CHAPTER XXI.

THE SINGULAR WOOING

He looked very nice--it is a principle of mine to tell the truth always, or, at least, nearly always; so I will go so far as to assert that he looked positively delicious. Because he did. He wore no overcoat. As he stood at the open door, with his hat in his hand, and just that flavour of impertinence about his smile and bearing and general deportment which does become some men, he struck me--even in that moment of so many agitations--not only as being extremely good-looking, which he undoubtedly was, but also as one of those recklessly, and criminally, delightful persons with whom one could hardly help having a really first-rate time. His manner, when he spoke, was suavity itself. He had a pleasant voice, and a take-it-for-granted air which was in keeping with his mischievous eyes and his moustache and his white waistcoat.

“I thought it was you.” Did he? How good of him! What business had he to think about it at all? “There has been a misunderstanding. My sister directed you to the wrong carriage. This is my sister’s carriage. May I ask you to take the trouble to transfer yourself to it.”

I hesitated, or I should have hesitated, had it not been for that wicked and presumptuous old man.

“Who are you, sir? What do you mean by detaining my carriage, sir? Go away, sir, and shut the door, and allow my carriage to proceed. This lady is with me.”

She might be, but not intentionally, and the even dim suggestion that she was, was sufficient to settle the question on the spot. I paid no attention to him whatever. I addressed myself solely and entirely to the brown man.

“So kind of you to take so much trouble, and so sweet of your sister to let me have her carriage. I expect that the mistake was mine.” Though, considering the care she had taken to particularise the vehicle which I was to enter, I did not see how that could be, but that was by the way. “If I may intrude.”

I proceeded to descend. My ancient companion endeavoured to stop me.

“My dear young lady, don’t leave me--only too delighted--take you anywhere!” Then he descended to the vernacular, altogether oblivious of the solemn truth that the fact of his having nearly, if not quite, attained to the Psalmist’s span should have induced him to pay some regard to the proprieties. “It’s hard lines your throwing me over like this--uncommonly hard lines--especially considering the row I’m booked for anyhow. I don’t call it a ladylike thing to do!”

His notions of what was, and of what was not, a ladylike thing to do were probably so distinctly his own that they could hardly be expected to interest me. At any rate, they did not. I just crossed over to the brown man’s sister’s carriage, and left him to formulate--I believe that is the proper word, but if not I cannot help it--his views on ladies and things at his leisure.

It was an odd sensation passing from one brougham to the other. Broughams with us are represented by vehicles from the livery stables. People sometimes, indeed often, take mamma and the girls in their broughams; but no one, since I was the merest child, ever betrayed the slightest desire to take me--not even to play the part of gooseberry. This unwonted actual anxiety to place absolutely charming conveyances at my disposal was most refreshing--to say no more. I had already been in a private omnibus--which, after all, was not so bad; in that bad old man’s wife’s carriage--which was a pet; and now I was in the most scrumptious little vehicle you could possibly imagine--and all in the course of a single evening. If I progressed at this rate I might find myself riding in the Lord Mayor’s coach before I went to bed.

Before many moments had elapsed, however, it began to dawn upon me that, so far as company was concerned, from certainly one point of view, I might not have made an altogether felicitous exchange. The brown man moved in seven-league boots. Compared to the rapidity of his advance, my previous companion had merely stumbled along. But then, of course, he was very much older.

We had been bowling along in silence, and I was beginning to wonder if I could possibly be in for a Quaker’s meeting, when my new companion put an end to any fears I might have had on that point by saying, in the calmest voice in the world, the sort of voice in which he would have referred to the possibility of a shower of rain:

“I wonder if we can get married in the morning.”

I jumped, not boisterously, perhaps, but I certainly did jump.

“I beg your pardon?” I observed.

“I say that I was wondering if we can get married in the morning. My uncle’s the Bishop of Battersea. I believe that you can get special licences from Bishops and persons of that sort while you wait. I’ve a suspicion that he turns in early: he’s that kind of character. The question is, whether I shall assail him at this hour of the night, or rout him out with the milk in the morning--which would he dislike least? I don’t want to hurt the poor dear man’s feelings more than I can help.”

It was as if a drop of ice-cold water had gone trickling down my spinal column. I had to shiver. Could the brown man be insane? And so good-looking! I endeavoured--if such were the case--to lead him back to lines of comparative sanity.

“It’s wonderfully good of your sister to lend me her beautiful carriage.”

His answer did startle me.

“She didn’t. Don’t suppose it.”

“But--she offered it to me herself.”

“That’s her artfulness. Louisa is artful. When I told her I wanted her brougham--for you; her brougham gives the thing an air--she said she’d see me farther first. So, when I went off to nobble it, waylaying you, she carted you off in someone else’s. Very neat indeed--Louisa’s no fool.”

This statement of the facts of the case, as they appeared to him, took my breath away. It might be true.

“Then am I to understand that your sister does not know that I am in her brougham?”

“She knows. You may bet on Louisa’s knowing.”

“Then am I here contrary to her wish?”

“What’s the use of worrying about trifles? never do. What’s troubling me is the much more serious question as to whether we can be married in the morning. The Bishop’s an unmanageable creature. Used to be my tutor. Short of throwing things at him, you never could get him to behave with decency. You can’t throw things at a Bishop. It’s not good form. Do you know anything about that sort of thing?”

“About what sort of thing?”

“Special licences, and so on.”

“Will you have the kindness to ask your coachman to stop the next cab we come to, and I will get into it.”

“I say! Really! You mustn’t talk like that!”

“It seems to me very much as if I must talk like that. I appear to be riding in your sister’s carriage against her wish, and you certainly are talking in a strain which would seem to hint at there being something the matter with your mental balance. I should be sorry to seem discourteous, but I prefer a cab.”

He looked at me with his impertinent eyes in a way which made me thrill all over. It is entirely impossible for a person like me--who hardly knows one end of a pen from the other, and does not want to--to give an adequate impression of the perfectly charming way in which he said the most ridiculous and disgraceful things. I had every intention and desire to be angry, but I had to smile.

“That’s the unreasonableness of the world. Everybody--including Louisa, who practically is everybody--has been urging me for ever so long to marry. But I have felt that I had a vocation. Women have seemed to me to be good for everything but marrying. Louisa weeps. Then, to-night, when I see you at the Imperial, I not only fall in love with you--which is nothing, because I am constantly falling in love and out again--but I am seized with an instant conviction that marriage is my vocation. I rush after you to the theatre, where Louisa has a box. I say to her, ‘Louisa, I am going to do as you wish, I am about to marry!’ She gives a movement which may or may not signify satisfaction, and ejaculates, ‘No!’ I retort, ‘Yes! there is the lady who is to be my wife!’ And I point you out to her in your place in the stalls. She focusses you with her glass, and exclaims ‘Good heavens!’ Then adds, ‘Who is she?’ ‘I have not the faintest notion who she is,’ I explain, ‘I only know that she is going to be--my wife.’ Louisa looks up at me and demands, ‘Are you mad?’ There--to return to my former position--is the unreasonableness of the world. Louisa hints insanity because I am unable to accede to her wishes; when I am, she calls me mad. I ask you if there is any reason why you should not be my wife?”

“Rather! To enter for a moment into your mood--is there any reason why I should?”

“Manifold obvious reasons. First, I love, which is a bourgeois reason perhaps. Then, I am rich, which again is a little bourgeois; but still sound reason. I am young, sound of mind, hale of body, not ill-looking, of decent reputation, easy temper. Happiness is but a word, meaning different things in different mouths. Yet it’s but the simple truth that I can offer you all that the heart of a woman can desire--when she marries.”

“You seem to have a tolerable opinion of yourself.”

“Why not? Yet I have a higher opinion still of you.”

“I doubt it. I am wondering if you are supposing that I have recently escaped from a lunatic asylum, or if it is the fact that you have.”

“Don’t say that you see sanity only in the commonplace. That were to rank yourself too violently with Louisa.”

“And this is Louisa’s carriage, if, as you pretend, that is your sister’s name. I have already asked you to let me get out of it into a cab. Where is the man driving? I don’t believe that this is the way to Kensington.”

“Why should it be the way to Kensington?”

“Why! Because I live there. Didn’t you hear the address I gave you?”

“But my address is in Berkeley Square.”

“_Your_ address! What has _your_ address to do with me?”

“Since it is also to be yours, does not the question seem a trifle crude?”

“Your address is to be mine? What do you mean?”

“I trust that you are sufficiently old-fashioned to consent to share your husband’s home.”

“My husband’s home! Have you dared to tell the man to drive me to your house?”

“The notion’s this: that you will consent to accept the shelter of my roof while I rout out the Bishop, so that we may be married in the morning. It may seem to be pressing matters on a trifle hastily, to ask you to permit yourself to be ‘wooed and married and all’ inside of half-a-dozen hours. But I’ve a feeling strong upon me that this is a business which were well done if it were done quickly. If we delay there’ll be a hundred thousand reasons buzzing about our ears, to sting us as if they were mosquitoes. While, if we’re married, there’ll be no sting left in them. They’ll only buzz. And of that they’ll soon grow tired.”

“I believe that you’re stark mad. You’re worse than that wicked old man. And I thought you were a gentleman. Will you tell the coachman--at once!--to drive me straight home.”

“My dear lady, permit me to ask your name. It’s a disadvantage to a man not to know the name of the lady he’s about to marry.”

“I certainly will not tell you my name. Will you do as I ask you?”

“I am your devoted slave, only do not treat me with too much harshness. This is a critical moment in my life: my fate hangs in the balance. Let us approach the consideration of our respective destinies with dispassionate calmness, with open minds. Let us be careful to avoid anything which may have the appearance of heat.”

As I caught his eye, I was surer than ever that he was laughing at me. He might have been an altogether delightful individual--I am offering no suggestion that he was not; but his barefaced impudence and brazen audacity were beyond anything I had ever conceived as possible. I saw that I should find myself in a pretty position if I did not look out--and quickly too. I had had such a dry-as-dust existence; here was the promise of adventure, if you liked. And I do not mind owning that there flashed through my mind a wild idea of seeing the adventure to a finish, of trusting him, of allowing him to take the arbitrament of my fate in his two hands, if that avuncular Bishop could only be persuaded to prove amenable--of permitting him to marry me in the morning. What a courtship it would have been! and what a wedding! What a nine days’ wonder! What would the girls have said? and mamma? and the five--particularly Walter Hammond, when he learnt how somebody else had taken a leaf out of his very own book, and made the running with a vengeance? His sister’s face--what sort of an expression would have been on that when she learnt the use which had been made of her brougham?--and what kind of an opinion would she have had of me?

He was a very magnetic person--by far the most magnetic I ever had encountered. As one became more and more conscious of his supremely attractive personality--as one could not help but do--there was something fascinating even about his topsy-turvy way of putting things. If I had surrendered myself to the magic of his influence, what would have happened? What would have been the issue of the night’s adventures? If I had! But I did not. I gave myself, as it were, a mental pinch, and I put my head out of the window, and I called to the driver.