The Last Chronicle of Barset [136]
while you stand there.'
'And you would really wish me to marry this girl?'
'I do--if you can love her.'
'And what about her love?'
'You must win it, of course. She is to be won, like any other woman. The fruit won't fall into your mouth merely because you open your lips. You must climb the tree.'
'Still climbing trees in the Hesperides,' said Conway. 'Love does that, you know; but it is hard to climb the trees without the love. It seems to me that I have done my climbing--have clomb as high as I knew how, and that the boughs are breaking with me, and that I am likely to get a fall. Do you understand me?'
'I would rather not understand you.'
'That is no answer to my question. Do you understand that at this moment I am getting a fall which will break every bone in my skin and put any other climbing out of the question as far as I am concerned? Do you understand that?'
'No; I do not,' said Mrs Broughton, in a tremulous voice.
'Then I'll go and make love at once to Clara Van Siever. There's enough of pluck left in me to ask her to marry me, and I suppose I could manage to go through the ceremony if she accepted me.'
'But I want you to love her,' said Mrs Dobbs Broughton.
'I daresay I should love her well enough after a bit;--that is, if she didn't break my head or comb my hair. I suppose there will be no objection to my saying that you sent me when I ask her?'
'Conway, you will of course not mention my name to her. I have suggested to you a marriage which I think would tend to make you happy, and would give you a stability in life which you want. It is perhaps better that I should be explicit at once. As an unmarried man I cannot continue to know you. You have said words of late which have driven me to this conclusion. I have thought about it much--too much perhaps, and I know that I am right. Miss Van Siever has beauty and wealth and intellect, and I think that she would appreciate the love of such a man as you are. Now go.' And Mrs Dobbs Broughton, standing upright, pointed to the door. Conway Dalrymple slowly took his Spanish hat from of the marble slab on which he had laid it, and left the room without saying a word. The interview had been quite long enough, and there was nothing else which he knew how to say with effect.
Croquet is a pretty game out of doors, and chess is delightful in a drawing-room. Battledore and shuttlecock and hunt-the-slipper have also their attractions. Proverbs are good, and cross questions with crooked answers may be made very amusing. But none of these games are equal to the game of love-making--providing that the players can be quite sure that there shall be no heart in the matter. Any touch of heart not only destroys the pleasure of the game, but makes the player awkward and incapable and robs him of his skill. And thus it is that there are many people who cannot play the game at all. A deficiency of some needed internal physical strength prevents the owners of the heart from keeping a proper control over its valves, and thus emotion sets in, and the pulses are accelerated, and feeling supervenes. For such a one to attempt the game of love-making, is as though your friend with the gout should insist on playing croquet. A sense of the ridiculous, if nothing else, should in either case deter the afflicted one from the attempt. There was no such absurdity with our friend Mrs Dobbs Broughton and Conway Dalrymple. Their valves and pulses were all right. They could play the game without the slightest danger of any inconvenient result;--of any inconvenient result, that is, as regarded their own feelings. Blind people cannot see and stupid people cannot understand--and it might be that Mr Dobbs Broughton, being both blind and stupid in such matters, might perceive something of the playing of the game and not know that it was only a game of skill.
When I say that as regarded these two lovers there was nothing of love between them, and that the game was therefore so far innocent, I would not be understood as asserting that these people had no hearts in their
'And you would really wish me to marry this girl?'
'I do--if you can love her.'
'And what about her love?'
'You must win it, of course. She is to be won, like any other woman. The fruit won't fall into your mouth merely because you open your lips. You must climb the tree.'
'Still climbing trees in the Hesperides,' said Conway. 'Love does that, you know; but it is hard to climb the trees without the love. It seems to me that I have done my climbing--have clomb as high as I knew how, and that the boughs are breaking with me, and that I am likely to get a fall. Do you understand me?'
'I would rather not understand you.'
'That is no answer to my question. Do you understand that at this moment I am getting a fall which will break every bone in my skin and put any other climbing out of the question as far as I am concerned? Do you understand that?'
'No; I do not,' said Mrs Broughton, in a tremulous voice.
'Then I'll go and make love at once to Clara Van Siever. There's enough of pluck left in me to ask her to marry me, and I suppose I could manage to go through the ceremony if she accepted me.'
'But I want you to love her,' said Mrs Dobbs Broughton.
'I daresay I should love her well enough after a bit;--that is, if she didn't break my head or comb my hair. I suppose there will be no objection to my saying that you sent me when I ask her?'
'Conway, you will of course not mention my name to her. I have suggested to you a marriage which I think would tend to make you happy, and would give you a stability in life which you want. It is perhaps better that I should be explicit at once. As an unmarried man I cannot continue to know you. You have said words of late which have driven me to this conclusion. I have thought about it much--too much perhaps, and I know that I am right. Miss Van Siever has beauty and wealth and intellect, and I think that she would appreciate the love of such a man as you are. Now go.' And Mrs Dobbs Broughton, standing upright, pointed to the door. Conway Dalrymple slowly took his Spanish hat from of the marble slab on which he had laid it, and left the room without saying a word. The interview had been quite long enough, and there was nothing else which he knew how to say with effect.
Croquet is a pretty game out of doors, and chess is delightful in a drawing-room. Battledore and shuttlecock and hunt-the-slipper have also their attractions. Proverbs are good, and cross questions with crooked answers may be made very amusing. But none of these games are equal to the game of love-making--providing that the players can be quite sure that there shall be no heart in the matter. Any touch of heart not only destroys the pleasure of the game, but makes the player awkward and incapable and robs him of his skill. And thus it is that there are many people who cannot play the game at all. A deficiency of some needed internal physical strength prevents the owners of the heart from keeping a proper control over its valves, and thus emotion sets in, and the pulses are accelerated, and feeling supervenes. For such a one to attempt the game of love-making, is as though your friend with the gout should insist on playing croquet. A sense of the ridiculous, if nothing else, should in either case deter the afflicted one from the attempt. There was no such absurdity with our friend Mrs Dobbs Broughton and Conway Dalrymple. Their valves and pulses were all right. They could play the game without the slightest danger of any inconvenient result;--of any inconvenient result, that is, as regarded their own feelings. Blind people cannot see and stupid people cannot understand--and it might be that Mr Dobbs Broughton, being both blind and stupid in such matters, might perceive something of the playing of the game and not know that it was only a game of skill.
When I say that as regarded these two lovers there was nothing of love between them, and that the game was therefore so far innocent, I would not be understood as asserting that these people had no hearts in their