CHAPTER VII.
Mrs. Croaker. “Well, if they concealed their amour, they shan’t conceal their wedding; that shall be public, I’m resolved.”
The Good-natured Man.
My aunt afterwards apologised to us for having lost her temper, but I was heartily glad my uncle had resolved not to ask the young couple to dinner again. A few scenes of this kind would hardly fail to drive Theresa away, and without Theresa, what were life?
And to tell you the truth, the less I should see of Conny, the more, I felt, should I be pleased. I was so much in love with Theresa, that all reference to the past was peculiarly disagreeable. To have had Conny’s large, blue, surprised eyes watching me whilst I talked with her cousin, and cut my little jokes and looked happy, would have been more than I could bear.
Next morning my uncle suggested to me that I should remain at Grove End and amuse Theresa.
“She will be dull with my wife,” said he, “whose temper makes her bad company.” This proposal was perfectly agreeable to me, and I had the pleasure of spending a happier day than I firmly believe was ever passed even at Rosherville. Unfortunately, we could not ride, because Theresa’s habit had not arrived from Thistlewood; but we could walk, and talk, and pick the flowers, and lounge under the cool trees, and snatch Arcadian joys from the breezy quiet grounds.
I longed to find out whether it was amiability that kept her happy in my company, or some more complimentary, some tenderer feeling. Somehow or other, I couldn’t make love to her as I had made love to Conny. Nothing had been easier than to mutter my eternal devotion into the ears of the golden-haired maid; nothing was harder than to pay Theresa even a compliment. It was not that she was cold; on the contrary, she was very genial. She gave me every reason to believe that my society pleased her; and throughout the long day, during which we were constantly together, never once suggested that she had had enough of me. The fault was mine, not hers. I was diffident. I was shy, bashful, muffish. Conny and other young ladies (who shall be nameless, for they may still be single) I had been able to make love to, as I have said, easily; but Theresa awed me. She was so honest, so open-hearted and candid, so womanly, so superior in numberless points to the girls whose friendship or whose hearts I had had the honour of possessing, that I could as soon have deliberately insulted her, as indulged in any of those light and jocose strokes of sentimentality with which I had been heretofore used to pay my court.
One thing struck both of us that afternoon and made us laugh: she had stopped at Grove End to be a companion for my aunt.