The Bertrams

"My uncle's making! It is not a match of my uncle's making."

"Well, well; one that he approves. I hardly gave you credit for so much prudence. That will be as good as having everything settled exactly as you could wish it."

"You are giving me a great deal too much credit," said Bertram, laughing. "My uncle knows nothing about my marriage, and I have not the slightest idea of consulting him. I should think it mean to do so, considering everything."

"Mean to consult the only relative you have who can do anything for you?"

"Yes. He has told me over and over again that I have no claim on him; and, therefore, I will make none."

Bertram had said to himself frequently that he cared nothing for this man's judgment in such matters; but, nevertheless, after what had passed, he did desire that Harcourt should see Caroline. He was aware, judging rather from Harcourt's tone than from his words, that that keen-sighted friend of his had but a low opinion of Miss Waddington; that he thought that she was some ordinary, intriguing girl, who had been baiting a hook for a husband, after the manner which scandal states to be so common among the Littlebathians; and Bertram longed, therefore, to surprise his eyes and astound his intellect with a view of her charms and a near knowledge of her attributes. Nothing should be said of her beauty, and the blaze of it should fall upon him altogether unprepared.

George was right in his feelings in this respect. Harcourt had formed a very false idea of Miss Waddington; – had led himself to imagine that she was second-rate and unattractive. In the first place, he had his own ideas about Littlebath, and conceived that it was not the place in which the highest beauty of England should be looked for; and in the next place, he knew George Bertram, and regarded him as a man peculiarly liable to such dangers as these.

"You must come down with me to Littlebath. When will you give me a day?"

Harcourt demurred, as he did not wish to be called on imperiously to praise a woman of whom he knew he should disapprove, and endeavoured to excuse himself from the journey. But Bertram persisted, and at last it was settled that he would go down.

This did not happen till towards the end of winter. Miss Baker had, as she promised, seen Mr. Bertram in the meantime, and the answer returned from the Hadley oracle had, like most oracle-answers, been neither favourable nor unfavourable. Mr. Bertram had expressed no great anger at the tale of love that was told him; but neither had he expressed any gratification. "Well," he had said, "it is odd that they should have come together; very odd. He is a clever young man, and I dare say may do well." Miss Baker had then ventured, but in a very modest way, to ask him his opinion as to the sufficiency of the young people's income. "They must judge of that themselves," he had said, rather sharply. "But I suppose they have no idea of marrying as yet. They mean to wait, don't they, till he begins his profession?" To this Miss Baker had made no answer, and nothing further had been said at that meeting.

Early in March, Miss Baker had again seen the great man. She had then ventured to explain to him that George was working very hard.

"Ah! you have his word for that, I suppose," said the uncle; "but if so, believe me he will get on at such work as that quicker without a wife than he will with one."

But at this interview Miss Baker did ask him plainly, as had been agreed beforehand between her and her niece that she should do, whether he would on their marriage make any increase to his granddaughter's fortune.

"She has a liberal, ladylike provision," said he.

"But they will not have enough to live on," said Miss Baker.

"They will have a third more, Mary, than I had when I married your aunt. And yet I saved money on my income."

"But remember how they have been brought up, sir."

"If they will be fine ladies and gentlemen, they must take the penalties of being so. Fine ladies and gentlemen cannot marry at a moment's notice, as do ploughboys and milkmaids. If they cannot live on a limited income, they must wait." He did, however, on this occasion go so far as to say, that if they would wait for another twelvemonth, and that if he were then living, he would add two thousand pounds to Caroline's fortune. As to George, he had done as much as he intended to do – certainly for the present. "George likes his own way," said the old man, "and as far as I am concerned, he shall have it. It will be well for him to make his own career in the world; he will be happier so than in spending my money."

On this occasion Miss Baker was permitted to tell Caroline all the circumstances of her parentage and grandparentage. The same story might now be told to George. But they were both to be cautioned that their relative's displeasure would be incurred by any useless repetition of it. "And, Mary," said he, "do not let them mislead themselves. Do not let them marry with the idea that by so doing they will inherit between them my money. I wish them both to understand that my views are altogether different."

Miss Baker, when she returned to Littlebath, could not think that she had been successful in her mission; and Caroline immediately declared that any idea of a marriage for that year, or even for the next, must now be altogether out of the question. She was very much startled at hearing that Mr. Bertram was her mother's father, but did not pretend to any suddenly intense affection for him. "If that be so," said she, coldly, "if George and I are his only near connections, and if he does not disapprove of our marriage, he ought to give us an income on which we can live." It is astonishing how different are the views of grandfathers and grandchildren on such matters!

Unfortunately there was no unanimity of opinion on this matter, either between the lovers themselves or between them and their aunt. George was of opinion that they should marry immediately on their present income, and trust to Providence and his exertions for a future increase. For one year he would have the income of his fellowship; in two years and a half he would be called; and in the meantime, he could make something by the Magazines. If Caroline was not afraid, he was not.

But Caroline was very much afraid. It had by no means formed part of the project of her life to live in London as a married woman on four hundred pounds a year. "She knew," she said to Miss Baker, "what effect that would have on her husband's affections." She seemed, indeed, to share some of Harcourt's opinions on the subject, and to have a dislike to feminine economies, or at least to the use of them under the surveillance of a man's eye. As far as she could see, the marriage must be postponed indefinitely – at any rate, till after George should have been called to the bar.

Miss Baker's voice was for a middle course. She suggested that they should wait for Mr. Bertram's two thousand pounds and then marry. They would then have an income increased to some extent. They would also show a deference to the old man's views, which would undoubtedly – so Miss Baker thought – have ultimate results of a most beneficial nature. "After all," as she remarked more than once to her niece, "who else is there?"

But the young people were quite as obstinate as the old man. George would make no concession whatever to his uncle. He was ready to marry on love and a small income, and he expected Caroline to show an equal warmth. Caroline would by no means alter her views, or risk the misery of an ill-provided nursery. It had been the one great resolve of her life, that she would not be a poor man's wife. "She was ready to wait," she said. "If she could trust and wait, surely George might do so. A man, with all the world around him, encountered neither the misery nor the risk in waiting that fell to a girl's lot."

The disputes incidental to these different opinions did not ever take place between George and Caroline. He, from a feeling of chivalry, abstained from discussing money matters with her; and she, from a feeling of prudence, was equally silent with him. Poor Miss Baker was the medium for it all. George of course would press with a lover's ardour for an early day; and Caroline would of course say that an immediate marriage was, she found, impracticable. And then each would refer the other to Miss Baker.

Things went on in this way till the middle of May. Sometimes George was almost angry, and wrote letters that were somewhat savage; sometimes Caroline would be haughty, and then she too could write letters which would tell her mind in good plain set terms. But they were not near enough, or sufficiently often with each other, to quarrel.

So matters went on till May; and then, on one fine May-day, Harcourt and George together took their places in the train for Littlebath.

"I wonder what you'll think of her?" said George. "Of course you'll tell the truth?"

"Oh, of course," said Harcourt, with his mind duly made up to praise her.

"You haven't the pluck to find fault with her," said George; "you would be afraid not to call her handsome, even if you thought her as ugly as Hecate."

"Exactly," said Harcourt; "and therefore these little experimentary trips are never of any use."

CHAPTER XV

MR. HARCOURT'S VISIT TO LITTLEBATH

During the whole of the winter and spring, George's attention to his work had been unremitting. Mr. Die was always prophesying still greater things, and still greater. Once a fortnight, on every other Saturday, Bertram had gone down to Littlebath, but he had always returned to London by the first train on Monday morning, and was always up to his elbows in law, even on that morning, before eleven.

During the whole of this time, he had not once seen his uncle, although Miss Baker had softly endeavoured to talk him into visiting Hadley. "I never go there without being asked," he had said. "It is quite understood between us."

He had made but one excursion out of London, except those to Littlebath, and that had been to Hurst Staple. Mr. Wilkinson had died very suddenly, as has been told, about the end of the winter, and Bertram had of course not been able to see him. Arthur Wilkinson had then been quickly put into the living, and as soon as he had taken up his residence in the parsonage, Bertram had gone down. This visit had been made before the last walk to West Putford; but even then the young barrister had found the young vicar in rather a plaintive mood. Wilkinson, however, had said nothing of his love, and George was too much occupied with talking of his own heart to think much of his cousin's.

Miss Gauntlet – I hope the reader has not altogether forgotten Adela Gauntlet – had also an aunt living at Littlebath, Miss Penelope Gauntlet; and it so happened, that very shortly after that memorable walk and the little scene that took place in the West Putford drawing-room, Adela visited her aunt. Bertram, who had known her well when they were children together, had not yet seen her there; indeed, her arrival had taken place since his last visit; but there she was, staying with Miss Penelope Gauntlet, when he and Harcourt went down to Littlebath together.

Caroline and Adela had for years been friends. Not bosom friends, perhaps; that is, they did not correspond three times a week, each sending to the other on each occasion three sheets of note paper crossed over on every page from top to bottom. Caroline had certainly no such bosom friend, and perhaps neither had Adela; but they were friends enough to call each other by their Christian names, to lend each other music and patterns, and perhaps to write when they had anything special to say. There had been a sort of quasi-connection between Miss Baker and the elder Miss Gauntlet – a connection of a very faint local character – in years gone by. Miss Baker, by reason of her Bertram relations, had been at Hurst Staple, and Miss Gauntlet had been at West Putford at the same time. They had thus become acquainted, and the acquaintance there had led to a Littlebath friendship. Friendships in Littlebath are not of a very fervid description.

Miss Waddington had now been engaged for six months, and hitherto she had made no confidante. She knew no resident at Littlebath whom she would willingly trust with her heart's secret: her aunt, and her aunt's cognizance of the matter were quite another thing. No one could be more affectionate than aunt Mary, no one more trustworthy, no one more thoroughly devoted to another than she was to her niece. But then she was not only old, but old-fashioned. She was prudent, and Caroline also was prudent; but their prudence was a different kind. There was no dash, no ambition about aunt Mary's prudence. She was rather humdrum, Caroline thought; and, which was worse, though she liked George Bertram, she did not seem to understand his character at all in the same light as that in which Caroline regarded it.

From these circumstances it came to pass that Adela had not been a week at Littlebath before she was made acquainted with the grand secret. She also had a secret of her own; but she did not tell that in return. Secrets such as Caroline's are made to be told; but those other secrets, those which burn up the heart instead of watering it as with a dew from heaven, those secrets for the most part are not made to be told.

"And yet, Adela, I suppose it will never happen." This had been said on the morning of that Saturday which was to bring down not only Bertram, but Harcourt. Caroline knew well that the London friend, the man of the world, was being brought to inspect her, and was by no means afraid of undergoing the inspection. She was not timid by nature; and though, as has been already said, she was hardly yet conscious of her powers of attracting, she was never ashamed of herself.

"And why not? I think that is nonsense, Caroline. If you really thought that, you would not receive him as you will do, nor his friend neither."

"I do think it; that is to say, I think it very probable. I cannot explain to you, Adela, all the turns of my mind, or of my heart. I would not for worlds of gold marry a man I did not love."

"And do not you love Mr. Bertram?"

"Yes, I do; at times very, very much; but I fear the time may come when I may love him less. You will not understand me; but the fact is, I should love him better if he were less worthy of my love – if he were more worldly."

"No, I do not understand that," said Adela, thinking of her love, and the worldly prudence of him who should have been her lover.

"That is it – you do not understand me; and yet it is not selfishness on my part. I would marry a man in the hope of making him happy."

"Certainly," said Adela; "no girl should marry unless she have reasonable hope that she can do that."

"He would wish me to go to him now, at once; when we have no sufficient income to support us."

"Four hundred a year!" said Adela, reproachfully.