She could not conclude her sentence, but Frere seemed perfectly satisfied with the fragment as it stood.
The result of the interview may best be gathered from the following remark of Mrs. Arundel, who, returning home about an hour after the occurrence of the conversation above related, declared that when she came in “she found to her horror and astonishment Ursa Major looking as if he would like to hug Rose, and, stranger still, Rose appearing rather flattered by the attention than otherwise.”
CHAPTER LIII.—DEPICTS THE MARRIED LIFE OF CHARLEY LEICESTER.
We must now request our readers to draw on the seven-leagued boots of their imaginations, and, thus accoutred, to stride remorselessly over the space of two years. ’Tis soon done; a slight mental effort, an agile hop, skip, and jump of the fancy, and the gulf is passed—time is annihilated. Let us raise the curtain and mark the changes the destroyer has wrought. The world goes round much the same as before; two years make little difference in the personal appearance of the fifty-eight-centuries-old planet—no lack of births, deaths, and marriages to regulate the average supply of the human race; if the cholera creates a deficiency one year, more poor curates marry, and starving Irishmen take unto themselves wives, the next, and those “beautiful” babies who contrive to turn out such very plain adults multiply upon the face of the earth, and the thinned ranks are replenished. And yet two years cause strange alterations when we dive beneath the surface of society and become cognisant of the fortunes of individuals: smiles have given place to tears, and the grief of the mourner has turned to joy; poor men have grown rich and rich men poor, and the bad (with but few, very few exceptions to prove the rule) have become worse, and the good advanced in righteousness; and the mass of the half-hearted, clinging yet more closely to this earth, of which they are so enamoured, where their grave is awaiting them, see heaven afar off, and wish feebly, and for a shorter time each seventh day, that they were good enough to reach it. Thus the passenger train, with its cargo of hopes, and fears, and wishes, speeds along the Railroad of Life.
In a magnificent apartment in one of those Arabian-night-like edifices, a Venetian palazzo—which, having belonged to one of the great historical families of the middle ages, whose chief was, by virtue of his position, a petty sovereign, was now let for the season to a wealthy Englishman—lounged Charley Leicester, whose own surprise at the change of fortune which could render such a description of him appropriate had not even yet ceased. On a sofa opposite sat his wife, on whose knee was perched a very young gentleman, to whom we could scarcely sooner have introduced our readers, for the excellent reason that he had not made his appearance at the Cradle Terminus of our Railroad when last we treated of his amiable parents. The present phase of this extremely young aristocrat was, so to speak, one of ex-babyhood; he was in the very act of ceasing to be “the most beautiful creature in the world,” and as yet retained enough of his pristine loveliness to deserve the epithet of a really pretty child. He exhibited in his proper person an instance of that strange phenomenon which (why, we have either no idea, or we hope, for the sake of morality, a wrong one) always excites such extreme astonishment in the minds of all nurses, maiden aunts, and female acquaintance—he was decidedly like his own proper papa and mamma. For the rest, when placed on the carpet he preferred a quadrupedal to an erect method of progression—had a strange habit of making the rashest experiments in gastronomy by putting everything wrong and dangerous into his mouth—never sat still for two minutes consecutively—would, in the same breath, laugh heartily and bewail himself piteously, from exciting causes, which may be expected to remain a mystery throughout all time, and confined his conversation to two substantives and a colloquial hieroglyphic—viz., “Pap-pa,” “Mam-ma,” and “gib-Tarley,” which last was believed to be an infantine-English compound of his Christian name and the verb “to give,” and signified an insatiable desire to render himself monarch of all he surveyed by a process of general self-appropriation. At the moment in which we shall introduce the reader to the party thus assembled, a servant entered bearing a packet of letters on a silver waiter, and handing them to Leicester, withdrew.
“Letters from England, by Jove!” exclaimed Charles, untying the string which encircled them.
“Any for me, Charley?” inquired Laura, who in her position of wife and mother looked the prettiest little matron conceivable.
“Two for me, and one for you, from Annie Grant, if I may judge by the writing,” replied her husband, as he rose to hand it to her.