* Read the Oxford Essays.
“Certainly not,” said Mrs. Bazalgette, sharply.
“Excuse us, dear,” said Lucy in the same breath.
“Well, Lucy,” said Mrs. Bazalgette, “am I wrong about your uncle's selfishness! I have tried in vain ever since I came here to make you see it whereyouwere the only sufferer.”
“Not quite in vain, aunt,” said Lucy sadly; “you have shown me defects in my poor uncle that I should never have discovered.”
Mrs. Bazalgette smiled grimly.
“Only, as you hate him, and I love him, and always mean to love him, permit me to call his defects 'thought-lessness.'Youcan apply the harsh term 'selfish-ness' to the most good-natured, kind, indulgent—oh!”
“Ha! ha! Don't cry, you silly girl. Thoughtless? a calculating old goose, who is eternally aiming to be a fox—never says or does anything without meaning something a mile off. Luckily, his veil is so thin that everybody sees through it but you. What do you think of histhought-less-nessin getting a tutor gratis? Poor Mr. Dodd!”
“I will answer for it, it is a pleasure to Mr. Dodd to be of service to his little friend,” said Lucy, warmly.
“How do you know a bore is a pleasure to Mr. Dodd?”
“Mr. Dodd is a new acquaintance of yours, aunt, but I have had opportunities of observing his character, and I assure you all this pity is wasted.”
“Why, Lucy, what did you say to Arthur just now. You are contradictingyourself.”
“What a love of opposition I must have. Are you not tired of in-doors? Shall we go into the village?”
“No; I exhausted the village yesterday.”
“The garden?”
“No.”
“Well, then, suppose we sketch the church together. There is a good light.”
“No. Let us go on the downs, Lucy.”
“Why, aunt, it—it is a long walk.”
“All the better.”
“But we said 'No.'”
“What has that to do with it?”
Arthur was right; the kites that are sold by shops of prey are not proportioned nor balanced; this is probably in some way connected with the circumstance that they are made to sell, not fly. The monster kite, constructed by the light of Euclid, rose steadily into the air like a balloon, and eventually, being attached to the chair, drew Mr. Arthur at a reasonable pace about half a mile over a narrow but level piece of turf that was on the top of the downs. Q.E.D. This done, these two patient creatures had to wind the struggling monster in, and go back again to the starting point. Before they had quite achieved this, two petticoats mounted the hill and moved toward them across the plateau. At sight of them David thrilled from head to foot, and Arthur cried, “Oh, bother!” an unjust ejaculation, since it was by his invitation they came. His alarms were verified. The ladies made themselves No. 1 directly, and the poor kite became a shield for flirtation. Arthur was so cross.
At last the B's desire to occupy attention brought her to the verge of trouble. Seeing David saying a word to Lucy, she got into the chair, and went gayly off, drawn by the kite, which Arthur, with a mighty struggle, succeeded in hooking to the car for her. Now, the plateau was narrow, and the chair wanted guiding. It was easy to guide it, but Mrs. Bazalgette did not know how; so it sidled in a pertinacious and horrid way toward a long and steepish slope on the left side. She began to scream, Arthur to laugh—the young are cruel, and, I am afraid, though he stood perfectly neutral to all appearance, his heart within nourished black designs. But David came flying up at her screams—just in time. He caught the lady's shoulders as she glided over the brow of the slope, and lifted her by his great strength up out of the chair, which went the next moment bounding and jumping athwart the hill, and soon rolled over and groveled in rather an ugly way.
Mrs. Bazalgette sobbed and cried so prettily on David's shoulder, and had to be petted and soothed by all hands. Inward composure soon returned, though not outward, and in due course histrionics commenced. First the sprain business. None of you do it better, ladies, whatever you may think. David had to carry her a bit. But she was too wise to be a bore. Next, the heroic business:wouldbe put down,wouldwalk, possible or not;wouldnot be a trouble to her kind friends. Then the martyr smiling through pain. David was very attentive to her; for while he was carrying her in his arms she had won his affection, all he could spare from Lucy. Which of you can tell all the consequences if you go and carry a pretty woman, with her little insinuating mouth close to your ears?
Lucy and Arthur walked behind. Arthur sighed. Lucy wasreveuse.Arthur broke silence first. “Lucy!”
“Yes, dear.”
“When is she going?”
“Arthur, for shame! I won't tell you. To-morrow.”
“Lucy,” said Arthur, with a depth of feeling, “she spoils everything!!!”
Next morning ——come back?What for?I will have the goodness to tell you what she said in his ear?Why, nothing.
You are a female reader?Oh! that alters the case. To attempt to deceive you would be cowardly, immoral; it would fail. She sighed, “My preserver!” at which David had much ado not to laugh in her face. Then she murmured still more softly, “You must come and see me at my home before you sail—will you not? I insist” (in the tone of a supplicant), “come, promise me.”
“That I will—with pleasure,” said David, flushing.
“Mind, it is a promise. Put me down. Lucy, come here and make him put me down. Iwill notbe a burden to my friends.”
THAT same evening, Mrs. Bazalgette, being alone with Lucy in the drawing-room, put her arm round that young lady's waist, and lovingly, not seriously, as a man might have been apt to do, reminded her of her honorable promise—not to be caught in the net of matrimony at Font Abbey. Lucy answered, without embarrassment, that she claimed no merit for keeping her word. No one had had the ill taste to invite her to break it.
“You are either very sly or very blind,” replied Mrs. Bazalgette, quietly.
“Aunt!” said Lucy, piteously.
Mrs. Bazalgette, who, by many a subtle question and observation during the last week, had satisfied herself of Lucy's innocence, now set to work and laid Uncle Fountain bare.
“I do not speak in a hurry, Lucy; a hint came round to me a fortnight ago that you had an admirer here, and it turns out to be this Mr. Talboys.”
“Mr. Talboys?”
“Yes. Does that surprise you? Do you think a young gentleman would come to Font Abbey three nights in a week without a motive?”
Lucy reflected.
“It is all over the place that you two are engaged.”
Lucy colored, and her eyes flashed with something very like anger, but she held her peace.
“Ask Jane else.”
“What! take my servant into my confidence?”
“Oh, there is a way of setting that sort of people chattering without seeming to take any notice. To tell the truth, I have done it for you. It is all over the village, and all over the house.”
“The proper person to ask must have been Uncle Fountain himself.”
“As if he would have told me the truth.”
“He is a gentleman, aunt, and would not have uttered a falsehood.”
“Doctrine of chivalry! He would have uttered half a dozen in one minute. Besides, why should I question a person I can read without. Your uncle, with his babyish cunning that everybody sees through, has given me the only proof I wanted. He has not had Mr. Talboys here once since I came.”
“Cunning little aunt! Mr. Talboys happens not to be at home; uncle told me so himself.”
“Simple little niece, uncle told you a fib; Mr. Talboys is at home. And observe! until I came to Font Abbey, he was here three times a week. You admit that. I come; your uncle knows I am not so unobservant as you, and Mr. Talboys is kept out of sight.”
“The proof that my uncle has deceived me,” said Lucy, coldly, and with lofty incredulity.
“Read that note from Miss Dodd!”
“What! you in correspondence with Miss Dodd?”
“That is to say, she has thrust herself into correspondence with me—just like her assurance.”
The letter ran thus:
“DEAR MADAM—My brother requests me to say that, in compliance with your request, he called at the lodge of Talboys Park, and the people informed him Mr. Talboys had not left Talboys Park at all since Easter. I remain yours, etc.”
Lucy was dumfounded.
“I suspected something, Lucy, so I asked Mr. Dodd to inquire.”
“It was a singular commission to send him on.”
“Oh, he takes long walks—cruises, he calls them—and he is so good-natured. Well, what do you think of your uncle's veracity now?”
Lucy was troubled and distressed, but she mastered her countenance: “I think he has sacrificed it for once to his affection for me. I fear you are right; my eyes are opened to many circumstances. But do—oh, pray do!—see his goodness in all this.”
“The goodness of a story-teller.”
“He admires Mr. Talboys—he reveres him. No doubt he wished to secure his poor niece what he thinks a great match, and now you assign ill motives to him. Yes, I confess he has deviated from truth. Cruel! cruel! what can you give me in exchange if you rob me of my esteem for those I love!”
This innocent distress, with its cause, were too deep for a lady whose bright little intelligence leaned toward cunning rather than wisdom. In spite of her niece's trouble, and the brimming eyes that implored forbearance, she drove the sting, merrily in again and again, till at last Lucy, who was not defending herself, but an absent friend, turned a little suddenly on her and said:
“And do you think he says nothing against you?”
“Oh, he is a backbiter, too, is he? I didn't know he had that vice. Ah! and, pray, what can he find to say against me?”
“Oh, people that hate one another can always find something ill-natured to say,” retorted Lucy, with a world of meaning.
Mrs. Bazalgette turned red, and her little nose went up into the air at an angle of forty-five. She said, with majestic disdain: “I don't hate the man—I don't condescend to hate him.”
“Then don't condescend to backbite him, dear.”
This home-thrust, coming from such a quarter, took away my Lady Disdain's very breath. She sat transfixed; then, upon reflection, got up a tear, and had to be petted.
This sweet lady departed, flinging down her firebrand on those hospitable boards.
Lucy, though she had defended her uncle, was not a little vexed that he had managed matters so as to get her talked of with Mr. Talboys. Her natural modesty and reserve prevented her from remonstrating; nor was there any positive necessity. She was one of those young ladies who seem born mistresses of the art of self-defense. Deriving the art not from experience, but from instinct, they are as adroit at seventeen as they are at twenty-seven; so a last year's bird constructs her first nest as cunningly as can a veteran feathered architect.
Therefore, without a grain of discourtesy or tangible ill-temper, she quietly froze, and a small family with her, they could not tell how or why, for they had never even suspected this girl's power. You would have seemed to them as one that mocketh had you told them they owed their gayety, their good-humor, their happiness, and their conversational powers to her.
Of these Talboys suffered the most. She brought him to a stand-still by a very simple process. She no longer patted or spurred him. To vary the metaphor, a man that has no current must be stirred or stagnate; Lucy's light hand stirred Talboys no more; Talboys stagnated. Mr. Fountain suffered next in proportion. He began to find that something was the matter, but what he had no idea. He did not observe that, though Lucy answered him as kindly as ever, she did not draw him out as heretofore, far less that she was vexed with him, and on her guard against him and everybody, like amaitresse d'armes.No. “The days were drawing in. The air was heavy; no carbon in it. Wind in the east again!!!” etc. So subtle is the influence of these silly little creatures upon creation's lords.
Mr. Talboys did not take delicate hints. He continued his visits three times a week, and the coast was kept clear for him. On this Miss Fountain proceeded to overt acts of war. She brought a champion on the scene—a terrible champion—a champion so irresistible that I set any woman down as a coward who lets him loose upon a sex already so unequal to the contest as ours. What that champion's real name is I have in vain endeavored to discover, but he iscalled“Headache.” When this terrible ally mingled in the game—on the Talboys nights—dismay fell upon the wretched males that abode in and visited the once cheerful, cozy Font Abbey. Messrs. Fountain and Talboys put their heads together in grave, anxious consultations, and Arthur vented a yell of remonstrance. He found the lady one afternoon preparing indisposition. She was leaning languidly back, and the fire was dying out of her eye, and the color out of her cheek, and the blinds were drawn down. The poor boy burst in upon this prologue. “Oh, Lucy,” he cried, in piteous, foreboding tones, “don't go and have a headache to-night. It was so jolly till you took to thesestupidheadaches.”
“I am so sorry, Arthur,” said Lucy, apologetically, but at bottom she was inexorable. The disease reached its climax just before dinner. All remedies failed, and there was nothing for it but to return to her own room, and read the last new tale of domestic interest—and principle—until sleep came to her relief.
After dinner Arthur shot out with the retiring servants, and interred himself in the study, where he sought out with care such wild romances as give entirely false views of life, and found them, “and so shut up in measureless content.”—Macbeth.
The seniors consulted at their ease. They both appreciated the painful phenomenon, but they differedtoto coeloas to the cause. Mr. Fountain ascribed it to the somber influence of Mrs. Bazalgette, and miscalled her, till Jane's hair stood on end: she happened to be the one at the keyhole that night. Mr. Talboys laid all the blame on David Dodd. The discussion was vigorous, and occupied more than two hours, and each party brought forward good and plausible reasons; and, if neither made any progress toward converting the other, they gained this, at least, that each corroborated himself. Now Mrs. Bazalgette was gone no direct reprisals on her were possible. Registering a vow that one day or other he would be even with her, the senior consented, though not very willingly, to co-operate with his friend against an imaginary danger. In answer to his remark that the Dodds were never invited to tea now, Mr. Talboys had replied: “But I find from Mr. Arthur he visits the house every day on the pretense of teaching him mathematics—a barefaced pretense—a sailor teach mathematics!” Mr. Fountain had much ado to keep his temper at this pertinacity in a jealous dream. He gulped his ire down, however, and said, somewhat sullenly: “I really cannot consent to send my poor friend's son to the University a dunce, and there is no other mathematician near.”
“If I find you one,” said Talboys, hastily, “will you relieve Mr. Dodd of his labors, and me of his presence?”
“Certainly,” said the other. Poor David!
“Then there is my friend Bramby. He is a second wrangler. He shall take Arthur, and keep him till Miss Fountain leaves us. Bramby will refuse me nothing. I have a living in my gift, and the incumbent is eighty-eight.”
The senior consented with a pitying smile.
“Bramby will take him next week,” said Talboys, severely.
Mr. Fountain nodded his head. It was all the assent he could effect: and at that moment there passed through him the sacrilegious thought that the Conqueror must have imported an ass or two among his other forces, and that one of these, intermarrying with Saxon blood, had produced a mule, and that mule was his friend.
The same uneasy jealousy, which next week was to expel David from Font Abbey, impelled Mr. Talboys to call the very next day at one o'clock to see what was being done under cover of trigonometry. He found Mr. and Miss Fountain just sitting down to luncheon. David and Arthur were actually together somewhere, perhaps going through the farce of geometry. He was half vexed at finding no food for his suspicions. Presently, so spiteful is chance, the door opened, and in marched Arthur and David.
“I have made him stay to luncheon for once,” said Arthur; “he couldn't refuse me; we are to part so soon.” Arthur got next to Lucy, and had David on his left. Mr. Talboys gave Mr. Fountain a look, and very soon began to play his battery upon David.
“How do you naval officers find time to learn geometry?”
“What? don't you know it is a part of our education, sir?”
“I never heard that before.”
“That is odd; but perhaps you have spent all your life ashore” (this in commiserating accents). David then politely explained to Mr. Talboys that a man who looked one day to command a ship must not only practice seamanship, but learn navigation, and that navigation was a noble art founded on the exact sciences as well as on practical experiences; that there did still linger upon the ocean a few of the old captains, who, born at a period when a ship, in making a voyage, used to run down her longitude first, and then begin to make her latitude, could handle a ship well, and keep her off a lee shoreif they saw it in time,but were, in truth, hardly to be trusted to take her from port to port. “We get a word with these old salts now and then when we are becalmed alongside, and the questions they put make us quite feel for them. Then they trust entirely to their instruments. They can take an observation, but they can't verify one. They can tack her and wear her (I have seen them do one when they should have done the other), and they can read the sky and the water better than we young ones; and while she floats they stick to her, and the greater the danger the louder the oaths—but that is all.” He then assured them with modest fervor that much more than that was expected of the modern commander, particularly in the two capital articles of exact science and gentlemanly behavior. He concluded with considerable grace by apologizing for his enthusiastic view of a profession that had been too often confounded with the faults of its professors—faults that were curable, and that they would all, he hoped, live long enough to see cured. Then, turning to Miss Fountain, he said: “And if I began by despising my business, and taking a small view of it, how should I ever hold sticks with my able competitors, who study it with zeal and admiration?”
Lucy. “I don't quite understand all you have said, Mr. Dodd, but that last I think is unanswerable.”
Fountain. “I am sure of it. As the Duke of Wellington said the other day in the House of Lords, 'That is a position I defy any noble lord to assault with success'—haw! ho!”
Mr. Talboys averted his attack. “Pray, sir,” said he, with a sneer, “may I ask, have nautical commanders a particular taste for education as well as science?”
“Not that I know of. If you mean me, I am hungry to learn, and I find few but what can teach me something, and what little I know I am willing to impart, sir; give and take.”
“It is the direction of your teaching that seems to me so singular. Mathematics are horrible enough, and greatly to be avoided.”
“That is news to me.”
“Onterra firma,I mean.”
At this opening of the case Talboys versus Newton, Arthur shrugged his shoulders to Lucy and David, and went swiftly out as from the presence of an idiot. It was abominably rude. But, besides being ill-natured and a little shallow, Mr. Talboys was drawling out his words, and Arthur was sixteen—candid epoch, at which affectation in man or woman is intolerable to us; we get a little hardened to it long before sixty. Mr. Talboys bit his lip at this boyish impertinence, but he was too proud a man to notice it otherwise than by quietly incorporating the offender into his satire. “But the enigma is why you read them with a stripling, of whose breeding we have just had a specimen—mathematics with a hob-ba-de-hoy?Grand Dieu!Do pray tell us, Mr. Dodd, why you come to Font Abbey every day; is it really to teach Master Orson mathematics and manners?”
David did not sink into the earth as he was intended to.
“I come to teach him algebra and geometry, what little I know.”
“But your motive, Mr. Dodd?”
David looked puzzled, Lucy uneasy at seeing her guest badgered.
“Ask Miss Fountain why she thinks I do my best for Arthur,” said David, lowering his eyes.
Talboys colored and looked at Fountain.
“I think it must be out of pure goodness,” said Lucy, sweetly.
Mr. Talboys ignored her calmly. “Pray enlighten us, Mr. Dodd. Now what is the real reason you walk a mile every day to do mathematics with that interesting and well-behaved juvenile?”
“You are very curious, sir,” said David, grimly, his ire rising unseen.
“I am—on this point.”
“Well, since you must be told what most men could see without help, it is—because he is an orphan; and because an orphan finds a brother in every man that is worth the shoe-leather he stands in. Can ye read the riddle now, ye lubber?” and David started up haughtily, and, with contempt and wrath on his face, marched through the open window and joined his little friend on the lawn, leaving Fountain red with anger and Talboys white.
The next thing was, Lucy rose and went quietly out of the room by the door.
“It is the last time he shall set his foot within my door. Provoking cub!”
“You are convinced at last that he is a dangerous rival?”
“A rival? Nonsense and stuff!!”
“Then why was she so agitated? She went out with tears in her eyes: I saw them.”
“The poor girl was frightened, no doubt. We don't have fracases at Font Abbey. On this one spot of earth comfort reigns, and balmy peace, and shall reign unruffled while I live. The passions are not admitted here, sir. Gracious Heaven forbid! I'd as soon see a bonfire in the middle of my dining-room as Jealousy & Co.”
“In that case you had better exclude the cause.”
“The cause is your imagination, my good friend; but I will give it no handle. I will exclude David Dodd until she has accepted you in form.”
With this understanding the friends parted.
After dinner that same day Arthur sat in the drawing-room with Lucy. He was reading, she working placidly. She looked off her work demurely at him several times. He was absorbed in a flighty romance. “I have dropped my worsted, Arthur. It is by you.”
Arthur picked the ball up and brought it to her; then back to his romance, heart and soul. Another sidelong glance at him; then, after a long silence, “Your book seems very interesting.”
“I'll fling it against the wall if it does not mind,” was the infuriated reply. “Here are two fools quarreling, page after page, and can't see, or won't see, what everybody else can see, that it is an absurd misunderstanding. One word of common sense would put it all right.”
“Then why not put the book down and talk to me?”
“I can't. It won't let me. I must see how long the two fools will go on not seeing what everybody else sees.”
“Will not the number of volumes tell you that?”
“Signorina, don't you try to be satirical!” said the sprightly youth; “you'll only make a mess of it. What is the use dropping one drop of vinegar into such a great big honey pot?”
“You are a saucy boy,” retorted Lucy, in tones of gentle approbation.
A long silence.
“Arthur, will you hold this skein for me?”
Arthur groaned.
“Never mind, dear. I will try and manage with a chair.”
“No you won't, now; there.”
The victim was caught by the hands. But with fatal instinctive perverseness he sat in silent amazement watching Lucy's supple white hand disentangling impossibilities instead of chattering as he was intended to. Lucy gave a little sigh. Here was a dreadful business—obliged to elicit the information she had resolved should be forced upon her.
“By the by, Arthur,” said she, carelessly, “did Mr. Dodd say anything to you on the lawn?”
“What about?”
“About what was said after you went out so ru—so suddenly.”
“No; why? what was said? Something about me? Tell me.”
“Oh, no, dear; as Mr. Dodd did not mention it, it is not worth while. You must not move your hands, please.”
“Now, Lucy, that is too bad. It is not fair to excite one's curiosity and then stop directly.”
“But it is nothing. Mr. Talboys teased Mr. Dodd a little, that is all, and Mr. Dodd was not so patient as I have seen him on like occasions. There,youare disentangled at last.”
“Now, signorina, let us talk sense. Tell me, which do you like best of all the gentlemen that come here?”
“You, dear; only keep your hands still.”
“None of your chaff, Lucy.”
“Chaff! what is that?”
“Flattery, then. I hope it isn't that affected fool Talboys, for I hate hun.”
“I cannot undertake to share your prejudices, Mr. Arthur.”
“Then you actually like him.”
“I don't dislike him.”
“Then I pity your taste, that is all.”
“Mr. Talboys has many good qualities; and if he was what you describe him, Uncle Fountain would not prize him as he does.”
“There is something in that, Lucy; but I think my guardian and you are mad upon just that one point. Talboys is a fool and a snob.”
“Arthur,” said Lucy, severely, “if you speak so of my uncle's friends, you and I shall quarrel.”
“You won't quarrel just now, if you can help it.”
“Won't I, though? Why not, pray?”
“Because your skein is not wound yet.”
“Oh, you little black-hearted thing!”
“I know human nature, miss,” said the urchin, pompously; “I have read Miss Edgeworth!!!”
He then made an appeal to her candor and good sense. “Now don't you see my friend Mr. Dodd is worth them all put together?”
“I can't quite see that.”
“He is so noble, so kind, so clever.”
“You must own he is a trifle brusk.”
“Never. And, if he is, that is not like hurting people's feelings on purpose, and saying nasty, ill-natured things wrapped up in politeness that you daren't say out like a man, or you'd get kicked. He is a gentleman inside; that Talboys is only one outside; but you girls can't look below the surface.”
“We have not read Miss Edgeworth. His hands are not so white as Mr. Talboys'.”
“Nor his liver, either—oh, you goose! Which has the finest eyes? Why, you don't see such eyes as Mr. Dodd's every day. They are as large as yours, only his are dark.”
“Don't be angry, dear. You must admit his voice is very loud.”
“He can make it loud, but it is always low and gentle whenever he speaks to you. I have noticed that; so that is monstrous ungrateful of you.”
“There, the skein is wound. Arthur!”
“Well?”
“I have a great mind to tell you something your friend Mr. Dodd said while you were out of the room—but no, you shall finish your story first.”
“No, no; hang the story!”
“Ah! you only say that out of politeness. I have taken you from it so long already.”
The impetuous boy jumped up, seized the volumes, dashed out, and presently came running back, crying: “There, I have thrown them behind the bookcase for ever and ever. Now will you tell me what he said?”
Lucy smiled triumphantly. She could relish a bloodless victory over an inanimate rival. Then she said softly, “Arthur, what I am going to tell you is in confidence.”
“I will be torn in pieces before I betray it,” said the young chevalier.
Lucy smiled at his extravagance, then began again very gravely: “Mr. Talboys, who, with many good qualities, has—what shall I say?—narrow and artificial views compared with your friend—”
“Ah! now you are talking sense.”
“Then why interrupt me, dear?—began teasing him, and wanting to know the real reason he comes here.”
“The real reason? What did the fool mean?”
“How can I tell, Arthur, any more than you? Mr. Dodd evidently thought that some slur was meant on the purity of his friendship for you.”
“Shame! shame! oh!”
“I saw his anger rising; for Mr. Dodd, though not irritable, is passionate—at least I think so. I tried to smooth matters. But no; Mr. Talboys persisted in putting this ungenerous question, when all of a sudden Mr. Dodd burst out, 'You wish to know why I love Arthur? Because he is an orphan; and because an orphan finds a brother in every man who is worth the shoe-leather he stands in. That is all the riddle, you lubber!!' It was terribly rude; but oh! Arthur, I must tell you your friend looked noble; he seemed to swell and rise to a giant as he spoke, and we all felt such little shrimps around him; and his lip trembled, and fire flashed from his eyes. How you would have admired him then; and he swept out of the room, and left us for his little friend, who is worthy of it all, since he stands up for him against us all. Arthur! why, he is crying! poor child! and do you think those words did not go tomyheart as well? I am an orphan, too. Arthur, don't cry, love! oh! oh! oh!”
Oh, magic of a word from a great heart! Such a word, uncouth and simple, but hot from a manly bosom, pierced silk and broadcloth as if they had been calico and fustian, and made a fashionable young lady and a bold school-boy take hands and cry together. But such sweet tears dry quickly; they dry almost as they flow.
“Hallo!” cried the mercurial prince; “a sudden thought strikes me. You kept running him down a minute ago.”
“Me?” said Lucy, with a look of amazement.
“Why, you know you did. Now tell me what was that for.”
“To give you the pleasure of defending him.”
“Oh. Hum? Lucy, you are not quite so simple as the others think; sometimes I can't make you out myself.”
“Is it possible? Well, you know what to do, dear.”
“No, I don't.”
“Why, read Miss Edgeworth over again.”
ARTHUR was bundled off to a private tutor, and the Dodds invited to Font Abbey no more, and Talboys dined there three days a week. So far, David Dodd was in a poor and miserable position compared with Talboys, who visited Lucy at pleasure, and could close the very street door against a rival, real or imaginary. But the street door is not the door of the heart, and David had one little advantage over his powerful antagonist; it was a slender one, and he owed it to a subtle source—female tact. His sister had long been aware of Talboys. The gossip of the village had enlightened her as to his visits and supposed pretensions. She had deliberately withheld this information from her brother, for she said to herself: “Men always makesuchfools of themselves when they are jealous. No. David shan't even know he has got a rival; if he did he would be wretched and live on thorns, and then he would get into passions, and either make a fool of himself in her eyes, or do something rash and be shown to the door.”
Thus far Eve, defending her brother. And with this piece of shrewdness she did a little more for him than she intended or was conscious of; for Talboys, either by feeble calculation or instinct of petty rivalry, constantly sneered at David before Lucy; David never mentioned Talboys' name to her. Now superior ignores, inferior detracts. Thus Talboys lowered himself and rather elevated David; moreover, he counteracted his own strongest weapon, the street door. After putting David out of sight, this judicious rival could not let him fade out of mind too; he found means to stimulate the lady's memory, and, as far as in him lay, made the absent present. May all my foes unweave their webs as cleverly! David knew nothing of this. He saw himself shut out from Paradise, and he was sad. He felt the loss of Arthur too. The orphan had been medicine to him. When a man is absorbed in a hopeless passion, to be employed every day in a good action has a magical soothing influence on the racked heart. Try this instead of suicide, despairing lover. It is a quack remedy; no M. D. prescribes it. Never you mind; in desperate ills a little cure is worth a deal of etiquette. Poor David had lost this innocent comfort—lost, too, the pleasure of going every day to the house she lived in. To be sure, when he used to go he seldom caught a glimpse of her, but he did now and then, and always enjoyed the hope.
“I see how it is,” said he to Eve one day; “I am not welcome to the master of the house. Well, he is the master; I shall not force my way where I am not welcome”; but after these spirited words he hung his head.
“Oh, nonsense,” said Eve. “It isn't him. There are mischief-makers behind.”
“Ay? just you tell me who they are. I'll teach them to come across my hawse”; and David's eyes flashed.
“Don't you be silly,” said Eve, and turned it off; “and don't be so downhearted. Why, you are not half a man.”
“No more I am, Eve. What has come to me?”
“What, indeed? just when everything goes swimmingly.”
“Eve, how can you say so?”
“Why, David, she leaves this in a few days for Mrs. Bazalgette's house. You tell me you have got a warm invitation there. Then make the play there, and, if you can't win her, say you don't deserve her, twiddle your thumb, and see a bolder lover carry her off. You foolish boy, she is only a woman; she is to be won. If you don't mind, some man will show you it was as easy as you think it is hard. Timid wooers make a mountain of a mole-hill.”
“Why, it is you who have kept me backing and filling all this time, Eve.”
“Of course. Prudence at first starting, but that isn't to say courage is never to come in. First creep within the fortification wall; but, once inside, if you don't storm the city that minute, woe be unto you. Come, cheer up! it is only for a few days, and then she goes where you will have her all to yourself; besides, you shall have one sweet delicious evening with her all alone before she goes. What! have you forgotten the pedigree? Wasn't I right to keep that back? and now march and take a good long walk.”
Her tongue was a spur. It made David's drooping manhood rear and prance—a trumpet, and pealed victory to come. David kissed her warmly and strode away radiant. She looked sadly after him.
She had never spoken so hopefully, so encouragingly. The reason will startle such of my readers as have not taken the trouble to comprehend her. It was that she had never so thoroughly desponded. Such was Eve. When matters went smoothly, she itched to torment and take the gloss off David; but now the affair looked really desperate, so it would have been unkind not to sustain him with all her soul. The cause of her despondency and consequent cheerfulness shall now be briefly related. Scarce an hour ago she had met Miss Fountain in the village and accompanied her home. For David's sake she had diverted the conversation by easy degrees to the subject of marriage, in order to sound Miss Fountain. “You would never give your hand without your heart, I am sure.”
“Heaven forbid,” was the reply.
“Not even to a coronet?”
“Not even to a crown.”
So far so good; but Miss Fountain went on to say that the heart was not the only thing to be consulted in a matter so important as marriage.
“It is the only thing I would ever consult,” said Eve. As Lucy did not reply, Eve asked her next what she would do if she loved a poor man. Lucy replied coldly that it was not her present intention to love anybody but her relations; that she should never love any gentleman until she had been married to him, or, correcting herself, at all events, been some time engaged to him, and she should certainly never engage herself to anyone who would not rather improve her position in society than deteriorate it. Eve met these pretty phrases with a look of contempt, as much as to say, “While you speak I am putting all that into plain vulgar English.” The other did not seem to notice it. “To leave this interesting topic for a while,” said she, languidly, “let me consult you, Miss Dodd. I have not, as you may have noticed, great abilities, but I have received an excellent education. To say nothing of thosesoi-disantaccomplishments with which we adorn and sometimes weary society, my dear mother had me well grounded in languages and history. Without being eloquent, I have a certain fluency, in which, they tell me, even members of Parliament are deficient, smoothly as their speeches read made into English by the newspapers. Like yourself, Miss Dodd, and all our sex, I am not destitute of tact, and tact, you know, is 'the talent of talents.' I feel,” here she bit her lip, “myself fit for public life. I am ambitious.”
“Oh, you are, are you?”
“Very; and perhaps you will kindly tell me how I had best direct that ambition. The army? No; marching against daisies, and dancing and flirting in garrison towns, is frivolous and monotonous too. It isn't as if war was raging, trumpets ringing, and squadrons charging. Your brother's profession? Not for the world; I am a coward” [consistent]. “Shall I lower my pretensions to the learned professions?”
“I don't doubt your cleverness, but the learned professions?”
“A woman has a tongue, you know, and that is their grand requisite. I interrupted you, Miss Dodd; pray forgive me.”
“Well, then, let us go through them. To be a clergyman, what is required? To preach, and visit the sick, and feel for them, and understand what passes in the sorrowful hearts of the afflicted. Is that beyond our sex?”
“That last is far more beyond a man at most times; and oh, the discourses one has to sit out in church!”
“Portia made a very passable barrister, Miss Dodd.”
“Oh, did she?”
“Why, you know she did; and as for medicine, the great successes there are achieved by honeyed words, with a long word thrown in here and there. I've heard my own mamma say so. Now which shall I be?”
“I suppose you are making fun of me,” said Eve; “but there is many a true word spoken in jest. You could be a better, parson, lawyer or doctor than nine out of ten, but they won't let us. They know we could beat them into fits at anything but brute strength and wickedness, so they have shut all those doors in us poor girls' faces.”
“There; you see,” said Lucy archly, “but two lines are open to our honorable ambition, marriage and—water-colors. I think marriage the more honorable of the two; above all, it is the more fashionable. Can you blame me, then, if my ambition chooses the altar and not the easel?”
“So that is what you have been bringing me to.”
“You came of your own accord,” was the sly retort. “Let me offer you some luncheon.”
“No, thank you; I could not eat a morsel just now.”
Eve went away, her bright little face visibly cast down. It was not Miss Fountain's words only, and that new trait of hard satire, which she had so suddenly produced from her secret recesses. Her very tones were cynical and worldly to Eve's delicate sense of hearing.
“Poor, poor David!” she thought, and when she got to the door of the room she sighed; and as she went home she said more than once to herself, “No more heart than a marble statue. Oh, how true our first thought is! I come back to mine—”
Lucy (sola).“Thenwhat right had she to come here and try to turn me inside out?”