The Bertrams Part 38

"My dearest Caroline," it began. Now I put it to all lovers whether, when they wish to please, they ever write in such manner to their sweethearts. Is it not always, "My own love?" "Dearest love?" "My own sweet pet?" But that use of the Christian name, which is so delicious in the speaking during the first days of intimacy, does it not always betoken something stern at the beginning of a lover's letter? Ah, it may betoken something very stern! "My dearest Jane, I am sorry to say it, but I could not approve of the way in which you danced with Major Simkins last night." "My dearest Lucy, I was at Kensington-garden gate yesterday at four, and remained absolutely till five. You really ought--." Is not that always the angry lover's tone?

I fear that I must give Bertram's letter entire to make the matter sufficiently clear.

My dearest Caroline,

I learn from Mr. Harcourt that you and Miss Baker are in town, and I am of course sorry to miss you. Would it not have been better that I should have heard this from yourself?

Mr. Harcourt tells me that you are dissatisfied; and I understand from his letter that you have explained your dissatisfaction very fully to him. It might have been better, I think, that the explanation should have been made to me; or had you chosen to complain, you might have done so to your aunt, or to your grandfather. I cannot think that you were at liberty to complain of me to Mr. Harcourt. My wish is, that you have no further conversation with him on our joint concerns. It is not seemly; and, if feminine, is at any rate not ladylike.

I am driven to defend myself. What is it of which you complain, or have a right to complain? We became engaged more than twelve months since, certainly with no understanding that the matter was to stand over for three years. My understanding was that we were to be married as soon as it might reasonably be arranged. You then took on yourself to order this delay, and kindly offered to give me up as an alternative. I could not force you to marry me; but I loved you too well, and trusted too much in your love to be able to think that that giving up was necessary. Perhaps I was wrong.

But the period of this wretched interval is at my own disposal. Had you married me, my time would have been yours. It would have been just that you should know how it was spent. Each would then have known so much of the other. But you have chosen that this should not be; and, therefore, I deny your right now to make inquiry. If I have departed from any hopes you had formed, you have no one to blame but yourself.

You have said that I neglect you. I am ready to marry you to-morrow; I have been ready to do so any day since our engagement. You yourself know how much more than ready I have been. I do not profess to be a very painstaking lover; nay, if you will, the life would bore me, even if in our case the mawkishness of the delay did not do more than bore. At any rate, I will not go through it. I loved, and do love you truly. I told you of it truly when I first knew it myself, and urged my suit till I had a definite answer. You accepted me, and now there needs be nothing further till we are married.

But I insist on this, that I will not have my affairs discussed by you with persons to whom you are a stranger.

You will see my letter to your aunt. I have told her that I will visit her at Littlebath as soon as I have returned to England.

Yours ever affectionately,

G. B.

This letter was a terrible blow to Caroline. It seemed to her to be almost incredible that she, she, Caroline Waddington, should be forced to receive such a letter as that under any circ.u.mstances and from any gentleman. Unseemly, unfeminine, unladylike! These were the epithets her lover used in addressing her. She was told that it bored him to play the lover; that his misconduct was her fault; and then she was accused of mawkishness! He was imperative, too, in laying his orders to her. "I insist on this!" Was it inc.u.mbent on her to comply with his insistings?

Of course she showed the letter to her aunt, whose advice resulted in this--that it would be better that she should pocket the affront silently if she were not prepared to give up the engagement altogether. If she were so prepared, the letter doubtless would give her the opportunity.

And then Mr. Harcourt came to her while her anger was yet at the hottest. His manner was so kind, his temper so sweet, his attention so obliging, that she could not but be glad to see him. If George loved her, if he wished to guide her, wished to persuade her, why was not he at her right hand? Mr. Harcourt was there instead. It did not bore him, multifold as his duties were, to be near her.

Then she committed the first great fault of which in this history she will be shown as being guilty. She showed her lover's letter to Mr.

Harcourt. Of course this was not done without some previous converse; till he had found out that she was wretched, and inquired as to her wretchedness; till she had owned that she was ill with sorrow, beside herself, and perplexed in the extreme. Then at last, saying to herself that she cared not now to obey Mr. Bertram, she showed the letter to Mr. Harcourt.

"It is ungenerous," said Harcourt.

"It is ungentlemanlike," said Caroline. "But it was written in pa.s.sion, and I shall not notice it." And so she and Miss Baker went back again to Littlebath.

It was September before Bertram returned, and then Sir Lionel came with him. We have not s.p.a.ce to tell much of what had pa.s.sed between the father and the son; but they reached London apparently on good terms with each other, and Sir Lionel settled himself in a bedroom near to his son's chambers, and near also to his own club. There was, however, this great ground of disagreement between them. Sir Lionel was very anxious that his son should borrow money from Mr. Bertram, and George very resolutely declined to do so. It was now clear enough to Sir Lionel that his son could not show his filial disposition by advancing on his own behalf much money to his father, as he was himself by no means in affluent circ.u.mstances.

He went down to Littlebath, and took his father with him. The meeting between the lovers was again unloverlike; but nothing could be more affectionate than Sir Lionel. He took Caroline in his arms and kissed her, called her his dear daughter, and praised her beauty. I believe he kissed Miss Baker. Indeed, I know that he made an attempt to do so; and I think it not at all improbable that in the overflowing of his affectionate heart, he made some overture of the same kind to the exceedingly pretty parlour-maid who waited upon them. Whatever might be thought of George, Sir Lionel soon became popular there, and his popularity was not decreased when he declared that he would spend the remainder of the autumn, and perhaps the winter, at Littlebath.

He did stay there for the winter. He had a year's furlough, during which he was to remain in England with full pay, and he made it known to the ladies at Littlebath that the chief object of his getting this leave was to be present at the nuptials of dear Caroline and his son. On one occasion he borrowed thirty pounds from Miss Baker; a circ.u.mstance which their intimacy, perhaps, made excusable. He happened, however, to mention this little occurrence casually to his son, and George at once repaid that debt, poor as he was at the time.

"You could have that and whatever more you chose merely for the asking," said Sir Lionel on that occasion, in a tone almost of reproach.

And so the winter pa.s.sed away. George, however, was not idle. He fully intended to be called to the bar in the following autumn, and did, to a certain extent, renew his legal studies. He did not return to Mr. Die, prevented possibly by the difficulty he would have in preparing the necessary funds. But his great work through the winter and in the early spring was another small volume, which he published in March, and which he called, "The Fallacies of Early History."

We need not give any minute criticism on this work. It will suffice to say that the orthodox world declared it to be much more heterodox than the last work. Heterodox, indeed! It was so bad, they said, that there was not the least glimmer of any doxy whatever left about it.

The early history of which he spoke was altogether Bible history, and the fallacies to which he alluded were the plainest statements of the book of Genesis. Nay, he had called the whole story of Creation a myth; the whole story as there given: so at least said the rabbis of Oxford, and among them outspoke more loudly than any others the outraged and very learned rabbis of Oriel.

Bertram however denied this. He had, he said, not called anything a myth. There was the printed book, and one might have supposed that it would be easy enough to settle this question. But it was far from being so. The words myth and mythical were used half a dozen times, and the rabbis declared that they were applied to the statements of Scripture. Bertram declared that they were applied to the appearance those statements must have as at present put before the English world. Then he said something not complimentary to the translators, and something also very uncivil as to want of intelligence on the part of the Oxford rabbis. The war raged warmly, and was taken up by the metropolitan press, till Bertram became a lion--a lion, however, without a hide, for in the middle of the dispute he felt himself called on to resign his fellows.h.i.+p.

He lost that hide; but he got another in lieu which his friends a.s.sured him was of a much warmer texture. His uncle had taken considerable interest in this dispute, alleging all through that the Oxford men were long-eared a.s.ses and bigoted monks. It may be presumed that his own orthodoxy was not of a high cla.s.s. He had never liked George's fellows.h.i.+p, and had always ridiculed the income which he received from it. Directly he heard that it had been resigned, he gave his nephew a thousand pounds. He said nothing about it; he merely told Mr. Pritchett to arrange the matter.

Sir Lionel was delighted. As to the question of orthodoxy he was perfectly indifferent. It was nothing to him whether his son called the book of Genesis a myth or a gospel; but he had said much, very much as to the folly of risking the fellows.h.i.+p; and more, a great deal more, as to the madness of throwing it away. But now he was quite ready to own himself wrong, and did do so in the most straightforward manner. After all, what was a fellows.h.i.+p to a man just about to be married? In his position Bertram had of course been free to speak out. If, indeed, there had been any object in holding to the college, then the expression of such opinions, let alone their publication, would not have been judicious.

As it was, however, nothing could have been more lucky. His son had shown his independence. The rich uncle had shown the warm interest which he still took in his nephew, and Sir Lionel was able to borrow two hundred and fifty pounds, a sum of money which, at the present moment, was very grateful to him. Bertram's triumph was gilded on all sides; for the booksellers had paid him handsomely for his infidel ma.n.u.script. Infidelity that can make itself successful will, at any rate, bring an income.

And this brings us to the period at which we may resume our story.

One word we must say as to Caroline. During the winter she had seen her lover repeatedly, and had written to him repeatedly. Their engagement, therefore, had by no means been broken. But their meetings were cold, and their letters equally so. She would have married him at once now if he would ask her. But he would not ask her. He was quite willing to marry her if she would herself say that she was willing so far to recede from her former resolution. But she could not bring herself to do this. Each was too proud to make the first concession to the other, and therefore no concession was made by either.

Sir Lionel once attempted to interfere; but he failed. George gave him to understand that he could manage his own affairs himself. When a son is frequently called on to lend money to his father, and that father is never called on to repay it, the parental authority is apt to grow dull. It had become very dull in this case.

CHAPTER IV.

RICHMOND.

It was in the midst of this noise about Bertram's new book that the scene is presumed to be re-opened. He had resigned his fellows.h.i.+p, and pocketed his thousand pounds. Neither of these events had much depressed his spirits, and he appeared now to his friends to be a happy man in spite of his love troubles. At the same time, Harcourt also was sufficiently elate. He had made his great speech with considerable _eclat_, and his sails were full of wind--of wind of a more substantial character than that by which Bertram's vessel was wafted.

And just now Harcourt and Bertram were again much together. A few months since it had appeared to Harcourt that Bertram intended to do nothing in the world, to make no figure. Even now there was but little hope of his doing much as a barrister; but it seemed probable that he might at any rate make himself known as an author. Such triumphs, as Harcourt well knew, were very barren; but still it was well to know men who were in any way triumphant; and therefore the barrister, himself so triumphant, considered it judicious not to drop his friend.

It may be said that Bertram had given up all idea of practising as a barrister. He still intended to go through the form of being called; but his profession was to be that of an author. He had all manner of works in hand: poems, plays, political pamphlets, infidel essays, histories, and a narrative of his travels in the East. He had made up his mind fully that there were in England only two occupations worthy of an Englishman. A man should be known either as a politician or as an author. It behoved a man to speak out what was in him with some audible voice, so that the world might hear. He might do so either by word of mouth, or by pen and paper; by the former in Parliament, by the latter at his desk. Each form of speech had its own advantage.

Fate, which had made Harcourt a member of Parliament, seemed to intend him, Bertram, to be an author.

Harcourt, though overwhelmed by business at this period, took frequent occasion to be with Bertram; and when he was with him alone he always made an effort to talk about Miss Waddington. Bertram was rather shy of the subject. He had never blamed Harcourt for what had taken place while he was absent in Paris, but since that time he had never volunteered to speak of his own engagement.

They were together one fine May evening on the banks of the river at Richmond. George was fond of the place, and whenever Harcourt proposed to spend an evening alone with him, they would go up the river and dine there.

On this occasion Harcourt seemed determined to talk about Miss Waddington. Bertram, who was not in the best possible humour, had shown, one might say plainly enough, that it was a subject on which he did not wish to speak. One might also say that it was a subject as to talking on which the choice certainly ought to have been left to himself. A man who is engaged may often choose to talk to his friend about his engaged bride; but the friend does not usually select the lady as a topic of conversation except in conformity with the Benedict's wishes.

On this occasion, however, Harcourt would talk about Miss Waddington, and Bertram, who had already given one or two short answers, began to feel that his friend was almost impertinent.

They were cracking decayed walnuts and sipping not the very best of wine, and Bertram was expatiating on Sir Robert Peel's enormity in having taken the wind out of the sails of the Whigs, and rehearsing perhaps a few paragraphs of a new pamphlet that was about to come out, when Harcourt again suddenly turned the conversation.

"By-the-by," said he, "I believe there is no day absolutely fixed for your marriage."

"No," said Bertram, sharply enough. "No day has been fixed. Could anything on earth have been more base than the manner in which he has endeavoured to leave Cobden as a necessary legacy to the new government? Would he have put Cobden into any place in a government of his own?"

"Oh, d---- Cobden! One has enough of him in the House,--quite."

"But I have not that advantage."

"You shall have some of these days. I'll make over the Battersea Hamlets to you as soon as I can get a judge's wig on my head. But I'm thinking of other things now. I wonder whether you and Caroline Waddington ever will be man and wife?"