“Doublet and hose should show itself courageous to petticoats.
Therefore, courage!”
—As You Like It.
“From the crown of his head, to the sole of his foot, he is all mirth.
He hath a heart as sound as a bell, and his tongue is the clapper;
For what his heart thinks, his tongue speaks.
“I hope he is in love.”
—Much Ado about Nothing.
“FRANK, I am not at all satisfied about your sister,” began Oaklands, as the door closed after her. “She does not look well, and she seems entirely to have lost her spirits.”
“I thought as you do before I went up for my degree,” replied I; “but since my return I hoped she was all right again. What makes you imagine her out of spirits?”
“Oh! several things; she never talks and laughs as she used to do. Why, all this afternoon I could scarcely get half a dozen words out of her; and she seems to have no energy to do anything. How unwilling she appeared to enter into my scheme about the riding! She evidently dislikes the idea of exertion of any kind: I know the feeling well; but it is not natural for her; she used to be surprisingly active, and was the life and soul of the party. But what, perhaps, has caused me to notice all this so particularly, and makes me exceedingly uncomfortable, is, that I am afraid it is all owing to me.”
“Owing to you, my dear Harry! what can you mean?” inquired I.
“Why, I fear that business of the duel, and the great care she and your mother took of me (for which—believing as I do that, under Providence, it saved my life—I can never be sufficiently grateful), have been too much for her. Remember, she was quite a girl; and no doubt seeing an old friend brought to the house apparently dying, must have been a very severe shock to her, and depend upon it, her nerves have never recovered their proper tone. However, I shall make it my business to endeavour to interest and amuse her, and you must do everything you can to assist me, Frank; we'll get all the new books down from London, and have some people to stay at the Hall. She has shut herself up too much; Ellis says she has; I shall make her ride on horseback every day.”
“Horseback, eh!” exclaimed Lawless, who had entered the cottage without our perceiving him. “Ay, that's a prescription better than all your doctor's stuff; clap her on a side-saddle, and a brisk canter for a couple of hours every day across country will set the old lady up again in no time, if it's your mother that's out of condition, Frank. Why, Oaklands, man, you are looking as fresh as paint; getting sound again, wind and limb, eh?”
“I hope so, at last,” replied Harry, shaking Lawless warmly by the hand; “but I've had a narrow escape of losing my life, I can assure you.”
“No; really I didn't know it had been as bad as that I By Jove, if he had killed you, I'd have shot that blackhearted villain, Wilford, myself, and chanced about his putting a bullet into me while I was doing it.”
“My dear Lawless, I thank you for your kind feeling towards me; but I cannot bear to hear you speak in that light way of duelling,” returned Oaklands gravely; “if men did but know the misery they were entailing on all those who cared for them by their rash acts, independently of all higher considerations, duelling, and its twin brother, suicide, would be less frequent than they are. When I have seen the tears stealing down my father's grief-worn cheeks, and witnessed the anxious, painful expression in the faces of the kind friends who were nursing me, and have reflected that it was by yielding to my own ungoverned passions that I had brought all this sorrow upon them, my remorse has often been far harder to bear than any pain my wound has caused me.”