`Deuced bad weather this!' he began. `There'll be no shooting to-day, I guess.' Then, suddenly lifting up his voice, he regaled us with a few bars of a rollicking song, which abruptly ceasing, he finished the tune with a whistle, and then continued,-- `I say Mrs. Huntingdon, what a fine stud your husband has!--not large but good.--I've been looking at them a bit this morning; and upon my word, Black Bess, and Grey Tom, and that young Nimrod are the finest animals I've seen for many a day!' Then followed a particular discussion of their various merits, succeeded by a sketch of the great things he intended to do in the horse-jockey line when his old governor thought proper to quit the stage.-- `Not that I wish him to close his accounts, added he; `the old Trojan is welcome to keep his books open as long as he pleases for me.'
`I hope so, indeed, Mr. Hattersley!'
`Oh yes! It's only my way of talking. The event must come, sometime, and so I look to the bright side of it--that's the right plan, isn't it, Mrs. H.?--What are you two doing here, by the by--where's Lady Lowborough?'
`In the billiard room.
`What a splendid creature she is !' continued he, fixing his eyes on his wife, who changed colour, and looked more and more disconcerted as he proceeded. `What a noble figure she has! and what magnificent black eyes; and what a fine spirit of her own;--and what a tongue of her own, too, when she likes to use it--I perfectly adore her!--But never mind, Milicent; I wouldn't have her for my wife--not if she'd a kingdom for her dowry! I'm better satisfied with the one I have.--Now, then ! what do you look so sulky for? don't you believe me?'
`Yes, I believe you,' murmured she, in a tone of half sad, half sullen resignation, as she turned away to stroke the hair of her sleeping infant, that she had laid on the sofa beside her.
`Well then, what makes you so cross? Come here Milly, and tell me why you can't be satisfied with my assurance.'
She went, and, putting her little hand within his arm, looked up in his face, and said softly,--`What does it amount to Ralph? Only to this, that though you admire Annabella so much, and for qualities that I don't possess, you would still rather have me than her for your wife, which merely proves that you don't think it necessary to love your wife: you are satisfied if she can keep your house and take care of your child. But I'm not cross; I'm only sorry; for,' added she in a low, tremulous accent, withdrawing her hand from his arm, and bending her looks on the rug, `if you don't love me, you don't, and it can't be helped.'
`Very true: but who told you I didn't? Did I say I loved Annabella?'
`You said you adored her.'
`True, but adoration isn't love. I adore Annabella, but I don't love her; and I love thee Milicent, but I don't adore thee.' In proof of his affection, he clutched a handful of her light brown ringlets and appeared to twist them unmercifully.
`Do you really, Ralph?' murmured she with a faint smile beaming through her tears, just putting up her hand to his, in token that he pulled rather too hard.
`To be sure I do,' responded he: `only you bother me rather, sometimes.'
`I bother you!' cried she in very natural surprise.
`Yes, you --but only by your exceeding goodness--when a boy has been cramming raisins and sugar-plums all day, he longs for a squeeze of sour orange by way of a change. And did you never, Milly, observe the sands on the sea-shore; how nice and smooth they look, and how soft and easy they feel to the foot? But if you plod along, for half an hour, over this soft, easy carpet--giving way at every step, yielding the more the harder you press,--you'll find it rather wearisome work, and be glad enough to come to a bit of good, firm rock, that won't budge an inch whether you stand, walk, or stamp upon it; and, though it be hard as the nether millstone, you'll find it the easier footing after all.'
`I know what you mean, Ralph,' said she, nervously playing with her watch-guard and tracing the figure on the rug with the point of her tiny foot, `I know what you mean, but I thought you always liked to be yielded to; and I can't alter now.
`I do like it,' replied he, bringing her to him by another tug at her hair. `You mustn't mind my talk Milly. A man must have something to grumble about; and if he can't complain that his wife harries him to death with her perversity and ill-humour, he must complain that she wears him out with her kindness and gentleness.'
`But why complain at all, unless, because you are tired and dissatisfied?'
`To excuse my own failings, to be sure. Do you think I'll bear all the burden of my sins on my own shoulders, as long as there's another ready to help me, with none of her own to carry?'
`There is no such one on earth,' said she seriously; and then, taking his hand from her head, she kissed it with an air of genuine devotion, and tripped away to the door.
`What now?' said he. `Where are you going?'
`To tidy my hair,' she answered, smiling through her disordered locks: `you've made it all come down.'
`Off with you then!--An excellent little woman,' he remarked when she was gone, `but a thought too soft--she almost melts in one's hands.
I positively think I ill-use her sometimes, when I've taken too much--but I can't help it, for she never complains, either at the time or after.
I suppose she doesn't mind it.'
`I can enlighten you on that subject, Mr. Hattersley,' said I:
`she does mind it; and some other things she minds still more, which, yet, you may never hear her complain of.'
`How do you know?--does she complain to you?' demanded he, with a sudden spark of fury ready to burst into a flame if I should answer `Yes.'
`No,' I replied; `but I have known her longer and studied her more closely than you have done.--And I can tell you, Mr. Hattersley, that Milicent loves you more than you deserve, and that you have it in your power to make her very happy, instead of which you are her evil genius, and, I will venture to say, there is not a single day passes in which you do not inflict upon her some pang that you might spare her if you would.'
