“How say you! do you not yet begin to apprehend a comfort? some allay of sweetness in the bitter waters?”
Charles Lamb.
It was twelve o’clock before I got back to my lodgings. I had done my best to cheer my uncle up, and certainly left him a great deal calmer than I had found him. You may believe he had asked me no questions about my visit to Thistlewood; the poor man could think and speak of nothing else but his daughter.
For myself, I never seriously reflected how far I was to be considered affected by Conny’s unnatural conduct until I reached my lodgings. Then, in the stillness of my sitting-room, with nothing to distract my attention but the picture of my landlady’s husband, with a great moon shining solemnly in through the window, and all the trees breathless in the night, I could think.
To think was to be shocked. What a depth of duplicity was in that child! Did I now know why she hadn’t answered my letter! Oh fool, fool, ever to have given her a thought! For what had she encouraged me? for what had she simpered and blushed when I had looked and sighed? for what had she allowed me, that Sunday evening, to coquette with her hair and the rose? for what had she called Mr. Curling “that nice young man?” for what had she given me reason to believe that her heart was entirely vacant, and that, if I would be patient, she would some day or other permit my image to take up a permanent lodging there? I say for what? and echo answered, Sot!
She had thrust me between her mother and herself, so that my elegant shape might hide from her mamma’s eyes the love-making she and that rascal Curling were enjoying behind me.
I had been made a tool of. Confusion! how that cashier must have sniggered at me when I wasn’t looking! how, when I had treated him with the lordly affability that is the marked characteristic of contempt, how must he have revelled in the reflection that he and his sweetheart were making, between them, the most consummate ass that ever walked on two legs, of the very fine gentleman!
Here were the dregs of the nauseating dose, and, phew! filthy and bitter they were. It was no medicine. It was rank poison; and my love, sadly emaciated already, and worn out for want of proper nourishment, gave a kick, and expired. Yes, that night,
Down dropped my love,
My love dropped dead!
Blow out your candle, Eugenio, and the sudden extinction of the flame shall illustrate the awful abruptness with which my flame perished. From that night, from that hour of pride made wretched by contempt, Conny was no more to me than the scarecrow that nods its blind head at the birds and flaps its idle rags along the breeze. I was in her power once. My heart had palpitated in the golden meshes of her hair like a robin in a fowler’s net. I was hers—she might have married me. But she had preferred a cashier. She had chosen for her partner a banker’s clerk with frizzy hair; for a breast to lean on, a bosom shaped like a pigeon-pie. Was I going to gnash my teeth and hurl ghastly looks at the moon? Does Abraham Levi burst into tears when a customer finds something more striking and splendid in a piece of paste than in a fine stone? I was a diamond, she might have worn me: she had chosen a Brummagem article instead, and by heavens, Eugenio! no liquid gem distilled from my eyes should add one grain of worth to her outrageous choice!