Wylders Hand | Page 8

puddings,
and latterly, of the nursery, where one treasure lay--that golden-haired
little boy, four years old, whom I had seen playing among the roses
before the parsonage door, asleep by this time--half-past seven,
'precise,' as old Lady Chelford loved to write on her summons to
dinner.
When the vicar, I dare say, in a very odd, quaint way, made his
proposal of marriage, moved thereto assuredly, neither by fortune, nor
by beauty, to good, merry, little Miss Dorothy Chubley, whom nobody
was supposed to be looking after, and the town had, somehow, set
down from the first as a natural-born old maid--there was a very
general amazement; some disappointment here and there, with
customary sneers and compassion, and a good deal of genuine
amusement not ill-natured.
Miss Chubley, all the shopkeepers in the town knew and liked, and, in a
way, respected her, as 'Miss Dolly.' Old Reverend John Chubley, D.D.,
who had been in love with his wife from the period of his boyhood; and
yet so grudging was Fate, had to undergo an engagement of nigh thirty
years before Hymen rewarded their constancy; being at length made
Vicar of Huddelston, and master of church revenues to the amount of
three hundred pounds a year--had, at forty-five, married his early love,
now forty-two.
They had never grown old in one another's fond eyes. Their fidelity
was of the days of chivalry, and their simplicity comical and beautiful.
Twenty years of happy and loving life were allotted them and one
pledge--poor Miss Dorothy--was left alone, when little more than

nineteen years old. This good old couple, having loved early and
waited long, and lived together with wonderful tenderness and gaiety of
heart their allotted span, bid farewell for a little while--the gentle little
lady going first, and, in about two years more, the good rector
following.
I remembered him, but more dimly than his merry little wife, though
she went first. She made raisin-wine, and those curious biscuits that
tasted of Windsor soap.
And this Mrs. William Wylder just announced by soft-toned Larcom, is
the daughter (there is no mistaking the jolly smile and lumpy odd little
features, and radiance of amiability) of the good doctor and Mrs.
Chubley, so curiously blended in her loving face. And last comes in old
Major Jackson, smiling largely, squaring himself, and doing his
courtesies in a firm but florid military style, and plainly pleased to find
himself in good company and on the eve of a good dinner. And so our
dinner-list is full.
The party were just nine--and it is wonderful what a row nine
well-behaved people will contrive to make at a dinner-table. The
inferior animals--as we see them caged and cared for, and fed at one
o'clock, 'precise,' in those public institutions provided for their
maintenance--confine their uproar to the period immediately antecedent
to their meal, and perform the actual process of deglutition with silent
attention, and only such suckings, lappings, and crunchings, as
illustrate their industry and content. It is the distinctive privilege of man
to exert his voice during his repast, and to indulge also in those
specially human cachinnations which no lower creature, except that
disreputable Australian biped known as the 'laughing jackass,'
presumes to imitate; and to these vocal exercises of the feasters respond
the endless ring and tinkle of knife and fork on china plate, and the
ministering angels in white chokers behind the chairs, those murmured
solicitations which hum round and round the ears of the revellers.
Of course, when great guns are present, and people talk pro bono
publico, one at a time, with parliamentary regularity, things are
different; but at an ordinary symposium, when the garrulous and

diffident make merry together, and people break into twos or threes and
talk across the table, or into their neighbours' ears, and all together, the
noise is not only exhilarating and peculiar, but sometimes perfectly
unaccountable.
The talk, of course, has its paroxysms and its subsidences. I have once
or twice found myself on a sudden in total silence in the middle of a
somewhat prolix, though humorous story, commenced in an uproar for
the sole recreation of my pretty neighbour, and ended--patched up,
_renounced_--a faltering failure, under the converging gaze of a sternly
attentive audience.
On the other hand, there are moments when the uproar whirls up in a
crescendo to a pitch and volume perfectly amazing; and at such times, I
believe that anyone might say anything to the reveller at his elbow,
without the smallest risk of being overheard by mortal. You may plan
with young Caesar Borgia, on your left, the poisoning of your host; or
ask pretty Mrs. Fusible, on your right, to elope with you from her
grinning and gabbling lord, whose bald head flashes red with
champagne only at the