_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ Why not propose to them yourselves? You seem to be all creditable young men.

_Harry Hedgerow._ I have proposed to Miss Dorothy, you know, and she would not have me; and the rest are afraid. We are all something to do with the land and the wood; farmers, and foresters, and nurserymen, and all that. And we have all opened our hearts to one another. They don't pretend to look above us; but it seems somehow as if they did, and couldn't help it They are so like young ladies. They daze us, like. Why, if they'd have us, they'd be all in reach of one another. Fancy what a family party there'd be at Christmas. We just want a good friend to put a good foot foremost for us; and if the young gentleman does marry, perhaps they may better themselves by doing likewise.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Six partners for six sisters 204-171]

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ And so you seven young friends have each a different favourite among the seven sisters?

_Harry Hedgerow._ Why, that's the beauty of it.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ The beauty of it? Perhaps it is. I suppose there is an agistor {1} among you?

1 An agistor was a forest officer who superintended the taking in of strange cattle to board and lodge, and accounted for the profit to the sovereign. I have read the word, but never heard it. I am inclined to think that in modern times the duty was carried on under another name, or merged in the duties of another office.

_Harry Hedgerow. (after looking at his companions who all shook their heads)_. I am afraid not. Ought there to be? We don't know what it means.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ I thought that among so many foresters there might be an agistor. But it is not indispensable. Well, if the young gentleman is going to be married, he will tell me of it. And when he does tell me, I will tell him of you. Have patience. It may all come right.

_Harry Hedgerow._ Thank ye, sir. Thank ye, sir, kindly.

Which being echoed in chorus by the other six, they took their departure, much marvelling what the reverend doctor could mean by an agistor.

'Upon my word,' said the doctor to himself, 'a very good-looking, respectable set of young men. I do not know what the others may have to say for themselves. They behaved like a Greek chorus. They left their share of the dialogue to the coryphaeus. He acquitted himself well, more like a Spartan than an Athenian, but none the worse for that. Brevity, in this case, is better than rhetoric. I really like that youth. How his imagination dwells on the family party at Christmas. When I first saw him, he was fancying how the presence of Miss Dorothy would gladden his father's heart at that season. Now he enlarges the circle, but it is still the same predominant idea. He has lost his mother. She must have been a good woman, and his early home must have been a happy one. The Christmas hearth would not be so uppermost in his thoughts if it had been otherwise. This speaks well for him and his. I myself think much of Christmas and all its a.s.sociations. I always dine at home on Christmas Day, and measure the steps of my children's heads on the wall, and see how much higher each of them has risen since the same time last year, in the scale of physical life. There are many poetical charms in the heraldings of Christmas. The halcyon builds its nest on the tranquil sea. "The bird of dawning singeth all night long." I have never verified either of these poetical facts. I am willing to take them for granted.

I like the idea of the Yule-log, the enormous block of wood carefully selected long before, and preserved where it would be thoroughly dry, which burned on the old-fashioned hearth. It would not suit the stoves of our modem saloons. We could not burn it in our kitchens, where a small fire in the midst of a mats of black iron, roasts, and bakes, and boils, and steams, and broils, and fries, by a complicated apparatus which, whatever may be its other virtues, leaves no s.p.a.ce for a Christmas fire. I like the festoons of holly on the walls and windows; the dance under the mistletoe; the gigantic sausage; the baron of beef; the vast globe of plum-pudding, the true image of the earth, flattened at the poles; the tapping of the old October; the inexhaustible bowl of punch; the life and joy of the old hall, when the squire and his household and his neighbourhood were as one. I like the idea of what has gone, and I can still enjoy the reality of what remains. I have no doubt Harry's father b.u.ms the Yule-log, and taps the old October. Perhaps, instead of the beef, he produces a fat pig roasted hole, like Eumaeus, the divine swineherd in the _Odyssey_. How Harry will burn the Yule-log if he can realise this day-dream of himself and his six friends with the seven sisters! I shall make myself acquainted with the position and characters of these young suitors. To be sure, it is not my business, and I ought to recollect the words of Cicero: "Est enim difficilis cura rerum alienarum: quamquam Terentia.n.u.s ille Chremes humani nihil a se alienum putat."{1} I hold with. Chremes too. I am not without hope, from some symptoms I have lately seen, that rumour, in the present case, is in a fair way of being right; and if, with the accordance of the young gentleman as key-note, these two heptachords should harmonise into a double octave, I do not see why I may not take my part as fundamental ba.s.s.'

1 It is a hard matter to take active concern in the affairs of others; although the Chremes of Terence thinks nothing human alien to himself.--De Officiis: i. 9.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE TWO QUADRILLES--POPE's...o...b..E--POETICAL TRUTH TO NATURE--CLEOPATRA

(Greek pa.s.sage) Alexis: Tarantini.

As men who leave their homes for public games, We leave our native element of darkness For life's brief light. And who has most of mirth, And wine, and love, may, like a satisfied guest, Return, contented, to the night he sprang from.

In the meantime Mr. Falconer, after staying somewhat longer than usual at home, had returned to the Grange. He found much the same party as he had left: but he observed, or imagined, that Lord Curryfin was much more than previously in favour with Miss Gryll; that she paid him more marked attention, and watched his conduct to Miss Niphet with something more than curiosity.

Amongst the winter evenings' amus.e.m.e.nts were two forms of quadrille: the old-fashioned game of cards, and the more recently fashionable dance. On these occasions it was of course a carpet-dance. Now, dancing had never been in Mr. Falconer's line, and though modern dancing, especially in quadrilles, is little more than walking, still in that 'little more'

there is ample room for grace and elegance of motion.

Herein Lord Curryfin outshone all the other young men in the circle. He endeavoured to be as indiscriminating as possible in inviting partners: but it was plain to curious observation, especially if a spice of jealousy mingled with the curiosity, that his favourite partner was Miss Niphet. When they occasionally danced a polka, the reverend doctor's mythological theory came out in full force. It seemed as if Nature had preordained that they should be inseparable, and the interior conviction of both, that so it ought to be, gave them an accordance of movement that seemed to emanate from the innermost mind. Sometimes, too, they danced the _Minuet de la Cour_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Minuet de la Cour 009-177]

Having once done it, they had been often unanimously requested to repeat it. In this they had no compet.i.tors. Miss Gryll confined herself to quadrilles, and Mr. Falconer did not even propose to walk through one with her. When dancing brought into Miss Nipher/s cheeks the blush-rose bloom, which had more than once before so charmed Lord Curryfin, it required little penetration to see, through his external decorum, the pa.s.sionate admiration with which he regarded her. Mr. Falconer remarked it, and, looking round to Miss Gryll, thought he saw the trace of a tear in her eye. It was a questionable glistening: jealousy construed it into a tear. But why should it be there? Was her mind turning to Lord Curryfin? and the more readily because of a newly-perceived obstacle?

Had mortified vanity any share in it? No: this was beneath _Morgana._ Then why was it there? Was it anything like regret that, in respect of the young lord, she too had lost her opportunity? Was he himself blameless in the matter? He had been on the point of declaration, and she had been apparently on the point of acceptance: and instead of following up his advantage, he had been absent longer than usual. This was ill; but in the midst of the contending forces which severally acted on him, how could he make it well? So he sate still, tormenting himself.

In the meantime, Mr. Gryll had got up at a card-table, in the outer, which was the smaller drawing-room, a quadrille party of his own, consisting of himself, Miss Ilex, the Reverend Dr. Opimian, and _Mr.

MacBorrowdale._

_Mr. Gryll._ This is the only game of cards that ever pleased me. Once it was the great evening charm of the whole nation. Now, when cards are played at all, it has given place to whist, which, in my younger days, was considered a dry, solemn, studious game, played in moody silence, only interrupted by an occasional outbreak of dogmatism and ill-humour.

Quadrille is not so absorbing but that we may talk and laugh over it, and yet is quite as interesting as anything of the kind has need to be.

_Miss Ilex._ I delight in quadrille. I am old enough to remember when, in mixed society in the country, it was played every evening by some of the party. But _Chaque age a ses plaisirs, son esprit, et ses mours._{1} It is one of the evils of growing old that we do not easily habituate ourselves to changes of custom. The old, who sit still while the young dance and sing, may be permitted to regret the once always accessible cards, which, in their own young days, delighted the old of that generation: and not the old only.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ There are many causes for the diminished attraction of cards in evening society. Late dinners leave little evening. The old time for cards was the interval between tea and supper.

Now there is no such interval, except here and there in out-of-the-way places, where, perhaps, quadrille and supper may still flourish, as in the days of Queen Anne. Nothing was more common in country towns and villages, half-a-century ago, than parties meeting in succession at each other's houses for tea, supper, and quadrille. How popular this game had been, you may judge from Gay's ballad, which represents all cla.s.ses as absorbed in quadrille.{2} Then the facility of locomotion dissipates, annihilates neighbourhood.

1 Boileau.

2 For example:

When patients lie in piteous case, In comes the apothecary, And to the doctor cries 'Alas!

_Non debes Quadrilare_.'

The patient dies without a pill: For why? The doctor's at quadrille.

Should France and Spain again grow loud, The Muscovite grow louder, Britain, to curb her neighbours proud,

Would want both ball and powder; Must want both sword and gun to kill; For why? The general's at quadrille.

People are not now the fixtures they used to be in their respective localities, finding their amus.e.m.e.nts within their own limited circle.

Half the inhabitants of a country place are here to-day and gone to-morrow. Even of those who are more what they call settled, the greater portion is less, probably, at home than whisking about the world. Then, again, where cards are played at all, whist is more consentaneous to modern solemnity: there is more wiseacre-ism about it: in the same manner that this other sort of quadrille, in which people walk to and from one another with faces of exemplary gravity, has taken the place of the old-fashioned country-dance. 'The merry dance, I dearly love' would never suggest the idea of a quadrille, any more than 'merry England' would call up any image not drawn from ancient ballads and the old English drama.

_Mr. Gryll._ Well, doctor, I intend to have a ball at Christmas, in which all modes of dancing shall have fair play, but country-dances shall have their full share.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ I rejoice in the prospect. I shall be glad to see the young dancing as if they were young.

_Miss Ilex._ The variety of the game called tredrille--the Ombre of Pope's _Rape of the Lock_--is a pleasant game for three. Pope had many opportunities of seeing it played, yet he has not described it correctly; and I do not know that this has been observed.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ Indeed, I never observed it. I shall be glad to know how it is so.

_Miss Ilex._ Quadrille is played with forty cards: tredrille usually with thirty: sometimes, as in Pope's...o...b..e, with twenty-seven. In forty cards, the number of trumps is eleven in the black suits, twelve in the red:{1} in thirty, nine in all suits alike.{2} In twenty-seven, they cannot be more than nine in one suit, and eight in the other three. In Pope's...o...b..e spades are trumps, and the number is eleven: the number which they would be if the cards were forty. If you follow his description carefully, you will find it to be so.

1 Nine cards in the black, and ten in the red suits, in addition to the aces of spades and clubs, Spadille and Basto, which are trumps in all suits.

2 Seven cards in each of the four suits in addition to Spadille and Basto.

_Mr. MacBorrowdale._ Why, then, we can only say, as a great philosopher said on another occasion: The description is sufficient 'to impose on the degree of attention with which poetry is read.'

_Miss Ilex._ It is a pity it should be so. Truth to Nature is essential to poetry. Few may perceive an inaccuracy: but to those who do, it causes a great diminution, if not a total destruction, of pleasure in perusal. Shakespeare never makes a flower blossom out of season.

Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey are true to Nature in this and in all other respects: even in their wildest imaginings.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ Yet here is a combination by one of our greatest poets, of flowers that never blossom in the same season--

Bring the rathe primrose, that forsaken dies, The tufted crow-toe and pale jessamine, The white pink, and the pansie freakt with jet, The glowing violet,