“No offence, I promise you,” said Wright; “but let us put her to the trial: do you keep your own counsel; go on courting her your own way, and let me go mine. Don’t you say one word of my being here in York; but put her off about the sale of Clover-hill, till such time as you are sure of her heart.”
To this proposal Marvel joyfully agreed; and, as to the time of trial, Wright asked only one week. His cousin then told him the new scheme, from which he expected to make so much: it had been suggested by Alicia’s brother. “I am to sell Clover-hill; and, with the money that I get for it, Barton and I are to build and fit up a theatre in Lincoln, and be the managers ourselves. I assure you, he says, and they all say, I should make a figure on the stage: and Miss Barton whispered, in my hearing, that I should make a capital Lothario,” added Marvel, throwing himself into a stage attitude, and reciting, in a voice that made Wright start,
“‘Earth, Heav’n, and fair Calista, judge the combat.’”
“Very fine, no doubt,” said Wright; “but I am no judge of these matters; only this I am sure of, that, with respect to selling Clover-hill, you had best go slowly to work, and see what the sister is, before you trust to the brother. It is not for my interest, I very well know, to advise you against this scheme; because, if I wanted to make certain of your not coming in for my uncle’s legacy, I could not take a better way than to urge you to follow your fancy. For, say that you lay out all you have in the world on the building of this playhouse, and say that Barton’s as honest a man as yourself: observe, your playhouse cannot be built in less than a couple of years, and the interest of your money must be dead all that time; and pray how are you to bring yourself up, by the end of the ten years? Consider, there are but seven years of the time to come.”
Marvel gave his cousin hearty thanks for his disinterested advice, but observed that actors and managers of playhouses were, of all men, they who were most likely to grow rich in a trice; that they often cleared many hundreds in one night for their benefits; that even, if he should fail to hit the public taste himself, as an actor, he was sure at least, if he married the charming Alicia, that she would be a source of inexhaustible wealth. “Not,” added he, “that I think of her in that light; for my soul is as much superior to mercenary considerations as her own.”
“More, perhaps,” said Wright; but seeing fire flash in his cousin’s eyes at this insinuation, he contented himself for the present with the promise he had obtained, that nothing should be concluded till the end of one week; that no mention should be made to Miss Barton, or her brother, of his arrival in town; and that he should have free liberty to make trial of the lady’s truth and constancy, in any way he should think proper. Back to his friend the milliner’s he posted directly. Miss Barton was gone out upon the race-ground in Captain Mowbray’s curricle: in her absence, Wright was received very graciously by the milliner, who had lodgings to let, and who readily agreed to let them to him for a week, as he offered half a guinea more than she could get from anybody else. She fancied that he was deeply smitten with Miss Barton’s charms, and encouraged his passion, by pretty broad hints that it was reciprocal. Miss Barton drank tea this evening with the milliner: Wright was of the party, and he was made to understand that others had been excluded: “for Miss Barton,” her friend observed, “was very nice as to her company.”
Many dexterous efforts were made to induce Wright to lay open his heart; for the dyer’s lady had been cross-questioned as to his property in Lincolnshire, and she being a lover of the marvellous, had indulged herself in a little exaggeration; so that he was considered as a prize, and Miss Barton’s imagination settled the matter so rapidly, that she had actually agreed to make the milliner a handsome present on the wedding-day. Upon this hint, the milliner became anxious to push forward the affair. Marvel, she observed, hung back about the sale of his estate; and, as to Sir Plantagenet Mowbray’s son, he was bound hand and foot by his father, so could do nothing genteel: besides, honourable matrimony was out of the question there.
All these things considered, the milliner’s decision was, on perfectly prudential and virtuous motives, in favour of Wright. Miss Barton’s heart, to use her own misapplied term, spoke warmly in his favour; for he was, without any comparison, the handsomest of her lovers; and his simplicity and apparent ignorance of the world were rather recommendations than objections.
Upon her second interview with him, she had, however, some reason to suspect that his simplicity was not so great as she had imagined. She was surprised to observe, that, notwithstanding all their artful hints, Wright came to nothing like a positive proposal, nor even to any declaration of his passion. The next day she was yet more astonished; for Wright, though he knew she was a full hour in the milliner’s shop, never made the slightest attempt to see her; nay, in the evening, he met her on the public walk, and passed without more notice than a formal bow, and without turning his head back to look after her, though she was flirting with a party of gentlemen, expressly for the purpose of exciting his jealousy.
Another consultation was held with her friend the milliner: “These men are terrible creatures to deal with,” said her confidant. “Do you know, my dear creature, this man, simple as he looks, has been very near taking us in. Would you believe it? he is absolutely courting a Lincolnshire lady for a wife. He wrote a letter to her, my dear Alicia, this morning, and begged me to let my boy run with it to the post-office. I winded and winded, saying he was mighty anxious about the letter, and so on, till, at the last, out comes the truth. Then I touched him about you; but he said, ‘an actress was not fit for a farmer’s wife, and that you had too many admirers already.’ You see, my dear creature, that he has none of the thoughts we built upon. Depend upon it he is a shrewd man, and knows what he is about; so, as we cannot do better than Marvel, my advice—”