[A] If there is anything; most of us think there is not. If the unthinking male creatures who abuse it only knew the comfort of it! and what a weariness it saves us! and as for the people who are burnt, it is not because of their crinolines, but because of losing their heads—a calamity to which in all kinds of dresses we are constantly liable.
There was a bouquet of violets on the table, which was Mr. Pitt the gardener’s daily quit-rent to Sara for all the honors and emoluments of his situation, so that every kind of ethereal sense was satisfied. Fanny Hardcastle dropped into a very low chair at one side of the fire, where she sat like a swan with her head and throat rising out of the white billowy waves which covered yards of space round about her. Sara, who was at home, drew a stool in front of the fire, and sat down there, heaping up in her turn snow-wreaths upon the rosy hearth. A sudden spark might have swallowed them both in fiery destruction. But the spark happily did not come; and they had their talk in great comfort and content. They touched upon a great many topics, skimming over them, and paying very little heed to logical sequences. And at last they stumbled into metaphysics, and had a curious little dive into the subject of love and love-making, as was not unnatural. It is to be regretted, however, that neither of these young women had very exalted ideas on this point. They were both girls of their period, who recognized the necessity of marriage, and that it was something likely to befall both of them, but had no exaggerated notions of its importance; and, indeed, so far from being utterly absorbed in the anticipation of it, were both far from clear whether they believed in such a thing as love.
“I don’t think one ever could be so silly as they say in books,” said Fanny Hardcastle, “unless one was a great fool—feeling as if every thing was changed, you know, as soon as he was out of the room, and feeling one’s heart beat when he was coming, and all that stuff; I don’t believe it Sara; do you?”
“I don’t know,” said Sara, making a screen of her pretty laced handkerchief to protect her face from the firelight; “perhaps it is because one has never seen the right sort of man. The only man I have ever seen whom one could really love is papa.”
“Papa!” echoed Fanny, faintly, and with surprise. Perhaps, after all, she had a lingering faith in ordinary delusions; at all events, there was nothing heroic connected in her mind with papas in general; and she could but sit still and gaze and wonder what next the spoiled child would say.
“I wonder if mamma was very fond of him,” said Sara, meditatively. “She ought to have been, but I dare say she never knew him half as well as I do. That is the dreadful thing. You have to marry them before you know.”
“Oh, Sara, don’t you believe in love at first sight?” said Fanny, forgetting her previously expressed sentiments. “I do.”
Sara threw up her drooping head into the air with a little impatient motion. “I don’t think I believe any thing about it,” she said.
“And yet there was once somebody that was fond of you,” said little Fanny breathlessly. “Poor Harry Mansfield, who was so nice—every body knows about that—and, I do think, Mr. Keppel, if you would not be so saucy to him—”
“Mr. Keppel!” exclaimed Sara, with some scorn. “But I will tell you plainly what I mean to do. Mind it is in confidence between us two. You must never tell it to any body. I have made up my mind to marry whoever papa wishes me to marry—I don’t mind who it is. I shall do whatever he says.”
“Oh, Sara!” said her young companion, with open eyes and mouth, “you will never go so far as that.”
“Oh yes, I will,” said Sara, with calm assurance. “He would not ask me to have any body very old or very hideous; and if he lets it alone I shall never leave him at all, but stay still here.”
“That might be all very well for a time,” said the prudent Fanny; “but you would get old, and you couldn’t stay here forever. That is what I am afraid of. Things get so dull when one is old.”
“Do you think so?” said Sara. “I don’t think I should be dull—I have so many things to do.”
“Oh, you are the luckiest girl in the whole world,” said Fanny Hardcastle, with a little sigh. She, for her own part, would not have despised the reversion of Mr. Keppel, and would have been charmed with Jack Brownlow. But such blessings were not for her. She was in no hurry about it; but still, as even now it was dull occasionally at the rectory, she could not but feel that when she was old—say, seven-and-twenty or so—it would be duller still; and if accordingly, in the mean time, somebody “nice” would turn up—Fanny’s thoughts went no farther than this. And as for Sara, she has already laid her own views on the subject before her friends.
It was just then that Jack Brownlow, leaving the dining-room, invited young Keppel to the great hall door to see what sort of a night it was. “It looked awfully like frost,” Jack said; and they both went with serious countenances to look out, for the hounds were to meet next day.
“Smoke! not when we are going back to the ladies,” said Keppel, with a reluctance which went far to prove the inclination which Fanny Hardcastle had read in his eyes.
“Put yourself into this overcoat,” said Jack, “and I’ll take you to my room, and perfume you after. The girls don’t mind.”
“Your sister must mind, I am sure,” said Keppel. “One can’t think of any coarse sort of gratification like this—I suppose it is a gratification—in her presence.”
“Hum,” said Jack; “I have her presence every day, you know, and it does not fill me with awe.”
“It is all very easy for you,” said Keppel, as they went down the steps into the cold and darkness. Poor fellow! he had been a little thrown off his balance by the semi-intimacy and close contact of the little dinner. He had sat by Sara’s side, and he had lost his head. He went along by Jack’s side rather disconsolate, and not even attempting to light his cigar. “You don’t know how well off you are,” he said, in touching tones, “whereas another fellow would give his head—”
“Most fellows I know want their heads for their own affairs,” said the unfeeling Jack. “Don’t be an ass; you may talk nonsense as much as you like, but you know you never could be such an idiot as to marry at your age.”
“Marry!” said Keppel, a little startled, and then he breathed forth a profound sigh. “If I had the ghost of a chance,” he said, and stopped short, as if despair choked farther utterance. As for Jack Brownlow, he was destitute of sensibility, as indeed was suitable to his trade.
“I shouldn’t say you had in this case,” he said, in his imperturbable way; “and all the better for you. You’ve got to make your way in the world like the rest of us, and I don’t think you’re the sort of fellow to hang on to a girl with money. It’s all very well after a bit, when you’ve made your way; but no fellow with the least respect for himself should think of such a thing before, say five-and-thirty; unless, of course, he is a duke, and has a great family to keep up.”
“I hope you’ll keep to your own standard,” said Keppel, with a little bitterness, “unless you think an only son and a duke on equal ground.”
“Don’t sneer,” said Jack; “I’m young Brownlow the attorney; you know that as well as I do. I can’t go visiting all over the country at my uncle’s place and my cousin’s place, like you. Brownlows is a sort of a joke to most people, you know. Not that I haven’t as much respect for my father and my family as if we were all princes; and I mean to stand by my order. If I ever marry it will be twenty years hence, when I can afford it; and you can’t afford it any more than I can. A fellow might love a woman and give up a great deal for her,” Jack added with a little excitement; “but, by Jove! I don’t think he would be justified in giving up his life.”
“It depends on what you call life,” said Keppel. “I suppose you mean society