CHAPTER V.
A RETURNED CALIFORNIAN.
At last, Matthew Maltboy was engaged. He had, since twenty, been dallying on the edge of a betrothal. Now he had taken the momentous step into that anomalous region which lies between celibacy and married life, where a man is not exactly a bachelor, nor yet, by any means, a husband. It is the land in which the dim enchantments of romance begin to assume the plain outlines of reality. It is the land in which the pledge of undying affection, breathed, at some rapturous moment, into a delicate, inclining ear, becomes invested with awful meaning, and has a value in the legal market like a bond and mortgage. It is the land where the excitement of pursuit is over, and the game is securely cornered, but not yet in hand. It is the spot where the ardent huntsman of Love pauses to look back, and ceases to bend his longing gaze into the distance beyond.
How it came to pass that the unreliable Matthew Maltboy had become the affianced one of the pleasant widow Frump, it is not the purpose of this history to record. Let it suffice to say, that the mutual aversion which they felt, some months before, at Mr. Whedell's house, on New Year's day, was the starting point in their course of true love. Such an aversion, subsequently smoothed away, is often the most promising beginning of a courtship.
Mrs. Frump had frequently met Matthew on the street, and been gratified with his deferential bow. His bulk, to which, as a rotund lady, she had taken an antipathy, seemed to dwindle down as it was looked at. Matthew, whose ideal was a delicate woman with observable shoulder blades, had also, by repeated sights of Mrs. Frump, become reconciled to her ample proportions. Meantime, they had heard much, incidentally, of each other through Marcus Wilkeson. Matthew had come to esteem Mrs. Frump for her affectionate devotion to old Van Quintem; and Mrs. Frump had secretly admired the powerful though silent legal ability displayed by Mr. Maltboy in the inquisition before Coroner Bullfast.
One night, Matthew, accompanied Marcus to his old friend's house; and, on the second night following, this couple were engaged--a happy event, which was brought about no less by the widow's experience, and conviction that there was no time to lose, than by Matthew's impulsive ardor.
He had been engaged ten days; and so entirely had he talked out the time to the widow, that it seemed six months.
"Why is it," thought Matthew, stretching himself in his chair, and looking critically at the widow, who was knitting crotchet work, "why is it that I no longer adore her? She is just as pretty, just as amiable, just as affectionate as ever. Now, why don't I care a button for her at this moment?" Matthew was not a transcendental philosopher; and the true answers to these questions did not come to him.
Old Van Quintem, pale and beautiful in his declining years, sat by the window that opened on the green leaves of the back yard, calmly smoking his pipe, and thinking, with a holy sadness, of his dead wife and his worse-than-dead son. The old gentleman, and the two quiet affianced ones, who sat near him, made up a well-dressed and handsome group; the pictorial effect of which was suddenly marred by the apparition of a stranger in the doorway.
He was tall, muscular, and what little could be seen of his face through a heavy growth of whiskers was mild and prepossessing, in spite of two large scars just visible below the broad brim of a rough hat. His dress was faded and dirty.