The Cockaynes in Paris Part 15

"I have s.n.a.t.c.hed the time to write you these hurried lines, while the wors.h.i.+pped subject of them has been trying on some new--but I forgot; I am writing to a bachelor. I have still a few minutes; let me make use of them.

"My dear Mac, when I return to foggy London--(I hear you have had terrible weather there)--you will see little or nothing of me. My Carrie allows me to smoke (she permits me everything), but I should be a mean brute if I took advantage of her boundless generosity. I smoke one cigar _per diem_, and no more. And as for wine--the honey of the loved one's lips is the true grape of the honeymoon. I must tell you that Carrie and I have made a solemn compact. Her head was nestled against my waistcoat as we made it. We are not going to live for the world, like foolish people whom we know. For society my little wife needs me; and I, happy man, shall be more than content for ever while the partner of my bosom deigns to solace me with her gentle voice. She has friends without number who will mourn her loss to society. Her dear friends the Barcaroles will be inconsolable; her sister Theodosia will break her heart. Life has its trials, however, which must be bravely borne; and Carrie's friends must be consoled when they learn that she is happy with the man of her choice. In the same way, be comforted, my dear Mac (for I know how warmly you regard me), when I tell you that henceforth we shall meet only at rare intervals. My life is bound up in that of the celestial being who is knitting in the window, not an arm's length from me.

"My dear Mac, we have drank our last gin-sling together. Recal me affectionately to the memory of Joe Parkes, and young Square, and all friends of her Majesty's Pugilistic Department; and may they all speedily be as happy as I am. How the wretches will laugh when you tell them that Flowerdew has reformed his ways, and has blackened his last Milo; but I think, my dear fellow, I have convinced you that I write after cool reflection. We have taken a cottage four miles south of my office. A sixpenny omnibus will take me back at four o'clock daily, to my little haven. My Carrie is fond of a garden; and I shall find her, on summer afternoons, waiting at the gate for me, in her garden hat, and leaning upon the smartest little rake in the world. You, and Joe, and the Pugilistic Department fellows may laugh; but this is the happy life I have chalked out for myself. As I have told you, some men marry with their eyes shut; but I live only to congratulate myself on my sagacity.

To think that I, of all men, should have won Caroline c.o.c.kayne!

"We shall remain here for another week, when we go to Fontainebleau, and thence we return to London. I may write to you from our next stage; but if not, expect to hear from me on my return, when, if I can persuade my love to brave the presence of a stranger, for friends.h.i.+p's sake, you shall have a peep at our felicity.

"Your old friend, "HAPPY TOM FLOWERDEW."

Mr. Mac's observations on the foregoing were, no doubt, to this effect: "He'll come to his senses by-and-by. I shouldn't like to be compelled to buy all the cigars he'll smoke before he turns his toes up."

_Flowerdew, from Fontainebleau._

"Fontainebleau, July 1.

"MY DEAR MAC,--I am tempted to send you a few lines from this wonderful place. You have heard of Fontainebleau grapes--you have tasted them; but you have not seen Fontainebleau. My dear Mac, when you marry (and, as your friend, I say, lose no time about it)--yes, when you marry, take the _cara sposa_ to Fontainebleau. Let her see the weeping rock, in that wonderful battle between granite and trees, they call the forest. Let her feed the fat carp with _galette_ behind the Palace in the company of those Normandy nurses (brown and flat as Normandy pippins), and their squalling basked-capped charges. Give her some of that delicious iced currant-water, which the dragoons who are quartered here appear to drink with all the relish the children show for it. Never fear that she will look twice at these soldiers, in their sky-blue coats and broad red pantaloons, and their hair cut so close that their eyes must have watered under the operation. Imagine dragoons drinking currant-water; and playing dominoes for shapeless sous, which they rattle incessantly in their preposterous trousers! I am meditating a book on the French army, in which I shall lay great stress on the above, I flatter myself, rather acute bit of observation. Carrie (she grows prettier daily) rather inclines to the idea that the moderation of these French dragoons is in their favour; and this is the first time I have found her judgment at fault. But then it would be unreasonable indeed to hope that on military subjects she could have that clear insight which she displays with such charming grace, whether we are contemplating the Marriage of Cana, in the Louvre, or thinking over the scenes some of those orange-trees in the Tuileries gardens have shed leaves upon. For, let me tell you, my dear Mac, there are trees there, the flowers of which have trembled at the silver laugh of unhappy Antoinette. Sallow Robespierre has rubbed against them. They were in their glory on that July day when the mob of blouses tasted of the cellars of a King.

"But you can get in Murray all I can tell you of the wonderful place in which it has been my fortune to find myself with my little wife. When, on the morning after our arrival, I threw my bedroom window open, the air was, I thought, the sweetest that had ever refreshed my nostrils.

The scene would have been perfect, had it not been for swarms of wasps that dashed their great bodies, barred, as Carrie said, like grooms'

waistcoats (wasn't it clever of her?) into the room. If everything were not flavoured with garlic (peaches included), I should say without hesitation, that our _hote_ is THE _cordon bleu_ of the country. Omelettes, my dear Mac, as light as syllabub; wild strawberries frosted with the finest white sugar I ever put to my lips; coffee that would make a Turk dance with delight; only, in each and all of these dainties, there is just a pinch of garlic. But love makes light of these little drawbacks. Carrie has made a wry face once or twice, it is true, but only in the best of humours, and when the garlic was very strong indeed.

"We had a rainy day yesterday: but we enjoyed it. We sat all the morning at our window, gossiping and flirting, and watching the peasants sauntering home from market, apparently unconscious that they were being drenched. I had bought Carrie a huge sugar stick (_sucre de pomme_, I think they call it), and she looked bewitchingly as she nibbled it, and then coaxingly held it to my lips. You remember my old antipathy to sweets; well, strange to say, I thought I had never tasted anything more delicious than this sugar stick; but remember, it came direct from Carrie's lips. Then we speculated on what our friends were doing at that very moment, peeped into Clapham, and we made bad guesses enough, I have no doubt. It ended by our agreeing that none of you were half so happy as we were.

"In the evening the weather cleared a little, and we went out for a stroll. A stroll through the streets of Fontainebleau is not one of the pleasantest exploits in the world. I thought every moment that my wife (delightful word, that thrills me to the finger tips as I write it) would sprain an ankle, for the paving is simply a heap of round stones thrown out of a cart; but she stepped so nimbly and lightly, that no harm came to her. I wish, my dear Mac, you could hear her conversation.

From morning till night she prattles away, hopping, skipping, and jumping from one subject to another, and saying something sensible or droll on each. You must know that Carrie has an immense fund of humour.

Her imitations of people make me almost die with laughter. You remember Mrs. Calfsfoot's habit of twitching her nose and twirling her thumbs when she is beginning an anecdote about somebody one never saw, and never cared to see. Well, Carrie stopped in the middle of our rambles in the forest, and imitated her squeaky voice and absurd gestures to the life. The anecdote, concocted impromptu, was a wonderfully sustained bit of pure invention. On my honour, when she had finished her little performance, I could not help giving her a kiss for it.

"You will smile, my dear Mac, at this: remembering the horror we mutually expressed one night at Ardbye's chambers, of female mimics. But there is a difference, which we do not appear to have recognised on that occasion, between good-natured and ill-natured mimicry. Now nothing can be more harmless fun than my Carrie's imitations. She never has the bad taste to mimic a deformity, or to burlesque a misfortune. She certainly said of Mrs. Blomonge (who is known to be the stoutest person in the parish of St. Bride's) that her head floated on her shoulders like a waterlily on a pond; but then the joke was irresistible, and there was not a touch of malice in the way the thing was said. How much there is in manner!

"Carrie is beginning to yearn for the repose of Arcady Cottage. She wants to see herself mistress of a house. She longs to have to order dinner, inspect the dusting of the drawing-room, pour out tea from our own tea-pot, and work antimaca.s.sars for our chairs. I can see already that she will make the most perfect little housewife in the world.

"There are dolts and dullards who declare that women who are witty and accomplished, generally make bad housewives. They are said to lie on sofas all day through, reading hooks they cannot understand; playing all kinds of tortuous music; and painting moss roses upon velvet. I am not an old married man (twenty days old only), but I am ready to wager, from what I have already seen of my Carrie, that there is not the slightest ground for those charges against clever women; on the contrary, it seems to me that your clever woman will see the duty, as well as the pleasure, of ordering her husband's house in a becoming manner. Why should empty-headed girls, who haven't a word to say for themselves, nor an accomplishment to their back--why should they be the superlative concocters of custards, and menders of s.h.i.+rts and stockings? Do you mean to tell me that a woman must be a fool to have a light hand at pastry? I believe these libels on clever women have been propagated by designing mothers who had stupid daughters on their hands. Whenever you see a heavy-eyed, lumpish girl, who hides herself in corners, and reddens to the very roots of the hair when you say a civil thing to her, you are sure to be told that she is the very best house-keeper in the world, and will make a better wife than her pretty sister. In future I shall treat all such excuses for ugliness and dulness as they deserve. For I say it boldly beforehand, ere Carrie has tried her first undercrust, she will be a pattern housewife--although she reads John Stuart Mill.

"'Tom, darling!' sounds from the next room, and the music goes to my soul. Good-bye. The next from Aready Cottage. Thine,

"TOM FLOWERDEW.

"P.S.--We met yesterday a most charming travelling companion; and although, as I think I hinted in my last, I and Carrie intend to suffice for each other, he had so vast a fund of happy anecdote, we could not find it in our hearts to snub him. Besides, he began by lending me the day's _Galignani_."

"That travelling companion," remarked shrewd Mr. Mac, "marks the beginning of the end of the honeymoon. I shall keep him dark when I dine with Papa c.o.c.kayne on Sunday."

CHAPTER XVI.

GATHERING A FEW THREADS.

Is there a more melancholy place than the street in which you have lived; than the house, now curtainless and weather-stained, you knew prim, and full of happy human creatures; than the "banquet-hall deserted:" than the empty chair; than the bed where Death found the friend you loved?

The Rue Millevoye is all this to me. I avoid it. If any cabman wants to make a short cut that way I stop him. Mrs. Rowe rests at last, in the same churchyard with the Whytes of Battersea: her faults forgiven; that dark story which troubled all her afterlife and made her son the terror of every hour, ended and forgotten.

If hers was a sad life, even cheered by the consolations of Mr. Mohun given over refres.h.i.+ng rounds of b.u.t.tered toast; what was the gloom upon the head of Emily Sharp, whom the child of shame (was it in revenge) brought to shame? I never tread the deck of a Boulogne steamer without thinking of her sweet, loving face; I never wait for my luggage in the chilly morning at the Chemin de Fer du Nord terminus, without seeing her agony as the deserted one.

The c.o.c.kayne girls are prospering in all the comfort of maternal dignity in the genteel suburbs; and yet were they a patch upon forlorn Emmy Sharp? Miss Sophonisba, with her grand airs, in her critical letters from Paris--what kind of a heart had she? Miss Theodosia was a flirt of the vulgarest type who would have thrown up John Catt as she would throw away a two-b.u.t.ton glove for a three-b.u.t.ton pair, had not the Vicomte de Gars given her father to understand that he must have a very substantial _dot_ with her. Mademoiselle c.o.c.kayne without money was not a thing to be desired, according to "his lords.h.i.+p."

John Catt was a rough diamond, as the reader has perceived, given to copious draughts of beer, black pipes, short sticks, prodigious s.h.i.+rt-collars, and music-halls. But he was a brave, honest, chivalrous lad in his coa.r.s.e way. He loved Miss Theodosia c.o.c.kayne, and was seriously stricken when he left Paris, although he had tried to throw off the affair with a careless word or two. He hid his grief behind his bluntness; but she had no tears to hide. It was only when the Vicomte, after a visit to Clapham (paid much against Mr. c.o.c.kayne's will) had come to business in the plumpest manner, that the young lady had been brought to her senses by the father's observation that he was not prepared to buy a foreign viscount into the family on his own terms, and that "his lords.h.i.+p" would not take the young lady on her own merits, aroused Miss Theodosia's pride;--and with it the chances of John Catt revived. He took her renewed warmth for repentance after a folly. He said to himself, "She loved me all the time; and even the Vicomte was not, in the long run, proof against her affection for me." Miss Theodosia, having lost the new love, was fortunate enough to get on with the old again, and she is, I hear, reasonably happy--certainly happier than she deserves to be, as Mrs. John Catt.

I am told she is very severe upon Emma Sharp, and wonders how her sister Carrie can have the creature's portrait hung up in her morning room. But there are a few things she no longer wonders at. Carrie speaks to Lucy Rowe; kisses Lucy Rowe; puts her arm round Lucy Rowe's neck; and tumbles her baby upon Lucy Rowe's knees; and Mrs. John Catt wonders no longer.

Not, I suspect, because she is fonder of Lucy now than she was in the Rue Millevoye, but because--well, _I_ married her, as the reader, who is not a goose, has suspected long ago.

And a little Lucy writes for me, in big round hand, her mother guiding the pen--

THE END.