Wrecked in Port: A Novel

by Edmund Yates

And then Mr. Benthall told them all he had heard from Mrs. Covey.

Gertrude went alone with Mr. Benthall to the gate, and they were a very long time saying their adieux. When she came back to the house, she found her sister in the hall.

"You found the gate very difficult to open, Gerty!" said Maude, with her grave smile.

"Yes, dear, very difficult! Do you know, dear,--he hasn't said anything, but I think Mr. Benthall is going to ask me to be his wife!"

"Well, Gerty, and what then?"

"Then I shall have a home to offer you, my darling! a home where we can be together, and needn't be under the rule of that beautiful, superior creature!"

[CHAPTER XXV.]

CLOUDING OVER.

Gertrude Creswell was not wrong in her supposition that Mr. Benthall intended asking her to become his wife. It is not often that mistakes are made in such matters, despite all we read of disappointed maidens and blighted hopes. Life is so very practical in this portion of the nineteenth century, that, except in very rare cases, even love-affairs scarcely care to avail themselves of a halo of romance, of that veil of mystery and secrecy which used to be half the charm of the affair. "The bashful virgin's sidelong looks of love" are now never seen, in anything like good society, where the intention of two young persons to marry as soon as--sometimes before--they have met, and the "understanding" between them is fully recognised by all their friends; while as to the "matron's glance which would such looks reprove," it is entirely obsolete, and never brought into play, save when the bashful virgins bend their sidelong looks of love on good-looking young paupers in the government offices or the army--a proceeding which it is but fair to say the bashful virgins "of the period" very rarely indulge in. Gertrude Creswell was as unlike a "girl of the period," in the present delightful acceptation of that phrase, as can well be imagined; that is to say, she was modest, frank, simple, honest, and without guile; but she was a woman, and she knew perfectly that she had engaged George Benthall's attention, and become the object of his affection, although she had had no previous experience in the matter. They had lived such quiet lives, these young ladies, and had slid so tranquilly from the frilled-trouser-wearing and les-graces-playing period of childhood, to the long skirts, croquet, and flirtation of marriageable age, that they had hardly thought of that largest component part of a girl's day-dream, settling in life. There was with them no trace of that direct and unmistakable line of demarcation known as "coming out"--that mountain-ridge between the cold dreary Switzerland of lessons, governesses, midday dinner, back-board, piano practice, and early bed, and the lovely glowing Italy of balls, bouquets, cavaliers, croquet, Park, Row, crush-room, country-house, French novel, and cotillon at five a.m. So Gertrude had never had a love-affair of any kind before; but she was very quiet about it, and restrained her natural tendency to gush, principally for Maude's sake. She thought it might seem unkind in her to make a fuss, as she described it, about her having a lover before Maude, who was as yet unsuited with that commodity. It puzzled Gertrude immensely, this fact of her having proved attractive to any one while Maude was by; she was accustomed to think so much of her elder sister, on whom she had endeavoured to model herself to the best of her ability, that she could not understand any one taking notice of her while her sister was present. Throughout her life, with her father, with her mother, and now with her uncle, Gertrude Creswell had always played the inferior part to her sister; she was always the humble confidante in white muslin to Maude in Tilburina's white satin, and in looks, manner, ability, or disposition, was not imagined to be able to stand any comparison with the elder girl.

But Mr. Benthall, preferring Gertrude, had given long and serious thought as to his future. He had taken the trouble to do something which he knew he ought to have done long since, but which he had always resolutely shirked--to look into the actual condition of his school, and more especially of his boarders; and after careful examination, he confessed to himself, as he smoked a costly cigar, pacing slowly up and down the lane, which was ablaze with apple-blossom--it would never have done to have been caught in the wildly dissipated act of smoking by any of the boys, or, indeed, by a good many of the villagers--he confessed to himself that he wanted a companion, and his establishment wanted a head, and that Mrs. Covey, excellent in her way, was scarcely a proper representative of the female element in the household of the head-master of Helmingham school. Thus minded, Mr. Benthall rode over to Woolgreaves, was received by a benevolent grin from the stable-helper, to whom he confided his horse (confound those fellows, with what an extraordinary facility they blunder on to the right scent in these matters!), went into the house, paid his suit to the two young ladies, had but a few words with Miss Maude, whose services, in consequence of an unfavourable turn of Mrs. Ashurst's illness, were required upstairs, and a prolonged interview of a very satisfactory kind with Miss Gertrude. With a portion only of this interview have we to do; the remaining portion can be much "more easily imagined than described," at least, by those to whom the circumstances of the position have been, or actually are, familiar--perhaps no inconsiderable proportion of the world.