Stands kindling up their rage.”
I blush to set it down. I blush almost to have such a thought, and concerning my own sister; yet it is so, and I have seen the like often and often. Surely it must be wrong; such sacred things as women's beauty and women's love were not made to set men mad at one another like brute beasts. Surely the woman could help it if she chose. Men may be jealous, and cross, and wretched; but they do not absolutely hate one another on a woman's account unless she has been in some degree to blame. While free, and shewing no preference, no one can well fight about her, for all have an equal chance; when she has a preference, though she might not openly shew it towards its object, she certainly would never think of shewing it towards anybody else. At least, that is my theory.
However, I am taking the thing too seriously, and it is no affair of mine. I have given up interfering long ago. Lisabel must “gang her ain gate,” as they say in Scotland. By the bye, Captain Treherne asked if we came from Scotland, or were of the celebrated clan Johnstone?
Time was, when in spite of the additional t, we all grumbled at our plebeian name, hoping earnestly to change it for something more aristocratic,—and oh, how proud we were of Charteris! How fine to put into the village post, letters addressed, “Francis Charteris, Esq.,” and to speak of our brother-in-law elect as having “an office under Government!” We firmly believed that office under Government would end in the Premiership and a peerage.
It has not, though. Francis still says he cannot afford to marry; I was asking Penelope yesterday if she knew what papa and his first wife, not our own mamma, married upon? Much less income, I believe, than what Francis has now. But my sister said I did not understand: “The cases were widely different.” Probably.
She is very fond of Francis. Last week, preparing for him, she looked quite a different woman; quite young and rosy again; and though it did not last, though after he was really come, she grew sharp and cross often,—to us, never to him, of course;—she much enjoys his being here. They do not make so much fuss over one another as they did ten years ago, which indeed would be ridiculous in lovers over thirty. Still, I should hardly like my lover, at any age, to sit reading a novel half the evening, and spend the other half in the sweet company of his cigar. Not that he need be always hankering after me, and “paying me attention.” I should hate that. For what is the good of people being fond of one another, if they can't be content simply in one another's company, or, without it even, in one another's love? letting each go on their own several ways and do their several work, in the best manner they can. Good sooth! I should be the most convenient and least troublesome sweetheart that ever a young man was ever blessed with; for I am sure I should sit all evening quite happy—he at one end of the room, and I at the other, if only I knew he was happy, and caught now and then a look and a smile—provided the look and the smile were my own personal property, nobody else's.
What nonsense am I writing? And not a word about the dinner-party. Has it left so little impression on my mind?
No wonder! It was just the usual thing. Papa as host, grave, clerical, and slightly wearying of it all. Penelope hostess. Francis playing “friend of the family,” as handsome and well-dressed as ever—what an exquisitely embroidered shirt-front, and what an aërial cambric kerehief! which must have taken him half an hour to tie! Lisabel—but I have told about her; and myself. Everybody else looking as everybody hereabouts always does look at dinner-parties—ex uno disce omnes—to muster a bit of the Latin for which, in old times, Francis used to call me “a juvenile prig.”
Was there, in the whole evening, anything worth remembering? Yes, thanks to his fit of jealousy, I did get a little sensible conversation out of Captain Treherne. He looked so dull, so annoyed, that I felt sorry for the youth, and tried to make him talk; so, lighting on the first subject at hand, asked him if he had seen his friend, Doctor Urquhart, lately?
“Eh—who? I beg your pardon.”