The General had been away about a fortnight, when Lewis received a letter from Rose informing him for the first time of her literary pursuits. Since we have last heard of this young lady she had been growing decidedly blue. Not only had she, under Bracy’s auspices, published a series of papers in Blunt’s Magazine, but she had positively written a child’s book, which, although it contained original ideas, good sense, and warm feeling, instead of second-hand moral platitudes, and did not take that particularly natural view of life which represents it as a system of temporal rewards and punishments, wherein the praiseworthy elder sister is always recompensed with an evangelical young duke, and the naughty boys are invariably drowned on clandestine skating expeditions, yet found an enterprising publisher willing to purchase it; nay, so well did it answer, that the courageous bibliopolist had actually expressed a wish to confer with the “talented authoress,” as he styled poor Rose, in regard to a second work. Whereupon Frere despatched a note to that young lady, telling her she had better come up to town at once, offering her the use of his house in a rough and ready way, just as if he had been writing to a man; and though he did add in a postscript that if she fancied she should be dull, she’d better bring her mother with her, the afterthought was quite as likely to have arisen from sheer good-nature, as from any, even the most faint, glimmering of etiquette. Owing, to a judicious hint thrown out by Bracy, however, an invitation arrived, at the same time, from Lady Lombard, which Mrs. Arundel had immediately decided on accepting, and the object of Rose’s letter was to inquire whether there was the slightest hope of Lewis being able to meet them.
By the same post arrived a note written by Annie from her father’s dictation, saying that he found he was quite unable to get on without Mr. Arundel’s assistance; that he considered change of scene might prove beneficial to Walter, and that it was therefore his wish that Lewis and his pupil should join them immediately after the bustle of the wedding should be over; which scheme chimed in with the young tutor’s wishes most admirably, and for the rest of the morning he was so happy as to be quite unlike his usual grave and haughty self, and astonished Faust to such a degree by placing his fore-paws against his own chest, and in that position constraining him to waltz round the room on his hind-legs, that the worthy dog would have assuredly taken out a statute of lunacy against his master had he been aware of the existence of such a process.
Those who witnessed the marriage of the Hon. Charles Leicester to the lovely and accomplished daughter of the late Peregrine Peyton, Esq., of Stockington Manor, in the county of Lancashire (they said nothing of Ludgate Hill and ignored Plumpstern totally), describe it to have been a truly edifying ceremony. The fatal knot was tied, and the wretched pair launched into a married state by the Bishop of L————, the unhappy victims submitting to their fate with unexampled fortitude and resignation, and the female spectators evincing by their tears that the lesson to be derived from the awful tragedy enacting before them would not be thrown away upon them. Nor were the good intentions thus formed allowed to swell the list of “unredeemed pledges” whence that prince of pawnbrokers, Satan, is popularly supposed to select his paving materials, as, during the ball which concluded the evening, two fine young men of property fell victims to premature declarations, and after a rapid decline from the ways of good fellowship were carried off by matrimony, and departed this (i.e., fashionable) life in less than two months after their first seizure.
On Lewis’s arrival in town he found a small packet directed to him in Leicester’s handwriting, containing, besides the glazed cards lovingly coupled by silver twist, a remarkably elegant gold watch and chain for the waistcoat pocket, together with a few lines from Charley himself, saying that to Lewis’s good advice and plain speaking he felt he in a great measure owed his present happiness, and that he hoped Lewis would wear the enclosed trifle, the joint gift of himself and Laura, to remind him of their mutual friendship and regard. Had he known that Annie Grant had noticed the fact of his not possessing a watch, and suggested the nature of the gift to her cousin, he would have valued it even more highly than he did.
The happy pair had determined to test the endurance of their felicity by starting for the Rhine, which popular river it was their intention to go up as far as it was go-up-able, then proceed to Switzerland, do that land of musical cows and icy mountains thoroughly, and finally take up their quarters at Florence, where Leicester had succeeded in obtaining a diplomatic appointment. A letter had been received from them dated Coblentz, wherein it appeared their newfound happiness had stood the voyage better than might have been expected; a fact mainly attributable to their having had an unusually calm passage. Laura considered the Rhine scenery exquisite; Charley thought it all very well for a change; but for a constancy, he must confess he preferred the Serpentine. He was disgusted with the German students, whom he stigmatised as “awful tigers,” wondered why the women wore short petticoats if they hadn’t better ankles to show, complained bitterly of the intense stupidity of the natives for not understanding either French or English, and wound up by a long, violent sentence quite unconnected with all that had gone before it, setting forth his unalterable conviction that Laura was an angel, which unscriptural assertion he reiterated four times in as many lines.
A change had taken place in Rose Arundel, and Lewis, as he gazed with affection on her calm, pensive brow, and marked the earnest, thoughtful expression of her soft, grey eyes, felt that she was indeed altered: he had left her little more than a child, he found her a woman in the best and fullest sense of the expression. Reader, do you know all that phrase implies? do you understand what is meant by a woman in the true and fullest sense of the term?
“Eh? I should rather think I did, too, just a very little,” replies Ensign Downylip, winking at society at large; “know what a woman is? yes, I consider that good, rather.”
“And what, oh! most exquisite juvenile, may be your definition of woman as she should be?”
The Ensign strokes his upper lip where that confounded moustache is so very “lang a comin’,” rubs his nose to arouse his intellect, which he fails to do because that faculty is not asleep but wanting, and replies—
“Ar—well, to begin with: woman is of course a decidedly inferiar animal, but—ar—take the best specimen of the class, and you’ll find it vewy pwitty, picquante, devoted to polking, light in hand, clean about the pasterns, something like Fanny Elsler, with a dash of Lady—to give it style (I can’t stand vulgawity), decidedly fast (I hate your cart-horsey gals)! plenty of bustle to make it look spicy, ready to go the pace no end, and able properly to—ahem! appweciate ‘Yours truly’—ar—that’s about the time of day, eh, Mr. Author!”