CHAPTER XIII.—“DEEPER AND DEEPER STILL.”
When Coverdale reached his own room, his first act was to lock the door, his next to fling open the window; he then untied his neck-cloth, pulled off his coat and boots, and substituting for them a dressing-gown and slippers, cast a long, lingering glance at his cigar-case. Shaking his head negatively, he muttered, “I daren’t risk it; old Hazlehurst has a wonderful nose for tobacco—if it were but as good for partridges and pheasants he’d make an invaluable retriever!”—he paused, sighed deeply, partly for want of a cigar—partly because, though he was not at all aware of it, one of the great realities of life was for the first time dawning upon him; then drawing a chair to the open window he seated himself, and gave way to thought.
“I’ve made a pretty mess of it this evening, and no mistake!”—thus ran his ideas—“gone and offended the governor, and rendered him as cantankerous as an old rhinoceros, so that the more I want him to do anything, the less likely he’ll be to do it. Then in my confounded good-nature, I’ve allowed that ass Knighton to detain me with his stupid prosing, so that I lost sight of the cotton-spinner, and gave him a chance of making Alice an offer—a chance of which the old fellow was inspired with wit enough to avail himself, I’m almost certain. Arthur will be preciously savage! and enough to make him—the notion of sacrificing Alice to such an old anatomy as that—a yellow-skinned brute like a resuscitated mummy, without more than two ideas in his head, and two such ideas—cash and cotton! he thinks of nothing else, asleep or awake. I wonder what answer Alice gave him; but there isn’t much doubt of that, the poor girl daren’t disobey her father—besides, women don’t refuse £20,000 a-year. Well, I wish old Crane joy of his bargain. She’ll soon get sick of him, and be miserable of course; then she’ll take to flirting with every young fellow she meets, to get rid of her ennui; chose out one to establish a platonic friendship with, perhaps!—I’ve seen all that sort of thing in France and Italy often enough. D’Almayne very likely, he’s just the sort of puppy to lead a woman on—she laughs at him now, but it may be different when she’s only old Crane to contrast him with. By the way, I’ll give Arthur a hint on that score.” He rose, paced up and down the room several times, then continued—“I wonder what the deuce is the matter with me! I feel most absurdly and unpleasantly miserable.” He reseated himself by the window, tossed back his hair, and sat silently watching the moon, just then emerging from behind a bank of clouds. It was a time and scene to elevate and refine man’s nature; and Harry was not insensible to the influence. He thought of his boyhood, and his mother’s tender love; he recurred to the moonlight stroll in which he had confided these cherished memories to Alice, and the warm and ready sympathy with which she listened to the recital; then minute points in their subsequent intercourse forced themselves into his recollection—smiles, words, and glances, trifles in themselves, but when collected, suggestive of a definite idea; and lastly, her look when she quitted the dining-room that evening flashed across him, and with a sudden start he pressed his hand to his forehead as he resumed—“Fool that I am, I see it all now—now when it is too late I love her, and I might have won her love—it only required to tell her of my own feelings, to change the affectionate interest she has conceived for me into a warmer sentiment; and now, perhaps piqued by my apparent indifference, she has accepted this man, and sealed her own unhappiness—and mine too, for that matter; but I deserve it! Why did I let this chance of a bright future escape me! To fancy that the mere physical excitements of hunting and shooting (pastimes for a thoughtless boy) could content a being endowed with reason and feeling!—though really I doubt whether I deserve such a title. I must have been blind—stultified, not to see all this before!” Burying his face in his hands, he remained for some time in deep and self-upbraiding thought; rousing himself at length by an effort, he continued—“well! it’s no good sitting here tormenting myself all night long—I’ll go to bed (though, of course, I shall not sleep a wink), and in the morning I’ll walk over to the station, meet Arthur—tell him how I’ve mismanaged everything he expected me to do, and find some excuse for leaving this place to-morrow. I should go mad if I were to stay here longer! Heigho! I wonder what will become of me—it will be no pleasure to look forward to the shooting season now! I don’t believe I shall ever care to hit a bird or mount a horse again. I’ll go to India, and join the army as a volunteer, or start off to look for the north pole, or something. I shall hang myself if I stay at home, and do nothing but think about Alice and that detestable old Crane!” By the time his meditations had reached this point, Coverdale was unrobed, and, jumping disconsolately into bed, had not laid his head on his pillow for five minutes ere he fell sound asleep, and dreamed of a battue, in which he tried to shoot Mr. Crane (who, on that occasion only, appeared ornithologically and picturesquely attired in the tail and plumage of a cock-pheasant), and could by no means induce his gun to go off.
The sun shining in through the open window awoke Harry, when he fancied he might have been asleep about a quarter of an hour; on referring to his watch, however, he found it was halfpast six, and as the train by which Arthur Hazlehurst was expected would arrive at twenty minutes past seven, and it was a good half-hour’s walk to the station, he rose and began dressing. As his thoughts recurred to the events of the previous evening, all his cares and anxieties came back upon him with redoubled force, and he felt more thoroughly out of sorts and unhappy than he ever remembered to have done since he had come to man’s estate. When the operation of shaving obliged him to look in the glass, he was surprised, and if the truth must be told, rather alarmed also, as he caught sight of the expression of his features. “What a hang-dog, miserable brute I look like!” he muttered to himself; “it strikes me I drank more wine than is good for one last night—that comes of old Hazlehurst bringing out Burgundy after everybody had had enough. The old boy must have been frightfully screwed himself, or he would never have got so cantankerous with me about nothing—I hate a man who grows quarrelsome over his liquor! Heigho! I feel shockingly seedy and down in the mouth, What the deuce am I to say to Arthur!—how on earth am I to set things right again with the old man! I wonder whether he will be stupid enough to expect me to make an apology? I wouldn’t mind doing it to an old codger like that, but ’pon my word I should not know what to say—I’ve nothing to apologise about that I can see. I hope Arthur won’t be angry, or worse still, unhappy about Alice—poor, dear Alice: if she comes down to breakfast looking miserable, I shall never be able to stand it! I’d better not look at her at all—that will be the only plan: I’ll be off before luncheon. When I get home, all by myself, and have nothing to do but sit and think, I shall have a pleasant life of it! Well, I certainly have gone and done it this time handsomely—rather!”
Thus fretting and worrying himself he finished dressing, and, making his way quietly down stairs, effected his exit unobserved. Fancying he was late he started at a brisk walk, and having crossed the open part of the park, reached a stile at the entrance of a grass-grown footpath overshadowed with trees. Before entering this he looked at his watch, and found that instead of too late he was too early, by nearly half an hour; accordingly, getting leisurely over the stile, he strolled onward in the direction of a rustic bench, which he remembered to have seen some short distance farther up the path, where, if the truth must be told, he proposed to console himself with a cigar. As he came in sight of this bench he perceived that it was occupied, and a second glance was scarcely needed to convince him that the occupant was Alice. For a moment he was perplexed as to what course to take, whether to join her, or to retrace his steps, and avoid a meeting which he felt, under the circumstances, must necessarily be most embarrassing. Perceiving that the young lady’s head was turned in the opposite direction, and that she had therefore not yet seen him, he drew back a pace or two, so as to place the trunk of a towering elm between them. “What shall I do?” thought Harry; “I have not an idea what to say to her that would be likely to be of any use; in fact, there’s nothing to be said. She has accepted old Crane, and now she’s come here to meet Arthur, tell him what she’s done, say she could not help it, and ask him to forgive her and make the best of it. I shall be de trop evidently, so the best thing I can do is to jog back again; and yet—and yet I should like to walk by her side, and look into her dear blue eyes once more—heigho! I almost wish my dream would come true, only reversed, and that I were the pheasant and Crane going to shoot me, though I should not be in much danger, for the old muff would be safe to miss me. Well, I suppose I’d better be off—is she there still? yes, but what is she doing—crying?—why by heaven she’s crying as if her heart would break! Oh, you know I can’t stand this, so it’s no use thinking any more about it; speak to her I must and will!” And, suiting the action to the word, he was about to spring forward and join her, when it occurred to him that it would only distress and annoy her if he were to obtrude his presence upon her when, imagining herself alone, she was unrestrainedly giving way to her grief; so, with that tact springing from innate delicacy of feeling which prevented Coverdale’s honest, straightforward character from ever becoming rough or overbearing, he waited till poor Alice had dried her tears, and with slow, listless footsteps (sadly different from her usual bounding and elastic gait) resumed her walk in the direction of the railway-station. As soon as she was fairly started Harry emerged from his hiding-place, and followed her with vigorous strides. When he had approached within hearing distance, he endeavoured by various means, such as stamping with his feet, brushing against the underwood as he passed, and the like, to render her aware of his presence, but for some minutes without success. At length, however, a violent onslaught he made against a blackthorn bush (by which means he acquired a practical knowledge of the penetrating properties of thorns) attracted her attention, and with a start sufficiently violent to show that her nervous system was unusually excited, she turned and beheld him. Re-assured by finding that the alarming sounds had been caused by the approach of a friend, rather than by that of a wild beast or an ogre (plagues so common in the midland counties of “England in ye nineteenth century,” that of course her imagination had instantly suggested them), Alice waited till he came up, and received him with her customary bright smile, although her heightened colour, and an unusual degree of consciousness in her manner, proved that for some reason the meeting rather embarrassed her also.
“You walk betimes, Miss Hazlehurst,” began Harry, anxious to break the ice, but not knowing in the slightest degree how, when it should be broken, he was going to proceed; “You are really a pattern of early rising; but I have a notion we are both bound on the same errand, namely, to meet Arthur—am I wrong?”
“Quite right,” was the reply; “I got up at a wonderfully early hour; I suppose I was too much excited by such an unaccustomed event as a dinner-party, to be able to sleep at all soundly.”
“You look fagged and weary even now,” returned Coverdale, regarding her anxiously, “and you will fatigue yourself still more by walking to the station and back. Are you prudent to undertake so long an expedition before breakfast?”
“Oh yes,” was the reply; “it will refresh me and do me good; besides, I want particularly to see and talk to Arthur.”
“I will accompany you as far as the station, if you will allow me,” returned Harry, “and, as soon as your brother arrives, leave you to talk with him in peace; the few words I have to say to him will do equally well after breakfast.”
Alice signified her consent, and the conversation continued for several minutes to turn on indifferent subjects, though the burden of sustaining it fell chiefly upon Alice, Harry’s observations becoming shorter and less coherent at each reply. At length, however, Alice’s stock of small-talk failed her, and Harry, in despair, was about to hazard some such original observation as, that the grass was looking remarkably green, when his companion suddenly addressed him.
“I am afraid that you will think that I am interfering very unnecessarily and impertinently, Mr. Coverdale, but I must trust to your kindness to make allowance for me.”
“She is actually going to confess the cotton-spinner to me, and tell me I’m in the way, I do believe! Cool hands women are, and no mistake!” thought Coverdale; he only said, however, “Pray go on.”
“The fact is,” resumed Alice, with a faltering voice, “my brother Tom informed me (you must not be angry with the poor boy, for he did it out of regard for you) that you—that is that my father and you differed about some political question after dinner yesterday, and that my father was so carried away by the subject as to become injudiciously warm, and, from Tom’s account, personal, and that his observations annoyed you. Now, I am so very sorry this should have occurred, for he had formed such a high opinion of you, and Arthur was so much pleased to see how well you got on with him—a point on which he appeared particularly anxious.” (Coverdale bit his lip, and cut off a thistle’s head viciously with his cane.) “But, if you could be so very good as to overlook anything my father may have said, it would make me—I mean it would make Arthur, and—and—all of us so much happier.”
“My dear Miss Hazlehurst,” began Harry, vehemently, “how very kind of you to trouble yourself about me! I can assure you I am most anxious to say or do anything to regain Mr. Hazlehurst’s good opinion. I know I made him rather an impertinent answer; but really I was so unprepared for such an attack; and then, to make matters worse, that old idiot, Mr. Crane—that is,” he continued, suddenly recollecting to whom he was speaking, and turning crimson as he did so, “I beg your pardon for speaking so disrespectfully of him to you; I really forgot—I am certainly losing my senses!” With a blush as bright, though not quite so deep coloured as that of Coverdale, Alice, turning away her head, replied:
“Mr. Crane’s only claim on my respect is, that he is my father’s friend; if I must own the truth, I do not myself consider him very wise.”
“His only claim did you say!” exclaimed Harry, earnestly. “Oh, Miss Hazlehurst—Alice—pardon me if I ask you to deal openly with me; am I indeed wrong in supposing that you are engaged, or about to become so, to Mr. Crane?”
“Oh yes!” was the hurried reply; “such a fate would render me most miserable.”
Upon this hint Harry spake; the reality and strength of his feelings imparted an earnest dignity to his manner, and an unwonted eloquence to his speech, which would have deeply affected his fair auditor, even had her own heart not pleaded warmly in his favour. As it was, before they arrived in sight of the railroad station, Harry had somehow come to the conclusion, that the communication he should have to make to his friend Arthur would be very much more satisfactory, though perhaps little less embarrassing, than the one he had originally designed. It certainly was a considerable change in the tenour of his report to be forced to explain, that instead of considering himself the most miserable being in the world, he felt convinced he was by far the happiest; for that Alice—resolved not to marry the cotton-spinner—had given her heart, and promised her hand, to him.
And thus, short, sharp, and decisive, began and ended “Harry Coverdale’s Courtship:” all the results, good and evil, “that came of it,” may be learned by any reader sufficiently persevering to peruse that which remains to be told of this veracious history.