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Hard Cash

by Charles Reade · English · Gutenberg #3067 · 1,471,770 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Hard Cash

Author: Charles Reade


        
Release date: February 1, 2002 [eBook #3067]
                Most recently updated: March 5, 2018

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3067

Credits: Produced by James Rusk and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HARD CASH ***




Produced by James Rusk







HARD CASH

By Charles Reade



     [Transcriber's Note: Italics are indicated by underscores.
     The pound sign is indicated by L. No attempt has been made
     to transcribe Greek text or sheet music. Accent marks in
     foreign words are ignored. Two chapters named Chapter XLI.]




PREFACE

“HARD CASH,” like “The Cloister and the Hearth,” is a matter-of-fact
Romance--that is, a fiction built on truths; and these truths have
been gathered by long, severe, systematic labour, from a multitude
of volumes, pamphlets, journals, reports, blue-books, manuscript
narratives, letters, and living people, whom I have sought out,
examined, and cross-examined, to get at the truth on each main topic I
have striven to handle.


The madhouse scenes have been picked out by certain disinterested
gentlemen, who keep private asylums, and periodicals to puff them;
and have been met with bold denials of public facts, and with timid
personalities, and a little easy cant about Sensation* Novelists; but
in reality those passages have been written on the same system as the
nautical, legal, and other scenes: the best evidence has been ransacked;
and a large portion of this evidence I shall be happy to show at my
house to any brother writer who is disinterested, and really cares
enough for truth and humanity to walk or ride a mile in pursuit of them.

CHARLES READE.

6 BOLTON ROW, MAYFAIR,

December 5, 1868.


     * This slang term is not quite accurate as applied to me.
     Without sensation there can be no interest: but my plan is
     to mix a little character and a little philosophy with the
     sensational element.




HARD CASH




PROLOGUE

IN a snowy villa, with a sloping lawn, just outside the great commercial
seaport, Barkington, there lived a few years ago a happy family. A
lady, middle-aged, but still charming; two young friends of hers; and a
periodical visitor.

The lady was Mrs. Dodd; her occasional visitor was her husband; her
friends were her son Edward, aged twenty, and her daughter Julia,
nineteen, the fruit of a misalliance.

Mrs. Dodd was originally Miss Fountain, a young lady well born,
high bred, and a denizen of the fashionable world. Under a strange
concurrence of circumstances she coolly married the captain of an East
Indiaman. The deed done, and with her eyes open, for she was not,
to say, in love with him, she took a judicious line--and kept it: no
hankering after Mayfair, no talking about “Lord this” and “Lady that,”
 to commercial gentlewomen; no amphibiousness. She accepted her place
in society, reserving the right to embellish it with the graces she had
gathered in a higher sphere. In her home, and in her person, she
was little less elegant than a countess; yet nothing more than a
merchant-captain's wife; and she reared that commander's children in a
suburban villa, with the manners which adorn a palace. When they happen
to be there. She had a bugbear; Slang. Could not endure the smart
technicalities current; their multitude did not overpower her distaste;
she called them “jargon”--“slang” was too coarse a word for her to apply
to slang: she excluded many a good “racy idiom” along with the real
offenders; and monosyllables in general ran some risk of' having to show
their passports. If this was pedantry, it went no further; she was open,
free, and youthful with her young pupils; and had the art to put herself
on their level: often, when they were quite young, she would feign
infantine ignorance, in order to hunt trite truth in couples with them,
and detect, by joint experiment, that rainbows cannot, or else will
not, be walked into, nor Jack-o'-lantern be gathered like a cowslip; and
that, dissect we the vocal dog--whose hair is so like a lamb's--never so
skilfully, no fragment of palpable bark, no sediment of tangible squeak,
remains inside him to bless the inquisitive little operator, &c., &c.
When they advanced from these elementary branches to Languages, History,
Tapestry, and “What Not,” she managed still to keep by their side
learning with them, not just hearing them lessons down from the top of
a high tower of maternity. She never checked their curiosity, but made
herself share it; never gave them, as so many parents do, a white-lying
answer; wooed their affections with subtle though innocent art, thawed
their reserve, obtained their love, and retained their respect. Briefly,
a female Chesterfield; her husband's lover after marriage, though not
before; and the mild monitress the elder sister, the favourite companion
and bosom friend of both her children.

They were remarkably dissimilar; and perhaps I may be allowed to preface
the narrative of their adventures by a delineation; as in country
churches an individual pipes the keynote, and the tune comes raging
after.

Edward, then, had a great calm eye, that was always looking folk full
in the face, mildly; his countenance comely and manly, but no more; too
square for Apollo; but sufficed for John Bull. His figure it was that
charmed the curious observer of male beauty. He was five feet ten;
had square shoulders, a deep chest, masculine flank, small foot, high
instep. To crown all this, a head, overflowed by ripples of dark brown
hair, sat with heroic grace upon his solid white throat, like some
glossy falcon new lighted on a Parian column.

This young gentleman had decided qualities, positive and negative. He
could walk up to a five-barred gate and clear it, alighting on the other
side like a fallen feather; could row all day, and then dance all night;
could fling a cricket ball a hundred and six yards; had a lathe and
a tool-box, and would make you in a trice a chair, a table, a doll,
a nutcracker, or any other moveable, useful, or the very reverse. And
could not learn his lessons, to save his life.

His sister Julia was not so easy to describe. Her figure was tall,
lithe, and serpentine; her hair the colour of a horse-chestnut fresh
from its pod; her ears tiny and shell-like, her eyelashes long and
silky; her mouth small when grave, large when smiling; her eyes pure
hazel by day, and tinged with a little violet by night. But in jotting
down these details, true as they are, I seem to myself to be painting
fire, with a little snow and saffron mixed on a marble pallet. There is
a beauty too spiritual to be chained in a string of items; and Julia's
fair features were but the china vessel that brimmed over with the
higher loveliness of her soul. Her essential charm was, what shall I
say? Transparence.

     “You would have said her very body thought.”

Modesty, Intelligence, and, above all, Enthusiasm, shone through her,
and out of her, and made her an airy, fiery, household joy. Briefly, an
incarnate sunbeam.

This one could learn her lessons with unreasonable rapidity, and until
Edward went to Eton, would insist upon learning his into the bargain,
partly with the fond notion of coaxing him on, as the company of a swift
horse incites a slow one; partly because she was determined to share his
every trouble, if she could not remove it. A little choleric, and indeed
downright prone to that more generous indignation which fires at the
wrongs of others. When heated with emotion, or sentiment, she lowered
her voice, instead of raising it like the rest of us. She called her
mother “Lady Placid,” and her brother “Sir Imperturbable.” And so much
for outlines.

Mrs. Dodd laid aside her personal ambition with her maiden name; but she
looked high for her children. Perhaps she was all the more ambitious for
them, that they had no rival aspirant in Mrs. Dodd. She educated Julia
herself from first to last: but with true feminine distrust of her power
to mould a lordling of creation, she sent Edward to Eton, at nine. This
was slackening her tortoise; for at Eton is no female master, to coax
dry knowledge into a slow head. However, he made good progress in two
branches--aquatics and cricket.

After Eton came the choice of a profession. His mother recognised but
four; and these her discreet ambition speedily sifted down to two. For
military heroes are shot now and then, however pacific the century; and
naval ones drowned. She would never expose her Edward to this class
of accidents. Glory by all means; glory by the pail; but safe glory,
please; or she would none of it. Remained the church and the bar: and,
within these reasonable limits, she left her dear boy free as air;
and not even hurried--there was plenty of time to choose: he must pass
through the university to either. This last essential had been settled
about a twelvemonth, and the very day for his going to Oxford was at
hand, when one morning Mr. Edward formally cleared his throat: it was
an unusual act, and drew the ladies' eyes upon him. He followed the
solemnity up by delivering calmly and ponderously a connected discourse,
which astonished them by its length and purport. “Mamma, dear, let us
look the thing in the face.” (This was his favourite expression, as
well as habit.) “I have been thinking it quietly over for the last six
months. Why send me to the university? I shall be out of place there.
It will cost you a lot of money, and no good. Now, you take a fool's
advice; don't you waste your money and papa's, sending a dull fellow
like me to Oxford. I did bad enough at _Eton._ Make me an engineer, or
something. If you were not so fond of me, and I of you, I'd say send me
to Canada, with a pickaxe; you know I have got no headpiece.”

Mrs. Dodd had sat aghast, casting Edward deprecating looks at the close
of each ponderous sentence, but too polite to interrupt a soul, even a
son talking nonsense. She now assured him she could afford very well to
send him to Oxford, and begged leave to remind him that he was too good
and too sensible to run up bills there, like the young men who did
not really love their parents. “Then, as for learning, why, we must be
reasonable in our turn. Do the best you can, love. We know you have no
great turn for the classics; we do not expect you to take high honours
like young Mr. Hardie; besides, that might make your head ache: he
has sad headaches, his sister told Julia. But, my dear, an university
education is indispensable Do but see how the signs of it follow a
gentleman through life, to say nothing of the valuable acquaintances and
lasting friendships he makes there: even those few distinguished persons
who have risen in the would without it, have openly regretted the want,
and have sent their children: and _that_ says volumes to me.”

“Why, Edward, it is the hall-mark of a gentleman,” said Julia eagerly.
Mrs. Dodd caught a flash of her daughter: “And my silver shall never be
without it,” said she warmly. She added presently, in her usual placid
tone, “I beg your pardon, my dears, I ought to have said my gold.” With
this she kissed Edward tenderly on the brow, and drew an embrace and a
little grunt of resignation from him. “Take the dear boy and show him
our purchases, love!” said Mrs. Dodd, with a little gentle accent of
half reproach, scarce perceptible to a male ear.

“Oh, yes,” and Julia rose and tripped to the door. There she stood
a moment, half turned, with arching neck, colouring with innocent
pleasure. “Come, darling. Oh, you good-for-nothing thing.”

The pair found a little room hard by, paved with china, crockery, glass,
baths, kettles, &c.

“There, sir. Look them in the face; and us, if you can.”

“Well, you know, I had no idea you had been and bought a cart-load of
things for Oxford.” His eye brightened; he whipped out a two-foot rule,
and began to calculate the cubic contents. “I'll turn to and make the
cases, Ju.”


The ladies had their way; the cases were made and despatched; and one
morning the Bus came for Edward, and stopped at the gate of Albion
Villa. At this sight mother and daughter both turned their heads quickly
away by one independent impulse, and set a bad example. Apparently
neither of them had calculated on this paltry little detail; they were
game for theoretical departures; to impalpable universities: and “an
air-drawn Bus, a Bus of the mind,” would not have dejected for a moment
their lofty Spartan souls on glory bent; safe glory. But here was a Bus
of wood, and Edward going bodily away inside it. The victim kissed them,
threw up his portmanteau and bag, and departed serene as Italian skies;
the victors watched the pitiless Bus quite out of sight; then went up
to his bedroom, all disordered by packing, and, on the very face of it,
vacant; and sat down on his little bed intertwining and weeping.

Edward was received at Exeter College, as young gentlemen are received
at college; and nowhere else, I hope, for the credit of Christendom.
They showed him a hole in the roof, and called it an “Attic;” grim
pleasantry! being a puncture in the modern Athens. They inserted him;
told him what hour at the top of the morning he must be in chapel;
and left him to find out his other ills. His cases were welcomed like
Christians, by the whole staircase. These undergraduates abused one
another's crockery as their own: the joint stock of breakables had just
dwindled very low, and Mrs. Dodd's bountiful contribution was a godsend.

The new comer soon found that his views of a learned university had been
narrow. Out of place in it? why, he could not have taken his wares to a
better market; the modern Athens, like the ancient, cultivates muscle
as well as mind. The captain of the university eleven saw a cricket-ball
thrown all across the ground; he instantly sent a professional bowler
to find out who that was; through the same ambassador the thrower was
invited to play on club days; and proving himself an infallible catch
and long-stop, a mighty thrower, a swift runner, and a steady, though
not very brilliant bat, he was, after one or two repulses, actually
adopted into the university eleven. He communicated this ray of glory
by letter to his mother and sister with genuine delight, coldly and
clumsily expressed; they replied with feigned and fluent rapture.
Advancing steadily in that line of academic study towards which his
genius lay, he won a hurdle race, and sent home a little silver hurdle;
and soon after brought a pewter pot, with a Latin inscription recording
the victory at “Fives” of Edward Dodd: but not too arrogantly; for in
the centre of the pot was this device, “The Lord Is My Illumination.”
 The Curate of Sandford, who pulled number six in the Exeter boat, left
Sandford for Witney: on this he felt he could no longer do his college
justice by water, and his parish by land, nor escape the charge of
pluralism, preaching at Witney and rowing at Oxford. He fluctuated,
sighed, kept his Witney, and laid down his oar. Then Edward was solemnly
weighed in his jersey and flannel trousers, and proving only eleven
stone eight, whereas he had been ungenerously suspected of twelve
stone,* was elected to the vacant oar by acclamation. He was a picture
in a boat; and, “Oh!!! well pulled, six!!” was a hearty ejaculation
constantly hurled at him from the bank by many men of other colleges,
and even by the more genial among the cads, as the Exeter glided at ease
down the river, or shot up it in a race.

     *There was at this time a prejudice against weight, which
     has yielded to experience

He was now as much talked of in the university as any man of his
college, except one. Singularly enough that one was his townsman; but
no friend of his; he was much Edward's senior in standing, though not in
age; and this is a barrier the junior must not step over--without direct
encouragement--at Oxford. Moreover, the college was a large one, and
some of “the sets” very exclusive: young Hardie was Doge of a studious
clique; and careful to make it understood that he was a reading man who
boated and cricketed, to avoid the fatigue of lounging; not a boatman or
cricketer who strayed into Aristotle in the intervals of Perspiration.

His public running since he left Harrow was as follows: the prize poem
in his fourth term; the sculls in his sixth; the Ireland scholarship
in his eighth (he pulled second for it the year before); Stroke of the
Exeter in his tenth; and reckoned sure of a first class to consummate
his twofold career.

To this young Apollo, crowned with variegated laurel, Edward looked up
from a distance. The brilliant creature never bestowed a word on him by
land; and by water only such observations as the following: “Time, Six!”
 “Well pulled, Six!” “Very well pulled, Six!” Except, by-the-bye, one
race; when he swore at him like a trooper for not being quicker at
starting. The excitement of nearly being bumped by Brasenose in the
first hundred yards was an excuse. However, Hardie apologised as they
were dressing in the barge after the race; but the apology was so stiff,
it did not pave the way to an acquaintance.

Young Hardie, rising twenty-one, thought nothing human worthy of
reverence, but Intellect. Invited to dinner, on the same day, with the
Emperor of Russia, and with Voltaire, and with meek St. John, he would
certainly have told the coachman to put him down at Voltaire.

His quick eye detected Edward's character; but was not attracted by it:
says he to one of his adherents, “What a good-natured spoon that Dodd
is; Phoebus, what a name!” Edward, on the other hand, praised this
brilliant in all his letters, and recorded his triumphs and such of his
witty sayings as leaked through his own set, to reinvigorate mankind.
This roused Julia's ire. It smouldered through three letters; but burst
out when there was no letter; but Mrs. Dodd, meaning, Heaven knows, no
harm, happened to say meekly, _a propos_ of Edward, “You know, love,
we cannot all be young Hardies.” “No, and thank Heaven,” said Julia
defiantly. “Yes, mamma,” she continued, in answer to Mrs. Dodd's
eyebrow, which had curved; “your mild glance reads my soul; I detest
that boy.” Mrs. Dodd smiled: “Are you sure you know what the word
'detest' means? And what has young Mr. Hardie done, that you should
bestow so violent a sentiment on him?”

“Mamma, I am Edward's sister,” was the tragic reply; then, kicking off
the buskin pretty nimbly, “There! he beats our boy at everything, and
ours sits quietly down and admires him for it: oh! how can a man let
anybody or anything beat him! I wouldn't; without a desperate struggle.”
 She clenched her white teeth and imagined the struggle. To be sure, she
owned she had never seen this Mr. Hardie; but after all it was only Jane
Hardie's brother, as Edward was hers; “And would I sit down and let Jane
beat me at Things? Never! never! never! I couldn't.”

“Your friend to the death, dear; was not that your expression?”

“Oh, that was a slip of the tongue, dear mamma; I was off my guard. I
generally am, by the way. But now I am on it, and propose an amendment.
Now I second it. Now I carry it.”

“And now let me hear it.”

“She is my friend till death--or Eclipse; and that means until she
eclipses me, of course.” But she added softly, and with sudden gravity:
“Ah! Jane Hardie has a fault which will always prevent her from
eclipsing your humble servant in this wicked world.”

“What is that?”

“She is too good. Much.”

“Par exemple?”

“Too religious.”

“Oh, that is another matter.”

“For shame, mamma! I am glad to hear it: for I scorn a life of
frivolity; but then, again, I should not like to give up everything, you
know.” Mrs. Dodd looked a little staggered, too, at so vast a scheme
of capitulation. But “everything” was soon explained to mean balls,
concerts, dinner-parties in general, tea-parties without exposition of
Scripture, races, and operas, cards, charades, and whatever else amuses
society without perceptibly sanctifying it. All these, by Julia's
account, Miss Hardie had renounced, and was now denouncing (with the
young the latter verb treads on the very heels of the former). “And, you
know, she is a district visitor.”

This climax delivered, Julia stopped short, and awaited the result.

Mrs. Dodd heard it all with quiet disapproval and cool incredulity.
She had seen so many young ladies healed of many young enthusiasms by
a wedding ring. But, while she was searching diligently in her mine
of ladylike English--mine with plenty of water in it, begging her
pardon--for expressions to convey inoffensively, and roundabout, her
conviction that Miss Hardie was a little, furious simpleton, the post
came and swept the subject away in a moment.

Two letters; one from Calcutta, one from Oxford.

They came quietly in upon one salver, and were opened and read with
pleasurable interest, but without surprise, or misgiving; and without
the slightest foretaste of their grave amid singular consequences.

Rivers deep and broad start from such little springs.


David's letter was of unusual length for him. The main topics were,
first, the date and manner of his return home. His ship, a very old one,
had been condemned in port: and he was to sail a fine new teak-built
vessel, the _Agra,_ as far as the Cape; where her captain, just
recovered from a severe illness, would come on board, and convey her
and him to England. In future, Dodd was to command one of the Company's
large steamers to Alexandria and back.

“It is rather a come-down for a sailor, to go straight ahead like a
wheelbarrow in all weathers with a steam-pot and a crew of coalheavers.
But then I shall not be parted from my sweetheart such long dreary
spells as I have been thus twenty years, my dear love: so is it for me
to complain?”

The second topic was pecuniary; the transfer of their savings from
India, where interest was higher than at home, but the capital not so
secure.

And the third was ardent and tender expressions of affection for
the wife and children he adored. These effusions of the heart had no
separate place, except in my somewhat arbitrary analysis of the honest
sailor's letter; they were the under current. Mrs. Dodd read part of it
out to Julia; in fact all but the money matter: that concerned the heads
of the family more immediately; and Cash was a topic her daughter did
not understand, nor care about. And when Mrs. Dodd had read it with
glistening eyes, she kissed it tenderly, and read it all over again
to herself, and then put it into her bosom as naively as a milkmaid in
love.

Edward's letter was short enough, and Mrs. Dodd allowed Julia to read
it to her, which she did with panting breath, and glowing cheeks, and a
running fire of comments.

“'Dear Mamma, I hope you and Ju are quite well----'”

“Ju,” murmured Mrs. Dodd plaintively.

“'And that there is good news about papa coming home. As for me, I
have plenty on my hands just now; all this term I have been ['training'
scratched out, and another word put in: C -- R -- oh, I know)
'cramming.'”

“'Cramming,' love?”

“Yes, that is the Oxfordish for studying.”

“'--For smalls.'”

Mrs. Dodd contrived to sigh interrogatively. Julia, who understood her
every accent, reminded her that “smalls” was the new word for “little
go.”

“'--Cramming for smalls; and now I am in two races at Henley, and that
rather puts the snaffie on reading and gooseberry pie' (Goodness me),
'and adds to my chance of being ploughed for smalls.'”

“What does it all mean?” inquired mamma, “'gooseberry pie'? and 'the
snaffle'? and 'ploughed'?”

“Well, the gooseberry pie is really too deep for me: but 'ploughed'
is the new Oxfordish for 'plucked.' O mamma, have you forgotten that?
'Plucked' was vulgar, so now they are 'ploughed.' 'For smalls; but I
hope I shall not be, to vex you and Puss.'”

“Heaven forbid he should be so disgraced! But what has the cat to do
with it?”

“Nothing on earth. Puss? that is me. How dare he? Did I not forbid all
these nicknames and all this Oxfordish, by proclamation, last Long.”

“Last Long?”

“Hem! last protracted vacation.”

“'--Dear mamma, sometimes I cannot help being down in the mouth,'
(why, it is a string of pearls) 'to think you have not got a son like
Hardie.'” At this unfortunate reflection it was Julia's turn to suffer.
She deposited the letter in her lap, and fired up. “Now, have not I
cause to hate, and scorn, and despise le petit Hardie?”

“Julia!”

“I mean to dislike with propriety, and gently to abominate--Mr. Hardie,
junior.”

“'--Dear mamma, do come to Henley on the tenth, you and Ju. The
university eights will not be there, but the head boats of the Oxford
and Cambridge river will; and the Oxford head boat is Exeter, you know;
and I pull Six.'”

“Then I am truly sorry to hear it; my poor boy will overtask his
strength; and how unfair of the other young gentlemen; it seems
ungenerous; unreasonable; my poor child against so many.”

“'--And I am entered for the sculls as well, and if you and “the
Impetuosity”' (Vengeance!) 'were looking on from the bank, I do think I
should be lucky this time. Henley is a long way from Barkington, but it
is a pretty place; all the ladies admire it, and like to see both the
universities out and a stunning race.' Oh, well, there _is_ an epithet.
One would think thunder was going to race lightning, instead of Oxford
Cambridge.”

“'--If you can come, please write, and I will get you nice lodgings; I
will not let you go to a noisy inn. Love to Julia and no end of kisses
to my pretty mamma. --From your affectionate Son,

“'EDWARD DODD.'”


They wrote off a cordial assent, and reached Henley in time to see the
dullest town in Europe; and also to see it turn one of the gayest in
an hour or two; so impetuously came both the universities pouring into
it--in all known vehicles that could go _their_ pace--by land and water.




CHAPTER I

IT was a bright hot day in June. Mrs. Dodd and Julia sat half reclining,
with their parasols up, in an open carriage, by the brink of the Thames
at one of its loveliest bends.

About a furlong up stream a silvery stone bridge, just mellowed by time,
spanned the river with many fair arches. Through these the coming river
peeped sparkling a long way above, then came meandering and shining
down; loitered cool and sombre under the dark vaults, then glistened on
again crookedly to the spot where sat its two fairest visitors that
day; but at that very point flung off its serpentine habits, and shot
straight away in a broad stream of scintillating water a mile long, down
to an island in mid-stream: a little fairy island with old trees, and
a white temple. To curl round this fairy isle the broad current parted,
and both silver streams turned purple in the shade of the grove; then
winded and melted from the sight.

This noble and rare passage of the silvery Thames was the Henley
racecourse. The starting-place was down at the island, and the goal was
up at a point in the river below the bridge, but above the bend
where Mrs. Dodd and Julia sat, unruffled by the racing, and enjoying
luxuriously the glorious stream, the mellow bridge crowded with
carriages--whose fair occupants stretched a broad band of bright colour
above the dark figures clustering on the battlements--and the green
meadows opposite with the motley crowd streaming up and down.

Nor was that sense, which seems especially keen and delicate in women,
left unregaled in the general bounty of the time. The green meadows
on the opposite bank, and the gardens at the back of our fair friends,
flung their sweet fresh odours at their liquid benefactor gliding by;
and the sun himself seemed to burn perfumes, and the air to scatter
them, over the motley merry crowd, that bright, hot, smiling, airy day
in June.

Thus tuned to gentle enjoyment, the fair mother and her lovely daughter
leaned back in a delicious languor proper to their sex, and eyed with
unflagging though demure interest, and furtive curiosity, the wealth of
youth, beauty, stature, agility, gaiety, and good temper, the two great
universities had poured out upon those obscure banks; all dressed in
neat but easy-fitting clothes, cut in the height of' the fashion; or
else in jerseys white or striped, and flannel trousers, and straw hats,
or cloth caps of bright and various hues; betting, strolling, laughing,
chaffing, larking, and whirling stunted bludgeons at Aunt Sally.

But as for the sport itself they were there to see, the center of all
these bright accessories, “The Racing,” my ladies did not understand
it, nor try, nor care a hook-and-eye about it. But this mild dignified
indifference to the main event received a shock at 2 p. m.: for then
the first heat for the cup came on, and Edward was in it. So then Racing
became all in a moment a most interesting pastime--an appendage to
Loving. He left to join his crew. And, soon after, the Exeter glided
down the river before their eyes, with the beloved one rowing quietly
in it: his jersey revealed not only the working power of his arms,
as sunburnt below the elbow as a gipsy's, and as corded above as a
blacksmith's, but also the play of the great muscles across his broad
and deeply indented chest: his oar entered the water smoothly, gripped
it severely, then came out clean, and feathered clear and tunably on the
ringing rowlock: the boat jumped and then glided, at each neat, easy,
powerful stroke. “Oh, how beautiful and strong he is!” cried Julia. “I
had no idea.”

Presently the competitor for this heat came down: the Cambridge boat,
rowed by a fine crew in broad-striped jerseys. “Oh, dear” said Julia,
“they are odious and strong in this boat too. I wish I was in it--with a
gimlet; he _should_ win, poor boy.”

Which corkscrew staircase to Honour being inaccessible, the race had to
be decided by two unfeminine trifles called “Speed” and “Bottom.”


Few things in this vale of tears are more worthy a pen of fire than an
English boat-race is, as seen by the runners; of whom I have often been
one. But this race I am bound to indicate, not describe; I mean, to show
how it appeared to two ladies seated on the Henley side of the Thames,
nearly opposite the winning-post. These fair novices then looked all
down the river, and could just discern two whitish streaks on the water,
one on each side the little fairy isle, and a great black patch on the
Berkshire bank. The threatening streaks were the two racing boats: the
black patch was about a hundred Cambridge and Oxford men, ready to run
and hallo with the boats all the way, or at least till the last puff of
wind should be run plus halloed out of their young bodies. Others less
fleet and enduring, but equally clamorous, stood in knots at various
distances, ripe for a shorter yell and run when the boats should come up
to them. Of the natives and country visitors, those who were not nailed
down by bounteous Fate ebbed and flowed up and down the bank, with
no settled idea but of getting in the way as much as possible, and of
getting knocked into the Thames as little as might be.

There was a long uneasy suspense.

At last a puff of smoke issued from a pistol down at the island; two
oars seemed to splash into the water from each white streak; and the
black patch was moving; so were the threatening streaks. Presently was
heard a faint, continuous, distant murmur, and the streaks began to get
larger, and larger, and larger; and the eight splashing oars looked four
instead of two.

Every head was now turned down the river. Groups hung craning over it
like nodding bulrushes.

Next the runners were swelled by the stragglers they picked up; so were
their voices; and on came the splashing oars and roaring lungs.

Now the colours of the racing jerseys peeped distinct. The oarsmen's
heads and bodies came swinging back like one, and the oars seemed to
lash the water savagely, like a connected row of swords, and the spray
squirted at each vicious stroke. The boats leaped and darted side by
side, and, looking at them in front, Julia could not say which
was ahead. On they came nearer and nearer, with hundreds of voices
vociferating “Go it, Cambridge” “Well pulled, Oxford!” “You
are gaining, hurrah!” “Well pulled Trinity!” “Hurrah!” “Oxford!”
 “Cambridge!” “Now is your time, Hardie; pick her up!” “Oh, well pulled,
Six!” “Well pulled, Stroke!” “Up, up! lift her a bit!” “Cambridge!”
 “Oxford!” “Hurrah!”

At this Julia turned red and pale by turns. “O mamma!” said she,
clasping her hands and colouring high, “would it be very wrong if I was
to _pray_ for Oxford to win?”

Mrs. Dodd had a monitory finger; it was on her left hand; she raised it;
and that moment, as if she had given a signal, the boats, fore-shortened
no longer, shot out to treble the length they had looked hitherto, and
came broadside past our palpitating fair, the elastic rowers stretched
like greyhounds in a chase, darting forward at each stroke so boldly
they seemed flying out of the boats, and surging back as superbly, an
eightfold human wave: their nostrils all open, the lips of some pale and
glutinous, their white teeth all clenched grimly, their young eyes all
glowing, their supple bodies swelling, the muscles writhing beneath
their jerseys, and the sinews starting on each bare brown arm; their
little shrill coxswains shouting imperiously at the young giants, and
working to and fro with them, like jockeys at a finish; nine souls
and bodies flung whole into each magnificent effort; water foaming and
flying, rowlocks ringing, crowd running, tumbling, and howling like mad;
and Cambridge a boat's nose ahead.

They had scarcely passed our two spectators, when Oxford put on a
furious spurt, and got fully even with the leading boat. There was a
louder roar than ever from the bank. Cambridge spurted desperately in
turn, and stole those few feet back; and so they went fighting every
inch of water. Bang! A cannon on the bank sent its smoke over both
competitors; it dispersed in a moment, and the boats were seen pulling
slowly towards the bridge--Cambridge with four oars, Oxford with six, as
if that gum had winged them both.

The race was over.

But who had won our party could not see, and must wait to learn.


A youth, adorned with a blue and yellow rosette, cried out, in the
hearing of Mrs. Dodd, “I say, they are properly pumped, both crews
are:” then, jumping on to a spoke of her carriage-wheel, with a slight
apology, he announced that two or three were shut up in the Exeter.

The exact meaning of these two verbs passive was not clear to Mrs. Dodd;
but their intensity was. She fluttered, and wanted to go to her boy
and nurse him, and turned two most imploring eyes on Julia, and Julia
straightway kissed her with gentle vehemence, and offered to ruin and
see.

“What, amongst all those young gentlemen, love? I fear that would not
be proper. See, all the ladies remain apart.” So they kept quiet and
miserable, after the manner of females.

Meantime the Cantab's quick eye had not deceived him; in each racing
boat were two young gentlemen leaning collapsed over their oars; and
two more, who were in a cloud, and not at all clear whether they were in
this world still, or in their zeal had pulled into a better. But their
malady was not a rare one in racing boats, and the remedy always at
hand: it combined the rival systems; Thames was sprinkled in their
faces--Homoeopathy: and brandy in a teaspoon trickled down their
throats--Allopathy: youth and spirits soon did the rest; and, the moment
their eyes opened, their mouths opened; and, the moment their mouths
opened, they fell a chaffing.

Mrs. Dodd's anxiety and Julia's were relieved by the appearance of Mr.
Edward, in a tweed shooting-jacket sauntering down to them, hands in
his pockets, and a cigar in his mouth, placidly unconscious of their
solicitude on his account. He was received with a little guttural cry of
delight; the misery they had been in about him was duly concealed from
him by both, and Julia asked him warmly who had won.

“Oh, Cambridge.”

“Cambridge! Why, then you are beaten?”

“Rather.” (Puff.)

“And you can come here with that horrible calm, and cigar, owning
defeat, and puffing tranquillity, with the same mouth. Mamma, we are
beaten. Beaten! actually.”

“Never mind,” said Edward kindly; “you have seen a capital race, the
closest ever known on this river; and one side or other must lose.”

“And if they did not quite win, they very nearly did,” observed Mrs.
Dodd composedly; then, with heartfelt content, “He is not hurt, and that
is the main thing.”

“Well, my Lady Placid, and Mr. Imperturbable, I am glad neither of your
equanimities is disturbed; but defeat is a Bitter Pill to me.”

Julia said this in her earnest voice, and drawing her scarf suddenly
round her, so as almost to make it speak, digested her Bitter Pill in
silence. During which process several Exeter men caught sight of Edward,
and came round him, and an animated discussion took place. They began
with asking him how it had happened, and, as he never spoke in a hurry,
supplied him with the answers. A stretcher had broken in the Exeter? No,
but the Cambridge was a much better built boat, and her bottom cleaner.
The bow oar of the Exeter was ill, and not fit for work. Each of these
solutions was advanced and combated in turn, and then all together. At
last the Babel lulled, and Edward was once more appealed to.

“Well, I will tell you the real truth,” said he, “how it happened.”
 (Puff.)

There was a pause of expectation, for the young man's tone was that of
conviction, knowledge, and authority.

“The Cambridge men pulled faster than we did.” (Puff.)

The hearers stared and then laughed.

“Come, old fellows,” said Edward, “never win a boat-race on dry land!
That is such a _plain_ thing to do; gives the other side the laugh as
well as the race. I have heard a stretcher or two told, but I saw
none broken. (Puff.) Their boat is the worst I ever saw; it dips every
stroke. (Puff.) Their strength lies in the crew. It was a good race and
a fair one. Cambridge got a lead and kept it. (Puff.) They beat us
a yard or two at rowing; but hang it all, don't let them beat us at
telling the truth, not by an inch.” (Puff.)

“All right, old fellow!” was now the cry. One observed, however, that
Stroke did not take the matter so coolly as Six; for he had shed a tear
getting out of the boat.

“Shed a fiddlestick!” squeaked a little sceptic.

“No” said another, “he didn't quite shed it; his pride wouldn't let
him.”

“So he decanted it, and put it by for supper, suggested Edward, and
puffed.

“None of your chaff, Six. He had a gulp or two, and swallowed the rest
by main force.”

“Don't you talk: you can swallow anything, it seems.” (Puff.)

“Well, I believe it,” said one of Hardie's own set. “Dodd doesn't know
him as we do. Taff Hardie can't bear to be beat.”

When they were gone, Mrs. Dodd observed, “Dear me! what if the young
gentleman did cry a little, it was very excusable; after such great
exertions it _was_ disappointing, mortifying. I pity him for one, and
wish he had his mother alive and here, to dry them.” *

     *Oh where, _and_ oh where, _was_ her Lindley Murray gone?

“Mamma, it is you for reading us,” cried Edward, slapping his thigh.
“Well, then, since you can feel for a fellow, Hardie _was_ a good deal
cut up. You know the university was in a manner beaten, and he took the
blame. He never cried; that was a cracker of those fellows. But he
did give one great sob, that was all, and hung his head on one side a
moment. But then he fought out of it directly, like a man; and there was
an end of it, or ought to have been. Hang chatterboxes!”

“And what did you say to console him, Edward?” inquired Julia warmly.

“What--me? Console my senior, and my Stroke? No, thank you.”

At this thunderbolt of etiquette both ladies kept their countenances
this was _their_ muscular feat that day--and the racing for the sculls
came on: six competitors, two Cambridge, three Oxford, one London.
The three heats furnished but one good race, a sharp contest between a
Cambridge man and Hardie, ending in favour of the latter; the Londoner
walked away from his opponent; Sir Imperturbable's competitor was
impetuous, and ran into him in the first hundred yards; Sir I.
consenting calmly. The umpire, appealed to on the spot, decided that it
was a foul, Mr. Dodd being in his own water. He walked over the course,
and explained the matter to his sister, who delivered her mind thus--

“Oh! if races are to be won by going slower than the other, we may shine
yet: _only,_ I call it Cheating, not Racing.”

He smiled unmoved; she gave her scarf the irony twist, and they all went
to dinner. The business recommenced with a race between a London boat
and the winner' of yesterday's heat, Cambridge. Here the truth of
Edward's remark appeared. The Cambridge boat was too light for the men,
and kept burying her hose; the London craft, under a heavy crew,
floated like a cork. The Londoners soon found out their advantage, and,
overrating it, steered into their opponents water prematurely, in spite
of a warning voice from the bank. Cambridge saw, and cracked on for a
foul; and for about a minute it was anybody's race. But the Londoners
pulled gallantly, and just scraped clear ahead. This peril escaped,
they kept their backs straight and a clear lead to the finish. Cambridge
followed a few feet in their wake, pulling wonderfully fast to the end,
but a trifle out of form, and much distressed.

At this both universities looked blue, their humble aspiration being,
first to beat off all the external world, and then tackle each other for
the prize.

Just before Edward left his friends for “the sculls,” the final heat, a
note was brought to him. He ran his eye over it, and threw it open into
his sister's lap. The ladies read it. Its writer had won a prize poem,
and so now is our time to get a hint for composition:


“DEAR SIR,--Oxford must win something. Suppose we go in for these
sculls. You are a horse that can stay; Silcock is hot for the lead at
starting, I hear; so I mean to work him out of wind; then you can wait
on us, and pick up the race. My head is not well enough to-day to
win, but I am good to pump the Cockney; he is quick, but a little
stale--Yours truly,

“ALFRED HARDIE”


Mrs. Dodd remarked that the language was sadly figurative; but she hoped
Edward might be successful in spite of his correspondent's style.

Julia said she did not dare hope it. “The race is not always to the
slowest and the dearest.” This was in allusion to yesterday's “foul.”

The skiffs started down at the island, and, as they were longer coming
up than the eight oars, she was in a fever for nearly ten minutes. At
last, near the opposite bank, up came the two leading skiffs struggling,
both men visibly exhausted--Silcock ahead, but his rudder overlapped by
Hardie's bow; each in his own water.

“We are third,” sighed Julia, and turned her head away from the river
sorrowfully. But only for a moment, for she felt Mrs. Dodd start and
press her arm; and lo! Edward's skiff was shooting swiftly across
from their side of the river. He was pulling just within himself, in
beautiful form, and with far more elasticity than the other two had got
left. As he passed his mother and sister, his eyes seemed to strike
fire, and he laid out all his powers, and went at the leading skiffs
hand over head. There was a yell of astonishment and delight from both
sides of the Thames. He passed Hardie, who upon that relaxed his speed.
In thirty seconds more he was even with Silcock. Then came a keen
struggle: but the new comer was “the horse that could stay:” he drew
steadily ahead, and the stern of his boat was in a line with Silcock's
person when the gun fired; and a fearful roar from the bridge, the
river, and the banks, announced that the favourite university had picked
up the sculls in the person of Dodd of Exeter.

In due course he brought the little silver sculls, and pinned them on
his mother.

While she and Julia were telling him how proud they were, and how happy
they should be, but for their fears that he would hurt himself, beating
gentlemen ever so much older than himself, came two Exeter men with wild
looks hunting for him.

“Oh, Dodd! Hardie wants you directly.”

“Don't you go, Edward,” whispered Julia; “why should you be at Mr.
Hardie's beck and call? I never heard of such a thing. That youth _will_
make me hate him.”

“Oh, I think I had better just go and see what it is about,” replied
Edward: “I shall be back directly.” And on this understanding he went
off with the men.

Half-an-hour passed; an hour; two hours, and he did not return. Mrs.
Dodd and Julia sat wondering what had become of him, and were looking
all around, and getting uneasy, when at last they did hear something
about him, but indirectly, and from an unexpected quarter. A tall young
man in a jersey and flannel trousers, and a little straw hat, with a
purple rosette, came away from the bustle to the more secluded part
where they sat, and made eagerly for the Thames as if he was a duck, and
going in. But at the brink he flung himself into a sitting posture,
and dipped his white handkerchief into the stream, then tied it
viciously round his brow, doubled himself up with his head in his hands,
and rocked himself like an old woman--minus the patience, of course.

Mrs. Dodd and Julia, sitting but a few paces behind him, interchanged,
a look of intelligence. The young gentleman was a stranger; but they had
recognised a faithful old acquaintance at the bottom of his pantomime.
They discovered, too, that the afflicted one was a personage: for he
had not sat there long when quite a little band of men came after him.
Observing his semi-circularity and general condition, they hesitated a
moment; and then one of them remonstrated eagerly.: “For Heaven's sake
come back to the boat! There is a crowd of all the colleges come round
us; and they all say Oxford is being sold. We had a chance for the
four-oared race, and you are throwing it away.”

“What do I care what they all say?” was the answer, delivered with a
kind of plaintive snarl.

“But we care.”

“Care then! I pity you.” And he turned his back fiercely on them, and
then groaned by way of half apology. Another tried him: “Come, give us a
civil answer, please.”

“People that intrude upon a man's privacy, racked with pain, have
no right to demand civility,” replied the sufferer, more gently, but
sullenly enough.

“Do you call this privacy?”

“It was, a minute ago. Do you think I left the boat, and came here among
the natives, for company? and noise? With my head splitting?”

Here Julia gave Mrs. Dodd a soft pinch, to which Mrs. Dodd replied by a
smile. And so they settled who this petulant young invalid must be.

“'There, it is no use,” observed one, _sotto voce,_ “the bloke really
has awful headaches, like a girl, and then he always shuts up this way.
You will only rile him, and get the rough side of his tongue.”

Here, then, the conference drew towards a close. But a Wadham man, who
was one of the ambassadors, interposed. “Stop a minute,” said he. “Mr.
Hardie, I have not the honour to be acquainted with you, and I am not
here to annoy you, nor to be affronted by you. But the university has a
stake in this race, and the university expostulates through us--through
me, if you like.”

“Who have I the honour?” inquired Hardie, assuming politeness sudden and
vast.

“Badham, of Wadham.”

“Badham o' Wadham? Hear that, ye tuneful nine! Well, Badham o' Wadham,
you are no acquaintance of mine; so you may possibly not be a fool. Let
us assume by way of hypothesis that you are a man of sense, a man of
reason as well as of rhyme. Then follow my logic. Hardie of Exeter is a
good man in a boat when he has not got a headache.

“When he has got a headache, Hardie of Exeter is not worth a straw in a
boat.

“Hardie of Exeter has a headache now.

“Ergo, the university would put the said Hardie into a race, headache
and all, and reduce defeat to a certainty.

“And, ergo, on the same premises, I, not being an egotist, nor an ass,
have taken Hardie of Exeter and his headache out of the boat, as I
should have done any other cripple.

“Secondly, I have put the best man on the river into this cripple's
place.

“Total, I have given the university the benefit of my brains; and
the university, not having brains enough to see what it gains by the
exchange, turns again and rends me, like an animal frequently mentioned
in Scripture; but, _nota bene,_ never once with approbation.”

And the afflicted Rhetorician attempted a diabolical grin, but failed
signally; and groaned instead.

“Is this your answer to the university, sir?”

At this query, delivered in a somewhat threatening tone, the invalid sat
up all in a moment, like a poked lion. “Oh, if Badham o' Wadham thinks
to crush me _auctoritate sua et totius universitatis,_ Badham o'
Wadham may just tell the whole university to go and be d----d, from
the Chancellor down to the junior cook at Skimmery Hall, with my
compliments.”

“Ill-conditioned brute!” muttered Badham of Wadham. “Serve you right if
the university were to chuck you into the Thames.” And with this comment
they left him to his ill temper. One remained; sat quietly down a little
way off, struck a sweetly aromatic lucifer, and blew a noisome cloud;
but the only one which betokens calm.

As for Hardie, he held his aching head over his knees, absorbed in pain,
and quite unconscious that sacred pity was poisoning the air beside him,
and two pair of dovelike eyes resting on him with womanly concern.

Mrs. Dodd and Julia had heard the greatest part of this colloquy. They
had terribly quick ears and nothing better to do with them just then.
Indeed, their interest was excited.

Julia went so far as to put her salts into Mrs. Dodd's hand with a
little earnest look. But Mrs. Dodd did not act upon the hint. She had
learned who the young man was: had his very name been strange to her,
she would have been more at her ease with him. Moreover, his rudeness
to the other men repelled her a little. Above all, he had uttered a
monosyllable and a stinger: a thorn of speech not in her vocabulary,
nor even in society's. Those might be his manners, even when not aching.
Still, it seems, a feather would have turned the scale in his favour,
for she whispered, “I have a great mind; if I could but catch his eye.”

While feminine pity and social reserve were holding the balance so
nicely, and nonsensically, about half a split straw, one of the racing
four-oars went down close under the Berkshire bank. “London!” observed
Hardie's adherent.

“What, are you there, old fellow?” murmured Hardie, in a faint voice.
“Now, that is like a friend, a real friend, to sit by me, and not make a
row. Thank you! thank you!”

Presently the Cambridge four-oar passed: it was speedily followed by the
Oxford; the last came down in mid-stream, and Hardie eyed it keenly as
it passed. “There,” he cried, “was I wrong? There is a swing for you;
there is a stroke. I did not know what a treasure I had got sitting
behind me.”

The ladies looked, and lo! the lauded Stroke of the four-oar was their
Edward.

“Sing out and tell him it is not like the sculls. We must fight for the
lead at starting, and hold it with his eyelids when he has got it.”

The adherent bawled this at Edward, and Edward's reply came ringing back
in a clear, cheerful voice, “We mean to try all we know.”

“What is the odds?” inquired the invalid faintly.

“Even on London; two to one against Cambridge; three to one against us.”

“Take all my tin and lay it on,” sighed the sufferer.

“Fork it out, then. Hallo! eighteen pounds? Fancy having eighteen pounds
at the end of term. I'll get the odds up at the bridge directly. Here's
a lady offering you her smelling-bottle.”

Hardie rose and turned round, and sure enough there were two ladies
seated in their carriage at some distance, one of whom was holding him
out three pretty little things enough, a little smile, a little blush,
and a little cut-glass bottle with a gold cork. The last panegyric on
Edward had turned the scale.

Hardie went slowly up to the side of the carriage, and took off his hat
to them with a half-bewildered air. Now that he was so near, his face
showed very pale; the more so that his neck was a good deal tanned;
his eyelids were rather swollen, and his young eyes troubled and almost
filmy with the pain. The ladies saw, and their gentle bosoms were
touched: they had heard of him as a victorious young Apollo trampling on
all difficulties of mind and body; and they saw him wan, and worn, with
feminine suffering: the contrast made him doubly interesting.

Arrived at the side of the carriage, he almost started at Julia's
beauty. It was sun-like, and so were her two lovely earnest eyes,
beaming soft pity on him with an eloquence he had never seen in human
eyes before; for Julia's were mirrors of herself; they did nothing by
halves.

He looked at her and her mother, and blushed, and stood irresolute,
awaiting their commands. This sudden contrast to his petulance with his
own sex paved the way. “You have a sad headache, sir,” said Mrs. Dodd;
“oblige me by trying my salts.”

He thanked her in a low voice.

“And, mamma,” inquired Julia, “ought he to sit in the sun?”

“Certainly not. You had better sit there, sir, and profit by our shade
and our parasols.”

“Yes, mamma, but you know the real place where he ought to be is Bed.”

“Oh, pray don't say that,” implored the patient.

But Julia continued, with unabated severity, “And that is where he would
go this minute, if I was his mamma.”

“Instead of his junior, and a stranger,” said Mrs. Dodd, somewhat
coldly, dwelling with a very slight monitory emphasis on the “stranger.”

Julia said nothing, but drew in perceptibly, and was dead silent ever
after.

“Oh, madam!” said Hardie eagerly, “I do not dispute her authority, nor
yours. You have a right to send me where you please, after your kindness
in noticing my infernal head, and doing me the honour to speak to me,
and lending me this. But if I go to bed, my head will be my master.
Besides, I shall throw away what little chance I have of making your
acquaintance; and the race just coming off!”

“We will not usurp authority, sir,” said Mrs. Dodd quietly; “but we know
what a severe headache is, and should be glad to see you sit still in
the shade, and excite yourself as little as possible.”

“Yes, madam,” said the youth humbly, and sat down like a lamb. He
glanced now and then at the island, and now and then peered up at the
radiant young mute beside him.

The silence continued till it was broken by--a fish out of water. An
undergraduate in spectacles came mooning along, all out of his element.
It was Mr. Kennet, who used to rise at four every morning to his Plato,
and walk up Shotover Hill every afternoon, wet or dry, to cool his eyes
for his evening work. With what view he deviated to Henley has not yet
been ascertained. He was blind as a bat, and did not care a button about
any earthly boat-race, except the one in the AEneid, even if he could
have seen one. However, nearly all the men of his college went to
Henley, and perhaps some branch, hitherto unexplored, of animal
magnetism drew him after. At any rate, there was his body; and his mind
at Oxford and Athens, and other venerable but irrelevant cities. He
brightened at sight of his doge, and asked him warmly if he had heard
the news.

“No: what? Nothing wrong, I hope?”

“Why, two of our men are ploughed; that is all,” said Kennet, affecting
with withering irony to undervalue his intelligence.

“Confound it, Kennet, how you frightened me! I was afraid there was some
screw loose with the crew.”

At this very instant, the smoke of the pistol was seen to puff out from
the island, and Hardie rose to his feet. “They are off!” cried he to the
ladies, and after first putting his palms together with a hypocritical
look of apology, he laid one hand on an old barge that was drawn up
ashore, and sprang like a mountain goat on to the bow, lighting on the
very gunwale. The position was not tenable an instant, but he extended
one foot very nimbly and boldly, and planted it on the other gunwale;
and there he was in a moment, headache and all, in an attitude as
large and inspired as the boldest gesture antiquity has committed to
marble--he had even the advantage in stature over most of the sculptured
forms of Greece. But a double opera-glass at his eye “spoiled the lot,”
 as Mr. Punch says.

I am not to repeat the particulars of a distant race coming nearer and
nearer. The main features are always the same; only this time it was
more exciting to our fair friends, on account of Edward's high stake in
it. And then their grateful though refractory patient, an authority
in their eyes, indeed all but a river-god, stood poised in air, and in
excited whispers interpreted each distant and unintelligible feature
down to them:

“Cambridge was off quickest.”

“But not much.”


“Anybody's race at present, madam.”


“If this lasts long we may win. None of them can stay like us.”

“Come, the favourite is not so very dangerous.”

“Cambridge looks best.”

“I wouldn't change with either, so far.”


“Now, in forty seconds more, I shall be able to pick out the winner.”

Julia went up this ladder of thrills to a high state of excitement; and,
indeed, they were all so tuned to racing pitch, that some metal nerve or
other seemed to jar inside all three, when the piercing, grating voice
of Kennet broke in suddenly with--

“How do you construe [Greek text]?”

The wretch had burrowed in the intellectual ruins of Greece the
moment the pistol went off, and college chat ceased. Hardie raised his
opera-glass, and his first impulse was to brain the judicious
Kennet, gazing up to him for an answer, with spectacles goggling like
supernatural eyes of dead sophists in the sun.

“How do you construe _'Hoc age'_? you incongruous dog. Hold your tongue,
and mind the race.”


“There, I thought so. Where's your three to one, now? The Cockneys
are out of this event, any way. Go on, Universities, and order their
suppers!”

“But which is first, sir?” asked Julia imploringly. “Oh, which is first
of all?”

“Neither. Never mind; it looks well. London is pumped; and if Cambridge
can't lead him before this turn in the river, the race will be ours.
Now, look out! By Jove, we are _ahead!_”

The leading boats came on, Oxford pulling a long, lofty, sturdy stroke,
that seemed as if it never could compete with the quick action of its
competitor. Yet it was undeniably ahead, and gaining at every swing.

Young Hardie writhed on his perch. He screeched at them across the
Thames, “Well pulled, Stroke! Well pulled all! Splendidly pulled, Dodd!
You are walking away from them altogether. Hurrah, Oxford for ever,
hurrah!” The gun went off over the heads of the Oxford crew in advance,
and even Mrs. Dodd and Julia could see the race was theirs.

“We have won at last,” cried Julia, all on fire, “and fairly; only think
of that!”

Hardie turned round, grateful to beauty for siding with his university.
“Yes, and the fools may thank me; or rather my man, Dodd. Dodd for ever!
Hurrah!”

At this climax even Mrs. Dodd took a gentle share in the youthful
enthusiasm that was boiling around her, and her soft eyes sparkled, and
she returned the fervid pressure of her daughter's hand; and both their
faces were flushed with gratified pride and affection.

“Dodd!” broke in “the incongruous dog,” with a voice just like a saw's.
“Dodd? Ah, that's the man who is just ploughed for smalls.”


Ice has its thunderbolts.




CHAPTER II

WINNING boat-races was all very fine; but a hundred such victories could
not compensate Mr. Kennet's female hearers for one such defeat as he had
announced--a defeat that, to their minds, carried disgrace. Their Edward
plucked! At first they were benumbed, and sat chilled, with red cheeks,
bewildered between present triumph and mortification at hand. Then the
colour ebbed out of their faces, and they encouraged each other feebly
in whispers, “Might it not be a mistake?”

But unconscious Kennet robbed them of this timid hope. He was now in
his element, knew all about it, rushed into details, and sawed away all
doubt from their minds. The sum was this. Dodd's general performance was
mediocre, but passable; he was plucked for his Logic. Hardie said he
was very sorry for it. “What does it matter?” answered Kennet; “he is a
boating-man.

“Well, and I am a boating-man. Why, you told me yourself, the other
day, poor Dodd was anxious about it on account of his friends. And,
by-the-bye, that reminds me they say he has got two pretty sisters
here.”

Says Kennet briskly, “I'll go and tell him; I know him just to speak
to.”

“What! doesn't he know?”

“How can he know?” said Kennet jealously; “the testamurs were only
just out as I came away.” And within this he started on his congenial
errand.

Hardie took two or three of his long strides, and fairly collared him.
“You will do nothing of the kind.”

“What, not tell a man when he's ploughed? That is a good joke.”

“No. There's time enough. Tell him after chapel to-morrow, or in chapel
if you must; but why poison his triumphal cup? And his sisters, too, why
spoil their pleasure? Hang it all, not a word about 'ploughing' to any
living soul to-day.”

To his surprise, Kennet's face expressed no sympathy, nor even bare
assent. At this Hardie lost patience, and burst out impetuously, “Take
care how you refuse me; take care how you thwart me in this. He is the
best-natured fellow in college. It doesn't matter to you, and it does
to him; and if you _do,_ then take my name off the list of your
acquaintance, for I'll never speak a word to you again in this world;
no, not on my death-bed, by Heaven!”

The threat was extravagant; but Youth's glowing cheek and eye, and
imperious lip, and simple generosity, made it almost beautiful.

Kennet whined, “Oh, if you talk like that, there is an end to fair
argument.”

“End it then, and promise me; upon your honour!”

“Why not? What bosh! There, I promise. Now, how do you construe [Greek
text]?”

The incongruous dog (“I thank thee, Taff, for teaching me that word”)
put this query with the severity of an inquisitor bringing back a
garrulous prisoner to the point. Hardie replied gaily, “Any way you
like, now you are a good fellow again.”

“Come, that is evasive. My tutor says it cannot be rendered by any one
English word; no more can [Greek text].”

“Why, what on earth can he know about English? [Greek text] is a
Cormorant: [Greek text] is a Skinflint; and your tutor is a Duffer.
Hush! keep dark now! here he comes.” And he went hastily to meet Edward
Dodd: and by that means intercepted him on his way to the carriage.
“Give me your hand, Dodd,” he cried; “you have saved the university. You
must be stroke of the eight-oar after me. Let me see more of you than I
have, old fellow.”

“Within all my heart,” replied Edward calmly, but taking the offered
hand cordially; though he rather wanted to get away to his mother and
sister. “We will pull together, and read together into the bargain,”
 continued Hardie.

“Read together? You and I? What do you mean?”

“Well, you see I am pretty well up in the Imigliner books; what I have
got to rub up is my Divinity and my Logic--especially my Logic. Will you
grind Logic with me? Say 'Yes,' for I know you will keep your word.”

“It is too good an offer to refuse, Hardie; but now I look at you,
you are excited: wonderfully excited: within the race, eh? Now,
just--you--wait--quietly--till next week, and then, if you are so soft
as to ask me in cool blood----”

“Wait a week?” cried the impetuous youth. “No, not a minute. It is
settled. There, we cram Logic together next term.”

And he shook Edward's hand again with glistening eyes and an emotion
that was quite unintelligible to Edward; but not to the quick, sensitive
spirits, who sat but fifteen yards off.

“You really must excuse me just now,” said Edward, and ran to the
carriage, and put out both hands to the fair occupants. They kissed him
eagerly, with little tender sighs; and it cost them no slight effort not
to cry publicly over “the beloved,” “the victorious,” “the ploughed.”

Young Hardie stood petrified. What? These ladies Dodd's sisters. Why,
one of them had called the other mamma. Good heavens! all his talk in
their hearing had been of Dodd; and Kennet and he between them had
let out the very thing he wanted to conceal, especially from Dodd's
relations. He gazed at them, and turned hot to the very forehead. Then,
not knowing what to do or say, and being after all but a clever boy,
not a cool, “never unready” man of the world, he slipped away, blushing.
Kennet followed, goggling.


Left to herself, Mrs. Dodd would have broken the bad news to Edward at
once, and taken the line of consoling him under her own vexation: it
would not have been the first time that she had played that card. But
young Mr. Hardie had said it would be unkind to poison Edward's day: and
it is sweet woman's nature to follow suit; so she and Julia put bright
faces on, and Edward passed a right jocund afternoon with them. He was
not allowed to surprise one of the looks they interchanged to relieve
their secret mortification. But, after dinner, as the time drew near
for him to go back to Oxford, Mrs. Dodd became silent, and a little
_distraite;_ and at last drew her chair away to a small table, and wrote
a letter.

In directing it she turned it purposely, so that Julia could catch the
address: _“Edward Dodd, Esq., Exeter College, Oxford._”

Julia was naturally startled at first, and her eye roved almost
comically to and fro the letter and its Destination, seated calm and
unconscious of woman's beneficent wiles. But her heart soon divined the
mystery: it was to reach him the first thing in the morning, and spare
him the pain of writing the news to them; and, doubtless, so worded as
not to leave him a day in doubt of their forgiveness and sympathy.

Julia took the missive unobserved by the Destination, and glided out of
the room to get it quietly posted.

The servant-girl was waiting on the second-floor lodgers, and told her
so, with a significant addition, viz., that the post was in this street,
and only a few doors off. Julia was a little surprised at her coolness,
but took the hint with perfect good temper, and just put on her shawl
and bonnet, and went with it herself. The post-office was not quite so
near as represented; but she was soon there, for she was eager till she
had posted it. But she came back slowly and thoughtfully; here in the
street, lighted only by the moon, and an occasional gaslight, there was
no need for self-restraint, and soon her mortification betrayed itself
in her speaking countenance. And to think that her mother, on whom she
doted, should have to write to her son, there present, and post the
letter! This made her eyes fill, and before she reached the door of the
lodging, they were brimming over.

As she put her foot on the step, a timid voice addressed her in a
low tone of supplication. “May I venture to speak one word to you, Miss
Dodd?--one single word?”

She looked up surprised; and it was young Mr. Hardie.

His tall figure was bending towards her submissively, and his face, as
well as his utterance, betrayed considerable agitation.


And what led to so unusual a rencontre between a young gentleman and
lady who had never been introduced?

“The Tender Passion,” says a reader of many novels.

Why, yes; the tenderest in all our nature:

Wounded Vanity.

Naturally proud and sensitive, and inflated by success and flattery,
Alfred Hardie had been torturing himself ever since he fled Edward's
female relations. He was mortified to the core. He confounded “the
fools” (his favourite synonym for his acquaintance) for going and
calling Dodd's mother an elder sister, and so not giving him a chance to
divine her. And then that he, who prided himself on his discrimination,
should take them for ladies of rank, or, at all events, of the highest
fashion and, climax of humiliation, that so great a man as he should
go and seem to court them by praising Dodd of Exeter, by enlarging upon
Dodd of Exeter, by offering to grind Logic with Dodd of Exeter. Who
would believe that this was a coincidence, a mere coincidence? They
could not be expected to believe it; female vanity would not let them.
He tingled, and was not far from hating the whole family; so bitter a
thing is that which I have ventured to dub “The Tenderest Passion.”
 He itched to soothe his irritation by explaining to Edward. Dodd was a
frank, good-hearted fellow; he would listen to facts, and convince the
ladies in turn. Hardie learned where Dodd's party lodged, and waited
about the door to catch him alone: Dodd must be in college by twelve,
and would leave Henley before ten. He waited till he was tired of
waiting. But at last the door opened; he stepped forward, and out
tripped Miss Dodd. “Confound it!” muttered Hardie, and drew back.
However, he stood and admired her graceful figure and action, her
ladylike speed without bustling. Had she come back at the same pace, he
would never have ventured to stop her: on such a thread do things hang:
but she returned very slowly, hanging her head. Her look at him and his
headache recurred to him--a look brimful of goodness. She would do as
well as Edward, better perhaps. He yielded to impulse, and addressed
her, but with all the trepidation of a youth defying the giant Etiquette
for the first time in his life.

Julia was a little surprised and fluttered, but did not betray it; she
had been taught self-command by example, if not by precept.

“Certainly, Mr. Hardie,” said she, within a modest composure a young
coquette might have envied under the circumstances.

Hardie had now only to explain himself; but instead of that, he stood
looking at her within silent concern. The fair face she raised to him
was wet with tears; so were her eyes, and even the glorious eyelashes
were fringed with that tender spray; and it glistened in the moonlight.

This sad and pretty sight drove the vain but generous youth's calamity
clean out of his head. “Why, you are crying! Miss Dodd, what is the
matter? I hope nothing has happened.”

Julia turned her head away a little fretfully, with a “No, no!” But soon
her natural candour and simplicity prevailed; a simplicity not without
dignity; she turned round to him and looked him in the face. “Why should
I deny it to you, sir, who have been good enough to sympathise with us?
We are mortified, sadly mortified, at dear Edward's disgrace; and it has
cost us a struggle not to disobey you, and _poison his triumphal cup_
with sad looks. And mamma had to write to him, and console him against
to-morrow: but I hope he will not feel it so severely as she does: and I
have just posted it myself, and, when I thought of our dear mamma being
driven to such expedients, I--Oh!” And the pure young heart, having
opened itself by words, must flow a little more.

“Oh, pray don't cry,” said young Hardie tenderly; “don't take such
a trifle to heart so. You crying makes me feel guilty for letting it
happen. It shall never occur again. If I had only known, it should never
have happened at all.”

“Once is enough,” sighed Julia.

“Indeed, you take it too much to heart. It is only out of Oxford a
plough is thought much of; especially a single one; that is so very
common. You see, Miss Dodd, an university examination consists of
several items: neglect but one, and Crichton himself would be ploughed;
because brilliancy in your other papers is not allowed to count; that is
how the most distinguished man of our day got ploughed for Smalls. I had
a narrow escape, I know, for one. But, Miss Dodd, if you knew how far
your brother's performance on the river outweighs a mere slip in the
schools, in all university men's eyes, the dons' and all, you would not
make this bright day end sadly to Oxford by crying. Why, I could find
you a thousand men who would be ploughed to-morrow with glory and
delight to win one such race as your brother has won two.”

Julia sighed again. But it sounded now half like a sigh of relief--the
final sigh, with which the fair consent to be consoled.

And indeed this improvement in the music did not escape Hardie. He felt
he was on the right tack: he enumerated fluently, and by name, many good
men, besides Dean Swift, who had been ploughed, yet had cultivated the
field of letters in their turn; and, in short, he was so earnest and
plausible, that something like a smile hovered about his hearer's lips,
and she glanced askant at him with furtive gratitude from under her
silky lashes. But it soon recurred to her that this was rather a long
interview to accord to “a stranger,” and under the moon; so she said a
little stiffly, “And was this what you were good enough to wish to say
to me, Mr. Hardie?”

“No, Miss Dodd, to be frank, it was not. My motive in addressing you,
without the right to take such a freedom, was egotistical. I came here
to clear myself; I--I was afraid you must think me a humbug, you know.”

“I do not understand you, indeed.”

“Well, I feared you and Mrs. Dodd might think I praised Dodd so, and did
what little I did for him, knowing who you were, and wishing to curry
favour with you by all that; and that is so underhand and paltry a way
of going to work, I should despise myself.”

“Oh, Mr. Hardie,” said the young lady, smiling, “How foolish: why, of
course, we knew you had no idea.”

“Indeed I had not; but how could you know it?”

“Why, we saw it. Do you think we have no eyes? Ah, and much keener ones
than gentlemen have. It is mamma and I who are to blame, if anybody;
we ought to have declared ourselves: it would have been more generous,
more--manly. But we cannot all be gentlemen, you know. It was so sweet
to hear Edward praised by one who did not know us; it was like stolen
fruit; and by one whom others praise: so, if you can forgive us our
slyness, there is an end of the matter.”

“Forgive you? you have taken a thorn out of my soul.”

“Then I am so glad you summoned courage to speak to me without ceremony.
Mamma would have done better, though; but after all, do not I know her?
my mamma is all goodness and intelligence. And be assured, sir, she does
you justice; and is quite sensible of your _disinterested_ kindness to
dear Edward.” With this she was about to retire.

“Ah! But you, Miss Dodd? with whom I have taken this unwarrantable
liberty?” said Hardie imploringly.

“Me, Mr. Hardie? You do me the honour to require my opinion of your
performances: including of course this self-introduction?”

Hardie hung his head; there was a touch of satire in the lady's voice,
he thought.

Her soft eyes rested demurely on him a moment; she saw he was a little
abashed.

“My opinion of it all is that you have been very kind to us; in being
most kind to our poor Edward. I never saw, nor read of anything more
generous, more manly. And then _so_ thoughtful, _so_ considerate, _so_
delicate! So instead of criticising you, as you seem to expect, his
sister only blesses you, and thanks you from the very bottom of her
heart.”

She had begun within a polite composure borrowed from mamma; but, once
launched, her ardent nature got the better: her colour rose and rose,
and her voice sank and sank, and the last words came almost in a
whisper; and such a lovely whisper: a gurgle from the heart; and, as
she concluded, her delicate hand came sweeping out with a heaven-taught
gesture of large and sovereign cordiality, that made even the honest
words and the divine tones more eloquent. It was too much; the young
man, ardent as herself, and not, in reality, half so timorous, caught
fire; and seeing a white, eloquent hand rather near him, caught it, and
pressed his warm lips on it in mute adoration and gratitude.

At this she was scared and offended. “Oh; keep that for the Queen!”
 cried she, turning scarlet, and tossing her fair head into the air,
like a startled stag; and she drew her hand away quickly and decidedly,
though not roughly. He stammered a lowly apology--in the very middle of
it she said quietly, “Good-bye, Mr. Hardie,” and swept, with a gracious
little curtsey, through the doorway, leaving him spell-bound.


And so the virginal instinct of self-defence carried her off swiftly and
cleverly. But none too soon; for, on entering the house, that external
composure her two mothers Mesdames Dodd and Nature had taught her, fell
from her like a veil, and she fluttered up the stairs to her own room
with hot cheeks, and panted there like some wild thing that has been
grasped at and grazed. She felt young Hardie's lips upon the palm of her
hand plainly; they seemed to linger there still; it was like light but
live velvet. This, and the ardent look he had poured into her eyes, set
the young creature quivering. Nobody had looked at her so before, and
no young gentleman had imprinted living velvet on her hand. She was
alarmed, ashamed, and uneasy. What right had he to look at her like
that? What shadow of a right to go and kiss her hand? He could not
pretend to think she had put it out to be kissed; ladies put forth
the back of the hand for that, not the palm. The truth was he was an
impudent fellow, and she hated him now, and herself too, for being so
simple as to let him talk to her: mamma would not have been so imprudent
when she was a girl.

She would not go down, for she felt there must be something of this kind
legibly branded on her face: “Oh! oh! just look at this young lady! She
has been letting a young gentleman kiss the palm of her hand; and the
feel has not gone off yet; you may see that by her cheeks.”

But then, poor Edward! she must go down.

So she put a wet towel to her tell-tale cheeks, and dried them by
artistic dabs, avoiding friction, and came downstairs like a mouse, and
turned the door-handle noiselessly, and glided into the sitting-room
looking so transparent, conscious, and all on fire with beauty and
animation, that even Edward was startled, and, in a whisper, bade his
mother observe what a pretty girl she was: “Beats all the country girls
in a canter.” Mrs. Dodd did look; and, consequently, as soon as ever
Edward was gone to Oxford, she said to Julia, “You are feverish, love;
you have been excited with all this. You had better go to bed.”

Julia complied willingly; for she wanted to be alone and think. She
retired to her own room, and went the whole day over again; and was
happy and sorry, exalted and uneasy, by turns; and ended by excusing Mr.
Hardie's escapade, and throwing the blame on herself. She ought to have
been more distant; gentlemen were not expected, nor indeed much wanted,
to be modest. A little assurance did not misbecome them. “Really, I
think it sets them off,” said she to herself.

Grand total: “What _must_ he think of me?”

Time gallops in reverie: the town clock struck twelve, and with its iron
tongue remorse entered her youthful conscience. Was this obeying mamma?
Mamma had said, “Go to bed:” not, “Go upstairs and meditate: upon young
gentlemen.” She gave an expressive shake of her fair shoulders, like
a swan flapping the water off its downy wings, and so dismissed the
subject from her mind.

Then she said her prayers.

Then she rose from her knees, and in tones of honey said, “Puss! puss!
pretty puss!” and awaited a result.

Thieves and ghosts she did not believe in, yet credited cats under beds,
and thought them neither “harmless” nor “necessary” there.

After tenderly evoking the dreaded and chimerical quadruped, she
proceeded none the less to careful research, especially of cupboards.
The door of one resisted, and then yielded with a crack, and blew out
the candle. “There now,” said she.

It was her only light, except her beauty. They allotted each Hebe
but one candle, in that ancient burgh. “Well,” she thought, “there is
moonlight enough to _un_dress by.” She went to draw back one of the
curtains; but in the act she started back with a little scream. There
was a tall figure over the way watching the house.

The moon shone from her side of the street full on him, and in that
instant her quick eye recognised Mr. Hardie.

“Well!” said she aloud, and with an indescribable inflexion; and hid
herself swiftly in impenetrable gloom.

But, after a while, Eve's daughter must have a peep. She stole with
infinite caution to one side of the curtain, and made an aperture just
big enough for one bright eye. Yes, there he was, motionless. “I'll tell
mamma,” said she to him, malignantly, as if the sound could reach him.

Unconscious of the direful threat, he did not budge.

She was unaffectedly puzzled at this phenomenon; and, not being the
least vain, fell to wondering whether he played the nightly sentinel
opposite every lady's window who exchanged civilities within him.
“Because, if he does, he is a fool,” said she, promptly. But on
reflection, she felt sure he did nothing of the kind habitually, for he
had too high an opinion of himself; she had noted that trait in him at
a very early stage. She satisfied herself, by cautious examination, that
he did not know her room. He was making a temple of the whole lodging.
“How ridiculous of him!” Yet he appeared to be happy over it; there was
an exalted look in his moonlit face; she seemed now first to see
his soul there. She studied his countenance like an inscription, and
deciphered each rapt expression that crossed it; and stored them in her
memory.

Twice she left her ambuscade to go to bed, and twice Curiosity, or
Something, drew her back. At last, having looked, peered, and peeped,
till her feet were cold, and her face the reverse, she informed herself
that the foolish Thing had tired her out.

“Good-night, Mr. Policeman,” said she, pretending to bawl to him. “And
oh! Do rain! As hard as ever you can.” With this benevolent aspiration,
a little too violent to be sincere, she laid her cheek on her pillow
doughtily.

But her sentinel, when out of sight, had more power to disturb her. She
lay and wondered whether he was still there, and what it all meant, and
whatever mamma would say; and which of the two, she or he, was the head
culprit in this strange performance, to which Earth, she conceived,
had seen no parallel; and, above all, what he would do next. Her pulse
galloped, and her sleep was broken; and she came down in the morning a
little pale. Mrs. Dodd saw it at once, with the quick maternal eye; and
moralised: “It is curious; youth is so fond of pleasure; yet pleasure
seldom agrees with youth; this little excitement has done your mother
good, who is no longer young; but it has been too much for you. I shall
be glad to have you back to our quiet home.”

Ah! Will that home be as tranquil now?




CHAPTER III

THE long vacation commenced about a month afterwards, and Hardie came to
his father's house, to read for honours, unimpeded by university races
and college lectures; and the ploughed and penitent one packed up his
Aldrich and his Whately, the then authorities in Logic, and brought
them home, together with a firm resolution to master that joyous science
before the next examination for Smalls in October. But lo! ere he had
been an hour at home, he found his things put neatly away in his drawers
on the feminine or vertical system--deep strata of waistcoats, strata of
trousers, strata of coats, strata of papers--and his Logic gone.

In the course of the evening he taxed his sister good-humouredly, and
asked “What earthly use that book was to her, not wearing curls.”

“I intend to read it, and study it, and teach you it,” replied Julia,
rather languidly--considering the weight of the resolve.

“Oh, if you have boned it to read, I say no more; the crime will punish
itself.”

“Be serious, Edward, and think of mamma! I cannot sit with my hands
before me, and let you be reploughed.”

“I don't want. But--reploughed!--haw, haw! but you can't help me at
Logic, as you used at Syntax. Why, all the world knows a girl can't
learn Logic.”

“A girl can learn anything she chooses to learn. What she can't learn is
things other people set her down to.” Before Edward could fully digest
this revelation, she gave the argument a new turn by adding fretfully,
“And don't be so unkind, thwarting and teasing me!” and all in a moment
she was crying.

“Halloa!” ejaculated Edward, taken quite by surprise. “What is the
matter, dears?” inquired maternal vigilance from the other end of the
room. “You did not speak brusquely to her, Edward?”

“No, no,” said Julia eagerly. “It is I that am turned so cross and so
peevish. I am quite a changed girl. Mamma, what _is_ the matter with
me?” And she laid her brow on her mother's bosom.

Mrs. Dodd caressed the lovely head soothingly with one hand, and made
a sign over it to Edward to leave them alone. She waited quietly till
Julia was composed: and then said, softly, “Come, tell me what it is:
nothing that Edward said to you; for I heard almost every word, and I
was just going to smile, or nearly, when you---- And, my love, it is not
the first time, you know. I would not tell Edward, but I have more than
once seen your eyes with tears in them.”

“Have you, mamma?” said Julia, scarcely above a whisper.

“Why, you know I have. But I said to myself it was no use forcing
confidence. I thought I would be very patient, and wait till you came
to me with it; so now, what is it, my darling? Why do you speak of one
thing and think of another? and cry without any reason that your mother
can see?”

“I don't know, mamma,” said Julia, hiding her head. “I think it is
because I sleep so badly. I rise in the morning hot and quivering, and
more tired than I lay down.”

Mrs. Dodd inquired how long this had been.

Julia did not answer this question; she went on, with her face still
hidden: “Mamma, I do feel so depressed and hysterical, or else in
violent spirits: but not nice and cheerful as you are, and I used to be;
and I go from one thing to another, and can settle to nothing--even in
church I attend by fits and starts: I forgot to water my very flowers
last night: and I heard Mrs. Maxley out of my window tell Sarah I am
losing my colour. Am I? But what does it matter? I am losing my sense;
for I catch myself for ever looking in the glass, and that is a sure
sign of a fool, you know. And I cannot pass the shops: I stand and look
in, and long for the very dearest silks, and for diamonds in my hair.” A
deep sigh followed the confession of these multiform imperfections; and
the culprit half raised her head to watch their effect.

As for Mrs. Dodd, she opened her eyes wide with surprise; but at the end
of the heterogeneous catalogue she smiled, and said, “I cannot believe
_that._ If ever there was a young lady free from personal vanity, it is
my Julia. Why, your thoughts run by nature away from yourself; you were
born for others.”

Her daughter kissed her gratefully, and smiled: but after a pause, said,
sorrowfully, “Ah! that was the old Julia, as seen with your dear eyes. I
have almost forgotten _her._ The new one is what I tell you, dear
mamma, and that” (within sudden fervour) “is a dreamy, wandering, vain,
egotistical, hysterical, abominable girl.”

“Let me kiss this monster that I have brought into the world,” said Mrs.
Dodd. “And now let me think.” She rested her eyes calm and penetrating
upon her daughter; and at this mere look, but a very searching one, the
colour mounted and mounted in Julia's cheek strangely.

“After all,” said Mrs. Dodd thoughtfully, “yours is a critical age.
Perhaps my child is turning to a woman; my rosebud to a rose. And she
sighed. Mothers will sigh at things none other ever sighed at.

“To a weed, I fear,” replied Julia. “What will you say when I own I felt
no real joy at Edward's return this time? And yesterday I cried, 'Do get
away, and don't pester me!'”

“To your brother? Oh!”

“Oh, no, mamma, that was to poor Spot. He jumped on me in a reverie, all
affection, poor thing.”

“Well, for your comfort, dogs do not appreciate the niceties of our
language.”

“I am afraid they do; when we kick them.”

Mrs. Dodd smiled at the admission implied here, and the deep penitence
it was uttered with. But Julia remonstrated, “Oh no! no! don't laugh at
me, but help me within your advice: you are so wise and so experienced:
you must have been a girl before you were an angel. You _must_ know
what is the matter with me. Oh, do pray cure me, or else kill me, for
I cannot go on like this, all my affections deadened and my peace
disturbed.”

And now the mother looked serious and thoughtful enough; and the
daughter watched her furtively. “Julia,” said Mrs. Dodd, very gravely,
“if it was not my child, reared under my eye, and never separated from
me a single day, I should say, this young lady is either afflicted
with some complaint, and it affects her nerves and spirits; or else she
has--she is--what inexperienced young people call 'in love.' You need
not look so frightened, child; nobody in their senses suspects _you_
of imprudence or indelicacy; and therefore I feel quite sure that
your constitution is at a crisis, or your health has suffered some
shock--pray Heaven it may not be a serious one. You will have the best
advice, and without delay, I promise you.”




CHAPTER IV


That very evening, Mrs. Dodd sent a servant into the town with a note
like a cocked-hat for Mr. Osmond, a consulting surgeon, who bore a
high reputation in Barkington. He came, and proved too plump for that
complete elegance she would have desired in a medical attendant; but
had a soft hand, a gentle touch, and a subdued manner. He spoke to the
patient with a kindness which won the mother directly; had every hope
of setting her right without any violent or disagreeable remedies; but,
when she had retired, altered his tone; and told Mrs. Dodd seriously she
had done well to send for him in time: it was a case of “Hyperaesthesia”
 (Mrs. Dodd clasped her hands in alarm), “or as unprofessional persons
would say, 'excessive sensibility.'”

Mrs. Dodd was somewhat relieved. Translation blunts thunderbolts. She
told him she had always feared for her child on that score. But was
sensibility curable? Could a nature be changed?

He replied that the Idiosyncrasy could not; but its morbid excess could,
especially when taken in time. Advice was generally called in too late.
However, here the only serious symptom was the Insomnia. “We must treat
her for that,” said he, writing a prescription; “but for the rest,
active employment, long walks or rides, and a change of scene and
associations, will be all that will be required. In these cases,”
 resumed Mr. Osmond, “connected as they are with Hyperaemia, some medical
men considered moderate venesection to be indicated.” He then put on his
gloves saying, “The diet, of course, must be Antiphlogistic. Let us say
then, for breakfast, dry toast with very little butter--no coffee--cocoa
(from the nibs), or weak tea: for luncheon, beef-tea or mutton-broth:
for dinner, a slice of roast chicken, and tapioca or semolina pudding.
I would give her one glass of sherry, but no more, and barley-water; it
would be as well to avoid brown meats, at all events for the present.
With these precautions, my dear madam, I think your anxiety will soon be
happily removed.”

Julia took her long walks and light diet; and became a little pale
at times, and had fewer bursts of high spirits in the intervals of
depression. Her mother went with her case to a female friend. The lady
said she would not trust to surgeons and apothecaries; she would have
a downright physician. “Why not go to the top of the tree at once, and
call in Dr. Short? You have heard of him?”

“Oh, yes; I have even met him in society; a most refined person: I
will certainly follow your advice and consult him. Oh, thank you, Mrs.
Bosanquet! _A propos,_ do you consider him skilful?

“Oh, immensely; he is a particular friend of my husband's.”

This was so convincing, that off went another three-cocked note, and
next day a dark-green carriage and pair dashed up to Mrs. Dodd's door,
and Dr. Short bent himself in an arc, got out, and slowly mounted
the stairs. He was six feet two, wonderfully thin, livid, and
gentleman-like. Fine homing head, keen eye, lantern jaws. At sight
of him Mrs. Dodd rose and smiled. Julia started and sat trembling.
He stepped across the room inaudibly, and after the usual civilities,
glanced at the patient's tongue, and touched her wrist delicately.
“Pulse is rapid,” said he.

Mrs. Dodd detailed the symptoms. Dr. Short listened within the patient
politeness of a gentleman, to whom all this was superfluous. He asked
for a sheet of note-paper, and divided it so gently, he seemed to be
persuading one thing to be two. He wrote a pair of prescriptions, and
whilst thus employed looked up every now and then and conversed with the
ladies.

“You have a slight subscapular affection, Miss Dodd: I mean, a little
pain under the shoulder-blade.”

“No, sir,” said Julia quietly.

Dr. Short looked a little surprised; his female patients rarely
contradicted him. Was it for them to disown things he was so a good as
to assign them?

“Ah!” said he, “you are not conscious of it: all the better; it must be
slight; a mere uneasiness: no more.” He then numbered the prescriptions,
1, 2, and advised Mrs. Dodd to drop No. 1 after the eighth day, and
substitute No. 2, to be continued until convalescence. He put on his
gloves to leave. Mrs. Dodd then, with some hesitation, asked him humbly
whether she might ask him what the disorder was. “Certainly, madam,”
said he graciously; “your daughter is labouring under a slight torpidity
of the liver. The first prescription is active, and is to clear the
gland itself, and the biliary ducts, of the excretory accumulation;
and the second is exhibited to promote a healthy normal habit in that
important part of the vascular system.”

“What, then, it is not Hyperaemia?”

“Hyperaemia? There is no such disorder in the books.”

“You surprise me,” said Mrs. Dodd. “Dr. Osmond certainly thought it was
Hyperaemia.” And she consulted her little ivory tablets, whereon she had
written the word.

But meantime, Dr. Short's mind, to judge by his countenance, was away
roaming distant space in search of Osmond.

“Osmond? Osmond? I do not know that name in medicine.”

“Oh, oh, oh!” cried Julia, “and they both live in the same street!” Mrs.
Dodd held up her finger to this outspoken patient.

But a light seemed to break in on Dr. Short. “Ah! you mean Mr. Osmond: a
surgeon. A very respectable man, a most respectable man. I do not know
a more estimable person--in his grade of the profession--than my good
friend Mr. Osmond. And so he gives opinions in medical cases, does he?”
 Dr. Short paused, apparently to realise this phenomenon in the world of
Mind. He resumed in a different tone: “You may have misunderstood him.
Hyperaemia exists, of course; since he says so. But Hyperaemia is not
a complaint; it is a symptom. Of biliary derangement. My worthy friend
looks at disorders from a mental point; very natural: his interest lies
that way, perhaps you are aware: but profounder experience proves that
mental sanity is merely one of the results of bodily health: and I
am happy to assure you that, the biliary canal once cleared, and the
secretions restored to the healthy habit by these prescriptions,
the Hyperaemia, and other concomitants of hepatic derangement, will
disperse, and leave our interesting patient in the enjoyment of her
natural intelligence, her friends' affectionate admiration, and above
all, of a sound constitution. Ladies, I have the honour” and the Doctor
eked out this sentence by rising.

“Oh, thank you, Dr. Short,” said Mrs. Dodd, rising within him; “you
inspire me with confidence and gratitude.” As if under the influence of
these feelings only, she took Dr. Short's palm and pressed it. Of the
two hands, which met for a moment then, one was soft and melting, the
other a bunch of bones; but both were very white, and so equally
adroit, that a double fee passed without the possibility of a bystander
suspecting it.

For the benefit of all young virgins afflicted like Julia Dodd, here are
the Doctor's prescriptions:--

FOR MISS DODD.

     Rx Pil: Hydrarg: Chlor: Co:
     singuml: nocte sumend:
     Decoc: Aloes Co: 3j
     omni mane
     viii. Sept. J. S.

-------

FOR MISS DODD.

     Rx Conf: Sennae.
     Potass: Bitartrat.
     Extr: Tarax: a a 3ss
     Misft: Elect:
     Cujus sum: 3j omni mane.
     xviii. Sept. J. S.

-------

Id: Anglie reddit: per me Carol: Arundin:

The same done into English by me. C. R.


FOR MISS DODD.

1. O Jupiter aid us!! Plummer's pill to be taken every night, 1 oz.
compound decoction of Aloes every morning.

8th Sept. J. S.

FOR MISS DODD.

2. O Jupiter aid us!! with Confection of Senna, Bitartrate of Potash,
extract of Dandelion, of each half an ounce, let an electuary be mixed;
of which let her take 1 drachm every morning.

18th Sept. J. S.

-------

“Quite the courtier,” said Mrs. Dodd, delighted. Julia assented: she
even added, with a listless yawn, “I had no idea that a skeleton was
such a gentlemanlike thing; I never saw one before.”

Mrs. Dodd admitted he was very thin.

“Oh no, mamma; 'thin' implies some little flesh. When he felt my pulse,
a chill struck to my heart. Death in a black suit seemed to steal up to
me, and lay a finger on my wrist: and mark me for his own.”

Mrs. Dodd forbade her to give way to such gloomy ideas; and expostulated
firmly with her for judging learned men by their bodies. “However,” said
she, “if the good, kind doctor's remedies do not answer his expectations
and mine, I shall take you to London directly. I do hope papa will soon
be at home.”

Poor Mrs. Dodd was herself slipping into a morbid state. A mother
collecting Doctors! It is a most fascinating kind of connoisseurship,
grows on one like Drink; like Polemics; like Melodrama; like the
Millennium; like any Thing.

Sure enough, the very next week she and Julia sat patiently at the
morning levee of an eminent and titled London surgeon. Full forty
patients were before them: so they had to wait and wait. At last they
were ushered into the presence-chamber, and Mrs. Dodd entered on the
beaten ground of her daughter's symptoms. The noble surgeon stopped her
civilly but promptly. “Auscultation will give us the clue,” said he,
and drew his stethoscope. Julia shrank and cast an appealing look at
her mother; but the impassive chevalier reported on each organ in turn
without moving his ear from the key-hole: “Lungs pretty sound,” said he,
a little plaintively: “so is the liver. Now for the----Hum? There is no
kardiac insufficiency, I think, neither mitral nor tricuspid. If we find
no tendency to hypertrophy we shall do very well. Ah! I have succeeded
in diagnosing a slight diastolic murmur; very slight.” He deposited the
instrument, and said, not without a certain shade of satisfaction that
his research had not been fruitless, “The heart is the peccant organ.”

“Oh, sir! is it serious?” said poor Mrs. Dodd.

“By no means. Try this” (he scratched a prescription which would not
have misbecome the tomb of Cheops), “and come again in a month.” Ting!
He struck a bell. That “ting” said, “Go, live, Guinea; and let another
come.”

“Heart-disease now!” said Mrs. Dodd, sinking back in her hired
carriage, and the tears were in her patient eyes.

“My own, own mamma,” said Julia earnestly, “do not distress yourself.
I have no disease in the world, but my old, old, old one, of being a
naughty, wayward girl. As for you, mamma, you have resigned your own
judgment to your inferiors, and that is both our misfortunes. Dear, dear
mamma, do take me to a doctress next time, if you have not had enough.”

“To a what, love?”

“A she-doctor, then.”

“A female physician, child? There is no such thing. No; assurance is
becoming a characteristic of our sex; but we have not yet intruded
ourselves into the learned professions, thank Heaven.”

“Excuse me, mamma, there are one or two; for the newspapers say so.”

“'Well, dear, there are none in this country, happily.”

“'What, not in London?”

“No.”

“Then what _is_ the use of such a great overgrown place, all smoke, if
there is nothing in it you cannot find in the country? Let us go back to
Barkington this very day, this minute, this instant; oh, pray, pray.”

“And so you shall--to-morrow. But you must pity your poor mother's
anxiety, and see Dr. Chalmers first.”

“Oh, mamma, not another surgeon! He frightened me; he hurt me. I never
heard of such a thing; oh, please not another surgeon.”

“It is not a surgeon, dear; it is the Court Physician.”

The Court Physician detected “a somewhat morbid condition of the great
nervous centres.” To an inquiry whether there was heart-disease, he
replied, “Pooh!” On being told Sir William had announced heart-disease,
he said, “Ah! _that alters the case entirely._” He maintained, however,
that it must be trifling, and would go no further, the nervous system
once restored to its healthy tone. “O Jupiter, aid us! Blue pill and
Seidhitz powder.”

Dr. Kenyon found the mucous membrane was irritated and required
soothing. “O Jupiter, &c.”

Mrs. Dodd returned home consoled and confused; Julia listless and
apathetic. Tea was ordered, with two or three kinds of bread, thinnest
slices of meat, and a little blane mange, &c., their favourite repast
after a journey; and whilst the tea was drawing, Mrs. Dodd looked over
the card-tray and enumerated the visitors that had called during
their absence. “Dr. Short-- Mr. Osmond--Mrs. Hetherington--Mr. Alfred
Hardie--Lady Dewry--Mrs. and Miss Bosanquet. What a pity Edward was not
at home, dear; Mr. Alfred Hardie's visit must have been to him.”

“Oh, of course, mamma.”

“A very manly young gentleman.”

“'Oh, yes. No. He is so rude.”

“Is he? Ah! he was ill just then, and pain irritates gentlemen; they are
not accustomed to it, poor Things.”

“That is like you, dear mamma; making excuses for one.” Julia added
faintly, “But he is so impetuous.”

“I have a daughter who reconciles me to impetuosity. And he _must_ have
a good heart, he was so kind to my boy.”

Julia looked down smiling; but presently seemed to be seized with a
spirit of contradiction: she began to pick poor Alfred to pieces; he was
this, that, and the other; and then so bold, she might say impudent.

Mrs. Dodd replied calmly that he was very kind to her boy.

“Oh, mamma, you cannot approve all the words he spoke.”

“It is not worth while to remember all the words young gentlemen speak
now-a-days. He was very kind to my boy, I remember that.”

The tea was now ready, and Mrs. Dodd sat down, and patted a chair, with
a smile of invitation for Julia to come and sit beside her. But Julia
said, “In one minute, dear,” and left the room.

When she came back, she fluttered up to her mother and kissed her
vehemently, then sat down radiant. “Ah!” said Mrs. Dodd, “why, you are
looking yourself once more. How do you feel now? Better?”

“How do I feel? Let me see: The world seems one e-nor-mous
flower-garden, and Me the butterfly it all belongs to.” She spake,
and to confirm her words the airy thing went waltzing, sailing, and
fluttering round the room, and sipping mamma every now and then on the
wing.

In this buoyancy she remained some twenty-four hours; and then came
clouds and chills, which, in their turn, gave way to exultation, duly
followed by depression. Her spirits were so uncertain, that things too
minute to justify narration turned the scale either way: a word from
Mrs. Dodd--a new face at St. Anne's Church looking devoutly her way--a
piece of town gossip distilled in her ear by Mrs. Maxley--and she was
sprightly or languid, and both more than reason.

One drizzly afternoon they were sitting silent and saddish in the
drawing-room, Mrs. Dodd correcting the mechanical errors in a drawing
of Julia's, and admiring the rare dash and figure, and Julia doggedly
studying Dr. Whately's Logic, with now and then a sigh, when suddenly a
trumpet seemed to articulate in the little hall: “Mestress Doedd at home?”

The lady rose from her seat, and said with a smile of pleasure, “I hear
a voice.”

The door opened, and in darted a grey-headed man, with handsome but
strongly marked features, laughing and shouting like a schoolboy broke
loose. He cried out, “Ah! I've found y' out at last.” Mrs. Dodd glided
to meet him, and put out both her hands, the palms downwards, with
the prettiest air of ladylike cordiality; he shook them heartily. “The
vagabins said y' had left the town; but y' had only flitted from the
quay to the subbubs; 'twas a pashint put me on the scint of ye. And how
are y' all these years? an' how's Sawmill?”

“Sawmill! What is that?”

“It's just your husband. Isn't his name Sawmill?”

“Dear no! Have you forgotten?--David.”

“Ou, ay. I knew it was some Scripcher Petrarch or another, Daavid, or
Naathan, or Sawmill. And how is he, and where is he?”

Mrs. Dodd replied that he was on the seas, but expect----

“Then I wish him well off 'em, confound 'em oncannall! Halloa! why, this
will be the little girl grown up int' a wumman while ye look round.”

“Yes, my good friend; and her mother's darling.”

“And she's a bonny lass, I can tell ye. But no freend to the Dockers, I
see.”

“Ah!” said Mrs. Dodd sadly, “looks are deceitful; she is under medical
advice at this very----”

“Well, that won't hurt her, unless she takes it.” And he burst into a
ringing laugh: but in the middle of it, stopped dead short, and his face
elongated. “Lord sake, mad'm,” said he impressively, “mind what y' are
at, though; Barkton's just a trap for fanciful femuls: there's a n'oily
ass called Osmond, and a canting cut-throat called Stephenson and a
genteel, cadaveris old assassin called Short, as long as a maypole;
they'd soon take the rose out of Miss Floree's cheek here. Why, they'd
starve Cupid, an' veneseck Venus, an' blister Pomonee, the vagabins.”

Mrs. Dodd looked a little confused, and exchanged speaking glances with
Julia. “However,” she said calmly, “I _have_ consulted Mr. Osmond and
Dr. Short; but have not relied on them alone. I have taken her to Sir
William Best. And to Dr. Chalmers. And to Dr. Kenyon.” And she felt
invulnerable behind her phalanx of learning and reputation.

“Good Hivens!” roared the visitor, “what a gauntlet o' gabies for one
girl to run; and come out alive! And the picter of health. My faith,
Miss Floree, y' are tougher than ye look.”

“My daughter's name is Julia,” observed Mrs. Dodd, a little haughtily;
but instantly recovering herself, she said, “This is Dr. Sampson,
love--an old friend of your mother's.”

“And th' Author an' Invintor of th' great Chronothairmal Therey o'
Midicine, th' Unity Perriodicity an' Remittency of all disease,” put in
the visitor, with such prodigious swiftness of elocution that the words
went tumbling over one another like railway carriages out on pleasure,
and the sentence was a pile of loud, indistinct syllables.

Julia's lovely eyes dilated at this clishmaclaver, and she bowed
coldly. Dr. Sampson had revealed in this short interview nearly all the
characteristics of voice, speech, and manner, she had been taught from
infancy to shun: boisterous, gesticulatory, idiomatic; and had taken
the discourse out of her mamma's mouth twice. Now Albion Villa was a Red
Indian hut in one respect: here nobody interrupted.

Mrs. Dodd had little personal egotism, but she had a mother's, and could
not spare this opportunity of adding another Doctor to her collection:
so she said hurriedly, “Will you permit me to show you what your learned
confreres have prescribed her?” Julia sighed aloud, and deprecated the
subject with earnest furtive signs; Mrs. Dodd would not see them. Now,
Dr. Sampson was himself afflicted with what I shall venture to call a
mental ailment; to wit, a furious intolerance of other men's opinions;
he had not even patience to hear them. “Mai--dear--mad'm,” said he
hastily, “when you've told me their names, that's enough. Short treats
her for liver, Sir William goes in for lung disease or heart, Chalmers
sis it's the nairves, and Kinyon the mookis membrin; and _I_ say they
are fools and lyres all four.”

“Julia!” ejaculated Mrs. Dodd, “this is very extraordinary.”

“No, it is not extraordinary,” cried Dr. Sampson defiantly; “nothing is
extraordinary. D'ye think I've known these shallow men thirty years, and
not plumbed 'um?”

“Shallow, my good friend? Excuse me! they are the ablest men in your own
branch of your own learned profession.”

“Th' ablest! Oh, you mean the money-makingest: now listen me! our
lairned Profession is a rascally one. It is like a barrel of beer. What
rises to the top?” Here he paused for a moment, then answered himself
furiously, “THE SCUM.”

This blast blown, he moderated a little. “Look see!” said he, “up to
three or four thousand a year, a Docker is often an honest man, and
sometimes knows something of midicine; not much, because it is not
taught anywhere. But if he is making over five thousand, he must be
a rogue or else a fool: either he has booed an' booed, an' cript
an' crawled, int' wholesale collusion with th' apothecary an' the
accoucheur--the two jockeys that drive John Bull's faemily coach--and
they are sucking the pashint togither, like a leash o' leeches: or else
he has turned spicialist; has tacked his name to some poplar disorder,
real or imaginary; it needn't exist to be poplar. Now, those four you
have been to are spicialists, and that means monomaniues--their buddies
exspatiate in West-ind squares, but their souls dwell in a n'alley,
ivery man jack of 'em: Aberford's in Stomich Alley, Chalmers's in Nairve
Court, Short's niver stirs out o' Liver Lane, Paul's is stuck fast in
Kidney Close, Kinyon's in Mookis Membrin Mews, and Hibbard's in Lung
Passage. Look see! nixt time y' are out of sorts, stid o' consultin'
three bats an' a n'owl at a guinea the piece, send direct to me, and
I'll give y' all their opinions, and all their prescriptions, _gratis._
And deevilich dear ye'll find 'em at the price, if ye swallow 'm.”

Mrs. Dodd thanked him coldly for the offer, but said she would be more
grateful if he would show his superiority to persons of known ability by
just curing her daughter on the spot.

“Well, I will,” said he carelessly: and all his fire died out of him.
“Put out your tongue!--Now your pulse!”


Mrs. Dodd knew her man (ladies are very apt to fathom their male
acquaintance--too apt, _I_ think); and, to pin him to the only medical
theme which interested her, seized the opportunity while he was in
actual contact with Julia's wrist, and rapidly enumerated her symptoms,
and also told him what Mr. Osmond had said about Hyperaesthesia.

“GOOSE GREECE!” barked Sampson, loud, clear, and sharp as an irritated
watch-dog; but this one bow-wow vented, he was silent as abruptly.

Mrs. Dodd smiled, and proceeded to Hyperaemia, and thence to the
Antiphlogistic Regimen.

At that unhappy adjective, Sampson jumped up, cast away his patient's
hand, forgot her existence--she was but a charming individual--and
galloped into his native region, Generalities.

“Antiphlogistic! Mai--dear--mad'm, that one long fragmint of ass's jaw
has slain a million. Adapted to the weakness of human nature, which
receives with rivirince ideas however childish, that come draped in
long-tailed and exotic words, that aasimine polysyllable has riconciled
the modern mind to the chimeras of th' ancients, and outbutchered the
guillotine, the musket, and the sword: ay, and but for me

     Had barred the door
     For cinturies more

on the great coming sceince, the sceince of healing diseases, instead
of defining and dividing 'em and lengthening their names and their
durashin, and shortening nothing but the pashint. Th' Antiphlogistic
Therey is this: That disease is fiery, and that any artificial
exhaustion of vital force must cool the system, and reduce the morbid
fire, called, in their donkey Latin 'flamma,' and in their compound
donkey Latin 'inflammation,' and in their Goose Greece, 'phlogosis,'
'phlegmon,' &c. And accordingly th' Antiphlogistic Practice is, to cool
the sick man by bleeding him, and, when blid, either to rebleed him with
a change of instrument, bites and stabs instid of gashes, or else
to rake the blid, and then blister the blid and raked, and then push
mercury till the teeth of the blid, raked, and blistered shake in their
sockets, and to starve the blid, purged, salivated, blistered wretch
from first to last. This is the Antiphlogistic system. It is seldom
carried out entire, because the pashint, at the first or second link
in their rimedial chain, expires; or else gives such plain signs of
sinking, that even these ass-ass-ins take fright, and try t' undo their
own work, not disease's, by tonics an' turtle, and stimulants: which
things given at the right time instead of the wrong, given when the
pashint was merely weakened by his disorder, and not enfeebled by their
didly rinmedies, would have cut th' ailment down in a few hours.”

“Dear me,” said Mrs. Dodd; “and now, my good friend, with respect to _my
daughter_----

“N' list _me!_” clashed Sampson; “ye're goen to fathom th'
antiphlogistics, since they still survive an' slay in holes and corners
like Barkton and d'Itly; I've driven the vamperes out o' the cintres o'
civilisation. Begin with their coolers! Exhaustion is not a cooler, it
is a feverer, and they know it; the way parrots know sentences. Why are
we all more or less feverish at night? Because we are weaker. Starvation
is no cooler, it is an inflamer, and they know it--as parrots know
truths, but can't apply them: for they know that burning fever rages in
ivery town, street, camp, where Famine is. As for blood-letting, their
prime cooler, it is inflammatory; and they know it (parrot-wise), for
the thumping heart and bounding pulse of pashints blid by butchers in
black, and bullocks blid by butchers in blue, prove it; and they have
recorded this in all their books: yet stabbed, and bit, and starved, and
mercuried, and murdered on. But mind ye, all their sham coolers are real
weakeners (I wonder they didn't inventory Satin and his brimstin lake
among their refrijrators), and this is the point whence t' appreciate
their imbecility, and the sairvice I have rendered mankind in been the
first t' attack their banded school, at a time it seemed imprignable.”

“Ah! this promises to be very interesting,” sighed Mrs. Dodd; “and
before you enter on so large a field, perhaps it would be as well to
dispose of a little matter which lies at my heart. Here is _my poor
daughter_----”

“NLISSMEE! A human Bean is in a constant state of flux and reflux; his
component particles move, change, disappear, and are renewed; his life
is a round of exhaustion and repair. Of this repair the brain is
the sovereign ajint by night and day, and the blood the great living
material, and digestible food th' indispensible supply. And this balance
of exhaustion and repair is too nice to tamper with: disn't a single
sleepless night, or dinnerless day, write some pallor on the face,
and tell against the buddy? So does a single excessive perspiration, a
trifling diary, or a cut finger, though it takes but half an ounce of
blood out of the system. And what is the cause of that rare ivint--which
occurs only to pashmints that can't afford docking--Dith from old age?
Think ye the man really succumms under years, or is mowed down by Time?
Nay, yon's just Potry an' Bosh. Nashins have been thinned by the lancet,
but niver by the scythe; and years are not forces, but misures of
events. No, Centenarius decays and dies bekase his bodil' expindituire
goes on, and his bodil' income falls off by failure of the reparative
and reproductive forces. And now suppose bodil' exhaustion and repair
were a mere matter of pecuniary, instead of vital, economy: what would
you say to the steward or housekeeper, who, to balance your accounts and
keep you solvent, should open every known channel of expinse with one
hand, and with the other--stop the supplies? Yet this is how the Dockers
for thirty cinturies have burned th' human candle at both ends, yet
wondered the light of life expired under their hands.”

“It seems irrational. Then in _my daughter's_ case you would----”

“Looksee! A pashint falls sick. What haps directly? Why the balance is
troubled, and exhaustion exceeds repair. For proof obsairve the buddy
when Disease is fresh!

    And you will always find a loss of flesh

to put it economikly, and then you must understand it, bein a
housekeeper--

    Whativer the Disease, its form or essence,
    Expinditure goes on, and income lessens.

But to this sick and therefore weak man, comes a Docker purblind with
cinturies of Cant, Pricidint, Blood, and Goose Greece; imagines him
a fiery pervalid, though the common sense of mankind through its
interpreter common language, pronounces him an 'invalid,' gashes him
with a lancet, spills out the great liquid material of all repair by the
gallon, and fells this weak man, wounded now, and pale, and fainting,
with Dith stamped on his face, to th' earth, like a bayoneted soldier or
a slaughtered ox. If the weak man, wounded thus, and weakened, survives,
then the chartered Thugs who have drained him by the bung-hole, turn to
and drain him by the spigot; they blister him, and then calomel him:
and lest Nature should have the ghost of a chance to conterbalance these
frightful outgoings, they keep strong meat and drink out of his
system emptied by their stabs, bites, purges, mercury, and blisters;
damdijjits! And that, Asia excipted, was profissional Midicine from
Hippocrates to Sampsin. Antiphlogistic is but a modern name for an
ass-ass-inating rouutine which has niver varied a hair since scholastic
midicine, the silliest and didliest of all the hundred forms of
Quackery, first rose--unlike Seeince, Art, Religion, and all true
Suns--in the West; to wound the sick; to weaken the weak; and mutilate
the hurt; and thin mankind.”

The voluble impugner of his own profession delivered these two last
words in thunder so sudden and effective as to strike Julia's work out
of her hands. But here, as in Nature, a moment's pause followed the
thunderclap; so Mrs. Dodd, who had long been patiently watching
her opportunity, smothered a shriek, and edged in a word: “This is
irresistible; you have confuted everybody, to their heart's content; and
now the question is, what course shall we substitute?” She meant, “in
the great case, which occupies me.” But Sampson attached a nobler,
wider, sense to her query. “What course? Why the great Chronothairmal
practice, based on the remittent and febrile character of all disease;
above all, on

     The law of Perriodicity, a law
     Midicine yet has wells of light to draw.

By Remittency, I mean th' ebb of Disease, by Perriodicity, th' ebb and
also the flow, the paroxysm and the remission. These remit and recur,
and keep tune like the tides, not in ague and remittent fever only, as
the Profission imagines to this day, but in all diseases from a Scirrhus
in the Pylorus t' a toothache. And I discovered this, and the new path
to cure of all diseases it opens. Alone I did it; and what my reward?
Hooted, insulted, belied, and called a quack by the banded school
of profissional assassins, who, in their day hooted Harvey and
Jinner--authors too of great discoveries, but discoveries narrow in
their consequences compared with mine. T' appreciate Chronothairmalism,
ye must begin at the beginning; so just answer me--What is man?”

At this huge inquiry whirring tip all in a moment, like a cock-pheasant
in a wood, Mrs. Dodd sank back in her chair despondent. Seeing her _hors
de combat,_ Sampson turned to Julia and demanded, twice as loud, “WHAT
IS MAN?” Julia opened two violet eyes at him, and then looked at her
mother for a hint how to proceed.

“How can that child answer such a question?” sighed Mrs. Dodd. “Let us
return to the point.”

“I have never strayed an inch from it. It's about 'Young Physic.'”

“No, excuse me, it is about a young lady. Universal Medicine: what have
I to do with that?”

“Now this is the way with them all,” cried Sampson, furious; “there
lowed John Bull. The men and women of this benighted nashin have an
ear for anything, provided it matters nothing: talk Jology, Conchology,
Entomology, Theology, Meteorology, Astronomy, Deuteronomy, Botheronomy,
or Boshology, and one is listened to with rivirence, because these are
all far-off things in fogs; but at a word about the great, near,
useful art of Healing, y'all stop your ears; for why? your life and
dailianhourly happiness depend on it. But 'no,' sis John Bull, the
knowledge of our own buddies, and how to save our own Bakin--Beef I
mean--day by day, from disease and chartered ass-ass-ins, all that may
interest the thinkers in Saturn, but what the deevil is it t' _us?_ Talk
t' _us_ of the hiv'nly buddies, not of our own; babble o' comets an'
meteors an' Ethereal nibulae (never mind the nibulae in our own skulls).
Discourse t' us of Predistinashin, Spitzbairgen seaweed, the last novel,
the siventh vile; of Chrisehinising the Patagonians on condition they
are not to come here and Chrischinise the Whitechapelians; of the
letter to the _Times_ from the tinker wrecked at Timbuctoo; and the dear
Professor's lecture on the probabeelity of snail-shells in the backyard
of the moon: but don't ask us to know ourselves--Ijjits!!”

The eloquent speaker, depressed by the perversity of Englishmen in
giving their minds to every part of creation but their bodies, suffered
a momentary loss of energy; then Mrs. Dodd, who had long been watching
lynx-like, glided in. “Let us compound. You are for curing all the
world, beginning with Nobody. My ambition is to cure _my girl,_ and
leave mankind in peace. Now, if you will begin with _my Julia,_ I will
submit to rectify the universe in its proper turn. Any time will do to
set the human race right; you own it is in no hurry: but _my child's_
case presses; so do pray cure her for me. Or at least tell me what her
Indisposition is.”

“Oh! What! didn't I tell you? Well, there's nothing the matter with
her.”


At receiving this cavalier reply for the reward of all her patience,
Mrs. Dodd was so hurt, and so nearly angry, that she rose with dignity
from her seat, her cheek actually pink, and the water in her eyes.
Sampson saw she was ruffled, and appealed to Julia--of all people.
“There now, Miss Julia,” said he, ruefully; “she is in a rage because I
won't humbug her. Poplus voolt decipee. I tell you, ma'am, it is not a
midical case. Give me disease and I'll cure 't. Stop, I'll tell ye
what do: let her take and swallow the Barkton Docks' prescriptions,
and Butcher Best's, and canting Kinyon's, and after those four tinkers
there'll be plenty holes to mend; then send for me!”

Here was irony. Mrs. Dodd retorted by _finesse._ She turned on him with
a treacherous smile, and said: “Never mind doctors and patients; it is
so long since we met; I do hope you will waive ceremony, and dine with
me _en ami._”

He accepted with pleasure; but must return to his inn first and get rid
of his dirty boots and pashints. And with this he whipped out his watch,
and saw that, dealing with universal medicine, he had disappointed more
than one sick individual; so shot out as hard as he had shot in, and
left the ladies looking at one another after the phenomenon.

“Well?” said Julia, with a world of meaning.

“Yes, dear,” replied Mrs. Dodd, “he _is_ a little eccentric. I think I
will request them to make some addition to the dinner.”

“No, mamma, if you please, not to put me off so transparently. If I had
interrupted, and shouted, and behaved so, you would have packed _me_ off
to bed, or somewhere, directly.”

“Don't say 'packed,' love. Dismissed me to bed.”

“Ah!” cried Julia, “that privileged person is gone, and we must all mind
our P's and Q's once more.”

Mrs. Dodd, with an air of nonchalance, replied to the effect that Dr.
Sampson was not her offspring, and so she was not bound to correct his
eccentricities. “And I suppose,” said she, languidly, “we must accept
these extraordinary people as we find them. But that is no reason why
_you_ should say 'P's and Q's,' darling.”

That day her hospitable board was spread over a trap. Blessed with an
oracle irrelevantly fluent, and dumb to the point, she had asked him to
dinner with maternal address. He could not be on his guard eternally;
sooner or later, through inadvertence, or in a moment of convivial
recklessness, or in a parenthesis of some grand Generality, he would
cure her child: or, perhaps, at his rate of talking, would wear out
all his idle themes, down to the very “well-being of mankind;” and them
Julia's mysterious indisposition would come on the blank tapis. With
these secret hopes she presided at the feast, all grace and gentle
amity. Julia, too, sat down with a little design, but a very different
one, viz., of being chilly company; for she disliked this new
acquaintance, and hated the science of medicine.

The unconscious Object chatted away with both, and cut their replies
very short, and did strange things: sent away Julia's chicken,
regardless of her scorn, and prescribed mutton; called for champagne and
made her drink it and pout; and thus excited Mrs. Dodd's hopes that he
was attending to the case by degrees.

But after dinner, Julia, to escape medicine universal and particular,
turned to her mother, and dilated on treachery of her literary guide,
the _Criticaster._ “It said 'Odds and Ends' was a good novel to read by
the seaside. So I thought then oh! how different it must be from most
books, if you can sit by the glorious sea and even look at it. So I sent
for it directly, and, would you believe, it was an ignoble thing; all
flirtations and curates. The sea indeed! A pond would be fitter to read
it by; and one with a good many geese on.”

“Was ever such simplicity!” said Mrs. Dodd. “Why, my dear, that phrase
about the sea does not _mean_ anything. I shall have you believing that
Mr. So-and-So, a novelist, can _'wither fashionable folly,'_ and that
_'a painful incident'_ to one shopkeeper has _'thrown a gloom'_ over a
whole market-town, and so on. Now-a-days every third phrase is of this
character; a starling's note. Once, it appears, there was an age of
gold, and then came one of iron, and then of brass. All these are gone,
and the age of 'jargon' has succeeded.”

She sighed, and Sampson generalised; he plunged from the seaside novel
into the sea of fiction. He rechristened that joyous art Feckshin, and
lashed its living professors. “You devour their three volumes greedily,”
 said he, “but after your meal you feel as empty as a drum; there is
no leading idea in 'um; now there always is--in Moliere; and _he_
comprehended the midicine of his age. But what fundamental truth
d'our novelists iver convey? All they can do is pile incidents. Their
customers dictate th' article: unideaed melodrams for unideaed girls.
The writers and their feckshins belong to one species, and that's 'the
non-vertebrated animals;' and their midicine is Bosh; why, they bleed
still for falls and fevers; and niver mention vital chronometry. Then
they don't look straight at Nature, but see with their ears, and repeat
one another twelve deep. Now, listen me! there are the cracters for an
'ideaed feckshin' in Barkington, and I'd write it, too, only I haven't
time.”

At this, Julia, forgetting her resolution, broke out, “Romantic
characters in Barkington? Who? who?”

“Who _should_ they be, but my pashints? Ay, ye may lauch, Miss Julee,
but wait till ye see them.” He was then seized with a fit of candour,
and admitted that some, even of his pashints, were colourless; indeed,
not to mince the matter, six or seven of that sacred band were nullity
in person. “I can compare the beggars to nothing,” said he, “but the
globules of the Do-Nothings; dee----d insipid, and nothing in 'em. But
the others make up. Man alive, I've got 'a rosy-cheeked miser,' and an
'ill-used attorney,' and an 'honest Screw'--he is a gardener, with a
head like a cart-horse.”

“Mamma! mamma! that is Mr. Maxley,” cried Julia, clapping her hands, and
thawing in her own despite.

“Then there's my virgin martyr and my puppy. They are brother and
sister; and there's their father, but he is an impenetrable dog--won't
unbosom. Howiver, he sairves to draw chicks for the other two, and so
keep 'em goen. By-the-bye, you know my puppy?”

“We have not that honour. Do we know Dr. Sampson's puppy, love?”
 inquired Mrs. Dodd, rather languidly.

“Mamma!--I--I--know no one of that name.”

“Don't tell me! Why it was he sent me here told me where you lived, and
I was to make haste, for Miss Dodd was very ill: it is young Hardie, the
banker's son, ye know.”

Mrs. Dodd said good-humouredly, but with a very slight touch of irony,
that really they were very much flattered by the interest Mr. Alfred
Hardie had shown; especially as her daughter had never exchanged ten
words with him. Julia coloured at this statement, the accuracy of which
she had good reason to doubt; and the poor girl felt as if an icicle
passed swiftly along her back. And then, for the first the in her life,
she thought her mother hardly gracious; and she wanted to say _she_ was
obliged to Mr. Alfred Hardie, but dared not, and despised herself for
not daring. Her composure was further attacked by Mrs. Dodd looking full
at her, and saying interrogatively, “I wonder how that young gentleman
could know about your being ill?”

At this Julia eyed her plate very attentively, and murmured, “I believe
it is all over the town: and seriously too; so Mrs. Maxley says, for she
tells me that in Barkington if more than one doctor is sent for, that
bodes ill for the patient.”

“Deevelich ill,” cried Sampson heartily.

     “For two physicians, like a pair of oars,
     Conduck him faster to the Styjjin shores.” *

     * Garth.

Julia looked him in the face, and coldly ignored this perversion of Mrs.
Maxley's meaning; and Mrs. Dodd returned pertinaciously to the previous
topic. “Mr. Alfred Hardie interests me; he was good to Edward. I am
curious to know why you call him a puppy?”

“Only because he is one, ma'am. And that is no reason at all with 'the
Six.' He is a juveneel pidant and a puppy, and contradicts ivery new
truth, bekase it isn't in Aristotle and th' Eton Grammar; and he's
such a chatterbox, ye can't get in a word idgeways; and he and his
sister--that's my virgin martyr--are a farce. _He_ keeps sneerin' at
her relijjin, and that puts _her_ in such a rage, she threatens 't'
intercede for him at the throne.”

“Jargon,” sighed Mrs. Dodd, and just shrugged her lovely shoulders. “We
breathe it--we float in an atmosphere of it. My love?” And she floated
out of the room, and Julia floated after.

Sampson sat meditating on the gullibility of man in matters medical.
This favourite speculation detained him late, and almost his first word
on entering the drawing-room was, “Good night, little girl.”

Julia coloured at this broad hint, drew herself up, and lighted a
bedcandle. She went to Mrs. Dodd, kissed her, and whispered in her ear,
“I hate him!” and, as she retired, her whole elegant person launched
ladylike defiance; under which brave exterior no little uneasiness was
hidden. “Oh, what will become of me!” thought she, “if _he_ has gone and
told him about Henley?”


“Let's see the prescriptions, ma'am,” said Dr. Sampson.

Delighted at this concession, Mrs. Dodd took them out of her desk and
spread them earnestly. He ran his eye over them, and pointed out that
the mucous-membrane man and the nerve man had prescribed the same
medicine, on irreconcilable grounds; and a medicine, moreover, whose
effect on the nerves was _nil,_ and on the mucous membrane was not
to soothe it, but plough it and harrow it; “and did not that open her
eyes?” He then reminded her that all these doctors in consultation would
have contrived to agree. “But you,” said he, “have baffled the collusive
hoax by which Dox arrived at a sham uniformity--honest uniformity can
never exist till scientific principles obtain. Listme! To begin, is the
pashint in love?”

The doctor put this query in just the same tone in which they inquire
“Any expectoration?” But Mrs. Dodd, in reply, was less dry and
business-like. She started and looked aghast. This possibility had once,
for a moment, occurred to her, but only to be rejected, the evidence
being all against it.

“In love?” said she. “That child, and I not know it!”

He said he had never supposed that. “But I thought I'd just ask ye;
for she has no bodily ailment, and the passions are all counterfeit
diseases; they are connected, like all diseases, with cerebral
instability, have their hearts and chills like all diseases, and their
paroxysms and remissions like all diseases. Nlistme! You have detected
the signs of a slight cerebral instability; I have ascertained th'
absence of all physical cause: then why make this healthy pashint's
buddy a test-tube for poisons? Sovereign drugs (I deal with no other,
I leave the nullities to the noodles) are either counterpoisons or
poisons, and here there is nothing to counterpoison at prisent. So I'm
for caushin, and working on the safe side th' hidge, till we are less in
the dark. Mind ye, young women at her age are kittle cattle; they have
gusts o' this, and gusts o' that, th' unreasonable imps. D'ye see these
two pieces pasteboard? They are tickets for a ball,

     In Barkton town-hall.”

“Yes, of course I see them,” said Mrs. Dodd dolefully.

“Well, I prescribe 'em. And when they have been taken,

     And the pashint well shaken,

perhaps we shall see whether we are on the right system: and if
so, we'll dose her with youthful society in a more irrashinal form;
conversaziones, cookeyshines, et citera. And if we find ourselves on the
wrong _tack_ why then we'll hark _back._

     Stick blindly to 'a course,' the Dockers cry.
     But it does me harm: _Then_ 'twill do good _by-and-bye._
     Where lairned ye that, Echoes of Echoes, say!
     The killer ploughs 'a course,' the healer _'feels his way.'_”

So mysterious are the operations of the human mind, that, when we have
exploded in verse tuneful as the above, we lapse into triumph instead of
penitence. Not that doggrel meets with reverence here below--the statues
to it are few, and not in marble, but in the material itself--But then
an Impromptu! A moment ago our Posy was not: and now is; with the speed,
if not the brilliancy, of lightning, we have added a handful to the
intellectual dust-heap of an oppressed nation. From this bad eminence
Sampson then looked down complacently, and saw Mrs. Dodd's face as long
as his arm. She was one that held current opinions; and the world does
not believe Poetry can sing the Practical. Verse and useful knowledge
pass for incompatibles; and, though Doggrel is not Poetry, yet it has a
lumbering proclivity that way, and so forfeits the confidence of
grave sensible people. This versification, and this impalpable and
unprecedented prescription she had waited for so long, seemed all of
a piece to poor mamma: wild, unpractical, and--“oh, horror!
horror!”--eccentric.

Sampson read her sorrowful face after his fashion. “Oh, I see, ma'am,”
 cried he. “Cure is not welcome unless it comes in the form consecrated
by cinturies of slaughter. Well, then, give me a sheet.” He took the
paper and rent it asunder, and wrote this on the larger fragment:

     Rx Die Mercur. circa x. hor: vespert:
     eat in musca ad Aulam oppid:
     Saltet cum xiii canicul:
     praesertim meo. Dom: reddita,
     6 hora matutin: dormiat at prand:
     Repetat stultit: pro re nata.

He handed this with a sort of spiteful twinkle to Mrs. Dodd, and her
countenance lightened again. Her sex will generally compound with
whoever can give as well as take. Now she had extracted a real, grave
prescription, she acquiesced in the ball, though not a county one; “to
satisfy your whim, my good, kind friend, to whom I owe so much.”


Sampson called on his way back to town, and, in course of conversation,
praised nature for her beautiful instincts, one of which, he said,
had inspired Miss Julee, at a credulous age, not to swallow “the didly
drastics of the tinkering dox.”

Mrs. Dodd smiled, and requested permission to contradict him; her
daughter had taken the several prescriptions.

Sampson inquired brusquely if she took him for a fool.

She replied calmly: “No; for a very clever, but _rather_ opinionated
personage.

“Opinionated? So is ivery man who has grounnds for his opinin. D'ye
think, because Dockers Short, an' Bist, an' Kinyon, an' Cuckoo, an'
Jackdaw, an' Starling, an' Co., don't know the dire effecks of calomel
an' drastics on the buddy, I don't know't? Her eye, her tongue, her
skin, her voice, her elastic walk, all tell _me_ she has not been robbed
of her vital resources. 'Why, if she had taken that genteel old thief
Short's rimidies alone, the girl's gums would be sore,

     And herself at Dith's door.”

Mrs. Dodd was amused. “Julia, this is so like the gentlemen; they are in
love with argumeunt. They go on till they reason themselves out of their
reason. Why beat about the bush; when there she sits?”

“What, go t' a wumman for the truth, when I can go t' infallible
Inference?”

“You may always go to my David's daughter for the truth,” said Mrs.
Dodd, with dignity. She then looked the inquiry; and Julia replied to
her look as follows: first, she coloured very high; then, she hid her
face in both her hands; then rose, and turning her neck swiftly, darted
a glance of fiery indignation and bitter reproach on Dr. Meddlesome, and
left the apartment mighty stag-like.

“Maircy on us!” cried Sampson. “Did ye see that, ma'am? Yon's just a
bonny basilisk. Another such thunderbolt as she dispinsed, and ye'll be
ringing for your maid to sweep up the good physician's ashes.”

Julia did not return till the good physician was gone back to London.
Then she came in with a rush, and, demonstrative toad, embraced Mrs.
Dodd's knees, and owned she had cultivated her geraniums with all those
medicines, liquid and solid; and only one geranium had died.


There is a fascinating age, when an intelligent girl is said to
fluctuate between childhood and womanhood. Let me add that these seeming
fluctuations depend much on the company she is in: the budding virgin
is princess of chameleons; and, to confine ourselves to her two most
piquant contrasts, by her mother's side she is always more or less
childlike; but, let a nice young fellow engage her apart, and, hey
presto! she shall be every inch a woman: perhaps at no period of her
life are the purely mental characteristics of her sex so supreme in
her; thus her type, the rosebud, excels in essence of rosehood the rose
itself.

My reader has seen Julia Dodd play both parts; but it is her child's
face she has now been turning for several pages; so it may be prudent to
remind him she has shone on Alfred Hardie in but one light; a young but
Juno-like woman. Had she shown “my puppy” her childish qualities,
he would have despised her--he had left that department himself so
recently. But Nature guarded the budding fair from such a disaster.

We left Alfred Hardie standing in the moonlight gazing at her lodging.
This was sudden; but, let slow coaches deny it as loudly as they like,
fast coaches exist; and Love is a Passion, which, like Hate, Envy,
Avarice, &c., has risen to a great height in a single day. Not that
Alfred's was “Love at first sight;” for he had seen her beauty in the
full blaze of day with no deeper feeling than admiration; but in the
moonlight he came under more sovereign spells than a fair face: her
virtues and her voice. The narrative of their meeting has indicated the
first, and as to the latter, Julia was not one of those whose beauty
goes out with the candle; her voice was that rich, mellow, moving organ,
which belongs to no rank nor station; is born, not made; and, flow it
from the lips of dairymaid or countess, touches every heart, gentle
or simple, that is truly male. And this divine contralto, full, yet
penetrating, Dame Nature had inspired her to lower when she was moved
or excited, instead of raising it; and then she was enchanting. All
unconsciously she cast this crowning spell on Alfred, and he adored her.
In a word, he caught a child-woman away from its mother; his fluttering
captive turned, put on composure, and bewitched him.

She left him, and the moonlight night seemed to blacken. But within his
young breast all was light, new light. He leaned opposite her window in
an Elysian reverie, and let the hours go by. He seemed to have vegetated
till then, and lo! true life had dawned. He thought he should love to
die for her; and, when he was calmer, he felt he was to live for her,
and welcomed his destiny with rapture. He passed the rest of the Oxford
term in a soft ecstasy; called often on Edward, and took a sudden and
prodigious interest in him; and counted the days glide by and the happy
time draw near, when he should be four months in the same town with
his enchantress. This one did not trouble the doctors; he glowed with a
steady fire; no heats and chills, and sad misgivings; for one thing, he
was not a woman, a being tied to that stake, Suspense, and compelled to
wait and wait for others' actions. To him, life's path seemed paved
with roses, and himself to march in eternal sunshine, buoyed by perfumed
wings.

He came to Barkington to try for the lovely prize. Then first he had
to come down from love's sky, and realise how hard it is here below to
court a young lady--who is guarded by a mother--without an introduction
in the usual form. The obvious course was to call on Edward. Having
parted from him so lately, he forced himself to wait a few days, and
then set out for Albion Villa.

As he went along, he arranged the coming dialogue for all the parties.
Edward was to introduce him; Mrs. Dodd to recognise his friendship for
her son; he was to say he was the gainer by it; Julia, silent at first,
was to hazard a timid observation, and he to answer gracefully, and
draw her out and find how he stood in her opinion. The sprightly affair
should end by his inviting Edward to dinner. That should lead to their
inviting him in turn, and then he should have a word with Julia,
and find out what houses she visited, and get introduced to their
proprietors. Arrived at this point, his mind went over hedge and ditch
faster than my poor pen can follow; as the crow flies, so flew he, and
had reached the church-porch under a rain of nosegays with Julia--in
imagination--by then he arrived at Albion Villa in the body. Yet he
knocked timidly; his heart beat almost as hard as his hand.

Sarah, the black-eyed housemaid, “answered the door.”

“Mr. Edward Dodd?”

“Not at home, sir. Left last week.”

“For long?”

“I don't rightly know, sir. But he won't be back this week, I don't
think.”

“Perhaps,” stammered Alfred, “the ladies--Mrs. Dodd--might be able to
tell me.”

“Oh yes, sir. But my mistress, she's in London just now.”

Alfred's eyes flashed. “Could I learn from Miss Dodd?”

“La, sir, she is in London along with her ma; why, 'tis for her they are
gone; to insult the great doctors.”

He started. “She is not ill? Nothing serious?”

“Well, sir, we do hope not. She is pinning a bit, as young ladies will.”

Alfred was anything but consoled by this off-hand account; he became
alarmed, and looked wretched. Seeming him so perturbed, Sarah, who was
blunt but good-natured, added, “But cook she says hard work would cure
our Miss of all _she_ ails. But who shall I say was asking? For my work
is a bit behind-hand.”

Alfred took the hint reluctantly, and drew out his card-case, saying,
“For Mr. Edward Dodd.” She gave her clean but wettish hand a hasty wipe
with her apron, and took the card. He retired; she stood on the step and
watched him out of sight, said “Oho!” and took his card to the kitchen
for preliminary inspection and discussion.

Alfred Hardie was resolute, but sensitive. He had come on the wings of
Love and Hope; he went away heavily; a housemaid's tongue had shod his
elastic feet with lead in a moment; of all misfortunes, sickness was
what he had not anticipated, for she looked immortal. Perhaps it was
that fair and treacherous disease, consumption. Well, if it was, he
would love her all the more, would wed her as soon as he was of age, and
carry her to some soft Southern clime, and keep each noxious air at bay,
and prolong her life, perhaps save it.

And now he began to chafe at the social cobwebs that kept him from her.
But, just as his impatience was about to launch him into imprudence,
he was saved by a genuine descendant of Adam. James Maxley kept Mr.
Hardie's little pleasaunce trim as trim could be, by yearly contract.
This entailed short but frequent visits; and Alfred often talked with
him; for the man was really a bit of a character; had a shrewd rustic
wit, and a ready tongue, was rather too fond of law, and much too fond
of money; but scrupulously honest: head as long as Cudworth's, but
broader; and could not read a line. One day he told Alfred that he must
knock off now, and take a look in at Albion Villee. The captain was due:
and on no account would he, Maxley, allow that there ragged box round
the captains quarter-deck: “That is how he do name their little mossel
of a lawn: and there he walks for a wager, athirt and across, across and
athirt, five steps and then about; and I'd a'most bet ye a halfpenny he
thinks hisself on the salt sea ocean, bless his silly old heart.”

All this time Alfred, after the first start of joyful surprise, was
secretly thanking his stars for sending him an instrument. To learn
whether she had returned, he asked Maxley whether the ladies had sent
for him. “Not they,” said Maxley, rather contemptuously; “what do
women-folk care about a border, without 'tis a lace one to their
nightcaps, for none but the father of all vanity to see. Not as I have
ought to say again the pair; they keep their turf tidyish--and pay
ready money--and a few flowers in their pots; but the rest may shift
for itself. Ye see, Master Alfred,” explained Maxley, wagging his head
wisely, “nobody's pride can be everywhere. Now theirs is in-a-doors;
their with-drawing-room it's like the Queen's palace, my missus tells
me; she is wrapped up in 'em, ye know. But the captain for my money.”

The sage shouldered his tools and departed. But he left a good hint
behind him. Alfred hovered about the back-door the next day till he
caught Mrs. Maxley; she supplied the house with eggs and vegetables.
“Could she tell him whether his friend Edward Dodd was likely to come
home soon?” She thought not; he was gone away to study. “He haven't much
head-piece, you know, not like what Miss Julia have. Mrs. and Miss are
to be home to-day; they wrote to cook this morning. I shall be there
to-morrow, sartain, and I'll ask in the kitchen when Master Edward is
a-coming back.” She prattled on. The ladies of Albion Villa were good
kind ladies; the very maid-servants loved them; Miss was more for
religion than her mother, and went to St. Anne's Church Thursday
evenings, and Sundays morning and evening; and visited some poor women
in the parish with food and clothes; Mrs. Dodd could not sleep a wink
when the wind blew hard at night; but never complained, only came down
pale to breakfast. Miss Julia's ailment was nothing to speak of, but
they were in care along of being so wrapped up in her, and no wonder,
for if ever there was a duck----!

Acting on this intelligence, Alfred went early the next Sunday to St.
Anne's Church, and sat down in the side gallery at its east end. While
the congregation flowed quietly in, the organist played the _Agnus Dei_
of Mozart. Those pious tender tones stole over his hot young heart, and
whispered, “Peace, be still!” He sighed wearily, and it passed through
his mind that it might have been better for him, and especially for his
studies, if he had never seen her. Suddenly the aisle seemed to lighten
up; she was gliding along it, beautiful as May, and modesty itself
in dress and carriage. She went into a pew and kneeled a minute, then
seated herself and looked out the lessons for the day. Alfred gazed at
her face: devoured it. But her eyes never roved. She seemed to have put
off feminine curiosity, and the world, at the church door. Indeed
he wished she was not quite so heavenly discreet; her lashes were
delicious, but he longed to see her eyes once more; to catch a glance
from them, and, by it, decipher his fate.

But no; she was there to worship, and did not discern her earthly lover,
whose longing looks were glued to her, and his body rose and sank with
the true worshippers, but with no more spirituality than a piston or a
Jack-in-the-box.

In the last hymn before the sermon, a well-meaning worshipper in the
gallery delivered a leading note, a high one, with great zeal, but
small precision, being about a semitone flat; at this outrage on her
too-sensitive ear, Julia Dodd turned her head swiftly to discover
the offender, and failed; but her two sapphire eyes met Alfred's
point-blank.

She was crimson in a moment, and lowered them on her book again, as if
to look that way was to sin. It was but a flash: but sometimes a flash
fires a mine.

The lovely blush deepened and spread before it melted away, and Alfred's
late cooling heart warmed itself at that sweet glowing cheek. She never
looked his way again, not once: which was a sad disappointment; but she
blushed again and again before the service ended, only not so deeply.
Now there was nothing in the sermon to make her blush: I might add,
there was nothing to redden her cheek with religious excitement. There
was a little candid sourness--oil and vinegar--against sects and
Low Churchmen; but thin generality predominated. Total: “Acetate of
morphia,” for dry souls to sip.

So Alfred took all the credit of causing those sweet irrelevant blushes;
and gloated: the young wretch could not help glorying in his power to
tint that fair statue of devotion with earthly thoughts.

But stay! that dear blush, was it pleasure or pain? What if the sight of
him was intolerable?

He would know how he stood with her, and on the spot. He was one of the
first to leave the church; he made for the churchyard gate, and walked
slowly backwards and forwards by it, with throbbing heart till she came
out.

She was prepared for him now, and bowed slightly to him with the most
perfect composure, and no legible sentiment, except a certain marked
politeness many of our young ladies think wasted upon young gentlemen;
and are mistaken.

Alfred took off his hat in a tremor, and his eyes implored and inquired,
but met with no further response; and she walked swiftly home, though
without apparent effort. He looked longingly after her; but discretion
forbade.

He now crawled by Albion Villa twice every day, wet or dry, and had
the good fortune to see her twice at the drawing-room window. He was
constant at St. Anne's Church, and one Thursday crept into the aisle to
be nearer to her, and he saw her steal one swift look at the gallery,
and look grave; but soon she detected him, and though she looked no more
towards him, she seemed demurely complacent. Alfred had learned to note
these subtleties now, for Love is a microscope. What he did not know
was, that his timid ardour was pursuing a masterly course; that to find
herself furtively followed everywhere, and hovered about for a look,
is apt to soothe womanly pride and stir womanly pity, and to keep the
female heart in a flutter of curiosity and emotions, two porters that
open the heart's great gate to love.

Now the evening before his visit to the Dodds, Dr. Sampson dined with
the Hardies, and happened to mention the “Dodds” among his old patients:
“The Dodds of' Albion Villa?” inquired Miss Hardie, to her brother's
no little surprise. “Albyn fiddlestick!” said the polished doctor. “No!
they live by the water-side; used to; but now they have left the town,
I hear. He is a sea-captain and a fine lad, and Mrs. Dodd is just the
best-bred woman I ever prescribed for, except Mrs. Sampson.”

“It _is_ the Dodds of Albion Villa,” said Miss Hardie. “They have two
children: a son; his name is Edward; and a daughter, Julia; she is
rather good-looking; a Gentleman's Beauty.”

Alfred stared at his sister. Was she blind? with her “rather
good-looking.”

Sampson was quite pleased at the information. “N' listen me! I saved
that girl's life when she was a year old.”

“Then she is ill now, doctor,” said Alfred hastily. “Do go and see her!
Hum! The fact is, her brother is a great favourite of mine.” He then
told him how to find Albion Villa. “Jenny, dear,” said he, when Sampson
was gone, “you never told me you knew her.”

“Knew who, dear?”

“Whom? Why Dodd's sister.”

“Oh, she is a new acquaintance, and not one to interest you. We only
meet in the Lord; I do not visit Albion Villa; her mother is an amiable
worldling.”

“Unpardonable combination!” said Alfred with a slight sneer. “So you and
Miss Dodd meet only at church!”

“At church? Hardly. She goes to St. Anne's: sits under a preacher who
starves his flock with moral discourses, and holds out the sacraments of
the Church as the means of grace.”

Alfred shook his head good-humouredly. “Now, Jenny, that is a challenge;
and you know we both got into a fury the last time we were betrayed into
that miserable waste of time and temper, Theological discussion. No,
no:--

     Let sects delight to bark and bite
     For 'tis their nature to;
     Let gown and surplice growl and fight,
     For Satan makes them so.

But let you and I cut High Church and Low Church, and be brother and
sister. Do tell me in English where you meet Julia Dodd; that's a dear;
for young ladies 'meeting in the Lord' conveys no positive idea to my
mind.”

Jane Hardie sighed at this confession. “We meet in the cottages of the
poor and the sick, whom He loved and pitied when on earth; and we, His
unworthy servants, try to soothe their distress, and lead them to Him
who can heal the soul as well as the body, and wipe away all the tears
of all His people.”

“Then it does you infinite credit, Jane,” said Alfred, warmly. “Now,
that is the voice of true religion; and not the whine of this sect,
nor the snarl of that. And so she joins you in this good work? I am not
surprised.”

“We meet in it now and then, dear; but she can hardly be said to have
joined me: I have a district, you know; but poor Mrs. Dodd will not
allow Julia to enlist in the service. She visits independently, and by
fits and starts; and I am afraid she thinks more of comforting their
perishable bodies than of feeding their souls. It was but the other day
she confessed to me her backwardness to speak in the way of instruction
to women as old as her mother. She finds it so much easier to let them
run on about their earthly troubles: and of course it is much _easier._
Ah! the world holds her still in some of its subtle meshes.”

The speaker uttered this sadly; but presently, brightening up, said,
with considerable _bonhomie,_ and almost a sprightly air: “But she is a
dear girl, and the Lord will yet light her candle.”

Alfred pulled a face as of one that drinketh verjuice unawares; but let
it pass: hypercriticism was not his cue just then. “Well, Jenny,” said
he, “I have a favour to ask you. Introduce me to your friend, Miss Dodd.
Will you?”

Miss Hardie coloured faintly. “I would rather not, dear Alfred: the
introduction could not be for her eternal good. Julia's soul is in a
very ticklish state; she wavers as yet between this world and the other
world; and it won't do; it won't do; there is no middle path. You would
very likely turn the scale, and then I should have fought against her
everlasting welfare--my friend's.”

“What, am I an infidel?” inquired Alfred angrily. Jane looked
distressed. “Oh no, Alfred; but you are a worldling.”

Alfred, smothering a strong sense of irritation, besought her to hear
reason; these big words were out of place here. “It is Dodd's sister;
and he will introduce me at a word, worldling as I am.”

“Then why urge me to do it, against my conscience?” asked the young
lady, as sharply as if she had been a woman of the world. “You cannot
be in _love_ with her, as you do not know her.”

Alfred did not reply to this unlucky thrust, but made a last effort
to soften her. “Can you call yourself my sister, and refuse me this
trifling service, which her brother, who loves her and esteems her ten
times more sincerely than you do, would not think of refusing me if he
was at home?”

“Why should he? He is in the flesh himself; let the carnal introduce one
another. I really must decline; but I am very, very sorry that you feel
hurt about it.”

“And I am very sorry I have not an amiable worldling for my sister,
instead of an unamiable and devilish conceited Christian.” And with
these bitter words, Alfred snatched a candle and bounced to bed in a
fury. So apt is one passion to rouse up others.

Jane Hardie let fall a gentle tear: but consoled herself with the
conviction that she had done her duty, and that Alfred's anger was quite
unreasonable, and so he would see as soon as he should cool.

The next day the lover, smarting under this check, and spurred to fresh
efforts, invaded Sampson. That worthy was just going to dine at Albion
Villa, so Alfred postponed pumping him till next day. Well, he called at
the inn next day, and if the doctor was not just gone back to London!

Alfred wandered disconsolate homewards.

In the middle of Buchanan Street, an agitated treble called after him,
“Mr. Halfred! hoh, Mr. Halfred!” He looked back and saw Dick Absalom,
a promising young cricketer, brandishing a document and imploring aid.
“Oh, Master Halfred, dooce please come here. I durstn't leave the shop.”

There is a tie between cricketers far too strong for social distinctions
to divide, and, though Alfred muttered peevishly, “Whose cat is dead
now?” he obeyed the strange summons.

The distress was a singular one. Master Absalom, I must premise, was
the youngest of two lads in the employ of Mr. Jenner, a benevolent old
chemist, a disciple of Malthus. Jenner taught the virtues of drugs and
minerals to tender youths, at the expense of the public. Scarcely ten
minutes had elapsed since a pretty servant girl came into the shop,
and laid a paper on the counter, saying, “Please to make that up, young
man.” Now at fifteen we are gratified by inaccuracies of this kind
from ripe female lips: so Master Absalom took the prescription with
a complacent grin; his eye glanced over it; it fell to shaking in his
hand, chill dismay penetrated his heart; and, to speak with oriental
strictness, his liver turned instantly to water. However, he made a
feeble clutch at Mercantile Mendacity, and stammered out, “Here's a many
ingredients, and the governor's out walking, and he's been and locked
the drawer where we keeps our haulhoppy. You couldn't come again in
half an hour, Miss, could ye?” She acquiesced readily, for she was not
habitually called Miss, and she had a follower, a languid one, living
hard by, and belonged to a class which thinks it consistent to come
after its followers.

Dicky saw her safe off, and groaned at his ease. Here was a prescription
full of new chemicals, sovereign, no doubt, _i.e.,_ deadly when applied
Jennerically; and the very directions for use were in Latin words he
had encountered in no prescription before. A year ago Dicky would have
counted the prescribed ingredients on his fingers, and then taken
down an equal number of little articles, solid or liquid, mixed them,
delivered them, and so to cricket, serene; but now, his mind, to apply
the universal cant, was “in a transition state.” A year's practice had
chilled the youthful valour which used to scatter Epsom salts or oxalic
acid, magnesia or corrosive sublimate. An experiment or two by himself
and his compeers, with comments by the coroner, had enlightened him as
to the final result on the human body of potent chemicals fearlessly
administered, leaving him dark as to their distinctive qualities applied
remedially. What should he do? Run with the prescription to old Taylor
in the next street, a chemist of forty years? Alas! at his tender age he
had not omitted to chaff that reverend rival persistently and publicly.
Humble his establishment before the King Street one? Sooner perish
drugs, and come eternal cricket! And after all, why not? Drummer-boys,
and powder-monkeys, and other imps of his age that dealt destruction,
did not depopulate gratis; Mankind acknowledged their services in cash:
but old Jenner, taught by Philosophy through its organ the newspapers
that “knowledge is riches,” was above diluting with a few shillings a
week the wealth a boy acquired behind his counter; so his apprentices
got no salary. Then why not shut up the old rogue's shutters, and excite
a little sympathy for him, to be followed by a powerful reaction on
his return from walking; and go and offer his own services on the
cricket-ground to field for the gentlemen by the hour, or bowl at a
shilling on their balls?

“Bowling is the lay for me,” said he; “you get money for that, and you
only bruise the gents a bit and break their thumbs: you can't put their
vital sparks out as you can at this work.”

By a striking coincidence the most influential member of the cricket
club passed while Dick was in this quandary.


“Oh, Mr. Halfred, you was always very good to me on the ground--you
couldn't have me hired by the club, could ye? For I am sick of this
trade; I wants to bowl.”

“You little duffer!” said Alfred, “cricket is a recreation, not a
business. Besides, it only lasts five months. Unless you adjourn to the
anitipodes. Stick to the shop like a man, and make your fortune.”

“Oh, Mr. Halfred,” said Dick sorrowfully, “how can I find fortune here?
Jenner don't pay. And the crowner declares he will not have it; and the
Barton _Chronicle_ says us young gents ought all to be given a holiday
to go and see one of us hanged by lot. But this is what have broke this
camel's back at last; here's a dalled thing to come smiling and smirking
in with, and put it across a counter in a poor boy's hand. Oh! oh! oh!”

“Dick,” said Alfred, “if you blubber, I'll give you a hiding. You have
stumbled on a passage you can't construe. Well, who has not? But we
don't shed the briny about it. Here, let me have a go at it.”

“Ah! I've heard you are a scholard,” said Dick, “but you won't make out
this; there's some new preparation of mercury, and there's musk, and
there's horehound, and there's a neutral salt: and dal his old head that
wrote it!”

“Hold your jaw, and listen, while I construe it to you. _'Die Mercurii,_
on Wednesday--_decima hora vespertina,_ at ten o'clock at night--_eat
in Musca:'_ what does that mean? _'Eat in Musca?'_ I see! this is
modern Latin with a vengeance. 'Let him go in a fly to the Towns-hall.
_Saltet,_ let him jump--_cum tredecim caniculis,_ with thirteen little
dogs--_praesertim meo,_ especially with my little dog.' Dicky, this
prescription emanates from Bedlam direct. _'Domum reddita'_--hallo! it
is a woman, then. 'Let _her_ go in a fly to the--Town-hall, eh?' 'Let
_her_ jump, no, dance, with thirteen whelps, especially mine.' Ha! ha!
ha! And who is the woman that is to do all this I wonder?”

“Woman, indeed!” said a treble at the door! “no more than I am; it's for
a young lady. O jiminy!”

This polite ejaculation was drawn out by the speaker's sudden
recognition of Alfred, who had raised his head at her remonstrance, and
now started in his turn; for it was the black-eyed servant of Albion
Villa. They looked at one another in expressive silence.

“Yes, sir, it is for my young lady. Is it ready, young man?”

“No, it ain't: and never will,” squealed Dick angrily “It's a vile 'oax;
and you ought to be ashamed of yourself bringing it into a respectable
shop.”

Alfred silenced him, and told Sarah he thought Miss Dodd ought to know
the nature of this prescription before it went round the chemists.

He borrowed paper of Dick and wrote:

“Mr. Alfred Hardie presents his compliments to Miss Dodd, and begs
leave to inform her that he has, by the merest accident, intercepted
the enclosed prescription. As it seems rather a sorry jest, and tends to
attract attention to Miss Dodd and her movements, he has ventured with
some misgivings to send it back with a literal translation, on reading
which it will be for Miss Dodd to decide whether it is to circulate.

“'On Wednesday, at ten P.M., let her go in a fly to the Town-hall, and
dance with thirteen little {little dogs, puppies, whelps,} especially
with mine: return home at six A.M. and sleep till dinner, and repeat the
folly as occasion serves.'”

“Suppose I could get it into Miss's hands when she's alone?” whispered
Sarah.

“You would earn my warmest gratitude.”

“'Warmest gratitude!' Is that a warm gownd, or a warm clock, I wonder?”

“It is both, when the man is a gentleman, and a pretty, dark-eyed girl
pities him and stands his friend.”

Sarah smiled, and whispered, “Give it me; I'll do my best.”

Alfred enclosed the prescription and his note in one cover, handed
them to her, and slipped a sovereign into her hand. He whispered, “Be
prudent.”

“I'm dark, sir,” said she: and went off briskly homewards, and Alfred
stood rapt in dreamy joy, and so self-elated that, had he been furnished
like a peacock, he would have instantly become a “thing all eyes,”
 and choked up Jenner's shop, and swept his counter. He had made a
step towards familiarity, had written her a letter; and then, if this
prescription came, as he suspected, from Dr. Sampson, she would perhaps
be at the ball. This opened a delightful vista. Meantime, Mrs. Dodd
had communicated Sampson's opinion to Julia, adding that there was a
prescription besides, gone to be made up. “However, he insists on your
going to this ball.”

Julia begged hard to be excused: said she was in no humour for balls:
and Mrs. Dodd objecting that the tickets had actually been purchased,
she asked leave to send them to the Dartons. “They will be a treat to
Rose and Alice; they seldom go out: mamma, I do so fear they are poorer
than people think. May I?”

“It would be but kind,” said Mrs. Dodd. “Though really why my child
should always be sacrificed to other people's children----”

“Oh, a mighty sacrifice!” said Julia. She sat down and enclosed the
tickets to Rose Darton, with a little sugared note. Sarah, being out,
Elizabeth took it. Sarah met her at the gate, but did not announce her
return: she lurked in ambush till Julia happened to go to her own room,
then followed her, and handed Alfred's missive, and watched her slily,
and being herself expeditious as the wind in matters of the heart, took
it for granted the enclosure was something very warm indeed; so she
said with feigned simplicity, “I suppose it is all right now, miss?” and
retreated swelling with a secret, and tormented her fellow-servants all
day with innuendoes dark as Erebus.

Julia read the note again and again: her heart beat at those few
ceremonious lines. “He does not like me to be talked of,” she said to
herself. “How good he is! What trouble he takes about me! Ah! _he will
be there!_”

She divined rightly; on Wednesday, at ten, Alfred Hardie was in the
ball-room. It was a magnificent room, well lighted, and at present not
half filled, though dancing had commenced. The figure Alfred sought was
not there; and he wondered he had been so childish as to hope she would
come to a city ball. He played the fine gentleman; would not dance. He
got near the door with another Oxonian, and tried to avenge himself for
her absence on the townspeople who were there by quizzing them.

But in the middle of this amiable occupation, and indeed in the middle
of a sentence, he stopped short, and his heart throbbed, and he thrilled
from head to foot; for two ladies glided in at the door, and passed up
the room with the unpretending composure of well-bred people. They were
equally remarkable; but Alfred saw only the radiant young creature in
flowing muslin, with the narrowest sash in the room, and no ornament but
a necklace of large pearls and her own vivid beauty. She had altered
her mind about coming, with apologies for her vacillating disposition so
penitent and disproportionate that her indulgent and unsuspecting mother
was really quite amused. Alfred was not so happy as to know that she had
changed her mind with his note. Perhaps even this knowledge could have
added little to that exquisite moment, when, unhoped for, she passed
close to him, and the fragrant air from her brushed his cheek, and
seemed to whisper, “Follow me and be my slave.”





CHAPTER V

HE did follow her, and, convinced that she would be engaged ten deep in
five minutes, hustled up to the master of the ceremonies and begged an
introduction. The great banker's son was attended to at once. Julia saw
them coming, as her sex can see, without looking. Her eyes were on
fire, and a delicious blush on her cheeks, when the M. C. introduced Mr.
Alfred Hardie with due pomp. He asked her to dance.

“I am engaged for this dance, sir,” said she softly.

“The next?” asked Hardie timidly.

“With pleasure.”

But when they had got so far they were both seized with bashful silence;
and just as Alfred was going to try and break it, Cornet Bosanquet,
aged 18, height 5 feet 4 inches, strutted up with clanking heel, and,
glancing haughtily up at him, carried Julia off, like a steam-tug towing
away some fair schooner. To these little thorns society treats all
anxious lovers, but the incident was new to Alfred, and discomposed him;
and, besides, he had nosed a rival in Sampson's prescription. So now he
thought to himself, “that little ensign is 'his puppy.'”

To get rid of Mrs. Dodd he offered to conduct her to a seat. She thanked
him; she would rather stand where she could see her daughter dance: on
this he took her to the embrasure of a window opposite where Julia and
her partner stood, and they entered a circle of spectators. The band
struck up, and the solemn skating began.

“Who is this lovely creature in white?” asked a middle-aged solicitor.
“In white? I did not see any beauty in white,” replied his daughter.
“Why there, before your eyes,” said the gentleman, loudly.

“What, that girl dancing with the little captain? I don't see much
beauty in her. _And_ what a rubbishing dress.”

“It never cost a pound, making and all,” suggested another Barkingtonian
nymph.

“But what splendid pearls!” said a third: “can they be real?”

“Real! what an idea!” ejaculated a fourth: “who puts on real pearls as
big as peas with muslin at twenty pence the yard?”

“Weasels!” muttered Alfred, and quivered all over: and he felt to Mrs.
Dodd so like a savage going to spring, that she laid her hand upon his
wrist, and said gently, but with authority, “Be calm, sir! and oblige me
by not noticing these people.”

Then they threw dirt on her bouquet, and then on her shoes, while she
was winding in and out before their eyes a Grace, and her soft muslin
drifting and flowing like an appropriate cloud round a young goddess.

“A little starch would make it set out better. It's as limp as a towel
on the line.”

“I'll be sworn it was washed at home.”

“Where it was made.”

“I call it a rag, not a gown.”

“Do let us move,” whispered Alfred.

“I am very comfortable here,” whispered Mrs. Dodd. “How can these things
annoy my ears while I have eyes? Look at her: she is the best-dressed
lady in the room; her muslin is Indian, and of a quality unknown to
these provincial shopkeepers; a rajah gave it us: her pearls were my
mother's, and have been in every court in Europe; and she herself
is beautiful, would be beautiful dressed like the dowdies who are
criticising her: and I think, sir, she dances as well as any lady can
encumbered with an Atom that does not know the figure.” All this with
the utmost placidity.

Then, as if to extinguish all doubt, Julia flung them a heavenly smile;
she had been furtively watching them all the time, and she saw they were
talking about her.

The other Oxonian squeezed up to Hardie. “Do you know the beauty? She
smiled your way.

“Ah!” said Hardie, deliberately, “you mean that young lady with
the court pearls, in that exquisite Indian muslin, which floats so
gracefully, while the other muslin girls are all crimp and stiff; like
little pigs clad in crackling.”

“Ha! ha! ha! Yes. Introduce me.”

“I could not take such a liberty with the queen of the ball.”

Mrs. Dodd smiled, but felt nervous and ill at ease. She thought to
herself, “Now here is a generous, impetuous thing.” As for the hostile
party, staggered at first by the masculine insolence of young Hardy, it
soon recovered, and, true to its sex, attacked him obliquely, through
his white ladye.

“Who _is_ the beauty of the ball?” asked one, haughtily.

“I don't know, but not that mawkish thing in limp muslin.”

“I should say Miss Hetherington is the belle,” suggested a third.

“Which is Miss Hetherington?” asked the Oxonian coolly of Alfred.

“Oh, she won't do for us. It is that little chalk-faced girl, dressed in
pink with red roses; the pink of vulgarity and bad taste.”

At this both Oxonians laughed arrogantly, and Mrs. Dodd withdrew her
hand from the speaker's arm and glided away behind the throng. Julia
looked at him with marked anxiety. He returned her look, and was sore
puzzled what it meant, till he found Mrs. Dodd had withdrawn softly from
him; then he stood confused, regretting too late he had not obeyed her
positive request, and tried to imitate her dignified forbearance.

The quadrille ended. He instantly stepped forward, and bowing politely
to the cornet, said authoritatively, “Mrs. Dodd sends me to conduct you
to her. With your permission, sir.” His arm was offered and taken before
the little warrior knew where he was.

He had her on his arm, soft, light, and fragrant as zephyr, and her cool
breath wooing his neck; oh, the thrill of that moment! but her first
word was to ask him, with considerable anxiety, “Why did mamma leave
you?”

“Miss Dodd, I am the most unhappy of men.”

“No doubt! no doubt!” said she, a little crossly. She added with one
of her gushes of naivete, “and I shall be unhappy too if you go and
displease mamma.”

“What could I do? A gang of snobbesses were detracting from--somebody.
To speak plainly, they were running down the loveliest of her sex. Your
mamma told me to keep quiet. And so I did till I got a fair chance, and
then I gave it them in their teeth.” He ground his own, and added, “I
think I was very good not to kick them.”

Julia coloured with pleasure, and proceeded to turn it off. “Oh! most
forbearing and considerate,” said she. “Ah! by the way, I think I did
hear some ladies express a misgiving as to the pecuniary value of my
costume; ha! ha! Oh--you--foolish!--Fancy noticing that! Why it is in
little sneers that the approval of the ladies shows itself at a ball,
and it is a much sincerer compliment than the gentlemen's bombastical
praises: 'the fairest of her sex,' and so on; that none but the
'silliest of her sex' believe.”

“Miss Dodd, I never said the fairest of her sex. I said the loveliest.”

“Oh, that alters the case entirely,” said Julia, whose spirits were
mounting with the lights and music, and Alfred's company; “so now
come and be reconciled to the best and wisest of her sex; ay, and the
beautifullest, if you but knew her sweet, dear, darling face as I do.
There she is; let us fly.”

“Mamma, here is a penitent for you, real or feigned, I don't know
which.”

“Real, Mrs. Dodd,” said Alfred. “I had no right to disobey you and risk
a scene. You served me right by abandoning me; I feel the rebuke and its
justice. Let me hope your vengeance will go no further.”

Mrs. Dodd smiled at the grandiloquence of youth, and told him he had
mistaken her character. “I saw I had acquired a generous, hot-headed
ally, who was bent on doing battle with insects; so I withdrew; but so
I should at Waterloo, or anywhere else where people put themselves in a
passion.”

The band struck up again.

“Ah!” said Julia, “and I promised you this dance; but it is a waltz and
my guardian angel objects to the _valse a deux temps._”

“Decidedly. Should all the mothers in England permit their daughters to
romp and wrestle in public, and call it waltzing, I must stand firm till
they return to their senses.”

Julia looked at Alfred despondently. He took his cue and said with a
smile, “Well, perhaps it is a little rompy; a donkey's gallop and then
twirl her like a mop.”

“Since you admit that, perhaps you can waltz properly?” said Mrs. Dodd.

Alfred said he ought; he had given his whole soul to it in Germany last
Long.

“Then I can have the pleasure of dropping the tyrant. Away with you both
while there is room to circulate.”

Alfred took his partner delicately; they made just two catlike steps
forward, and melted into the old-fashioned waltz.

It was an exquisite moment. To most young people Love comes after a
great deal of waltzing. But this pair brought the awakened tenderness
and trembling sensibilities of two burning hearts to this their first
intoxicating whirl. To them, therefore, everything was an event,
everything was a thrill--the first meeting and timid pressure of their
hands, the first delicate enfolding of her supple waist by his strong
arm but trembling hand, the delightful unison of their unerring feet,
the movement, the music, the soft delicious whirl, her cool breath
saluting his neck, his ardent but now liquid eyes seeking hers
tenderly, and drinking them deep, hers that now and then sipped his so
sweetly--all these were new and separate joys, that linked themselves in
one soft delirium of bliss. It was not a waltz it was an Ecstasy.

Starting almost alone, this peerless pair danced a gauntlet. On each
side admiration and detraction buzzed all the time.

“Beautiful! They are turning in the air.”

“Quite gone by. That's how the old fogies dance.”

Chorus of shallow males: “How well she waltzes.”

Chorus of shallow females: “How well he waltzes.”

But they noted neither praise nor detraction: they saw nothing, heard
nothing, felt nothing, but themselves and the other music, till two
valsers _a deux temps_ plunged into them. Thus smartly reminded they had
not earth all to themselves, they laughed good-humouredly and paused.

“Ah! I am happy!” gushed from Julia. She hushed at herself, and said
severely, “You dance very well, sir.” This was said to justify her
unguarded admission, and did, after a fashion. “I think it is time to go
to mamma,” said she demurely.

“So soon? And I had so much to say to you.”

“Oh, very well. I am all attention.”

The sudden facility offered set Alfred stammering a little. “I wanted
to apologise to you for something--you are so good you seem to have
forgotten it--but I dare not hope that--I mean at Henley--when the
beauty of your character, and your goodness, so overpowered me, that a
fatal impulse----”

“What do you mean, sir?” said Julia, looking him full in the face, like
an offended lion, while, with true feminine and Julian inconsistency her
bosom fluttered like a dove. “I never exchanged one word with you in
my life before to-day; and I never shall again if you pretend the
contrary.”

Alfred stood stupified, and looked at her in piteous amazement.

“I value your acquaintance highly, Mr. Hardie, now I have made it,
as acquaintances are made; but please to observe, I never saw you
before--scarcely; not even in church.”

“As you please,” said he, recovering his wits in part. “What you say
I'll swear to.”

“Then I say, never remind a lady of what you ought to wish her to
forget.”

“I was a fool, and you are an angel of tact and goodness.”

“Oh, now I am sure it is time to join mamma,” said she in the driest,
drollest way. _“Valsons._”

They waltzed down to Mrs. Dodd, exchanging hearts at every turn, and
they took a good many in the space of a round table, for in truth both
were equally loth to part.


At two o'clock Mrs. Dodd resumed common-place views of a daughter's
health, and rose to go.

Her fly had played her false, and, being our island home, it rained
buckets. Alfred ran, before they could stop him, and caught a fly. He
was dripping. Mrs. Dodd expressed her regrets; he told her it did not
matter; for him the ball was now over, the flowers faded, and the lights
darkness visible.

“The extravagance of these children!” said Mrs. Dodd to Julia, with a
smile, as soon as he was out of hearing. Julia made no reply.

Next day she was at evening church: the congregation was very sparse.
The first glance revealed Alfred Hardie standing in the very next
pew. He wore a calm front of conscious rectitude; under which peeped
sheep-faced misgivings as to the result of this advance; for, like all
true lovers, he was half impudence, half timidity; and both on the grand
scale.

Now Julia in a ball-room was one creature, another in church. After
the first surprise, which sent the blood for a moment to her cheek,
she found he had come without a prayer-book. She looked sadly and half
reproachfully at him; then put her white hand calmly over the wooden
partition, and made him read with her out of her book. She shared
her hymn-book with him, too, and sang her Maker's praise modestly and
soberly, but earnestly, and quite undisturbed by her lover's presence.
It seemed as if this pure creature was drawing him to heaven holding by
that good book, and by her touching voice. He felt good all over. To be
like her, he tried to bend his whole mind on the prayers of the church,
and for the first time realised how beautiful they are.

After service he followed her to the door. Island home again, by the
pailful; and she had a thick shawl but no umbrella. He had brought a
large one on the chance; he would see her home.

“Quite unnecessary; it is so near.”

He insisted; she persisted; and, persisting, yielded. They said but
little; yet they seemed to interchange volumes; and, at each gaslight
they passed, they stole a look and treasured it to feed on.

That night was one broad step more towards the great happiness, or great
misery, which awaits a noble love. Such loves, somewhat rare in Nature,
have lately become so very rare in Fiction that I have ventured, with
many misgivings, to detail the peculiarities of its rise and progress.
But now for a time it advanced on beaten tracks. Alfred had the right
to call at Albion Villa, and he came twice; once when Mrs. Dodd was out.
This was the time he stayed the two hours. A Mrs. James invited Jane and
him to tea and exposition. There he met Julia and Edward, who had just
returned. Edward was taken with Jane Hardie's face and dovelike eyes;
eyes that dwelt with a soft and chastened admiration on his masculine
face and his model form, and their owner felt she had received “a call”
 to watch over his spiritual weal. So they paired off.

Julia's fluctuating spirits settled now into a calm, demure,
complacency. Her mother, finding this strange remedial virtue in
youthful society, gave young parties, inviting Jane and Alfred in
their turn. Jane hesitated, but, as she could no longer keep Julia from
knowing her worldly brother, and hoped a way might be opened for her
to rescue Edward, she relaxed her general rule, which was to go into no
company unless some religious service formed part of the entertainment.
Yet her conscience was ill at ease; and, to set them an example, she
took care, when she asked the Dodds in return, to have a clergyman there
of her own party, who could pray and expound with unction.

Mrs. Dodd, not to throw cold water on what seemed to gratify her
children, accepted Miss Hardie's invitation; but she never intended to
go, and at the last moment wrote to say she was slightly indisposed. The
nature of her _indisposition_ she revealed to Julia alone. “That young
lady keeps me on thorns. I never feel secure she will not say or do
something extravagant or unusual: she seems to suspect sobriety and good
taste of being in league with impiety. Here I succeed in bridling her
a little; but encounter a female enthusiast in her own house? _merci!_
After all, there must be something good in her, since she is your
friend, and you are hers. But I have something more serious to say
before you go there: it is about her brother. He is a flirt: in fact, a
notorious one, more than one lady tells me.”

Julia was silent, but began to be very uneasy; they were sitting and
talking after sunset, yet without candles. She profited for once by that
prodigious gap in the intelligence of “the sex.”

“I hear he pays you compliments, and I have seen a disposition to single
you out. Now, my love, you have the good sense to know that, whatever a
young gentleman of that age says to you, he says to many other ladies;
but your experience is not equal to your sense; so profit by mine. A
girl of your age must never be talked of with a person of the other sex:
it is fatal; fatal! but if you permit yourself to be singled out, you
will be talked of, and distress those who love you. It is easy to avoid
injudicious duets in society; oblige me by doing so to-night.” To show
how much she was in earnest, Mrs. Dodd hinted that, were her admonition
neglected, she should regret for once having kept clear of an
enthusiast.

Julia had no alternative; she assented in a faint voice. After a pause
she faltered out, “And suppose he should esteem me seriously?”

Mrs. Dodd replied quickly, “Then that would be much worse. But,” said
she, “I have no apprehensions on that score; you are a child, and he is
a precocious boy, and rather a flirt. But forewarned is forearmed. So
now run away and dress, sweet one: my lecture is quite ended.”

The sensitive girl went up to her room with a heavy heart. All the fears
she had lulled of late revived. She saw plainly now that Mrs. Dodd only
accepted Alfred as a pleasant acquaintance: as a son-in-law he was out
of the question. “Oh, what will she say when she knows all?” thought
Julia.

Next day, sitting near the window, she saw him coming up the road. After
the first movement of pleasure at the bare sight of him, she was sorry
he had come. Mamma's suspicions awake at last, and here he was again;
the third call in one fortnight! She dared not risk an interview with
him, ardent and unguarded, under that penetrating eye, which she felt
would now be on the watch. She rose hurriedly, said as carelessly as
she could, “I am going to the school,” and tying her bonnet on all in a
flurry, whipped out at the back-door with her shawl in her hand just as
Sarah opened the front door to Alfred. She then shuffled on her shawl,
and whisked through the little shrubbery into the open field, and
reached a path that led to the school, and so gratified was she at her
dexterity in evading her favourite, that she hung her head, and went
murmuring, “Cruel, cruel, cruel!”

Alfred entered the drawing-room gaily, with a good-sized card and a
prepared speech. His was not the visit of a friend, but a functionary;
the treasurer of the cricket-ground come to book two of his eighteen to
play against the All-England Eleven next month. “As for you, my worthy
sir (turning to Edward), I shall just put you down without ceremony.
But I must ask leave to book Captain Dodd. Mrs. Dodd, I come at the
universal desire of the club; they say it is sure to be a dull match
without Captain Dodd. Besides, he is a capital player.”

“Mamma, don't you be caught by his chaff,” said Edward, quietly. “Papa
is no player at all. Anything more unlike cricket than his way of making
runs!”

“But he makes them, old fellow; now you and I, at Lord's the other day,
played in first-rate form, left shoulder well up, and achieved--with
neatness, precision, dexterity, and despatch--the British duck's-egg.

_“Misericorde!_ What is that?” inquired Mrs. Dodd.

“Why, a round O,” said the other Oxonian, coming to his friend's aid.

“And what is that, pray?”

Alfred told her “the round O,” which had yielded to “the duck's egg,”
 and was becoming obsolete, meant the cypher set by the scorer against a
player's name who is out without making a run.

“I see,” sighed Mrs. Dodd. “The jargon of the day penetrates to your
very sports and games. And why British?”

“Oh, 'British' is redundant: thrown in by the universities.”

“But what does it mean?”

“It means nothing. That is the beauty of it. British is inserted in
imitation of our idols, the Greeks; they adored redundancy.”

In short, poor Alfred, though not an M. P., was talking to put off time,
till Julia should come in: so he now favoured Mrs. Dodd, of all people,
with a flowery description of her husband's play, which I, who have
not his motive for volubility, suppress. However, he wound up with the
captains “moral influence.” “Last match,” said he, “Barkington did
not do itself justice. Several, that could have made a stand, were
frightened out, rather than bowled, by the London professionals.
Then Captain Dodd went in, and treated those artists with the same
good-humoured contempt he would a parish bowler, and, in particular,
sent Mynne's over-tossed balls flying over his head for five, or to
square leg for four, and, on his retiring with twenty-five, scored in
eight minutes, the remaining Barkingtonians were less funky, and made
some fair scores.”

Mrs. Dodd smiled a little ironically at this tirade, but said she
thought she might venture to promise Mr. Dodd's co-operation, should he
reach home in time. Then, to get rid of Alfred before Julia's return,
the amiable worldling turned to Edward. “Your sister will not be back,
so you may as well ring the bell for luncheon at once. Perhaps Mr.
Hardie will join us.”

Alfred declined, and took his leave with far less alacrity than he had
entered; Edward went down-stairs with him.

“Miss Dodd gone on a visit?” asked Alfred, affecting carelessness.

“Only to the school. By-the-bye, I will go and fetch her.”

“No, don't do that; call on my sister instead, and then you will pull me
out of a scrape. I promised to bring her here; but her saintship was so
long adorning 'the poor perishable body,' that I came alone.”

“I don't understand you,” said Edward. “I am not the attraction here; it
is Julia.”

“How do you know that? When a young lady interests herself in an
undergraduate's soul, it is a pretty sure sign she likes the looks of
him. But perhaps you don't want to be converted; if so, keep clear
of _her._ 'Bar the fell dragon's blighting way; but shun that lovely
snare.'”

“On the contrary,” said Edward calmly, “I only wish she could make me
as good as she is, or half as good.”

“Give her the chance, old fellow, and then it won't be your fault if she
makes a mess of it. Call at two, and Jenny will receive you very kindly,
and will show you you are in the 'gall of bitterness and the bond of
iniquity.' Now, won't that be nice?”

“I will go,” said Edward gravely.

They parted. Where Alfred went the reader can perhaps guess; Edward to
luncheon.

“Mamma,” said he, with that tranquillity which sat so well on him,
“don't you think Alfred Hardie is spoony upon our Julia?”

Mrs. Dodd suppressed a start, and (perhaps to gain time before replying
sincerely) said she had not the honour of knowing what “spoony” meant.

“Why, sighs for her, and dies for her, and fancies she is prettier than
Miss Hardie. He must be over head and ears to think that.”

“Fie, child!” was the answer. “If I thought so, I should withdraw from
their acquaintance. Excuse me; I must put on my bonnet at once, not to
lose this fine afternoon.”

Edward did not relish her remark: it menaced more Spoons than one.
However, he was not the man to be cast down at a word: he lighted a
cigar, and strolled towards Hardie's house. Mr. Hardie, senior, had left
three days ago on a visit to London; Miss Hardie received him; he
passed the afternoon in calm complacency, listening reverently to her
admonitions, and looking her softly out of countenance, and into earthly
affections, with his lion eyes.

Meantime his remark, so far from really seeming foolish to Mrs. Dodd,
was the true reason for her leaving him so abruptly “Even this dear slow
Thing sees it,” thought she. She must talk to Julia more seriously,
and would go to the school at once. She went up-stairs, and put on her
bonnet and shawl before the glass; then moulded on her gloves, and came
down equipped. On the stairs was a large window, looking upon the open
field; she naturally cast her eyes through it in the direction she was
going, and what did she see but a young lady and gentleman coming slowly
down the path towards the villa. Mrs. Dodd bit her lip with vexation,
and looked keenly at them, to divine on what terms they were. And the
more she looked the more uneasy she grew.

The head, the hand, the whole body of a sensitive young woman walking
beside him she loves, betray her heart to experienced eyes watching
unseen; and especially to female eyes. And why did Julia move so slowly,
especially after that warning? Why was her head averted from that
encroaching boy, and herself so near him? Why not keep her distance,
and look him full in the face? Mrs. Dodd's first impulse was that of
leopardesses, lionesses, hens, and all the mothers in nature; to dart
from her ambush and protect her young; but she controlled it by a
strong effort; it seemed wiser to descry the truth, and then act with
resolution: besides, the young people were now almost at the shrubbery;
so the mischief if any, was done.

They entered the shrubbery.

To Mrs. Dodd's surprise and dismay, they did not come out this side
so quickly. She darted her eye into the plantation; and lo! Alfred had
seized the fatal opportunity foliage offers, even when thinnish: he
held Julia's hand, and was pleading eagerly for something she seemed not
disposed to grant; for she turned away and made an effort to leave him.
But Mrs. Dodd, standing there quivering with maternal anxiety, and
hot with shame, could not but doubt the sincerity of that graceful
resistance. If she had been quite in earnest, Julia had fire enough in
her to box the little wretch's ears. She ceased even to doubt, when
she saw that her daughter's opposition ended in his getting hold of two
hands instead of one, and devouring them with kisses, while Julia still
drew her head and neck away, but the rest of her supple frame seemed
to yield and incline, and draw softly towards her besieger by some
irresistible spell.

“I can bear no more!” gasped Mrs. Dodd aloud, and turned to hasten and
part them; but even as she curved her stately neck to go, she caught the
lovers' parting; and a very pretty one too, if she could but have looked
at it, as these things ought always to be looked at: artistically.

Julia's head and lovely throat, unable to draw the rest of her away,
compromised: they turned, declined, drooped, and rested one half moment
on her captor's shoulder, like a settling dove: the next, she scudded
from him, and made for the house alone.

Mrs. Dodd, deeply indignant, but too wise to court a painful interview,
with her own heart beating high, went into the drawing-room, and there
sat down, to recover some little composure. But she was hardly seated
when Julia's innocent voice was heard calling “Mamma, mamma!” and soon
she came bounding into the drawing-room, brimful of good news, her
cheeks as red as fire and her eyes wet with happy tears; and there
confronted her mother, who had started up at her footstep, and now,
with one hand nipping the back of the chair convulsively, stood lofty,
looking strangely agitated and hostile.

The two ladies eyed one another, silent, yet expressive, like a picture
facing a statue; but soon the colour died out of Julia's face as well,
and she began to cower with vague fears before that stately figure, so
gentle and placid usually, but now so discomposed and stern.


“Where have you been, Julia?”

“Only at the school,” she faltered.

“Who was your companion home?”

“Oh, don't be angry with me! It was Alfred.”

“Alfred! His Christian name! You try my patience too hard.”

“Forgive me. I was not to blame this time, indeed! indeed! You frighten
me. What will become of me? What have I done for my own mamma to look at
me so?”

Mrs. Dodd groaned. “Was that young coquette I watched from my window
the child I have reared? No face on earth is to be trusted after this.
'What have you done' indeed? Only risked your own mother's esteem, and
nearly broken her heart!” And with these words her own courage began to
give way, and she sank into a chair with a deep sigh.

At this Julia screamed, and threw herself on her knees beside her, and
cried “Kill me! oh, pray kill me! but don't drive me to despair with
such cruel words and looks!” and fell to sobbing so wildly that Mrs.
Dodd altered her tone with almost ludicrous rapidity. “There, do not
terrify me with your impetuosity, after grieving me so. Be calm, child;
let me see whether I cannot remedy your sad imprudence; and, that I may,
pray tell me the whole truth. How did this come about?”

In reply to this question, which she somewhat mistook, Julia sobbed out,
“He met me c-coming out of the school, and asked to s-see me home. I
said 'No thank you,' because I th-thought of your warning. 'Oh yes!'
said he, and _would_ walk with me, and keep saying he loved me. So, to
stop him, I said, 'M-much ob-liged, but I was b-busy and had no time
to flirt.' 'Nor have I the in-inclination,' said he. 'That is not what
others say of you,' said I--you know what you t-told me, mamma--so at
last he said d-did ever he ask any lady to be his wife? 'I suppose
not,' said I, 'or you would be p-p-private property by now instead of
p-public.'”

“Now there was a foolish speech; as much as to say nobody could resist
him.”

“W-wasn't it? And n-no more they could. You have no idea how he makes
love; _so_ unladylike: keeps advancing and advancing, and never once
retreats, nor even st-ops. 'But I ask _you_ to be my wife,' said he.
Oh, mamma, I trembled so. Why did I tremble? I don't know. I made myself
cold and haughty; 'I should make no reply to such ridiculous questions;
say that to mamma, if you dare!' I said.”

Mrs. Dodd bit her lip, and said, “Was there ever such simplicity?”

“Simple! Why that was my cunning. You are the only creature he is afraid
of; so I thought to stop his mouth with you. But instead of that, my
lord said calmly, 'That was understood; he loved me too well to steal
me from her to whom he was indebted for me.' Oh, he has always an answer
ready. And that makes him such a p-pest.”

“It was an answer that did him credit.”

“Dear mamma! now did it not? Then at parting he said he would come
to-morrow, and ask you for my hand; but I must intercede with you first,
or you would be sure to say 'No.' So I declined to interfere: 'W-w-what
was it to me?' I said. He begged and prayed me: 'Was it likely you would
give him such a treasure as Me unless I stood his friend?' (For the
b-b-brazen Thing turns humble now and then.) And, oh, mamma, he did so
implore me to pity him, and kept saying no man ever loved as he
loved me, and with his begging and praying me so passionately--oh, so
passionately--I felt something warm drop from his poor eyes on my hand.
Oh! oh! oh! oh!--What could I do? And then, you know, I wanted to
get away from him. So I am afraid I did just say 'Yes.' But

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