Weighed and Wanting, George MacDonald [ebook reader android txt] 📗

fellow, and was kind to every one of his own relations as long as there was one left to be kind to."

"Well, I shall go back to him, mamma, and tell him you are coming as soon as you have got your wig and your newest lace-cap on, and your cheeks rouged and pearl-powdered, to look as like the lady that would none of him as you can."

Her mother laughed merrily, and pretended to box her daughter's ears. It was not often any mood like this rose between them; for not only were they serious in heart, but from temperament, and history, and modes and direction of thought, their ways were serious as well. Yet who may so well break out in childlike merriment as those whose life has in it no moth-eaten Mammon-pits, who have no fear, no greed, and live with a will-rising like the sun to fill the day with the work given them to do!

"Look what I have brought you, cousin," said major Marvel, the moment Hester re-entered the room, holding out to her a small necklace. "You needn't mind taking them from an old fellow like me. It don't mean that I want to marry you off-hand before I know what sort of a temper you've got. Take them."

Hester drew near, and looked at the necklace.

"Take it," said the major again.

"How strangely beautiful it is!-all red, pear-shaped, dull, scratched-looking stones, hanging from a savage-looking gold chain! What are they, Mr. Marvel?"

"You have described it like a book!" he said. "It is a barbarous native necklace-but they are fine rubies-only rough-neither cut nor polished."

"It is beautiful," repeated Hester. "Did you really mean it for me?"

"Of course I did!"

"I will ask mamma if I may keep it."

"Where's the good of that? I hope you don't think I stole it? Though faith there's a good deal that's like stealing goes on where that comes from!-But here comes the mother!-Helen, I'm so glad to see you once more!"

Hester slipped away with the necklace in her hand, and left her mother to welcome her old admirer before she would trouble her about the offered gift. They met like trusting friends whom years had done nothing to separate, and while they were yet talking of bygone times, Mr. Raymount entered, received him cordially, and insisted on his remaining with them as long as he could; they were old friends, although rivals, and there never had been any ground for bitterness between them. The major agreed; Mr. Raymount sent to the station for his luggage, and showed him to a room.


CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE MAJOR AND VAVASOR.


As major Marvel, for all the rebuffs he had met with, had not yet learned to entertain the smallest doubt as to his personal acceptability, so he was on his part most catholic in his receptivity. But there were persons whom from the first glance he disliked, and then his dislike was little short of loathing. I suspect they were such as found the heel of his all but invulnerable vanity and wounded it. Not accustomed to be hurt, it resented hurt when it came the more sorely. He was in one sense, and that not a slight one, a true man: there was no discrepancy, no unfittingness between his mental conditions and the clothing in which those conditions presented themselves to others. His words, looks, manners, tones, and everything that goes to express man to man, expressed him. What he felt that he showed. I almost think he was unaware of the possibility of doing otherwise. At the same time, he had very little insight into the feelings of others, and almost no sense of the possibility that the things he was saying might affect his listeners otherwise than they affected him. If he boasted, he meant to boast, and would scorn to look as if he did not know it was a good thing he was telling of himself: why not of himself as well as of another? He had no very ready sympathy with other people, especially in any suffering he had never himself experienced, but he was scrupulously fair in what he said or did in regard of them, and nothing was so ready to make him angry as any appearance of injustice or show of deception. He would have said that a man's first business was to take care of himself, as so many think who have not the courage to say it; and so many more who do not think it. But the Major's conduct went far to cast contempt upon his selfish opinion.

During dinner he took the greater part of the conversation upon himself, and evidently expected to be listened to. But that was nearly all he wanted. Let him talk, and hear you laugh when he was funny, and he was satisfied. He seemed to have no inordinate desire for admiration or even for approbation. He was fond of telling tales of adventure, some wonderful, some absurd, some having nothing in them but his own presence, and occasionally, while the detail was good the point for the sake of which it had been introduced would be missing; but he was just as willing to tell one, the joke of which turned against himself, as one amusing at the expense of another. Like many of his day who had spent their freshest years in India, he was full of the amusements and sports with which so much otherwise idle time is passed by Englishmen in the East, and seemed to think nothing connected with the habits of their countrymen there could fail to interest those at home. Every now and then throughout the dinner he would say, "Oh, that reminds me!" and then he would tell something that happened when he was at such and such a place, when So-and-So "of our regiment" was out tiger-shooting, or pig-sticking, or whatever the sport might be; "and if Mr. Raymount will take a glass of wine with me, I will tell him the story"-for he was constantly drinking wine, after the old fashion, with this or that one of the company.

When he and Vavasor were introduced to each other, he glanced at him, drew his eyebrows together, made his military bow, and included him among the listeners to his tales of exploit and adventure by sea and land.

Vavasor was annoyed at his presence-not that he much minded a little boring in such good company, or forgot that everything against another man was so much in his own favor; but he could not help thinking, "What would my aunt say to such a relative?" So while he retained the blandest expression, and was ready to drink as many glasses of wine with the new comer as he wished, he set him down in his own mind not only as an ill-bred man and a boaster, in which there was some truth, but as a liar and a vulgar-minded man as well, in which there was little or no truth.

Now although major Marvel had not much ordinary insight into character, the defect arose mainly from his not feeling a deep enough interest in his neighbor; and if his suspicion or dislike was roused in respect of one, he was just as likely as any other ever is to arrive at a correct judgment concerning a man he does not love.

He had been relating a thrilling adventure with a man-eating tiger. He saw, as they listened, the eyes of little Mark and Saffy had almost surpassed the use of eyes and become ears as well. He saw Hester also, who was still child enough to prefer a story of adventure to a love-tale fixed as if, but for the way it was bound over to sobriety, her hair would have stood on end. But at one moment he caught also-surprised indeed a certain expression on the face of Vavasor, which that experienced man of the world never certainly intended to be so surprised, only at the moment he was annoyed to see the absorption of Hester's listening; she seemed to have eyes for no one but the man who shot tigers as Vavasor would have shot grouse.

The major, who upon fitting occasion and good cause, was quarrelsome as any turkey-cock, swallowed something that was neither good, nor good for food, and said, but not quite so carelessly as he had intended:

"Ha, ha, I see by your eyes, Mr. Passover, you think I'm drawing the long bow-drawing the arrow to the head, eh?"

"No, 'pon my word!" said Vavasor earnestly, "nothing farther from my thoughts. I was only admiring the coolness of the man who would actually creep into the mouth of the-the-the jungle after a-what-you-call-him-a man-eating tiger."

"Well, you see, what was a fellow to do," returned the major suspiciously. "The fellow wouldn't come out! and by Jove I wasn't the only fellow that wanted him out! Besides I didn't creep in; I only looked in to see whether he was really there. That I could tell by the shining eyes of him."

"But is not a man-eating tiger a something tremendous, you know? When he once takes to that kind of diet, don't you know-they say he likes nothing else half so well! Good beef and mutton will no longer serve his turn, I've been told at the club. A man must be a very Munchausen to venture it."

"I don't know the gentleman-never heard of him," said the major: for Vavasor had pronounced the name German-fashion, and none of the listeners recognized that of the king of liars; "but you are quite mistaken in the character of the man-eating tiger. It is true he does not care for other food after once getting a passion for the more delicate; but it does not follow that the indulgence increases either his courage or his fierceness. The fact is it ruins his moral nature. He does not get many Englishmen to eat; and it would seem as if the flesh of women and children and poor cowardly natives, he devours, took its revenge upon him by undermining and destroying his natural courage. The fact is, he is well-known for a sneak. I sometimes can't help thinking the ruffian knows he is a rebel against the law of his Maker, and a traitor to his natural master. The man-eating tiger and the rogue-elephant are the devils of their kind. The others leave you alone except you attack them; then they show fight. These attack you-but run-at least the tiger, not the elephant, when you go out after him. From the top of your elephant you may catch sight of him sneaking off with his tail tucked between his legs from cover to cover of the jungle, while they are beating up his quarters to drive him out. You can never get any sport out of him. He will never fly at your elephant, or climb a tree, or take to the water after you! If there's a creature on earth I hate it's a coward!" concluded the major.

Said Vavasor to himself, "The man is a coward!"

"But why should you hate a coward so?" asked Hester, feeling at the moment, with the vision of a man-eating tiger before her, that she must herself come under the category. "How can a poor creature made without courage help being one? You can neither learn nor buy courage!"

"I am not so sure about the learning. But such as you mean, I wouldn't call cowards," returned the major. "Nobody thinks worse of the hare, or even the fox, for going away before the hounds. Men whose business it is to fight go