CHAPTER CV.

A WORD OF NOBS, AND AN ALLUSION TO CÆSAR. SOME CIRCUMSTANCES RELATING TO THE DOCTOR'S SECOND LOVE, WHEREBY THOSE OF HIS THIRD AND LAST ARE ACCOUNTED FOR.

Un mal que se entra por medio los ojos,
    Y va se derecho hasta el corazon;
    Alli en ser llegado se torna aficion,
Y da mil pesares, plazeres y enojos:
Causa alegrias, tristezas, antojos;
    Haze llorar, y haze reir,
    Haze cantar, y haze plañir;
Da pensamientos dos mil a manojos.
                                               QUESTION DE AMOR.

“Nobs,” said the Doctor, as he mounted and rode away from Mr. Bacon's garden gate, “when I alighted and fastened thee to that wicket, I thought as little of what was to befal me then, and what I was about to do, as thou knowest of it now.”

Man has an inward voice as well as an “inward eye,”1 a voice distinct from that of conscience. It is the companion, if not “the bliss of solitude;”1 and though he sometimes employs it to deceive himself, it gives him good counsel perhaps quite as often, calls him to account, reproves him for having left unsaid what he ought to have said, or for having said what he ought not to have said, reprehends or approves, admonishes or encourages. On this occasion it was a joyful and gratulatory voice, with which the Doctor spake mentally, first to Nobs and afterwards to himself, as he rode back to Doncaster.

1 WORDSWORTH.

By this unuttered address the reader would perceive, if he should haply have forgotten what was intimated in some of the ante-initial chapters, and in the first post-initial one, that the Doctor had a horse, named Nobs; and the question Who was Nobs, would not be necessary, if this were all that was to be said concerning him. There is much to be said; the tongue that could worthily express his merits, had need be like the pen of a ready writer; though I will not say of him as Berni or Boiardo has said of

quel valeroso e bel destriero,

Argalia's horse, Rubicano, that

Un che volesse dir lodando il vero,
Bisogno aria di parlar piu ch' umano.

At present, however, I shall only say this in his praise, he was altogether unlike the horse of whom it was said he had only two faults, that of being hard to catch, and that of being good for nothing when he was caught. For whether in stable or in field, Nobs would come like a dog to his master's call. There was not a better horse for the Doctor's purpose in all England; no, nor in all Christendom; no, nor in all Houyhnhnmdom, if that country had been searched to find one.

Cæsarem vehis, said Cæsar to the Egyptian boatman. But what was that which the Egyptian boat carried, compared to what Nobs bore upon that saddle to which constant use had given its polish bright and brown?

Virtutem solidi pectoris hospitam
Idem portat equus, qui dominum. 2

Nobs therefore carried—all that is in these volumes; yea, and as all future generations were, according to Madame Bourignon, actually as well as potentially, contained in Adam,—all editions and translations of them, however numerous.

2 CASIMIR.

But on that evening he carried something of more importance; for on the life and weal of his rider there depended from that hour, as far as its dependence was upon anything earthly, the happiness of one of the best men in the world, and of a daughter who was not unworthy of such a father. If the Doctor had been thrown from his horse and killed, an hour or two earlier, the same day, it would have been a dreadful shock both to Deborah and Mr. Bacon; and they would always have regretted the loss of one whose company they enjoyed, whose character they respected, and for whom they entertained a feeling of more than ordinary regard. But had such a casualty occurred now, it would have been the severest affliction that could have befallen them.

Yet till that hour Deborah had never thought of Dove as a husband, nor Dove of Deborah as a wife,—that is, neither had ever looked at the possibility of their being one day united to each other in that relation. Deborah liked him, and he liked her; and beyond this sincere liking neither of them for a moment dreamt that the inclination would ever proceed. They had not fallen in love with each other; nor had they run in love, nor walked into it, nor been led into it, nor entrapt into it; nor had they caught it.

How then came they to be in love at last? The question may be answered by an incident which Mr. John Davis relates in his Travels of Four Years and a Half in the United States of America. The traveller was making his way “faint and wearily” on foot to a place called by the strange name of Frying Pan,—for the Americans have given all sorts of names, except fitting ones, to the places which they have settled, or discovered, and their Australian kinsmen seem to be following the same absurd and inconvenient course. It will occasion, hereafter, as much confusion as the sameness of Mahommedan proper names, in all ages and countries, causes in the history of all Mahommedan nations. Mr. Davis had walked till he was tired without seeing any sign of the place at which he expected long before to have arrived. At length he met a lad in the wilderness, and asked him, “how far, my boy, is it to Frying Pan?” The boy replied, “you be in the Pan now.”

So it was with the Doctor and with Deborah;—they found themselves in love, as much to their surprize as it was to the traveller when he found himself in the Pan, and much more to their satisfaction. And upon a little after reflection they both perceived how they came to be so.

                     There's a chain of causes
Link'd to effects,—invincible necessity
That whate'er is, could not but so have been.3

Into such questions, however, I enter not. “Nolo altum sapere,” they be matters above my capacity: the Cobler's check shall never light on my head, “Ne sutor ultra crepidam.”4 Opportunity, which makes thieves, makes lovers also, and is the greatest of all match-makers. And when opportunity came, the Doctor,

Por ubbidir chi sempre ubbidir debbe
La mente, 5

acted promptly. Accustomed as he was to weigh things of moment in the balance, and hold it with as even and as nice a hand, as if he were compounding a prescription on which the life of a patient might depend, he was no shillishallier, nor ever wasted a precious minute in pro-and-conning, when it was necessary at once to decide and act.

Chi ha tempo, e tempo aspetta, il tempo perde. 6

His first love, as the reader will remember, came by inoculation, and was taken at first sight. This third and last, he used to say, came by inoculation also; but it was a more remarkable case, for eleven years elapsed before there was an appearance of his having taken the infection. How it happened that an acquaintance of so many years, and which at its very commencement had led to confidence and esteem and familiarity and friendship, should have led no farther, may easily be explained. Dove, when he first saw Deborah, was in love with another person.

3 DRYDEN.

4 THOMAS LODGE.

5 PULCI.

6 SERAFINO DA L'AQUILA.

He had attended poor Lucy Bevan from the eighteenth year of her age, when a tendency to consumption first manifested itself in her, till the twenty-fifth, when she sunk under that slow and insidious malady. She, who for five of those seven years, fancied herself during every interval, or mitigation of the disease, restored to health, or in the way of recovery, had fixed her affections upon him. And he who had gained those affections by his kind and careful attendance upon a case of which he soon saw cause to apprehend the fatal termination, becoming aware of her attachment as he became more and more mournfully convinced that no human skill could save her, found himself unawares engaged in a second passion, as hopeless as his first. That had been wilful; this was equally against his will and his judgment: that had been a folly, this was an affliction. And the only consolation which he found in it was, that the consciousness of loving and of being beloved, which made him miserable, was a happiness to her as long as she retained a hope of life, or was capable of feeling satisfaction in anything relating to this world. Caroline Bowles, whom no authoress or author has ever surpassed in truth and tenderness and sanctity of feeling, could relate such a story as it ought to be related,—if stories which in themselves are purely painful ought ever to be told. I will not attempt to tell it:—for I wish not to draw upon the reader's tears, and have none to spare for it myself.

This unhappy attachment, though he never spoke of it, being always but too certain in what it must end, was no secret to Mr. Bacon and his daughter: and when death had dissolved the earthly tie, it seemed to them, as it did to himself, that his affections were wedded to the dead. It was likely that the widower should think so, judging of his friend's heart by his own.

Sorrow and Time will ever paint too well
The lost when hopeless, all things loved in vain.7

His feelings upon such a point had been expressed for him by a most prolific and unequal writer, whose poems, more perhaps than those of any other English author, deserve to be carefully winnowed, the grain, which is of the best quality, being now lost amid the heap of chaff.

Lord keep me faithful to the trust
    Which my dear spouse reposed in me:
To her now dead, preserve me just
    In all that should performed be.
For tho' our being man and wife
Extendeth only to this life,
Yet neither life nor death should end
The being of a faithful friend.8

The knowledge that the Doctor's heart was thus engaged at the time of their first acquaintance, had given to Deborah's intercourse with him an easy frankness which otherwise might perhaps not have been felt, and could not have been assumed; and the sister-like feeling into which this had grown, underwent no change after Lucy Bevan's death. He meantime saw that she was so happy with her father, and supposed her father's happiness so much depended upon her, that to have entertained a thought of separating them (even if the suitableness of such a marriage in other respects had ever entered into his imagination), would have seemed to him like a breach of friendship. Yet, if Mr. Bacon had died before he opened his mind to the Doctor upon occasion of Joseph Hebblethwaite's proposal, it is probable that one of the first means of consolation which would have occurred to him, would have been to offer the desolate daughter a home, together with his hand; so well was he acquainted with her domestic merits, so highly did he esteem her character, and so truly did he admire the gifts with which Nature had endowed her,—

                                 her sweet humour
That was as easy as a calm, and peaceful;
All her affections, like the dews on roses,
Fair as the flowers themselves, as sweet and gentle.9

7 ROBERT LANDOR.

8 WITHER.

9 BEAUMONT and FLETCHER.