=Dale tries His Hand at an Ode.=
Dale's preoccupations with his new friends had thrown on Philip Hume
the necessity of seeking society for himself, if he did not wish to
spend many solitary evenings at Littlehill. The resources of Denborough
were not very great, and his dissipation generally took the form of a
quiet dinner, followed by a rubber of whist, at Mount Pleasant. The
Colonel and he suited one another, and, even if Philip had been less
congenial in temper, the Colonel was often too hard put to it for a
fourth player to be nice in scrutinizing the attractions of anyone
who could be trusted to answer a call and appreciate the strategy of
a long suit. Even with Philip's help the rubber was not a brilliant
one; for Tora only played out of filial duty, and Sir Harry came in to
join because it was better to be with Tora over a whist-table than not
to be with her at all. That he thought so witnessed the intensity of
his devotion, for to play whist seemed to Sir Harry to be going out of
one's way to seek trouble and perplexity of mind.
On the evening of Arthur Angell's arrival the usual party had dined
together and set to work. Things were not going well. At dinner they
had discussed the royal visit, and the Colonel had been disgusted to
find that his daughter, unmindful of her, or rather his, principles,
was eager to see and, if it might be, to speak with "this young
whippersnapper of a Prince." The Colonel could not understand such a
state of feeling, but Tora was firm. All the county would be there in
new frocks; she had ordered a new frock, of which she expected great
things, and she meant to be there in it; it would not do, she added,
for the Duke to think that the Radicals had no pretty girls on their
side. The Colonel impatiently turned to Sir Harry; but Sir Harry agreed
with Tora, and even Philip Hume announced his intention of walking down
High Street to see, not the Prince of course, but the people and the
humors of the day.
"Really, Colonel," he said, "I cannot miss the Mayor."
"Are we going to have a rubber or not?" asked the Colonel with an air
of patient weariness.
They sat down, Sir Harry being his host's partner. Now, Sir Harry was,
and felt himself to be, in high favor, owing to his sound views on
the question of the day, and he was thinking of anything in the world
rather than the fall of the cards. Consequently his play was marked by
somewhat more than its ordinary atrociousness, and the Colonel grew
redder and redder as every scheme he cherished was nipped in the bud by
his partner's blunders. Tora and Philip held all the cards, and their
good fortune covered Tora's deficiency in skill, and made Philip's
sound game seem a brilliant one.
At last the Colonel could bear it no longer. He broke up the party, and
challenged Philip to a game of piquet.
"At any rate, one hasn't a partner at piquet," he said.
Sir Harry smiled, and followed Tora to the drawing room. With such
rewards for bad play, who would play well? He sat down by her and
watched her making spills. Presently he began to make spills too. Tora
looked at him. Sir Harry made a very bad spill indeed, and held it up
with a sigh.
"That's the sort of thing," he said, "I have to light my pipe with at
home!"
"As you've been very good to-night," answered Tora, "I'll give you some
of mine to take with you. Let me show you how to do them for yourself."
Then ensued trivialities which bear happening better than they do
recording--glances and touches and affectations of stupidity on
one side and impatience on the other--till love's ushers, their
part fulfilled, stand by to let their master speak, and the hidden
seriousness, which made the trifles not trifling, leaps to sudden
light. Before her lover's eager rush of words, his glorifying of her,
his self-depreciation, Tora was defenseless, her raillery was gone, and
she murmured nothing but:
"You're _not_ stupid--you're _not_ dull. Oh, how can you!"
Before he set out for home Philip Hume was privileged to hear the
fortunate issue, and to wonder how much happiness two faces can manage
to proclaim. Kindly as the little family party took him into their
confidence, he hastened away, knowing that he had no place there.
Such joys were not for him, he thought, as he walked slowly from the
door, remembering how once he had challenged impossibility, and laid
his love at a girl's feet; and she, too, had for a moment forgotten
impossibility; and they were very happy--for a moment; then they
recollected--or had it recollected for them--that they were victims
of civilization. And hence an end. Philip recalled this incident as
he walked. He had not thought of it for a long time, but the air of
Denborough seemed so full of love and love-making that he spared a
sigh or two for himself. Well born and well educated, he wrung from
the world, by painful labor, some three or four hundred pounds a year.
It was enough if he had not been well born or well educated; but his
advantages turned to disabilities, and he saw youth going or gone, and
the home and the love which had been so confidently assumed as his lot,
that even as a boy he had joked and been joked about them, faded away
from his picture of the future, and he was only kept from a sigh of
self-pity by reminding himself of the ludicrous commonplaceness of his
grievance against fate. He knew men so situated by dozens, and nobody
thought them ill used. No more they were, he supposed; at least, it
seemed nobody's fault, and, in view of sundry other sad things in the
world, not a matter to make a fuss about.
He found Dale in high spirits; for Dale had conceived a benevolent
scheme, by which he was to make two of his friends happy--as happy
as Tora Smith and Harry Fulmer, the news of whom he heard with the
distant interest to which Tora's bygone hostility restricted him.
He and Arthur Angell had dined together, smoked together, and drunk
whisky and water together, and the floodgates of confidence had been
opened; a thing prone to occur under such circumstances, a thing that
seems then very natural, and reserves any appearance of strangeness
for next morning's cold meditations. Dale had chanted Janet's charms,
and Arthur had been emboldened to an antistrophe in praise of Nellie
Fane. It was a revelation to Dale--a delightful revelation. It would be
ideally suitable, and it was his pleasure that the happy issue should
be forwarded by all legitimate means.
"Arthur's going to stay," he said; "and I've written to Nellie to tell
her to come down with her mother."
"Ah!"
"Of course, I've said nothing about Arthur. I've put it on the royal
visit. She'd like to be here for that anyhow; and when she's here,
Arthur must look out for himself."
"Why couldn't he do it in London? They live on the same pair of
stairs," objected Philip.
"Oh, London! who the deuce could make love in London?" asked Dale in
narrow-minded ignorance. "People's faces are always dirty in London."
Philip smiled, but this new plan seemed to him a bad one. It was one
of Dale's graces to be unconscious of most of his triumphs, and it had
evidently never struck him that Nellie's affections would offer any
obstacle to the scheme, or cause her fatally to misinterpret what the
scheme was.
"I don't see," said Philip, "that she is more likely to be captivated
by our young friend here than in London."
"My dear fellow, he's at work there, and so is she. Here they'll have
nothing else to do."
While Dale chattered over his great idea, Philip pondered whether to
interfere or not. He was certain that Nellie had been fond, not of
Arthur Angell, but of Dale himself; he feared she would think her
invitation came from Dale's own heart, not in favor to a friend, and
he suspected the kindness would end in pain. But, on the other hand,
affections change, and there is such a thing as falling back on the
good when the better is out of reach; and, finally, there is a sound
general principle that where it is doubtful whether to hold one's
tongue or not, one's tongue should be held. Philip held his.
He shrugged his shoulders and said:
"If this goes on, a bachelor won't be safe in Denborough. What have you
been doing?" and he pointed at some scribbling which lay on the table.
Dale flushed a little.
"Oh, I've just been trying my hand at that little thing they want me to
do--you know."
"For the Radical meeting?"
"No, no. For the Duke of Mercia's visit."
"Oh! So you're going to do it?"
Dale assumed a candid yet judicial air.
"If I find I can say anything gracious and becoming, without going back
on my principles, Phil, I think I shall. Otherwise not."
"I see, old fellow. Think you will be able?"
"I don't intend to budge an inch from my true position for anybody."
"Don't be too hard on the Duke. He's a young man."
Dale became suspicious that he was being treated with levity; he looked
annoyed, and Philip hastened to add:
"My dear boy, write your poem, and never mind what people tell you
about your principles. Why shouldn't you write some verses to the young
man?"
"That's what I say," replied Dale eagerly. "It doesn't compromise me in
the least. I think you're quite right, Phil."
And he sat down again with a radiant expression.
Philip lit his pipe, and drew his chair near the fire, listening idly
to the light scratchings of the writing and the heavy scratchings of
the erasures.
"You seem to scratch out a lot, Dale," he remarked.
"A thing's no good," said Dale, without turning round, "till you've
scratched it all out twice at least."
"It's a pity, then," said Philip, pulling at his pipe and looking into
the fire, "that we aren't allowed to treat life like that."
His words struck a chord in Dale's memory. He started up, and repeated:
"The moving Finger writes, and having writ
Moves on, nor all your piety nor wit
Can lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all your tears wash out a word of it."
"And yet," said Philip, stretching out a hand to the flickering blaze,
"we go on being pious and wise--some of us; and we go on crying--all of
us."