"Love in her eyes lay hiding,
His time in patience biding."
"Square it with Colquhoun before you go any farther," said Ladds.
Square it with the guardian--speak to the young lady's father--make it
all right with the authorities; what excellent advice to give, and how
easy to follow it up! Who does not look forward with pleasure, or
backward as to an agreeable reminiscence, to that half hour spent in a
confidential talk with dear papa? How calmly critical, how severely
judicial, was his summing up! With what a determined air did he follow
up the trail, elicited in cross-examination, of former sins! With how
keen a scent did he disinter forgotten follies, call attention to
bygone extravagances, or place the finger of censure upon debts which
never ought to have been incurred, and economies which ought to have
been made!
Remember his "finally"--a word which from childhood has been
associated with sweet memories, because it brings the sermon to an
end, but which henceforth will awake in your brain the ghost of that
_mauvais quart d'heure_. In that brief peroration he tore the veil
from the last cherished morsel of self-illusion; he showed you that
the furnishing of a house was a costly business, that he was not going
to do it for you, that servants require an annual income of
considerable extent, that his daughter had been brought up a lady,
that lady's dress is a serious affair, that wedlock in due season
brings babies, and that he was not so rich as he seemed.
Well, perhaps he said "Yes" reluctantly, in spite of drawbacks. Then
you felt that you were regarded by the rest of the family as the means
of preventing dear Annabella from making a brilliant match. That
humbled you for life. Or perhaps he said "No." In that case you went
away sadly and meditated suicide. And whether you got over the fit, or
whether you didn't--though of course you did--the chances were that
Annabella never married at all, and you are still regarded by the
family as the cause of that sweet creature not making the
exceptionally splendid alliance which, but for you, the disturbing
influence, would have been her lot.
However, the thing is necessary, unless people run away, a good old
fashion by which such interviews, together with wedding-breakfasts,
wedding-garments, and wedding-presents were avoided.
Running away is out of fashion. It would have been the worst form
possible in Jack Dunquerque even to propose such a thing to Phillis,
and I am not at all certain that he would ever have made her
understand either the necessity or the romance of the thing. And I am
quite sure that she would never understand that Jack Dunquerque was
asking her to do a wrong thing.
Certainly it was not likely that this young man would proceed further
in the path of irregularity--which leads to repentance--than he had
hitherto done. He had now to confess before the young lady's guardian
something of the part he played.
Looked at dispassionately, and unsoftened by the haze of illusion,
this part had, as he acknowledged with groans, an appearance far from
pleasing to the Christian moralist.
He had taken advantage of the girl's total ignorance to introduce
himself at the house where she was practically alone for the whole
day; he found her like a child in the absence of the reserve which
girls are trained to; he stepped at once into the position of a
confidential friend; he took her about for walks and drives, a thing
which might have compromised her seriously; he allowed Joseph Jagenal,
without, it is true, stating it in so many words, to believe him an
old friend of Phillis's; he followed her to Twickenham and installed
himself at Mrs. L'Estrange's as an _ami de famille_; he had done
so much to make the girl's life bright and happy, he was so dear to
her, that he felt there was but one step to be taken to pass from a
brother to a lover.
It was a black record to look at, and it was poor consolation to think
that any other man would have done the same.
Jack Dunquerque, like Phillis herself, was changed within a month.
Somehow the fun and carelessness which struck Gilead Beck as so
remarkable in a man of five-and-twenty were a good deal damped. For
the first time in his life he was serious; for the first time he had a
serious and definite object before him. He was perfectly serious in an
unbounded love for Phillis. Day by day the sweet beauty of the girl,
her grace, her simple faith, her child-like affection, sank into his
heart and softened him. Day after day, as he rowed along the meadows
of the Thames, or lazied under the hanging willows by the shore, or
sat with her in the garden, or rode along the leafy roads by her side,
the sincerity of her nature, as clear and cloudless as the blue depths
of heaven; its purity, like the bright water that leaps and bubbles
and flows beneath the shade of Lebanon; its perfect truthfulness, like
the midday sunshine in June; the innocence with which, even as another
Eve, she bared her very soul for him to read--these things, when he
thought of them, brought the unaccustomed tears to his eyes, and made
his spirit rise and bound within him as to unheard of heights. For
love, to an honest man, is like Nature to a poet or colour to an
artist--it makes him see great depths, and gives him, if only for once
in his life, a Pisgah view of a Land far, far holier, a life far, far
higher, a condition far, far sweeter and nobler than anything in this
world can give us--except the love of a good woman. In such a vision
the ordinary course of our life is suspended; we move on air; we see
men as trees walking, and regard them not. Happy the man who once in
his life has been so lifted out of the present, and knows not
afterwards whether he was in the flesh or out of the flesh.
Jack, with the influence of this great passion upon him, was
transformed. Fortunately for us this emotion had its ebb and flow.
Else that great dinner to Literature had never come off. But at all
times he was under its sobering influence. And it was in a penitent
and humble mood that he sought Lawrence Colquhoun, in the hope of
"squaring it" with him as Ladds advised. Good fellow, Tommy; none
better; but wanting in the higher delicacy. Somehow the common words
and phrases of every-day use applied to Phillis jarred upon him. After
all, one feels a difficulty in offering a princess the change for a
shilling in coppers. If I had to do it, I should fall back on a
draught upon the Cheque Bank.
Lawrence was full of his own annoyances--most of us always are, and it
is one of the less understood ills of life that one can never get,
even for five minutes, a Monopoly of Complaint. But he listened
patiently while Jack--Jack of the Rueful Countenance--poured out his
tale of repentance, woe, and prayer.
"You see," he said, winding up, "I never thought what it would come
to. I dropped into it by accident and then--then----"
"When people come to flirt they stay to spoon," said Lawrence. "In
other words, my dear fellow, you are in love. Ah!"
Jack wondered what was meant by the interjection. In all the list of
interjections given by Lindley Murray, or the new light Dr. Morris,
such as Pish! Phaw! Alas! Humph! and the rest which are in everybody's
mouth, there is none which blows with such an uncertain sound as this.
Impossible to tell whether it means encouragement, sympathy, or cold
distrust.
"Ah!" said Lawrence. "Sit down and be comfortable, Jack. When one is
really worried, nothing like a perfect chair. Take my own. Now, then,
let us talk it over."
"It doesn't look well," thought Jack.
"Always face the situation," said Lawrence (he had got an uncommonly
awkward situation of his own to face, and it was a little relief to
turn to some one else's). "Nothing done by blinking facts. Here we
are. Young lady of eighteen or so--just released from a convent;
ignorant of the world; pretty; attractive ways; rich, as girls go--on
the one hand. On the other, you: good-looking, as my cousin Agatha
L'Estrange says, though I can't see it; of a cheerful disposition--_aptus
ludere_, fit to play, _cum puellâ_, all the day----"
"Don't chaff, Colquhoun; it's too serious."
But Colquhoun went on:
"An inflammable young man. Well, with any other girl the danger would
have been seen at once; poor Phillis is so innocent that she is
supposed to be quite safe. So you go on calling. My cousin Agatha
writes me word that she has been looking for the light of love, as she
calls it, in Phillis's eyes; and it isn't there. She is a
sentimentalist, and therefore silly. Why didn't she look in your eyes,
Jack? That would have been very much more to the purpose."
"She has, now. I told her yesterday that I--I--loved Phillis."
"Did she ask you to take the young lady's hand and a blessing at once?
Come, Jack, look at the thing sensibly. There are two or three very
strong reasons why it can't be."
"Why it can't be!" echoed Jack dolefully.
"First, the girl hasn't come out. Now, I ask you, would it not be
simply sinful not to give her a fair run? In any case you could not be
engaged till after she has had one season. Then her father, who did
not forget that he was grandson of a Peer, wanted his daughter to make
a good match, and always spoke of the fortune he was to leave her as a
guarantee that she would marry well. He never thought he was going to
die, of course; but all events I know so much of his wishes. Lastly,
my dear Jack Dunquerque, you are the best fellow in the world, but,
you know--but----"
"But I am not Lord Isleworth."
"That is just it. You are his lordship's younger brother, with one or
two between you and the title. Now don't you see? Need we talk about
it any more?"
"I suppose Phil--I mean Miss Fleming--will be allowed to choose for
herself. You are not going to make her marry a man because he happens
to have a title and an estate, and offers himself?"
"I suppose," said Lawrence, laughing, "that I am going to lock Phillis
up in a tower until the right man comes. No, no, Jack; there shall be
no compulsion. If she sets her heart upon marrying you--she is a
downright young lady--why, she must do it; but after she has had her
run among the ball-rooms, not before. Let her take a look round first;
there will be other Jack Dunquerques ready to look at, be sure of
that. Perhaps she will think them fairer to outward view than you. If
she does, you will have to give her up in the end, you know."
"I have said no word of love to her, Colquhoun, I give you my honour,"
said Jack hotly, "I don't think she would understand it if I did."
"I am glad of that at least."
"If I am to give her up and go away, I dare say," the poor youth went
on, with a little choking in his throat, "that she will regret me at
first and for a day or two. But she will get over that; and--as you
say, there are plenty of fellows in the world better than
myself--and----"
"My dear Jack, there will be no going away. You tell me you have not
told her all the effect that her _beaux yeux_ have produced upon
you. Well, then--and there has been nothing to compromise her at all?"
"Nothing; that is, once we went to the Tower in a hansom cab."
"Oh, that is all, is it? Jack Dunquerque--Jack Dunquerque!"
"And we have been up the river a good many times in a boat."
"I see. The river is pleasant at this time of the year."
"And we have been riding together a good deal. Phil rides very well,
you know."
"Does she? It seems to me, Jack, that my cousin Agatha is a fool, and
that you have been having rather a high time in consequence. Surely
you can't complain if I ask you to consider the innings over for the
present?"
"No; I can't complain, if one may hope----"
"Let us hope nothing. Sufficient for the day. He who hopes nothing
gets everything. Come out of it at once, Jack, before you get hit too
hard."
"I think no one was ever hit so hard before," said Jack. "Colquhoun,
you don't know your ward. It is impossible for any one to be with her
without falling in love with her. She is----" Here he stopped, because
he could not go any farther. Anybody who did not know the manly nature
of Jack Dunquerque might have thought he was stopped by emotion.
"We all get the fever some time or other. But we worry through. Look
at me, Jack. I am forty, and, as you see, a comparatively hale and
hearty man, despite my years. It doesn't shorten life, that kind of
fever; it doesn't take away appetite; it doesn't interfere with your
powers of enjoyment. There is even a luxury about it. You can't
remember Geraldine Arundale, now Lady Newladegge, when she came out,
of course. You were getting ready for Eton about that time. Well, she
and I carried on for a whole season. People talked. Then she got
engaged to her present husband, after seeing him twice. She wanted a
Title, you see. I was very bad, that journey; and I remember that
Agatha, who was in my confidence, had a hot time of it over the
faithlessness of shallow hearts. But I got over the attack, and I have
not been dangerously ill, so to speak since. That is, I have made a
contemptible ass of myself on several occasions, and I dare say I
shall go on making an ass of myself as long as I live. Because the
older you grow, somehow, the sweeter do the flowers smell."
Jack only groaned. It really is no kind of consolation to tell a
suffering man that you have gone through it yourself. Gilead Beck told
me once of a man who lived in one of the Southern States of America:
he was a mild, and placid creature, inoffensive as a canary bird,
quiet as a mongoose, and much esteemed for his unusual meekness. This
harmless being once got ear-ache--very bad ear-ache. Boyhood's
ear-aches are awful things to remember; but those of manhood, when
they do come, which is seldom, are the Devil. To him in agony came a
friend, who sat down beside him, like Eliphaz the Temanite, and
sighed. This the harmless being who had the ear-ache put up with,
though it was irritating. Presently the friend began to relate how he
once had the ear-ache himself. Then the harmless creature rose up
suddenly, and, seizing an adjacent chunk of wood, gave that friend a
token of friendship on the head with such effect that he ceased the
telling of that and all other stories, and has remained quite dumb
ever since. The jury acquitted that inoffensive and meek creature, who
wept when the ear-ache was gone, and often laid flowers on the grave
of his departed friend.
Jack did not heave chunks of wood at Colquhoun. He only looked at him
with ineffable contempt.
"Lady Newladegge! why, she's five-and-thirty! and she's fat!"
"She wasn't always five-and-thirty, nor was she always fat. On the
contrary, when she was twenty, and I was in love with her, she was
slender, and, if one may so speak of a Peeress, she was cuddlesome!"
"Cuddlesome!" Jack cried, his deepest feelings outraged. "Good
Heavens! to think of comparing Phil with a woman who was once
cuddlesome!"
Lawrence Colquhoun laughed.
"In fifteen years, or thereabouts, perhaps you will take much the same
view of things as I do. Meantime Jack, let things remain as they are.
You shall have a fair chance with the rest; and you must remember that
you have had a much better chance than anybody else, because you have
had the first running. Leave off going to Twickenham quite so much;
but don't stop going altogether, or Phillis may be led to suspect.
Can't you contrive to slack off by degrees?"
Jack breathed a little more freely. The house, then, was not shut to
him.
"The young lady will have her first season next year. I don't say I
hope she will marry anybody else, Jack, but I am bound to give her the
chance. As soon as she really understands a little more of life she
will find out for herself what is best for her, perhaps. Now we've
talked enough about it."
Jack Dunquerque went away sorrowful. He expected some such result of
this endeavour to "square" it with Colquhoun, but yet he was
disappointed.
"Hang it all, Jack," said Ladds, "what can you want more? You are told
to wait a year. No one will step in between you and the young lady
till she comes out. You are not told to discontinue your visits--only
not to go too often, and not to compromise her. What more does the man
want?"
"You are a very good fellow, Tommy," sighed the lover; "a very good
fellow in the main. But you see, you don't know Phil. Let me call her
Phil to you, old man. There's not another man in the world that I
_could_ talk about her to--not one, by Jove; it would seem a
desecration."
"Go on, Jack--talk away; and I'll give you good advice."
He did talk away! What says Solomon? "Ointment and perfume rejoice the
soul; so doth the sweetness of a man's friend by hearty counsel." The
Wise Man might have expressed himself more clearly, but his meaning
can be made out.
Meantime Lawrence Colquhoun, pulling himself together after Jack went
away, remembered that he had not once gone near his ward since he
drove her to Twickenham.
"It is too bad," said Conscience; "a whole month."
"It is all that woman's fault," he pleaded. "I have been dangling
about, in obedience to her, like a fool."
"Like a fool!" echoed Conscience.
He went that very day, and was easily persuaded to stay and dine with
the two ladies.
He said very little, but Agatha observed him watching his ward
closely.
After dinner she got a chance.
It was a pleasant evening, early in June. They had strawberries on a
garden table. Phillis presently grew tired of sitting under the shade,
and strolled down to the river-side, where she sat on the grass and
threw biscuits to the swans.
"What do you think, Lawrence?"
He was watching her in silence.
"I don't understand it, Agatha. What have you done to her?"
"Nothing. Are you pleased?"
"You are a witch; I believe you must have a familiar somewhere. She is
wonderful--wonderful!"
"Is she a ward to be proud of and to love, Lawrence? Is she the
sweetest and prettiest girl you ever saw? My dear cousin, I declare to
you that I think her faultless. At least, her very faults are
attractive. She is impetuous and self-willed, but she is full of
sympathy. And that seems to have grown up in her altogether in the
last few months."
"Her manner appears to be more perfect than anything I have ever
seen."
"It is because she has no self-consciousness. She is like a child
still, my dear Phillis, so far."
"I wonder if it is because she cannot read? Why should we not prohibit
the whole sex from learning to read?"
"Nonsense, Lawrence. What would the novelists do? Besides, she is
learning to read fast. I put her this morning into the Third Lesson
Book--two syllables. And it is not as if she were ignorant, because
she knows a great deal."
"Then why is it?"
"I think her sweet nature has something to do with it; and, besides,
she has been shielded from many bad influences. We send girls to
school, and--and--well, Lawrence, we cannot all be angels, any more
than men. If girls learn about love, and establishments, and
flirtations, and the rest of it, why, they naturally want their share
of these good things. Then they get self-conscious."
"What about Jack Dunquerque?" asked Lawrence abruptly. "He has been to
me about her."
Agatha blushed as prettily as any self-conscious young girl.
"He loves Phillis," she said; "but Phillis only regards him as a
brother."
"Agatha, you are no wiser than little Red Riding Hood. Jack Dunquerque
is a wolf."
"I am sure he is a most honourable, good young man."
"As for good, goodness knows. Honourable no doubt, and a wolf. You are
a matchmaker, you bad, bad woman. I believe you want him to marry that
young Princess over there."
"And what did you tell poor Jack?"
"Told him to wait. Acted the stern guardian. Won't have an engagement.
Must let Phillis have her run. Mustn't come here perpetually trying to
gobble up my dainty heiress. Think upon that now, Cousin Agatha."
"She could not marry into a better family."
"Very true. The Dunquerques had an Ark of their own, I believe, at the
Deluge. But then Jack is not Lord Isleworth; and he isn't ambitious,
and he isn't clever, and he isn't rich."
"Go on, Lawrence; it is charming to see you in a new
character--Lawrence the Prudent!"
"Charmed to charm _la belle cousine_. He is in love, and he is hit as
hard as any man I ever saw. But Phillis shall not be snapped up in
this hasty and inconsiderate manner. There are lots of better _partis_
in the field."
Then Phillis came back, dangling her hat by its ribbons. The setting
sun made a glory of her hair, lit up the splendour of her eyes, and
made a clear outline of her delicate features and tall shapely figure.
"Come and sit by me, Phillis," said her guardian. "I have neglected
you. Agatha will tell you that I am a worthless youth of forty, who
neglects all his duties. You are so much improved, my child, that I
hardly knew you. Prettier and--and--everything. How goes on the
education?"
"Reading and writing," said Phillis, "do not make education. Really,
Lawrence, you ought to know better. A year or two with Mr. Dyson would
have done you much good. I am in words of two syllables; and Agatha
thinks I am getting on very nicely. I am in despair about my painting
since we have been to picture-galleries. And to think how conceited I
was once over it! But I _can_ draw, Lawrence; I shall not give up my
drawing."
"And you liked your galleries?"
"Some of them. The Academy was tiring. Why don't they put all the
portraits in one room together, so that we need not waste time over
them?"
"What did you look at?"
"I looked at what all the other people pressed to see, first of all.
There was a picture of Waterloo, with the French and English crowded
together so that they could shake hands. It was drawn beautifully; but
somehow it made me feel as if War was a little thing. Mr. Dyson used
to say that women take the grandeur and strength out of Art. Then
there was a brown man with a sling on a platform. The platform rested
on stalks of corn; and if the man were to throw the stone he would
topple over, and tumble off his platform. And there was another one,
of a row of women going to be sold for slaves; a curious picture, and
beautifully painted, but I did not like it."
"What did you like?"
"I liked some that told their own story, and made me think. There was
a picture of a moor--take me to see a moor, Lawrence--with a windy
sky, and a wooden fence, and a light upon. Oh, I liked all the
landscapes. I think our artists feel trees and sunshine. But what is
my opinion worth?"
"Come with me to-morrow, Phillis; we will go through the pictures
together, and you shall teach me what to like. Your opinion worth?
Why, child, all the opinions of all the critics together are not worth
yours."