CHAPTER IV.

_Bland._ “Never mention what is past. The wranglings of married people about unlucky questions that break out between them is like the lashing of a top: it only serves to keep it up the longer.”

_All in the Wrong._

Next day business was a little brisk at the bank, and, considering my short apprenticeship, I acquitted myself tolerably well. I took Curling’s place and paid or received the cheques, &c., as they were presented, and what was extremely wonderful, found at the end of the day that I had made no mistake. I also conferred with two or three customers in the manager’s private room, performing the simple duty of listening to them with a very grave face, and dismissing them in a style that excited Mr. Spratling, who had a slow and laborious mind, into applause.

When the bank was closed I went to my lodgings to get some dinner, not intending to call at Grove End until late in the evening. The fact was, my uncle had spoken of leaving London with the devoted couple at four o’clock; Updown would be reached by seven, and I had no wish to intrude until the violence and agitation of the meeting at Grove End should be in some degree calmed.

My dinner, composed of a mutton chop and a pint of red wine, was soon despatched. I pulled an arm-chair to the open window, lighted a pipe, and surrendered myself up to various reflections.

Among other things, I remember thinking how very pretty my landlady’s house was, how snugly it would accommodate a newly-married pair--and then I thought of Theresa.

In imagination I pictured her my wife, moving, at this sunset hour, with watering-pot in hand, among the flowers in the garden, ever and anon creeping up to the window, where I was seated, to give me a flower, and let me take a long look into her bright and speaking eyes.

Heavens! how the wheel goes round! Not very long before I had figured another young lady as my wife, offering me flowers through that very identical window, with all the sweetness of her spirit beaming like the moon in the dark azure of her eyes. That picture was blotted out. Did I care? A fiddle! I liked the other picture much better. Why, even that reverence, which, despite Conny’s indifference to me, I should ever have remembered her beauty with, was sunk, was destroyed by the consideration that her name was now CURLING, and that the frizzy cashier was privileged to call her HIS!

His! Imagine that cockneyfied forefinger, that long forefinger with the olive-coloured nail and the dreadful ring, chucking Conny’s dimpled chin, playing with Conny’s golden hair! Faugh! The rose that makes the beauties of your sweetheart’s white bosom killing, becomes a sordid, vulgar flower when transferred on the morrow to the char-woman, and pinned by her against the dirt of the handkerchief about her chest. Though idealism has its limits, yet its circle had been a big one for Conny, and there was little she could have done in it _alone_ that would have endangered her charms in my eyes. But she had chosen to lug Mr. Curling into the magic realm; and souse! the spell was broken.

It was like throwing a duck into a lake, in whose lucent serenity the stars of the heavens found their duplicates.

Now, whilst I thus sate, the postman came into the garden and handed me a letter. I caught sight of the initials “T. H.” at the corner of the envelope, and my heart beat quickly. I pulled out the enclosure. What a fine, free, dashing hand! How firm and honest and characteristic! How thoughtful to answer my letter so soon! Why, she could only have received it that morning, and must therefore have written her reply on the spot.

“My dear Charlie,” she began: and then went on to express her astonishment and grief at the news I had sent her of Conny’s elopement. She could scarcely credit I was in earnest.

“What mad impulse could have prompted her to take such a step! How grieved my uncle and aunt must be! Surely had they suspected that Conny was so fond of this young man, they would have allowed her to marry him, rather than drive her into an elopement by their refusal. Papa is perfectly stupefied; for he told me that uncle Tom had over and over again expressed his belief, that Conny would marry well.”

“As for _you_, I am not so surprised as you fancied I should be, to hear that Conny’s rash act has not broken your heart. I told you plainly one day that you didn’t love her, and now you confess I was right. Again and again I tell you that your fickleness, as you call it, cannot affect my opinion of you. Had you sincerely loved her, taught her to love you, and then turned from her, no words of mine could possibly convey how greatly I should despise you. I don’t mean to say that I or any other woman could think the _better_ of a man for not knowing his own mind. Judgment is a fine quality in a man, and without it he can never be devoted, or honest, or resolute.

“But I told you, during that rude fit of mine, that you were a boy--which you are--and are therefore to be laughed at and excused for falling into an ecstasy over the first pretty face you meet, and calling your silly transports, _love_! You have been punished severely enough through your self-conceit; and I can imagine that you will never care to be reminded, that at the time you were thinking you had made a conquest of Conny, she was encouraging you merely that you might serve her as a kind of dummy, with whom she might coquette whilst she indulged her real passion with her Theodore.”

Having written so far, she was pleased to suspend her raillery, to make way for large-hearted expressions of sympathy with Tom and his wife, and concluded a tolerably voluminous letter by signing herself “Your affectionate cousin.”

“P.S. Tell me all the news as it comes to hand, that is if you can find any time to waste upon T. H.”

I was so much piqued and so much pleased with this letter, that, had I had any further news to tell her--enough to find me an excuse for writing so promptly--I should there and then have sent her a reply. The