Page images
PDF
EPUB
[merged small][merged small][graphic][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]
[blocks in formation]

I

MY BEST CHRISTMAS-BOX.

DON'T know how it came to pass,

but I certainly contrived to fall in love very decidedly with my cousin Clara. She was a bright, pretty girl, as, curiously enough, nearly every girl of the name of Clara is sure to be-the brightest and prettiest that I have ever known. With her, cousinhood had at once paved the way for intimacy. 'If ever you fall in love, you ought to fall in love with your cousin Clara,' said my good mother one day to me. I contrived to carry out the maternal hint with great promptitude. Now my mother was the poor sister of a rich man. Because she saw this delicate matter in a certain point of view, it by no means followed that Uncle John should see it exactly in the same light; and even if Uncle John should happen to coincide with her on such a vital matter, it was still more unlikely that Aunt Jemima should take the same kindly view. For Aunt Jemima was a rich, proud woman. Clara was her only child, and of course all the money of her marriage settlement was to go to Clara. Aunt Jemima took good care to let me understand that, properly speaking, she was no aunt of mine. She had married my uncle, but she had not married his family; and, indeed, even my uncle looked down upon his sister, for she had married a poor curate, who was to be nothing else than a poor curate all his days. He lived in the north country, and I went to the great grammar-school of a northern city. The fact will be hardly credited in these days, but I actually came of age without ever visiting the little village,' as those people say of London who call the Atlantic a pond. Those grammarschools are blessed institutions, especially fitted for curates and their numerous families, and I humbly trust that no Education Commission will ever improve them off the face of the earth. I was so near the top of the big grammar-school that I had the refusal of a scholarship or exhibition that would have gone most of the way towards clearing my expenses at Oxford or Cambridge. My father wrote to Uncle Blogue to ask him whether, as a family matter, he could give me any help towards the university. Uncle Blogue, or possibly it was Aunt Blogue, by no means seemed to see it.' He sent a letter quite full, I am informed, of very beautiful Christian feeling, saying that he had no doubt but I should ultimately find an opening in commerce in one of

the neighbouring manufacturing counties. I believe my mother shed some bitter tears, but I am sure I never bore Uncle Blogue the least grudge in the matter. On the contrary, I have always felt a considerable amount of thankfulness towards him. I think I can forecast with tolerable accuracy what would have been my university career. I should have got into many difficulties. If I turned out bad I should have gone to the dogs; if I turned out good I should probably have become the poorest of poor curates. As it was, I went into a lawyer's office at Liverpool, who took me in a most obliging way on account of my school character for sharpness; and I don't think that Liverpool allowed my natural acuteness, such as it was, to be dulled, although I had not had the advantage of a metropolitan experience. I am afraid, indeed, that the Liverpool experience might not have been of the most healthful sort; but I used to spend most of the long vacation with my father; and in the seclusion of my familiar and loved home amid the Yorkshire moors and streams, I came nearer to what my father wished me to be, and rubbed off the narrowness of the office and the unfavourable general colouring conferred by Liverpool.

I got a kind of promotion. It was settled that I was to go up to London, to the office of the London agency that was very closely connected with the Liverpool firm. They wanted a man in town who knew all about Liverpool. My berth was moderately good, and there was the expectation that it would become better. Moreover, there was a location assigned me-a bedroom with a very diminutive sitting-room attached, which were handed over to me by the junior partner. He had just been admitted a member of a club, and had taken lodgings in Jermyn Street to carry out the idea, firing many of his friends with a noble emulative ambition. For a few days I roamed about London, not exactly like a noble savage lost in hopeless admiration, but with the cynical nil admirari style, which we flattered ourselves we had brought to considerable perfection in the provinces. And then I bethought myself that I would call on Uncle Blogue, who, indeed, had been frequently in my mind since it had been settled that I should come up to London.

I confess I knocked at my uncle's door, throwing into my knock much of the energy of my original Yorkshire

nature. My uncle lived in Stucconia, a good house in a good street, a region which he himself called Belgravia, but which was more generally entitled Pimlico. I confess also that when I first met my mother's only brother I yearned for some little amount of sympathy, for I had had a touch of melancholy that morning, and a feeling of the loneliness of London was growing upon me. I moved with the heartiest feeling towards a middle-aged gentleman in a pink waistcoat, with pink eyes and cheeks to match. There was only one point about him which I liked, and that was that his smile was of a more pleasing kind than might have been expected from his visage, generally speaking, and that he smiled with his eyes. But when I noticed his mechanical movements and the cold pressure of his flabby hand, my Liverpool training stood me in good stead, and I very exactly adapted my own manner to his. Mrs. Blogue was hardly more disappointing, and for a very simple reason. Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed,' which defined very exactly my state of feeling in reference to Aunt Jemima. After some salutations and inquiries were exchanged, of a very conventional nature, the word 'dinner' escaped my uncle's mouth but died away upon his lips at a warning look from my aunt. Mrs. Blogue substituted a milder invitation, and asked if I would stay lunch that day, or some other day before they should be leaving town. I was feeling annoyed, and was about excusing myself, when there came a peculiarly sharp knock, a peculiarly quick ring, and Mrs. Blogue exclaimed, Why, here's Clara,' and her face lighted up with a sudden animation and interest as she moved into the hall to meet her daughter.

'Cousin Charlie here!' came the accents of a musical, surprised, and even rather a delighted voice, and my bright, handsome cousin entered the study where we had been talking. She came up immediately with extended hands and dancing eyes. The provocation of those eyes was immense; and was there any one in the world who could deny that we were first cousins? I bent forward to kiss her, and her lips moved to meet mine.

Mrs. Blogue looked aghast, but presently recovered her equanimity; and in a way half apologetic for her daughter, but not over-friendly to myself, she murmured, Ah, yes! cousins always are so affectionate.'

We sat down to a very good lunch,

[ocr errors]

and before the lunch was half over we were on Charlie' and 'Clara' terms. Before the lunch was entirely over I had gone a long way towards obeying my beloved mother's injunction.

When we had finished lunch Clara said, Isn't it nice that Charlie has come up to town? He is just in time for our dinner-party next Monday.'

[ocr errors]

'I am afraid, my dear, our table will be quite full,' said my uncle. There's Sir James, and the Downings, and Lady Pendleton, and the others. Quite a close fit as it is.'

'Oh, I saw Lucy Pendleton in the square this morning, and she said that her mamma was so upset by the death of her poodle that she was going to write a note to decline the invitation.'

'Seriously, Clara?' said Aunt Jemima. 'Seriously, old lady.' I opened my eyes at this expression, for it sounded slangy and periodic, but Aunt Jemima took it mildly. It was evident to me that the young lady ruled the old lady, and meant to have it her own way in the matter of that invitation.

So it was fixed that I should come to dinner on Monday at seven o'clock. 'And remember,' said Cousin Clara, half whisperingly, that you may be here a little before seven, if you like, for I shall be down in the drawing-room long before that.'

I do not know why I should go very fully into my love story, which was in its blessed experience like all the true love stories that ever were or will be. A hint is rarely lost upon the legal mind. I shall always remember that evening of evenings. I made a point of wilfully mistaking the hour, and came exactly an hour earlier; but that was of course excused to the kinsman of the house. The old birds were engaged. Aunt Jemima was putting herself in gorgeous apparel, and the uncle was draping himself in black. So we sat for a whole hour in the delicious gloaming twilight of the drawing-room, in full cousinly amity, and Clara and I exchanged our histories. She had not much to tell, for she had only been released six months from her school at Brighton; but she wanted to know all about her relations in Yorkshire, and had an enthusiastic regard for my father, a portion of which I hoped she would transfer to his unworthy son. So at last hand clasped hand, and when the first note had announced the first guest, she gave me the kiss of cousinhood and ran upstairs to meet her mother.

The dinner was a very excellent one. The charm to me was, beyond Cousin Clara, who sat directly opposite, the

presence of two or three guests, of whom I had heard a great deal in the public papers, but had never contemplated with the eyes of the flesh. The lord of the absent Lady Pendleton was a cele. brated judge; but she had probably wept more over her poodle than over any number of criminals whom the judge had hung. Then there was a great M.P., with a boundless capacity for work and talk; and I perceived that, in the course of the evening, he ventilated every fact and idea with which he favoured the House and the country the following Tuesday night. As a rule, however, very great people are not so impressive in the undress of private life as when they are 'upon their legs,' or girt with the insignia of office. Still it was a happy night; but I thought the judge and the M.P. talked poor stuff compared to what Cousin Clara said.

I came whenever I had a chance to St. George's Road. Clara was always kind and courteous, very pleasant in manner, and, if she had the woman's wit with which I credited her, she I would have known how fond I was of her sweet face. But I perceived that I was not very popular with my uncle and aunt. I really think my uncle Blogue had a not unkindly feeling towards me. But he was emphatically

a man under authority,' absolutely subjugated by Aunt Jemima. Mrs. Blogue always gave me a sickly, stereotyped smile, and a hysterical shake of that codfish hand of hers. I perceived that there was a kind of cycle in this curious household which quite reversed all my limited notions of propriety-the wife domineering over the husband, and the daughter, in a sweetly imperative fashion, over the mother. However, it was clear to me that the old people did not care very much for my company. As a rule, I went through the farce of asking if they were at home; but they must, I think, have understood that I did not care very greatly if only the young lady were in the drawing-room. One day I got a letter from my honoured father which was not at all to my liking-at least the P.S. alarmed me, which was this: I am afraid you are giving your uncle Blogue too much of your company. The wise man tells us to withdraw the foot from our neighbour's house, lest he weary of us. Your uncle says, a little unfeelingly, that you come very often, and not always at convenient times.' Now was not this a passage peculiarly likely to gall a young man, and hurt his sense of his own dignity? It hurt all my amour

propre that I should be supposed to go where I was not wanted. I kept away for weeks. Wounded sensibility told me never again to cross that hateful threshold; but affection reminded me of Clara's bright eyes, and confidently assured me that she at least had no part in that cruel message.

[ocr errors]

When I summoned up courage to call at last, the door was opened by a man-servant, of unamiable and even forbidding aspect. He took a very deliberate survey of me, and asked for my card. He then informed me that the family was all hout. I bore my disappointment as I could, and deliberated within what space of time it might be decent for me, considering my uncle's expression of weariness, to call again. I determined to allow him the eternity of a lunar month. At the conclusion of that month I once more faced Cerberus. Not at home,' said he, very sharply. When will they be at home?' I asked, with a failing heart. 'Don't know, sir; hout for the day.' I prolonged the lunar month to the space of a calendar month before the next call, and then I knocked at the door once more. It was in the evening, this time, between eight and nine. I read the inevitable Not at home' upon the scoundrel's stolid face. How very unfortunate!' I exclaimed. 'Wery unfortunate indeed,' said the man; and I am not sure that he did not put his tongue into his cheek. As I turned away I cast a look back towards the drawingroom, and there I saw lights. 'Very odd,' I thought, when there is no one in the house. This unhappy experience happened once or twice again, and I began to think that I must give up calling altogether.

It was a Saturday afternoon, some weeks after my last failure, and I was sitting moodily in my rooms. It was long past business hours, and I had been intending to run down to the Crystal Palace for a half-holiday, and was thinking how sweet it would be to have Cousin Clara there at the Rosary and by the lakes. It was dull work, however, to go by oneself, and I had given up the notion. Presently there came a gentle rap at the office-door. I wondered greatly what should bring clients at that time; for my few friends were very unlikely to call at an hour when they and I would most likely be away from town. There was no clerk in attendance, and when I opened the door I saw two young ladies. I immediately recognised my cousin Clara, and presently her lady's-maid -possibly a shade better, certainly

« PreviousContinue »