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 make
_such_ fools 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 those _soi-disant_ accomplishments 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). _“Then_ what right had she to come here and
try to turn me inside out?”