The happiness which she then enjoyed was greater than that which preceded it. Who is it that defines that word happiness to be “gleams of a brighter world, too soon eclipsed and forfeited?” Lizzie’s bliss, however, was saddened by the thought that Tom was soon to leave her. It intensified her love, and surrounded it with that holier charm which sorrow always lends.
Then came the parting. And Andromeda was left alone to lament, whilst her lover was ploughing the stormy main. Tom was “off to the wars”—rather a queer place for a knight of chivalry in the nineteenth century to seek for adventure, Abyssinia!—and Lizzie had, like most women in such cases, to nurse her grief, which was her joy as well, by herself. ’Tis the way of the world, as Kingsley sings—
“For men must work! and women must weep!
And the sooner ’tis over, the sooner to sleep!”
The weary weeks glided by slowly after Tom’s departure, and Lizzie’s little world was changed. But greater changes were coming soon, if not to her spiritual, at least to her temporal state.
Lizzie had been made aware, of course, long since, of her brother’s engagement with Laura Inskip; but she had been so much taken up with her own troubles that she had not had spirit enough to enter into Herbert’s “little roman” with all the good-natured enthusiasm of which her bursting: little heart was capable. Events had rolled on so rapidly that she became confused between them all, and the engagement with Laura was not looked upon with that surprise and interest with which any enterprise or suit of her brother’s was usually regarded.
But time went on, and Lizzie could not but interest herself now in the progress of change around her. She had liked the languid Laura in her way; but she was not the sort of girl—being a very energetic and hopeful little sister—that she would have selected for her brother’s mate. She would have had a little goddess or empress for Herbert; still as Herbert had chosen for himself, she made up her mind to love her expected sister-in-law with all her heart.
With these thoughts, Lizzie made many advances to the Inskips, but the old campaigner was very disagreeable to her, and treated her as a nonentity; and Laura was too lazy to share her future sister’s enthusiasm, so Lizzie’s feelings were damped. Carry, she thought very “nice,” but she was too noisy and gushing for Lizzie, just so heavily bereaved; consequently the little maiden was forced to withdraw herself within herself, and think of the future and Tom, and build very unstable castles in the air.
And so the autumn passed by, and winter was nigh, and the change changed still.
Herbert Pringle was to be married early in the new year. It was to be quite a grand affair, and from the hints dropped, Bigton and Hartwood village were all agog with the news and their anticipations, for you may be sure the campaigner was not one to hide her light under a bushel.
But Lizzie felt alone! Poor Andromeda. Perseus had gone! not in a classic trireme! but by one of the P. and O. steamers.