“As usual, you were going to say,” rejoined Harry; “speak your thoughts honestly, whatever injustice they may do me. But if, in future, instead of condemning me unheard, you were to admit the possibility—nothing more—of my being willing occasionally to sacrifice my wishes to yours, it might save us both considerable pain and misconception; recollect this, and reflect upon it quietly and calmly.” So saying, he placed his wife’s writing-table before her, found her a footstool, and left the room.
As the sound of his retreating footsteps died away in the distance, Alice felt decidedly penitent, and wished she could unsay all the sharp things she had uttered at the beginning of the conversation; but this was a frame of mind too uncomfortable to last long, and so she consoled herself by the reflection that if, on this particular occasion, she had done her husband an injustice, it was his conduct at other times which had led her to do so. It was unfair to blame herself for the natural effect his selfishness and unkindness had produced upon her mind; she was sure there had been a period, before she was so rudely awakened from her “love’s young dream,” when she had given him credit for possessing every noble, heroic, and tender quality under the sun: it was not her fault that she could think so no longer—people must take the consequences of their own misdeeds. And so, consoling herself with these and many like arguments, and magnifying the mote in her husband’s eye, and ignoring the beam in her own, Alice talked herself into her former frame of mind, and sat down to write her acceptance of Kate’s invitation, convinced that if her husband had said “Yes” on this occasion, he would say “No” on every other.
CHAPTER XXX.—INTRODUCES A LORDLY GALLANT.
That day week saw Alice, Harry, and Celeste (a little pert soubrette, whom Alice had brought back from Paris with her), on their way to the railway-station at H————; a groom and a couple of saddle-horses (without which Harry could not support the burden of a London life) having preceded them by a slower train. As Harry had a great horror of being too late, and had flurried and bustled Alice to such a degree that, if she had not been the most good-natured little woman in the world (except in matters connected with the feelings), she would assuredly have lost her temper, of course they were at least a quarter of an hour too soon, and were forced to promenade up and down beneath a Brobdignagian glass roof, open at each end, and enjoy the large supply of draughts afforded by this ingenious compromise between indoors and out of doors. Having paced up and down the platform for some ten minutes or so—lost Celeste and the trunks, and found them again—and narrowly escaped violent death from wild luggage-barrows, urged by reckless and excited porters, neatly bound in green corduroy, and numbered like the lots in a saleroom,—the train by which they were to fly to London crawled up ignominiously at the tail of a strong-minded cart-horse, which a heroic but unclean supernumary conducted in the way he should go. Just as Alice had taken her seat, and was imploring Harry to join her before a dreadful green dragon of a locomotive engine (which had been getting up its steam, and taking in its fuel, and wetting its whistle, and otherwise performing its awful toilet in a neighbouring cavern, whence it issued looking as vicious, and dangerous, and eager to burst in a tunnel, as a furious steam-devil could do) should get at him and do him a mischief, a tall, elegant-looking young man, who was seeking for an unoccupied place, suddenly exclaimed—
“I beg pardon, but surely I have the pleasure of seeing Harry—a—that is—Mr. Coverdale?”
“A true bill, sir,” replied Harry; “but just at present you’ve all the pleasure to yourself, for I must honestly confess that I do not recollect you; and yet—no—yes—why, it can’t be little Alfred Courtland?”
“As for the ‘little,’ I must leave you to judge for yourself; the copy-books tell us that ‘all weeds grow apace,’ and I’m afraid I’m a shocking example; but Alfred Courtland I most certainly am, and delighted to meet an old acquaintance—if an urchin in the under-school dare pretend to have been on such a footing with one of the sixth form.”
“Little Alfred Courtland, six feet high, and cultivating whiskers! Wonders will never cease,” resumed Harry, meditatively: “but are you going by this train? Jump in here, man, and I’ll introduce you to my wife. Alice, this is Alfred—I beg his pardon, but I can’t remember he’s not a little boy still—Lord Alfred Courtland. You remember Arthur Hazlehurst, my fidus Achates, don’t you, Courtland? my wife is his sister. Tickets! well, here they are. What a suspicious generation these railway officials are! anybody would suppose they had been accustomed to deal with thieves and pickpockets all their lives, instead of honest Englishmen. But I hate the railroads, root and branch, that’s a fact; they’ve ruined the breed of horses in this country.”