Mrs. Coverdale was some few minutes before she was, literally, awake to a sense of her situation; and the lady’s-maid entering while she was still between sleeping and waking, she half unconsciously asked the not unnatural question—“What has become of your master?”
“If you please, Mem, Master’s been out shooting partringers ever since five o’clock, Wilkins says. If you please, Mem, there’s a note for you, Mem, lying on your dressing-table, in Master’s handwriting.”
Rousing herself, Alice read it eagerly. The contents did not seem particularly to please her, for, as she refolded the paper, she looked grave, and gave vent to a mild sigh. “Do not undraw the curtain,” she said: “come again in an hour, Ellis; I feel sleepy, and there is nothing to get up for,” she added, in a slightly pettish tone. Falling asleep the moment she laid her head upon the pillow, Alice dreamed that when she came down to breakfast she found Harry had returned, saying that he could not bear to leave her alone all day, and so had come back and wished to drive her to call upon that agreeable woman, Mrs. Felicia Tabinette (a name with which she was inspired for the occasion, as no such neighbour existed), to which proposition she gladly assenting, they had gone out in a pony-chaise made of coral and mother-of-pearl, and drawn by two lovely little sea-green ponies with lilac manes and tails, and harness made of the best point lace. And she was just advancing the unanswerable proposition that, as lace was the fittest material of which to make a lady’s collar, it must also be the most proper fabric for that of a horse, when the inexorable Ellis appeared for the second time, and dispelled all her bright visions by awakening her to the dull reality. Alice, however, took her revenge upon that “dis-illusioning”—as a Frenchman would have called it—lady’s-maid, for she was more fastidious and difficult to please, and almost snappish, than Ellis had ever known her before, insomuch that the excellent Abigail afterwards propounded her opinion in the servants’ hall, that “Missus was tuter fay outer sorts,” which disheartening fact she accounted for by the hypothesis that she—Mrs. Coverdale—must have got out of bed with the wrong foot foremost.
While the tea for her solitary breakfast was drawing, Alice, having no one else to look at, amused herself by regarding her own natural—no term could be more appropriate—face in a large pier-glass, and was quite startled to behold the unmistakeably cross expression which characterized it. Taking herself to task for this, she, sipping her tea, which did not taste nearly so good as when Harry was at home, mentally decided that she was very unreasonable, and childish, and ridiculous—that when Harry had been devoting himself for the last month to her pleasure and amusement, going to balls and all sorts of places which he did not care a pin about, solely to please her, it was horribly selfish in her to grudge him a few hours to devote to a favourite pursuit—though how men could find delight in killing those poor birds, she could not tell. She did not so much wonder about other people; she believed men were generally cruel; but Harry was so unusually kind-hearted. She supposed it must be the excitement, and the beautiful scenery, and the interest in watching those dear, clever dogs stick out their long tails to point at the partridges with—which, looking at it in a Chesterfieldian point of view, was decidedly impolite, if not positively rude, of them; and yet she had heard gentlemen talk about their sporting dogs being so well-bred.
Having thus reasoned herself into a wiser frame of mind, she resolved to make the best of it; and suddenly recollecting she had at least a thousand things to do, which she was continually putting aside till some time or other when Harry should be out, she decided that this was the time, and that now or never must they all be done. Accordingly, she set vigorously to work, and wrote three letters one after another, to three former schoolfellows, wherein she described her husband as a species of modern demi-god, compounded of equal parts of Solomon and Adonis, with a dash of Achilles thrown in to do justice to his heroic qualities; and depicted matrimonial felicity in such glowing colours, that the richest and prettiest of her correspondents eloped the next week with her music-master; and one of the others, who was neither rich nor pretty, turned pious out of spite, and went into a sort of High Church Protestant nunnery-and-water, to punish the men, who, it must be confessed, appeared to submit to the trial with the most cheerful resignation. Then Alice brought out a large roll of bills, and a thick house-keeping book, ruled with blue lines, and having a business-like smell of new leather about the binding, which Alice flattered herself would impress even the stately housekeeper (who was old enough to be her mother, and stiff enough for anything; and of whom Alice, in her secret soul, stood very much in dread) with a deep sense of her being a very dragon of housewifery, prepared to be down upon the slightest attempt at peculation like an avenging fury. But the bills were so complicated, and never would add up twice alike, and the butcher was so inconsistent and slippery about his prices, sometimes charging 7d. and sometimes 7½d. as “if once a pound of mutton, always a pound of mutton,” were not an incontrovertible axiom; and the baker was as bad, besides choosing to spell dough, d.o.e., which at first made her think that he was the butcher and sold venison; and the hams seemed always to come from the tallow-chandler’s with the candles, which wasn’t by any means an agreeable association of ideas; and the footman was evidently of Esquimaux descent, and lived sumptuously upon lamp-oil at 8s. the gallon; and the coachman appeared to feed the carriage-horses with sponges, wash-leather, and rotten-stone, which she was sure could not be good for them; and she thought the under-housemaid had ordered herself a “Turk’s-head” dessert-cake, for her own private eating, but it turned out to be a particular species of broom; while the amount of hearth-stones and house-flannels that girl consumed would have served to build an “Albert pattern” model cottage once a quarter, and furnish the pauper inhabitants thereof with winter clothing: so that by the time luncheon arrived poor Alice, tired and confused, with inky fingers and an aching head, had come to the conclusion that she had nothing in common with Joseph Hume, M.P., and that for the future she should resign the glory of managing the housekeeper’s book to Mrs. Gripples, and restrict her department to the equally dignified, but less onerous, duty of making Harry sign the cheques, and handing them over to that august domestic to pay the bills with.
CHAPTER XXI.—THE EVENING OF THE SAME DAY.
Luncheon—a dreadful hot luncheon—luncheon enough for four hungry men, at least; and Alice had a headache. Of course she could not touch a bit, so she listlessly nibbled a biscuit, and sipped half a glass of wine, and felt very lonely and uncomfortable, and sat down to think—which was just the very worst thing she could have done under the circumstances, for it brought on a second attack of the “neglected wife” state of feeling; and she had actually proceeded so far, that she was about mentally to convict Harry (that matrimonial phoenix) of positive selfishness, when the enormity of the idea horrified her, and produced an instantaneous re-action, and she told herself, roundly and sharply, that she was ungrateful in the extreme, and weak, and childish and vacillating, and altogether unworthy of such a blessing of a husband as Harry Coverdale. And thus, having taken herself severely to task, and repented and confessed, and promising amendment for the future, yet refused herself absolution, she recovered sufficiently to determine that she would do something energetic to dissipate reflection, though of what nature the deed was to be, she had not the smallest conception. Should she order the carriage, and pay visits?—no, impossible! they were all first visits to a set of total strangers, and she could no more call upon them alone than she could fly: besides she would be lost in that great carriage all by herself, and the horses would be sure to avail themselves of the opportunity to shy and run away, if Harry were not there to protect her. She knew the white-legged horse had a spite against her, for when she wanted to pat his nose one day, he tried to bite her—what a wonderful thing instinct was, to be sure! No, she would go and take a brisk walk, that would rouse her, and do her headache good; besides, she could have the dear dogs for company—oh, yes! a walk by all means. Where should she go?—why, across the fields to visit Mrs. Markum, and see how the little stranger looked in his gorgeous apparel, and learn whether mother or son wanted for anything. Harry would like her to do that, he was so fond of Markum. Ah, Alice! had you no mental reservation?—did not a hope lurk in the bottom of your heart that at the gamekeeper’s cottage you might possibly catch a glimpse of his master, calling in for dry shoes, or a relay of powder and shot? Poor, loving little Alice, ashamed to confess, even to herself, the depth and strength of her affection!—silly little Alice, jealous even of her involuntary rivals, the partridges, who would gladly have dispensed with the attentions her husband was paying them!—weak, foolish, little Alice!—and yet more truly wise in such loving folly, stronger in the weakness of such tender womanly devotion, nearer the Divine ideal, whence God who made man in his own image formed woman as a help meet for him, than the most self-engrossed esprit fort who ever confused herself and others by prating of things above her comprehension.
So Alice set out for her solitary ramble, taking with her Pepper and Ginger, which (although the former was often found in a pretty pickle, and would have been wholly inappropriate in a bream tart; and the latter, judging by the appearance of a very red tongue, was decidedly “hot i’ the mouth”) were not a couple of spicy condiments, but a brace of Skye terriers. The dogs were in charming spirits, which they displayed by running after and barking at respectable blackbirds seeking their frugal “diet of worms;” coming back in eccentric and violent circles, to twitch the ends of Alice’s boa and the corners of her shawl, only to dash away again and lose themselves, by forcing burglarious entrances into forbidden rabbit-burrows, with the vicious intention of worrying the timid inmates, in their little brown coats with practical jokes of tails. And here be it observed parenthetically, that of all the freaks of nature, the unexpected way in which she has seen fit to turn up rabbits’ tails, and to line them with white, to the great disfigurement and personal hazard of the owners, has always appeared to us one of the strangest, and only to be accounted for by the hypothesis of a chronic practical joke. Whether this idea enhanced the fun Pepper and Ginger had with the rabbits during that expedition, or whether it never occurred to them, is more than we can tell; but the extent to which those dogs persisted in burying themselves alive, and harassing their mistress by a succession of these amateur extramural interments, almost justifies us in supposing it must have done so.