WE stayed all that night at Waterflag, as we always did when we dined with the Sedgwicks, and of course I was subjected to a long private and confidential conversation with Mrs. Harley in my dressing-room, when we both ought to have been at rest. She poured out her anxieties upon me as she had done many a long year ago, when all these young people were unconscious little children, and Dr. Harley, poor good man, was newly dead. Only Time had changed both of us since then—she had become an old woman with silver-white hair under her snowy cap. I was old too, though my boy was but a child, and kept me nearer to youth than belonged to my years; but Mrs. Harley was as glad of this outlet to her anxieties, and felt as much relief in pouring these anxieties forth upon somebody else’s shoulders as ever.
“Ah, Clare!” she said, “you have only one, to be sure, and he’s nobly provided for; but we’re never so happy, though we don’t think it, as when they’re all children. There’s nothing but measles and such things to frighten one then—but now!—dear, dear! the charge of all these grown up young people, Clare, is far too much for a poor woman like me. I believe I shall break down all at once, one of these days.”
“Let us take it quietly,” said I, “they are very good, sensible, well-educated young people—they know what they are doing—don’t you think you might trust them to act for themselves?”
“They will, whether I trust them or not,” sighed poor Mrs. Harley. “Ah dear! to think how one toils and denies one’s self for one’s family, and how little account they make of one’s wishes when all is done! I think mine have quite set themselves—all but Clara, dear girl, who is so perfectly satisfactory in every way—to thwart and cross me, Alice—you know how unreasonable she is—I can do nothing with her. Just the thing of all others that I could have chosen for her, and such a nice, excellent, judicious young man. You saw how she behaved to him to-night.”
“But really, Mrs. Harley, if Alice doesn’t like him”—I interposed with humility.
“Oh, nonsense—she does like him—at least, she doesn’t like anybody else that I know of—and why shouldn’t she like him?” asked the exasperated mother. “You know, Mrs. Crofton, that my poor income dies with me—and there is Johnnie, poor child, to make some provision for, and when I die what will she do?—though to be sure,” concluded Mrs. Harley, drawing herself up a little, “I am not the sort of person to marry my daughters merely for an establishment—that never was my way. This case, you must perceive, Clare, is quite different. He is such a very nice—such an entirely satisfactory person; and the position—I was a clergyman’s wife myself, and I would choose that sphere rather than any other for Alice; and as for liking, I really cannot see a single reason why she should not like him, do you?”
“Why, no—except just, perhaps, that—I fear—she doesn’t,” said I, with hesitation; for I confess this superlative mother’s argument quite nonplused me. After all, why shouldn’t she like that good, young, handsome Rector? I reserved the question for private consideration, but was a little staggered by the strength of Mrs. Harley’s case.
“My opinion is that Alice thinks it rather a merit to refuse an eligible person,” said Mrs. Harley—“like all these young people. There is Maurice, too—you will not believe it, Clare—but Maurice has actually had the folly to fall in love with Francis Owen’s sister in Simonborough. I could not believe my ears when I heard of it first. Maurice, who has always been such a very prudent boy! She is a very nice, pretty girl, but, of course has not a penny—and Maurice has nothing but his fellowship. It is a pretty mess altogether. In the very best view of the case, if Maurice even had been content to think like other people, and had a nice living waiting for him, they might both have done better—he might have done a great deal better at least. But, no!—when they find somebody quite unsuitable, that is the very thing to please young people in these days; and there is my son, Clare—my eldest son—who was never intended for any profession but the Church—actually broaching all kinds of wild schemes about work, and talking of going to Australia, or taking a laborer’s hod, or any other wild thing he can think of; it is enough to break my heart!”
“Then do you mean that Maurice intends to throw up his fellowship, and marry?” said I, thinking this too good news to be true.
Mrs. Harley shook her head.
“It is all a muddle,” she said, “there is no satisfaction at all in it; she thought he flirted with Miss Reredos, and he thought she flirted with some of the officers; and Miss Reredos has such a grudge at him for falling in love with anybody but herself, that she did all she could to help them to a quarrel; and a very good thing, too, for of course they never would have been so mad as to marry, and I dislike long engagements exceedingly; only since then it is really almost impossible to endure Maurice in the house. He is so ill-tempered, it is really quite dreadful. I am sure, when I was young, I never gave my parents any uneasiness about me, yet my two eldest children seem to think it quite an amusement to worry me out of my life.”
“Let us believe they don’t do it on purpose,” said I; “troubles never come single, you know—and I daresay this is the most critical time of their life.”
“Ah, Alice should have had all these affairs over long ago!” said Mrs. Harley, disapprovingly; “Alice is seven and twenty, Mrs. Crofton—she ought to have been settled in life years ago. I am sure, considering all the opportunities she has had, it is quite disgraceful. I can’t help feeling that people—her father’s friends, for instance—will blame me.”
I found it difficult not to smile at this refinement of maternal anxiety, but after a while succeeded in soothing the good mother, whose mind was evidently eased by the utterance, and persuading her that everything would come right. She went away shaking her head, but smiling through her anxious looks. She laid down her burden at my door, and left it there. When she had gone I took up my portion of it with sundry compunctions. Bertie Nugent had been seven years away—when he went away Alice was scarcely twenty. They had of course been very much in each other’s society before this, but seven years is a long break, even for lovers. These two were not lovers; and was not Clara right when she stigmatized as the merest foolish romance any interest which Alice might have in her long-departed and indifferent playfellow? I began to blame myself for cherishing in my own mind the lingering hope that my wishes might still be accomplished concerning them. Perhaps that hope had, by some subtle means, betrayed itself to Alice, and had helped to strengthen her in her natural perversity and the romance of that vague visionary link which existed only in her mind and mine. I have known very similar cases more than once in my life—cases in which a childish liking, kept up only by chance inquiries or friendly messages at long intervals on one side or the other, has forestalled the imagination of the two subjects of it so completely, that both have kept from all engagements for years, until at long and last, encountering each other once again, they have discovered themselves to have loved each other all this time, and married out of hand. This vague sort of tie, which is no tie, has a more captivating hold upon the mind than a real engagement; but then it might come to nothing. And after an interval of seven years, was it not everybody’s duty to turn the dreamer away from that romantic distance to the real ground close at hand? I had considered the question many times with too strong a regard for Bertie (who, to be sure, had no particular solicitude about the matter, or he might have been home long ago) in my thoughts. Now I rather changed my point of view. If Alice liked Bertie, it was purely a love of the imagination. Why, for that Will-o’-the-wisp, was she to keep dreaming in the twilight while the broad daylight of life and all its active duties were gliding out of her reach? I resolved to bestir myself and startle Alice into common sense and ordinary prudence. Here was she, letting youth pass her, not perceiving how it went, looking so far away out of her horizon to that fantastic, unreal attraction at the other end of the world. Thinking over it I grew more and more dissatisfied. She was wrong to entertain, I was wrong to encourage, so uncomfortable a piece of self-delusion. It is true, Bertie was in danger, and surrounded with a flush of interest and anxiety which doubled his claims on everybody who knew him. Still it must not be permitted to continue—she must be roused out of this vain imaginary attachment which blinded her to the love that sought her close at hand. Why did she not like the Rector? I resolved to be at the bottom of that question, which I could not answer, before twenty-four hours were out.