And then she would give it up as a bad job, and put the account-book away, after pretending to crush the lion with it.
Or, if she were in a very sedate and serious state of mind, she would sit down with the tablets, and a little basket of bills and other doc.u.ments, which looked more like curl-papers than anything else, and endeavour to get some result out of them. After severely comparing one with another, and making entries on the tablets, and blotting them out, and counting all the fingers of her left hand over and over again, backwards and forwards, she would be so vexed and discouraged, and would look so unhappy, that it gave me pain to see her bright face clouded--and for me!--and I would go softly to her, and say:
"What"s the matter, Dora?"
Dora would look up hopelessly, and reply, "They won"t come right. They make my head ache so. And they won"t do anything I want!"
Then I would say, "Now let us try together. Let me show you, Dora."
Then I would commence a practical demonstration, to which Dora would pay profound attention, perhaps for five minutes; when she would begin to be dreadfully tired, and would lighten the subject by curling my hair, or trying the effect of my face with my shirt-collar turned down. If I tacitly checked this playfulness, and persisted, she would look so scared and disconsolate, as she became more and more bewildered, that the remembrance of her natural gaiety when I first strayed into her path, and of her being my child-wife, would come reproachfully upon me; and I would lay the pencil down, and call for the guitar.
I had a great deal of work to do, and had many anxieties, but the same considerations made me keep them to myself. I am far from sure, now, that it was right to do this, but I did it for my child-wife"s sake. I search my breast, and I commit its secrets, if I know them, without any reservation to this paper. The old unhappy loss or want of something had, I am conscious, some place in my heart; but not to the embitterment of my life. When I walked alone in the fine weather, and thought of the summer days when all the air had been filled with my boyish enchantment, I did miss something of the realization of my dreams; but I thought it was a softened glory of the Past, which nothing could have thrown upon the present time. I did feel, sometimes, for a little while, that I could have wished my wife had been my counsellor; had had more character and purpose, to sustain me and improve me by; had been endowed with power to fill up the void which somewhere seemed to be about me; but I felt as if this were an unearthly consummation of my happiness, that never had been meant to be, and never could have been.
I was a boyish husband as to years. I had known the softening influence of no other sorrows or experiences than those recorded in these leaves.
If I did any wrong, as I may have done much, I did it in mistaken love, and in my want of wisdom. I write the exact truth. It would avail me nothing to extenuate it now.
Thus it was that I took upon myself the toils and cares of our life, and had no partner in them. We lived much as before, in reference to our scrambling household arrangements; but I had got used to those, and Dora I was pleased to see was seldom vexed now. She was bright and cheerful in the old childish way, loved me dearly, and was happy with her old trifles.
When the debates were heavy--I mean as to length, not quality, for in the last respect they were not often otherwise--and I went home late, Dora would never rest when she heard my footsteps, but would always come downstairs to meet me. When my evenings were unoccupied by the pursuit for which I had qualified myself with so much pains, and I was engaged in writing at home, she would sit quietly near me, however late the hour, and be so mute, that I would often think she had dropped asleep.
But generally, when I raised my head, I saw her blue eyes looking at me with the quiet attention of which I have already spoken.
"Oh, what a weary boy!" said Dora one night, when I met her eyes as I was shutting up my desk.
"What a weary girl!" said I. "That"s more to the purpose. You must go to bed another time, my love. It"s far too late for you."
"No, don"t send me to bed!" pleaded Dora, coming to my side. "Pray, don"t do that!"
"Dora!" To my amazement she was sobbing on my neck. "Not well, my dear!
not happy!"
"Yes! quite well, and very happy!" said Dora. "But say you"ll let me stop, and see you write."
"Why, what a sight for such bright eyes at midnight!" I replied.
"Are they bright, though?" returned Dora, laughing. "I"m so glad they"re bright." "Little Vanity!" said I.
But it was not vanity; it was only harmless delight in my admiration. I knew that very well, before she told me so.
"If you think them pretty, say I may always stop, and see you write!"
said Dora. "Do you think them pretty?"
"Very pretty."
"Then let me always stop and see you write."
"I am afraid that won"t improve their brightness, Dora."
"Yes, it will! Because, you clever boy, you"ll not forget me then, while you are full of silent fancies. Will you mind it, if I say something very, very silly?---more than usual?" inquired Dora, peeping over my shoulder into my face.
"What wonderful thing is that?" said I.
"Please let me hold the pens," said Dora. "I want to have something to do with all those many hours when you are so industrious. May I hold the pens?"
The remembrance of her pretty joy when I said yes, brings tears into my eyes. The next time I sat down to write, and regularly afterwards, she sat in her old place, with a spare bundle of pens at her side. Her triumph in this connexion with my work, and her delight when I wanted a new pen--which I very often feigned to do--suggested to me a new way of pleasing my child-wife. I occasionally made a pretence of wanting a page or two of ma.n.u.script copied. Then Dora was in her glory. The preparations she made for this great work, the ap.r.o.ns she put on, the bibs she borrowed from the kitchen to keep off the ink, the time she took, the innumerable stoppages she made to have a laugh with Jip as if he understood it all, her conviction that her work was incomplete unless she signed her name at the end, and the way in which she would bring it to me, like a school-copy, and then, when I praised it, clasp me round the neck, are touching recollections to me, simple as they might appear to other men.
She took possession of the keys soon after this, and went jingling about the house with the whole bunch in a little basket, tied to her slender waist. I seldom found that the places to which they belonged were locked, or that they were of any use except as a plaything for Jip--but Dora was pleased, and that pleased me. She was quite satisfied that a good deal was effected by this make-belief of housekeeping; and was as merry as if we had been keeping a baby-house, for a joke.
So we went on. Dora was hardly less affectionate to my aunt than to me, and often told her of the time when she was afraid she was "a cross old thing". I never saw my aunt unbend more systematically to anyone. She courted Jip, though Jip never responded; listened, day after day, to the guitar, though I am afraid she had no taste for music; never attacked the Incapables, though the temptation must have been severe; went wonderful distances on foot to purchase, as surprises, any trifles that she found out Dora wanted; and never came in by the garden, and missed her from the room, but she would call out, at the foot of the stairs, in a voice that sounded cheerfully all over the house:
"Where"s Little Blossom?"
CHAPTER 45. MR. d.i.c.k FULFILS MY AUNT"S PREDICTIONS
It was some time now, since I had left the Doctor. Living in his neighbourhood, I saw him frequently; and we all went to his house on two or three occasions to dinner or tea. The Old Soldier was in permanent quarters under the Doctor"s roof. She was exactly the same as ever, and the same immortal b.u.t.terflies hovered over her cap.
Like some other mothers, whom I have known in the course of my life, Mrs. Markleham was far more fond of pleasure than her daughter was.
She required a great deal of amus.e.m.e.nt, and, like a deep old soldier, pretended, in consulting her own inclinations, to be devoting herself to her child. The Doctor"s desire that Annie should be entertained, was therefore particularly acceptable to this excellent parent; who expressed unqualified approval of his discretion.
I have no doubt, indeed, that she probed the Doctor"s wound without knowing it. Meaning nothing but a certain matured frivolity and selfishness, not always inseparable from full-blown years, I think she confirmed him in his fear that he was a constraint upon his young wife, and that there was no congeniality of feeling between them, by so strongly commending his design of lightening the load of her life.
"My dear soul," she said to him one day when I was present, "you know there is no doubt it would be a little pokey for Annie to be always shut up here."
The Doctor nodded his benevolent head. "When she comes to her mother"s age," said Mrs. Markleham, with a flourish of her fan, "then it"ll be another thing. You might put ME into a Jail, with genteel society and a rubber, and I should never care to come out. But I am not Annie, you know; and Annie is not her mother."
"Surely, surely," said the Doctor.
"You are the best of creatures--no, I beg your pardon!" for the Doctor made a gesture of deprecation, "I must say before your face, as I always say behind your back, you are the best of creatures; but of course you don"t--now do you?---enter into the same pursuits and fancies as Annie?"
"No," said the Doctor, in a sorrowful tone.
"No, of course not," retorted the Old Soldier. "Take your Dictionary, for example. What a useful work a Dictionary is! What a necessary work!
The meanings of words! Without Doctor Johnson, or somebody of that sort, we might have been at this present moment calling an Italian-iron, a bedstead. But we can"t expect a Dictionary--especially when it"s making--to interest Annie, can we?"
The Doctor shook his head.
"And that"s why I so much approve," said Mrs. Markleham, tapping him on the shoulder with her shut-up fan, "of your thoughtfulness. It shows that you don"t expect, as many elderly people do expect, old heads on young shoulders. You have studied Annie"s character, and you understand it. That"s what I find so charming!"
Even the calm and patient face of Doctor Strong expressed some little sense of pain, I thought, under the infliction of these compliments.
"Therefore, my dear Doctor," said the Old Soldier, giving him several affectionate taps, "you may command me, at all times and seasons. Now, do understand that I am entirely at your service. I am ready to go with Annie to operas, concerts, exhibitions, all kinds of places; and you shall never find that I am tired. Duty, my dear Doctor, before every consideration in the universe!"
She was as good as her word. She was one of those people who can bear a great deal of pleasure, and she never flinched in her perseverance in the cause. She seldom got hold of the newspaper (which she settled herself down in the softest chair in the house to read through an eye-gla.s.s, every day, for two hours), but she found out something that she was certain Annie would like to see. It was in vain for Annie to protest that she was weary of such things. Her mother"s remonstrance always was, "Now, my dear Annie, I am sure you know better; and I must tell you, my love, that you are not making a proper return for the kindness of Doctor Strong."
This was usually said in the Doctor"s presence, and appeared to me to const.i.tute Annie"s princ.i.p.al inducement for withdrawing her objections when she made any. But in general she resigned herself to her mother, and went where the Old Soldier would.
It rarely happened now that Mr. Maldon accompanied them. Sometimes my aunt and Dora were invited to do so, and accepted the invitation.