Page:ONCE A WEEK JUL TO DEC 1860.pdf/377

29, 1860.] different reason. She seemed to be transformed. Seeing him inclined to gape, she ran up to him, caught up his chin between her ten fingers, and kissed him on both cheeks, saying:

“You needn’t come, if you’re too proud, you know, little man!”

And to Harriet’s look of disgust, the cause for which she divined with her native rapidity, she said: “What does it matter? They will talk, but they can’t look down on us now. Why, this is my doing!”

She came tripping to her tall sister, to ask plaintively: “Mayn’t I be glad?” and bobbed a curtsey.

Harriet desired Andrew to leave them. Flushed and indignant she then faced the Countess.

“So unnecessary!” she began. “What can excuse your indiscretion, Louisa?”

The Countess smiled to hear her talking to her younger sister once more. She shrugged.

“Oh, if you will keep up the fiction, do. Andrew knows—he isn’t an idiot—and to him we can make light of it now. What does anybody’s birth matter, who’s well off?”

It was impossible for Harriet to take that view. The shop, if not the thing, might still have been concealed from her husband, she thought.

“It mattered to me when I was well off,” she said, sternly.

“Yes; and to me when I was: but we’ve had a fall and a lesson since that, my dear. Half the aristocracy of England spring from shops!—Shall I measure you?”

Harriet never felt such a desire to inflict a slap upon mortal cheek. She marched away from her in a tiff. On the other hand, Andrew was half-fascinated by the Countess’s sudden re-assumption of girlhood, and returned—silly fellow! to have another look at her. She had ceased, on reflection, to be altogether so vivacious: her stronger second nature had somewhat resumed its empire: still she was fresh, and could at times be roguishly affectionate: and she patted him, and petted him, and made much of him; slightly railed at him for his uxoriousness and domestic subjection, and proffered him her fingers to try the taste of. The truth must be told: Mr. Duffian not being handy, she in her renewed earthly happiness wanted to see her charms in a woman’s natural mirror: namely, the face of man: if of man on his knees, all the better: and though a little man is not much of a man, and a sister’s husband is, or should be, hardly one at all, still some sort of a reflector he must be. Two or three jests adapted to Andrew’s palate achieved his momentary captivation.

He said: ’Gad, I never kissed you in my life, Louy.”

And she, with a flavour of delicate Irish brogue, “Why don’t ye catch opportunity by the tail, then?”

Perfect innocence, I assure you, on both sides.

But mark how stupidity betrays. Andrew failed to understand her, and act on the hint immediately. Had he done so, the affair would have been over without a witness. As it happened, delay permitted Harriet to assist at the ceremony.

“It wasn’t your mouth, Louy,” said Andrew.

“Oh, my mouth!—that I keep for my chosen,” was answered.

’Gad, you make a fellow almost wish—” Andrew’s fingers worked over his poll, and then the spectre of righteous wrath flashed on him—naughty little man that he was! He knew himself naughty, for it was the only time since his marriage that he had ever been sorry to see his wife. This is a comedy, and I must not preach lessons of life here: but I am obliged to remark that the husband must be proof, the sister-in-law perfect, where arrangements exist that keep them under one roof. She may be so like his wife! Or, from the knowledge she has of his circumstances, she may talk to him almost as his wife! He may forget that she is not his wife! And then again, the small beginnings, which are in reality the mighty barriers, are so easily slid over. But what is the use of telling this to a pure generation? My constant error is in supposing that I write for the wicked people who begat us.

Note, however, the difference between the woman and the man! Shame confessed Andrew’s naughtiness: he sniggered pitiably: whereas the Countess jumped up, and pointing at him, asked her sister what she thought of that. Her next sentence, coolly delivered, related to some millinery matter. If this was not innocence, what is?

Nevertheless, I must here state that the scene related, innocent as it was, and, as one would naturally imagine, of puny consequence, if any, did no less a thing than, subsequently, to precipitate the Protestant Countess de Saldar into the bosom of the Roman Catholic Church. A little bit of play!

It seems barely just. But if, as I have heard, a lady had trod on a pebble and broken her nose, tremendous results like these warn us to be careful how we walk. As for play, it was never intended that we should play with flesh and blood.

And, oh, be charitable, matrons of Britain! See here, Andrew Cogglesby, who loved his wife as his very soul, and who almost disliked her sister;—in ten minutes the latter had set his head spinning! The whole of the day he went about the house meditating frantically on the possibility of his Harriet demanding a divorce.

She was not the sort of woman to do that. But one thing she resolved to do; and it was, to go to Lymport with Louisa, and having once got her out of her dwelling-place, never to allow her to enter it, wherever it might be, in the light of a resident again. Whether anything but the menace of a participation in her conjugal possessions could have despatched her to that hateful place, I doubt. She went: she would not let Andrew be out of her sight. Growing haughtier towards him at every step, she advanced to the old strange shop. over the door! There the Countess, having meantime returned to her state of womanhood, shared her shudders. They entered, and passed in to Mrs. Mel, leaving their footman, apparently, in the rear. Evan was not visible. A man in the shop, with a yard measure negligently adorning his shoulders, said that Mr. Harrington was in the habit of quitting the shop at five.

“Deuced good habit, too,” said Andrew.