And that was how it came about that he gazed into Miss Burney's eyes and pressed her hand at parting with a tenderness he had never previously associated with his leave-taking. He felt sure that Miss Burney would understand what he meant, though he knew that he would have difficulty in expressing it all to her in words; for the effect of the music was to make him feel that he could put so much feeling into a look, into a squeeze of the hand, as would touch the heart of any young woman and cause her to be certain that she might trust him though all other help might fail her.
That was the effect which the heroic music had upon him, though he did not know it; it made him feel willing to face hell for her sake at that moment, and even until he had walked through more than a mile of the network of streets that lay between Leicester Fields and the Poultry.
But the effect of such an intoxicant as music upon such a nature as his is not lasting. Before he had reached Cheapside his own individuality was beginning to assert itself; and he wondered if he had not gone too far for discretion—discretion being, according to his reckoning, the power to withdraw from a position that might compromise him. And before he reached his home he had got the length of wondering how he had so far forgotten himself as to yield to that compromising impulse represented by the gaze and the squeeze. He could not for the life of him understand what had come over him at that moment; for he had by no means satisfied himself that Miss Burney was the young woman who would make him comfortable as his wife. He still thought highly of her on account of her modesty and her dainty shyness, but marriage was a serious matter, and he was not sure that he should take her for his wife.
On the whole, he felt that he had had a very trying evening—between the Lieutenant who had so nearly qualified to practise as a murderer, and the father and daughter who seemed ready to strum their duets until midnight, to say nothing of the foolish gentleman who tried to play the trumpet with his ear; and Thomas made up his mind that he would not trust himself into the midst of so unusual a circle until he was certain that he wanted to marry the young woman whose hand he had, for some reason or other, pressed at parting.
But Mrs. Burney had noticed much more clearly than Fanny had done the expression that the face of Thomas Barlowe had worn when he had looked into the girl's eyes; she had measured to the fraction of a second the duration of his holding of her hand beyond the time essential for the discharge of the ordinary courtesy of a hand-shake; and she was satisfied that Thomas was progressing in his wooing of the least attractive and certainly the least accomplished member of the family. The good woman thought, however, that it was rather a pity that her husband and Susan had persisted in the practice of their duets; for by doing so they had not given a chance to Thomas and Fanny of being alone together.
But, looking back upon the incidents of the evening, she came to the conclusion that, on the whole, she had no reason to complain of the progress that was being made in the young man's wooing. She was no believer in undue haste in this respect; and had not Thomas looked into Fanny's eyes at the close of the evening? Yes, at the close; and that proved to her satisfaction that he had not suffered discouragement by the maladroit conversation about Mr. Eugene Aram. The unhappy episode upon which her husband had dwelt with far too great attention to its details, was one to which she herself had never alluded; for at Lynn, where she had lived all her life previous to being married to Dr. Burney, the Eugene Aram episode was regarded as a scandal to be ignored by those of the inhabitants whose children had attended the school where he had been usher. It was a distinctly favourable sign of the impression made upon young Mr. Barlowe by Fanny, that he had gazed into her eyes in spite of his having been made aware of the connection of the family with the tragedy of that wretched schoolmaster. Mrs. Burney took no account of the effect of Bach's marvellous music upon a young man who was a lover in the rough. In this respect, as has been indicated, she did not differ from the young man himself.
CHAPTER XI
IT was at the Pantheon in the Oxford Road a fortnight later, that Mrs. Thrale, the brewer's lively wife, had an opportunity of shining, by a display of that esprit which caused Mr. Garrick to affirm solemnly that if she had gone upon the stage she would have been a dangerous rival to Mistress Clive; and Fanny Burney, with her father and Mr. Linley, the father of the beautiful Mrs. Sheridan, was a witness of the ease with which the lady sparkled as she described for the benefit of the circle how Mr. Garrick's jest at the expense of poor Mr. Kendal and the Widow Nash had set all the Wells laughing. She imitated Mr. Garrick to his face, in offering his congratulations to Mr. Kendal and so setting the ball a-rolling until within an hour the poor, silly gentleman had been offered the felicitations of half the Wells upon his engagement to Widow Nash. Mrs. Thrale re-enacted with great gravity the part she had played in Mr. Garrick's plot, and then she hastened to imitate Mrs. Cholmondeley's part, and even Mr. Sheridan's, upon that lively morning at Tunbridge Wells.