"Gerald!" said the young man, drawing himself up to the full of that one-inch advantage he had over his friend; but then he remembered how Gerald had taken her in to supper the evening or two before, and he felt a doubt; but it only made him angry and more obstinate to win the prize.
"I think, Randolph," his mother went on, reading his thoughts, "your cake, as you call her, you gluttonous boy, is hardly worth the eating; leave it for your friends, and make them welcome. Muriel Stanley is no match for you, and no great catch for anybody. She will get her aunt's money, I suppose--a comfortable little sum--when they die, which is not likely to happen for twenty years; but she has no connections whatever, and a good connection is so very advantageous for a young man. You will realize that more and more as you get on."
"But she is awfully pretty, the prettiest little thing in Montreal, and the nicest."
"I grant you that, if you think so; but she is only fifteen, and her aunts will not let her marry for five years yet. She will be stout at twenty; that kind of girl whose figure forms so early, always gets stout, and you will think her a little coarse--men of taste always think that of plump girls, I have observed--but you will sacrifice yourself all the same, like a man of honour, if you are already engaged. That will not be the worst, however; five years more and she will be positively fat! Imagine yourself with a wife like that! You will be about thirty then, just in your prime, with your nice slim figure merely improved from what it is now, the shoulders a little broader, of course, which will be no disadvantage, and your moustache a trifle heavier, but otherwise scarcely changed--in fact, at your very best. How will you like then walking down St. James's Street on the circumference of a copious wife?--a sprig of lavender tied to a marigold! Does the picture attract you?"
When you drive together or have stalls at the theatre, imagine yourself protruding from among your spouse's cloaks and flounces. The buggy could be built of extra size, to be sure, but all the stall chairs are alike. It is a subject for your own consideration exclusively. Personally, I am fond of Muriel. She is a nice little thing, and I should welcome her as a daughter; but it is not I who should have to appear in public with her for the remainder of my days; and if a man means to go into society, he is wise to choose a wife who will group well with him.
"Now, there are our neighbours at St. Euphrase. Think of an only daughter!--heiress to a seigniory, and connected with all the best people in the province. You will say she has not a good complexion; but how short a time complexion lasts in this climate! and those who have had one, and lost it, always look haggard and older than those who never had any. A man married to an old-looking woman, whether fat or lean, always strikes me as a melancholy spectacle--like a sapling sprouting from a crumbling wall, as the poet says--and the world is seldom respectful. It is apt to look on him as the man who broke the commandments and married his grandmama, because nobody of his own age would have him. There is no fear of that with Adèline Rouget; she will improve every year she lives. She is distinguished looking now, though she is not pretty. Every year she will improve, that is the advantage of having plenty of bone. She will look stately in middle life, and be beautiful--the rarest kind of beauty--in old age. Look forward always, my boy, when you think about marrying, it is an experiment which generally can be tried but once, so bought experience can do you no good."
Mother and son had a long conversation, in which she plied him with so many flatteries, that finally of his own free choice he promised to "go in" for Miss Rouget, yet at the same time felt himself magnanimous and dutiful in yielding his own wish to the gratification of his parent; and she encouraged the delusion as likely to hold him to her point. Self-denial is a heroic sort of virtue, and rather above the purchase of most folks; therefore, to be self-denying, and so, admirable to his seldom gratified moral sense, while still pleasing himself, was exaltedly delightful. If a man is not a hero, it pleases him the more to see himself in a heroic light. It is new, and it may not occur again, therefore he will do his best to retain the gallant attitude in which he finds himself; and Randolph set himself to live up to his ideal.
It was in ceremonious and most well-behaved fashion that the young lady placed herself on the toboggan, and permitted her cavalier to wrap the outflowing draperies more compactly about her in gracious quietude. The gentleman gave the equipage a push beyond the brink, jumped in behind with a parting kick against the shore, and they were away; swiftly, and with ever-accelerating speed as the hill grew steeper--"shooting Niagara." The bienséances of the convent, with their modest tranquillity, are scarcely maintainable in a toboggan shooting down a glassy incline of fifty degrees or more, at the rate of miles in a minute, with the certainty that dislodgment from the quarter-inch board one is seated on may hurl one anywhere, bruised or maimed, but assuredly ridiculous.
Adèline caught her breath with a gasp as she found they were off, and, as the pace quickened down hill, she clenched her teeth tightly and closed her eyes; and then there came a jolt as they sped across some swelling in the ice, and she felt herself thrown backwards, and gave a little scream; and Randolph was there behind to support her, with a laugh, as she bumped against his chest, a laugh she could not but join in, though a little hysterically, perhaps, at first. And then the pace began to slacken as they reached the level of the meadow below, and still it slackened, and finally they stopped, and stood up, and shook themselves from adhering snow, and found, the experience was over, that they were both safe, and that it had been a little thrilling, but "awfully jolly." The ice was broken between the two young people forthwith, and the Lady Superior with her nuns, who had taken such pains in the formation of Adèline's character and manners, would scarcely have recognized her, or been able to distinguish her from one of those dreadful, fast, heretical English girls, they had been wont to hold up to her and her companions as models to avoid, as she caught Randolph's arm to climb to the top of the bank again, and vowed it had been delightful.
Conventional mannerisms are like mud in a slough, when the animal which has floundered through gets out into the sunshine, it dries and peels off and falls away very quickly. These two were average young people who had been comfortably reared, with warm clothes and nourishing victuals imagination, sentiment, "yearnings" of any kind had been omitted from their composition, but they were unconscious of the deficiency, so were perfectly content. They were both healthy and strong, and the physical surroundings of the moment were exhilarating in the highest degree--bright clear air and exciting exercise. The quickening of their pulses, caused by their romp upon the snow, was as high a delight as either was capable of knowing, and they clung closer together each time they re-climbed the steep to shoot again from the summit, and laughed more joyously with each succeeding jolt, and persuaded themselves even, perhaps, that they were really falling in love--it is a delusion which often has no more substantial foundation.