“Don’t go out in the rain with your cold, dear,” said Mrs. Eastwood.
“Pshaw! what’s a cold?” said Jenny. The rain was nothing to the chill discouragement and inarticulate vague misery which seemed to fill the house from garret to basement. A sense of unhappiness, which he did not know how to struggle against, was in Jenny’s own mind. Nothing uncomfortable had happened to him in his personal career. He had pleasant rooms, was in a good set, and fortune smiled upon him. Nevertheless he too was dully miserable, as the house was; he did not know why. He was too young for sentiment, or, at least, too boyish and defiant of sentiment, to take himself to task in the matter, or ascertain what ailed him. Perhaps even the boy was wise enough not to wish to come to any clear conclusion in the matter; but he was dull, dull as ditchwater, according to his own simile.
They were all going to a dance at Mrs. Barclay’s that night, which was some relief. She was full of triumph and exultation in the event which had brought so little comfort to the Eastwoods. She had asked everybody—the Molyneuxes, who were to be “connexions,” through Nelly, and John Vane, who was already her “connexion,” through Innocent—and all the habitués of the Elms. Jenny spent the time till dinner in a wretched walk, and came in drenched, with his cold considerably increased, which, on the whole, he was rather glad of; and Mrs. Eastwood, yielding to the general misery of the circumstances at last, went “to lie down”—an indulgence unknown to her on ordinary occcasions. Dick went to his own room, where Winks, on being whistled for five times, condescended to follow him; and they two, I think, had the best of it. Frederick had sole possession of the library, where he sat over the fire with his feet on the grate, and a countenance which was dark as the sky. And Nelly went to poor Innocent’s room and put things tidy with her own hands, and cried over the little empty white bed, as if Innocent had died. A wretched day, rain outside, cold, dulness, and misery within; but if people will marry in February, what else can be looked for? for the home of the bride is seldom a very cheerful habitation on the evening of the wedding day.
CHAPTER XLII.
AFTER THE WEDDING.
The ball at Mrs. Barclay’s was brilliant, and the Eastwood family were, as was natural, the most honoured guests. And I suppose that Nelly and her brothers, being young, enjoyed themselves, as the phrase is, and were able to cast off their melancholy. Dick at least was perfectly able to cast it off, the more especially as he met the reigning lady of his affections—the girl whom he had many thoughts of asking to go out with him to India—thoughts which were tempered by the wholesome fear of having his proposal treated with much contumely as a boy’s fancy at home. He danced with her half the evening, and sat out with her on the crowded staircase, and consumed much ice and lemonade in her company, and was very happy. Jenny, who had not been properly looked after in his dancing when he was young, and was very doubtful of his own steadiness in a waltz, stalked about the rooms and talked to the people he knew, and said it was a great bore, yet was vaguely exhilarated, as one is when under twenty, by the crowd, and the lights, and the music. Frederick, of course, being still in the first gloom of his widowhood, did not come. And, as for Nelly, though she expected nothing but to be miserable, she, too, found the evening pass off much less disagreeably than she anticipated. Molyneux, somewhat frightened by the decided stand she had made, and piqued by the possibility of rejection after all, was more constantly at her side than he had been since the early days of their engagement; and Vane, looking more friendly than in the morning, asked her to dance with him, on purpose it would seem to make up for his former coldness. He kept aloof from Mrs. Eastwood, but he sought Nelly. “If you will accept so poor a partner,” he said; “my dancing days are about over.”
“I do not see why that should be,” said Nelly, looking brightly up at him, pleased to hear his voice soften into its old tone.
“Ah, pardon, I do,” he said, with a smile, “I am growing old. I shall go and set up a monkery one of these days beside my sister’s nunnery. I am not like Longueville; no means are afforded to me of renewing my youth.”
“But you are not old, like Sir Alexis,” cried Nelly.
“Not like Sir Alexis; but old—tolerably old in years—a great deal older in heart.”
“Oh, how wrong you are!” said Nelly; “on the contrary, you are young. I am a bystander, and I can see better than you can. You are a great deal younger than many who are—not so old as you are.” Her eyes went wandering over the room as she spoke, and John Vane made out in his own mind that she was looking for Molyneux—a thing which I cannot take upon me to affirm.