CHAPTER L
UPON WHICH THE CURTAIN FALLS
"Plain sense upon the marriage question is my demand upon man andwoman, for the stopping of many a tragedy."
These were Dr. Middleton's words in reply to Willoughby's briefexplanation.
He did not say that he had shown it parentally while the tragedy wasthreatening, or at least there was danger of a precipitate descent fromthe levels of comedy. The parents of hymeneal men and women he wasindisposed to consider as dramatis personae. Nor did he mention certainsympathetic regrets he entertained in contemplation of the health ofMr. Dale, for whom, poor gentleman, the proffer of a bottle of thePatterne Port would be an egregious mockery. He paced about, anxiousfor his departure, and seeming better pleased with the society ofColonel De Craye than with that of any of the others. Colonel De Crayeassiduously courted him, was anecdotal, deferential, charminglyvivacious, the very man the Rev. Doctor liked for company when plungedin the bustle of the preliminaries to a journey.
"You would be a cheerful travelling comrade, sir," he remarked, andspoke of his doom to lead his daughter over the Alps and Alpine lakesfor the Summer months.
Strange to tell, the Alps, for the Summer months, was a settled projectof the colonel's.
And thence Dr. Middleton was to be hauled along to the habitablequarters of North Italy in high Summer-tide.
That also had been traced for a route on the map of Colonel De Craye.
"We are started in June, I am informed," said Dr. Middleton.
June, by miracle, was the month the colonel had fixed upon.
"I trust we shall meet, sir," said he.
"I would gladly reckon it in my catalogue of pleasures," the Rev.Doctor responded; "for in good sooth it is conjecturable that I shallbe left very much alone."
"Paris, Strasburg, Basle?" the colonel inquired.
"The Lake of Constance, I am told," said Dr. Middleton. Colonel DeCraye spied eagerly for an opportunity of exchanging a pair ofsyllables with the third and fairest party of this glorious expeditionto come.
Willoughby met him, and rewarded the colonel's frankness in statingthat he was on the look-out for Miss Middleton to take his leave ofher, by furnishing him the occasion. He conducted his friend Horace tothe Blue Room, where Clara and Laetitia were seated circling a halfembrace with a brook of chatter, and contrived an excuse for leadingLaetitia forth. Some minutes later Mrs. Mountstuart called aloud forthe colonel, to drive him away. Willoughby, whose good offices wereunabated by the services he performed to each in rotation, ushered herinto the Blue Room, hearing her say, as she stood at the entrance: "Isthe man coming to spend a day with me with a face like that?"
She was met and detained by Clara.
De Craye came out.
"What are you thinking of?" said Willoughby.
"I was thinking," said the colonel, "of developing a heart, like you,and taking to think of others."
"At last!"
"Ay, you're a true friend, Willoughby, a true friend. And a cousin toboot!"
"What! has Clara been communicative?"
"The itinerary of a voyage Miss Middleton is going to make."
"Do you join them?"
"Why, it would be delightful, Willoughby, but it happens I've got a lotof powder I want to let off, and so I've an idea of shouldering my gunalong the sea-coast and shooting gulls: which'll be a harmless form ofcommitting patricide and matricide and fratricide--for there's myfamily, and I come of it!--the gull! And I've to talk lively to Mrs.Mountstuart for something like a matter of twelve hours, calculatingthat she goes to bed at midnight: and I wouldn't bet on it; such is theenergy of ladies of that age!"
Willoughby scorned the man who could not conceal a blow, even though hejoked over his discomfiture.
"Gull!" he muttered.
"A bird that's easy to be had, and better for stuffing than foreating," said De Craye. "You'll miss your cousin."
"I have," replied Willoughby, "one fully equal to supplying his place."
There was confusion in the hall for a time, and an assembly of thehousehold to witness the departure of Dr. Middleton and his daughter.Vernon had been driven off by Dr. Corney, who further recommended restfor Mr. Dale, and promised to keep an eye for Crossjay along the road.
"I think you will find him at the station, and if you do, command himto come straight back here," Laetitia said to Clara. The answer was anaffectionate squeeze, and Clara's hand was extended to Willoughby, whobowed over it with perfect courtesy, bidding her adieu.
So the knot was cut. And the next carriage to Dr. Middleton's was Mrs.Mountstuart's, conveying the great lady and Colonel De Craye.
"I beg you not to wear that face with me," she said to him.
"I have had to dissemble, which I hate, and I have quite enough toendure, and I must be amused, or I shall run away from you and enlistthat little countryman of yours, and him I can count on to beprofessionally restorative. Who can fathom the heart of a girl! Hereis Lady Busshe right once more! And I was wrong. She must be a gamblerby nature. I never should have risked such a guess as that. Colonel DeCraye, you lengthen your face preternaturally, you distort itpurposely."
"Ma'am," returned De Craye, "the boast of our army is never to knowwhen we are beaten, and that tells of a great-hearted soldiery. Butthere's a field where the Briton must own his defeat, whether smilingor crying, and I'm not so sure that a short howl doesn't do himhonour."
"She was, I am certain, in love with Vernon Whitford all along.Colonel De Craye!"
"Ah!" the colonel drank it in. "I have learnt that it was not thegentleman in whom I am chiefly interested. So it was not so hard forthe lady to vow to friend Willoughby she would marry no one else?"
"Girls are unfathomable! And Lady Busshe--I know she did not go bycharacter--shot one of her random guesses, and she triumphs. We shallnever hear the last of it. And I had all the opportunities. I'm boundto confess I had."
"Did you by chance, ma'am," De Craye said, with a twinkle, "drop a hintto Willoughby of her turn for Vernon Whitford?"
"No," said Mrs. Mountstuart, "I'm not a mischief-maker; and the policyof the county is to keep him in love with himself, or Patterne will belikely to be as dull as it was without a lady enthroned. When his prideis at ease he is a prince. I can read men. Now, Colonel De Craye, pray,be lively."
"I should have been livelier, I'm afraid, if you had dropped a bit of ahint to Willoughby. But you're the magnanimous person, ma'am, andrevenge for a stroke in the game of love shows us unworthy to win."
Mrs. Mountstuart menaced him with her parasol. "I forbid sentiments,Colonel De Craye. They are always followed by sighs."
"Grant me five minutes of inward retirement, and I'll come out formedfor your commands, ma'am," said he.
Before the termination of that space De Craye was enchanting Mrs.Mountstuart, and she in consequence was restored to her natural wit.
So, and much so universally, the world of his dread and his unconsciousworship wagged over Sir Willoughby Patterne and his change of brides,until the preparations for the festivities of the marriage flushed himin his county's eyes to something of the splendid glow he had worn onthe great day of his majority. That was upon the season when two loversmet between the Swiss and Tyrol Alps over the Lake of Constance.Sitting beside them the Comic Muse is grave and sisterly. But taking aglance at the others of her late company of actors, she compresses herlips.
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