"I hold him but a fool, that would endanger
His body for a girl that loves him not."
Fallowfield left us the next morning, the Bellasys later in the same day. They were to pay divers visits, and then return to Kerton. Lady Catharine pressed them to do so; though she liked the daughter less than the mother, she was so anxious Guy should marry some one that I think she would have accepted even Flora with thankfulness.
It is a favorite delusion with the British parent that marriage will work a miracle, and steady their children for life, by casting forth the lutins who beset them. A thousand failures have not convinced the good speculative matrons of the hazard of the experiment, nor will as many more do so; they will go on match-making and blundering to the end of time. For a very brief space the evil spirits are exorcised; but before the gloss is off the new-married couple's new furniture, one of the band creeps back and opens the door to his fellows. These hardly know their old quarters at first, but they soon begin to like them better than ever—are they not swept and garnished? "So they enter in and dwell there, and"—I need not finish the sentence; a thousand sweet though somewhat shrill voices will save me that trouble—a doleful music—an ancient tale of wrong—the Song of the Brides! They used to say that a man never went so hard to hounds after entering the holy estate. If this be so, I fear it is the only comforting result which follows of course.
What Flora and Guy said to each other at parting I can not guess. Neither was of the sentimental order, and both might have taken for their motto, "Lightly won and lightly lost." Her hand lingered somewhat long in his as they said farewell, but she was smiling, if any thing, more saucily than ever. So she went, leaving behind her no tangible token, except a tiny pearl-colored glove, which Guy twisted rather pensively between his fingers as he stood on the hall steps, and watched the carriage disappear down the avenue. Mr. Bruce exulted after his saturnine fashion, and Isabel Raymond trembled; the one had lost a strong, unscrupulous ally, the other a formidable enemy.
"Why don't you open those letters, Charley?" Livingstone asked at breakfast, next morning, pointing to a pile that lay unopened by the letters plate.
"My dear boy, I haven't the heart to do it," was the reply. "They are all expressive, I know, of different phases of mercantile despair. I believe these men keep a supplicant, as Moses maintains a poet. The last appeal from my saddler was perfectly heartrending: he could not have written it himself, for he looks as tough as his own pig-skin. If he had, he would be impayable in more ways than one. What can I do? I can't come down on the poor old man who has the misfortune to be my father for more supplies when rents are being reduced fifteen per cent. The tradesmen must learn to endure. They have a splendid chance of attaining the victory of suffering."
Bruce smiled complacently to himself, and then superciliously at Charley. He had just received a letter from his banker, consulting him as to the disposal of a superfluous thousand or so, and he was hesitating between some dock shares and a promising railway.
"Yes," Forrester went on, "it's very well for you to talk in that hardened way, as you did the other night, about detrimentals and second sons. I wonder how you would like to have an elder brother, a pillar of learned societies, and as tenacious of life as one of his pet zoophytes? He used to consume quantities of medicine, which was encouraging; but lately he has taken to homœopathy, which was quite out of the match. He told me, lately, that 'four hundred a year and my pay was affluence.' Affluence!"
It is impossible to describe the cadence of plaintive indignation which he gave to the last word. The recollection of his wrongs had made him almost energetic: we listened to his eloquence in respectful surprise.