Tap, tap!—‘Come in!’—And enter two or three little ones to hid papa good-night. Ah, little sweethearts, what a vision you have undone! The flowing stream, the overhanging trees, the old gray tower, the silent hills, have all, at the touch of your tiny fingers, vanished!
I was not dreaming—no, nor yet asleep. My hook lies turned face down on my knee, and my pipe, extinguished, is still between my lips. It is towards the end of December; the Christmas bells have already rung out their message, and the New Year is waiting, in a few days to be ushered in. Outside, the wind is blowing in loud noisy gusts through the darkness, scattering the snow-flakes before it in a level drift. Here, in my bookroom, as I sat with foot on fender, watching the glowing embers in the grate, thoughts of summer days had stolen over me. I was once more by silvery Tweed, under sunny skies, plying ‘the well-dissembled fly’—the storm and the snow-drift without, being as if they were not. To you, reader, I have uttered aloud the reverie of those brief five minutes of swift fancy; to you, brother anglers, may that phantasmal expedition be the harbinger of coming sport; and with each and all of you I now will part, bidding you reverently, as I bid my little ones, Good-night!
IN ALL SHADES.
CHAPTER V.
The letter from Edward that had so greatly perturbed old Mr Hawthorn had been written, of course, some twenty days before he received it, for the mail takes about that time, as a rule, in going from Southampton across the Atlantic to the port of Trinidad. Edward had already told his father of his long-standing engagement to Marian; but the announcement and acceptance of the district judgeship had been so hurried, and the date fixed for his departure was so extremely early, that he had only just had time by the first mail to let his father know of his approaching marriage, and his determination to proceed at once to the West Indies by the succeeding steamer. Three weeks was all the interval allowed him by the inexorable red-tape department of the Colonial Office for completing his hasty preparations for his marriage, and setting sail to undertake his newly acquired judicial functions.
‘Three weeks, my dear,’ Nora cried in despair to Marian; ‘why, you know, it can’t possibly be done! It’s simply impracticable. Do those horrid government-office people really imagine a girl can get together a trousseau, and have all the bridesmaids’ dresses made, and see about the house and the breakfast and all that sort of thing, and get herself comfortably married, all within a single fortnight? They’re just like all men; they think you can do things in less than no time. It’s absolutely preposterous.’
‘Perhaps,’ Marian answered, ‘the government-office people would say they engaged Edward to take a district judgeship, and didn’t stipulate anything about his getting married before he went out to Trinidad to take it.’
‘Oh, well, you know, if you choose to look at it in that way, of course one can’t reasonably grumble at them for their absurd hurrying. But still the horrid creatures ought to have a little consideration for a girl’s convenience. Why, we shall have to make up our minds at once, without the least proper deliberation, what the bridesmaids’ dresses are to be, and begin having them cut out and the trimmings settled this very morning. A wedding at a fortnight’s notice! I never in my life heard of such a thing. I wonder, for my part, your mamma consents to it.—Well, well, I shall have you to take charge of me going out, that’s one comfort; and I shall have my bridesmaid’s dress made so that I can wear it a little altered, and cut square in the bodice, when I get to Trinidad, for a best dinner dress. But it’s really awfully horrid having to make all one’s preparations for the wedding and for going out in such a terrible unexpected hurry.’ However, in spite of Nora, the preparations for the wedding were duly made within the appointed fortnight, even that important item of the bridesmaids’ dresses being quickly settled to everybody’s satisfaction.
Strange that when two human beings propose entering into a solemn contract together for the future governance of their entire joint existence, the thoughts of one of them, and that the one to whom the change is most infinitely important, should be largely taken up for some weeks beforehand with the particular clothes she is to wear on the morning when the contract is publicly ratified! Fancy the ambassador who signs the treaty being mainly occupied for the ten days of the preliminary negotiations with deciding what sort of uniform and how many orders he shall put on upon the eventful day of the final signature!