Hard Cash

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She sighed, and Sampson generalised; he plunged from the seaside novel
into the sea of fiction. He rechristened that joyous art Feckshin, and
lashed its living professors. "You devour their three volumes greedily,"
said he, "but after your meal you feel as empty as a drum; there is no
leading idea in 'um; now there always is--in Moliere; and _he_
comprehended the midicine of his age. But what fundamental truth d'our
novelists iver convey? All they can do is pile incidents. Their customers
dictate th' article: unideaed melodrams for unideaed girls. The writers
and their feckshins belong to one species, and that's 'the
non-vertebrated animals;' and their midicine is Bosh; why, they bleed
still for falls and fevers; and niver mention vital chronometry. Then
they don't look straight at Nature, but see with their ears, and repeat
one another twelve deep. Now, listen me! there are the cracters for an
'ideaed feckshin' in Barkington, and I'd write it, too, only I haven't
time."

At this, Julia, forgetting her resolution, broke out, "Romantic
characters in Barkington? Who? who?"

"Who _should_ they be, but my pashints? Ay, ye may lauch, Miss Julee, but
wait till ye see them." He was then seized with a fit of candour, and
admitted that some, even of his pashints, were colourless; indeed, not to
mince the matter, six or seven of that sacred band were nullity in
person. "I can compare the beggars to nothing," said he, "but the
globules of the Do-Nothings; dee----d insipid, and nothing in 'em. But
the others make up. Man alive, I've got 'a rosy-cheeked miser,' and an
'ill-used attorney,' and an 'honest Screw'--he is a gardener, with a head
like a cart-horse."

"Mamma! mamma! that is Mr. Maxley," cried Julia, clapping her hands, and
thawing in her own despite.

"Then there's my virgin martyr and my puppy. They are brother and sister;
and there's their father, but he is an impenetrable dog--won't unbosom.
Howiver, he sairves to draw chicks for the other two, and so keep 'em
goen. By-the-bye, you know my puppy?"

"We have not that honour. Do we know Dr. Sampson's puppy, love?" inquired
Mrs. Dodd, rather languidly.

"Mamma!--I--I--know no one of that name."

"Don't tell me! Why it was he sent me here told me where you lived, and I
was to make haste, for Miss Dodd was very ill: it is young Hardie, the
banker's son, ye know."

Mrs. Dodd said good-humouredly, but with a very slight touch of irony,
that really they were very much flattered by the interest Mr. Alfred
Hardie had shown; especially as her daughter had never exchanged ten
words with him. Julia coloured at this statement, the accuracy of which
she had good reason to doubt; and the poor girl felt as if an icicle
passed swiftly along her back. And then, for the first the in her life,
she thought her mother hardly gracious; and she wanted to say _she_ was
obliged to Mr. Alfred Hardie, but dared not, and despised herself for not
daring. Her composure was further attacked by Mrs. Dodd looking full at
her, and saying interrogatively, "I wonder how that young gentleman could
know about your being ill ?"

At this Julia eyed her plate very attentively, and murmured, "I believe
it is all over the town: and seriously too; so Mrs. Maxley says, for she
tells me that in Barkington if more than one doctor is sent for, that
bodes ill for the patient."

"Deevelich ill," cried Sampson heartily.

"For two physicians, like a pair of oars,
Conduck him faster to the Styjjin shores."*

* Garth.

Julia looked him in the face, and coldly ignored this perversion of Mrs.
Maxley's meaning; and Mrs. Dodd returned pertinaciously to the previous
topic. "Mr. Alfred Hardie interests me; he was good to Edward. I am
curious to know why you call him a puppy?"

"Only because he is one, ma'am. And that is no reason at all with 'the
Six.' He is a juveneel pidant and a puppy, and contradicts ivery new
truth, bekase it isn't in Aristotle and th' Eton Grammar; and he's such a
chatterbox, ye can't get in a word idgeways; and he and his
sister--that's my virgin martyr--are a farce. _He_ keeps sneerin' at her
relijjin, and that puts _her_ in such a rage, she threatens 't' intercede
for him at the throne."

"Jargon," sighed Mrs. Dodd, and just shrugged her lovely shoulders. "We
breathe it--we float in an atmosphere of it. My love?" And she floated
out of the room, and Julia floated after.

Sampson sat meditating on the gullibility of man in matters medical. This
favourite speculation detained him late, and almost his first word on
entering the drawing-room was, "Good night, little girl."

Julia coloured at this broad hint, drew herself up, and lighted a
bedcandle. She went to Mrs. Dodd, kissed her, and whispered in her ear,
"I hate him!" and, as she retired, her whole elegant person launched
ladylike defiance; under which brave exterior no little uneasiness was
hidden. "Oh, what will become of me!" thought she, "if _he_ has gone and
told him about Henley?"

"Let's see the prescriptions, ma'am," said Dr. Sampson.

Delighted at this concession, Mrs. Dodd took them out of her desk and
spread them earnestly. He ran his eye over them, and pointed out that the
mucous-membrane man and the nerve man had prescribed the same medicine,
on irreconcilable grounds; and a medicine, moreover, whose effect on the
nerves was _nil,_ and on the mucous membrane was not to soothe it, but
plough it and harrow it; "and did not that open her eyes?" He then
reminded her that all these doctors in consultation would have contrived
to agree. "But you," said he, "have baffled the collusive hoax by which
Dox arrived at a sham uniformity--honest uniformity can never exist till
scientific principles obtain. Listme! To begin, is the pashint in love?"

The doctor put this query in just the same tone in which they inquire
"Any expectoration?" But Mrs. Dodd, in reply, was less dry and
business-like. She started and looked aghast. This possibility had once,
for a moment, occurred to her, but only to be rejected, the evidence
being all against it.

"In love?" said she. "That child, and I not know it!"

He said he had never supposed that. "But I thought I'd just ask ye; for
she has no bodily ailment, and the passions are all counterfeit diseases;
they are connected, like all diseases, with cerebral instability, have
their hearts and chills like all diseases, and their paroxysms and
remissions like all diseases. Nlistme! You have detected the signs of a
slight cerebral instability; I have ascertained th' absence of all
physical cause: then why make this healthy pashint's buddy a test-tube
for poisons? Sovereign drugs (I deal with no other, I leave the nullities
to the noodles) are either counterpoisons or poisons, and here there is
nothing to counterpoison at prisent. So I'm for caushin, and working on
the safe side th' hidge, till we are less in the dark. Mind ye, young
women at her age are kittle cattle; they have gusts o' this, and gusts o'
that, th' unreasonable imps. D'ye see these two pieces pasteboard? They
are tickets for a ball,

In Barkton town-hall."

"Yes, of course I see them," said Mrs. Dodd dolefully.

"Well, I prescribe 'em. And when they have been taken,

And the pashint well shaken,

perhaps we shall see whether we are on the right system: and if so, we'll
dose her with youthful society in a more irrashinal form; conversaziones,
cookeyshines, et citera. And if we find ourselves on the wrong _tack_ why
then we'll hark _back._

Stick blindly to 'a course,' the Dockers cry.
But it does me harm: _Then_ 'twill do good _by-and-bye._
Where lairned ye that, Echoes of Echoes, say!
The killer ploughs 'a course,' the healer _'feels his way.'_"

So mysterious are the operations of the human mind, that, when we have
exploded in verse tuneful as the above, we lapse into triumph instead of
penitence. Not that doggrel meets with reverence here below--the statues
to it are few, and not in marble, but in the material itself--But then an
Impromptu! A moment ago our Posy was not: and now is; with the speed, if
not the brilliancy, of lightning, we have added a handful to the
intellectual dust-heap of an oppressed nation. From this bad eminence
Sampson then looked down complacently, and saw Mrs. Dodd's face as long
as his arm. She was one that held current opinions; and the world does
not believe Poetry can sing the Practical. Verse and useful knowledge
pass for incompatibles; and, though Doggrel is not Poetry, yet it has a
lumbering proclivity that way, and so forfeits the confidence of grave
sensible people. This versification, and this impalpable and
unprecedented prescription she had waited for so long, seemed all of a
piece to poor mamma: wild, unpractical, and--"oh, horror!
horror!"--eccentric.

Sampson read her sorrowful face after his fashion. "Oh, I see, ma'am,"
cried he. "Cure is not welcome unless it comes in the form consecrated by
cinturies of slaughter. Well, then, give me a sheet." He took the paper
and rent it asunder, and wrote this on the larger fragment:

Rx Die Mercur. circa x. hor: vespert:
eat in musca ad Aulam oppid:
Saltet cum xiii canicul:
praesertim meo. Dom: reddita,
6 hora matutin: dormiat at prand:
Repetat stultit: pro re nata.

He handed this with a sort of spiteful twinkle to Mrs. Dodd, and her
countenance lightened again. Her sex will generally compound with whoever
can give as well as take. Now she had extracted a real, grave
prescription, she acquiesced in the ball, though not a county one; "to
satisfy your whim, my good, kind friend, to whom I owe so much."

Sampson called on his way back to town, and, in course of conversation,
praised nature for her beautiful instincts, one of which, he said, had
inspired Miss Julee, at a credulous age, not to swallow "the didly
drastics of the tinkering dox."

Mrs. Dodd smiled, and requested permission to contradict him; her
daughter had taken the several prescriptions.

Sampson inquired brusquely if she took him for a fool.

She replied calmly: "No; for a very clever, but _rather_ opinionated
personage.

"Opinionated? So is ivery man who has grounnds for his opinin. D'ye
think, because Dockers Short, an' Bist, an' Kinyon, an' Cuckoo, an'
Jackdaw, an' Starling, an' Co., don't know the dire effecks of calomel
an' drastics on the buddy, I don't know't? Her eye, her tongue, her skin,
her voice, her elastic walk, all tell _me_ she has not been robbed of her
vital resources. 'Why, if she had taken that genteel old thief Short's
rimidies alone, the girl's gums would be sore,

And herself at Dith's door."

Mrs. Dodd was amused. "Julia, this is so like the gentlemen; they are in
love with argumeunt.They go on till they reason themselves out of their
reason. Why beat about the bush; when there she sits?"

"What, go t' a wumman for the truth, when I can go t' infallible
Inference?"

"You may always go to my David's daughter for the truth," said Mrs. Dodd,
with dignity. She then looked the inquiry; and Julia replied to her look
as follows: first, she coloured very high; then, she hid her face in both
her hands; then rose, and turning her neck swiftly, darted a glance of
fiery indignation and bitter reproach on Dr. Meddlesome, and left the
apartment mighty stag-like.

"Maircy on us!" cried Sampson. "Did ye see that, ma'am? Yon's just a
bonny basilisk. Another such thunderbolt as she dispinsed, and ye'll be
ringing for your maid to sweep up the good physician's ashes."

Julia did not return till the good physician was gone back to London.
Then she came in with a rush, and, demonstrative toad, embraced Mrs.
Dodd's knees, and owned she had cultivated her geraniums with all those
medicines, liquid and solid; and only one geranium had died.

There is a fascinating age, when an intelligent girl is said to fluctuate
between childhood and womanhood. Let me add that these seeming
fluctuations depend much on the company she is in: the budding virgin is
princess of chameleons; and, to confine ourselves to her two most piquant
contrasts, by her mother's side she is always more or less childlike;
but, let a nice young fellow engage her apart, and, hey presto! she shall
be every inch a woman: perhaps at no period of her life are the purely
mental characteristics of her sex so supreme in her; thus her type, the
rosebud, excels in essence of rosehood the rose itself.

My reader has seen Julia Dodd play both parts; but it is her child's face
she has now been turning for several pages; so it may be prudent to
remind him she has shone on Alfred Hardie in but one light; a young but
Juno-like woman. Had she shown "my puppy" her childish qualities, he
would have despised her--he had left that department himself so recently.
But Nature guarded the budding fair from such a disaster.

We left Alfred Hardie standing in the moonlight gazing at her lodging.
This was sudden; but, let slow coaches deny it as loudly as they like,
fast coaches exist; and Love is a Passion, which, like Hate, Envy,
Avarice, &c., has risen to a great height in a single day. Not that
Alfred's was "Love at first sight;" for he had seen her beauty in the
full blaze of day with no deeper feeling than admiration; but in the
moonlight he came under more sovereign spells than a fair face: her
virtues and her voice. The narrative of their meeting has indicated the
first, and as to the latter, Julia was not one of those whose beauty goes
out with the candle; her voice was that rich, mellow, moving organ, which
belongs to no rank nor station; is born, not made; and, flow it from the
lips of dairymaid or countess, touches every heart, gentle or simple,
that is truly male. And this divine contralto, full, yet penetrating,
Dame Nature had inspired her to lower when she was moved or excited,
instead of raising it; and then she was enchanting. All unconsciously she
cast this crowning spell on Alfred, and he adored her. In a word, he
caught a child-woman away from its mother; his fluttering captive turned,
put on composure, and bewitched him.

She left him, and the moonlight night seemed to blacken. But within his
young breast all was light, new light. He leaned opposite her window in
an Elysian reverie, and let the hours go by. He seemed to have vegetated
till then, and lo! true life had dawned. He thought he should love to die
for her; and, when he was calmer, he felt he was to live for her, and
welcomed his destiny with rapture. He passed the rest of the Oxford term
in a soft ecstasy; called often on Edward, and took a sudden and
prodigious interest in him; and counted the days glide by and the happy
time draw near, when he should be four months in the same town with his
enchantress. This one did not trouble the doctors; he glowed with a
steady fire; no heats and chills, and sad misgivings; for one thing, he
was not a woman, a being tied to that stake, Suspense, and compelled to
wait and wait for others' actions. To him, life's path seemed paved with
roses, and himself to march in eternal sunshine, buoyed by perfumed
wings.

He came to Barkington to try for the lovely prize. Then first he had to
come down from love's sky, and realise how hard it is here below to court
a young lady--who is guarded by a mother--without an introduction in the
usual form. The obvious course was to call on Edward. Having parted from
him so lately, he forced himself to wait a few days, and then set out for
Albion Villa.

As he went along, he arranged the coming dialogue for all the parties.
Edward was to introduce him; Mrs. Dodd to recognise his friendship for
her son; he was to say he was the gainer by it; Julia, silent at first,
was to hazard a timid observation, and he to answer gracefully, and draw
her out and find how he stood in her opinion. The sprightly affair should
end by his inviting Edward to dinner. That should lead to their
uninviting him in turn, and then he should have a word with Julia, and
find out what houses she visited, and get introduced to their
proprietors. Arrived at this point, his mind went over hedge and ditch
faster than my poor pen can follow; as the crow flies, so flew he, and
had reached the church-porch under a rain of nosegays with Julia--in
imagination--by then he arrived at Albion Villa in the body. Yet he
knocked timidly; his heart beat almost as hard as his hand.

Sarah, the black-eyed housemaid, "answered the door."

"Mr. Edward Dodd?"

"Not at home, sir. Left last week."

"For long?"

"I don't rightly know, sir. But he won't be back this week, I don't
think."

"Perhaps," stammered Alfred, "the ladies--Mrs. Dodd--might be able to
tell me."

"Oh yes, sir. But my mistress, she's in London just now."

Alfred's eyes flashed. "Could I learn from Miss Dodd?"

"La, sir, she is in London along with her ma; why, 'tis for her they are
gone; to insult the great doctors."

He started. "She is not ill? Nothing serious?"

"Well, sir, we do hope not. She is pinning a bit, as young ladies will."

Alfred was anything but consoled by this off-hand account; he became
alarmed, and looked wretched. Seeming him so perturbed, Sarah, who was
blunt but good-natured, added, "But cook she says hard work would cure
our Miss of all _she_ ails. But who shall I say was asking? For my work
is a bit behind-hand."

Alfred took the hint reluctantly, and drew out his card-case, saying,
"For Mr. Edward Dodd." She gave her clean but wettish hand a hasty wipe
with her apron, and took the card. He retired; she stood on the step and
watched him out of sight, said "Oho!" and took his card to the kitchen
for preliminary inspection and discussion.

Alfred Hardie was resolute, but sensitive. He had come on the wings of
Love and Hope; he went away heavily; a housemaid's tongue had shod his
elastic feet with lead in a moment; of all misfortunes, sickness was what
he had not anticipated, for she looked immortal. Perhaps it was that fair
and treacherous disease, consumption. Well, if it was, he would love her
all the more, would wed her as soon as he was of age, and carry her to
some soft Southern clime, and keep each noxious air at bay, and prolong
her life, perhaps save it.

And now he began to chafe at the social cobwebs that kept him from her.
But, just as his impatience was about to launch him into imprudence, he
was saved by a genuine descendant of Adam. James Maxley kept Mr. Hardie's
little pleasaunce trim as trim could be, by yearly contract. This
entailed short but frequent visits; and Alfred often talked with him; for
the man was really a bit of a character; had a shrewd rustic wit, and a
ready tongue, was rather too fond of law, and much too fond of money; but
scrupulously honest: head as long as Cudworth's, but broader; and could
not read a line. One day he told Alfred that he must knock off now, and
take a look in at Albion Villee. The captain was due: and on no account
would he, Maxley, allow that there ragged box round the captains
quarter-deck: "That is how he do name their little mossel of a lawn: and
there he walks for a wager, athirt and across, across and athirt, five
steps and then about; and I'd a'most bet ye a halfpenny he thinks hisself
on the salt sea ocean, bless his silly old heart."

All this time Alfred, after the first start of joyful surprise, was
secretly thanking his stars for sending him an instrument. To learn
whether she had returned, he asked Maxley whether the ladies had sent for
him. "Not they," said Maxley, rather contemptuously; "what do women-folk
care about a border, without 'tis a lace one to their nightcaps, for none
but the father of all vanity to see. Not as I have ought to say again the
pair; they keep their turf tidyish--and pay ready money--and a few
flowers in their pots; but the rest may shift for itself. Ye see, Master
Alfred," explained Maxley, wagging his head wisely, "nobody's pride can
be everywhere. Now theirs is in-a-doors; their with-drawing-room it's
like the Queen's palace, my missus tells me; she is wrapped up in 'em, ye
know. But the captain for my money."

The sage shouldered his tools and departed. But he left a good hint
behind him. Alfred hovered about the back-door the next day till he
caught Mrs. Maxley; she supplied the house with eggs and vegetables.
"Could she tell him whether his friend Edward Dodd was likely to come
home soon?" She thought not; he was gone away to study. "He haven't much
head-piece, you know, not like what Miss Julia have. Mrs. and Miss are to
be home to-day; they wrote to cook this morning. I shall be there
to-morrow, sartain, and I'll ask in the kitchen when Master Edward is
a-coming back." She prattled on. The ladies of Albion Villa were good
kind ladies; the very maid-servants loved them; Miss was more for
religion than her mother, and went to St. Anne's Church Thursday
evenings, and Sundays morning and evening; and visited some poor women in
the parish with food and clothes; Mrs. Dodd could not sleep a wink when
the wind blew hard at night; but never complained, only came down pale to
breakfast. Miss Julia's ailment was nothing to speak of, but they were in
care along of being so wrapped up in her, and no wonder, for if ever
there was a duck----!"

Acting on this intelligence, Alfred went early the next Sunday to St.
Anne's Church, and sat down in the side gallery at its east end. While
the congregation flowed quietly in, the organist played the _Agnus Dei_
of Mozart. Those pious tender tones stole over his hot young heart, and
whispered, "Peace, be still!" He sighed wearily, and it passed through
his mind that it might have been better for him, and especially for his
studies, if he had never seen her. Suddenly the aisle seemed to lighten
up; she was gliding along it, beautiful as May, and modesty itself in
dress and carriage. She went into a pew and kneeled a minute, then seated
herself and looked out the lessons for the day. Alfred gazed at her face:
devoured it. But her eyes never roved. She seemed to have put off
feminine curiosity, and the world, at the church door. Indeed he wished
she was not quite so heavenly discreet; her lashes were delicious, but he
longed to see her eyes once more; to catch a glance from them, and, by
it, decipher his fate.

But no; she was there to worship, and did not discern her earthly lover,
whose longing looks were glued to her, and his body rose and sank with
the true worshippers, but with no more spirituality than a piston or a
Jack-in-the-box.

In the last hymn before the sermon, a well-meaning worshipper in the
gallery delivered a leading note, a high one, with great zeal, but small
precision, being about a semitone flat; at this outrage on her
too-sensitive ear, Julia Dodd turned her head swiftly to discover the
offender, and failed; but her two sapphire eyes met Alfred's point-blank.

She was crimson in a moment, and lowered them on her book again, as if to
look that way was to sin. It was but a flash: but sometimes a flash fires
a mine.

The lovely blush deepened and spread before it melted away, and Alfred's
late cooling heart warmed itself at that sweet glowing cheek. She never
looked his way again, not once: which was a sad disappointment; but she
blushed again and again before the service ended, only not so deeply. Now
there was nothing in the sermon to make her blush: I might add, there was
nothing to redden her cheek with religious excitement. There was a little
candid sourness--oil and vinegar-- against sects and Low Churchmen; but
thin generality predominated. Total: "Acetate of morphia," for dry souls
to sip.

So Alfred took all the credit of causing those sweet irrelevant blushes;
and gloated: the young wretch could not help glorying in his power to
tint that fair statue of devotion with earthly thoughts.

But stay! that dear blush, was it pleasure or pain? What if the sight of
him was intolerable?

He would know how he stood with her, and on the spot. He was one of the
first to leave the church; he made for the churchyard gate, and walked
slowly backwards and forwards by it, with throbbing heart till she came
out.

She was prepared for him now, and bowed slightly to him with the most
perfect composure, and no legible sentiment, except a certain marked
politeness many of our young ladies think wasted upon young gentlemen;
and are mistaken.

Alfred took off his hat in a tremor, and his eyes implored and inquired,
but met with no further response; and she walked swiftly home, though
without apparent effort. He looked longingly after her; but discretion
forbade.

He now crawled by Albion Villa twice every day, wet or dry, and had the
good fortune to see her twice at the drawing-room window. He was constant
at St. Anne's Church, and one Thursday crept into the aisle to be nearer
to her, and he saw her steal one swift look at the gallery, and look
grave; but soon she detected him, and though she looked no more towards
him, she seemed demurely complacent. Alfred had learned to note these
subtleties now, for Love is a microscope. What he did not know was, that
his timid ardour was pursuing a masterly course; that to find herself
furtively followed everywhere, and hovered about for a look, is apt to
soothe womanly pride and stir womanly pity, and to keep the female heart
in a flutter of curiosity and emotions, two porters that open the heart's
great gate to love.