My friend Tom Strachan belonged decidedly to this latter section. Mary Rivers, a remarkably clever and very showy girl, but as arrant a flirt as ever wore rosebud in her bosom, had engrossed the whole of his heart before he reached the reflecting age of twenty, and kept him for nearly five years in a state of uncomplaining bondage. Not that I believe she ever cared about him. Tom was as poor as a church-mouse, and had nothing on earth to look to except the fruits of his professional industry, which, judging from all appearances, would be a long time indeed in ripening. Mary was not the sort of person to put up with love in a cottage, even had Tom's circumstances been adequate to defray the rent of a tenement of that description: she had a vivid appreciation, not only of the substantials but of the higher luxuries of existence. But her vanity was flattered at having in her train at least one devoted dangler, whom she could play off, whenever opportunity required, against some more valuable admirer. Besides, Strachan was a man of family, tall, good-looking, and unquestionably clever in his way: he also danced the polka well, and was useful in the ball-room or the picnic. So Mary Rivers kept him on in a kind of blissful dream, just sunning him sufficiently with her smiles to make him believe that he was beloved, but never allowing matters to go so far as to lead to the report that they were engaged. Tom asked for nothing more. He was quite contented to indulge for years in a dream of future bliss, and wrote during the interval a great many more sonnets than summonses. Unfortunately sonnets don't pay well, so that his worldly affairs did not progress at any remarkable ratio. And he only awoke to a sense of his real situation, when Miss Rivers, having picked a quarrel with him one day in the Zoological Gardens, announced on the next to her friends that she had accepted the hand of a bilious East India merchant.
Tom made an awful row about it—grew as attenuated and brown as an eel—and garnished his conversation with several significant hints about suicide. He was, however, saved from that ghastly alternative by being drafted into a Rowing Club, who plied their gondolas daily on the Union Canal. Hard exercise, beer, and pulling had their usual sanatory effect, and Tom gradually recovered his health, if not his spirits.
It was at this very crisis that he fell in with this mysterious Miss Percy. There was an immense hole in his affections which required to be filled up; and, as nature abhors a vacuum, he plugged it with the image of Dorothea. The flight, therefore, of the fair levanter, after so brief an intercourse, was quite enough to upset him. He was in the situation of a man who is informed over-night that he has succeeded to a large fortune, and who gets a letter next morning explaining that it is a mere mistake. I was therefore not at all astonished either at his paroxysms or his credulity.
We had rather a dreary dinner that day. The judges always entertain the first day of circuit, and it is considered matter of etiquette that the counsel should attend. Sometimes these forensic feeds are pleasant enough; but on the present occasion there was a visible damp thrown over the spirits of the party. His lordship was evidently savage at the unforeseen escape of M'Wilkin, and looked upon me, as I thought, with somewhat of a prejudiced eye. Bailie Beerie and the other magistrates seemed uneasy at their unusual proximity to a personage who had the power of death and transportation, and therefore abstained from emitting the accustomed torrent of civic facetiousness. One of the sheriffs wanted to be off on a cruise, and another was unwell with the gout. The Depute Advocate was fagged; Whaup surly as a bear with a sore ear, on account of the tenuity of his fees; and Strachan, of course, in an extremely unconversational mood. So I had nothing for it but to eat and drink as plentifully as I could, and very thankful I was that the claret was tolerably sound.
We rose from table early. As I did not like to leave Tom to himself in his present state of mind, we adjourned to his room for the purpose of enjoying a cigar; and there, sure enough, upon the table lay the expected missive. Strachan dashed at it like a pike pouncing upon a parr; I lay down upon the sofa, lit my weed, and amused myself by watching his physiognomy.
"Dear suffering angel!" said Tom at last, with a sort of whimper, "Destiny has done its worst! We have parted, and the first fond dream of our love has vanished before the cold and dreary dawn of reality! O my friend—we were like the two birds in the Oriental fable, each doomed to traverse the world before we could encounter our mate—we met, and almost in the same hour the thunderbolt burst above us!"
"Yes—two very nice birds," said I. "But what does she say in the letter?"
"You may read it," replied Tom, and he handed me the epistle. It was rather a superior specimen of penmanship, and I don't choose to criticise the style. Its tenor was as follows:—
"I am hardly yet, my dear friend, capable of estimating the true extent of my emotions. Like the buoyant seaweed torn from its native bed among the submarine forest of the corals, I have been tossed from wave to wave, hurried onwards by a stream more resistless than that which sweeps through the Gulf of Labrador, and far—far away as yet is the wished-for haven of my rest. Hitherto my life has been a tissue of calamity and woe. Over my head since childhood, has stretched a dull and dreary canopy of clouds, shutting me out for ever from a glimpse of the blessed sun. Once, and but once only have I seen a chasm in that envious veil—only once and for a few, a very few moments, have I gazed upon the blue empyrean, and felt my heart expand and thrill to the glories of its liquid lustre. That once—oh, Mr Strachan, can I ever forget it?—that once comprises the era of the few hours which were the silent witnesses of our meeting!
"Am I weak in writing to you thus? Perhaps I am; but then, Thomas, I have never been taught to dissemble. Did I, however, think it probable that we should ever meet again—that I should hear from your lips a repetition of that language which now is chronicled in my soul—it may be that I would not have dared to risk an avowal so candid and so dear! As it is, it matters not. You have been my benefactor, my kind consoler—my friend. You have told me that you love; and in the fulness and native simplicity of my heart, I believe you. And if it be any satisfaction to you to know that your sentiments have been at least appreciated, believe that of all the pangs which the poor Dorothea has suffered, this last agony of parting has been incomparably the most severe.