THE FIRST WHISPER OF THE STORM.
There was no omnibus to take Mrs. Gilbert back to Graybridge after the service at Hurstonleigh; but there had been some Graybridge people at church, and she found them lingering in the churchyard talking to some of the model villagers, enthusiastic in their praises of Mr. Colborne's eloquence.
Amongst these Graybridge people was Miss Sophronia Burdock, the maltster's daughter, very radiant in a bright pink bonnet, so vivid as almost to extinguish her freckles, and escorted by young Mr. Pawlkatt, the surgeon's son, and his sister, a sharp-nosed, high-cheek-boned damsel, who looked polite daggers at the Doctor's Wife. Was not Mr. George Gilbert a rising man in Graybridge? and was it likely that the family of his rival should have any indulgence for the shortcomings of his pale-faced wife?
But Miss Sophronia was in the humour to heap coals of fire on the head of the nursery-governess whom George Gilbert had chosen to marry. Sophronia was engaged, with her father's full consent, to the younger Pawlkatt, who was to insure his life for the full amount of the fair damsel's dower, which was to be rigidly tied up for her separate use and maintenance, &c., and who looked of so sickly and feeble a constitution that the maltster may have reasonably regarded the matrimonial arrangement as a very fair speculation. Sophronia was engaged, and displayed the little airs and graces that Graybridge considered appropriate to the position of an engaged young lady. "The only way to make love now," said Mr. Nash to Goldsmith, "is to take no manner of notice of the lady." And Graybridge regarded the art of polite courtship very much in this fashion, considering that a well-bred damsel could not possibly be too contemptuously frigid in her treatment of the man whom she had chosen from all other men to be her partner for life. Acting on this principle, Miss Burdock, although intensely affectionate in her manner to Julia Pawlkatt, and warmly gushing in her greeting of the Doctor's Wife, regarded her future husband with a stony glare, only disturbed by a scornful smile when the unfortunate young man ventured to make any remark. To reduce a lover to a state of coma, and exhibit him in that state to admiring beholders for an entire evening, was reckoned high art in Graybridge.
Everybody in the little Midlandshire town knew that Miss Burdock and Mr. Pawlkatt were engaged; and people considered that Augustus Pawlkatt had done a very nice thing for himself by becoming affianced to a young lady who was to have four thousand pounds tightly tied up for her separate use and maintenance.
The consciousness of being engaged and having a fortune, combined to render Sophronia especially amiable to everybody but the comatose "future." Was Isabel alone, and going to walk back? "Oh, then, in that case you must go with us!" cried Miss Burdock, with a view to the exhibition of the unfortunate Augustus in peripatetic coma.
What could Mrs. Gilbert say, except that she would be delighted to go home with them? She was thinking of him; she was looking to see his head towering above the crowd. Of course it would tower above that crowd, or any crowd; but he was like the famous Spanish fleet in the "Critic," inasmuch as she could not see him because he was not to be seen. She went with Miss Burdock and her companions out of the churchyard, towards the meadow-path that led across country towards Graybridge. They walked in a straggling, uncomfortable manner, for Sophronia resolutely refused all offers of her future husband's arm; and he was fain to content himself with the cold comfort of her parasol, and a church-service of ruby velvet, with a great many ribands between the pages.
The conversation during that Sabbath afternoon walk was not very remarkable for liveliness or wisdom. Isabel only spoke when she was spoken to, and even then like a bewildered creature newly awakened from a dream. Miss Julia Pawlkatt, who was an intellectual young person, and prided herself upon not being frivolous, discoursed upon the botanical names and attributes of the hedge-blossoms beside the path, and made a few remarks on the science of medicine as adapted to female study, which would have served for the ground-work of a letter in a Sunday paper.
Miss Burdock, who eschewed intellectual acquirements, and affected to be a gushing thing of the Dora Spenlow stamp, entreated her future sister-in-law not to be "dreadful," and asked Isabel's opinion upon several "dears" of bonnets exhibited that afternoon in Hurstonleigh church; and the comatose future, who so rarely spoke that it seemed hard he should always commit himself when he did speak, ventured a few remarks, which were received with black and frowning looks by the idol of his heart.
"I say, Sophronia, weren't you surprised to see Mr. Lansdell in the gallery?" the young man remarked, interrupting his betrothed in a discussion of a bunch of artificial may on the top of a white-tulle bonnet so sweet and innocent-looking. "You know, dear, he isn't much of a church-goer, and people do say that he's an atheist; yet there he was as large as life this afternoon, and I thought him looking very ill. I've heard my father say that all those Lansdells are consumptive."