“God bless me!” said I uncomfortably; “what a memory you have! Who wrote that rubbish?”
“I forget. It was a school exercise, and that is how I happen to know it.”
“I hope you have no more pat quotations at your finger ends.”
“No. What other poetry I know is all sentimental.”
“Ah!” I exclaimed, “I am very fond of sentimental poetry—Moore’s for instance.”
“I wonder, with your refined taste, that you could ever tolerate the notion of settling into a banker’s clerk.”
Was she ironical? Was she sarcastic? Her eyes were all innocence; her face all candour.
“It is not the choice of my will, but of my poverty. Nature made me a gentleman, but forgot to endow me. Therefore there is nothing for me to do, but to forget her good intentions and learn book-keeping.”
Here she looked at the clock, and as she did so her mamma came rustling and swelling in, decked out in a fine bonnet, new gloves, and a stiff blue silk gown.
“Haven’t you been to see the grounds, Charlie?” she asked.
“I have been very well entertained,” I replied with a smile at Conny.
“There’s the carriage!” exclaimed my cousin, and a barouche with two horses, driven by my friend James in silver livery, swept along the avenue and stopped at the door.
“We have lost our footman,” said my aunt, apologetically, as we passed out, “but I hope to replace him next week.” I begged her not to mention it; we got in, and off we went.
I faced Conny, and was thus able to alternate luxuriously between the beauties of nature and the beauties of human nature. When we reached Updown, James was requested to drive slowly, in order that I might “view” the town. It turned out that my aunt was a native of the place, and knew a good deal of its history, social and otherwise. The carriage was stopped at the huge gateway at the bottom of the High Street, that I might decipher the inscription, and admire the carvings. Unfortunately the inscription was in Latin, with v’s for u’s. I did not understand it, but as I had always been given to believe that a knowledge of the dead tongues was esteemed a very essential ingredient in the composition of a gentleman’s character, I looked wise, and talked much nonsense about the unintelligibility of mediæval Latin.
“They say,” observed my aunt, “that this gate was built by the Romans.”
“Oh, that must be a mistake,” I answered, “for don’t you see the date MDCLI?” which was the only part of the inscription I could read.
“The writing says that the gateway was restored in that year,” said Conny, quietly.
“What! do you understand Latin?” I asked.
“No. Mr. Curling told me.”
My aunt tossed her head, and exclaimed, “I am sure Mr. Curling can’t read Latin.”
“Indeed he can!” returned Conny, looking for an instant with her deep, deep eyes, at her mamma, and then letting them drop with a little smile.
“James, drive on!” cried Mrs. Hargrave.
Had Mr. Curling’s head been under our wheels, I believe at that moment I should have sat through the jump of the carriage unmoved. Was my aunt’s suspicion right? did Conny care about that lean young man at the bank? Suppose he could read Latin—what then? I daresay he had bragged of this solitary achievement to my cousin, and she had mentioned it first to pique her mother.
I looked at her, and then at my aunt, and then pretended to fall into a rapture over an old gable-peaked house with latticed windows, and a porch surmounted by an effigy of Time. The town abounded in venerable structures of this kind; but the builders were busy in the suburbs, and the country outside was dotted with little stucco residences, squares of plaster, coloured like gingerbread—advertised as charming homes for newly-married couples—poor wretches! My relations received several bows during our progress through the streets, and—I say this without vanity—I was a good deal stared at. I know nothing more ludicrous than bucolic curiosity. I was incessantly laughing to see some old man or woman turn slowly to look after us, as if our carriage were a magnet, and their noses were steel, and gaze until we were out of sight.
“How do the people amuse themselves all day long?” I asked.
“Are any balls or dinner-parties ever given?”
“No,” answered my aunt, emphatically. “Society here is very mean and close. The only parties that are given are by new-comers. But they soon find out that it is a one-sided amusement, and drop it. A call is all the return people think of making.”
“At Longueville,” said I, “we are dancing all the year round. What with fêtes champêtres, and balls at l’Institution de Bienfaisance, and private parties, one never has an evening to one’s self.”
This was stretching a small truth into colossal dimensions; but as Dr. Primrose says, “I was never much displeased with those harmless delusions that tend to make us more happy.” And it certainly made me happy to increase my importance in my aunt’s and Conny’s eyes.
We got out of the town into the country, and I was not sorry for the change. My aunt had so much to say about Updown, that I got bored with her recollections before we reached the top of High Street. Now carrots and corn-fields have no social and historical associations; and when we got among the trees, her memory slackened, and enabled me to talk with Conny.
Considering I had met her for the first time in my life only on the afternoon of the previous day, I don’t know what right I had to possess an intense longing to ask her if she was in love with Mr. Curling. Her sentiments ought to have been nothing to me. But they were. Indeed, I discovered at this very early stage, that I took a profound interest in them. I noticed one thing; my aunt seemed thoroughly well pleased with the attention I paid her daughter, and with the unaffected admiration that overspread my face when I looked at her. My conceit made it a mere matter-of-course, that both Mr. and Mrs. Hargrave would be transported with joy, and rendered giddy with emotions of pride, were I to give them to understand that Conny was agreeable to me, and that I would not mind marrying her. But I was not so sure that Conny herself would share in their delirium. She rather puzzled me. Sometimes I thought her shy and simple. Sometimes she confounded me with a sudden sally—a smart retort—a pat allusion, apt, shrewd and well-timed enough to reverse my judgment, and set me speculating on her real character. If she meant me to fall in love with her, she was going the right way to work. Pique your man, Clorinda, before you angle for him. The cleverest fishers among you always summon the sentiments with ground-bait before they throw the hook in.