William Clark Russell

“ I wanted to know her and enjoy your hospitality and society, and uncle Tom could have no right to expect more from me. I always was and always shall be opposed to marriages ‘of convenience,’” I continued warmly. “A man and a woman are brought together without love, without sympathy, without probably one interest in common, save that of mutual disgust. How can they be happy? You may tell them that their marriage will fill their pockets with money; but how many pounds sterling does an ounce of pure love cost? Where are they to go to market for their everyday moral wants? ”

“ Why, surely she can’t see her way in your marriage with Conny?”
“For God’s sake don’t poo-pooh me,” I cried. “You don’t know how I love her.”
[30] “I don’t want to know. I would much rather not hear. The thing’s a mistake. I never expected it. It must end. You’re a fine fellow, and I would as soon see you Conny’s husband as another man. But there are obstacles not to be got over under a larger sum of money than you possess. Don’t disappoint me. Don’t object and argue. My scheme is perfect. I maintain it is a magnificent scheme. It assures your fortune; it assures the permanency of the bank ”

“ But very often my eyes wandered to Theresa’s handsome face, and though my heart reproached me for the involuntary judgment, I could not help confessing that of the two cousins Conny was decidedly the inferior in every physical respect. Nothing more natural, of course, being a fair man, than that when I had two pretty girls before me, she of the dark eyes should touch me more nearly than she of the blue. ”

“ I threw myself into an arm-chair, thankful for the privilege of resting myself, and glanced languidly around the spacious room. In any other mood I should have found a great deal to admire; but I was so vexed and amazed by my reception in the avenue, and so irritated by the imbecile behaviour of the footman, that I could think of nothing else.
However, I had scarcely been seated a minute when my uncle came in.
“How are you? how are you?” he cried, grasping my hand. “Delighted to see you and to welcome you. Why didn’t you let us know the train you came by? ”

“ In the provinces there is nothing harder to get than society. A man must live in a place half his life before he can gather people about him, and then his antecedents must be unimpeachable. Provincial society consists of coteries, all absurdly jealous and suspicious of intruders. I parted with some pleasant friends when I left ——; but how many years I shall have to live here before the people whose acquaintance is desirable will honour me with their friendship I cannot imagine. Money will not bring society, and mere respectability takes time to make itself known. ”

“ But what use reasoning with a woman who manifestly was not in possession of her reason? I considered that I had been already a great deal too condescending. I had forgotten my dignity, and provoked a most audacious snubbing by an amiability that was totally at variance with those high and splendid conceptions which had hitherto characterised [118] my self-estimates. No wonder my aunt had guessed that I would not like Teazer. “Teazer!” That was a dog’s name, and it suited my cousin to perfection. But did she behave to everybody as she behaved to me? Impossible. She wouldn’t have a friend. ”

“ Uncle Tom had suggested that she wanted taming, but that word suggested nothing. She stood in need of greater discipline than taming.
“Haven’t you brought any messages for me from Grove End?” she demanded. “I don’t want to be thought rude; but really, you seem a perfect stick, without a word to say for yourself.”
“Your pistol has blown all my confidence out of me.”
“You think me rather outspoken, don’t you?”
“Rather.”
[94] “Don’t you like outspoken people? I do.”
“Pray give me a little time. We scarcely know each other yet. By-and-by I may turn out as outspoken as you like.” ”

“ One side of the roof was flat, and my uncle led me through a trap-door, whence we emerged into so broiling a sun, and on to a floor so burning, that I darted hastily down the staircase, protesting that if I wasn’t killed by a sunstroke, I should be roasted alive. ”

“ She hangs about the avenue until she spies you coming, and then salutes you with a pistol shot! She repels your politeness with the most uncouth rudeness! In order still further to embarrass and disgust you, she coolly tells O’Twist that you are not always in your right senses, and desires him to keep his eye on you whenever he has the opportunity of doing so, particularly during meal-times, lest you should snatch [155] up a knife, and attempt to murder one of us! A better tool than O’Twist for her sorry purposes she couldn’t have hit upon. ”

“ Lovers can never be ridiculous in each other’s eyes, if both are in earnest. But if one is insincere, then the other is inevitably absurd. So two mad people explaining to each other, the one his claims to the English throne, the other his claims to the moon as a family estate, listen with gravity, embrace with sympathy, and part with mutual admiration. ”

“ I occasionally grumble, I am satisfied that society should remain as it is. The social successes of moneyed interlopers have done a great deal, since I was a boy, to demoralise the tone of English society. The world is lumbered with parvenus; and though I am a City man myself, I am conservative enough in my views of life never to regret any illustration, on the part of society, of a resolution to resist the encroachments of the City. ”

“ When my poor wife was alive my liberties were jealously curtailed; and now I would give up every liberty I possess to clasp her dear hand again, to look into her dear eyes.”
[80] “Does Theresa resemble you or her mother?”
“There is a mingling of us both in her. But the mother preponderates. She has profound passions, the deepest nature a woman ever had. Such tenderness! such generous impulses! She has not her equal.”
Good gracious! I thought. How affection blinds us! Tender, indeed—confound her! she nearly killed me! And here I thought of Conny, and inwardly groaned, “Always thine, my own! ”

“ But, as I told him, I choose to have my secrets as well as he.”
“I am not going to marry Theresa,” I said. “I am not going down to a man’s house to make love to his daughter, and ask her to be my wife, as if I were a curiosity-dealer taking a journey in order to drive a bargain for a piece of china. My uncle knows that I am in love with Conny, and, although he pooh-poohs me, never will he get me to alter my sentiments, and forsake her for a woman who shoots pistols!”
“Thomas knows my sentiments about his scheme,” said my aunt, with a toss [43] of her head. ”

“ Her fine eyes sparkled as she answered, “That is why I hate flattery. Honest people won’t flatter. I always look upon a compliment as the mask of some sentiment which would be very offensive were it exposed.”
“That’s an extreme view. A man may sometimes flatter with the wish to please; [192] and whom should he wish to please but his sweetheart?”
“I would rather not be complimented by the man I love.”
“He’ll have to be dumb, then,” said I.
“I will agree with you in this,” said she, with a smile, “a girl with money is under great disadvantages as regards courtship and marriage. ”

“ But a lunatic, talking his nonsense to a sane man, is pitied and despised.
Oh, who that has been in love hasn’t suffered? Where is he? I would walk ten miles on the hottest July day to behold him. I say, it is impossible to love and not to suffer. Thy goddess is a divinity hedged about with furze, and whatever be thy fortune with her, inevitably art thou bound to carry away [220] scars and blisters and wounds. ”

“ Conny looked indescribably pretty, in spite of a somewhat affected pose. Teazer’s face was in profile, and a handsome profile it was. There was plenty of intellect in the low, square brow, over which the plentiful dark hair was roughly drawn. The eyelashes were long, but contributed little of tenderness to the determined gaze of the large eye. The contour of the bust was noble. She held a stout riding-whip across her shoulder, as a man holds a gun. Yet there was something very striking about this photograph. [88] I caught myself examining it intently and not without admiration ”

“ Could this be my cousin Theresa?
I was so much astonished by the report of the pistol, and her peremptory address, that I quite forgot my manners. I had hastily put my hat on, and there I kept it. “You may bless your stars,” she exclaimed, “that I didn’t take the curl [66] out of your mustache with a pistol ball. I could do it. Do you doubt me? Turn your face round, so that I get your profile.”
And she levelled her pistol full at my head.
“Who are you?” I stammered; “and what do you mean to do? Put that pistol down. Don’t you know that you can’t play with a more dangerous toy?” ”

“ For she may love a man whose sensitiveness finds an obstacle in her fortune, and keeps him back, lest a proposal should subject him to misconstruction. Or she may meet with a man who sincerely loves her, but whose sincerity she distrusts because she has money. Now a girl without money knows very well that when an offer is made her, she is loved only for herself. ”

“ Grove End! There, at least, they know how to treat a gentleman.”
“A gentleman!” she exclaimed. “I am very sure that were you to behave to Conny as you have behaved to me——”
“Are you aware,” I interrupted her, “that in mentioning the name of Conny, you are speaking of the sweetest and most womanly of girls? who would no more insult me as you do, than I would knowingly insult you?” ”

“ I measured twenty paces, faced the tree, levelled the pistol, pulled the trigger, and by heaven! the ball fell!
Teazer stared: my uncle clapped his hands.
“You are a soldier’s son,” said he, “and ought to be able to shoot well. After that, Teazer, boast no more.”
[207] I was now afraid that Teazer would challenge me to shoot again. Another fluke had added another leaf to the crown I felt sprouting about my brows: it would be a great blow to have the growth of that vegetation checked. But to my delight Theresa returned to her chair. ”

“ Though you held him the most honest of living beings, he is committed for forgery; or though you thought him doomed to be a struggling man all his life, he has made a fortune on the Stock Exchange, and is surrounded by architects with plans for a mansion; or though you considered him a very ordinary-minded person, he has just acknowledged himself the author of a book the world has gone into ecstacies over. So shifting is this life, it is scarcely possible to turn your back upon the most familiar object, without finding it changed on looking at it again. ”

“ MY UNCLE’S SCHEME.
[1] MY UNCLE’S SCHEME.
CHAPTER I.
Creepmouse. “In love a young man should climb—not stoop. Yes, sir, to a young man like Tom, marriage should be a ladder, not a pit.”
Retired from Business.
My uncle Dick amply vindicated his brother’s eulogium of his conversational powers. When, at the bank, I had beheld the stout, big form of my relative, and heard his bluff and highly familiar language, I believed him to be as nearly related to a boor as any man of his size and age can be. ”

“ But if you drive your nephew into loving another woman, as sure as you are a man, Conny will grow sentimental again over your cashier. How are you to help it?’ I asked him. ‘You bring no young men to the house: she sees no society; if she isn’t actually in love with Charlie, she told me enough to persuade me that it will not be long before she loves him.’ But he pish’d and pshaw’d, and pooh-pooh’d me down, and told me I was [48] interfering, and that I was foolish to imagine for a moment that there had been anything serious between Conny and Mr. Curling. ”

“ His horse was saddled and brought to the door; he sprang upon it in fine style considering his great bulk, and with a kindly nod at me, trotted slowly down the avenue.
Seeing no signs of Theresa, I thought I could not better pass the time than by writing a description of my reception and adventures to Conny, and went into [165] the house meaning to settle down to a long letter. As I passed through the hall, I noticed the album lying upon the table in the drawing-room. So I took hold of the book, and, like an honest lover that I was, fell to a maudlin perusal of my mistress’s countenance. ”

“ Ghosts, murders, and bigamies, living burials, exhumations, and pushing-your-sweetheart’s-husband-over-precipices, are events which happen every moment, which you may number among the sights you witness every time you take your walks abroad, and are therefore fit subjects for novel-writers to deal with. But that any young lady, calling herself a lady, could act——
Oh! Eugenio!—thou whom I have apostrophised so often, and may now publish thee no myth, but rather my bosom friend—thou knowest I am writing [203] true history; that Theresa did so receive me ”

“ Here is a passage doubly underscored: ‘It is easy to love a woman, but difficult to find a woman worth loving.’”
“Oh, never mind those marks,” exclaimed Conny.
“Is the hero often afflicted with salt dews?” I inquired.
“You are laughing at me.” She snatched the book from my hand, and pouted.
[12] “I don’t often read novels,” said I, “but when I do, I must say I like a good gory story—something dripping or dank—with a yellow-haired heroine who loves to sit on her lover’s grave and braid her tresses by the light of the moon, and an Italian rival who stabs everybody in the forehead. ”

“ If the songs of a country are, as they ought to be, the expression of the national character, what will our grand-children think of the age that could produce and enjoy the namby-pamby you now-a-days hear in concerts and drawing-rooms? Go back to my young days, and look into the songs we used to sing. There is a manliness even in the most sentimental of Moore’s ballads—a delicate reference to heroic actions and Irish spirit, which gives them a flavour you’ll look for in vain in your modern verselets. ”

“ The old saying is, ‘no man can be considered honest until he has been tempted.’”
“If that is your opinion of me,” said I, “it is quite right that I should go to Thistlewood. I want to be tested. I only hope that I may find Theresa perfectly beautiful, and thoroughly womanly, and brilliantly clever, and superfine in every point, to prove that, compared to you, she will be no more to me than that bush.” ”

“ She struck the piano, and I breathed [105] freely. But anything more distressing and feeble than her performance I never listened to. Why, Conny was a Patti and a Thalberg rolled into one compared to her! The song she sung was “Cease, rude Boreas,” of all the songs ever written, the one, to my mind, the least suitable for a woman’s voice. She was for ever striking the wrong notes, pausing often to cough or think, and singing with such ludicrous affectation, that it cost me an immense effort to preserve my gravity. ”

“ They may pair without anybody’s consent; they’ve got no [45] relations to interfere, and no marriage settlements to make them hate each other. But man is born naked, with a skin so sensitive that heat and cold give him equal tortures. He has got to dig for his food, without being sure of finding any. He is kicked if he hasn’t money, and is plundered if he has. If he falls in love with a woman, it is a hundred to one that he marries somebody else, for thousands of obstacles are piled up in his way. ”

“ It was O’Twist. The moonlight made him deadly white, and I scarcely knew him in his undress.
“What do you want?” I gasped, not [130] doubting that the man had hoped to find me asleep, and to steal my watch and purse, and perhaps to murder me.
“I tort I’d look in to see if you were all right, sor,” he answered.
“Right! what do you mean? I was asleep.”
“Thrue, sor.”
Here he advanced, went to the window, pulled down the sash, and drew the curtains. I was so much amazed by his actions that I could barely articulate. Was he walking in his sleep? Impossible. Somnambulists can’t converse. ”

“ I daresay Teazer will meet [19] you, if you let her know what train you arrive by. If not, our house isn’t a mile from the station, and you won’t be able to miss it after getting into the high road.”
I now thought it about time that I should be making my way home: but uncle Tom, seeing me prepare to leave, came up to me, and said, “What’s your hurry? I have something to say to you. The night is fine, and the longer you stay, the more brightly the moon will light you home.” ”