DAVID DODD was so radiant and happy for a day or two that Eve had not the heart to throw cold water on him again.
Three days elapsed, and no invitation to Font Abbey; on this his happiness cooled of itself. But when day after day rolled by, and no Font Abbey, he was dashed, uneasy, and, above all, perplexed. What could be the reason? Had he, with his rough ways, offended her? Had she been too dignified to resent it at the time? Was he never to go to Font Abbey again? Eve's first feeling was unmixed satisfaction. We have seen already that she expected no good from this rash attachment. For a single moment her influence and reasons had seemed to wean David from it; but his violent agitation and joy at two words of kindly curiosity from Miss Fountain, and the instant unreasonable revival of love and hope, showed the strange power she had acquired over him. It made Eve tremble.
But now the Fountains were aiding her to cure this folly. She had read them right, had described them to David aright. A wind of caprice had carried him and her into Font Abbey; another such wind was carrying them out. No event had happened. Mr. and Miss Fountain had been seen more than once in the village of late. “They have dropped us, and thank Heaven!” said Eve, in her idiomatic way.
She pitied David deeply, and was kinder and kinder to him now, to show him she felt for him; but she never mentioned the Font Abbey people to him either to praise or blame them, though it was all she could do to suppress her satisfaction at the turn their insolent caprice had taken.
That satisfaction was soon clouded. This time, instead of rousing himself and his pride, David sank into a moody despondency; varied by occasional fretfulness. His appetite went, and his bright color, and his elastic step. This silent sadness was so new in him, such a contrast to his natural temperature, large, genial, and ever cheerful, that Eve could not bear it. “I must shake him out of this, at all hazards,” thought she: yet she put off the experiment, and put it off, partly in hopes that David would speak first, partly because she saw the wound she would probe was deep, and she winced beforehand for her patient.
Meantime, prolonged doubt and suspense now goaded with their intolerable stings the active spirit that chill misgivings had at first benumbed. Spurred into action by these torments, David had already watched several days in the neighborhood of Font Abbey, determined to speak to Miss Fountain, and find out whether he had given her offense; for this was still his uppermost idea. Having failed in this attempt at an interview with her, he was now meditating a more resolute course, and he paced the little gravel-walk at home debating in himself the pros and cons. Raising his head suddenly, he saw his sister walking slowly at the other end of the path. She was coming toward him, but her eyes were bent thoughtfully on the ground. David slipped behind some bushes, not to have his unhappiness and his meditations interrupted. The lover and the lunatic have points in common.
He had been there some time when a grave little voice spoke quietly to him from the lawn. “David, I want to speak to you.” David came out.
“Here am I.”
“Oh, I knew where you were. Don't do that again, sir, please, or you'll catch it.”
“Oh, I didn't think you saw me,” said David, somewhat confusedly.
“What has that to do with it, stupid? David,” continued she, assuming a benevolent, cheerful, and somewhat magnificent nonchalance, “I sometimes wonder you don't come to me with your troubles. I might advise you as well as here and there one. But perhaps you think now, because I am naturally gay, I am not sensible. You mustn't go by that altogether. Manner is very deceiving. The most foolishly conducted men and women ever I met were as grave as judges, and as demure as cats after cream. Bless you, there is folly in every heart. Your slow ones bottle it up for use against the day wisdom shall be most needed. My sort let it fizz out at their mouths in their daily talk, and keep their good sense for great occasions, like the present.”
“Have we drifted among the proverbs of Solomon?” inquired David, dryly. “No need to make so many tacks, Eve. Haven't I seen your sense and profited by it—I and one or two more? Who but you has steered the house this ten years, and commanded the lubberly crew?” *
* The reader must not be misled by the familiar phraseology
of these two speakers to suppose that anything the least
droll or humorous was intended by either of them at any part
of this singular dialogue. Their hearts were sad and their
faces grave.
“And then again, David, where the heart is concerned, young women are naturally in advance of young men.”
“God knows. He made them both. I don't.”
“Why, all the world knows it. And then, besides, I am five years older than you.
“So mother says; but I don't know how to believe it. No one would say so to look at you.”
“I'll tell you, David. Folk that have small features look a deal younger than their years; and you know poor father used to say my face was the pattern of a flat-iron. So nobody gives me my age; but I am five good years older than you, only you needn't go and tell the town crier.”
“Well, Eve?”
“Well, then, put all these together, and now, why not come to me for friendly advice and the voice of reason?”
“Reason! reason! there are other lights besides reason.”
“Jack-o'-lantern, eh? and Will-o'-the-wisp.”
“Eve, nobody can advise me that can't feel for me. Nobody can feel for me that doesn't know my pain; and you don't know that, because you were never in love.”
“Oh, then, if I had ever been in love, you would listen.”
“As I would to an angel from Heaven.”
“And be advised by me.”
“Why not? for then you'd be competent to advise; but now you haven't an idea what you are talking about.”
“What a pity! Don't you think it would be as well if you were not to speak to me so sulky?”
“I ask your pardon; Eve. I did not mean to offend you.”
“Davy, dear—for God's sake what is this chill that has come between you and me? You are a man. Speak out like a man.”
David turned his great calm, sorrowful eye full upon her.
“Well, then, Eve, if the truth must be told, I am disappointed in you.”
“Oh, David.”
“A little. You are not the girl I took you for. You know which way my fancy lies, yet you keep steering me in the teeth of it; then you see how down-hearted I am this while, but not a word of comfort or hope comes from you, and me almost dried up for want of one.”
“Make one word of it, David—I am not a sister to you.”
“I don't say that, but you might be kinder; you are against me just when I want you with me the most.”
“Now this is what I like,” said Eve, cheerfully; “this is plain speaking. So now it is my turn, my lad. Do you remember Balaam and his ass?”
“Sure,” said David; but, used as he was to Eve's transitions, he couldn't help staring a little at being carried eastward ho so suddenly.
“Then what did the ass say when she broke silence at last?”
“Well, you know, Eve; I take shame to say I don't remember her very words, but the tune of them I do. Why, she sang out, 'Avast there! it is first fault, so you needn't be so hasty with your thundering rope's end.”'
“There! You'd make a nice commentator. You haven't taken it up one bit; you are as much in the dark as our parson. He preached on her the very Sunday you came home, and it was all I could do to help whipping up into the pulpit, and snatching away his book, and letting daylight in on them.”
David was scandalized at the very idea of such a breach of discipline. “That is ridiculous,” said he; “one can't have two skippers in a church any more than in a ship, brig, or bark. But you can let daylight in on me.”
“I mean. To begin: the ass was in the right and Balaam in the wrong; so what becomes of your 'first fault?' She was frugal of her words, but every syllable was a needle; the worst is, some skins are so thick our needles won't enter 'em. Says she, 'This seven years you have known me; always true to the bridle and true to you. Did ever I disobey you before? Then why go and fancy I do it without some great cause that you can't see?' Then the man's eyes were open, and he saw it was destruction his old friend had run back from, and galled his foot to save his life; so of course he thanked her, and blessed her then. Not he. He was too much of a man.”
“Ay, ay, I see; but what is the moral? for I have no heart to expound riddles.”
“Oh, I'll tell you the moral sooner than you'll like, perhaps. The ass is a type, David. In Holy Writ you know almost everything is a type. When a thing means one thing and stands for another, that's a type.”
“Ducks can swim—at least I've heard so. Now if you could tell me what she is a type of?”
“What, the ass? Don't you know? Why, of women, to be sure—of us poor creatures of burden, underrated and misunderstood all the world over. And Balaam he stands for men, and for you at the head of them,” cried she, turning round with flashing eyes on David; “you have known me and my true affection more than seven years, or seventeen. I carried you in my arms when you were a year old and I was six. You were my little curly-headed darling, and have been from that day to this. Did ever I cross you, or be cold or unkind to you, till the other day?”
“No, Eve, no, no, no! Come sit beside me.
“Then shouldn't you have said, 'Don't slobber me; I won't have it; you and I are bad friends.' Oughtn't you to have said, 'Eve could never give herself the pain of crossing me' (no, there isn't a man in the world with gumption enough to say that—that is a woman's thought); but at least you might have said, 'She sees rocks ahead that I can't.' (Balaam couldn't see the drawn sword ahead, but there it was.) it was for you to say, 'My sister Eve would not change from gay to grave all at once, and from indulging me in everything to thwarting me and vexing me, unless she saw some great danger threatening your peace of mind, your career in life, your very reason, perhaps.'”
“I have been to blame, Eve; but speak out and let me know the worst. You have heard something against her character? Speak plain out, for Heaven's sake!”
“It is all very well of you to say speak plain out, but there are things girls don't like to speak about to any man. But after what you said, that you would listen to me if I—so it is my duty. You will see my face red enough in about a minute. Two years ago I couldn't have done this even for you. It is hard I must expose my own folly—my own crime.”
“Why, Eve, lass, how you tremble! Drop it now! drop it!”
“Hold your tongue!” said Eve, sharply, but in considerable agitation. “It is too late now, after something you have said to me. If I didn't speak out now, I should be like that bad man you told us of, who let out the beacon light when the wind was blowing hard on shore. Listen, David, and take my words to heart. The road you are on now I have been upon, only I went much farther on it than you shall go.” She resumed after a short pause: “You remember Henry Dyke?”
“What, the young clergyman, who used to be always alongside you at our last anchorage?”
“Yes. He was just such a man as Miss Fountain is a woman. He was but a dish of skim-milk, yet he could poison my life.”
Then Eve told the story of her heart. She described her lover as he appeared to her in the early days of courtship, young, handsome, good, noble in sentiment, and warm and tender in manner. Halcyon days—not a speck to be seen on love's horizon.
Then she delineated the fine gradations by which the illusion faded, too slowly and too late for her to withdraw the love she had conceived for his person at that time when person and mind seemed alike superior. She painted with the delicate touch of her sex the portrait of a man and a scholar born to please all the world, and incapable of condensing his affections; a pious flirt, no longer stimulated to genuine ardor by doubts of success, but too kind-hearted to pain her beyond measure when a little factitious warmth from time to time would give her hours of happiness, keep her, on the whole, content, and, above all, retain her his. Then she shifted the mirror to herself, the fiery and faithful one, and showed David what centuries of torture a good little creature like this Dyke, with its charming exterior, could make a quick, and ardent, and devoted nature suffer in a year or two. Came out in her narrative, link by link, the gentle delicious complacency of the first period, the chill airs that soon ruffled it, the glowing hopes, the misgivings that dashed them; then the diminution of confidence, more complexing and exasperating than its utter loss; the alternations of joy and doubt, the fever and the ague of the wounded spirit; then the gusts of hatred followed by deeper love; later still, the periodical irritation at hopes long deferred, and still gleams of bliss between the paroxysms, so that now, as the vulgar say in their tremendous Saxon, she “spent her time between heaven and hell”; last of all, the sickness and recklessness of the wornout and wearied heart over which melancholy or fury impended.
It was at this crisis when, as she could now see on a calm retrospect, her mind was distempered, a new and terrible passion stepped upon the scene—jealousy. A friend came and whispered her, “Mr. Dyke was courting another woman at the same time, and that other woman was rich.”
“David, at that word a flash of lightning seemed to go through me, and show me the man as he really was.”
“The mean scoundrel, to sell himself for money!!”
“No, David, he would not have sold himself, with his eyes open, any more than perhaps your Miss Fountain would; but what little heart he had he could give to any girl that was not a fright. He was a self-deceiver and a general lover, and such characters and their affections sink by nature to where their interest lies. Iron is not conscious, yet it creeps toward the loadstone. Well, while she was with me I held up and managed to question her as coldly as I speak to you now, but as soon as she left me I went off in violent hysterics.”
“Poor Eve!”
“She had not been gone an hour when doesn't the Devil put it into his head to send me a long, affectionate letter, and in the postscript he invited himself to supper the same afternoon. Then I got up and dried my eyes, and I seemed to turn into stone with resolution. 'Come!' I said, 'but don't think you shall ever go back to her. Your troubles and mine shall end to-night.'”
“Why, Eve, you turn pale with thinking of it. I fear you have had worse thoughts pass through your mind than any man is worth.”
“David, your blood was in my veins, and mine is in yours.
“If I didn't think so! The Lord deliver us from temptation! We don't know ourselves nor those we love.”
“He had driven me mad.”
“Mad, indeed. What! had you the heart to see the man bleed to death—the man you had loved—you, my little gentle Eve?”
“Oh no, no; no blood!” said Eve, with a shudder. “Laudanum!”
“Good God!”
“Oh, I see your thought. No, I was not like the men in the newspapers, that kill the poor woman with a sure hand, and then give themselves a scratch. It was to be one spoonful for him, but two for me. I can't dwell on it” (and she hid her face in her hands); “it is too terrible to remember how far I was misled. Who, think you, saved us both?” David could not guess.
“A little angel—my good angel, that came home from sea that very afternoon. When I saw your curly head, and your sweet, sunburned face come in at the door, guess if I thought of putting death in the pot after that? Ah! the love of our own flesh and blood, that is the love—God and good angels can smile on it.”
“Yes; but go on,” said David, impatiently.
“It is ended, David. They say a woman's heart is a riddle, and perhaps you will think so when I tell you that when he had brought me down to this, and hadn't died for it, I turned as cold as ice to him that minute, once and forever. I looked back at the precipice, and I hated him. Ay, from that evening he was like the black dog to my eye. I used to slip anywhere to hide out of his way—just as you did out of mine but now.”
“Can't you forget that? Well, to be sure. Well?”
“So then (now you may learn what these skim-milk cheeses are made of), when he found he was my aversion, he fell in love with me again as hot as ever; tried all he could think of to win me back; wrote a letter every day; came to me every other day; and when he saw it was all over for good between us he cried and bellowed till my hate all went, and scorn came in its place. Next time we met he played quite another part—the calm, heart-broken Christian; gave me his blessing; went down on his knees, and prayed a beautiful prayer, that took me off my guard and made me almost respect him; then went away, and quietly married the girl with money; and six months after wrote to me he was miserable, dated from the vicarage her parents had got him.”
“Now, you know, if he wasn't a parson, d—n me if I'd turn in to-night till I'd rope's-ended that lubber!”
“As if I'd let you dirty your hands with such rubbish! I sent the note back to him with just one line, 'Such a fool as you are has no right to be a villain.' There, David, there is your poor sister's life. Oh, what I went through for that man! Often I said, is Heaven just, to let a poor, faithful, loving girl, who has done no harm, be played with on the hook, and tortured hot and cold, day after day, month after month, year after year, as I was? But now I see why it was permitted; it was for your sake, that you might profit by my sharp experience, and not fling your heart away on frozen mud, as I did;” and, happy in this feminine theory of Divine justice, Eve rested on her brother a look that would have adorned a seraph, then took him gently round the neck and laid her little cheek flat to his.
She felt as if she had just saved a beloved life.
Who can estimate the value of a happiness so momentary, yet so holy?
Presently looking up, she saw David's face illuminated. “What is it?” she asked joyously; “you look pleased.”
David was “pleased because now he was sure she could feel for him, and would side with him.”
“That I do; but, David, as it is all over between you and her—”
“All over? Am I dead then?”
Eve gasped with astonishment: “Why, what have I been telling you all this for?”
“Who should you tell your trouble to but your own brother? Why, Eve—ha! ha!—you don't really see any likeness between your case and mine, do you? You are not so blind as to compare her with that thundering muff?”
“They are brother and sister, as we are,” was the reply. “Ever since I saw you looked her way, my eye has hardly been off her, and she is Henry Dyke in petticoats.”
“I don't thank you for saying that. Well, and if she is, what has that to do with it? I am not a woman. I am not forced to lie to waiting for a wind, as the girls are. I am a man. I can work for the wish of my heart, and, if it does not come to meet me, I can overhaul it.” Eve was a little staggered by this thrust, but she was not one to show an antagonist any advantage he had obtained. “David,” said she, coldly, “it must come to one of two things; either she will send you about your business in form, which is a needless affront for you and me both, or she will hold you in hand, and play with you and drive you mad. Take warning; remember what is in our blood. Father was as well as you are, but agitation and vexation robbed him of his reason for a while; and you and I are his children. Milk of roses creeps along in that young lady's veins, but fire gallops in ours. Give her up, David, as she has you. She has let you escape; don't fly back like a moth to the candle! You shan't, however; I won't let you.”
“Eve,” said David, quietly, “you argue well, but you can't argue light into dark, nor night into day. She is the sun to me. I have seen her light; and now I can't live without it.”
He added, more calmly: “It is her or none. I never saw a girl but this that I wanted to see twice, and I never shall.”
“But it is that which frightens me for you, David. Often I have wished I could see you flirt a bit and harden your heart.”
“And break some poor girl's.”
“Oh, hang them! they always contrive to pass it on. What do I care for girls! they are not my brother. But no, David, I can't believe you will go against me and my judgment after the insult she has put on you. No more about it, but just you choose between my respect and this wild-goose chase.”
“I choose both,” said David, quietly. “Both you shan't have”; and, with this, up bounced Eve, and stood before him bristling like a cat-o'mountain. David tried to soothe her—to coax her—in vain; her cheek was on fire, and her eyes like basilisks'. It was a picture to see the pretty little fury stand so erect and threatening, great David so humble and deprecating, yet so dogged. At last he took out his knife; it was not one of your stabbing-knives, but the sort of pruning-knife that no sailor went without in those days. “Now,” said he, sadly, “take and cut my head off—cut me to pieces, if you will—I won't wince or complain; and then you will get your way; but while I do live I shall love her, and I can't afford to lose her by sitting twiddling my thumbs, waiting for luck. I'll try all I know to win her, and if I lose her I won't blame her, but myself for not finding out how to please her; and with that I'll live a bachelor all my days for her, or else die, just as God wills—I shan't much care which.”
“Oh, I know you, you obstinate toad,” said Eve, clinching her teeth and her little hand. Then she burst out furiously: “Are you quite resolved?”
“Quite, dear Eve,” said David, sadly—but somehow it was like a rock speaking.
“Then there is my hand,” said Eve, with an instant transition to amiable cheerfulness that dazzled a body like a dark lantern flying open. Used as David was to her, it stupefied him; he stared at her, and was all abroad. “Well, what is the wonder now?” inquired Eve; “there are but two of us. We must be together somehow or another must we not? You won't be wise with me; well, then, I'll be a fool with you. I'll help you with this girl.”
“Oh, my dear Eve!”
“You won't gain much. Without me you hadn't the shadow of a chance, and with me you haven't a chance, that is all the odds.”
“I have! I have! you have taken away my breath with joy;” and David was quite overcome with the turn Eve had taken in his favor.
“Oh, you need not thank me,” said Eve, tossing her head with a hypocrisy all her own. “It is not out of affection for you I do it, you may be very sure of that; but it looks so ridiculous to see my brother slipping out of my way behind a tree as soon as he sees me coming—oh! oh! oh! oh!” And a violent burst of sobs and tears revealed how that incident had rankled in this stoical little heart.
David, with the tear in his own eye, clasped her in his arms, and kissed her and coaxed her and begged her again and again to forgive him. This she did internally at the first word; but externally no; pouted and sobbed till she had exacted her full tribute, then cleared up with sudden alacrity and inquired his plans.
“I am going to call at Font Abbey, and find out whether I have offended her.”
Eve demurred, “That would never do. You would betray yourself and there would be an end of you. How good I am not to let you go. No, I'll call there. I shall quietly find out whether it is her doing that we have not been invited so long, or whose it is. You stay where you are. I won't be a minute.”
When the minute was thirty-five, David came under her window and called her. She popped her head out: “Well?”
“What are you doing?”
“Putting on my bonnet.”
“Why, you have been an hour.”
“You wouldn't have me go there a fright, would you?”
At last she came down and started for Font Abbey, and David was left to count the minutes till her return. He paced the gravel sailor-wise, taking six steps and then turning, instead of going in each direction as far as he could. He longed and feared his sister's return. One hour—two hours elapsed; still he walked a supposed deck on the little lawn—six steps and then turn. At last he saw her coming in the distance; he ran to meet her; but when he came up with her he did not speak, but looked wistfully in her face, and tried hard to read it and his fate.
“Now, David, don't make a fool of yourself, or I won't tell you.”
“No, no. I'll be calm, I will—be—calm.”
“Well, then, for one thing, she is to drink tea with us this evening.”
“She? Who? What? Where? Oh!”
“Here.”
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