“More females are born than males.”
“That’s more than I know. As one of the legislators of the country I am prepared to state that statistics are always false. What we have to do is to induce men to marry. We can’t do it by statute.”
“No, thank God.”
“Nor yet by fashion.”
“Fashion seems to be going the other way,” said Herriot.
“It can be only done by education and conscience. Take men of forty all round—men of our own class—you believe that the married men are happier than the unmarried? I want an answer, you know, just for the sake of the argument.”
“I think the married men are the happier. But you speak as the fox who had lost his tail;—or, at any rate, as a fox in the act of losing it.”
“Never mind my tail. If morality in life and enlarged affections are conducive to happiness it must be so.”
“Short commons and unpaid bills are conducive to misery. That’s what I should say if I wanted to oppose you.”
“I never came across a man willing to speak the truth who did not admit that, in the long run, married men are the happier. As regards women, there isn’t even ground for an argument. And yet men don’t marry.”
“They can’t.”
“You mean there isn’t food enough in the world.”
“The man fears that he won’t get enough of what there is for his wife and family.”
“The labourer with twelve shillings a week has no such fear. And if he did marry, the food would come. It isn’t that. The man is unconscientious and ignorant as to the sources of true happiness, and won’t submit himself to cold mutton and three clean shirts a week—not because he dislikes mutton and dirty linen himself—but because the world says they are vulgar. That’s the feeling that keeps you from marrying, Herriot.”
“As for me,” said Herriot, “I regard myself as so placed that I do not dare to think of a young woman of my own rank except as a creature that must be foreign to me. I cannot make such a one my friend as I would a man, because I should be in love with her at once. And I do not dare to be in love because I would not see a wife and children starve. I regard my position as one of enforced monasticism, and myself as a monk under the cruellest compulsion. I often wish that I had been brought up as a journeyman hatter.”
“Why a hatter?”
“I’m told it’s an active sort of life. You’re fast asleep, and I was just now, when you were preaching. We’d better go to bed. Nine o’clock for breakfast, I suppose?”
XXV
Mr. Dove’s Opinion
Mr. Thomas Dove, familiarly known among club-men, attorneys’ clerks, and, perhaps, even among judges when very far from their seats of judgment, as Turtle Dove, was a counsel learned in the law. He was a counsel so learned in the law, that there was no question within the limits of an attorney’s capability of putting to him, that he could not answer with the aid of his books. And when he had once given an opinion, all Westminster could not move him from it—nor could Chancery Lane and Lincoln’s Inn and the Temple added to Westminster. When Mr. Dove had once been positive, no man on earth was more positive. It behoved him, therefore, to be right when he was positive; and though whether wrong or right he was equally stubborn, it must be acknowledged that he was seldom proved to be wrong. Consequently the attorneys believed in him, and he prospered. He was a thin man, over fifty years of age, very full of scorn and wrath, impatient of a fool, and thinking most men to be fools; afraid of nothing on earth—and, so his enemies said, of nothing elsewhere; eaten up by conceit; fond of law, but fonder, perhaps, of dominion; soft as milk to those who acknowledged his power, but a tyrant to all who contested it; conscientious, thoughtful, sarcastic, bright-witted, and laborious. He was a man who never spared himself. If he had a case in hand, though the interest to himself in it was almost nothing, he would rob himself of rest for a week should a point arise which required such labour. It was the theory of Mr. Dove’s life that he would never be beaten. Perhaps it was some fear in this respect that had kept him from Parliament and confined him to the courts and the company of attorneys. He was, in truth, a married man with a family; but they who knew him as the terror of opponents and as the divulger of legal opinions, heard nothing of his wife and children. He kept all such matters quite to himself, and was not given to much social intercourse with those among whom his work lay. Out at Streatham, where he lived, Mrs. Dove probably had her circle of acquaintance;—but Mr. Dove’s domestic life and his forensic life were kept quite separate.
At the present moment Mr. Dove is interesting to us solely as being the learned counsel in whom Mr. Camperdown trusted—to whom Mr. Camperdown was willing to trust for an opinion in so grave a matter as that of the Eustace diamonds. A case was made out and submitted to Mr. Dove immediately after that scene on the pavement in Mount Street, at which Mr. Camperdown had endeavoured to induce Lizzie to give up the necklace; and the following is the opinion which Mr. Dove gave:—
There is much error about heirlooms. Many think that any chattel
