The General was a little disappointed with his guests, when, on the retirement of the ladies, a magnum of undeniable claret exhaled its aroma for their immediate benefit, and he found it did not by any means disappear with that military rapidity to which he was accustomed in his younger days. Charlie’s cough was a sufficient excuse for his abstemiousness; and Frank Hardingstone, though he could drink a bucketful on occasion, would not open his lips on compulsion; so the General found himself in consequence obliged to grapple with the giant almost single-handed. This, to do him justice, he undertook with considerable gusto, and by the time he had got to the bottom of his measure, had arrived at that buoyant state in which gentlemen are more prone to broach such matters of business as they may think it expedient to undertake, than to explain clearly the method by which their desired ends can most readily be attained. Accordingly, when Frank and Charlie rose to join the ladies in the drawing-room, our old soldier called the latter back to the fire-place, and filling himself a large bumper of sherry as an orthodox conclusion to the whole, bid his nephew sit down again for five minutes, and have a little quiet conversation on a subject which should not be too long postponed. “Just three words, Charlie,” said the General, sipping his sherry; “won’t you have a whitewash, my boy? Three hundred and sixty-five more glasses in the year, you know. You won’t? Well, Charlie, I’m right glad to see you back again. To-morrow I must go over everything with you as regards money matters. Frank has told you all about the will. What? Zounds! it was very singular—I confess I expected it all along.” The General was one of those truest of prophets whose predictions are reserved until the fulfilment of events. Finding that Charlie took this extraordinary instance of foresight very coolly, he proceeded, as he thought, to beat about the bush in a most skilful manner.
“Well, Charlie, and how d’ye think we’re all looking, eh? Wear well and struggle on, don’t we? I’ve taken pretty good care of your cousin for you, my boy, during your absence. How d’ye think she’s looking, eh?”
Charlie, who had not thought about it at all, answered, “Very well.”
And the General filled himself another glass of sherry and went on—“By Jove, Charlie, I congratulate you on that, eh? Shake hands, my lad. Zounds! we’ll drink Blanche’s health. Now I’ve put everything en train. We can have the lawyers down at a moment’s notice. Blanche’s things, to be sure, will have to be got; women can’t do without such a quantity of clothes. Why, when Rummagee Bang’s widow was burnt—however, that’s neither here nor there. Now tell me, Charlie, when do you think it ought to come off?”
“My dear uncle, I can’t think what you’re talking about,” replied Charlie, trying to look as if he didn’t understand; “I don’t see what I’ve got to do with Blanche’s things.”
“Talking of?” resumed the General, “why, the wedding, to be sure. What else should I be talking of? You’re quite prepared, I suppose. I’ve arranged it all with Blanche; she cried and all that, but I know the sex, Charlie, and I could see—zounds, sir! she’s de-lighted. Never was such an arrangement—keeps all the money together, fulfils everyone’s intentions. What?—and then it’s been such a long attachment, ever since you were both children, corals and long petticoats. Petticoats! How d’ye mean?”
“But, Uncle Baldwin,” pleaded Charlie, with some difficulty getting in a word edgeways, “don’t you think all this is somewhat premature?”
“Premature! what the devil?” replied the General—“zounds, sir! not at all premature; quite the contrary, been put off too long, in fact. Never mind, better late than never. These things should be done out of hand. Why, sir, when I was at Cheltenham in ’25, the very year of that claret, by the way,” pointing to the empty magnum, “there was a handsome widow wanted to marry me at twelve hours’ notice. Did I ever tell you how I got off, Charlie? ’Gad, sir, Mulligatawney, of the Civil Service, got me out of the town in a return hearse; but even death couldn’t part us, my boy—zounds! she followed me to Bath, and I was laid up on the second-floor of the York House with the scarlet fever—the scarlet fever! and I was as well as you are—till we starved her out; and when they said I was disfigured for life she gave in.” The General chuckled till the tears came into his eyes; then, recollecting his moral was somewhat anti-matrimonial, checked himself into supernatural gravity, and resumed on the other tack. “But marriage is a respectable state, Charlie; there’s nothing like it, so Mulligatawney tells me, to sober a man. Marriage, Charlie,” said the General, oracularly, with a solemn shake of the head, “marriage is like that empty decanter. It comes in sparkling and blushing, like sunrise on a May morning. What?—You draw the cork, and the first glass is heaven upon earth—that’s the honeymoon; then you fill another—same flavour, but not quite equal to the first. Never mind, try again; so you keep sipping and sipping, to analyse, if you can, the real taste of the beverage, and before you satisfy yourself you come to the end of the bottle; then, sir, when you get to the bottom you can see through it, and you find how empty it is! Not that I mean exactly that,” said the General, again catching himself up, as he found that his metaphor, having taken a wrong turn, had led to a somewhat unexpected conclusion. “But we can’t stop here all night,” added he; “so tell me, my boy, when I may begin to send out invitations for the breakfast.”
Charlie blushed up all over his emaciated face, as he replied, pulling vehemently at his moustaches, “Why, uncle, it’s best to be explicit, and I like to be straightforward about everything, so I may as well tell you at once, I—I’m hardly prepared to marry—in fact, I’m rather adverse to it—in short,” said Charlie, gaining courage as he went on, “I’ve no immediate idea of marrying at all, and, with all my respect and brotherly affection for her, certainly not Blanche.”
“Certainly not Blanche!” repeated the General, in something between a shriek and a moan. “Certainly not Blanche!—and why, in the name of all that’s de—de—disgusting? Certainly not Blanche! Zounds! I see it all now; you’ve got a black wife—don’t deny it!—a black wife and a swarm of piebald picaninnies. Oh dear! oh dear! that I should live to see this day—I shall never get over it—it’s killing me now;——, I feel it here, sir, in the pit of my stomach! I’ll go to bed,” he vociferated, untying his neckcloth on the spot; “I’ll go to bed this instant, and never get up again!” With which lugubrious threat the General, regardless of Charlie’s protestations and remonstrances, did in effect stump furiously off to his den, whence his dressing-room bell was forthwith heard pealing with alarming violence; nor did he appear any more that evening, leaving the gentlemen to drag out a weary sitting, still at cross purposes, each in the society of her he loved best in the world.