“’Pon my word, my dear Mrs. Coverdale, when I see you and my friend Harry here so happy together.” (Harry seized a pear and began denuding it of its rind with a kind of ferocious eagerness, suggestive to any one acquainted with the dessous des cartes of his willingness to perform a similar operation upon his mal à-propos guest), “I declare it makes a fellow feel quite down in the mouth when he thinks of going home to enjoy his own single blessedness, as they call it—though single t’other thing would be more like the truth, I fancy—but then it isn’t everybody that’s as lucky as Harry and you—not suited to each other so charmingly, you understand.” (Alice, avoiding her husband’s eye, bent over her sweetmeat as though she were anxious to count the number of spangles of candied sugar it took to cover a square inch thereof.) “Now there was a man in our regiment—curious coincidence, his name was Harry, too—but those things do happen so curiously—Harry Flusterton his name was—well, ma’am, when we were quartered up at Montreal, there was a family there to whom Harry and I took out introductions, and as we found ourselves decidedly hard up for amusement, we used to visit there pretty much. There were two or three daughters in the family, but the eldest was the one that took my fancy most, and Harry Flusterton was of the same opinion. Accordingly we both laid siege to her, but Harry soon began to shoot ahead, and I, finding that it was no go, quietly took up with number two, who, although she hadn’t her sister’s points, figure, or action, was by no means a girl to be despised, especially in a dull place like that; well, my dear fellow—haw!—my dear ma’am, I mean—’pon my word, I’m not fit for ladies’ society—but the long and short of it is, Harry was married—everybody thought he was the luckiest dog breathing—I’m sure I did for one, and said as much to Eliza—that was the younger one, you understand, that I was obliged to put up with. When I made that remark to her, she looked at me queer like, and says she, ‘I hope your friend is a very sweet temper, Mr. Rattleworth?’ ‘Of course he is,’ returned I, for he was, up to the day he married, as easy tempered a fellow as you’d wish to meet with. Would you believe it, Mrs. Coverdale, this charming creature that we had both fallen so desperately in love with (not but that I liked Eliza just as well when I once got used to her) turned, out a regular vixen—a perfect virago, ma’am; why Harry himself told me that they hadn’t much more than got over the honeymoon, when the first time he wanted her to do something she didn’t like, some nonsense about visiting, or some such stuff, the way she flared up was a caution to single men——”
“My dear Rattleworth, I’m sorry to interrupt you,” exclaimed Coverdale, who could bear it no longer, “but I’m afraid my wife is a little overcome by the heat of the room—those servants will make such ridiculously large fires. My dear Alice, if you prefer the drawing-room, I’m sure Rattleworth will excuse you; this place is like the black-hole in Calcutta.” And while Rattleworth, talking all the time, sprang to open the door, Harry covered his wife’s retreat by instituting a furious onslaught upon the unoffending fire. It was well he came to the rescue when he did, for in another minute Alice would have been in hysterics. To get rid of his dear friend as soon as possible was Harry’s next anxiety, but this was no such easy matter. Thomas Rattleworth, Esq., M.F.H., was at that happy moment the victim of two strenuous necessities—one to listen to the sound of his own voice, expressing not so much his ideas as his paucity thereof; and the other to imbibe a bottle of port wine, in twelve doses of a wine-glass each; and these necessities had the unfortunate property of re-acting upon and increasing each other; for talking made him thirsty, and drinking made him talkative, so that it was eleven o’clock before he had talked himself out, by which time the terminus of a second bottle of port had been arrived at. With a feeling of relief such as Sinbad the Sailor might have experienced when he felt the legs of the Old Man of the Sea gradually relaxing their clasp around his wearied shoulders, did Harry assist his friend to light a cigar, then watched its fiery tip gradually disappear in the darkness, as Rattleworth’s cover hack cantered off with its master’s six feet one of good-natured goose-flesh.
Left to his own meditations, Harry started a cigar on his own account, and, the night being a fine one, he paced up and down the gravel walk in front of the house until he should have cleared his brain from the fumes of the wine civility had forced him to swallow. The calm stars came out one by one, and as he watched their bright effulgence, an idea of his childhood, that they might be the eyes of angels, recurred to his memory; and he could even fancy they appeared to gaze upon him reproachfully. No human being possessing even the lowest order of reflective powers, or the faintest vestige of imagination, can watch the tranquil splendour of a starlight night—a scene which at once proclaims God’s omnipotence, and appears a work fitted to the majesty of the Great Being who created it for his own glory—without becoming imbued with the idea of rest and peace, and desirous of realising these blessings in his own life. “With God and infinity so near us, how we loathe the trifles of existence! and, above all, how we despise and contemn the littleness of our fallen nature! how we repent with bitter tears of shame and contrition the evils they have wrought in ourselves, and through us to others! And how, at such a moment, do the qualities we inherit from heaven—truth, and love, and mercy—expand within us, and fill our souls, and raise us, for the time, above ourselves, and nearer to the high estate from which we have fallen—alas I that it should be only for the time! Coverdale was not insensible to these elevating influences; his love for Alice returned in all its original strength and purity, and he determined, before he slept that night, to bring about a reconciliation, even if his wife should refuse to confess that she had acted wrongly. Yes! he would actually go the length of owning that he had been to blame and was sorry for it, and then Alice would forgive him, and all would be as though this foolish disagreement had never occurred.
False reasoning, Harry! there are two things a woman, however thoroughly she may forgive them, never forgets—neglect and unkindness; and when once these have cast their shadow across the bright eager gladness with which she yields up her whole soul as a thank-offering to him she loves, man, with his stronger, sterner nature, can no more bring back the delicacy and freshness of that young affection, than he can restore to the peach the bloom which his careless fingers have profaned—the love may still exist in its full reality, but the bright halo of early romance which surrounded it has been dispelled, never to return.
CHAPTER XXVII.—THE PLEASURES OF KEEPING UP THE GAME.
Having looked at the stars, and profited by their quiet teaching, Harry went in a sadder and a wiser man, resolved, ere he slept that night, to confess his fault, and, if it might be so, obtain Alice’s forgiveness. But Alice, tired and unhappy, had gone to bed, and cried herself to sleep like a weary child; and when Harry entered her room, he found her lying with her head pillowed on her arm, and the tear-drops scarcely dried upon her long silken eyelashes, as soundly asleep as though care, and sin, and sorrow, were evils of which her philosophy had never dreamed—so Coverdale could only invoke a silent blessing upon her, and hasten to follow her example by going to bed and to sleep himself. Thus an opportunity was lost of regaining the “high estate” in his wife’s affections, from which he had fallen by reason of his inconsiderate selfishness, and hasty and impetuous temper; and it is a fact equally true and trying, that an opportunity once lost never returns, even an advertisement in the Times would fail to regain it.
One of the strangest and least comprehensive of psychological phenomena is the total change produced in our thoughts, feelings, opinions, hopes, fears, sympathies, antipathies, and all the other component parts which make up that wonderful spiritual steam-engine, the mind of man, by a good night’s sleep. We go to bed desperately in love with some charming girl we have flirted with half the evening, despising her cruel old male parent, who would come and disturb our tête-à-tête, and take her away at least an hour sooner than anybody not utterly callous to all the finer feelings of human nature would have dreamed of doing; and having with unchristian malignity her tall cousin in the Blues, who, having known her from her cradle upwards, dared to call her “Gussie” to our very face—we sleep soundly, our mind lies fallow for some six hours, and lo! a change has come o’er us; our goddess has stepped down from her pedestal, and appears a very average specimen of white muslined femininity and flirtation, whom her father has improved into quite an amiable model paterfamilias, at whose patient benignity in remaining, to please his daughter, at an evening party till half-past three a.m. we actually marvel; and as to that fine young fellow her cousin, we are really shocked when we recall our unchristian feelings towards him, and, as some slight compensation, mentally book him for an invite to that dinner at Blackwall which we propose bestowing upon a dozen of our very particular friends, in the unlikely event of our exchequer holding out till the white-bait season. Thus, by the next morning, Coverdale had slept off the sharp edge of his penitence, and when Alice began by a great effort to refer to the events of the previous day, with the intention of confessing herself in the wrong, and asking forgiveness, Harry, dreading a scene with a degree of horror equally masculine and English, checked the flow of her eloquence by exclaiming abruptly and cheerfully, “Yes, dear, certainly—but don’t say another word about it; we were both very silly, and made each other very miserable, when we might be as happy as the day is long; let bygones be bygones, we will forgive and forget, and be wiser for the future, eh?” As he spoke, he drew her to him, and sealing his forgiveness on her lips with a kiss, rendered all discussion impossible by leaving the room.
This speech (kiss included) ought to have satisfied any reasonable wife, but unfortunately at that moment Alice was not exactly in a reasonable frame of mind; she had dwelt so long on one idea, in accordance with which she had arranged the whole programme of a dramatic reconciliation scene, that she by no means approved of Harry’s short cut to concord, rendering null and void all her explanation of how, and why, and wherefore she had come to behave ill, together with a spirited sketch in monologue of her contrition for the past and vows of amendment for the future; the whole to conclude with certain annotations and reflections, which she trusted would so affect her husband’s feelings, and convince his understanding, that he would for the future restrict shooting to two short mornings a-week, and cast hunting “to the dogs” entirely, and now all the mysterious pleasure the gentler sex derive from talking a thing well over, was denied her.