Ayala's Angel Part 97

said Lucy.

"He never saw them, you know," said Ayala, putting in a goodnatured word for her uncle.

"If he had," said the sculptor, "he would have doubted the auctioneer's getting anything. I have turned it all in my mind very often since, and I think that Sir Thomas was right."

"I am sure he was wrong," said Lucy. "He is very goodnatured, and n.o.body can be more grateful to another person than I am to him;--but I won't agree that he was right about that."

"He never would have said it if he had seen them," again pleaded Ayala.

"They will never fetch anything as they are," continued the sculptor, "and I don't suppose that when I made them I thought they would. They have served their purpose, and I sometimes feel inclined to break them up and have them carted away."

"Isadore!" exclaimed Lucy.

"For what purpose?" asked Ayala.

"They were the lessons which I had to teach myself, and the play which I gave to my imagination. Who wants a great figure of Beelzebub like that in his house?"

"I call it magnificent," said Ayala.

"His name is Lucifer,--not Beelzebub," said Lucy. "You call him Beelzebub merely to make little of him."

"It is difficult to do that, because he is nearly ten feet high. And who wants a figure of Bacchus? The thing is, whether, having done a figure of Bacchus, I may not be better able to do a likeness of Mr. Jones, when he comes to sit for his bust at the request of his admiring friends. For any further purpose that it will answer, Bacchus might just as well be broken up and carted away in the dust-cart." To this, however, the two girls expressed their vehement opposition, and were of opinion that the time would come when Beelzebub and Bacchus, transferred to marble, would occupy places of honour in some well-proportioned hall built for the purpose of receiving them. "I shall be quite content," said Hamel, "if the whole family of the Jones's will have their busts done about the size of life, and stand them up over their bookshelves. My period for Beelzebubs has gone by." The visit, on the whole, was delightful.

Lucy was contented with the almost more than divine beauty of her lover, and the two sisters, as they made their return journey to Kingsbury Crescent in another Hansom, discussed questions of art in a spirit that would have been delightful to any aspiring artist who might have heard them.

Then came the wedding, of which some details were given at the close of the last chapter, at which two brides who were very unlike to each other were joined in matrimony to two bridegrooms as dissimilar. But the Captain made himself gracious to the sculptor who was now to be connected with him, and declared that he would always look upon Lucy as a second sister to his dear Gertrude. And Gertrude was equally gracious, protesting, when she was marshalled to walk up to the altar first, that she did not like to go before her darling Lucy. But the dimensions of the church admitted but of one couple at a time, and Gertrude was compelled to go in advance. Colonel Stubbs was there acting as best man to Hamel, while Lord John Battledore performed the same service for Captain Batsby. Lord John was nearly broken-hearted by the apostacy of a second chum, having heard that the girl whom Frank Houston had not succeeded in marrying was now being taken by Batsby without a shilling. "Somebody had to bottle-hold for him,"

said Lord John, defending himself at the club afterwards, "and I didn't like to throw the fellow over, though he is such a fool!

And there was Stubbs, too," continued his Lordship, "going to take the other girl without a shilling! There's Stubbs, and Houston, and Batsby, all gone and drowned themselves. It's just the same as though they'd drowned themselves!" Lord John was horrified,--nay, disgusted,--by the folly of the world. Nevertheless, before the end of the year, he was engaged to marry a very pretty girl as devoid of fortune as our Ayala.

CHAPTER LXIV.

AYALA'S MARRIAGE.

Now we have come to our last chapter, and it may be doubted whether any reader,--unless he be some one specially gifted with a genius for statistics,--will have perceived how very many people have been made happy by matrimony. If marriage be the proper ending for a novel,--the only ending, as this writer takes it to be, which is not discordant,--surely no tale was ever so properly ended, or with so full a concord, as this one. Infinite trouble has been taken not only in arranging these marriages but in joining like to like,--so that, if not happiness, at any rate sympathetic unhappiness, might be produced. Our two sisters will, it is trusted, be happy. They have chosen men from their hearts, and have been chosen after the same fashion. Those two other sisters have been so wedded that the one will follow the idiosyncrasies of her husband, and the other bring her husband to follow her idiosyncrasies, without much danger of mutiny or revolt. As to Miss Docimer there must be room for fear. It may be questioned whether she was not worthy of a better lot than has been achieved for her by joining her fortunes to those of Frank Houston. But I, speaking for myself, have my hopes of Frank Houston.

It is hard to rescue a man from the slough of luxury and idleness combined. If anything can do it, it is a cradle filled annually. It may be that he will yet learn that a broad back with a heavy weight upon it gives the best chance of happiness here below. Of Lord John's married prospects I could not say much as he came so very lately on the scene; but even he may perhaps do something in the world when he finds that his nursery is filling, For our special friend Tom Tringle, no wife has been found. In making his effort,--which he did manfully,--he certainly had not chosen the consort who would be fit for him. He had not seen clearly, as had done his sisters and cousins. He had fallen in love too young,--it being the nature of young men to be much younger than young ladies, and, not knowing himself, had been as might be a barn-door c.o.c.k who had set his heart upon some azure-plumaged, high-soaring lady of the woods. The lady with the azure plumes had, too, her high-soaring tendencies, but she was enabled by true insight to find the male who would be fit for her. The barn-door c.o.c.k, when we left him on board the steamer going to New York, had not yet learned the nature of his own requirements.

The knowledge will come to him. There may be doubts as to Frank Houston, but we think that there need be none as to Tom Tringle. The proper wife will be forthcoming; and in future years, when he will probably have a Glenbogie and a Merle Park of his own, he will own that Fortune did well for him in making his cousin Ayala so stern to his prayers.

But Ayala herself,--Ayala our pet heroine,--had not been yet married when the last chapter was written, and now there remains a page or two in which the reader must bid adieu to her as she stands at the altar with her Angel of Light. She was at Stalham for a fortnight before her marriage, in order, as Lady Albury said, that the buxom ladysmaid might see that everything had been done rightly in reference to the trousseau. "My dear," said Lady Albury, "it is important, you know. I dare say you can bake and brew, because you say so; but you don't know anything about clothes." Ayala, who by this time was very intimate with her friend, pouted her lips, and said that if "Jonathan did not like her things as she chose to have them he might do the other thing." But Lady Albury had her way, inducing Sir Harry to add something even to Uncle Tom's liberality, and the buxom woman went about her task in such a fashion that if Colonel Stubbs were not satisfied he must have been a very unconscionable Colonel. He probably would know nothing about it,--except that his bride in her bridal array had not looked so well as in any other garments, which, I take it, is invariably the case,--till at the end of the first year a glimmer of the truth as to a lady's wardrobe would come upon him. "I told you there would be a many new dresses before two years were over, Miss," said the buxom female, as she spread all the frocks and all the worked petticoats and all the collars and all the silk stockings and all the lace handkerchiefs about the bedroom to be inspected by Lady Albury, Mrs.

Gosling, and one or two other friends, before they were finally packed up.

Then came the day on which the Colonel was to reach Stalham, that day being a Monday, whereas the wedding was to take place on Wednesday.

It was considered to be within the bounds of propriety that the Colonel should sleep at Stalham on the Monday, under the same roof with his bride; but on the Tuesday it was arranged that he should satisfy the decorous feeling of the neighbourhood by removing himself to the parsonage, which was distant about half-a-mile across the park, and was contiguous to the church. Here lived Mr. Greene, the bachelor curate, the rector of the parish being an invalid and absent in Italy.

"I don't see why he is to be sent away after dinner to walk across the park in the dark," said Ayala, when the matter was discussed before the Colonel's coming.

"It is a law, my dear," said Lady Albury, "and has to be obeyed whether you understand it or not, like other laws. Mr. Greene will be with him, so that no one shall run away with him in the dark. Then he will be able to go into church without dirtying his dress boots."

"But I thought there would be half-a-dozen carriages at least."

"But there won't be room in one of them for him. He is to be n.o.body until he comes forth from the church as your husband. Then he is to be everybody. That is the very theory of marriage."

"I think we managed it all very well between us," said Lady Albury afterwards, "but you really cannot guess the trouble we took."

"Why should there have been trouble?"

"Because you were such a perverse creature, as the old lady said.

I am not sure that you were not right, because a girl does so often raise herself in her lover's estimation by refusing him half-a-dozen times. But you were not up to that."

"Indeed I was not. I am sure I did not intend to give any trouble to anybody."

"But you did. Only think of my going up to London to meet him, and of him coming from Aldershot to meet me, simply that we might put our heads together how to overcome the perversity of such a young woman as you!" There then came a look almost of pain on Ayala's brow. "But I do believe it was for the best. In this way he came to understand how absolutely necessary you were to him."

"Am I necessary to him?"

"He thinks so."

"Oh, if I can only be necessary to him always! But there should have been no going up to London. I should have rushed into his arms at once."

"That would have been unusual."

"But so is he unusual," said Ayala.

It is probable that the Colonel did not enjoy his days at Stalham before his marriage, except during the hour or two in which he was allowed to take Ayala out for a last walk. Such days can hardly be agreeable to the man of whom it is known by all around him that he is on the eve of committing matrimony. There is always, on such occasions, a feeling of weakness, as though the man had been subdued, brought at length into a cage and tamed, so as to be made fit for domestic purposes, and deprived of his ancient freedom amongst the woods;--whereas the girl feels herself to be the triumphant conqueror, who has successfully performed this great act of taming.

Such being the case, the man had perhaps better keep away till he is forced to appear at the church-door.

Nevertheless our Colonel did enjoy his last walk. "Oh, yes," she said, "of course we will go to the old wood. Where else? I am so glad that poor fox went through Gobblegoose;--otherwise we should never have gone there, and then who knows whether you and I would ever have been friends again any more?"

"If one wood hadn't been there, I think another would have been found."

"Ah, that's just it. You can know that you had a purpose, and perhaps were determined to carry it out."

"Well, rather."

"But I couldn't be sure of that. I couldn't carry out my purpose, even if I had one. I had to doubt, and to be unhappy, and to hate myself, because I had been perverse. I declare, I do think you men have so much the best of it. How glorious would it have been to be able to walk straight up and say, Jonathan Stubbs, I love you better than all the world. Will you be my husband?"

"But suppose the Jonathan Stubbs of the occasion were to decline the honour. Where would you be then?"

"That would be disagreeable," said Ayala.

"It is disagreeable,--as you made me feel twice over."

"Oh, Jonathan, I am so sorry."