Chapter III.
I saw the Morgans were making a dead set to take me in. Sometimes it was Miss Letitia, and sometimes Miss Sophia—and always the mother. To hear that woman talk of her daughters, you would swear that two such were never known on earth before. Their sweetness—their temper—their beauty—the numbers of people that were in love with them—the hosts of rich and handsome fellows they had rejected, and the decided turn both of them had for a quiet country life, and the society of a well-educated, intellectual man of a certain age. She was a wonderful woman Mrs Morgan, and I really believe she thought she was speaking the simple truth all the time. But it wouldn't do—I judged for myself, and never took the least notice of all her hints and boastings. I tried to have them less about the house than they used to be; but nothing would keep them away—they always pretended it was for the sake of Martha Brown—a very likely story that they should trouble their heads about my uncle's anonymous contribution to the population returns, when his veritable nephew and heir was to be had by hook or crook. But I don't mean any disparagement by that to the poor little girl herself—far from it—she was the nicest creature in the world, and really not so black as I had thought; and she was now nearly twenty-one, and played and sung—and such an excellent critic, too! I always read my writings to her the moment they were finished, and she never found the slightest fault in any of them. I had left my description of Maria Valentine de Courcy incompleted for several years—for it is a long time now since the foolish adventure of the flower-pot first showed me that she took a tenderer interest in me than merely that of a cousin—and I now determined to give my second chapter the finishing touch, and consult her on the farther conduct of the story.
"Martha," I said, "I wish you would listen for a minute or two to what I've written."
So she sat down in my study, and worked a flower in an Ottoman square, and was evidently prepared to listen with the utmost attention.
"It is the rest of the second chapter."
"Oh, are you only there yet? I was in hopes you had come to the end of the story."
To the end of the story! Could the girl be hinting that I ought to tell her my mind; for I must tell you, I had so completely got over all prejudice about her birth, that I was strongly tempted to give an additional proof of my veneration for my uncle's memory, by giving his poor little orphan my name. Can she mean any thing by wishing me to come to the end of the story?
"How do you mean to wind up?" she asked.
"Oh! in a most mysterious and surprising manner; but we haven't got near the dénouement yet. There must be a duel, of course—a misunderstanding—and a rival."
"Oh! Theodore Fitzhedingham has no occasion to fear a rival," said Martha, pretending to have lost the stitch.
"No! 'Pon my word that's very good of you. Do you really think that Maria Valentine de Courcy will prefer him to every one else?"
"She will be a very foolish, a very ungrateful girl, if she doesn't—for hasn't he loved her ever since she was a child?"
"Well, Martha, you are certainly a very nice, a very affectionate girl; and I may as well put your mind at rest at once by telling you"—
"Sneezum! Sneezum!"
There was old Morgan again kicking at the study door, and holloing Sneezum with all his might. I had taken Martha's hand, and was just going to tell her to make preparations to become Mrs Sneezum in a week or two. I let go her hand, and rushed to the door.
"What the mischief do you want?"
"Why, here's Billy come back again," he said; "won't you come and give a welcome to poor Billy?"
"No; I be hang'd if I do. He has never apologized for pushing me down the steps; tell him to get out of my house; I have not forgot what alarm my accident caused to poor Martha. Don't you remember it, my dear?"
But there sat Martha—sometimes red and sometimes white—with tears in her eyes, and her lips half open, like the picture of St Cecilia.
"There! the very recollection of it frightens her to death. Go to your room, my dear, and I'll send this blustering fellow out of the house."
She glided out of the study without speaking a word, and I hurried to the drawing-room, but no Billy was there. His mother and sisters were luckily in London, so I turned angrily round on the father.
"A pretty fellow this son of yours—never one word of apology, either to me or Martha—I won't have him roystering here at all hours, frightening affectionate little girls with his violence."
"Who is it he has frightened?" enquired old Morgan; "who are the affectionate girls you mean? I'm sure he has never caused the least alarm to his sisters in his life."
"Perhaps not—perhaps not, Mr Morgan; but there is another girl that I wouldn't have any injury done to on any account. In fact, I may as well tell you at once, that Martha evidently expects me to provide for her happiness, and I am going to do it."
"Well, nothing can be fairer—but how?"
"Why, as to any little blot on her birth, I don't care much about it. Uncle was a kind friend to me, and I really think I can't do better than give a good steady husband to his child."
"Bravo! bravo! when you have found her."
"What do you mean by—when I have found her?"
"Why, have you never read the letters?"
"No; I never read letters. They're all in the wooden box."
"Then where, when, or how, have you encountered a daughter of your uncle?"
"Why, Martha Brown. I tell you I don't dislike a little dash of Hindoo blood; it's like curry, and gives a flavour."
"And who is the husband you have chosen for her?"
"Myself."
Old Morgan burst into a prodigious laugh, but I was in no humour to stand such nonsense. I got into a furious passion—he answered in an insulting manner—and so I ordered him to get out of my house, him and his son, and all his baggage.
"Certainly, certainly, Mr Sneezum, but you'll repent of it; and, as to your marrying Martha, you'll just as soon marry the Princess-Royal."
When he was gone, I went in search of Martha to settle the matter at once. There was a circular basin among the shrubs upon the lawn, with a nymph cowering under a waterfall that fell all round her like a veil—a very pretty ornament to the grounds—and at one side of it was a little arbour, where I used often to sit and see the sun make rainbows out of the spray that rose round the head of the nymph. To get to it, it was necessary to walk on the ledge of the wall that rose a little above the water in the basin, and this I was induced to do; for, as I was searching for Martha, I thought I heard a voice in the arbour, and I hurried on to tell her what I had done to old Morgan. I stept steadily on tiptoe along the coping-stone—for I wished to surprise her—but on getting to the opening of the arbour, a sight met my eyes that made me lose my balance all of a sudden; and with a start of rage and indignation, I stept backward into the pond, and was forced to battle among the water-lilies for my life. Martha rushed from the arbour and held out her hands in vain; but the person with her—a tall young man, with bushy whiskers and an enormous pair of mustaches—leapt into the basin and lifted me on to the bank, just as I had found it useless to try any longer to rise above the broad leaves that floated on the top, and made up my mind to give it up as a bad job. When I came to myself my preserver was gone, but Martha was supporting my head.
"Oh, you double-faced, deceitful gipsy!" I began. "Who would have thought you would be sitting, hand locked in hand, with a horrid fellow like the ruffian that was with you in the bower?"
"The ruffian! My dear guardian, don't you know him?"
"How should I? I never saw the vagabond's ugly face before."
"Why, it's William Morgan—how strange you shouldn't recognise him!"
"Well, if it were twenty William Morgans, that's no reason you should sit with your hand in his like the sign of the fire-office over our stable-door."
"Oh, he's such an old friend! Recollect, sir, we grew up together, and now how can you keep your anger against him? He has saved your life."
"After first startling me into the water. No, no; I'll have none of the Morgans here. I'll go and get changed, and then I'll finish what I was going to tell you when Morgan came to the door."
I was inflexible; I wouldn't let one of the Morgans into my house. Miss Letitia wrote a letter of four pages, and Miss Sophia enclosed a sonnet. Nothing would do. I resolved to keep Martha all to myself; and, for fear of other adventures in the bower, I gave her positive orders not to leave the house. I set people to watch her. I threatened to hang her Ayah with my own hands, and showed her the very bough of the tree I would do it on, if Martha was allowed to speak to any body but myself. I resolved to marry her in a week; and, merely to prevent her being harassed by the Morgans in the interval, I took all these precautions. After that, I determined to pardon the whole family, and had even prepared a letter asking them all to dinner on our wedding-day. Martha did not seem inconsolable. Day after day passed away; and, to show how easy I was in my mind, I went on with the last chapter of my novel, leaving all the middle part to be filled up at my leisure.
One morning—it was last Wednesday—I went into the study, and had just taken pen in hand, when I recollected that that was the very day I had summoned all the labourers on the estate to resist the approach of the levellers and engineers of a disgusting railway that was determined to force itself right through my garden and close under the dining-room windows. I went out to the barn—all the men were there. I gave orders to them to warn the intruders off; if they resisted, to knock them down without ceremony and keep them in custody till I could get them before a magistrate. Having satisfied my mind on these points, I felt so sure of my object being gained in both respects—that is, Martha and the railway—that I dispatched my letter to old Morgan, inviting the whole family to dine with me on Friday, the day I had fixed on for the marriage. Martha sat by my side in the study, and went on with the everlasting Ottoman square. I read to her—
"'Is it in the circle of possible events—is it a contingency to be calculated on in the decrees of fate,' exclaimed Theodore Fitzhedingham—(this was the finest bit out of my last chapter)—'that the girl I have loved—the paragon I have worshipped—the angel I have adored, is, indeed no longer the humbly born maid I thought her but the descendant of princes—the kinswoman of emperors—the inheritrix of kings?'
"'It certainly is far from false, nay, it is absolutely true,' returned Maria Valentine de Courcy, with a condescending smile, 'that I am not the person you have taken me for, but oh! beloved Theodore—faithful Fitzhedingham, need I tell you that my love is unaltered, my affections are unabated, my heart unchanged'"——
"Sir! sir!" cried voice at the door, "they be come." I hurried out; my servant was armed with the poker, I seized the hall tongs as I passed through; and on the lawn, in the coolest possible manner, were about half a dozen fellows smoking their cigars, and occasionally looking through a bright brass instrument upon a three-legged stand, and noting down the result with the greatest nonchalance.
"Oho!" I cried, and rushed at the intruders, "run for the people in the barn, Thomas. Who are you, you infernal interloping vagabonds?"
"Engineers of the Episcopal and Universal Railway Company, sir, and we will trouble you to stand out of the way," said a tall blackguard, scarcely deigning to look at me.
"Oh, you are, are you? Just wait a minute till my men come up, and I'll have you and your railway ducked in the horsepond."
"Don't interrupt us, old man," replied the scientific ruffian; "if we do any damage, charge it to the Company—we have seventy-five thousand shares, and can afford to pay any claims."
"Here!" I cried to the men, "catch that long villain with the dwarf telescope and take him into the house; if I don't get him six weeks of the treadmill my name is not Tom Sneezum."
The man made a stout resistance, but at last was overpowered, and carried into the hall. I helped to repel the others, and as they were tolerably civil, now that the ringleader was gone, I contented myself with walking them to the very end of my boundaries, and gave them notice, that if they ventured to return, I would treat them exactly as I had done their chief. This whole business did not take up more than an hour; and before going home, I walked across to Major Slowtops, the nearest magistrate, and luckily found him at home. He promised to trounce the fellow handsomely when I brought him; and telling him I would be back with the culprit and the witnesses in half an hour, I returned in no little triumph to Goslingbury.
"Where is the vagabond?" I exclaimed, when I got into the house.
"He's been gone this hour, sir," said Thomas, hardly able to keep in a laugh.
"Gone! who let him go?"
"Why, he ordered the carriage, sir, and him and Miss Martha is off for London."
"Are you mad, Thomas?—what is it you're speaking of? Where is the rascally leveller of the railway?"
"Lor', sir—don't you know? It was only Mr William at one of his tricks. The moment he took off the spectacles we all knew him, and Miss Martha seemed so pleased"—
"Did she?"
"Oh, yes! and Mr William—but they say he's Captain Morgan now—laughed so. It was certainly a rare good surprise—wasn't it, sir?"
I rushed into my study. "Let her go!" I said, "the false, deceitful Hottentot, or Hindoo, or whatever she is; she's as black as my hat, and a disgrace to my old uncle." So I stood very quietly, brooding over my misfortune—if a misfortune it was—and revenging myself by tearing into a million pieces the beginning and the end of my romantic novel.
"Here we are, Sneezum, my boy!" said old Morgan, on the Friday, at about two o'clock; "I've come on before, to tell you to get into good-humour; for perhaps you've forgotten the invitations you gave us all for to-day."
"What has become of the young woman?" I asked, with a very disdainful look; "my uncle's unowned little girl?"
"Do you mean William's wife?" inquired Mr Morgan; "they were married this morning, at St George's, Hanover Square, and will take you for an hour or two on their way to the North."
"I think, sir, as her guardian—not to say her cousin"——
"There, my dear Sneezum, you are altogether wrong; she was no relation of your uncle. She was the daughter of a Mr Brown of the Commissariat, and left to your uncle's charge; you, of course, succeeded to the guardianship as his representative; but she is no more a Hindoo than you are."
"That makes it worse, sir."
"Come, come, old Sneezum, don't keep up your anger; recollect you are old enough to be her father, and that she likes you next in the whole world to William. Shake hands with them, and be friends; and if you ever had the folly to think of marrying her, keep your own secret, and nobody will be a bit the wiser."
I thought old Morgan advised very wisely—so, if you show this to any body, alter the names a little; for I would not have it known for the world.—Believe me, sir, your obedient servant,