IT may be allowed to me to confess that I watched during the remainder of that day with a little natural, but extremely absurd curiosity to see “what effect” our conversation had upon Maurice Harley. After I had got over my own unpleasant sensations, I began to flatter myself, with natural vanity, that perhaps I might have “done him good.” I had an inkling that it was absurd, but that made very little difference, and I acknowledge that I felt quite a new spur and stimulus of interest in the young man. I listened to his chance observations during the day with an attention which I had never before bestowed upon them. For the moment, instead of simple impatience of his indolence, and virtuous, gentlemanly good-for-nothingness, I began to sympathize somewhat in the lamenting admiration of his friends that so much talent should be lost to the world. Altogether, in my capacity of hostess to Maurice, I was for that day a reformed and penitent person, full of compunction for my offence. I am obliged to confess, however, that there was no corresponding change upon my guest. Maurice demeaned himself that day exactly as he had done the day before—was as superior, and critical, and indifferent, as much above the common uses of life and motives of humanity as he had ever been. Still, my penitential feelings lasted out the day, and it was not till I perceived how entirely he was laying himself out to charm and captivate Miss Reredos and make up to her for the attentions she had paid him, that I detected myself in the simple-minded vanity of expecting to have “done him good.” The flirtation that evening was so evident, and Maurice threw himself so much more warmly into it than on any former occasion, that we, the spectators, were all roused to double observation. Johnnie sat behind the little table in the corner, with the stereoscope before him, blazing the wildest rage out of his half-hidden eyes upon his brother, and sometimes quite trembling with passion. Alice moved about with a little indignant dilation of her person and elevation of her head—half out of regard to the honor of her “sex,” which Miss Reredos, she supposed, was compromising, and half out of shame and annoyance at the “infatuation” of her brother. And not quite knowing what this new fervor might portend, I took an opportunity as I passed by Maurice’s chair to speak to him quietly—
“Is Miss Reredos, then, to be more attractive than the fellowship?” I said, lingering a moment as I passed.
Maurice looked up at me with a certain gleam of boyish malice and temper in his eye.
“You know we are very well matched, and I cannot do her much harm,” he said, quoting my own words.
This was the good I had done him—this, out of a conversation which ended so seriously, was the only seed that had remained in that fertile and productive soil, the mind of Maurice Harley, and behold already its fructifications. I went back to my seat, and sat down speechless. I was inexpressibly angry and mortified for the moment. To be sure it was a little private and personal vanity which made the special sting. Yet he had been unquestionably moved by my candid opinion of him, in which very little admiration was mingled with the regret—but had I not piqued his vanity as well?
As for Johnnie, having been taken into his confidence, I was doubly alive to the feelings with which he watched his brother. Miss Reredos managed admirably well between the lover real and the lover make-believe, her vanity being of course in play even more decidedly than anybody else’s. I believe she was quite deceived by the sudden warmth of Maurice. I believe the innocent young woman fell captive in an instant, not to his fascinations, but to the delusion of believing that she had fascinated him, and that the name of the Fellow of Exeter was that evening inscribed upon her long list of victims; but, notwithstanding, she would not give up Johnnie; I suppose his youthful adoration was something new and sweet to the experienced young lady—the absoluteness of his trust in her and admiration of her was delicious to the pretty coquette, with whom warier men were on their guard. Over Johnnie she was absolute, undisputed sovereign—he was ready to defy the whole world in her behalf, and disown every friend he had at her bidding. Such homage, even from a cripple, was too sweet to be parted with. Somehow, by means of those clever eyes of hers, even while at the height of her flirtation with Maurice, she kept Johnnie in hand, propitiated, and calmed him. I don’t know how it is done—I don’t think Alice knew either; but I am not sure that a certain instinctive perception of the manner of that skilful double movement did not come natural to Clara Sedgwick, and stimulate her disgust at the proceeding. If she had not been married so early and been so happy a little wife, Clara might have been a little flirt herself—who knows? I saw that she had an intuition how it was done.
As for Miss Polly, she could do nothing but talk about the advantages of useful training for girls. “If these poor children should turn out flirts, Clare!” she cried, in dismay. To be sure, Emmy, the pretty one, was only ten and a half—but still if education could hinder such a catastrophe, there was certainly no time to be lost.
Mr. Owen came to dinner next day, according to my invitation. He was a young man, younger than Maurice, and a hundred times more agreeable. He was curate of St. Peter’s, in Simonborough, where a curate among the multitude of divines congregated about the cathedral, was as hard to find or make any note of as the famous needle in the bundle of hay. And it is very probable that he was not a brilliant preacher, or noted for any gift in particular; but I liked the honest, manful young fellow, who was not ashamed either to do his work or to talk of it when occasion called—nor afraid to marry upon his minute income, nor to tell me with a passing blush and a happy laugh, which became him, what a famous little housekeeper his wife was, and what fun they had over her economics. Maurice heard and smiled—calm, ineffable, superior—and wished he could only submit his unhappily more enlightened mind to a simple faith like Owen’s. And Owen, on his part, was respectful of the dainty disbeliever, and took off his hat to that scepticism, born of idleness and an unoccupied mind, for which I, in my secret heart, for sheer impatience and disgust, could have whipped the Fellow of Exeter. Mr. Owen was as respectful of it as if that pensive negation had been something actual and of solemn importance. He shook his head and talked to me mysteriously of poor Harley. Maurice had rather distinguished himself at college before he sank into his fellowship. His old companions who were of the same standing were a little proud of his scholarly attainments. “He could be anything if he chose,” they said to themselves; and because Maurice did not choose, his capabilities looked all the grander. Owen was quite a partisan of Harley. “What a pity it was!” the honest fellow said, “with such a mind, if he could but get right views”——
At which juncture I struck the excellent young man dumb and breathless by uttering aloud a fervent desire and prayer that by some happy chance Maurice should fall in love.
Mr. Owen looked at me for a moment thunderstruck, the words of his own former sensible sentence hanging half-formed about his lips; then, when he had recovered himself a little, he smiled and said, “You have so much confidence in a female preacher? No doubt they are irresistible—but not in matters of doctrine, perhaps.”
“No such thing,” said I, “I have no confidence in female preachers or religious courtship; but apart from the intense satisfaction which I own I should have in seeing Maurice make, as people say, a fool of himself, that is the only means I see of bringing him back to life.”
“To life!” said my new acquaintance, with a lively look of interrogation.
“Oh, I do not mean anything grand; I mean common life, with the housekeeping to be provided for,” said I smiling, “and the daily bread, and the other mouths that have to eat it. I daresay, even you yourself, who seem to stand in no such need as Maurice, have found out something in the pleasant jingle you were talking of—of Mrs. Owen’s basket of keys.”
The young man blushed once more that slight passing color of happiness, and answered gravely, yet with a smile, “It is true, I see what you mean—and it is very possible indeed—but,” he added, stopping abruptly, and looking at his friend, who was in the full tide of flirtation with Miss Reredos, “Mrs. Crofton, look there!”
I shook my head. “Nothing will come of it,” said I; “they are amusing themselves.”
Condign punishment came upon my head almost as I spoke; I had turned my head incautiously, and Johnnie and Alice had both heard me.
“Amusing themselves!” cried Johnnie, hissing the words into my ears in a whisper. “Amusing! do you suppose that it is anything but her angel-sweetness, Mrs. Crofton, that makes her so forbearing with Maurice—my brother? I adore her for it,” cried (but in a whisper) the deluded boy.
“Amusing themselves!” cried Alice, raising her head, “and you can say so, Mrs. Crofton? Oh, I am ashamed, to think a woman should forget herself so strangely; I could forgive anything—almost anything,” said Alice, correcting herself with a blush, “which really sprang from true strong feeling; but flirting—amusing themselves! Oh, Mrs. Crofton!”
“My dear child, it is not my fault,” said I, “I have no hand in the matter, either one way or the other.”
“Yes, that is true,” said Alice, with that lively impatience and disinclination to suffer a dear friend to rest in an opinion different from her own, which I have felt myself and understood perfectly,—“but you will not see how unworthy it is—how dishonoring to women! That is what wounds me.”
“Is it not dishonoring to men as well?—two are playing at it, and the other creature is accountable likewise. Are you not concerned for the credit of your sex?” said I, turning to Owen.
The young curate laughed, Alice blushed and looked deeply affronted, and Johnnie, turning all the fury of his jealousy upon me, looked as if it would have pleased him to do me some bodily harm. Well, well, one can bear all that—and I am happy to say that I think I accelerated distantly and humbly by this said conversation, the coming on of Maurice Harley’s fate.