Love Me Little, Love Me Long Part 27

This innocent distress, with its cause, were too deep for a lady whose bright little intelligence leaned toward cunning rather than wisdom.

In spite of her niece's trouble, and the br.i.m.m.i.n.g eyes that implored forbearance, she drove the sting, merrily in again and again, till at last Lucy, who was not defending herself, but an absent friend, turned a little suddenly on her and said:

"And do you think he says nothing against you?"

"Oh, he is a backbiter, too, is he? I didn't know he had that vice.

Ah! and, pray, what can he find to say against me?"

"Oh, people that hate one another can always find something ill-natured to say," retorted Lucy, with a world of meaning.

Mrs. Bazalgette turned red, and her little nose went up into the air at an angle of forty-five. She said, with majestic disdain: "I don't hate the man--I don't condescend to hate him."

"Then don't condescend to backbite him, dear."

This home-thrust, coming from such a quarter, took away my Lady Disdain's very breath. She sat transfixed; then, upon reflection, got up a tear, and had to be petted.

This sweet lady departed, flinging down her firebrand on those hospitable boards.

Lucy, though she had defended her uncle, was not a little vexed that he had managed matters so as to get her talked of with Mr. Talboys.

Her natural modesty and reserve prevented her from remonstrating; nor was there any positive necessity. She was one of those young ladies who seem born mistresses of the art of self-defense. Deriving the art not from experience, but from instinct, they are as adroit at seventeen as they are at twenty-seven; so a last year's bird constructs her first nest as cunningly as can a veteran feathered architect.

Therefore, without a grain of discourtesy or tangible ill-temper, she quietly froze, and a small family with her, they could not tell how or why, for they had never even suspected this girl's power. You would have seemed to them as one that mocketh had you told them they owed their gayety, their good-humor, their happiness, and their conversational powers to her.

Of these Talboys suffered the most. She brought him to a stand-still by a very simple process. She no longer patted or spurred him. To vary the metaphor, a man that has no current must be stirred or stagnate; Lucy's light hand stirred Talboys no more; Talboys stagnated. Mr.

Fountain suffered next in proportion. He began to find that something was the matter, but what he had no idea. He did not observe that, though Lucy answered him as kindly as ever, she did not draw him out as heretofore, far less that she was vexed with him, and on her guard against him and everybody, like a _maitresse d'armes._ No. "The days were drawing in. The air was heavy; no carbon in it. Wind in the east again!!!" etc. So subtle is the influence of these silly little creatures upon creation's lords.

Mr. Talboys did not take delicate hints. He continued his visits three times a week, and the coast was kept clear for him. On this Miss Fountain proceeded to overt acts of war. She brought a champion on the scene--a terrible champion--a champion so irresistible that I set any woman down as a coward who lets him loose upon a s.e.x already so unequal to the contest as ours. What that champion's real name is I have in vain endeavored to discover, but he is _called_ "Headache." When this terrible ally mingled in the game--on the Talboys nights--dismay fell upon the wretched males that abode in and visited the once cheerful, cozy Font Abbey. Messrs. Fountain and Talboys put their heads together in grave, anxious consultations, and Arthur vented a yell of remonstrance. He found the lady one afternoon preparing indisposition. She was leaning languidly back, and the fire was dying out of her eye, and the color out of her cheek, and the blinds were drawn down. The poor boy burst in upon this prologue. "Oh, Lucy," he cried, in piteous, foreboding tones, "don't go and have a headache to-night. It was so jolly till you took to these _stupid_ headaches."

"I am so sorry, Arthur," said Lucy, apologetically, but at bottom she was inexorable. The disease reached its climax just before dinner. All remedies failed, and there was nothing for it but to return to her own room, and read the last new tale of domestic interest--and principle--until sleep came to her relief.

After dinner Arthur shot out with the retiring servants, and interred himself in the study, where he sought out with care such wild romances as give entirely false views of life, and found them, "and so shut up in measureless content."--Macbeth.

The seniors consulted at their ease. They both appreciated the painful phenomenon, but they differed _toto coelo_ as to the cause. Mr.

Fountain ascribed it to the somber influence of Mrs. Bazalgette, and miscalled her, till Jane's hair stood on end: she happened to be the one at the keyhole that night. Mr. Talboys laid all the blame on David Dodd. The discussion was vigorous, and occupied more than two hours, and each party brought forward good and plausible reasons; and, if neither made any progress toward converting the other, they gained this, at least, that each corroborated himself. Now Mrs. Bazalgette was gone no direct reprisals on her were possible. Registering a vow that one day or other he would be even with her, the senior consented, though not very willingly, to co-operate with his friend against an imaginary danger. In answer to his remark that the Dodds were never invited to tea now, Mr. Talboys had replied: "But I find from Mr.

Arthur he visits the house every day on the pretense of teaching him mathematics--a barefaced pretense--a sailor teach mathematics!" Mr.

Fountain had much ado to keep his temper at this pertinacity in a jealous dream. He gulped his ire down, however, and said, somewhat sullenly: "I really cannot consent to send my poor friend's son to the University a dunce, and there is no other mathematician near."

"If I find you one," said Talboys, hastily, "will you relieve Mr. Dodd of his labors, and me of his presence?"

"Certainly," said the other. Poor David!

"Then there is my friend Bramby. He is a second wrangler. He shall take Arthur, and keep him till Miss Fountain leaves us. Bramby will refuse me nothing. I have a living in my gift, and the inc.u.mbent is eighty-eight."

The senior consented with a pitying smile.

"Bramby will take him next week," said Talboys, severely.

Mr. Fountain nodded his head. It was all the a.s.sent he could effect: and at that moment there pa.s.sed through him the sacrilegious thought that the Conqueror must have imported an a.s.s or two among his other forces, and that one of these, intermarrying with Saxon blood, had produced a mule, and that mule was his friend.

The same uneasy jealousy, which next week was to expel David from Font Abbey, impelled Mr. Talboys to call the very next day at one o'clock to see what was being done under cover of trigonometry. He found Mr.

and Miss Fountain just sitting down to luncheon. David and Arthur were actually together somewhere, perhaps going through the farce of geometry. He was half vexed at finding no food for his suspicions.

Presently, so spiteful is chance, the door opened, and in marched Arthur and David.

"I have made him stay to luncheon for once," said Arthur; "he couldn't refuse me; we are to part so soon." Arthur got next to Lucy, and had David on his left. Mr. Talboys gave Mr. Fountain a look, and very soon began to play his battery upon David.

"How do you naval officers find time to learn geometry?"

"What? don't you know it is a part of our education, sir?"

"I never heard that before."

"That is odd; but perhaps you have spent all your life ash.o.r.e" (this in commiserating accents). David then politely explained to Mr.

Talboys that a man who looked one day to command a ship must not only practice seamanship, but learn navigation, and that navigation was a n.o.ble art founded on the exact sciences as well as on practical experiences; that there did still linger upon the ocean a few of the old captains, who, born at a period when a ship, in making a voyage, used to run down her longitude first, and then begin to make her lat.i.tude, could handle a ship well, and keep her off a lee sh.o.r.e _if they saw it in time,_ but were, in truth, hardly to be trusted to take her from port to port. "We get a word with these old salts now and then when we are becalmed alongside, and the questions they put make us quite feel for them. Then they trust entirely to their instruments. They can take an observation, but they can't verify one.

They can tack her and wear her (I have seen them do one when they should have done the other), and they can read the sky and the water better than we young ones; and while she floats they stick to her, and the greater the danger the louder the oaths--but that is all." He then a.s.sured them with modest fervor that much more than that was expected of the modern commander, particularly in the two capital articles of exact science and gentlemanly behavior. He concluded with considerable grace by apologizing for his enthusiastic view of a profession that had been too often confounded with the faults of its professors--faults that were curable, and that they would all, he hoped, live long enough to see cured. Then, turning to Miss Fountain, he said: "And if I began by despising my business, and taking a small view of it, how should I ever hold sticks with my able compet.i.tors, who study it with zeal and admiration?"

Lucy. "I don't quite understand all you have said, Mr. Dodd, but that last I think is unanswerable."

Fountain. "I am sure of it. As the Duke of Wellington said the other day in the House of Lords, 'That is a position I defy any n.o.ble lord to a.s.sault with success'--haw! ho!"

Mr. Talboys averted his attack. "Pray, sir," said he, with a sneer, "may I ask, have nautical commanders a particular taste for education as well as science?"

"Not that I know of. If you mean me, I am hungry to learn, and I find few but what can teach me something, and what little I know I am willing to impart, sir; give and take."

"It is the direction of your teaching that seems to me so singular.

Mathematics are horrible enough, and greatly to be avoided."

"That is news to me."

"On _terra firma,_ I mean."

At this opening of the case Talboys versus Newton, Arthur shrugged his shoulders to Lucy and David, and went swiftly out as from the presence of an idiot. It was abominably rude. But, besides being ill-natured and a little shallow, Mr. Talboys was drawling out his words, and Arthur was sixteen--candid epoch, at which affectation in man or woman is intolerable to us; we get a little hardened to it long before sixty. Mr. Talboys bit his lip at this boyish impertinence, but he was too proud a man to notice it otherwise than by quietly incorporating the offender into his satire. "But the enigma is why you read them with a stripling, of whose breeding we have just had a specimen--mathematics with a hob-ba-de-hoy? _Grand Dieu!_ Do pray tell us, Mr. Dodd, why you come to Font Abbey every day; is it really to teach Master Orson mathematics and manners?"

David did not sink into the earth as he was intended to.

"I come to teach him algebra and geometry, what little I know."

"But your motive, Mr. Dodd?"

David looked puzzled, Lucy uneasy at seeing her guest badgered.

"Ask Miss Fountain why she thinks I do my best for Arthur," said David, lowering his eyes.

Talboys colored and looked at Fountain.

"I think it must be out of pure goodness," said Lucy, sweetly.

Mr. Talboys ignored her calmly. "Pray enlighten us, Mr. Dodd. Now what is the real reason you walk a mile every day to do mathematics with that interesting and well-behaved juvenile?"

"You are very curious, sir," said David, grimly, his ire rising unseen.