‘I would not marry upon the strength of an enthusiastic moment, Celia, lest a lifelong repentance should follow. You can know so little of this Mr. Gerard. It is hardly possible you can care for him.’
‘“Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?”’ quoted Celia, laughing. ‘I am not quite so foolish as to love at first sight; but in three days I seemed to know Mr. Gerard as well as if we had been friends as many years.’
‘Your brother and he are intimate friends, are they not?’
‘I cannot make out the history of their friendship. Edward is disgustingly reserved about Mr. Gerard, and I don’t like to seen, curious, for fear he should suppose I take too much interest in the young man.’
‘Mr. Gerard has gone back to London, has he not?’
‘Yes,’ sighed Celia. ‘He went early on Tuesday morning, by the parliamentary train. Fancy the Sir William Jenner of the future travelling by a horrid slow train, in a carriage like a cattle truck.’
‘He will be amply rewarded by-and-by, if he is really the Jenner of the future.’
‘Yes, but it’s a long time to wait,’ said Celia, dolefully.
‘No doubt,’ assented Laura,’ and the time would seem longer to the wife sitting at home by a shabby fireside.’
‘Sitting,’ echoed Celia; ‘she would never be able to sit. She would have no time for moping over the fire. She would always be dusting or sweeping, or making a pudding, or sewing on buttons.’
‘I think you had better abandon idea,’ said Laura. ‘You could never bear a life of deprivation. Your home-nest has been too soft and comfortable. You had much better think of Mr. Sampson, who admires you very sincerely, and who has a nice house and a good income.’
‘A nice house!’ exclaimed Celia, with unqualified contempt. ‘The quintessence of middle-class commonness. I would rather endure George Gerard’s Gerard’s shabby lodgings. A nice house! Oh, Laura, how can you, living in these fine old rooms, call that stucco abomination of a modern villa, those dreadful walnut-wood chairs and sofas and chiffonier, all decorated with horrid wriggling scroll work, badly glued on; that sticky-looking mahogany sideboard, those all-pervading crochet antimacassars — —’
‘My dearest, the antimacassars are not fixtures. You could do away with them. Indeed, I dare say if Mr. Sampson thought his furniture was the only obstacle to his happiness, he would not mind refurnishing his house altogether.’
‘His furniture the only obstacle,’ echoed Celia, indignantly. ‘What have you ever seen in my conduct or character, Laura, that can justify you in supposing I could marry a stumpy little man, with sandy hair?’
‘In that case we will waive the marriage question altogether. You say you won’t marry Mr. Sampson, and I am sure you ought not to marry Mr. Gerard.’
‘There is no fear of my doing anything so foolish,’ Celia replied, with a resigned air. ‘He has gone back to London, and heaven knows if I shall ever see him again. But I am certain it’ you saw more of him, you would like him very much.’
Laura shuddered, remembering that it was by means of George Gerard that her husband had been identified with the missing Chicot. She could not have a very friendly feeling towards Mr. Gerard, knowing this, but she listened with admirable patience while Celia descanted upon the young man’s noble qualities, and repeated all he had said upon the moor, where he really seemed to have recited his entire biography for Celia’s edification.
Comforted by her husband’s letter, Laura was able to support Celia’s liveliness, and so the long winter evening wore itself away pleasantly enough. The next day was Saturday. Laura had calculated that, if things went easily with him in Paris, it would be just possible for John Treverton to be home on Saturday night. This possibility kept her in a flutter all day. It was in vain that Celia proposed a drive to Beechampton, or a walk on the moor. Laura would not go a step beyond the gardens of the Manor House. She could not be persuaded even to go as far as the orchard, for there she could not have seen the fly that brought her husband to the door, and she had an ever-present expectation of his return.
‘Don’t you know that vulgar old proverb which says that “a watched pot never boils,” Laura?’ remonstrated Miss Clare. ‘Depend upon it, your husband will never come while you are worrying yourself about him. You should try to get him out of your thoughts.’
‘I can’t,’ answered Laura. ‘All my thoughts are of him. He is a part of my mind.’
Celia sighed, and felt more sympathetic than usual. She had been thinking about George Gerard for the last four days more than seemed at all reasonable; and it occurred to her that if she were ever to be seriously in love, she might be quite as foolish as her friend.
The day wore on very slowly, for both women. Laura watched the clock, and gave herself up to the study of railway time-tables, in order to calculate the probabilities as to John Treverton’s return. She sent the carriage to meet an afternoon train, and the carriage came back empty. This was a disappointment, though she argued with herself afterwards that she had not been justified in expecting her husband by that train.
An especially excellent dinner had been ordered, in the hope that the master of the house would be at home to eat it. Seven o’clock came, but no John Treverton, and.so the dinner was deferred till eight; and at eight Laura would have had it kept back till nine if Celia had not protested against such cruelty.
‘I don’t suppose yon asked me to stay here with the deliberate intention of starving me, she said,’ but that is exactly what you are doing. I feel as if it was weeks since I had eaten anything There is no possibility — at least so far as the railway goes — of Mr. Treverton’s being here before half-past ten; so you really may as well let me have a little food, even if you are too much in the clouds to eat your dinner.’
‘I am not in the clouds, dear, I am only anxious.’ They went into the dining-room and sat down to the table which seemed so empty and dismal without the master of the house. The carriage was ordered to meet the last train. Celia ate an excellent dinner, talking more or less all the time. Laura was too agitated to eat anything. She was glad to get back to the drawing-room, where she could walk up and down, and lift the curtain from one of the windows every now and then to look out and listen for wheels that were not likely to be heard within an hour.
‘Laura, you are making me positively miserable.’ Celia cried at last. ‘You are as monotonous in your movements as a squirrel in his cage, and don’t seem half so happy as a squirrel. It’s a fine, dry night. We had better wrap ourselves up and walk to the gate to meet the carriage. Anything will be better than this.’
‘I should enjoy it above all things,’ said Laura.
Five minutes later they were both clad in fur jackets and hats, and were walking briskly towards the avenue.
The night was fine, and lit with wintry stars. There was no moon, but that clear sky, with its pale radiance of stars, gave quite enough light to direct the footsteps of the two girls, who knew every inch of the way.
They had not gone far before Celia, whose tongue ran on gaily, and whose eyes roamed in every direction, espied a man walking a little way in front of them.
‘A strange man,’ she cried. ‘Look, Laura! I hope he’s not a burglar!’
‘Why should he be a burglar? No doubt he is some tradesman who has been delivering goods at the kitchen door.’
‘At ten o’clock?’ cried Celia. ‘Most irregular. Why, every respectable tradesman in the village is in bed and asleep by this time.’
Laura made no further suggestion. The subject had no interest for her. She was straining her ears to catch the first sound of wheels on the frost-bound high-road. Celia quickened her pace.
‘Let’s try and overtake him,’ she said; ‘I think it’s our duty. You ought not to allow suspicious looking strangers to hang about your grounds without at least trying to find out who they are. He may have a revolver, but I’ll risk it.’
With this heroic determination Celia went off at a run, and presently
came up with the man, who was walking steadily on in front of her. At the sound of her footsteps he stopped and looked round.
‘I beg your pardon,’ gasped Celia, in a breathless condition, and looking anxiously for the expected revolver. ‘Have you been leaving anything at the Manor House?’
‘No, madam. I’ve only been making an inquiry,’ the man replied, quietly.
‘It is one of John’s tenants, Celia,’ said Laura overtaking them. ‘You have been to inquire about Mr. Treverton’s return, I suppose,’ she added, to the stranger.
‘Yes, madam. My visit is to come to an end on Monday morning, and I am getting anxious. I want to see Mr. Treverton before I go back. It will save me a journey to and fro, you see, madam, and time is money to a man in my position.’
‘I expect him home this evening,’ Laura answered, kindly; ‘and if he does come to-night, as I hope he will, I have no doubt he will see you as early as you like on Monday morning. At nine, if that will not be too early for you.’
‘I thank you, madam. That will suit me admirably.’
‘Good evening,’ said Laura.
The man lifted his hat and walked away.
‘A very decent person,’ remarked Celia; ‘not a bit like the popular notion of a burglar, but perhaps not altogether unlike the real thing. A respectable appearance must be a great advantage to a criminal.’
‘There it is,’ cried Laura, joyfully.
‘What?’
‘The carriage. Yes, I am sure. Yes — he is coming. Let’s run on to the gate, Celia.’
They ran as fast as a brace of school-girls, and arrived at the gate in a flutter of excitement, just in time to see the neat little brougham turn into the avenue.
‘Jack,’ cried Laura.
‘Stop,’ cried Jack, with his head out of the window, and the coachman pulled up his horses, as his master jumped out of the carriage.
‘Come out, Sampson,’ said Mr. Treverton. ‘We’ll walk to the house with the ladies.’
He put his wife’s hand through his arm and walked on, leaving Celia to Mr. Sampson’s escort.
They had much to say to each other, husband and wife, in this happy meeting. John Treverton was in high spirits, full of delight at returning to his wife, full of triumph in the thought that no one could oust him from the home they both loved.
Tom Sampson walked in the rear with Miss Clare. She was dying to question him as to where he and his client had been, and what they had been doing, but felt that to do so would be bad manners, and knew that it would be use less. So she confined herself to general remarks of a polite nature.
‘I hope you have had what the Yankees call a good time, Mr. Sampson,’ she said.
‘Very much so, thanks, Miss Clare,’ answered Sampson, recalling a dinner eaten at Vefour’s just before leaving Paris on the previous evening. ‘The kewsine is really first-class.’
If there was one word Celia hated more than another it was this last odious adjective.
‘You came by the four o’clock express from Waterloo, I suppose,’ hazarded Celia.
‘Yes, and a capital train it is!’
‘Ah!’ sighed Celia, ‘I wish I had a little more experience of trains. I stick in my native soil till I feel myself fast becoming a vegetable.’
‘No fear of that,’ exclaimed Mr. Sampson. ‘Such a girl as you — all life and spirit and cleverness — no fear of your ever assimilating to the vegetable tribe. There’s my poor sister Eliza, now, there’s a good deal of the vegetable about her. Her ideas run in such a narrow groove. I know before I go down to breakfast of a morning exactly what she’ll say to me, and I get to answer her mechanically. And at dinner again we sit opposite each other like a couple of talking automatons. It’s a dismal life, Miss Clare, for a man with any pretence to mind. If you only knew how I sometimes sigh for a more congenial companion!’
‘But I don’t know anything about it, Mr. Sampson,’ answered Celia, tartly. ‘How should I?’
‘You might,’ murmured Sampson, tenderly, ‘if you had as much sympathy with my ideas as I have with yours.’
‘Nonsense!’ cried Celia. ‘ What sympathy can there be between you and me? We haven’t an idea in common. A business man like you, with his mind wholly occupied by leases and draft agreements and wills and writs and things, and a girl who doesn’t know an iota of law.’
‘That’s just it!’ exclaimed Sampson. ‘A man in my position wants a green spot in his life — a haven from the ocean of business — an o — what’s its name — in the barren desert of legal transactions. I want a home, Miss Clare — a home!’
‘How can you say so, Mr. Sampson? I am sure you have a very comfortable house, and a model housekeeper in your sister.’
‘A young woman may be too good a housekeeper, Miss Clare,’ answered Sampson, seriously. ‘My sister is a little over-conscientious in her housekeeping. In her desire to keep down expenses she sometimes cuts things a little too fine. I don’t I hold with waste or extravagant — I shudder at the thought of it — but I don’t like to be asked to eat rank salt butter on a Saturday morning because the regulation amount of fresh has run out, and Eliza won’t allow another half-pound to be had in till Saturday afternoon. That’s letting a virtue merge into a vice, Miss Clare.’
‘Poor Miss Sampson. It is quite too good of her to study your purse so carefully.’
‘So it is, Miss Clare,’ answered the solicitor, doubtfully, ‘but I see ribbons round Eliza’s neck, and bonnets upon Eliza’s head, that I can’t always account for satisfactorily to myself. She has a little income of her own, as you no doubt know, since everybody knows everything at Hazlehurst, and she has made her little investments in cottage property out of her little income, which, as you may also know, is derived from cottage property, and she has added a cottage here and a cottage there, till she is swelling out into a little town, as you may say — well, I should think she must have five and twenty tenements in all — and I sometimes ask myself how she manages to invest so much of her little income, and yet to dress so smart. There isn’t a better dressed young lady in Hazlehurst — present company, of course, excepted — than my sister. You may have noticed the fact.’
‘I have,’ replied Celia, convulsed with inward laughter. ‘Her bonnets have been my admiration and my envy.’
‘No, Miss Clare, not your envy,’ protested Sampson, with exceeding tenderness. ‘You can envy no one. Perfection has no need to envy. It must feel its own superiority. But I was about to observe, in confidence, that I would rather the housekeeping money was spent on butter than on bonnets; and that when I feel myself deprived of any little luxury, it is a poor consolation to know
that my self-denial will provide, Eliza with a neck ribbon. No, my dear Miss Clare, the hour must come when my sister will have to give up the keys of her cupboards at the Laurels, and retire to a home of her own. She is amply provided for. There will be no unkindness in such a severance. You know the old proverb, “Two is company, three is none.” It doesn’t sound grammatical, but it’s very true. When I marry, Eliza will have to go.’
‘But you are not thinking of matrimony yet awhile, I hope, Mr. Sampson?’
‘Yet awhile,’ echoed Sampson; ‘I’m three and thirty. If I don’t take the business in hand now, Miss Clare, it will be too late. I am thinking of matrimony, and have been thinking of it very constantly for the last six months. But there is only one girl in the world that I would care to marry, and if she won’t have me I shall go down to my grave a bachelor.’
‘Don’t say that,’ cried Celia. ‘That is deciding things much too hastily. You haven’t seen all the girls in the world. How can you know anything about it? Hazlehurst is such a narrow sphere. A man might as well live in a nutshell, and call that life. You ought to travel. You ought to see the world of fashion. There are charming boarding-houses at Brighton, now, where you would meet very stylish girls. Why don’t you try Brighton?’
‘I don’t want to try Brighton, or anywhere else,’ exclaimed
Mr. Sampson, with a wounded air. ‘I tell you I am fixed, fixed as fate. There is only one girl in this magnificent universe I want for my wife. Celia, you must feel it, you must know it — you are that girl.’
‘Oh, I am so sorry,’ cried Celia. ‘This is quite too dreadful.’
‘It is not dreadful at all. Don’t be carried away by the first shock of the thing. I may have been too sudden, perhaps. Oh, Celia, I have worshipped too long in silence, and I may, perchance—’ Mr. Sampson rather dwelt on the perchance, which seemed to him a word of peculiar appropriateness — almost a lapse into poetry. ‘I may, perchance, have been too sudden in my avowal. But when a man is as much in earnest as I am, he
does not study details. Celia, you must not say no.’
‘But I do say no,’ protested Celia.
‘Not an irrevocable no?’
‘Yes, a most irrevocable no. I am very much flattered, of course, and I really like you very much — as we all do — because you are good and true and honest. But I never, never, never could think of you in any other character than that of a trustworthy friend.’
‘Do you really mean it?’ asked poor Sampson aghast.
He was altogether crushed by this unexpected blow. That any young lady in Hazlehurst could refuse the honour of an alliance with him had never occurred to him as within the range of possibility. He had taken plenty of time in making up his mind upon the matrimonial question. He had been careful and deliberate, and had waited till he was thoroughly convinced that Celia Clare was precisely the kind of wife he wanted, before committing himself by a serious. He had been careful that his polite attentions should not be too significant, until the final die was cast. His journey to Brittany had given him ample leisure for reflection. Prostrate in his comfortable berth on board the St. Malo steamer, in the dim light of the cabin lamp, lulled by the monotonous oscillation of the steamer, he had been able to contemplate the question of marriage from every standpoint, and this offer of to-night was the result of those meditations.
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