"No, Mistress Clarissa, I have had too good cause to know who has been the tyrant in this business," declared Sam Winnington, speaking out roundly, as a woman loves to hear a man, though it be to her own condemnation, "You have used me cruelly, Clarissa Gage; you have abused my faith, wasted the best years of my life, and deceived my affections."
"What were the three words," asked Clary, faint and low.
"'Yours, Sam Winnington;' or else, 'Farewell, Clarissa Gage?'"
"Yours, Sam Winnington."
He caught her so sharp up by the arm at that sentence, that some persons said Mistress Clarissa had staggered and was about to swoon; others, that the vulgar fellow of a painter had behaved like a brute, pulled her to his side as she was marching past him, and accused her of perjury before the whole ball-room. Bold men were apt at that time to seize aggravating women (especially if they were the wives of their bosoms) by the hairs of their heads, so that a trifling rudeness was little thought of. The county member, however, pricked up his long ears, flushed, fiercely stamped to the particular corner, and had a constable in his eye to arrest the beggarly offender; but before he could get at the disputants, he had the mortification to see them retreat amicably into a side room, and the next thing announced to him was, that Mistress Clarissa had evanished home, before anybody could get rightly at the bottom of the mystery.
Very fortunately, the county member ascertained the following day, before he had compromised his pride another hair's-breadth, that the fickle damsel had accepted the painter's escort the previous evening, and had admitted the painter at an incredibly early hour the subsequent morning. After such indiscretion, the great man would have nothing more to say to Mistress Clarissa, but departed in great dudgeon, and would never so much as set his foot within Redwater again; not even at the following election.
Uncle Barnet was forced to come round and acknowledge, with a very bad grace, that legislation in heiresses' marriages—in any marriage—is out of the question. No man knew how a marriage would turn out; you might as well pledge yourself for the weather next morning; certainly there were signs for the wise; but were weather almanacs deceptive institutions or were they not? The innocent old theory of marriages being made in heaven was the best. Clary was not such a mighty catch after all: a six thousand pounds' fortune was not inexhaustible, and the county member might never have come the length of asking its owner's price. People did talk of a foolish engagement in his youth to one of his yeomen's daughters, and of a wealthy old aunt who ruled the roast; though her well-grown nephew, not being returned for a rotten borough, voted with dignity for so many thousands of his fellow-subjects in the Commons. Uncle Barnet, with a peculiarly wry face, did reluctantly what he did not often advise his clients to do, unless in desperate circumstances—he compromised.
Clary was made a wife in the height of summer, with all the rites and ceremonies of the Church, with all the damasks, and laces, and leadings by the tips of the fingers, and lavishings of larkspurs, lupins, and tiger-lilies proper for the occasion, which Dulcie had lost. Nay, the supper came off at the very "Rod and Fly," with the tap open to the roaring, jubilant public; a score of healths were drunk upstairs with all the honours, the bride and bridegroom being king and queen of the company: even Uncle Barnet owned that Sam Winnington was very complaisant—rather exceed in his complaisance, he supplemented scornfully; but surely Sam might mend that fault with others in the bright days to come. It is only the modern English who act Hamlet minus the Prince of Denmark; sitting at the bridal feast without bride or bridegroom. They say hearts are often caught on the rebound, and if all ill-treated suitors spoke out warmly yet sternly like Sam Winnington, and did not merely fence about and either sneer or whine, more young fools might be saved, even when at touch-and-go with their folly, after the merciful fate of Clary and to the benefit of themselves and of society.