Miss Barrington, with Josephine at one side and Polly Dill on the other,
sat at work in her little room that opened on the garden. Each was
engaged in some peculiar task, and each seemed bent upon her labor in
that preoccupied way which would imply that the cares of needlework make
no mean call upon human faculties. A close observer would, however, have
remarked that though Miss Barrington stitched vigorously away at the
background for a fierce tiger with measly spots over him, Polly seemed
oftener to contemplate than continue her handiwork; while Josephine's
looks strayed constantly from the delicate tracery she was following, to
the garden, where the roses blended with the jasmine, and the drooping
honeysuckles hung listlessly over the boughs of the apple-tree.
“If your work wearies you, Fifine,” said Miss Dinah, “you had better
read for us.”
“Oh no, not at all, aunt; I like it immensely. I was only wondering why
one should devise such impossible foliage, when we have the real thing
before us, in all its grace and beauty.”
“Humph!” said the old lady; “the sight of a real tiger would not put me
out of countenance with my own.”
“It certainly ought not, ma'am,” said Polly; while she added, in a faint
whisper, “for there is assuredly no rivalry in the case.”
“Perhaps Miss Dill is not too absorbed in her study of nature, as
applied to needlework, to read out the newspaper.”
“I will do it with pleasure, ma'am. Where shall I begin?”
“Deaths and marriages first, of course, child. Then fashion and
varieties; take the accidents afterwards, and close with anything
remarkable in politics, or any disastrous occurrence in high life.”
Polly obeyed to the letter; once only straying into an animated account
of a run with the Springfield fox-hounds, where three riders out of a
large field came in at the death; when Miss Dinah stopped her abruptly,
saying, “I don't care for the obituary of a fox, young lady. Go on with
something else.”
“Will you have the recent tragedy at Ring's End, ma'am?”
“I know it by heart Is there nothing new in the fashions,--how are
bonnets worn? What's the latest sleeve? What's the color in vogue?”
“A delicate blue, ma'am; a little off the sky, and on the hyacinth.”
“Very becoming to fair people,” said Miss Dinah, with a shake of her
blond ringlets.
“'The Prince's Hussars!' Would you like to hear about _them_, ma'am?”
“By all means.”
“It's a very short paragraph. 'The internal troubles of this unhappy
regiment would seem to be never ending. We last week informed our
readers that a young subaltern of the corps, the son of one of our most
distinguished generals, had thrown up his commission and repaired to
the Continent, to enable him to demand a personal satisfaction from
his commanding officer, and we now learn that the Major in question is
precluded from accepting the gage of battle by something stronger than
military etiquette.'”
“Read it again, child; that vile newspaper slang always puzzles me.”
Polly recited the passage in a clear and distinct voice.
“What do you understand by it, Polly?”
“I take it to mean nothing, madam. One of those stirring pieces of
intelligence which excites curiosity, and are no more expected to be
explained than a bad riddle.”
“It cannot surely be that he shelters himself under his position towards
us? That I conclude is hardly possible!”
Though Miss Barrington said this as a reflection, she addressed herself
almost directly to Josephine.
“As far as I am concerned, aunt,” answered Josephine, promptly, “the
Major may fight the monster of the Drachenfels to-morrow, if he wishes
it.”
“Oh, here is another mystery apparently on the same subject. 'The
Lascar, Lal-Adeen, whom our readers will remember as having figured in a
police-court a few days back, and was remanded till the condition of
his wound--a severe sabre-cut on the scalp--should permit his further
examination, and on the same night made his escape from the hospital,
has once again, and very unexpectedly, turned up at Boulogne-sur-Mer.
His arrival in this country--some say voluntarily, others under a
warrant issued for his apprehension--will probably take place to-day or
to-morrow, and, if report speak truly, be followed by some of the most
singular confessions which the public has heard for a long time back.'
'The Post' contradicts the statement, and declares 'no such person has
ever been examined before the magistrate, if he even have any existence
at all.'”
“And what interest has all this for us?” asked Miss Dinah, sharply.
“You do not forget, ma'am, that this is the same man Major Stapylton was
said to have wounded; and whose escape scandal hinted he had connived
at, and who now 'does not exist.'”
“I declare Miss Dill, I remember no such thing; but it appears to me
that Major Stapylton occupies a very considerable space in your own
thoughts.”
“I fancy Polly likes him, aunt,” said Josephine, with a slight smile.
“Well, I will own he interests me; there is about him a mysterious
something that says, 'I have more in my head and on my heart than you
think of, and more, perhaps, than you could carry if the burden were
yours.'”
“A galley-slave might say the same, Miss Dill.”
“No doubt of it, ma'am; and if there be men who mix in the great world,
and dine at grand houses, with something of the galley-slave on their
conscience, they assuredly impress us with an amount of fear that is
half a homage. One dreads them as he does a tiger, but the terror is
mingled with admiration.”
“This is nonsense, young lady, and baneful nonsense, too, begotten of
French novels and a sickly sentimentality. I hope Fifine despises it as
heartily as I do.” The passionate wrath which she displayed extended to
the materials of her work-basket, and while rolls of worsted were
upset here, needles were thrown there; and at last, pushing her
embroidery-frame rudely away, she arose and left the room.
“Dearest Polly, how could you be so indiscreet! You know, far better
than I do, how little patience she has with a paradox.”
“My sweet Fifine,” said the other, in a low whisper, “I was dying to get
rid of her, and I knew there was only one way of effecting it. You
may remark that whenever she gets into a rage, she rushes out into the
flower-garden, and walks round and round till she's ready to drop. There
she is already; you may gauge her anger by the number of her revolutions
in a minute.”
“But why did you wish her away, Polly?”
“I'll tell you why; that is, there is a charming French word for what
I mean, the verb 'agacer,' all untranslatable as it is. Now there
are moments when a person working in the same room--reading, writing,
looking out of the window--becomes an insupportable infliction. You
reason, and say, 'How absurd, how childish, how ungenerous,' and so
forth. It won't do; for as you look round he is there still, and by his
mere presence keeps up the ferment in your thoughts. You fancy, at last,
that he stands between you and your inner self, a witness that won't let
your own conscience whisper to you, and you come in the end to hate him.
Your dear aunt was on the high-road to this goal, when I bethought me of
my expedient! And now we are all alone, dearest, make me a confession.”
“What is it?”
“You do not like Major Stapylton?”
“No.”
“And you do like somebody else?”
“Perhaps,” said she, slowly, and dividing the syllables as she spoke
them.
“That being the case, and seeing, as you do, that your aunt is entirely
of your own mind, at least as to the man you do not care for, why don't
you declare as much frankly to your grandfather, and break off the
negotiation at once?”
“Just because that dear old grandpapa asked me not to be precipitate,
not to be rash. He did not tell me that I must love Major Stapylton, or
must marry him; but he said, 'If you only knew, Fifine, what a change in
our fortune would come of a change in _your_ feelings; if you could but
imagine, child, how the whole journey of life might be rendered easier,
all because you took the right-hand road instead of the left; if you
could guess these things, and what might follow them--'” She stopped.
“Well, go on.”
“No. I have said all that he said; he kissed my cheek as he got thus
far, and hurried away from the room.”
“And you, like a sweet, obedient child, hastened away to yours; wrote a
farewell, a heart-broken farewell, to Fred Conyers; and solemnly swore
to your own conscience you 'd marry a man you disliked. These are the
sort of sacrifices the world has a high admiration for; but do you know,
Fifine, the world limps a little in its morality sometimes, and is not
one-half the fine creature it thinks itself. For instance, in the midst
of all its enthusiasm for you, it has forgotten that in accepting for
your husband a man you do not love, you are doing a dishonesty; and
that, besides this, you really love another. It is what the French call
the aggravating circumstance.”
“I mean to do nothing of the kind!” broke in Fifine, boldly. “Your
lecture does not address itself to _me_.”
“Do not be angry, Fifine,” said the other, calmly.
“It is rather too hard to be rebuked for the faults one might have, but
has not committed. It's like saying how wet you 'd have been had you
fallen into that pool!”
“Well, it also means, don't fall into the pool!”
“Do you know, Polly,” said Josephine, archly, “I have a sort of
suspicion that you don't dislike this Major yourself! Am I right?”
“I'm not say you were altogether wrong; that is, he interests me, or,
rather, he puzzles me, and it piques my ingenuity to read him, just as
it would to make out a cipher to which I had only one-half the key.”
“Such a feeling as that would never inspire a tender interest, at least,
with _me_.”
“Nor did I say it was, Fifine. I have read in some book of my father's
how certain physicians inoculated themselves with plague, the better
to note the phenomena, and trace the course; and I own I can understand
their zeal, and I 'd risk something to decipher this man.”
“This may be very nice in medicine, Polly, but very bad in morals! At
all events, don't catch the plague for the sake of saving _me?_”
“Oh! I assure you any step I take shall be done in the interests of
science solely; not but that I have a small debt to acquit towards the
gallant Major.”
“You have! What can it possibly be?”
“Well, it was this wise,” said she, with a half-sigh. “We met at
a country-house here, and he paid me certain attentions, made me
compliments on my riding, which I knew to be good, and my singing, which
was just tolerable; said the usual things which mean nothing, and a few
of those more serious ones which are supposed to be more significant;
and then he asked my father's leave to come and visit him, and actually
fixed a day and an hour. And we, poor people, all delighted with the
flattery of such high notice, and thinking of the effect upon our
neighbors so splendid a visitor would produce, made the most magnificent
preparations to receive him,--papa in a black satin waistcoat, mamma in
her lilac ribbons. I myself,--having put the roof on a pigeon-pie,
and given the last finishing touch to a pagoda of ruby jelly,--I, in a
charming figured muslin and a blush rose in my hair, awaited the hour of
attack! And, after all, he never came. No, Fifine, never came! He forgot
us, or he changed his mind, or something else turned up that he liked
better; or--which is just as likely as any of the three--he thought
it would be a charming piece of impertinence to pass off on such small
folk, who presumed to fancy themselves company for him. At all events,
Fifine, we saw him no more. He went his way somewhere, and we were left
lamenting.”
“And you really liked him, Polly?”
“No, of the two, I disliked him; but I wished very much that he might
like _me!_ I saw him very overbearing and very insolent to those
who were certainly his equals, assuming a most offensive superiority
everywhere and to any one, and I thought what an awful humiliation it
would be if so great a personage were to be snubbed by the doctor's
daughter. I wanted to give a lesson which could only be severe if it
came from one humble as myself; but he defeated me, Fifine, and I am
still his debtor! If I did not like him before, you may believe that
I hate him now; and I came off here this morning, in hot haste, for no
other purpose than to set you against him, and induce you to regard him
as I do.”
“There was little need,” said Fifine, calmly; “but here comes my aunt
back again. Make your submission quickly, Polly, or it will be too late
to expect mercy.”
“I 'll do better,” said Polly, rising. “I 'll let my trial go on in my
absence;” and with this she stepped out of the window as Miss Barrington
entered by the door.