Part 103 (1/2)

'Have a little patience, old fellow, it will all come right. My worthy relatives--for I suppose I can call them so now--are too shrewd people to refuse the offer of such a fellow as you. They have that native pride that demands a certain amount of etiquette and deference. They must not seem to rise too eagerly to the fly; but only give them time--give them time, Lockwood.'

'Ay, but the waiting in this uncertainty is terrible to me.'

'Let it be certainty, then, and for very little I'll ensure you! Bear this in mind, my dear fellow, and you'll see how little need there is for apprehension. You--and the men like you--snug fellows with comfortable estates and no mortgages, unhampered by ties and uninfluenced by connections, are a species of plant that is rare everywhere, but actually never grew at all in Ireland, where every one spent double his income, and seldom dared to move a step without a committee of relations. Old Kearney has gone through that fat volume of the gentry and squirearchy of England last night, and from Sir Simon de Lockwood, who was killed at Crecy, down to a certain major in the Carbineers, he knows you all.'

'I'll bet you a thousand they say No.'

'I've not got a thousand to pay if I should lose, but I'll lay a pony--two, if you like--that you are an accepted man this day--ay, before dinner.'

'If I only thought so!'

'Confound it--you don't pretend you are in love!'

'I don't know whether I am or not, but I do know how I should like to bring that nice girl back to Hamps.h.i.+re, and install her at the Dingle. I've a tidy stable, some nice shooting, a good trout-stream, and then I should have the prettiest wife in the county.'

'Happy dog! Yours is the real philosophy of life. The fellows who are realistic enough to reckon up the material elements of their happiness--who have little to speculate on and less to unbelieve--they are right.'

'If you mean that I'll never break my heart because I don't get in for the county, that's true--I don't deny it. But come, tell me, is it all settled about your business? Has the uncle been asked?--has he spoken?'

'He has been asked and given his consent. My distinguished father-in-law, the prince, has been telegraphed to this morning, and his reply may be here to-night or to-morrow. At all events, we are determined that even should he prove adverse, we shall not be deterred from our wishes by the caprice of a parent who has abandoned us.'

'It's what people would call a love-match.'

'I sincerely trust it is. If her affections were not inextricably engaged, it is not possible that such a girl could pledge her future to a man as humble as myself?'

'That is, she is very much in love with _you_?'

'I hope the astonishment of your question does not arise from its seeming difficulty of belief?'

'No, not so much that, but I thought there might have been a little heroics, or whatever it is, on your side.'

'Most dull dragoon, do you not know that, so long as a man spoons, he can talk of his affection for a woman; but that, once she is about to be his wife, or is actually his wife, he limits his avowals to _her_ love for _him_?'

'I never heard that before. I say, what a swell you are this morning. The c.o.c.k-pheasants will mistake you for one of them.'

'Nothing can be simpler, nothing quieter, I trust, than a suit of dark purple knickerbockers; and you may see that my thread stockings and my coa.r.s.e shoes presuppose a stroll in the plantations, where, indeed, I mean to smoke my morning cigar.'

'She'll make you give up tobacco, I suppose?'

'Nothing of the kind--a thorough woman of the world enforces no such penalties as these. True free-trade is the great matrimonial maxim, and for people of small means it is inestimable. The formula may be stated thus--'Dine at the best houses, and give tea at your own.'

What other precepts of equal wisdom Walpole was prepared to enunciate were lost to the world by a message informing him that Miss Betty was in the drawing-room, and the family a.s.sembled, to see him.

Cecil Walpole possessed a very fair stock of that useful quality called a.s.surance; but he had no more than he needed to enter that large room, where the a.s.sembled family sat in a half-circle, and stand to be surveyed by Miss O'Shea's eye-gla.s.s, unabashed. Nor was the ordeal the less trying as he overheard the old lady ask her neighbour, 'if he wasn't the image of the Knave of Diamonds.'

'I thought you were the other man!' said she curtly, as he made his bow.

'I deplore the disappointment, madam--even though I do not comprehend it.'

'It was the picture, the photograph, of the other man I saw--a fine, tall, dark man, with long moustaches.'