“Yours, in many senses of the word,
“Kate Marsden.”
The third epistle was from Horace D’Almayne to a friend and ally in Paris. “We transcribe it verbatim:—
“Alphonse, mon cher,—I enclose you a draft for 3000 francs, wherewith I beg you to satisfy Carreau, the tailor, et tous les autres brigands, who render Paris an unsafe residence for me. You will naturally ask how I have obtained the money; not at the gaming-table, nor on the highway, like Claude Duval. Railroads and police have freed England from highwaymen. No; I have for the present filled my purse by studying the great game of life; in which, like all other games, you must either pillage, or be pillaged. You and I, men of wit and of action, naturally belong to the former class, and have meritoriously laboured to fulfil our destiny. Since I have been in England this time I have sedulously cultivated the millionaire I introduced to you last season, whose pocket you so obligingly relieved of £500 at piquet. I made a bad bargain there in only claiming one-third of the spoil; I should have demanded half, for without my assistance you could have done nothing with him; but I understand them, these cautious islanders, some of their blood runs in my veins—my mother, as you know, having been an Englishwoman. However, the time spent on my millionaire has turned out a more profitable investment than I at all calculated upon. He is a weak, vacillating character, one of those feeble-minded mortals who always require some intelligence stronger than their own to lean upon. This support he has found in your humble servant; and so convinced has he become of my diplomatic powers, that just at present he can do nothing without my approval and sanction. His great object in life is to marry, and it is to assist him in obtaining a wife that my counsel is required. When I first arrived here, I found he was dangling after a charming little country girl, the daughter of a landed proprietor in these parts. I soon discovered that the said proprietor, for mercenary reasons, desired the match; but with the young lady I could do nothing. I gave her the full benefit of my eyes, which, as you know, are not wont to look in vain; but it was no use—even ‘les petites moustaches noires,’ usually so irresistible, were thrown away upon her; nor had friend Crane’s £20,000 per annum (mon Dieu, Alphonse, quelle somme merveilleuse!) any more effect upon her. But I soon found a clue to her obduracy—the silly child was enamoured of her brother’s friend, a fox-hunting squire, a true specimen of young John Bull. I saw how the game would go, John Bull returned her affection; he is a real type of his class. Rich, obstinate, and impetuous, he was resolved to marry the pretty rustic; she was equally determined; her brother befriended him; the thing was to be, so I arranged my hand accordingly. There is in the family a belle cousine—such a splendid creature, Alphonse! beautiful as an angel, the contour of a Juno, the port of an empress. She has tact and talent; a soul of fire beneath an exterior of ice; she is poor and ambitious. I could not have hoped to find one better suited to my purpose. She shall marry Crane; his purse will be in her hands; he will become her slave; and, Alphonse, she shall be mine! Do you doubt my success, mon ami? Bah! the game is as simple as child’s play. She is young, ardent; she will marry an old man to satisfy her ambition—she will despise him. Her heart will pine for an object on which to lavish its tenderness; I shall present myself, become her friend, her counsellor—and the result? Oh, you cannot doubt it. So I have pulled the strings, and my marionnettes have danced, and are dancing. My millionaire offered—the little rustic refused him. While he was smarting from this insult, I suggested to him that la belle cousine pined for love of him; praised her wit and beauty; and advised him to revenge himself by transferring his attentions to her. The bait took; I worked out all the minor incidents admirably; the young fox-hunter has married the pretty rustic, and taken her out of my way yesterday. The lovely Kate, playing her own game, labours indefatigably for my interest also. My friend Crane is delighted, and shows his gratitude by urging me to borrow money of him—(I have mortgaged my farm in Brittany to him for six times its value; when the three prior claims upon it are satisfied, and he brings forward his, this fact will surprise him, and teach him prudence for the future)—I avail myself of his liberality with caution, for I must not cut up my golden goose too quickly. But it is well to have more than one resource to rely upon; so if your rich young German countess should resolve on visiting England, send me timely notice. I feel that my star is in the ascendant. Cher Alphonse, wish your friend the success which should reward talent, in the use of which you have so well instructed your devoted,
“Horace.”
CHAPTER XVIII.—ALICE’S FIRST INTRODUCTION TO HER HUSBAND’S “QUIET MANNER.”
If our readers, gentle or simple, will obligingly stretch their imaginations sufficiently to depict for themselves the happiness of Alice and Harry during the first month of their married life, popularly denominated the honeymoon, and be content to permit us to resume our office of chronicler at the termination of that mellifluous (though, to all but the parties concerned, especially insipid) season, the readers aforesaid will merit our eternal gratitude, which we hereby beg to present them with.
Alice and Harry, then, having been married one calendar mouth, during which period they had been “up” the Rhine, and one or two of the Swiss mountains—having seen a great many strange things and strange people—having talked a vast amount of bad French and worse German, and narrowly escaped an attack of cholera from listening to the dissonance of that arch-delusion the Ranz-des-Vaches—having eaten such wonderful articles, cooked in such wonderful fashion, that if the genus Bimana were not providentially omnivorous, they would infallibly have been poisoned—having travelled over land and water by every species of conveyance known to the annals of locomotion, except perhaps a balloon, or the back of an elephant—had at length made their way to Paris; and as the inhabitants of that skittish and inconstant capital were then figuratively patting each other on the back, by way of congratulation on the fortunate accident which had preserved those that remained alive after the latest revolution from having shot each other through the head, our bride and bridegroom, established in a comfortable hotel, had determined to remain there till such time as they should mutually agree upon for their return to England. For, be it observed, that enough of the halo of the honeymoon yet lingered around this young couple, to keep them in the misty delusion that they possessed but one “will of their own” between them. They had yet to learn that there is a higher, truer, nobler state of association to be arrived at, even here on earth—a state in which we recognise the deep happiness of being privileged to sacrifice our own desires to those of the being we love better than ourselves. A logician may stigmatise this as merely a refined phase of selfishness; but it is such selfishness as might cling to us in heaven, and we yet remain sinless. Be this as it may, Alice, who had never been abroad before, found every pleasure enhanced by the charm of novelty, and was in a perfect Elysium of happy excitement. Harry had seen and done it all, and a great deal more besides; and would have found it a bore, only it was sufficient amusement to him to watch his young wife’s delight at all she saw and heard. Whether this amusement of watching, petting, and spoiling Alice, was at all beginning to lose its charm, may be gathered from the following conversation:—