_ CHAPTER XVI
By noon, next day, I had reached my old home, and was folded in Alice Merivale's warm embrace. How beautiful she looked, standing on the platform of the depot as we steamed in? So tall, and graceful, and lady-like, so handsomely dressed, so striking in every particular!
I was proud to be claimed by her, when I came out, and be led enthusiastically away by her, into their comfortable sleigh, among their rich and luxurious robes: in twenty minutes we were at the house, where a cordial reception greeted me on every side.
The news of my engagement had got ahead of me; there is no bridling intelligences of this nature, whether they go up with the smoke out of our chimneys, or creep through the key-holes of our doors, it is hard to say, but get abroad, they must, and do.
They are served up at the
recherche repasts of fashionable families, and keep time with the stitches of gossip-loving milliners and dress-makers, they are the great prevailing attraction at tea-socials, sewing societies and bazaars, and are not unfrequently discussed over the genial "rosy" or behind a flavoured cigar. Rumour is the worst epidemic that has ever visited humanity.
But as there is nothing to be ashamed of, in half of what Rumour says about us, we may as well meet it with a friendly face, and this I did, when my old friends teazed or congratulated me in their peculiar way. I shall not dwell at length upon the details of my first visit to my old home: those persons and circumstances that may interest the reader, more particularly, shall alone claim my attention. Ernest Dalton was not in town, he had left some days before my arrival, and had given no definite promise to return at a late or early date. I only learned, that he had "gone away."
Arthur Campbell, I do not count, of course, for I saw him every day at least, sometimes twice and oftener, in the twenty-four hours; and Alice Merivale? She had her own story, which I may as well finish for the reader, as I pass by.
She had been home, about three weeks, when a dashing young Englishman took the Capital by storm. One of those tall, lean, wiry-looking fellows with clothes so well-fitting that a pocket-full of bank-notes would have utterly destroyed the desired effect. He wore very long and very pointed shoes, and a peculiar little hat, made of hideous tweed, with flaps tied over the low crown with fluttering ribbons. He carried a tall, lean, wiry-looking stick, not a bad counterpart of himself, if it had only had a tweed cap on one end, and a pair of tooth-pick shoes on the other, with here and there a little slit for a silk handkerchief, or a reserved cigar. His drawl was perfect, and his eye-glass as bright--as his wits.
In his outer pocket, he carried a little plush card-case, stuffed with little printed visiting cards, on whose immaculate surface, the name--Mr. Sylvester Davenport Clyde--lay in conscious dignity and beauty. Away down in the left hand corner, like a parenthetical guarantee of Mr. Clyde's imposing social standing, was neatly inscribed--Portland Place, London, England.
Mr. Sylvester Davenport Clyde, of Portland Place, London, England, a pleasure tourist in Canada, with a (figurative) mortgage on every town he visited, and a claim on the hand of one of Canada's fairest daughters.
It would be too hazardous of me, perhaps to declare that he had no claim upon her heart, but with the most perfect sanction of the most scrupulous discretion, I can safely avow, that she never loved him, for she owned to me, she did not. She laughed most boisterously at him, when he took his maiden snow-shoe tramp, and actually displeased him with her ridicule, when he came up the toboggan hill after an unfortunate slide, making strenuous efforts to shake the wet snow from under his stiff, linen cuffs; his yellow gloves were sadly spoiled, and his eye-glass broken; his hat was injured by being blown off in the descent, and there were other still more grievous consequences which need not be mentioned, since the mercy of the darkness kept them from the general view.
She married him, however, before he returned to Portland Place. Her father and mother shouldered the responsibility of paraphrasing his genteel pretensions by enumerating, for the gratification or envy of other Canadian husband-seekers, the many titled connections and immediate relatives of their prospective son-in-law.
If all they said were true he must have been related to half the landed aristocracy of that world-famed metropolis. What surprised me, above and beyond all comprehension, was, that Mrs. Merivale, for a lady who had completely forgotten that "prepositions govern the objective case," could remember with such accurate fidelity the endless syllables of these high-sounding titles, and the intricate channels and by-ways through which the original blue blood came down the stream of vanished generations into the narrow vessels that made Mr. Sylvester Davenport Clyde's humanity sacred and precious to fashionable eyes.
There was not much mention of whose son he was, his social prestige had a more remote source than his immediate parentage. He was greater as a grandson, immortal as a nephew, a very idol on fashion's shrine when his relations by marriage were taken into account. He had endless cousins of high-bred notoriety, who had again married into still greater and grander families, all of whom Mrs. Merivale now reckoned as easily at her fingers' ends, as she could the days of the week, or seasons of the year. In this brainless boy who was, and ever must be an alien to the finer susceptibilities and nobler aspirations of true and sturdy manhood, the Merivales were pleased to see, a full and happy realization of all their fondest hopes. Alice would be courted and flattered in the highest circles; was not that what their dream had been from the first?
And Alice herself was seemingly satisfied. Her better nature had been crushed out entirely by her frivolous pastimes and pursuits. There was no re-action now, no leaping up of the old flame which cast great ugly shadows over her other life. She had stifled her struggling conscience, had laughed its keen remonstrances to scorn, and now she was free. Nothing now would do her but a ceaseless round of pleasures and gay distractions. Nothing but feasting, and merry-making and song. There must be no lull in the din of glad confusion, no pause in the ring of that restless mirth--that mock pacifier of human scruples that stirs and stimulates us to-day, but that to-morrow drives our deepest misery to remorse.
They were married after Easter, and such a wedding as it was! Half the merchants of the town might have retired upon their profits when it was over if they had had any hankering after good society, which they did not happen to have. Her bridal equipage, of course, came from England and was chosen by the Dowager Lady Trebleston, a great-aunt of the groom, who was not at all distinguished for any particular ability to choose a wedding outfit with extraordinary taste or economy, but whose name lent a flavour to the choice, as "Dresden" does to china, or "Cambridge" to sausages.
It was quite disappointing to Mrs. Merivale if any of her visitors had heard of Lady Trebleston's name, in connection with the bridal array, before she had had the opportunity and exquisite pleasure of imparting it. Still, she had many such disappointments, for the news had spread like wild-fire at its first mention, and floated through the town on every lip, regardless of discrimination.
The wedding-presents were marvels of beauty and wealth, and such an array as there was. Alice contemplated them with many a sweeping glance of open admiration, which was generally followed by the dancing of a light pirouette around the room, and an exulting cry of "Who wouldn't get married after that, eh, Miss Hampden?"
As this was not the time for remonstration of any sort, on my part, I remained utterly passive throughout, watching the proceedings in their origin and progress with a curious and puzzling eye. Alice was full of the occasion; she danced and sang, and skipped about the house, in the maddest manner possible, hugging us all around whenever some new addition arrived to her already magnificent collection of gifts.
Such a trying on of dresses, and mantles and hats. Such endless speculations about the ultimate crisis of the whole affair, and how it would all come off. What the papers would say, and what people would think. Such an arranging of after-sports, travels, and elaborate receptions. I expected the hair, of not only the men, women, and children, but of all the fur-bearing animals of the town, whether alive, or in door mats, to stand rigidly on end with consternation at sight of such realizations, and the teeth of all the combs and saws in the country, to water with envy when the great climax would have arrived.
No one spoke of her marriage as a great and solemn change coming into her life. No one foresaw cheerful glimpses of a happy, domestic life, presided over by a steady sustaining unity of loves. No pictures were drawn of quiet, fireside pleasures, in their future home, no praises uttered of a woman's hallowed power to make life's burdens easy for him whose happiness she is free to make or mar.
Every one said how bright a star this dazzling bride would be; the comet of many seasons, the cynosure of many jealous and many admiring eyes. No one said: "how loving, how devoted she will be, a model wife, a patient helpmate, the joy and comfort of her husband's days." This was a minor consideration. I suppose, the world knows nothing of these stay-at-home little housewives, the angels of many a happy hearth, whose busy fingers, beaming smiles and gentle accents are the rest and refuge of many a toil-worn weaver at life's heavy loom. To lay aside the world's distressing cares at sunset, to wipe his moistened brow, and "homeward plod his weary way" to his cabin small and lowly, where glows this cheerful love in one dear breast, in one sweet face, is to the uncouth "ploughman" a joy, a comfort, which many a prince doth envy.
It is not I who say it, but our century has proven beyond a question, unfortunately, that the full Christian interpretation of the Divine ordination concerning those "whom God hath joined together" has, like many other principles of rigid morality, become for the most part dependant upon that honest, toiling, sterling mass of humanity upon which society looks down with a haughty forbearance or condescending patronage. When we want a type of genuine manhood, let us leave the lighted hall, where gilded folly revels, let us leave the solemn chamber of science and of art, men have chilled it with the foul and withering breath of infidelity and materialism, let us leave the busy arena of commerce, men are gloating over gain and gold in their hidden corners; let us rest with that sturdy, active, middle-class, where the mechanic's ingenious conceptions puzzle and captivate the most listless observer; let us watch the busy minds and busier fingers of those men, so fascinated by their daily toil, that all the world outside their own great pursuits has become a power beyond them, which they neither flatter, nor defy. If the labour of the right hand be the touchstone of men's inward morality, then how conclusively my theory is sanctioned by the black and brawny fingers of the human industry, whose praises I could sing forever; there is no treacherous ambush in such natures, as I speak of now; no hidden recesses, where the animal man may lay in wait to assault or overcome the spiritual man. Every lurking tendency to evil is easily blighted by that stimulating activity which brings moisture to the furrowed brow, which strengthens the sinewy arm, and stamps its wholesome seal upon the broad and hardened hand!
It seems odd enough, to say, that among such are found the greatest and noblest phases of humanity, and yet, is it not so? Is not that man great and noble, whose honest path lies straight within the precincts of righteousness? who has lifted himself above the power of sordid influences, who looks upon mortal throes as the stepping-stones to immortal joys? that man to whose watchful eyes the shallow side of nature is ever uppermost, he who serves but one master, whose only policy is honesty, whose only stimulus is the ever-abiding promise of a blissful hereafter, and whose attitude towards his fellow-creatures is one of charity and kind forbearance?
I have wandered a little, while noting down the details of Alice Merivale's fashionable wedding, and though I feel that it is doing Mr. Sylvester Davenport Clyde a cruel injustice to bring him to the front again, beside such pictures of exalted humanity as we have just been contemplating, I owe it, in amendment, for my trespass upon the reader's patience, to proceed with the interrupted thread of my story, and can therefore only trust to the generosity of his disposition not to dwell at any length upon the compromising nature of the contrast, but to remember Mr. Clyde, in his more interesting character of bridegroom, at a very showy and stylish wedding ceremony.
When the great event had come and gone, no one could tell exactly whether half his or her sanguine expectations had been fulfilled or not. I had an uneasy suspicion, at the time, that the soundness of the family's mental organization had become temporarily suspended, from Mrs. Merivale down--they seemed to have gone stark mad.
It was six weeks after the ceremony of pelting a glittering carriage with white slippers and rice, as it rolled away from their festive-looking mansion, that Mrs. Merivale dropped down into an easy-chair one afternoon with the greatest languor and physical depression, and declaring that "those fashionable weddings were enough to knock a body up for a month," quietly fell asleep among her comfortable cushions. _