JILTED!
OR,
MY UNCLE’S SCHEME.

JILTED!
OR,
MY UNCLE’S SCHEME.

A Novel, in Three Vols.

VOL. I.

London:
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, LOW, & SEARLE,
CROWN BUILDINGS, FLEET STREET.
1875.
[All Rights Reserved.]

CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS,
CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS.

CONTENTS.

JILTED!
OR,
MY UNCLE’S SCHEME.

MY UNCLE’S SCHEME.

CHAPTER I.

“It has been found hard to describe man by an adequate definition. Some philosophers have called him a reasonable animal; but others have considered reason as a quality of which many creatures partake. He has been termed likewise a laughing animal; but it is said that some men have never laughed. Perhaps man may be more properly distinguished as an idle animal.”—Dr. Johnson.

My father was a major in the army who, at the time this story begins, had lived in Longueville-sur-mer for fifteen years, to which place he had come, after my mother’s death, bringing me with him. I was then seven years old. He put me to a good school in the neighbourhood, at which I remained until I was sixteen; and was then let free. Considering myself a man, I worked hard to grow a mustache, in which I very ignominiously failed; for it was not until I was one-and-twenty that nature condescended to favour me with that very elegant and martial decoration. I also took to colouring meerschaum pipes, in which art, before I was nineteen, I was considered by my companions to excel, though I did not succeed in establishing my reputation in that line until I had dealt such an injury to my nervous system as I fear I shall never recover. I also became, before long, an expert hand at billiards, though up to the last Bob Le Marchmont could always give me twenty points and beat me comfortably. But I was his better at whist, and was indeed a match for several grave old gentlemen who were members of our English Club in the Rue des Chiens.

My father was a remarkably handsome man, with a nose like Lord Chatham’s and with whiskers which I would liken to two solid bastions of hair, richly dyed and inexorably curled. A whiter hand than his never embellished a cuff. He stood six feet in his stockings, and well do I remember Sub-lieutenant Delplanque saying to me “Mon cher, one may stitch pokers instead of whalebone into one’s stays, and still fail to achieve the air magnificent and Cæsaresque that distinguishes le major Argrrrarve.” I was once walking on the port, as they call the quay, with my father, when Louis Napoleon drove past us; His Majesty was in mufti, and my father would not have known him had not the Emperor deigned to raise his hat. The compliment was an imperial one, and my father would relate the incident with exquisite satisfaction. Jack Sturt said “it was foreign majesty paying homage to British arms—and legs.” To which I added, “God save the Queen.”

There can be no doubt that after I left school my father ought to have put me to one of the professions, or entered me in a house of business. He had two brothers, one of whom owned a private bank, the other was a retired stock-broker; and either of them, as they afterwards told me, would have been very glad to take me by the hand, had my father applied to them. But he was by nature a reckless man: by reckless I mean that he never troubled himself about the future (though he lived strictly within his half-pay). He hated trouble of any kind or description. If ever he reflected upon the future, he could scarcely, I am sure, understand that it should mean more than a perpetual succession of morning strolls, and afternoon siestas, and evening whist parties. He pursued day after day, with automatic regularity, a small round of trifling and monotonous distractions, which by degrees girdled his existence with the narrowest possible horizon, and prevented him from sympathising with any needs which, like mine, lay outside the sphere of his daily routine.

I do not say I was not as much or more to blame. Had I teazed him, he would no doubt have made an effort to get me out of Longueville into some calling in England. To speak the truth, I liked my life so well that I had no wish to change. Monotony has its fascination. We cling to dulness after many years of habitude. Don’t you know people who have, to your certain knowledge, made up their minds for the last ten years to leave the place they live in? Year after year the same story is told—how they hate the society; how inhospitable the neighbours are; how low the town has become since their day: how every stone in every street is as familiar to them as their faces; how unspeakably nauseating the people who live opposite, and who overlook all their internal doings, make life by the sickening regularity of their habits. But your grumbling friends still go on living in the same place; and all they do, and all they probably ever will do, is to amuse their resolution to quit with fictitious inspections of houses they don’t mean to take, and occasional applications for lists to distant house-agents, with whom they have not the slightest intention of transacting any business. Over and over again I would say, “I’d give anything to get out of this hole;” and no man’s voice more loudly swelled the residential chorus of abuse against Longueville than mine. But I never meant what I said. In the depths of my soul dwelt a very pathetic love for our apartments, with the faded velvet furniture and ghastly skeleton clock and antique mirrors, over Auguste Soulier’s the bootmaker’s shop in the Rue d’Enghien; for the pastry-cook’s opposite, where, when a boy, I would spend my pocket-money in pistaches and tarts, and where, when grown too nice for raw sweetmeats and jam, I would dawdle over Vanilla ices; for the billiard table in the Café Grenouille over whose worn cloth I have stooped with an enthusiasm that, directed into a money-making channel, would have earned me a good income; for the whist tables in the club-room, where, amid volumes of smoke from cigars, at fifty centimes apiece, I would make or lose during a long evening as much as ten sous. And shall I ever forget—oh, fond and foolish heart, be still!—shall I ever forget thee, sweet Pauline Gautier—remind me, was thy father a dancing-master, or did he keep a school? Thee, I say, whom on summer evenings I would row in a boat on the amber-coloured river, filling the intervals of the measured music of my oars with tender breathings, surely not the less delightful for thee to hear because I whispered them in French, not always strictly grammatical?

But, as my father would often say, aprôpos of nothing, “Facts, my boy, are stronger than prejudices;” and a very undeniable fact was that, though billiards, and smoking, and boating, and spooning by moonlight are highly agreeable pursuits, they could not in any fashion whatever contribute to my existence when it pleased heaven to call my father away. I wonder I never thought of this. However, when I was hard upon three-and-twenty, a change came. This is the story of it.

One morning I saw a letter addressed to my father lying upon the breakfast-table. It bore the English post-mark, and without taking further thought of it I went to the window and amused myself with staring out until my father should enter. Somehow, I have the clearest recollection of that morning, and of a trivial incident that made up the life of the street whilst I looked down upon it. It was early morning—nine o’clock. The gay sunshine streamed brightly upon the shop-windows and the white pavement, and threw a coquettish intelligence upon the brown and comely features of a smart femme de chambre, who had thrown up a window opposite to shake a duster, which, I took it, she meant to continue shaking whilst I remained visible. In the middle of the road were two soldiers, little red-trowsered men, so neat and small, you would have said that they had just been unpacked at the toyman’s at the corner. A priest passed, reading a book, with his eyes in the corners of their sockets; the little soldiers whipped up their hands, gave him a salute, and fell to talking again. Ciel! how they gesticulated, shrugged, brandished their fists, smote their breasts, and struck attitudes! In London a crowd would have surrounded them in two minutes, and a hundred pocket-handkerchiefs would have been lost for ever. Now what were they grimacing, grinning, grunting, and growling over? Probably a description. Alphonse was telling Jules how Auguste had beaten Amedée last night at dominoes; the stakes, sugar-and-water all round, a matter of cinquante centimes. Amedée was abimé. Va pour un croquant! You saw his face this morning, Jules? Tenez! ’twas green as grass. This Amedée bears misfortune like a Russian. (To-day it would be a Prussian). Bah! ... here a shrug expressed the rest: in which the ears stood out along the shoulders, in which the back became a hump, in which the tension of the corporeal frame lifted the trousers up the calves, and exhibited everything but socks—in which the whole person was transformed into a rounded twist of silent eloquence, so convincing that I saw Monsieur Galette in the pastry-cook’s shop, nod his head with a gesture of acute appreciation of the significance of the martial convulsion. Thus universally intelligible in France is the language of contortion.

As the soldiers walked off, gesticulating as if at any moment they would throw their caps down and fight it out, in came my father, took up the letter, pulled out his glasses, and having read a little, called out—

“Charlie, here’s news for you.”

“Grove End, Updown,
“May —, 18—.

“My dear Brother,

“I was very glad to get your letter, for, guessing roughly, I should say it is not a day less than four years since I last heard from you. You hate the sea; yet you managed to cross the Channel once; can’t you cross it again and spend a few weeks with us?”

(My father shook his head.)

“I can give you some capital Burgundy, my cook knows her work, and though society here is rather drab-coloured, I can pick you out enough people to keep you well stocked with rubbers.”

(“He would have to entertain a corpse,” said my father. “The crossing would kill me—especially if it were calm—for then all the filth of the engine-room is tasted.”)

“And now to business,” continued the letter. “You want to place your son. Would he like to be a banker’s clerk?”

(“No,” said I; but my father took no notice.)

“One of my clerks is leaving me. His salary is £100. I will make it £150 for your son, if he will come. He can either live in lodgings or with us. He may prefer the former; but I think he will find our house more comfortable than any apartments he can get at Updown. The place will be vacant next week, and he can join when he likes.

“Richard was with me last month.”

(“Poor Dick!” said my father; “we haven’t met for twenty years!”)

“Do you know that he has changed his quarters, and purchased an estate at Shandon?”

(“Tom told me that Dick had retired on £40,000,” said my father, looking at me over his glasses.)

“He has grown very corpulent, and hankers after his old trade. A gain of £10 makes him giddy with joy; and he will forget, amid his transports, that he lost a hundred or more last account. His daughter Theresa has grown a fine woman. I shall be curious to see your son, who scarcely reached to my knee when I last saw him.

“My wife and Constance send all manner of kind messages.

“Believe me, dear Charles,
“Your affectionate brother,
“Thomas Hargrave.”

“What is all this about?” said I.

“About?” cried my father: “why, about you.”

“What made you write? You didn’t tell me you had done so.”

“Because I wasn’t sure that anything would come of it. Why, this is from your uncle Tom. Didn’t you know you had such an uncle?”

“Of course I knew—but what made you write?”

“I’ll tell you,” answered my father, pulling off his glasses. “Last Monday evening I had a talk with Harris at the Club. Harris is a man I respect. I consider Harris,” said my father with emphasis, “an honest man. He spoke of you. ‘Major,’ said he, ‘I think Charlie is too fine a fellow to be allowed to run to seed in a place like this?’ ‘I’ll own, Harris,’ said I, ‘that it has sometimes struck me my son might be doing better.’ He then asked me, why I didn’t get you into some house of business in London. This sort of questions are very easily put. There’s no difficulty in asking a subaltern why he isn’t a field-marshal, or a poor man why he don’t invent something wonderful, and make a fortune. ‘The fact is,’ said I, ‘I have no interest in the City. I don’t think,’ I said, quite forgetting my brother Tom for the moment, ‘that I have a single friend in business.’ ‘Well, major,’ said Harris, ‘your boy and I are old friends: he’s a thorough Englishman and a gentleman, and has done nothing that I can see to deserve expatriation. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I have a brother——’ ‘Faith Harris,’ said I, ‘I am truly obliged to you, but I can’t permit you to do for me what it is my duty, at all events, to try to do for myself. You’ve reminded me that I, too, have a brother who owns a private bank. By George!’”—(my father always swore like a gentleman)—“‘I’ll write to him! I have never asked either of my brothers a favour in my life; and I don’t suppose Tom will refuse me a first and last request.’ So, without saying a word to you, I sent a letter to Tom, asking his interest for you. I don’t know how it strikes you—but I never could have expected so handsome a reply after so long a silence. Why, he has answered me by return of post,” said my father, peering at the date.

“Oh, no doubt he is very kind,” I answered, wishing both him and old Harris at Jericho. “But I haven’t any particular wish to leave here.”

“True, but this is no place for a young man. What’s your age? Three-and-twenty. My dear boy, at three-and-twenty William Pitt was First Lord of the Treasury. What you have to consider is, I am fifty years old” (50 + 12), “and at fifty a man is no longer young.”

“That is true,” said I, somewhat impressed, for these were considerations that, so far as I could remember, had never before disturbed either of us.

“When I die,” continued my father, “my pay dies with me. I have saved nothing—what have I to save? This is not so cheap a place to live in as people think. There was, indeed, a time when ten francs would purchase poultry enough to stock a hotel for a week, but now I can scarcely put a pair of fowls on my table for that money. When I die, what is to become of you? If you don’t think of that now, you will find yourself in a muddle some of these days. Tom can be the making of you if he likes. A hundred and fifty a year, let me tell you, is a very handsome beginning.”

“Yes; but a banker’s clerk!”

“You needn’t call yourself that. You’ll be known as your uncle’s nephew, and I should always speak of you as a banker. And after all, what does it signify what you’re called, so long as you have prospects?”

“I know I can’t do any good by remaining here,” said I, gloomily; “but that doesn’t make me want to leave.”

“Man,” answered my father with the solemnity of a Rasselas, “is not a vegetable. Legs were given him to walk with, and the world was made for him to look at. As we advance in life our wants dwindle to a point. No man could ever have started with more copious aspirations than I did, and now whist is the one solitary pleasure that satisfies me. I don’t know,” he continued, stroking his fine whiskers, “how it came about that I never thought of sending a line to Tom about you before. Answer his letter after breakfast, and take care to thank him for his kindness. I consider his offer a very handsome one.”

“It’s awfully sudden,” said I.

Indeed it was: and I thought it hard that I should be called upon to act and decide for myself without having received one word of warning that a change was to take place. It was not to be expected that I could let fall at once those prejudices in favour of an idle life which had been the accumulation of six years of steady inactivity.

“All good fortune is sudden,” said my father.

“Do you mean to accept the invitation?”

“No; apart from my horror of the sea, I should prefer that you entered life alone. There is a dignity in solitude—a suggestion of self-dependence, my boy, that all men of the world admire. Of course on your arrival you will assure everybody of my affectionate and brotherly sentiments.”

“I shouldn’t mind anything else but a banker’s clerk!” I grumbled. “Roget’s a banker’s clerk, and what a snob he is!”

“Roget’s a Frenchman. Don’t confound monkeys with men. Always be lordly in your estimates of what you are about. I always was. Nothing gave me greater delight than to be magnificent in trifles. I have read of a composer who invariably sat down to write in full court dress, with fine lace ruffles on, and diamond rings. That was a great man. Let your personal characteristics, if you have any, overtop and overwhelm every consideration that seems in anywise mercenary or humble. Sink the Thing in the Man! Beau Brummel behind a counter showing scarves to gentlemen or silks to ladies, would make haberdasherising a gorgeous calling, fit for monarchs to pursue. If I were a banker’s clerk, the whole profession should feel themselves dignified by the accession of a man in whose rich and sumptuous individuality all paltry conditions of his employment should be merged, sunk, and annihilated!”

Saying which, he gave me a magnificent nod, and looked at himself in the glass.

“Happen what will,” said I, “I’ll live in lodgings. I suppose I shall be fearfully hardworked: but what time I have to myself, I mean to be free in. For anything I can tell, my aunt may hate the smell of tobacco. Perhaps uncle Tom is a one-pipe man, who blows his cloud up the kitchen-chimney. A pleasant look-out for a fellow like me, to find himself in a house, where, after tea, the wife pulls out ‘Emma,’ or ‘Cecilia,’ and reads aloud, whilst the husband snorts in an arm-chair, and the daughter works at an altar cloth! Bed at half-past nine—a knock at your door at a quarter to ten, with a shrill request to put your light out, as master’s afraid of fire. No boiled mutton and near relations for me! I’d rather be a missionary than endure that sort of thing.”

“By all means live in lodgings,” said my father, who, I could see, reflected with horror upon the picture I had drawn. “A hundred and fifty a year ought to get you some good wine and cigars, and I don’t see what the deuce is to upset you.”

“Well, I can but try banking, and see how I like it,” said I, dolefully, accommodating my prejudices after the established fashion.

“Oh, you’ll like it,” answered my father. “You’re not going among strangers: and Tom is too much my brother, I hope, not to know what is due to relations and gentlemen.”

Here Celestine brought in the coffee and omelettes, and we sat down to breakfast.

Of course you guess that I did as my father bade me, and accepted my uncle’s offer with an abundance of artificial gratitude. Really grateful I could not be. I was content to remain as I was, as I have told you, and heartily wished my uncle hanged for his kindness. Nor was I at all well-pleased to be reminded of my prospective necessities. What business had Harris to remind my father to tell me that, when he died, I should be a beggar? This was a most objectionable truth: a bold, naked, confounded fact, which, when I was made to look at it, I could not blink; which rendered work necessary; and which enforced my acceptance of uncle Tom’s offer. “Ah, my Pauline!” I remember thinking that evening as I wandered companionless around the stand on which the band of the Hundred Guards were playing, as only it can play, “Ah, my Pauline, would that I had but thy papa’s income, which, as he once assured me in a moment of supreme confidence, amounted to two thousand francs! Small are my wants and thine! What luxuries and bliss unspeakable were ours on two thousand francs of rent! Is not thine a smile that would make soupe maigre—accursed beverage!—more exquisite to the palate than turtle-soup? Hast thou not eyes whose sweet fires would give to the thinnest ordinaire the ruby radiance and the Paradisaical aroma of Burgundy’s vintage?” Was love a reason for my reluctance to leave Longueville? I almost forget. Seldom is the memory tenacious of early indiscretions, or, as a Scotchman said to me once, with intense gravity, “Sir, we forget what we canna remember.” I contrast those sighs I have just recorded with the emotions with which I surveyed Pauline last summer. Que voulez vous? She keeps a hotel. Fat? was she fat? Mr. Banting might have been cut out of her, and still left her a stout woman. I did not know her. Fat annihilates idealism, and I might as well have hunted for a vision of loveliness in the lump of marble which the sculptor has not yet struck, as have sought for the Pauline of my youth, the Pauline of my moonlight boating trips, the Pauline of the black eyes and little waist, in the Dutch and shaking rotundity that filled me, as I gazed, with mingled emotions of alarm and amazement. She knew me, and gasped out her name and—pouff! let me blow these recollections away. I have a story to tell of which Pauline is not the heroine.

So figure to yourself that I have bidden my father and a group of friends, in deer-stalking hats and tight pantaloons, good-bye, and that I am standing near the man at the wheel, who is steering the “King of the French” out through the piers, and that I continue waving my handkerchief to everybody who will look, until the town sinks behind the cliffs, and the piers melt into thin lines. Then I gaze ahead, and see nothing but a broad expanse of blue leaping water, through which the steamer cuts her way, straight for a cloud, a vague white cloud upon the horizon, which a Frenchman near me tells Madame, his wife, is “Le cliffs to Shak-ess-pear, comedian Angleesh.”

CHAPTER II.

“Take my word for it, when relations choose to be obliging, they’re better friends than any a man can make for himself.”—The Vagrant.

I had to change carriages at Canterbury in order to get to Updown, which was twelve miles distant from that city. I felt as lonely as a German who can’t speak a word of English, and who must either make his way from Leicester Square to Mile End Gate, or starve. A guard took me for a foreigner, perhaps a fire-worshipper, because I had to get him to repeat a question three times before I had the faintest idea of his meaning. I will put it to the most intelligent of my readers—if a man with a face like the countenance of a skate, were to thrust his head into a window and roar with a voice turbid with hops, “F-r-sh-f-rd-s-r!” what would you think? Would you call for the police; or fall back, and resignedly give yourself up for lost? What I gathered after a bold and narrow cross-examination was, that the man, who enjoyed his right senses, wanted an answer to this question: “Are you for Ashford, sir?” Considering that I look as much an Englishman as blue eyes, a fair complexion, and a yellow, or auburn, or red, or tawny (take your choice; they all mean one colour) mustache can make a man; and considering, moreover, that I could articulate the national dialect in a manner Dr. Johnson himself—his immortal name, I am proud to say, heads chapter one—would have held unimpeachable, I maintain that I had a right to consider myself aggrieved, by being set down as a foreigner, by a man who looked like a fish, and spoke like a Yahoo. Ever since that day I have possessed, and I hope I shall always preserve, an unaffected sympathy with foreigners travelling in England. No wonder Alphonse Tassard, after a fortnight’s trip to Great Britain—he having set out with the intention of returning in four days—swore with many wild and awful imprecations, that he would rather travel round Dante’s fearful circles, than make a tour in Albion. For, had not a London cabman taken him to the North-Western Railway Station instead of to the South-Eastern Railway Station; and had not a sot put him into a carriage that whirled him into the furnaces of the Black Country, instead of to the southern port, whence he had hoped to embark for his hair-dressing establishment in the Rue de Poitrine?

The train stopped at Updown station, and out I jumped, leaving behind me, in my eagerness to escape from being carried any further, a new silk umbrella with an ivory handle. (This is intended to meet the eye of a melancholy looking man who sat opposite to me.) My portmanteau, which might have been full of priceless Dresden ware for anything the guard knew, was hurled out of the van on to the platform, where it gave a bound and stood upright, the engine screeched, off went the train, and I was left staring at a short man with a waistcoat that descended considerably below his middle, who, on catching my eye, fell to poking his forehead rapidly with his thumb.

“Mr. Hargrave, sir?” said he interrogatively.

“That’s my name,” I answered.

“I’m from your uncle, if you please, sir. The phaeton’s awaitin’ outside. Is that all your luggage, sir?”

“That’s all.”

The groom or coachman, or whatever he was, pounced upon the portmanteau, hoisted it on to his shoulders, and led the way out of the station into a green lane, where stood a neat little trap, into which he bade me jump. I was not fond of jumping. All my traditions were opposed to violent exercise. I clambered leisurely on to the front seat, my companion seized the reins, and the smart chestnut mare, lustrous with brass-mounted harness, started off at a quick trot.

“Where are you going to drive me to?” I asked.

“To Mr. Hargrave’s, sir,” replied the man.

“Do you know if he has procured any lodgings for me in the town?”

“I really can’t say, sir. Master ordered me to drive you to Grove End. Them was my orders, sir.”

I wondered if it could be possible that my uncle had determined I should live in his house? I was resolved that no tyranny of hospitality should tame me into submission. I had made up my mind to live in lodgings, and nothing human, I said to myself, shall induce me to abandon that resolution. How was I to know the sort of treatment I might have to submit to? Mightn’t the butler—if they kept one—sneer at me from behind his master’s chair, and flatter himself that there was no comparison between the respectability of his position as a butler, and mine as a banker’s clerk? Mightn’t my aunt send me upon menial errands, treat me as a kind of upper footman, and if I remonstrated, inquire with a scowl what I thought her husband gave me a hundred and fifty pounds a year for?

Meanwhile, I was being driven through a country so exceedingly pretty, that in the face of it, my fretful and feverish fancies died away, and I found myself incapable of more than admiration. Updown, the coachman told me, was three miles from the station. We had driven a mile by this time, but I could see nothing of the town. The country was hilly, with ridges richly shagged with wood. It was a glorious May afternoon, with a warm breeze that swept by, charged with indescribable aromas, and with the most delicate blue sky that ever I saw, across which great bright clouds were rolling, dimming the sun at intervals, and mellowing and deepening with shadows the manifold colours of hills and plains. We had long ago left the green lane and were now bowling along a very good turnpike road, which rose and fell as far as the horizon behind us, but which grew very devious and vanishing as we advanced. I was struck by the air of cultivated beauty the country exhibited. I had never seen anything like it about Longueville. I noticed the vivid green of the grass, the sturdy and sheltering aspect of the trees, the cosiness and permanency of the farm-houses and wayside buildings, and the rugged and vigorous frames of the country people we overtook and passed. Presently we rattled over a broad bridge, and I looked along a bright river with so smooth a surface that the shores were as accurately mirrored in it as if it had been a looking-glass. I thought of Izaak Walton and hearty, cheerful Mr. Cotton, and wondered if they had ever thrown their quills in that water; and as the “Compleat Angler” was a book I had often read, and was passionately fond of, it is not surprising that the rich and sweet description of Maudlin, and her syllabubs and song, should come into my memory to gild the brief glimpse I had caught with the radiance of an imperishable poem.

On coming to a bend of the road, I saw on my right the red roofs and church spires and glittering vanes, and smoking chimneys of a town built on the sloping sides of two hills.

“Is that Updown?” I asked. The coachman said it was. I gazed at it with interest. Distance softened all rude and commonplace details, and, in the silver sunshine, the town looked fairy-like. The central street, which ran straight as a line through the heart of the valley, was made wonderfully picturesque by a great archway. We branched off just as we were getting near enough to see the houses distinctly, and, in about ten minutes, drove through a gate, along a pleasant avenue, and stopped before an exceedingly pretty house, with gleaming conservatories on either side, and hedged about with a great profusion of shrubbery. I saw a girl’s face at one of the windows, and, in a moment or two, the door was thrown open, and forth stepped—my uncle: a spare, dry-faced man, with very high shirt-collars, and a very shiny black satin cravat, and dressed in a suit of shepherd’s plaid. Of course I had no idea who he was, for there was no more resemblance between him and my father than there was between his coachman and me. But the moment he smiled, I knew he must be a Hargrave.

I got out of the phaeton, and he came up to me, and took my hand, and held it without speaking, whilst he ran his eye over me.

“And you are Charlie, are you?” cried he, not letting go my hand, but, on the contrary, proceeding to shake it slowly and persistently. “Good heaven! how old the world must be getting! Why, it was only the other day that you came up to my knee, and now, egad! it seems as if I only came up to yours! Do you remember me?”

“Very faintly,” said I. “You came to Longueville once, when I was at school.”

“Yes—yes! and I got you a half-holiday, and you wheedled a half-crown out of me! ha! ha! and how’s my brother, the major? Does he ever mean to come and see me?... But what do I mean by keeping you standing here? Hi! James, carry Mr. Hargrave’s portmanteau into the hall.”

And catching me by the arm, he led me up the steps, and through the hall into a drawing-room full of flowers and china—so it appeared to me—calling “Conny! Conny!” loudly as we passed in.

Scarcely were we entered, when two ladies presented themselves. I felt travel-worn and soiled, and wished my uncle had given me an opportunity of making myself a little fresher-looking before introducing me to his wife and daughter. I made a low bow and took my aunt’s hand; she welcomed me in a very mild and pleasing manner. My cousin Conny then came up to me and shook my hand, looking very shy and charming. She was exceedingly pretty. Up to that time, I don’t think I had ever seen her equal. As to Pauline Gautier—pshaw! There was no comparison to be made. Pauline was brown; Conny had a skin of snow, and hair of gold, and large, modest, dark blue eyes, and a sweet and saucy nose, and a small mouth, and a transporting figure. I can’t describe the dress she wore. No man but a shopkeeper ought to be able to describe a woman’s costume. Shall I tell you why? because a woman’s style ought to be too perfect for a man to notice details. Depend upon it, there is something gross in that woman’s taste, whose dress, after leaving her, a man is able to describe.

My aunt was a stout, healthy-looking woman, red-cheeked, with a most amiable cast of countenance. I was impressed by the size of her cap, and her walk, which was a waddle. My uncle pushed a chair forwards for me to be seated; he and the ladies then ranged themselves round me, and we began to converse.

“I was delighted to hear from my brother. How is he?”

“Very well indeed. He begged me to thank you heartily for the kindness of your offer to me, and to convey his love to you and Mrs. Hargrave, and your daughter.”

“What a time he has lived at Longueville! Isn’t he sick of the place?”

“No. We are both of us very fond of Longueville. I left it with great regret, I assure you.”

“I wanted papa to take us there this summer,” said Conny, timidly, and then starting; like Fear in Collins’ Ode, at the sound she herself had made.

“I dread the water, Mr. Charles,” observed my aunt.

“And so does my father, or he would have been glad to accept your kind invitation.”

“Is it long since you were in England?” asked Conny.

“I have not been in England since I was six years old.”

“Why, you must be a perfect Frenchman!” cried out my uncle and aunt in a breath. And then said my uncle: “You’ll find French very useful to you in business. How do you like the idea of being a banker?”

“I know nothing about it,” I answered.

I was proud of my ignorance. I believed it would impress Conny. I felt, in short, like the West-end gentleman who asked a friend where the city was.

“We’ll soon teach you,” said my uncle, cheerily. “I wish you had made up your mind to live with us. I have taken lodgings for you in the town, as you desired, but I am sure you would have been more comfortable here.”

I felt disposed to agree with him. Certainly the house appeared a very delightful one, and I must say that I had had no idea I owned such a pretty cousin as Conny. But still I reflected that the habits of the old people might be entirely opposed to mine; and it would be hideous to have to submit to any kind of restraint, after the long years of billiards, tobacco, and freedom I had enjoyed at Longueville.

“At all events,” said my aunt, “you can always come here if you don’t find your quarters comfortable. Your landlady was recommended to me by our laundress, who is a very respectable woman; Conny and I inspected your rooms, before taking them, and they seem pretty comfortable. They are very clean, which is a great thing in lodgings.”

I looked at Conny, who was watching me; her eyes fell when mine met them. There seemed a little more keenness and slyness in their glance than I should have thought such innocent, maidenly, tender, blue eyes capable of. But oh, Eugenio! what is there more deceitful in life than a pretty girl? Does thy heart bleed? Mine has bled. I have tried to pick a rose, and have pulled away nothing but four fingers and a thumb stuffed with thorns.

“You will dine with us to-day,” said my uncle. “Afterwards, James shall drive you to your quarters. There is no need to go to work before Monday. You can pass the rest of the week in looking about you, and sending home your impressions to my brother, the major, who I daresay will be anxious to know how you like the place.”

“Your kindness,” I answered, “will give me plenty to tell him about.”

“My dear boy, we promise to do our best to make you happy,” said my uncle effusively. “I can assure you, it gives me great pleasure to be of service to you and my brother. He ought to have applied to me before. Had you begun this sort of work ten years ago, you might have owned a bank of your own by this time. But it’s never too late to begin, is it?” and here he smiled, and I smiled, and my aunt smiled, and my sweet little cousin laughed a little harping treble, soft as the notes of a flute heard on the water at midnight. “This is very promising,” thought I.

My aunt then told her husband to take me upstairs; it was nearly five, and dinner would soon be ready. So I followed my uncle to a bed-room, and there, as I brushed my hair and curled my mustache, I wondered what sort of an impression I had made on my relations. I thought of my father’s advice, and wished I knew how to be as magnificent as he. He had often told me that his brothers had a very high respect for him, and considered him the prop and decoration of the family name. I thought this quite likely. People in business do respect professional relations. Profit and purple are a fine combination; and if Mr. Scrip knows that her ladyship would call upon Mrs. Scrip, were she to hear that the Dean was Mrs. Scrip’s brother, why shouldn’t Scrip brag of the parson, and combine social dignity with his remunerative pursuits in Throgmorton Street? I lamented my inability to imitate my father’s lordliness, for then I might have profited by my relations’ pride in him, and provoked deference, and even awe, by repeating in myself those swelling qualities and overtopping characteristics which rendered my father among his acquaintance an object of admiration and reverence. It is an old saying, that the world will always take you at your own price. Cast your eyes around you, Eugenio, and mark the numbers who are buying paste for precious stones, and, albeit, by no means destitute of the critical faculty, ostentatiously parading the worthless make-believe in the sincere conviction that they are gems of the purest ray serene. Any muff can make himself a considerable man, if he will but shout long and loud enough to the populace to step up! step up! and admire! “Behold me, gentlemen!” says the poet through himself or through his friends. “I am not so great a man as Shakespeare, and I have not Dante’s austere and morbid imagination. But it is universally acknowledged that I combine the sweetness of Keats and the wisdom of Wordsworth with the power of Byron and the ghastliness of Coleridge; and give me leave to say that the man who can rival these acknowledged geniuses must be great?” “Hooroor!” yell the populace. They believe him; they buy his quarto of nonsense; and lo! another muff is canonised.

So I maintain that my father was right when he exhorted me to treat life as a court-dress affair. The world is so full of hero-worshippers, that no man can think himself too important.

CHAPTER III.

Hardcastle. “I believe, sir, you must be sensible, sir, that no man alive ought to be more welcome than your father’s son, sir. I hope you think so?”

Marlow. “I do, from my soul, sir. I don’t want much entreaty, I generally make my father’s son welcome wherever he goes.”—She Stoops to Conquer.

I returned to my uncle and the ladies in the drawing room. By this time I felt quite at home, a feeling to which the improvement effected by the hair-brush and towel in the coup-d’œil of my personal appearance did not a little contribute; and I could stop to admire. Addressing myself to my aunt, I complimented her upon the beauty of the grounds, a glimpse of which I could catch through the windows, and entered easily into a conversation, in which my uncle and Conny joined with great readiness.

My uncle gained upon me. Yellow, and spare, and shrewd as his face was, a great deal of heart and amiability were mixed up in it. He was five years younger than my father, but was one of those men who look fifty when they are thirty, and forty when they are sixty. He had lank black hair, and a long nose, and a spasmodic way of speaking, as if, after delivering himself of a few sentences, he found difficulty in breathing.

I asked him what time the bank closed.

“At four,” he answered. “The clerks generally get away by half-past.”

“Do you like the idea of being a banker’s clerk?” inquired Conny, with a gleam of mischief in her blue unfathomable eyes.

“I haven’t the least notion,” I replied. “All that I know about banks is that they are places where you offer cheques and receive money for them.”

“True,” said my uncle, with a laugh; “but people must work very hard in order to induce the banks to change those cheques into money.”

“I wonder your papa didn’t put you into the army,” said Conny. “Would not you have liked to be a soldier?”

“It is immaterial to me what I am, provided I am easy in my mind, and have time now and then to smoke a cigar,” answered I, with the lofty languor of an exquisite of the first water.

Conny laughed merrily; but, being afraid that my answer was a rather ungracious one, all things considered, I changed the subject by asking my uncle if he smoked. Yes, he did smoke, incessantly, Mrs. Hargrave told me; which meant that he had a cigar after dinner and a cigar with his grog before going to bed. I should have probably pointed out that my uncle was extraordinarily moderate in his consumption of tobacco, and have proceeded to give a sketch of our club in the Rue des Chiens, and the immense quantity of tabac fin and cigars that were smoked there at a sitting, had not dinner been announced. I gave my arm to my aunt, and, followed by Conny and her papa, marched into the dining-room, a charming apartment with a large window conducting on to the lawn, and glass doors leading into the conservatory, the walls hung with good paintings, and the whole of the furniture in happy taste. The setting sun was shining in front, and filled the room with long slanting rules of pink light, the effect of which was to make Conny, who took a seat fronting me, bewitchingly pretty. I had tasted no food since eight o’clock that morning, and therefore did abundant justice to the very good dinner that had been provided for me. My uncle was a capital host. He allowed me to eat instead of disturbing me with remarks, and damaging my appetite by obliging me to talk. His wines were capital; his cook, like Bayard, sans reproche; I said to him, holding up a glass of Madeira, “My father would appreciate this.”

“Yes,” he answered; “why doesn’t he come and see us? I should find him aged, no doubt; but he was always a handsome man.” And he began to tell us stories of his and his brother’s young days, and how a certain young lady broke her heart when my father went to India, and how another young lady turned Roman Catholic, and faded into a white veil, when my father married. I thought Conny looked sentimental whilst she listened. I caught her eye once, during these startling revelations, but saw that she was not thinking of me by her abstracted air.

By the time the sweets were on the table, I was qualified for any amount of conversation. I talked of Longueville, and of the Emperor’s bow to my father, the major, described the Empress and her style, as well as I could, her fine taste and sweet face, and graceful manners—indeed, I talked so much of the imperial pair, whom I had only seen once or twice at Longueville, that my aunt got the extraordinary impression in her head that I was an intimate friend of theirs, as I afterwards learned, by her boasting to a friend that, “Charlie was often with the Emperor and Empress of the French at Longueville.” True to my resolution to deal with life as splendidly as I could, and not a little excited into a disposition to dazzle by Conny’s intoxicating eyes, I talked of some titled acquaintances of mine at Longueville, and, I believe, dove-tailed their valuable names into my remarks, with surprising effect. I spoke of the capital cigars Lord Towers used to give me; of the gambling propensities of the Honourable Mr. Spadille, Lord Shallowman’s brother, who tried to induce the members of our club to play for guinea points; of the Marchioness of Cliffeton’s little suppers in the Rue de Ville, &c., &c. Do you think I told them that Lord Towers skulked in Longueville, because he durst not show his face in London for fear of Mr. Sloman? That the Honourable Mr. Spadille, Lord Shallowman’s brother, had bolted from Leamington with Colonel Corney’s wife? That the Countess of Cliffeton—bah! What’s in a name? sometimes a blackguard. What’s in a lion’s skin? very often an ass. The characters of certain of the English nobility residing in Longueville were nothing to nobody. All that I wanted was, that my uncle, and aunt, and Conny of the celestial eyes, should understand that a young gentleman, named Charles Hargrave, who, out of respect for his father, the major, and out of regard for his own prospects, had condescended to become a banker’s clerk, had frequently waltzed with a marchioness, and pledged her at her own table in unpaid champagne, had invariably addressed an English baron by a convivial nickname, and had very often helped to put the intoxicated brother of a North British nobleman to bed.

I don’t know if my uncle was impressed; but my aunt was, and I rather think Conny was, too. An irresistible thrill of pride ran through me, when my aunt, leaning across the table, said with great earnestness,

“I am afraid, Mr. Charles, you will despise the position Thomas has offered you; but though the profession of banking has sunk rather low since our day, there are still plenty of gentlemen engaged in it.”

There was no sneer in this; I should have instantly felt it had there been.

“Banking may have sunk low in other places,” said Conny, with a heightened colour, “but I am sure papa’s clerks are gentlemen.”

“I am not so sure,” replied my aunt, who every moment was proving herself to be a deliciously candid woman.

“Oh, Curling’s a gentleman,” said my uncle, “and so is Spratling, though his name might be grander.”

“Mr. Curling is gentlemanly, I admit, but I don’t consider him to be a gentleman,” exclaimed my aunt.

Conny picked at a bit of bread and twisted the fragments into little balls.

“Oh, I am sure I shall like banking, Mrs. Hargrave,” said I, with fine condescension. “Of course,” I continued, waving my hand in imitation of my father, who would gesticulate in that manner in a very impressive and polished way: “if I had an income of my own, however small, I should have preferred to continue as I was. But necessity is one of those things to which noblemen as well as ploughmen must submit.”

“True,” said my uncle with a nod. “Help yourself to more wine.”

“I should have thought,” observed my candid aunt with a face full of sober honesty, and in a tone that quite forbade all notion that any irony was intended, “that you would have been able to marry very well.”

“Oh, oh! give him time—give him time!” chuckled my uncle.

“I have never been in love,” said I.

Conny’s deep eyes, full of mournfulness, met mine.

“I have a great horror, Mrs. Hargrave,” I went on, “of men who marry only for money.”

“And so have I,” said Conny.

“Eh? you?” cried her papa, fondly. “What do you know of these matters?”

“Money,” I observed—a sucking Daniel come to judgment!—“is no doubt very necessary; but I never will admit that it can be the foundation of married happiness.”

Nobody at that table had said that it was; and the observation was therefore uncalled for. But I used to be a lover of slashing commonplaces.

“I quite agree with you,” said Conny, looking, as she spoke, a thorough child of sensibility.

“Mayn’t love and money be sometimes combined?” suggested my aunt deferentially, as if henceforth and for ever she never meant to be sure of anything until I had given judgment.

“I doubt it,” I replied, and I gave her my reasons: firstly, because, if the woman had money, she would always be suspicious of the man’s sincerity; and secondly—but why print myself an ass? I spoke much indescribable folly; though, let me tell you, I never saw anybody look more pleased than Conny as she listened to me. She and I, and my aunt, had now all the conversation to ourselves; for my uncle, after having assured me that he was deaf with dyspepsia, had become silent, and did nothing but make faces and sip a petit goût of brandy. There could be no question that I had succeeded in making a very good impression on my aunt, and I rather fancied that Conny seemed well pleased with me. I was gentlemanly in my manners—I must really be permitted to say that; and I was not bad looking—which is an observation I should not dream of making did I not think it due to the public; and I possessed the art, in some degree of perfection, of talking a large amount of froth, in a manner that ladies, in those days, were obliging enough to think very agreeable and diverting. Putting these facts together, it is not very surprising that my aunt, whom I treated with all imaginable courtesy, should have been favourably prejudiced; and I need not say, therefore, that I was not very greatly astonished when she said to me, before she left the table,

“I do wish, Mr. Charles, that you would change your mind, and make this house your home.”

“I am deeply sensible of the kindness and value of your offer, Mrs. Hargrave,” I replied, with a bow my father might have envied, “but I cannot think that I should have any right to inflict my presence upon you until you know me better. My habits,” I continued, magnificently, “have been formed in a school that might clash with the prejudices of English provincial life; for our philosophy at Longueville is of the laissez-aller sort; we are there, indeed, a species of lotus-eaters, whose hardest physical work is limited to dealing cards, and whose hardest mental work consists in playing them. When I have become more Anglicised, I may then, with your hospitable permission, accept your very great kindness.”

She appeared overpowered by this speech, and felt, I daresay, very much as though she had just kissed hands at the Tuileries. I glanced at Conny, who, catching my eye, said saucily,

“All men like their freedom; but what a freedom it is! it is a horrid slavery to tobacco, late hours, and to everything bad for the health.”

Here was an opportunity for saying something singularly neat and smart; but I missed it from sheer want of wit.

The ladies now left the table. The sun had sunk behind the hills, but many gorgeous tints lingered behind, and made the quiet sky beautiful. My uncle, lifting his head out of his cravat, fixed a dyspeptic eye upon me, and bade me draw my chair near his and fill my glass. I cannot express how much I liked the honest, homely amiability of his manner. He seemed to me the very essence of kindness. We had a long chat about my father, of whom he was very proud and fond, and asked me many questions about his habits and opinions and means. He then talked of my other uncle, Richard, and his daughter Theresa, whom he described as a very fine girl, but so eccentric in her conduct as to cause some uneasiness to her father, who was anxious to get her married.

“If she is handsome and has money,” I observed, “surely a husband ought to be easily got for her.”

“Dick tells me she has had several admirers,” answered my uncle, “but she is so confoundedly fastidious that nobody is able to please her. What do you think of Conny?”

“She is a cousin to boast of. She is the prettiest girl I have ever seen.”

My uncle looked immensely gratified.

“Yes, yes,” said he with a broad smile. “She is pretty enough. I have nothing to complain of. An only child is not always so well favoured. When nature is mean, she is generally mean with a vengeance. But Conny is a sly puss; she has made her mamma and me a little uneasy latterly.”

“Indeed!”

“My cashier, Curling, is a rather good looking young fellow, and Mrs. Hargrave has got an idea in her head that Conny admires him.”

“Oh, there is no harm in that.”

“She is afraid that Conny likes him.”

“Women often have the queerest tastes,” said I uneasily. Why was I irritated by my aunt’s suspicion?

“Did you notice that my wife rather poo-pooh’d bankers’ clerks?”

“I did.”

“That was done for a motive,” said my uncle with a twinkling eye. “My wife is a shrewd woman. I have no right to be her trumpeter, but I must say that very few women have my wife’s sagacity.”

“Is Mr. Curling a gentleman?”

“I believe so. He is a London man. But he’s no match for my daughter, I can tell you.”

“I should think not,” said I jealously and warmly; “very few men are.”

“However,” continued my uncle, twisting a wine-glass round upon the table, “all this may be a mere delusion on the part of your aunt.” [Your aunt! Do you mark the flattering identification?] “It would certainly never do to appear suspicious. Trifles are easily made significant and important. Curling used to be asked here sometimes, but my wife won’t have him now; and I think she’s right. Eh? What do you think?”

I fully agreed with him; and we then rose to join the ladies.

Whilst we talked I had heard the sound of a piano, and on entering the drawing-room found Conny alone, playing very prettily. She instantly jumped up when she saw her father and me. I begged her to keep her place, but she refused.

“Do you play?” she asked.

“A waltz or two,” said I; “that’s all.”

“Let me hear you.”

The little haughty command was delightful. I went at once and dashed into a piece of dance-music; then looked up, thinking it was Conny who stood near, but found it was my aunt.

“You have a charming touch, Mr. Charles,” said she. “Of course you sing.”

Of course I didn’t. She wouldn’t believe me, so conquering and clever did she consider her nephew. I dropped my assurances to the contrary after a little, being perfectly satisfied to be included in the rank of those who have honour thrust upon them, and went up to Conny and asked her to play.

“You would much rather smoke a cigar with papa than listen.”

“Before I grow eloquent,” said I, with a smile, “I should like to know if I may call you Constance?”

“Oh, I believe cousins are privileged.”

“And after I have called you Constance a few times, just for form’s sake, may I address you as Conny?”

“Call me what you please,” she replied, with the loveliest flush of pink in her fair cheeks.

“Then,” said I, “Constance, so far from wishing to smoke, I would be perfectly content to give up that habit for ever, if you would but consent to play the piano to me, every time a longing came across me for a cigar.”

“That’s a little story,” she said in a whisper.

Oh! what lovely eyes! oh, what glorious hair! Come, Pauline, come quickly, and snatch me from this peril! Or, since Pauline has grown too fat to come quickly, rise ye recollections of defeat and humiliation, of rage and despair, and steel my heart against the bewildering memories that make it languish as I write.

“It is solemn truth,” said I. Whereupon she went to the piano, and played “Il segréto per esse felice,” whilst mamma kept time with her head, and papa warbled an accompaniment at the other end of the room.

“I wonder if it is too cold to smoke a cigar out of doors,” said my uncle, opening one of the windows and thrusting his hand out to test the temperature.

“Oh yes, much too cold, I am sure. Why can’t you and Mr. Charles smoke in the library? We’ll keep you company,” observed my aunt.

“Very well,” answered my uncle. “Charlie, I hope you won’t mind the ladies joining us?”

Mind! oh irony, where is thy sting? And this was a house I durst not live in, for fear I shouldn’t be allowed to have my liberty! This was a house where smoking was forbidden! Where “Emma” and “Cœlebs” were read aloud, whilst Miss tatted! Where lights were put out at a quarter before ten! Dolt! numskull! but it was too late: my honour was involved; my dignity was at stake! my importance must not be tarnished. I had said I would go into lodgings, and there was an end.

We all repaired to the library, where my aunt lighted some candles, and where my uncle produced a box of cigars, whilst Conny struck a wax match, and shaded the flame with her hand (whereby the light shone in her eyes, and made her hair sparkle like the sea at night), ready to hold to my cigar when I wanted it. I asked Mrs. Hargrave if she didn’t object to the smell of tobacco. Oh no; she liked it. She owned that she didn’t much care about pipes, but she knew no smell so fragrant as that of a good cigar.

“Don’t you think my brother the major would enjoy this?” said my uncle, lying back in a capacious arm-chair.

“It would be his ideal of happiness,” I answered.

And I believed it would. The room, though large, was wonderfully snug, furnished with book-cases filled with volumes, and the walls ornamented with rich old engravings. My aunt sat near the table sewing, but not busily; and Conny occupied a chair near her papa, with her hands folded on her lap, doing nothing. What could be more homely than such a scene? Oh, ladies, do you not know that your presence makes the cigar doubly soothing and fragrant, and choice beyond the wildest advertising dreams of the tobacconist? There are men—call them Ogres, Bluebeards, Turks, Ashantees—who profess to think that the one great charm of tobacco is, that it gives them an excuse to get away from your society. But take the word of a man who loves, admires, reverences your sex with the ardour of a Frenchman and the loyalty of a Briton—that to all good men Havannah fumes never taste so sweet as when your white hands present the lighted spill, and when your fair presences are enthroned in the ambrosial cloud. No, madam, don’t—pray don’t pretend that good tobacco-smoke is objectionable. I speak not of mundungus, of the poisonous negro-head, of the raw, coarse cavendish. These, I admit, discharge fumes fit only for hothouses. I have in my mind the dry, the nutty, the aromatic cigar, to which, give me leave to ask, did ever an engaged woman object? Fie! you liked it, Julia, when James was courting you. Didn’t you give him a silver match-box? It is wifely tyranny, I say, that drives him and his intimidads into a back-room; it is caprice that kecks at his comforts, not at his cigars. Go! thou art not my wife. I would not own thee. The true, the faithful, the fond, sits at her husband’s feet, whilst he exhales the blue smoke in rings to the ceiling. I call a blessing on her. May her sons be honest men, and may they never know the want of a good cigar!

It was eight o’clock, when my uncle suddenly sitting bolt upright, said,

“I don’t want to hurry you, Charlie; but as you have a two miles’ drive before you, and as I believe your landlady has been expecting you since eight o’clock this morning, what say if I order the phaeton to be got ready?”

I assented with a stoical face, but with an inward deep reluctance. What a fool I was to permit my ridiculous fears to prevent me living at Grove End! My uncle rung the bell, and ordered the trap, whilst my aunt expressed her regrets that it was necessary for me to leave so early, and her hopes that I would find my lodgings comfortable.

I caught Conny smiling once or twice; and when, at last, meeting her blue eyes full, I said, “Something amuses my cousin;” she answered, “I know why you wouldn’t live here—you were afraid you would not be able to smoke.” It would not do to admit such an impeachment as this; I must either deal with the matter splendidly, or say nothing. So I assured Conny, in my loftiest manner, that she was quite in error; that I never for a moment doubted that I should be received and treated—as I had been—with delightful kindness; that my reason for declining her papa’s and mamma’s offer, was my disinclination to burden their home with the presence of a bachelor, whose ways and habits—here I repeated what I had before said to my aunt; taking care, however, to exhibit those “ways and habits,” to which I alluded in a light that could not fail to make them imposing and lordly, and precisely such characteristics as would naturally belong to a young gentleman who had mingled all his life in the society of men of high birth and distinguished positions.

My uncle wanted to accompany me to my lodgings, and “see me comfortable for the night,” as he said; and my aunt encouraged him to do so. But I was firm—I said no. I would not hear of his leaving the house to be my companion in a long drive through the night-air. I had my way; and my portmanteau being hoisted into the phaeton, I followed it amid a chorus of good-nights, and hopes that I would sleep well.

The road to Updown was pretty hilly, but smooth and good: and, in a very short time, the little mare had rattled us into the High Street. James had his directions, and presently pulled up before a detached house, in which, he informed me, were my lodgings. I pushed open the garden gate and knocked at the door. After a pretty long interval, a key was turned, a chain unslipped, a bolt withdrawn, and an elderly woman, with a candle over her head, stood forth. I told her who I was; whereupon she dropped me a curtsey, and said she had quite given me up for that day. James brought in my portmanteau, and went away, thanking me for a little trifle I gave him. The elderly woman then conducted me into a good-sized parlour, which she said was my sitting-room, very comfortably furnished, with a good large sofa in it, that took my fancy mightily. She then led me to my bed-room, and this apartment I also found unexceptionable in all points. She asked me if I would take tea, and on my saying yes, she went away to prepare it, whilst I unpacked my portmanteau. When I returned to the parlour, I found it cheerful and brilliant, with a fine old-fashioned oil lamp; the tea-things were on the table, and the pretty crockery made me feel as much at home as if I had lodged with Mrs. Reeves a year.

So far everything that had befallen me was entirely to my taste. My uncle’s reception of me had been overpowering; my aunt, it was plain, thought me a very fine and splendid person; my cousin was pretty enough to make Updown a paradise; and nothing could be more comfortable than my lodgings. After tea I lighted a pipe and stretched myself along the sofa and thought over matters. It was, perhaps, all for the best that I had decided not to live at Grove End. I could keep up my dignity better by residing at a distance. No doubt I should be asked there as often as I cared to be; and I should certainly enjoy my kind-hearted relations’ hospitality not the less because I could combine my privileges with personal independence.

Conny ran in my head a good deal. What a little pet she was! I could love that girl, I thought. Who was Curling? Did she like him? He must be a very impertinent sort of fellow to think about her. I supposed that he had paid her attention, and as perhaps he was not entirely ugly, and as young men didn’t abound in these parts, she had talked a little nonsense about him to her mamma, which had frightened the old lady. Pshaw! thought I, what chance would Curling stand against me if I took it into my head to unseat him? What! a banker’s clerk, a man of pass-books and cancelled cheques against a gentleman who knew nothing of business, who thought money an insufferable bore, and credit the easiest and most courtly way of supplying one’s needs; who was a man of the world, a great favourite with women, a good billiard player, and the friend, the intimate friend, of men who, were it not for their tailors and hatters, would be making brilliant with their presence and wit the high society from which the heartless dun or the yet more inexorable bailiff had obliged them to beat a precipitate retreat.

I laughed at the absurdity of the idea. Why, in all probability, Conny was already in love with me. Of course they were talking about me at Grove End. Couldn’t I hear my uncle exclaim, with pardonable exultation, “My nephew!” which meant, “See, my dears, what our side has produced!” And what could my aunt do but praise me and abuse Curling, and contrast my manners with the cashier’s (Oh, humiliating comparison!), and wonder, with a sneer, whether Louis Napoleon would have pulled off his hat to Curling’s papa?

Risum teneatis, amici? asks Maunder’s Treasury of Knowledge. I was Mr. Bottom, of the ass’s ears, in those days. Behold my magnanimity! I pull my ancient character out of obscurity, as I would an old coat to dress a scarecrow withal, that it may be a warning and a horror to men. Only please don’t confound the high-minded being who addresses you with the senseless, conceited dummy that idly flaps his useless arms about the fields.

CHAPTER IV.

“There

Thy uncle—this thy first cousin, and these

Are all thy near relations.”

The Critic.

I had breakfasted by nine the next morning, and after a conversation with my landlady respecting matters of much too mean a nature to figure in this fastidious narrative, I filled my pipe, put on my hat, and went out.

The morning was lovely; I never drew breath with a keener enjoyment of life; the garden in front of Mrs. Reeves’ house was small, but plentifully stocked; the wall-flowers made the air delicious, and I could have very well passed a whole hour standing at the gate smoking my pipe, and watching the quiet interests with which the long street was peopled.

Whilst I lingered, debating which way I should go, I beheld a smart vehicle approaching, and recognised my uncle’s phaeton. He was in it, and waved his hand to me.

“Up already!” he cried, springing briskly into the road. “Conny has lost a pair of gloves. She bet me that I should find you in bed.”

“She deserves to lose,” said I, laughing, “for having such a bad opinion of me.”

“How did you sleep? Did you like your rooms? Is Mrs. Reeves obliging? Is your bed comfortable?” were some among the many questions my uncle asked me in his cheery, cordial manner; and hearing that I was perfectly satisfied and happy, he asked me what I meant to do? I told him that I was about to take a walk and see the town.

“Come, first, and let me show you the bank. We open at half-past nine.”

I put my pipe in my pocket, and scrambled up into the back seat, and away we clattered down the High Street, through the ancient gateway, and round the corner, stopping before a new building over which the word “Bank” was engraved. My uncle led the way in. The office was clean and new, and made fearfully business-like by a counter and high stools and advertisement-charts of insurance offices. A young man stepped from behind a ground-glass front, and my uncle introduced him to me as Mr. Curling. I bowed loftily, and fixed a scrutinising eye upon the young gentleman. He was more cordial, and offered me his hand.

“Glad to know you, Mr. Hargrave,” said he.

“I am much obliged to you,” I replied.

“Yonder is Mr. Spratling,” said my uncle, smiling at the youth who had turned his head on hearing his name pronounced. I nodded, and Mr. Spratling stared. My uncle then went round the counter, calling to me to follow, and going up to a desk behind the ground-glass front, said, “This will be your place, Charlie,” and watched my face; but I said nothing, though I could have commented in very forcible terms upon the immense inconvenience it would be to me—a lounger born—of having to sit on a high stool all day and write down dry bucolic names and rows of figures in a huge book called a ledger. My uncle then conducted me into his private office at the back, and leaning against the table, asked me, with a rather humorous twinkle in his eye, “How my look-out struck me?”

“I’ll tell you what,” I answered, seating myself, for it was always my opinion that you can’t make a greater mistake than to stand when you can sit; “I’ll tell you what, uncle; you are such a thoroughly good fellow, with so nice a sense of what is due to a gentleman, that I believe, after a little, I shall be able to endure this life. But in any other office than yours, with any other man but you over me, I could no more submit to have a counter placed between me and society, than I could submit to cleaning boots.”

He laughed heartily, and clapping me on the shoulder, exclaimed,

“I don’t mean you to be a clerk; all that I want you to do is to learn the business. I have plans for you, which both you and your father will like, I believe. But you must learn the business. I don’t mean you to do any dry or mean work, such as collecting bills. Look over young Spratling’s shoulder now and then, and observe what he is about. Pump Mr. Curling—he is good-natured and a smart hand—and get all the information you can out of him.”

“Oh, I will, with pleasure.”

“You needn’t fear any ill-feeling. They know you are my nephew, and I have told them that your father has sent you to me to learn business habits, and to qualify you for becoming—well, I shall have more to say to you about the future before long. I have a good scheme in my head.”

“You are all kindness,” I answered. “Every moment I am with you makes me think of Longueville with less regret.”

“All right,” he exclaimed, looking immensely gratified and amiable. “And now, as I told you last night, I don’t want you to formally join us until Monday. You are under an engagement to my wife—who, I can assure you, has fallen in love with you!—to dine with us every day—that is, if you like; and she takes you under her protection until Monday morning, when she will consign you to me. She has ordered the carriage at eleven, and means, I believe, to take you a drive round the town, and show you what there is to be seen. The phaeton will convey you to Grove End.”

Here Mr. Spratling came in, and said Mr. Clover wanted an audience. I took my hat, but before I went out, my uncle called me back to whisper, “You’ll find a box of cigars in the library,” and dismissed me with a cheerful push. Mr. Curling bowed as I passed out, and I returned his salute politely. I felt more at my ease now that my uncle had told me that these young men were to regard me as a gentleman who had condescended to join the bank merely for the purpose of acquiring business habits. I cannot say that I thought Mr. Curling good-looking. His eyes indeed were not bad; but he didn’t look a manly sort of fellow. He was narrow and thin-breasted, and had curly black hair, which I detest. His teeth were good, and his smile so-so, but his dress was outré, ill-fitting, and he wore a ring on the first finger of his right hand—the hand he wrote with, the finger he pointed with—which affected me more disagreeably than had he said “You was,” and dropped his h’s and g’s. It was ridiculous to suppose that golden-haired Conny could see anything in such a man as that. As to Spratling, he looked a harmless little fellow; his head and hands were immense, and his shoulders broad enough for a man of my father’s height; yet he might have walked under my arm.

I cocked my hat as I strolled past the counter with a slow and indolent step; and stopped, when on the pavement, full in the sight of Mr. Curling, to light a cigar, though I should have preferred a pipe. I then got into the phaeton, and was driven to Grove End.

My aunt received me in the most gracious manner. The first question she asked me was, if I had breakfasted: and, on my replying in the affirmative, eagerly questioned me about my lodgings. Was I quite sure I was comfortable, she wanted to know; because, if I was not, there was a delightful bed-room, entirely at my service, at the back of the house, and she would give orders at once for it to be got ready. I hope I showed her that my gratitude was equal to her kindness. Indeed I was almost embarrassed by the extraordinary civilities I had met with; and, though I believe there was not another man in England, at that time, who had a better opinion of himself than I had, yet I must do myself the justice to declare that I did not conscientiously believe I deserved the kindness I received.

Presently the door opened and in came Conny. She gave me her hand, which I raised to my lips.

“That is a German fashion,” said I, rather dismayed by her extravagant blush.

“Is it?” she answered, turning her head aside and looking half angry and half pleased. “I thought it wasn’t English.”

“The French kiss each other on both cheeks, don’t they?” inquired my aunt with naïve interest.

“The men do, and I also believe it is customary among lovers. But I fancy that the custom does not prevail amongst the married folks, from the story that is told of a Frenchman, who, hearing that a friend of his had kissed his wife, cried ‘Quoi! sans y etre obligé!’”

You see, I meant to mingle sarcasm with humour, and to shine as a wit; but to crack a joke with my aunt was like pulling a cracker at a supper-table with your partner, who gets only a piece of the paper, and leaves the sweetmeat and the motto with you.

“Dear me!” said she. “Now I should have thought such a custom would have been entirely confined to the married people.”

I looked at Conny. How was she dressed? Now you want to puzzle me. Was it black silk? I believe it was. Whatever the material, it was dark enough to set off the transporting whiteness of her throat, and to make the curl that gleamed down her back shine (to use the language of an imitator of Ossian) like the lustrous wake of a meteor upon the midnight sky. What pearly teeth! What a surprisingly dainty complexion! Where did this girl learn to dress her hair? Never did I see hair so becomingly dressed. Is she to be my heroine? Nous verrons; but I rather fear, if she is to be my heroine, that hair of hers won’t serve any dramatic exigencies. How could it flow, as all heroines’ gold-coloured hair ought to flow, at an instant’s notice, in a bright cloud over a pillar of a man’s throat, if it is dressed so well and firmly? All we dare hope is that we shall meet with no pillars (columns I think they call them) for Conny’s hair to flow over. But if a column or a pillar of a throat will interfere, in spite of our earnest remonstrances, let us at least trust that the hair-pins will do their duty, and maintain the respectability of passion by holding the pads and puffs and frizettes in their proper places.

“I hope,” said I, following her to the window, “that my foreign manners haven’t ruined me in your good opinion?”

“I told you last night that cousins are privileged.”

“They ought to be.”

“Are you going for a drive with us?”

“Yes, if I may.”

“Oh, mamma ordered the carriage expressly for you.”

I turned to mamma, who sat smiling at us, behind our backs, and thanked her.

“I thought you would like to see the town, Mr. Charles.”

“Pray call me Charlie,” said I, “or your example will give Conny an excuse to treat me with reserve. You see how familiarly I name her. But I got her leave to do so.”

“Oh, cousins ought always to be on the very best terms! Aren’t they made of the same flesh and blood?” said my aunt.

“Of course they are,” I replied.

“Conny,” said her mamma, “will you go and get ready for the drive, so that you can show Mr. ——, I mean Charlie, over the grounds, while I put on my things?”

“Yes,” answered Conny, and went out.

My aunt chatted about a variety of commonplaces; and my sense of self-complacency, which, God knows, was already impertinent enough, was not a little heightened by the marked deference and laboured urbanity of her manner to me. Had I been a prince of the blood royal, I don’t think she could have shown herself more flattered by my conversation, and more obliged by my condescension. There could be no doubt that her husband had inspired her with the most extravagant conceptions of the importance and splendour of his brother, the major. The pride of relationship, when there is anything to be proud of, is a sentiment, Eugenio, which springs eternal in all human breasts; it enables wives to snub their husbands with applause, and husbands to humiliate their wives with impunity; it gives importance to poverty and dignity to vulgarity; it embroiders the rags of the beggar, and justifies the impertinencies of unresisting imbecility. No, Eugenio, I am not quoting from “Rasselas.” This is all my own thunder.

When Conny came in my aunt left the room.

“Pray forgive me,” said I, “but, really, that is a lovely little hat you have on.”

“I am glad you like it,” answered my cousin, looking at herself in the glass.

“All feminine attire is becoming that looks saucy. Don’t you think so?”

“Is this hat saucy?”

“Very. There is a knowing expression about the feather, as though it has just been pulled out of a peacock’s tail, and the eye hasn’t had time to stop winking.”

“What an odd idea! but this isn’t a peacock’s feather!”

What! was she going to prove as literal as her mamma? Defend it, ye Nine!

“And then,” I went on, “there is an audacity about the curve of the brim, that fills me with irrepressible delight. Let me assure you, dear cousin, that it is the very hat of all the hats that ever were made, which you ought to wear.”

“It was my choice,” said she, looking at me as though she were a little afraid. “But the carriage will soon be ready, and mamma wanted me to show you over the grounds before we drove out.”

“I would much rather sit here with you,” I replied. “I can look at the grounds this afternoon.”

“As you please,” said she prettily, seating herself in her mamma’s chair.

She fronted the window, in consequence the light was full upon her face, and I was able to see every expression that rose and faded in it.

“Your father introduced me to the bank this morning,” said I, fixing my eye upon her.

“Yes?”

“I had the honour of making the acquaintance of Mr. Curling.”

I expected to see her wince and change colour. On the contrary, she remained perfectly impassive. She did not even ask me what I thought of him, or if I liked him, or anything about him. All she said was, “I hope you and he will get on together. He seems a very nice sort of young man.”

Love prompts a thousand absurdities; but never in all my experience of life could I conceive a girl calling the object of her affection “a nice young man.” The phrase smote me as the death-knell of Curling’s hopes, if he had any.

“I don’t very much care about nice young men,” I answered. “I have been bred in a land of piquant sauces and thickly peppered dishes, and like things well flavoured. A nice person is a boiled character which you have to discuss without salt.”

“I know what you mean,” she exclaimed gaily. “Mr. Meek, our doctor here, is a boiled character, full of what papa calls negative excellence, which means thorough insipidity.”

I was much gratified to find her capable of appreciating my jokes. It did seem impossible that such demure, sweet, intelligent eyes as hers should be the windows of a sluggish, dull nature. I was resolved to try her a little more on the subject of the cashier.

“Your father gave me to understand that Mr. Curling was good-looking. How people differ in their tastes? Now I think Mr. Curling anything but good looking.”

“He is very thin.”

“Very; one thing I noticed, the cockneyfication of his person by a big ring on his first finger. These fellows ought to go abroad now and then. ‘Home keeping youths have ever homely wits.’”

“But don’t you know what another poet says?

‘What learn our youth abroad but to refine

The homely vices of their native land?

Give me an honest, home-spun country clown

Of our own growth; his dullness is but plain,

But their’s embroidered; they are sent out fools

But come back fops!’”

“God bless me!” said I uncomfortably; “what a memory you have! Who wrote that rubbish?”

“I forget. It was a school exercise, and that is how I happen to know it.”

“I hope you have no more pat quotations at your finger ends.”

“No. What other poetry I know is all sentimental.”

“Ah!” I exclaimed, “I am very fond of sentimental poetry—Moore’s for instance.”

“I wonder, with your refined taste, that you could ever tolerate the notion of settling into a banker’s clerk.”

Was she ironical? Was she sarcastic? Her eyes were all innocence; her face all candour.

“It is not the choice of my will, but of my poverty. Nature made me a gentleman, but forgot to endow me. Therefore there is nothing for me to do, but to forget her good intentions and learn book-keeping.”

Here she looked at the clock, and as she did so her mamma came rustling and swelling in, decked out in a fine bonnet, new gloves, and a stiff blue silk gown.

“Haven’t you been to see the grounds, Charlie?” she asked.

“I have been very well entertained,” I replied with a smile at Conny.

“There’s the carriage!” exclaimed my cousin, and a barouche with two horses, driven by my friend James in silver livery, swept along the avenue and stopped at the door.

“We have lost our footman,” said my aunt, apologetically, as we passed out, “but I hope to replace him next week.” I begged her not to mention it; we got in, and off we went.

I faced Conny, and was thus able to alternate luxuriously between the beauties of nature and the beauties of human nature. When we reached Updown, James was requested to drive slowly, in order that I might “view” the town. It turned out that my aunt was a native of the place, and knew a good deal of its history, social and otherwise. The carriage was stopped at the huge gateway at the bottom of the High Street, that I might decipher the inscription, and admire the carvings. Unfortunately the inscription was in Latin, with v’s for u’s. I did not understand it, but as I had always been given to believe that a knowledge of the dead tongues was esteemed a very essential ingredient in the composition of a gentleman’s character, I looked wise, and talked much nonsense about the unintelligibility of mediæval Latin.

“They say,” observed my aunt, “that this gate was built by the Romans.”