CHAPTER XXX

THE SUITORS

MR. BUNTING’s entire and devoted submission to Miss Rosa made Mamma feel very independent of Mr. Jasper, who, not being so obedient as he ought under the circumstances, Mamma gave increased liberty to our friend Jack, and aired him out freely and openly, to the surprise of the knowing ones, who thought his affair was settled.

“Why, how is that?” asked Miss Cloverley, opening wide her beautiful darkly-fringed black eyes, not knowing of the private promenades. “Why, how is that? I thought it was all over between Mr. B. and Miss McD.?”

Then came the explanations—oftener wrong than right—but every body likes to be knowing; one showing how ill Mr. Goldspink had behaved to the fair one; another, how the lawyers had quarrelled over the parchments, and would not let it be; a third, how the old curmudgeon down in the country had set his great gouty foot upon it, when, just as the stories were beginning to spread, lo and behold, Miss appeared, with a dangler on each side, the gentlemen looking sweetly at her, and bitterly at each other. Then the mistaken knowing ones had to flounder out of their fictions the best way they could, one saying, “Jones said so;” another, laying it on “Brown;” while the more hardened ones looked wise, and said there was “something wrong notwithstanding.”

A lazy, lounging watering-place, where people have nothing whatever to do, but meet and pass, and meet and pass, morn, noon, and night, has a wonderful advantage over a trading, bustling town, and also over the country, where people are scattered far and wide, and can only come together by appointment, and more good business, as the merchants say, can be done in a week at a popular watering-place than in a year anywhere else. The men are idle at the watering-places as well as the ladies, which is a wonderful advantage, nine-tenths of the eligible men of the kingdom being so absorbed in their beloved ten per cent. hunting, as to leave little or no leisure for love. Hence, also, when they do begin wooing, they begin in right earnest; an introduction, a courtship, and an offer not unfrequently following in the same week. And though the time may seem short, and the climax premature, yet when we come to remember that these are railway days, and spread the time out, and apportion it fairly, what with morning rides, seaside strolls, balls, concerts, confectioners, and comet, the enchanted ones see quite as much of each other in a week as they might otherwise do in a year. There is also another advantage, namely, that the lady has no occasion to conceal her love, letting “it feed on her damask cheek like a worm i’ the bud;” for “quick” is the word, and parties come to the—“What-have-you-got? and what-will-you-do?”-point quickly, cutting the cable if things don’t suit, and mooring the man if they do. Thus long courtships are avoided, and dilatory young gentlemen spurred up to the point, who might otherwise go on sighing and dying for years. In our particular case, Jasper might have served a regular apprenticeship to Miss Rosa, still keeping himself free and other admirers off; for men have not the same taste for cutting each other out that ladies have, and accept encouragement as a sign of engagement, or of the ladies’ willingness to be engaged. As even a Comet, however brisk and fiery, cannot make perpetual summer, still less replenish people’s purses, so the waning season, and still more the waning sovereigns, at length warned Mrs. McDermott that she ought to be giving that clear week’s notice from the day of entry, without which greedy uttermost-farthing landlords too often insist upon another week’s rent. Save on the stage, the closing scene is undoubtedly the weak one anywhere—at a watering-place in particular, for there seems no end to the liabilities—the bills come showering in at the last moment—the parties’ gratitude being generally in the inverse ratio to their receipts—large bills, small thanks—each man biting as though he thought that bite would be the last—thus sending forth good walking advertisements against his house for evermore instead of parties to recommend him. Then when the ominous “Let” appears in the window, comes the unpleasantness of living in public for the rest of the time, it being open to any idle inquisitive person to come and look at the rooms to see who the parties are in them, or how they live. So the occupants are exhibited along with the furniture, much in the manner of the inmates of a club, only in a club the liabilities are general instead of being personal on the lady. And as ladies always want to see every thing from the attics down to the cellar, a good quickeyed woman—such as Mrs. Trattles—would be able to form a tolerable idea of the ways and means of the party—compo-candles, cold mutton, and so on, just as the insolvent dandy indicated the sort of allowance he thought he could manage to keep body and soul together upon, when he said “a wax candle and Eau de Cologne” one.

The Paul Pry system of persecution being very popular at Roseberry Rocks, and our heroine making the house rather a marked one, Mamma and Miss suffered a good deal from this sort of intrusion, the annoyance of which was not lessened by one old lady—Mrs. Saucefield—pretending to take Jasper for the drawing-master as he sat beside Miss with her sketch-book, and begging she might not interrupt Miss Rosa in her lesson. Another day, a whole troop of balloon-like Miss Jewisons came circling in with Mamma, criticising the rooms, and turning up their oiley hook noses at everything, talking as though such accommodation might do very well for some people, it wouldn’t at all do for them. Then when they got into the street, an observer in the balcony might see their machinery-lace shrouded shoulders rising with laughter as the gaudy bonnets got together, and each party recounted the result of her observation; one what a pair of dirty stockings were hanging over the chair in the bedroom; another, that somebody’s hair-brushes would be better of washing; a third had seen a roll of house flannel hid under the drawing-room sofa; a fourth would have liked to have had a peep into the ottoman; while Mamma declared the larder was filthy, and the kitchen a shame to be seen. Next came the dread house-agent, Mr. Worrypenny, with his ominous red-backed book and pencil to go through the furniture and check the dilapidations. Then what a list of casualties appeared! Every thing seemed to be more or less injured—cracks, rends, and tears—all the more extraordinary, as Worrypenny said, because there were not no childer. Still he made the most of them. The drawing-room chairs were all more or less damaged in the joints (most likely from the fat boy swinging upon them), while those regular annuities to lodging-letters, the easy chairs, had wholly gone down, and now stood, or rather lounged, in the corners of the room. The commonest crockery could not be matched save at a matchless expense; and the old kitchen utensils were declared to have been wholly worn out in Mrs. McDermott’s service. So what with Chousey at one end, and Worrypenny at the other, the estimates for the visit were rather exceeded. That, however, is nothing uncommon, as most of our readers are aware.