“Well, I couldn’t do my duty as a clergyman, any more than you could do yours as a governess. You ought to have a little fellow-feeling there, Mary.”
“I never said you ought to be a clergyman. There are other sorts of work. It seems to me very miserable not to resolve on some course and act accordingly.”
“So I could, if—” Fred broke off, and stood up, leaning against the mantel-piece.
“If you were sure you should not have a fortune?”
“I did not say that. You want to quarrel with me. It is too bad of you to be guided by what other people say about me.”
“How can I want to quarrel with you? I should be quarrelling with all my new books,” said Mary, lifting the volume on the table. “However naughty you may be to other people, you are good to me.”
“Because I like you better than any one else. But I know you despise me.”
“Yes, I do—a little,” said Mary, nodding, with a smile.
“You would admire a stupendous fellow, who would have wise opinions about everything.”
“Yes, I should.” Mary was sewing swiftly, and seemed provokingly mistress of the situation. When a conversation has taken a wrong turn for us, we only get farther and farther into the swamp of awkwardness. This was what Fred Vincy felt.
“I suppose a woman is never in love with any one she has always known— ever since she can remember; as a man often is. It is always some new fellow who strikes a girl.”
“Let me see,” said Mary, the corners of her mouth curling archly; “I must go back on my experience. There is Juliet—she seems an example of what you say. But then Ophelia had probably known Hamlet a long while; and Brenda Troil—she had known Mordaunt Merton ever since they were children; but then he seems to have been an estimable young man; and Minna was still more deeply in love with Cleveland, who was a stranger. Waverley was new to Flora MacIvor; but then she did not fall in love with him. And there are Olivia and Sophia Primrose, and Corinne—they may be said to have fallen in love with new men. Altogether, my experience is rather mixed.”
Mary looked up with some roguishness at Fred, and that look of hers was very dear to him, though the eyes were nothing more than clear windows where observation sat laughingly. He was certainly an affectionate fellow, and as he had grown from boy to man, he had grown in love with his old playmate, notwithstanding that share in the higher education of the country which had exalted his views of rank and income.
“When a man is not loved, it is no use for him to say that he could be a better fellow—could do anything—I mean, if he were sure of being loved in return.”
“Not of the least use in the world for him to say he COULD be better. Might, could, would—they are contemptible auxiliaries.”
“I don’t see how a man is to be good for much unless he has some one woman to love him dearly.”
“I think the goodness should come before he expects that.”
“You know better, Mary. Women don’t love men for their goodness.”
“Perhaps not. But if they love them, they never think them bad.”
“It is hardly fair to say I am bad.”
“I said nothing at all about you.”
“I never shall be good for anything, Mary, if you will not say that you love me—if you will not promise to marry me—I mean, when I am able to marry.”
“If I did love you, I would not marry you: I would certainly not promise ever to marry you.”
“I think that is quite wicked, Mary. If you love me, you ought to promise to marry me.”
“On the contrary, I think it would be wicked in me to marry you even if I did love you.”
“You mean, just as I am, without any means of maintaining a wife. Of course: I am but three-and-twenty.”
“In that last point you will alter. But I am not so sure of any other alteration. My father says an idle man ought not to exist, much less, be married.”
“Then I am to blow my brains out?”
“No; on the whole I should think you would do better to pass your examination. I have heard Mr. Farebrother say it is disgracefully easy.”
“That is all very fine. Anything is easy to him. Not that cleverness has anything to do with it. I am ten times cleverer than many men who pass.”
“Dear me!” said Mary, unable to repress her sarcasm; “that accounts for the curates like Mr. Crowse. Divide your cleverness by ten, and the quotient—dear me!—is able to take a degree. But that only shows you are ten times more idle than the others.”
“Well, if I did pass, you would not want me to go into the Church?”
“That is not the question—what I want you to do. You have a conscience of your own, I suppose. There! there is Mr. Lydgate. I must go and tell my uncle.”
“Mary,” said Fred, seizing her hand as she rose; “if you will not give me some encouragement, I shall get worse instead of better.”
“I will not give you any encouragement,” said Mary, reddening. “Your friends would dislike it, and so would mine. My father would think it a disgrace to me if I accepted a man who got into debt, and would not work!”
Fred was stung, and released her hand. She walked to the door, but there she turned and said: “Fred, you have always been so good, so generous to me. I am not ungrateful. But never speak to me in that way again.”
“Very well,” said Fred, sulkily, taking up his hat and whip. His complexion showed patches of pale pink and dead white. Like many a plucked idle young gentleman, he was thoroughly in love, and with a plain girl, who had no money! But having Mr. Featherstone’s land in the background, and a persuasion that, let Mary say what she would, she really did care for him, Fred was not utterly in despair.
When he got home, he gave four of the twenties to his mother, asking her to keep them for him. “I don’t want to spend that money, mother. I want it to pay a debt with. So keep it safe away from my fingers.”
“Bless you, my dear,” said Mrs. Vincy. She doted on her eldest son and her youngest girl (a child of six), whom others thought her two naughtiest children. The mother’s eyes are not always deceived in their partiality: she at least can best judge who is the tender, filial-hearted child. And Fred was certainly very fond of his mother. Perhaps it was his fondness for another person also that made him particularly anxious to take some security against his own liability to spend the hundred pounds. For the creditor to whom he owed a hundred and sixty held a firmer security in the shape of a bill signed by Mary’s father.
CHAPTER XV.
“Black eyes you have left, you say, Blue eyes fail to draw you; Yet you seem more rapt to-day, Than of old we saw you.
“Oh, I track the fairest fair Through new haunts of pleasure; Footprints here and echoes there Guide me to my treasure:
“Lo! she turns—immortal youth Wrought to mortal stature, Fresh as starlight’s aged truth— Many-named Nature!”
A great historian, as he insisted on calling himself, who had the happiness to be dead a hundred and twenty years ago, and so to take his place among the colossi whose huge legs our living pettiness is observed to walk under, glories in his copious remarks and digressions as the least imitable part of his work, and especially in those initial chapters to the successive books of his history, where he seems to bring his armchair to the proscenium and chat with us in all the lusty ease of his fine English. But Fielding lived when the days were longer (for time, like money, is measured by our needs), when summer afternoons were spacious, and the clock ticked slowly in the winter evenings. We belated historians must not linger after his example; and if we did so, it is probable that our chat would be thin and eager, as if delivered from a campstool in a parrot-house. I at least have so much to do in unraveling certain human lots, and seeing how they were woven and interwoven, that all the light I can command must be concentrated on this particular web, and not dispersed over that tempting range of relevancies called the universe.