It may be supposed that my mood underwent precious little improvement
after this communication. Dark conceits, darker than ever, came
across my mind. I longed to get away, and return to that home from
which I had banished confidence!--ah, only too happy if there still
lingered hope! But my friend, blunt, good-humored, and thoughtless
creature as he was, took for granted that I had come to look at
the landscape, to admire water-views by moonlight, and drink fresh
draughts of sea-breeze from the southwest; and, thrusting his arm
through mine, he dragged me on, down, almost to the threshold of
the cottage, whence still issued the tinkle, tinkle, of the guitar
which had first driven me away.
"That girl sings well. Do you know her--Miss Davison? She's soon
to be married, THEY say (d--n 'they say,' however--the greatest
scandal-monger, if not mischief-maker and liar, in the world!)--she
is soon to be married to young Trescott--a clover lad who sniffles,
plays on the flute, wears whisker and imperial on the most cream-colored
and effeminate face you ever saw! A good fellow, nevertheless, but
a silly! She is a good fellow, too, rather the cleverest of the
twain, and perhaps the oldest. The match, if match it really is to
be, none of the wisest for that very reason. The damsel, now-a-days,
who marries a lad younger than herself, is laying up a large stock
of pother, which is to bother her when she becomes thirty--for even
young ladies, you know, after forty, may become thirty. A sort of
dispensation of nature. She sings well, nevertheless."
I said something--it matters not what. Dark images of home were in
my eyes. I heard no song--saw no landscape The voice of Kingsley
was a sort of buzzing in my ears.
"You are dull to-night, but that song ought to soothe you. What a
cheery, light-hearted wench it is! Her voice does seem so to rise
in air, shaking its wings, and crying tira-la! tira-la! with an
enthusiasm which is catching! I almost feel prompted to kick up my
heels, throw a summerset, and, while turning on my axis, give her
an echo of tira-la! tira-la! tira-la! after her own fashion."
"You are certainly a happy, mad fellow, Kingsley!" was my faint,
cheerless commentary upon a gayety of heart which I could not share,
and the unreserved expression of which, at that moment, only vexed
me.
"And you no glad one, Clifford. That song, which almost prompts me
to dance, makes no impression on you! By-the-way, your wife used
to sing so well, and now I never hear her. That d---d painting,
if you don't mind, will make her give up everything else! As for
Bill Edgerton, he cares for nothing else out his varnish, trees,
and umber-hills, and streaky water. You shouldn't let him fill
your wife's mind with this oil-and-varnish spirit--giving up the
piano, the guitar, and that sweeter instrument than all, her own
voice. D--n the paintings!--his long talk on the subject almost makes
me sick of everything like a picture. I now look upon a beautiful
landscape like this. as a thing that is shortly to be desecrated--taken
in vain--scratched out of shape and proportion upon a deal-board,
and colored after such a fashion as never before was seen in the
natural world, upon, or under, or about this solid earth. D--n the
pictures, I say again!--but, for God's sake, Clifford, don't let
your wife give up the music! Make her play, even if she don't like
it. She likes the painting best, but I wouldn't allow it! A wife is
a sort of person that we set to do those things that we wish done
and can't do for ourselves. That's my definition of a wife. Now, if
I were in your place, with my present love for music and dislike
of pictures, I'd put her at the piano, and put the paint-saucers,
and the oil, and the smutted canvass, out of the window; and
then--unless he came to his senses like other people--I'd thrust
Bill Edgerton out after them! I'd never let the best friend in the
world spoil my wife."