Part 57

"Daphne is charming, and is to come out next spring; she will have £3000 a year, lucky child; all out of chocolate. What nonsense we've all talked about trade! We shall all have to take to it in time. The Lonlay-Savignac people were wise in their generation.

"And what do you think? Young Digby-Dobbs wants to marry her, out of the school-room! He'll be Lord Frognal, you know; and very soon, for his father is drinking himself to death.

"He's in your old regiment, and a great favorite; not yet twenty--he only left Eton last Christmas twelvemonth. She says she won't have him at any price, because he stammers.

"She declares you haven't written to her for three months, and that you owe her an illustrated letter in French, with priests and nuns, and dogs harnessed to a cart.

"And now for news that will delight you: She is to come abroad with me for a twelvemonth, and wishes to go with you and me to Düsseldorf first! Isn't that a happy coincidence? We would all spend the summer there, and then Italy for the winter; you too, if you can (so you must be economical with that £200).

"I have already heard wonders about Dr. Hasenclever, even before your letter came; he cured General Baines, who was given up by everybody here, Lady Palmerston told me; she was here yesterday, by-the-bye, and the Duchess of Bermondsey, and both inquired most kindly after you.

"The Duchess looked as handsome as ever, and as proud as a peacock; for last year she presented her niece, Julia Royce, 'the divine Julia,' the greatest beauty ever seen, I am told--with many thousands a year, if you please--Lady Jane Royce's daughter, an only child, and her father's dead. She's six feet high, so you would go mad about her. She's already refused sixty offers, good ones; among them little Lord Orrisroot, the hunchback, who'll have £1000 a day (including Sundays) when he comes into the title--and that can't be very far off, for the wicked old Duke of Deptford has got creeping paralysis, like his father and grandfather before him, and is now quite mad, and thinks himself a postman, and rat-tats all day long on the furniture. Lady Jane is furious with her for not accepting; and when Julia told her, she slapped her face before the maid!

"There's another gigantic beauty that people have gone mad about--a Polish pianist, who's just married young Harcourt, who's a grandson of that old scamp the Duke of Towers.

"Talking of beauties, whom do you think I met yesterday in the Park? Whom but your stalwart friend Mr. Maurice (he wasn't the beauty), with his sister, your old Paris playfellow, and the lovely Miss Gibson. He introduced them both, and I was delighted with them, and we walked together by the Serpentine; and after five minutes I came to the conclusion that Miss Gibson is as beautiful as it is possible for a dark beauty to be, and as nice as she looks. She isn't dark really, only her eyes and hair; her complexion is like cream: she's a freak of nature. Lucky young Maurice if she is to be his fate--and both well off, I suppose.

"Upon my word, if you were King Cophetua and she the beggar-maid, I would give you both my blessing. But how is it you never fell in love with the fair Ida? You never told me how handsome she is. She too complained of you as a correspondent, and declares that she gets one letter in return for three she writes you.

"I have bought you some pretty new songs, among others one by Charles Kingsley, which is lovely; about three fishermen and their wives: it reminds one of our dear Whitby! I can play the accompaniment in perfection, and all by heart!

"Give my kindest remembrances to Father Louis and the dear Abbé Lefebvre, and say kind things from me to the Torfses. Martha sends her love to little Frau, and so do I.

"We hope to be in Antwerp in a fortnight, and shall put up at the Grand Laboureur. I shall go to Malines, of course, to say good-bye to people.

"Tell the Torfses to get my things ready for moving. There will be five of us: I and Martha, and Daphne and two servants of her own; for Daphne's got to take old Mrs. Richards, who won't be parted from her.

"Good-bye for the present. My dear boy, I thank God on my knees, night and morning for having given you back to me in my old age.

"Your ever affectionate aunt,

"Caroline.

"P. S.--You remember pretty little Kitty Hardwicke you used to flirt with, who married young St. Clair, who's now Lord Kidderminster? She's just had three at a birth; she had twins only last year; the Queen's delighted. Pray be careful about never getting wet feet--"

One stormy evening in May, Mrs. Gibson drove Ida and Leah and me and Mr. Babbage, a middle-aged but very dapper War Office clerk (who was a friend of the Gibson family), to Chelsea, that we might explore Cheyne Walk and its classic neighborhood. I rode on the box by the coachman.

We alighted by the steamboat pier and explored, I walking with Leah.

We came to a very narrow street, quite straight, the narrowest street that could call itself a street at all, and rather long; we were the only people in it. It has since disappeared, with all that particular part of Chelsea.

Suddenly we saw a runaway horse without a rider coming along it at full gallop, straight at us, with a most demoralizing sharp clatter of its iron hoofs on the stone pavement.

"Your backs to the wall!" cried Mr. Babbage, and we flattened ourselves to let the maddened brute go by, bridle and stirrups flying--poor Mrs. Gibson almost faint with terror.

Leah, instead of flattening herself against the wall, put her arms round her mother, making of her own body a shield for her, and looked round at the horse as it came tearing up the street, striking sparks from the flag-stones.

Nobody was hurt, for a wonder; but Mrs. Gibson was quite overcome. Mr. Babbage was very angry with Leah, whose back the horse actually grazed, as he all but caught his hoofs in her crinoline and hit her with a stirrup on the shoulder.

I could only think of Leah's face as she looked round at the approaching horse, with her protecting arms round her mother. It was such a sudden revelation to me of what she really was, and its expression was so hauntingly impressive that I could think of nothing else. Its mild, calm courage, its utter carelessness of self, its immense tenderness--all blazed out in such beautiful lines, in such beautiful white and black, that I lost all self-control; and when we walked back to the pier, following the rest of the party, I asked her to be my wife.

She turned very pale again, and the flesh of her chin quivered as she told me that was quite impossible--and could never be.

I asked her if there was anybody else, and she said there was nobody, but that she did not wish ever to marry; that, beyond her parents and Ida, she loved and respected me more than anybody else in the whole world, but that she could never marry me. She was much agitated, and said the sweetest, kindest things, but put all hope out of the question at once.