“But it is so noisy in the street,” said Mr Brown. Then, with a pause after this unquestionable truism, “I’ve been thinking about you this very long time.”
Bessie looked up quickly with, great amazement; thinking of her! She was wiser when she cast her eyes down again. Mr Brown had not the smallest conception that he had explained himself without saying a syllable, but he had, notwithstanding, leaving Bessie thunder-struck, yet with a moment’s time to deliberate. While he went on with his embarrassed slow expressions, fancying that he was gradually conveying to her mind what he meant, Bessie, in a dreadful silent flutter and agitation, was revolving the whole matter, and asking herself what she was to answer. She had ten full minutes for this before he came to the point, and before, according to his idea, the truth burst upon her. But it is doubtful whether that ten minutes’ preparation was any advantage to Bessie. It destroyed the unconsciousness, which was her greatest charm; it made an end of her straightforwardness; worst of all, it left her silent. She gave a terrified glance up at him when it actually happened. There he stood full in the light, with all his awkwardnesses more clearly revealed than usual; six-and-forty, abrupt, almost eccentric; telling that story very plainly, without compliment or passion; would she have him? He was content that she should think it over—he was content to wait for her answer; but if it was to be no, let her say it out.
Strange to say, that word which she was exhorted to say out did not come to Bessie’s lips. Perhaps because she trembled a great deal, and really lost her self-possession, and for the moment did not know what she was about. But even in her agitation she did not think of saying it. Mr Brown, when he had his say out, marched up and down the path before her, and did not interrupt her deliberations. Another dreadful ten minutes passed over Bessie. The more she thought it over the more bewildered she became as to what she was to say.
“Please would you walk with me to the railway,” were the words that came from Bessie’s lips at last. She rose up trembling and faint, and with a kind of instinct took Mr Brown’s arm. He, on his part, did not say anything to her. His agitation melted away into a subdued silent tenderness which did not need any expression. He took her back into the streets, all along that tiresome way. He suffered the noise to surround and abstract her without any interruption which would make her conscious of his presence. It was a strange walk for both. To have called them lovers would have been absurd—to have supposed that here was a marriage of convenience about to be arranged would have been more ridiculous still. What was it? Bessie went along the street in a kind of cloud, aware of nothing very clearly; feeling somehow that she leant upon somebody, and that it was somebody upon whom she had a right to lean. They reached the railway thus, without any further explanation. Mr Brown put the trembling girl into a carriage, and did not go with her. The Carlingford attorney had turned into a paladin. Was it possible that his outer man itself had smoothed out and expanded too?
“I am not going with you,” he said, grasping her hand closely. “I won’t embarrass or distress you, Bessie; but recollect you have not said no; and when I come to Grove Street to-morrow, I’ll hope to hear you say yes. I’ll let you off,” said John Brown, grasping the little soft hand so tight and hard that it hurt Bessie. “I’ll let you off with liking, if you’ll give me that; at my age I don’t even venture to say for myself that I’m very much in love.”
And with that, the eyes, which had betrayed him before, flashed in Bessie’s face a contradiction of her elderly lover’s words. Yes! it astounded himself almost as much as it did Bessie. He would still have flatly contradicted anybody who accused him of that folly; but he went away with an undeniable blush into the London streets, self-convicted. A year’s observation and an hour’s talk had resulted in a much less philosophical sentiment than Mr Brown was prepared for. He went back to the streets, wondering what she would like in all those wonderful shop-windows. He traced back, step for step, the road they had come together. He was not six-and-forty—six-and-twenty was the true reading. That was a May-day of his youth that had come to him, sweet if untimely; a missed May-day, perhaps all the better that it had been kept for him these many tedious years.
And though Bessie cried all the way down to Carlingford, the no she had not said did not occur to her as any remedy for her tears; and, indeed, when she remembered how she had taken Mr Brown’s arm, and felt that she had committed herself by that act, the idea was rather a relief to Bessie. “It was as bad as saying yes at once,” said she to herself, with many blushes. But thus, you perceive, it was done, and could not be altered. She must stand to the consequences of her weakness now.
It made a great noise in Carlingford, as might be supposed; it made a vast difference in the household of Mrs Christian, which was removed to the house in which she had formerly hoped to establish herself as heir-at-law. But the greatest difference of all was made in that dim, spacious, wainscoted dining-room, which did not know itself in its novel circumstances. That was where the change was most remarkably apparent; and all these years Phœbe Thomson’s shadow has thrown no cloud as yet over the path of John Brown.
THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES.
A NEW SONG.
Have you heard of this question the Doctors among,
Whether all living things from a Monad have sprung?
This has lately been said, and it now shall be sung,
Which nobody can deny.