CHAPTER XXXIII
Mrs. Egan was engaged in some needlework, and Fanny turning over the leaves of a music-book, and occasionally humming some bars of her favourite songs, as the gentlemen came into the drawing-room. Fanny rose from the pianoforte as they entered.
“Oh, Miss Dawson,” exclaimed Moriarty, “why tantalise us so much as to let us see you seated in that place where you can render so much delight, only to leave it as we enter?”
Fanny turned off the captain's flourishing speech with a few lively words and a smile, and took her seat at the tea-table to do the honours. “The captain,” said Father Phil to the doctor, “is equally great in love or war.”
“And knows about as little of one as the other,” said the doctor. “His attacks are too open.”
“And therefore easily foiled,” said Father Phil; “How that pretty creature, with the turn of a word and a curl of her lip, upset him that time! Oh! what a powerful thing a woman's smile is, doctor? I often congratulate myself that my calling puts all such mundane follies and attractions out of my way, when I see and know what fools wise men are sometimes made by silly girls. Oh, it is fearful, doctor; though, of course, part of the mysterious dispensation of an all-wise Providence.”
“That fools should have the mastery, is it?” inquired the doctor, drily, with a mischievous query in his eye as well. “Tut, tut, tut, doctor,” replied Father Phil, impatiently; “you know well enough what I mean, and I won't allow you to engage me in one of your ingenious battles of words. I speak of that wonderful influence of the weaker sex over the stronger, and how the word of a rosy lip outweighs sometimes the resolves of a furrowed brow; and how the—pooh! pooh! I'm making a fool of myself talking to you—but to make a long story short, I would rather wrastle out a logical dispute any day, or a tough argument of one of the fathers, than refute some absurdity which fell from a pretty mouth with a smile on it.”
“Oh, I quite agree with you,” said the doctor, grinning, “that the fathers are not half such dangerous customers as the daughters.”
“Ah, go along with you, doctor!” said Father Phil, with a good-humoured laugh. “I see you are in one of your mischievous moods, and so I'll have nothing more to say to you.”
The Father turned away to join the Squire, while the doctor took a seat near Fanny Dawson and enjoyed a quiet little bit of conversation with her, while Moriarty was turning over the leaves of her album; but the brow of the captain, who affected a taste in poetry, became knit, and his lip assumed a contemptuous curl, as he perused some lines, and asked Fanny whose was the composition.
“I forget,” was Fanny's answer.
“I don't wonder,” said Moriarty; “the author is not worth remembering, for they are very rough.”
Fanny did not seem pleased with the criticism, and said that, when sung to the measure of the air written down on the opposite page, they were very flowing.
“But the principal phrase, the 'refrain'' I may say, is so vulgar,” added Moriarty, returning to the charge. “The gentleman says, 'What would you do?' and the lady answers, 'That's what I'd do.' Do you call that poetry?”
“I don't call that poetry,” said Fanny, with some emphasis on the word; “but if you connect those two phrases with what is intermediately written, and read all in the spirit of the entire of the verses, I think there is poetry in them—but if not poetry, certainly feeling.”
“Can you tolerate 'That's what I'd do'?—the pert answer of a housemaid.”
“A phrase in itself homely,” answered Fanny, “may become elevated by the use to which it is applied.”
“Quite true, Miss Dawson,” said the doctor, joining in the discussion. “But what are these lines which excite Randal's ire?”
“Here they are,” said Moriarty. “I will read them, if you allow me, and then judge between Miss Dawson and me.
'What will you do, love, when I am going,
With white sail flowing,
The seas beyond?
What will you do, love, when—'”
“Stop thief!—stop thief!” cried the doctor. “Why, you are robbing the poet of his reputation as fast as you can. You don't attend to the rhythm of those lines—you don't give the ringing of the verse.”
“That's just what I have said in other words,” said Fanny. “When sung to the melody, they are smooth.”
“But a good reader, Miss Dawson,” said the doctor, “will read verse with the proper accent, just as a musician would divide it into bars; but my friend Randal there, although he can tell a good story and hit off prose very well, has no more notion of rhythm or poetry than new beer has of a holiday.”
“And why, pray, has not new beer a notion of a holiday?”
“Because, sir, it works of a Sunday.”
“Your beer may be new, doctor, but your joke is not—I have seen it before in some old form.”
“Well, sir, if I found it in its old form, like a hare, and started it fresh, it may do for folks to run after as well as anything else. But you shan't escape your misdemeanour in mauling those verses as you have done, by finding fault with my joke redevivus. You read those lines, sir, like a bellman, without any attention to metre.”
“To be sure,” said Father Phil, who had been listening for some time; “they have a ring in them—”
“Like a pig's nose,” said the doctor.
“Ah, be aisy,” said Father Phil. “I say they have a ring in them like an owld Latin canticle—
'What will you do, love, when I am go-ing,
With white sail flow-ing,
The says beyond?'
That's it!”
“To be sure,” said the doctor. “I vote for the Father's reading them out on the spot.”
“Pray, do, Mister Blake,” said Fanny.
“Ah, Miss Dawson, what have I to do with reading love verses?”
“Take the book, sir,” said Growling, “and show me you have some faith in your own sayings, by obeying a lady directly.”
“Pooh! pooh!” said the priest.
“You won't refuse me?” said Fanny, in a coaxing tone.
“My dear Miss Dawson,” said the padre.
“Father Phil!” said Fanny, with one of her rosy smiles.
“Oh, wow! wow! wow!” ejaculated the priest, in an amusing embarrassment, “I see you will make me do whatever you like.” So Father Phil gave the rare example of a man acting up to his own theory, and could not resist the demand that came from a pretty mouth. He took the book and read the lines with much feeling, but, with an observance of rhythm so grotesque, that it must be given in his own manner.
WHAT WILL YOU DO, LOVE?
I
“What will you do, love, when I am go-ing,
With white sail flow-ing,
The seas be-yond? What will you do, love, when waves di-vide us,
And friends may chide us,
For being fond?”
“Though waves di-vide us, and friends be chi-ding,
In faith a-bi-ding,
I'll still be true;
And I'll pray for thee on the stormy o-cean,
In deep de-vo-tion,—
That's what I'll do!”