A FABLE tells us a fowler one day saw sitting in tree a wood-pigeon. This is a very shy bird, so he had to creep and maneuver to get within gunshot unseen, unheard. He stole from tree to tree, and muffled his footsteps in the long grass so adroitly that, just as he was going to pull the trigger, he stepped light as a feather on a venomous snake. It bit; he died.
This is instructive and pointed, but a trifle severe.
What befell Uncle Fountain, busy enmeshing his cock and hen pheasant, netting a niece and a friend, went to the same tune, but in a lower key, as befitted a domestic tale.*
* “Domestic,” you are aware, is Latin for “tame.” Ex.,
“domestic fowl,” “domestic drama,” “story of domestic
intereet,” “or chronicle of small beer,”
Among his letters at breakfast-time came one which he had no sooner read than he flung on the table and went into a fury. Lucy sat aghast; then inquired in tender anxiety what was the matter.
Angry explanations are apt to be dark ones. “It is a confounded shame—it is a trick, child—it is a do.”
“Ah! what is that, uncle? 'a do'?—'a do'?”
“Yes, 'a do.' He knew I hated figures; can't bear the sight of them, and the cursed responsibility of adding them up right.”
“But who knew all this?”
“He came over here bursting with health, and asked me to be one of his executors—mind, one. I consented on a distinct understanding I was never to be called upon to act. He was twenty years my junior, and like so much mahogany. It was just a form; I did it to soothe a man who called himself my friend, and set his mind at rest.”
“But, uncle dear, I don't understand even now. Can it be possible that a friend has abused your good nature?”
“A little,” with an angry sneer.
“Has he betrayed your confidence?”
“Hasn't he?”
“Oh dear! What has he done?”
“Died, that is all,” snarled the victim.
“Oh, uncle! Poor man!”
“Poor man, no doubt. But how about poor me? Why, it turns out I am sole executor.”
“But, dear uncle, how could the poor soul help dying?”
“That is not candid, Lucy,” said Mr. Fountain, severely. “Did ever I say he could help dying? But he could help coming here under false colors, a mahogany face, and trapping his friend.”
“Uncle, what is the use—your trying to play the misanthrope with me, who know how good you are, in spite of your pretenses to the contrary? To hide your emotion from your poor niece, you go into a feigned fury, and all the time you know how sorry you are your poor friend is gone.”
“Of course I am. He has secured one mourner. He might have died to all eternity if he hadn't nailed me first. See how selfish men are, and bad-hearted into the bargain. I believe that young fellow had been to a doctor, and found out he was booked in spite of his mahogany cheeks; so then he rides out here and wheedles an unguarded friend—I'm wired—I'm trapped—I'm snared.”
Lucy set herself to soothe her injured relative. “You must say to yourself, 'C'est un petit matheur.'”
“Tell myself a falsehood? What shall I gain by that? Let me tell you, it is these minor troubles that send a man to Bedlam. One breeds another, till they swarm and buzz you distracted, and sting you dead. 'Petit maiheur!'' it is a greater one than you have ever encountered since you have been under my wing.”
“It is, dear, it is; but I hope to encounter much greater ones before I am your age.”
“The deuce you do!”
“Or else I shall die without ever having lived—a vegetable, not a human being.”
“Bombast! a 'flower' your lovers will call you.”
“And men of sense a 'weed.' But don't let us discuss me. What I wish to know is the nature of your annoyance, dear.” He explained to her with a groan that he should have to wind up all the affairs of an estate of 8,000 pounds a year, pay the annual and other encumbrances, etc., etc.
“Well, but, dear, you will be quite at home in this, you have such a turn for business.”
“For my own,” shrieked the old bachelor, angrily, “not for other people's. Why, Lucy, there will be half a dozen separate accounts, all of four figures. It is not as if executors were paid. And why are they not paid? There ought to be a law compelling the estates they administer to pay them, and handsomely. It never occurred to me before, but now I see the monstrous iniquity of amateur executors, amateur trustees, amateur guardians. They take business out of the hands of those who live by business. I sincerely regret my share in this injustice. If a snob works, he always expects to be paid! how much more a gentleman. He ought to be paid double—once for the work, and once for giving up his natural ease. Here am I, guardian gratis to a cub of sixteen—the worst age—done school, and not begun Oxford and governesses.”
“Tutors, you mean.”
“Do I? Is it the tutors the whelps fall in love with, little goose? Stop; I'll describe my 'interesting charge,' as the books call it. He has hair you could not tell from tow. He has no eyebrows—a little unfledged slippery horror. He used to come in to dessert, and turn all our stomachs except his silly father's.”
“Poor orphan!”
“When you speak to him he never answers—blushes instead.”
“Poor child!”
“He has read of eloquent blushes, and thinks there is no need to reply in words—blushing must be such an interesting and effective substitute.”
“Poor boy, he wants a little judicious kindness. We will have him here.”
“Here!” cried the old gentleman, with horror. “What! make Font Abbey a kennel!!! No, Lucy, no, this house is sacred; no nuisances admitted here. Here, on this single spot of earth, reigns comfort, and shall reign unruffled while I live. This is the temple of peace. If I must be worried, I must, but not beneath this hallowed roof.”
This eloquence, delivered as it was with a sudden solemnity, told upon the mind.
“Dear Font Abbey,” murmured Lucy, half closing her eyes, “how well you describe it! Societies of the cosey; the walls seem padded, the carpets velvet, and the whole structure care-proof; all is quiet gayety and sweet punctuality. Here comfort and good humor move by clock-work; that is Font Abbey. Yet you are right; if you were to be seen in it no more, it would lose the life of its charm, dear Uncle Fountain.”
“Thank you, my dear—thank you. I do like to see my friends about me comfortable, and, above all, to be comfortable myself. The place is well enough, and I am bitterly sorry I must leave it, and sorry to leave you, my dear.”
“Leave us? not immediately?”
“This very day. Why, the funeral is to be this week—a grand funeral—and I have to order it all. Then there are relatives to be invited—thirty letters—others to be asked to the reading of the will. It will be one hurry-scurry till we get the house clear of the corpse and the vultures; then at it I must go, head-foremost, into fathomless addition—subtraction—multiplication, and vexation. 'Oh, now forever farewell, something or other—farewell content!' You talk of misanthropy. I shall end there. Lucy.”
“Yes, dear uncle.”
“I never—do—a good-natured thing—but—I—bitterly—repent it. By Jupiter! the coffee is cold; the first time that has befallen me since I turned off seven servants that battled that point of comfort with me.”
Lucy suggested that the coffee might have cooled a little while he was being so kind as to answer her question at unusual length. Then she came round to him bringing a fresh supply of fragrant slow poison, and sat beside him and soothed him till his ire went down, and came the calm depression of a man who, accustomed for many years to do just what he liked, found himself suddenly obliged to do something he did not like—a thing out of the groove of his habits too.
Sure enough, he left Font Abbey the same day, with a promise, exacted by Lucy, that he should make her the partner of all his vexations by writing to her every day.
“And, Lucy,” said the old Parthian, as he stepped into his traveling-carriage, “my friend Talboys will miss me; pray be kind to him while I am away. He is a particular friend of mine. I may be wrong, but I do like men of known origin—of old family.”
“And you are right. I will be kind to him for your sake, dear.”
A slight cold confined Lucy to the house for three or four days after her uncle's departure (by the by, I think this must have been the reason of David's ill success in his endeavors to get an interview with her out of doors).
Thus circumstanced, ladies rummage.
Lucy found in a garret a chest containing a quantity of papers and parchments, and the beautifulest dust. No such dust is made in these degenerate days. Some of these MSS. bore recent dates, and were easily legible, though not so easily intelligible, being written as Gratiano spake.* The writers had omitted to put the idea'd words into red ink, so they had to be picked out with infinite difficulty from the multitude of unidea'd ones.
* “Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing . . . . his
reasons are as three grains of wheat in two bushels of
chaff.”
Other of the MSS., more ancient, wore a double veil. They hid their sense in verbiage, and also in narrow Germanifled letters, farther deformed by contractions and ornamental flourishes, whose joint effect made a word look like a black daddy-long-legs, all sprawling fantastic limbs and the body a dot.
The perusal of these pieces was slow and painful; it was like walking or slipping about among broken ruins overgrown with nettles. But then Uncle Fountain was so anxious to hook on to the Flunkeys—oh, Ciel! what am I saying?—the Funteyns, and his direct genealogical evidence had so completely broken down. She said to herself, “Oh dear! if I could find something among these old writings, and show it him on his return.” She had them all dusted and brought down, and a table-cloth laid on a long table in the drawing-room, and spelled them with a good-humored patience that belonged partly to her character, partly to her sex. A female who undertakes this sort of work does not skip as we should; the habit of needle-work in all its branches reconciles that portion of mankind to invisible progress in other matters.
Besides this, they are naturally careful, and, above all, born to endure, they carry patience into nearly all they do.*
* At about the third rehearsal of a new play our actresses
bring the author's words into their heads, our actors are
still all abroad, and at the first performance the breaks-
down are sure to be among the males; the female jumenta
carry their burden (be it of pig-lead) safe from wing to
wing.
Lucy made her way manfully through all the well-written circumlocution, and in a very short time considering; but the antique [Greek] tried her eyes too much at night, so she gave nearly her whole day to it, for she was anxious to finish all before her uncle's return. It was a curious picture—Venus immersed in musty records.
One day she had studied and spelled four mortal hours, when a visitor was suddenly announced—Miss Dodd. That young lady came briskly in at the heels of the servant and caught Lucy at her work. After the first greeting, her eye rested with such undisguised curiosity on the “mouldy records” that Lucy told her in general terms what she was trying to do for her uncle. “La!” said Eve, “you will ruin your eye-sight; why not send them over to us? I will make David read them.”
“And his eyesight?”
“Oh, bless you, he has a knack at reading old writing. He has made a study of it.”
“If I thought I was not presuming too far on Mr. Dodd's good nature, I would send one or two of them.”
“Do; and I will make him draw up a paper of the contents; I have seen him at this sort of work before now. But there, la! I suppose you know it is all vanity.”
“I do it to please my poor uncle.”
“And very good you are. But what the better will the poor old gentleman be? We are here to act our own part well; we can't ride up to heaven on our great-grandfather.”
These maxims were somewhat coldly received, so Eve shifted her ground. “After all, I don't know why I should be the one to say that, for my own name is older than your uncle's a pretty deal.”
Lucy looked puzzled; then suddenly fancying she had caught Eve's meaning, she said: “That is true. Hail mother of mankind!!” and bowed her head with graceful reverence.
Eve stared and colored, not knowing what on earth her companion meant. I am afraid it must be owned that Eve steadily eschewed books and always had. What little book-learning she had came to her filtered through David, and by this channel she accepted it willingly, even sought it at odd times, when there was no bread, pudding, dress, theology, scandal, or fun going on. She turned it off by a sudden inquiry where Mr. Fountain was; “they told me in the village he was away.” Now several circumstances combined to make Lucy more communicative than usual. First, she had been studying hard; and, after long study, when a lively person comes to us, it is a great incitement to talk. Pitiful by nature, I spare you the “bent bow.” Secondly, she was a little anxious lest her uncle's sudden neglect should have mortified Miss Dodd, and a neutral topic handled at length tends to replace friendly feeling without direct and unpleasant explanations. She therefore answered every question in full; told her that her uncle had lost a dear friend; that he was executor and guardian to the poor boy, now entirely an orphan. Her uncle, with his usual zeal on behalf of his friends; had gone off at once, and doubtless would not return till he had fulfilled in every respect the wishes of the deceased.
To this general sketch she added many details, suppressing the misanthropy Mr. Fountain had exhibited or affected at the first receipt of the intelligence.
In short, angelic gossip. Earthly gossip always backbites, you know. Eve missed something somehow, no doubt the human or backbiting element; still, it was gossip, sacred gossip, far dearer than Shakespeare to the female heart, and Eve's eyes glowed with pleasure and her tongue plied eager questions.
With all this, such instinctive artists are these delicate creatures, both these ladies were secretly in ambush, Lucy to learn whether Eve and David were hurt or surprised at not being invited of late, and why she and he had not called since; Eve to find out what was the cause David and she had been so suddenly dropped: was it Lucy's doing or whose?
Each lady being bent on receiving, not on making revelations, nothing transpired on either side. Seeing this, Eve became impatient and made a bold move.
“Miss Fountain,” said she, “you are all alone. I wish you would come over to us this evening and have tea.”
Lucy did not immediately reply. Eve saw her hesitation. “It is but a poor place,” said she, “to ask you to.”
“I will come,” said the lady, directly. “I will come with great pleasure.”
“Will seven be too early for you?”
“Oh, no, I don't dine now my uncle is away. I call luncheon dinner.”
“Perhaps, six, then?”
“Pray let me come at your usual hour. Why derange your family for one person?” Six o'clock was settled.
“I must take some of this rubbish with me,” said Eve; “come along, my dears”; and with an ample and mock enthusiastic gesture she caught up an armful of manuscripts.
“The servant shall take them over for you.”
“Oh, bother the servant; I am my own servant—if you will lend me a pin or two.”
Lucy drew six pins out from different parts of her dress. Eve noticed this, but said nothing. She pinned up her apron so as to make an enormous pocket, and went gayly off with the “spoils of time.”
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