Part 11 (2/2)

They found Lucy alone in the drawing-room, and Eve engaged her directly in sprightly conversation, into which they soon drew David, and, interchanging a secret signal, plied him with a few artful questions, and--launched him. But the one sketch I gave of his manner and matter must serve again and again. Were I to retail to the reader all the droll, the spirited, the exciting things he told his hearers, there would be no room for my own little story; and we are all so egotistical! Suffice it to say, the living book of travels was inexhaustible; his observation and memory were really marvelous, and his enthusiasm, coupled with his accuracy of detail, had still the power to inthrall his hearers.

”Mr. Dodd,” said Lucy, ”now I see why Eastern kings have a story-teller always about them--a live story-teller. Would not you have one, Miss Dodd, if you were Queen of Persia?”

”Me? I'd have a couple--one to make me laugh; one miserable.”

”One would be enough if his resources were equal to your brother's.

Pray go on, Mr. Dodd. It was madness to interrupt you with small talk.”

David hung his head for a moment, then lifted it with a smile, and sailed in the spirit into the China seas, and there told them how the Chinamen used to slip on board his s.h.i.+p and steal with supernatural dexterity, and the sailors catch them by the tails, which they observing, came ever with their tails soaped like pigs at a village feast; and how some foolhardy sailors would venture into the town at the risk of their lives; and how one day they had to run for it, and when they got to the sh.o.r.e their boat was stolen, and they had to 'bout s.h.i.+p and fight it out, and one fellow who knew the natives had loaded the sailors' guns with currant jelly. Make ready--present--fire! In a moment the troops of the Celestial Empire smarted, and were spattered with seeming gore, and fled yelling.

Then he told how a poor comrade of his was nabbed and clapped in prison, and his hands and feet were to be cut off at sunrise; himself at noon. It was midnight, and strict orders from the quarterdeck had been issued that no man should leave the s.h.i.+p: what was to be done? It was a moonlight night. They met, silent as death, between decks--daren't speak above a whisper, for fear the officers should hear them. His messmate was crying like a child. One proposed one thing, one another; but it was all nonsense, and we knew it was, and at sunrise poor Tom must die.

At last up jumps one fellow, and cries, ”Messmates, I've got it; Tom isn't dead yet.”

This was the moment Mr. Fountain and Mr. Talboys chose for coming into the drawing-room, of course. Mr. Fountain, with a shade of hesitation and awkwardness, introduced the Dodds to Mr. Talboys: he bowed a little stiffly, and there was a pause. Eve could not repress a little movement of nervous impatience. ”David is telling us one of his nonsensical stories, sir,” said she to Mr. Fountain, ”and it is so interesting; go on, David.”

”Well, but,” said David, modestly, ”it isn't everybody that likes these sea-yarns as you do, Eve. No, I'll belay, and let my betters get a word in now.”

”You are more merciful than most story-tellers, sir,” said Talboys.

Eve tossed her head and looked at Lucy, who with a word could have the story go on again. That young lady's face expressed general complacency, politeness, and _tout m'est egal._ Eve could have beat her for not taking David's part. ”Doubleface!” thought she. She then devoted herself with the sly determination of her s.e.x to trotting David out and making him the princ.i.p.al figure in spite of the new-corner.

But, as fast as she heated him, Talboys cooled him. We are all great at something or other, small or great. Talboys was a first-rate freezer. He was one of those men who cannot s.h.i.+ne, but can eclipse.

They darken all but a vain man by casting a dark shadow of trite sentences on each luminary. The vain man insults them directly, and so gets rid of them.

Talboys kept coming across honest enthusiastic David with little remarks, each skillfully discordant with the rising sentiment. Was he droll, Talboys did a bit of polite gravity on him; was he warm in praise of some gallant action, chill irony trickled on him from T.

His flashes of romance were extinguished by neat little dicta, embodying sordid and false, but current views of life. The gauze wings of eloquence, unsteeled by vanity, will not bear this repeated dabbing with prose glue, so David collapsed and Talboys conquered--”spell”

benumbed ”charm.” The sea-wizard yielded to the petrifier, and ”could no more,” as the poets say. Talboys smiled superior. But, as his art was a purely destructive one, it ended with its victim; not having an idea of his own in his skull, the commentator, in silencing his text, silenced himself and brought the society to a standstill. Eve sat with flas.h.i.+ng eyes; Lucy's twinkled with sly fun: this made Eve angrier.

She tried another tack.

”You asked David to bring his fiddle,” said she, sharply, ”but I suppose now--”

”Has he brought it?” asked Mr. Fountain, eagerly.

”Yes, he has; I made him” (with a glance of defiance at Talboys).

Mr. Fountain rang the bell directly and sent for the fiddle. It came.

David took it and tuned it, and made it discourse. Lucy leaned a little back in her chair, wore her ”_tout m'est egal_ face,” and Eve watched her like a cat. First her eyes opened with a mild astonishment, then her lips parted in a smile; after a while a faint color came and went, and her eyes deepened and deepened in color, and glistened with the dewy light of sensibility.

A fiddle wrought this, or rather genius, in whose hand a jews-harp is the lyre of Orpheus, a fiddle the harp of David, a chisel a hewer of heroic forms, a brush or a pen the scepter of souls, and, alas! a nail a picklock.

Inside every fiddle is a soul, but a coy one. The nine hundred and ninety-nine never win it. They play rapid tunes, but the soul of beautiful gayety is not there; slow tunes, very slow ones, wherein the spirit of whining is mighty, but the sweet soul of pathos is absent; doleful, not nice and tearful. Then comes the Heaven-born fiddler,*

who can make himself cry with his own fiddle. David had a touch of this witchcraft. Though a sound musician and reasonably master of his instrument, he could not fly in a second up and down it, tickling the fingerboard and scratching the strings without an atom of tone, as the mechanical monkeys do that b.o.o.bies call fine players.

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