Upon the very eve of that welcome morning which was to set all the guns in Midlandshire popping at those innocent red-breasted victims, George Gilbert received a letter from his old friend and comrade, Mr. Sigismund Smith, who wrote in very high spirits, and with a great many blots.
"I'm coming down to stop a few days with you, dear old boy," he wrote, "to get the London smoke blown out of my hyacinthines, and to go abroad in the meadows to see the young lambs—are there any young lambs in September, by the bye? I want to see what sort of a matron you have made of Miss Isabel Sleaford. Do you remember that day in the garden when you first saw her? A palpable case of spoons there and then! K-k-c-k-k! as Mr. Buckstone remarks when he digs his knuckles into the walking gentleman's ribs. Does she make puddings, and sew on buttons, and fill up the holes in your stockings with wonderful trellis-work? She never would do that sort of thing at Camberwell. I shall give you a week, and I shall spend another week in the bosom of my family; and I shall bring a gun, because it looks well in the railway carriage, you know, especially if it doesn't go off, which I suppose it won't, if it isn't loaded; though, to my mind, there's always something suspicious about the look of fire-arms, and I should never be surprised to see them explode by spontaneous combustion, or something of that kind. I suppose you've heard of my new three-volume novel—a legitimate three-volume romance, with all the interest concentrated upon one body,—'The Mystery of Mowbray Manor,'—pleasant alliteration of M's, eh?—which is taking the town by storm; that's to say, Camden Town, where I partial board, and have some opportunity of pushing the book myself by going into all the circulating libraries I pass, and putting my name down for an early perusal of the first copy. Of course I never go for the book; but if I am the means of making any one simple-minded librarian take a copy of 'The M. of M. M.' more than he wants, I feel I have not laboured in vain."
Mr. Smith arrived at Warncliffe by an early train next morning, and came on to Graybridge in an omnibus, which was quite spiky with guns. He was in very high spirits, and talked incessantly to Isabel, who had stayed at home to receive him; who had stayed at home when there was just a faint chance that Mr. Lansdell might take his morning walk in the direction of Lord Thurston's Crag,—only a faint chance, for was it not the 1st of September; and might not he prefer the slaughter of partridges to those lazy loiterings under the big oak?
Mrs. Gilbert gave her old friend a very cordial welcome. She was fond of him, as she might have been of some big brother less objectionable than the ordinary run of big brothers. He had never seen Mr. Sleaford's daughter looking so bright and beautiful. A new element had been introduced into her life. She was happy, unutterably happy, on the mystical threshold of a new existence. She did not want to be Edith Dombey any longer. Not for all the ruby-velvet gowns and diamond coronets in the world would she have sacrificed one accidental half-hour on the bridge under Lord Thurston's oak.
She sat at the little table smiling and talking gaily, while the author of "The Mystery of Mowbray Manor" ate about half a quartern of dough made up into puffy Yorkshire cakes, and new-laid eggs and frizzled bacon in proportion. Mr. Smith deprecated the rampant state of his appetite by-and-by, and made a kind of apology for his ravages.
"You see, the worst of going into society is that," he remarked vaguely, "they see one eat; and it's apt to tell against one in three volumes. It's a great pity that fiction is not compatible with a healthy appetite; but it isn't; and society is so apt to object to one, if one doesn't come up to its expectations. You've no idea what a lot of people have invited me out to tea—ladies, you know—since the publication of 'The Mystery of Mowbray Manor.' I used to go at first. But they generally said to me, 'Lor', Mr. Smith, you're not a bit like what I fancied you were! I thought you'd be TALL, and DARK, and HAUGHTY-LOOKING, like Montague Manderville in 'The Mystery of —— ', &c., &c.; and that sort of thing is apt to make a man feel himself an impostor. And if a writer of fiction can't drink hot tea without colouring up as if he had just pocketed a silver spoon, and it was his guilty conscience, why, my idea is, he'd better stay at home. I don't think any man was ever as good or as bad as his books," continued Sigismund, reflectively, scraping up a spoonful of that liquid grease which Mrs. Jeffson tersely entitled "dip." "There's a kind of righteous indignation, and a frantic desire to do something splendid for his fellow-creatures, like vaccinating them all over again, or founding a hospital for everybody, which a man feels when he's writing—especially late at night, when he's been keeping himself awake—with bitter ale—that seems to ooze away somehow when his copy has gone to the printers. And it's pretty much the same with one's scorn and hate and cynicism. Nobody ever quite comes up to his books. Even Byron, but for turning down his collars, and walking lame, and dining on biscuits and soda-water, might have been a social failure. I think there's a good deal of Horace Walpole's Inspired Idiocy in this world. The morning sun shines, and the statue is musical; but all the day there is silence; and at night—in society, I suppose—the sounds are lugubrious. How I do talk, Izzie, and you don't say anything! But I needn't ask if you're happy. I never saw you looking so pretty."
Isabel blushed. Was she pretty? Oh, she wanted so much to be pretty!
"And I think George may congratulate himself upon having secured the dearest little wife in all Midlandshire."
Mrs. Gilbert blushed a deeper red; but the happy smile died away on her lips. Something, a very vague something as yet, was lurking in what Mr. Raymond would have called her "inner consciousness;" and she thought, perhaps, George had not such very great reason for self-gratulation.
"I always do as he tells me,"' she said naïvely; "and he's kinder than mamma used to be, and doesn't mind my reading at meals. You know how ma used to go on about it. And I mend his socks—sometimes." She drew open a drawer, where there were some little bundles of grey woollen stuff, and balls of worsted with big needles stuck across them. "And, oh, Sigismund," she exclaimed, rather inconsecutively, "we've been to Mordred—to Mordred Priory—to a luncheon; quite a grand luncheon—pine-apple and ices, and nearly half-a-dozen different kinds of glasses for each person."