William Clark Russell

“ I got weary, Charlie, of having to meet him stealthily, and of carrying a heavy secret about; and I was driven into running away when I saw how earnestly mamma was working to bring about my marriage with you.”
“One question, Conny; do you remember one Sunday night leaving me hurriedly on hearing the clock strike seven?”
“Yes. I went to meet Theodore. Oh, Charlie, how I hated you for stopping at home that evening!”
“And on that evening I asked you to marry me!” I exclaimed, with a laugh like a groan. “What fools men sometimes make of themselves! But never mind. ”

“ Theresa gained upon me every day. Fresh characteristics were for ever cropping up to charm me with new aspects of her nature. She was hearty, genuine, cheerful; piquant with candour, amusing with originality. Moreover, I found my admiration of her fine face and figure [7] increase in proportion as I grew familiar with them. The longer Conny remained silent the more powerful became my regard for her cousin. I pictured that fair-haired girl devoted—to Curling; and jealousy stung me, and turned me to Theresa, and obliged me to think of her. ”

“ Beauty inspires passion, but will it create sincerity? Something more than that is wanted, I think. No love lasts that is unrequited. No lamp burns long that isn’t replenished with oil. There are hundreds of verses among the poets illustrative of this, the best of which I might easily quote if I knew where to find them. Don’t say this digression is neither here nor there. It is here and there too. It concerns my sincerity; it vindicates my loyalty.
Riding with Theresa on a fragrant and glowing summer evening, we fell to talking about Conny. ”

“ As I beheld my uncle’s tears, I cried to myself: “Does a man marry for this? Does he soothe and sue, make presents, and receive them back, grow cynical, and leave his beard unshorn, laugh at papa’s stale stories, and submit to mamma’s acidity, for this? Does he take upon himself the responsibilities of a British housekeeper, write cheques for landlords, wrangle with tradespeople, be interfered with by his wife’s connections, hunt after monthly nurses, sit up all night with windy babies—to be made miserable in his old age?” ”

“ Who are we to throw stones? Who are we to fill the judgment seat? Life stretches before them; there are, there must be, many sorrows on the road, and hard trials, and bitter tears. Whether we forgive them or not, it is unhappily only too certain that the future will make them more than expiate the vexation and disappointment they have caused us. No, no! I am not for exacting penances. I [105] am not for grinding young hearts down because they have betrayed their owners into folly. Conny does love that young man amazingly. ”

“ When I tell you that though I remained fondly attached to Conny through a large number of those days darkened by her barbarous neglect, I could still find a very great pleasure in riding with Theresa, talking to her, listening to her singing, and saying pretty things with a tolerably significant face, will you pronounce me an impossibility, or allow that I acted as a great number of young men have acted, are acting, and will for ever act?
[6] Come, drop that stone. You know I’m a species. Every woman knows I am a species. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I am pained by her conduct for her father’s and mother’s sake, but has anybody a right to expect me to have any personal feelings in the matter, beyond a proper sense of gratefulness that her pretty face and capricious smiles can no longer keep me awake o’ nights, nor prevent me from enjoying my food? Ah, Theresa! you may indeed value yourself on your perceptions. I am afraid I never really loved Conny. ”

“ Every moment I expect to see her come in and laugh at me for imagining that she could be guilty of eloping with such a man. How my husband jeered me for saying that his clerk was a dangerous person! And now he is our son-in-law: now we are all fastened together for life, and degraded for ever!”
“No, no: not degraded. My dear aunt, Mr. Curling is quite as gentlemanly as the majority of young men. Look at the sons-in-law one meets with everywhere! Elopements take place in the highest families. ”

“ 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 [196] 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. ”

“ Curling grinned faintly. Conny looked at me askew, as if she wondered how I could find the heart to be funny.
“Come, come, don’t let us get personal,” exclaimed my uncle. “What I told [98] Conny and her husband in London I will repeat here; they have chosen to act foolishly and cruelly; but greatly as they have made us suffer, it is our duty, now that the action is irreparable, not only to wish to see them happy, but to strive to make them so. It is too late to show any temper, and all reproaches must be idle and foolish.”
“Ay, but flesh and blood must speak!” cried out my aunt. ”

“ 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 [139] 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? ”

“ The first thing to be done is to get them married properly. My wife, I fear, will give us trouble. She talks as if she loathed Curling, and though she professes to be willing to do anything now, I fear that when the time comes she will never consent to be seen with him out of doors, or to prove, by her behaviour, that the marriage is not a disgrace. ”

“ 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. ”

“ My aunt went into hysterics twice, and wrung my nerves with violent agitations of distress and horror. She was not a strong-minded woman, and took to her woe hungrily. I watched her tears with the keenest apprehensions, dreading fresh outbreaks of the sobs, and short yells, and rapid heel-taps with which she had twice favoured me. ”

“ 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.”
[137] “It is a confounded upset,” said Dick: “but you are perfectly right to look at it cheerfully. ”

“ Curling!—Theresa, let your pride bleed for me. Let me know I have your sympathy. The briefest assurance that your opinion of me is not lowered because I haven’t broken my heart over Conny, will give me all the strength I need to support the very crushing sense of contempt that visits me, whenever I reflect on their duplicity and my humiliation.” And so on, and so on.
I was as nearly as possible telling her that I had left my heart behind me at Thistlewood. Who isn’t bold in a letter? Consider the qualifications a goose-quill and a sheet of paper confer! ”

“ Can’t you love decently, and marry becomingly? Do you think it fun to go running off o’ nights with men, and wringing tears out of hearts you were sent into this world to soothe and bless? Is romance spiced by a mother’s lamentations? Is love sweetened by a father’s groans? ”

“ Curling to fall in love with? I’ll be hanged if I do.”
“Oh, woman’s caprice is an old song set to a tune to which men have been capering for many thousand years. [107] Wasn’t Eve glad to be turned out of Paradise? we have only Milton’s word for it, that she cried. Conny finds her Theodore lovely—and there’s an end. Women, like birds, will build their nests in the queerest places. You can’t reason with them. They obey an instinct that was implanted, in order that the ugliest man might not be mateless.” ”

“ Sempronius the base is engaged to Sacharissa, and Clorinda sailed for India last week along with her husband, Major O’Ulysses. No hearts were broken, no tears were shed—no eyes became bloodshot—no hair was torn out by the roots; the fact being, that heaven in its mercy hath qualified humanity with a marvellous power of forgetting its mistakes, and of accommodating itself to the first new condition events impose. ”

“ 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 [161] 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. ”

“ Charles Hargrave left Grove End for the railway station at Updown at one o’clock, en route for the south of France, where we believe it is their intention to pass the honeymoon. Our best wishes follow them into their blissful though temporary retirement; nor can we close this inadequate notice of the auspicious event, without tendering our respectful congratulations to the parents of the young people whom the marriage cements with new and indissoluble domestic ties. ”

“ Imagine it not only powerful enough to drive a delicate girl, who has been coddled all her life, out of a luxurious country home, into squalid London lodgings, but to make her perfectly satisfied with her dirty quarters! ”

“ Curling has acted wildly, but he is an honourable man. They both knew we should never consent to their marriage, and they have done as thousands have done before them—defied father and mother, and eloped. To-morrow we shall get a letter, telling us they are married, and begging our forgiveness.”
“Of course they have run away to get married,” I gasped.
“But oh! what a man to marry! Oh, what a man to have for a son-in-law!” raved my aunt. “I felt—I knew all along that Conny was in love with [42] him, and so I wanted her to marry you. ”

“ 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 [164] train, and I found Theresa thoroughly domiciled, sitting at the open drawing-room window with some work in her hand. ”

“ You have been punished severely enough through your self-conceit; and I can imagine that you will never care to be reminded, that at the time you were thinking you had made a conquest of Conny, she was encouraging you merely that you might serve her as a kind of dummy, with whom she might coquette whilst she indulged her real passion with her Theodore. ”

“ 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, [182] 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. ”