第53章

'Yes--you'll have enough to supply yourself with gloves and boots;that is, if the Jews have not got the possession of it all. Ibelieve they have the most of it already. I wonder, Bertie, at your indifference; that you, with your talents and personal advantages, should never try to settle yourself in life. I look forward with dread to the time when the governor must go. Mother, and Madeline, and I,--we shall be poor enough, but you will have absolutely nothing.'

'Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof,' said Bertie.

'Will you take my advice?' said the sister.

'Cela depend,' said the brother.

'Will you marry a wife with money?'

'At any rate,' said he, 'I won't marry one without; wives with money a'nt so easy to get now-a-days; the parsons pick them all up.'

'And a parson will pick up the wife I meant for you, if you do not look quickly about it; the wife I mean is Mrs Bold.'

'Whew-w-w-w!' whistled Bertie, 'a widow!'

'She is very beautiful,' said Charlotte.

'With a son and heir already to my hand,' said Bertie.

'A baby that will very likely die,' said Charlotte.

'I don't see that,' said Bertie. 'But however, he may live for me--I don't wish to kill him; only, it must be owned that a ready-made family is a drawback.'

'There is only one after all,' pleaded Charlotte.

'And that a very little one, as the maid-servant said,' rejoined Bertie.

'Beggars mustn't be choosers, Bertie; you can't have everything.'

'God knows I am not unreasonable,' said he, 'nor yet opinionated;and if you'll arrange it for me, Lotte, I'll marry the lady. Only mark this: the money must be sure, and the income at my own disposal, at any rate for the lady's life.'

Charlotte was explaining to her brother that he must make love for himself if he meant to carry on the matter, and was encouraging him to so, by warm eulogiums on Eleanor's beauty, when the signora was brought into the drawing-room. When at home, and subject to the gaze of none but her own family, she allowed herself to be dragged about by two persons, and her two bearers now deposited her on the sofa. She was not quite so grand in her apparel as she had been at the bishop's party, but yet she was dressed with much care, and though there was a look of care and pain about her eyes, she, was, even by daylight, extremely beautiful.

'Well, Madeline; so I'm going to be married,' Bertie began, as soon as the servants had withdrawn.

'There's no other foolish thing left, that you haven't done,' said Madeline, 'and therefore you are quite right to try that.'

'Oh, you think it's a foolish thing, do you?' said he. 'There's Lotte advising me to marry by all means. But on such a subject your opinion ought to be the best; you have experience to guide you.'

'Yes, I have,' said Madeline, with a sort of harsh sadness in her tone, which seemed to say--What is it to you if I am sad? I have never asked your sympathy.

Bertie was sorry when he saw that she was hurt by what he said, and he came and squatted on the floor close before her face to make his peace with her.

'Come, Mad, I was only joking; you know that. But in sober earnest, Lotte is advising me to marry. She wants me to marry Mrs Bold.

She's a widow with lots of tin, a fine baby, a beautiful complexion, and the George and Dragon hotel up in High Street. By Jove, Lotte, if I marry her, I'll keep the public house myself--it's just the life that suits me.'

'What?' said Madeline, 'that vapid swarthy creature in the widow's cap, who looked as though her clothes had been stuck on her back with a pitchfork!' The signora never allowed any woman to be beautiful.

'Instead of being vapid,' said Lotte, 'I call her a very lovely woman. She was by far the loveliest woman in the rooms the other night; that is, excepting you, Madeline.'

Even the compliment did not soften the asperity of the maimed beauty. 'Every woman is charming according to Lotte,' she said; 'Inever knew an eye with so little true appreciation. In the first place, what woman on earth could look well in such a thing as that she had on her head?'

'Of course she wears a widow's cap; but she'll put that off when Bertie marries her.'

'I don't see any "of course" in it,' said Madeline. 'The death of twenty husbands should not make me undergo such a penance. It is as much a relic of paganism as the sacrifice of a Hindu woman at the burning of her husband's body. If not so bloody, it is quite as barbarous, and quite as useless.'

'But you don't blame her for that,' said Bertie. 'She does it because it's the custom of the country. People would think ill of her if she didn't do it.'

'Exactly,' said Madeline. 'She is just one of those English nonentities who would tie her head up in a bag for three months every summer, if her mother and her grandmother had tied up their heads before her. It would never occur to her, to think whether there was any use in submitting to such a nuisance.'

'It's very hard, in a country like England, for a young woman to set herself in opposition to the prejudices of that sort,' said the prudent Charlotte.

'What you mean is, that it's very hard for a fool not to be a fool,' said Madeline.