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 a _maitresse 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 is _called_
“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 these
_stupid_ headaches.”
“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 differed _toto coelo_ as 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 shore _if
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.”
“On _terra 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, _you_ are 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 to _my_ heart 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.”