A TROUBLED SPIRIT.
With mingled feelings of disinclination and repulsion, also an undefined sense of dread and reluctance, poor C. Babbington-Cole left the City of Chicago and, again on terra firma, made his way up from the seaboard to London, where at Morley's Hotel he and his father had arranged to meet. "Hang it," he thought moodily, "I feel like an infernal frog out of Acheron, covered with the ooze and mud of melancholy. Jove, if I could only chance upon the Will Smyths or Mrs. Gower, what a tonic they would be; how they would enjoy this madding crowd with all the world abroad, with no blue blood in the beef they eat either; judging from red cheeks and stout ankles. What women! cotton batting would not be a safe investment here; I hope the governor is waiting for me at Morley's, but he must be, as he took the Circassian from Quebec on the 16th. I'll persuade him not to go out to Bayswater at all, but to abandon this debt of honor, as in his sensitive nature he dubs his promise to a dead woman, for I have no hankering after a martyr's crown. If I am coerced (for I am made of very limp stuff) into this union and she is not a girl I can care to spoon over, and must 'write me down as an ass' for selling my liberty to, then adieu to wedded bliss—I shall again content myself in a den by myself, and my craze for mechanism shall be my wife and my few real friends my mistress. Jove! though, I must strain my eyes and endeavor to see a glimmer of light in the black clouds; if she be a girl after my own heart she will sympathize after a more practical manner than did the 'twenty with Bunthorn,' in giving me the dollar to develop, and obtain a patent for one or other of my inventions. Yes, I'll be a soldier. I am nearing the battle-field; with the smell of powder in my nostrils, I will gain strength. Cabby is reining in his steed, so this, I suppose, is my hotel."
"Morley's, sir; and 'ere be a porter for your baggage, sir."
"All right," and springing from the four-wheeler he is interviewing the clerk.
"Has Mr. Babbington-Cole, from Ottawa, Canada, arrived?"
"No, sir; are you Mr. C. Babbington-Cole?"
"Yes."
"Then here is a cablegram for you, sir."
It was from his father, and ran thus:
"St. Lawrence Hall,
"Montreal, Sept. 20th."To C. Babbington-Cole, Esq.,
"Morley's Hotel, London, England."Your father has been very ill—typhoid fever; called me in; is improving; asks me to cablegram you to return by way of Montreal. Longs to see you and your wife, which will be a panacea for him.
"John Peake, M.D."
"My father ill! Oh that I could have foreseen all this," exclaimed Cole, flinging himself into a chair in the privacy of the bedroom assigned him. "To have to face my fate alone," he thought, "and yet I have been aware for some time that this was hanging over me; but the truth is, I thought the girl would never claim me, that they would arbitrate, divide, have a grab game among themselves, anything other than rope me in. Had I been gifted with Scotch second-sight, or even caution, I should not be in this fix now; but I have been made of wax, and so absorbed in my loved inventions, filling in an emotional half hour with an occasional flirtation, with my nose to the grindstone the rest of my time, that this possible 'game of barter,' in which some one says 'the devil always has the best of it,' rarely occurred to me; but this will never do in action, only shall I now find repose. I must go out to Bayswater, and I must wed this girl, unless Heaven works a miracle—no, unless I act the coward's part, cut and run, I am in for it. If I could only moralize on the pantheon of ugly horrors half of our marriages are, and that one might imagine most of them were perpetrated in the dark, or on sight, as mine, then I might console myself by thinking that I have as good a chance of happiness as most. My brain is on fire; if I only had one friend in this vanity fair, wherein to me is no merriment, the babel of sounds seeming to me the guns of the enemy warning me to retreat; talk of delirium tremens, I have all the blue devils rolled in one; a stimulant is what I want, to be able to face the music."
And making his way to the bar, in a short time his spirits, with the aid of John Barleycorn, arise; though he knows in the reaction they will be below zero.
"And now for Bayswater and my shrinking young bride," he thought. "I declare," he said, half aloud, with a forced laugh, "I can sympathize, for the first time, with the fly who had a bid from the spider to walk into his parlor. Is there a roaring farce on anywhere?" he asked the bar-tender.
"Yes, sir; a reg'lar side-splitter at the Haymarket. You will 'ave time to take in the matinee and dinner at Broadlawns, Bayswater, too, sir."
"How the deuce did you know I was due there?"
"Mr. Stone and Miss Villiers have called three times to look you up, sir."
"Indeed!"
"Yes, sir; Mr. Stone, he came in, and Miss Villiers, she waited outside in the trap."
The mere mention of the people from Broadlawns having come to hunt him up, had such a depressing effect, that he abandoned all idea of distraction at the play.
"There is not a particle of use of my trying to sit through the farce with this thumping headache; have a hansom here for me in a couple of hours, to convey me to Broadlawns; I shall walk out and get a glimpse of the city."
"All right, thank you, sir."
"Some one hath it," he thought, entering Trafalgar Square, "that the grand panacea, the matchless sanative which is an infallible cure for the blues, is exercise, exercise, exercise! so now for a trial; here goes for five miles an hour."
On, and ever onwards, with, and yet apart from, the stream of busy life, alone and lonely amidst the throngs not once staying his steps; winging his flight in the vain effort to flee from self, drifting on the waves of unrest, they engulfing him, his face white and worn as a ghost, his blue eyes weary and with a hunted look, a neuralgic headache driving him to the brink of madness; the panorama of wonderful sights on which, under other circumstances, he would have feasted his eyes. Peers of the realm, having gained notoriety in one way or another, passed unnoticed, with lovely women, from professional beauties reclining in their own carriages, whose toys were men's hearts, with the world as a stage, to the avowed actress, whose bright eyes looked from a hired equipage, who played for men's gold on the stage of the theatre; far-famed Regent Street was traversed with less interest than he would have accorded to Lombard Street, Toronto; for man loves freedom as a bird—there he was free, now he feels his fetters.
"Take care, sir," said a policeman, kindly.
"Blockhead! it would serve him right to come to his senses under the feet of my horse," said the only occupant of a low carriage, in the voice of a shrew, as she drove on.
At this juncture Cole shook himself to rights, as it were.
"She was ugly enough to give a fellow a scare, after our pretty Canadian women," he said to the policeman.
"Oh, she isn't no type of what we can show you, sir; she's but small, but enough o' her sort, say I."
"Ditto; and now be good enough to hail a cab for me."
"Yes, sir; here you are, and thank you, sir."
"To Morley's hotel."
"All right, sir."
On reaching his destination he learned that Mr. Stone had driven in to ascertain whether he had arrived, when, on hearing that he had, but was out, had waited; when a lady, calling for him, had gone, leaving a note for him, which on opening read thus:
"Dear Babbington-Cole,—Am very pleased to hear of your safe arrival; have important business, so cannot wait; in fact arrangements for the immediate marriage of my niece to yourself; kindly come out at once, on your return.
"Yours sincerely,
"Timothy Stone."
"The net is well laid," thought poor Cole; "they are bound to rope me in; how strange it all seems; even my name sounds unfamiliar, having at home, in dear old Toronto, dropped the Babbington; but I must adorn myself for the altar." And once more he seeks retirement in his own chamber. "Hang that evolution of a woman's corsets and curling tongs, viz., the modern dude! such a choking and tightening a fellow's throat and legs undergo; I wonder if my shrinking bride will expect me to kneel to her. Ah! there goes for a rip; under the knee, though, as luck would have it; not being quite educated up to a chamois pad and face powder, my modest Pearl will have to be satisfied with candle and throat moulds. I wonder if she will compliment me on my handsome black moustache, as my women friends at home do; and now to fortify myself with dinner, or at least oysters and a glass of stout. Hang it, how faint and dizzy I feel."