’”
“Yes, I do, you cross old thing!” said the seraph, shaking her golden locks and laughing saucily; “and I remember also that your ‘favourite Herrick’ says something else about one’s ‘gathering rose-buds whilst one may.’”
“You naughty girl!” said Miss Pimpernell, trying to look angry and frown at her; but the attempt was such a palpable pretence that we all laughed at her as much as the delinquent.
“And what is your favourite style of poetry, Miss Clyde?” asked the curate, taking advantage of the introduction of Herrick to change the subject. ”