This chapter shall begin, good reader, with one of those startling bursts of "illustration," with which our most popular preachers are wont now to astonish and edify their hearers, and after starting with them at the opening of the sermon from the north-pole, the Crystal Palace, or the nearest cabbage-garden, float them safe, upon the gushing stream of oratory, to the safe and well-known shores of doctrinal commonplace, lost in admiration at the skill of the good man who can thus make all roads lead, if not to heaven, at least to strong language about its opposite. True, the logical sequence of their periods may be, like that of the coming one, somewhat questionable, reminding one at moments of Fluellen's comparison between Macedon and Monmouth, Henry the Fifth and Alexander: but, in the logic of the pulpit, all's well that ends well, and the end must needs sanctify the means. There is, of course, some connection or other between all things in heaven and earth, or how would the universe hold together? And if one has not time to find out the true connection, what is left but to invent the best one can for oneself? Thus argues, probably, the popular preacher, and fills his pews, proving thereby clearly the excellence of his method. So argue also, probably, the popular poets, to whose "luxuriant fancy" everything suggests anything, and thought plays leap-frog with thought down one page and up the next, till one fancies at moments that they had got permission from the higher powers, before looking at the universe, to stir it all up a few times with a spoon. It is notorious, of course, that poets and preachers alike pride themselves upon this method of astonishing; that the former call it, "seeing the infinite in the finite;" the latter—"pressing secular matters into the service of the sanctuary," and other pretty phrases which, for reverence' sake, shall be omitted. No doubt they have their reasons and their reward. The style takes; the style pays; and what more would you have? Let them go on rejoicing, in spite of the cynical pedants in the Saturday Review, who dare to accuse (will it be believed?) these luminaries of the age of talking merely irreverent nonsense. Meanwhile, so evident is the success (sole test of merit) which has attended the new method, that it is worth while trying whether it will not be as taking in the novel as it is in the chapel; and therefore the reader is requested to pay special attention to the following paragraph, modelled carefully after the exordiums of a famous Irish preacher, now drawing crowded houses at the West End of Town. As thus;—"It is the pleasant month of May, when, as in old Chaucer's time, the—
"Smale foules maken melodie,That slepen alle night with open eyeSo priketh hem nature in their corages.Then longen folk to goe on pilgrimages,And specially from every shire's endOf Englelond, to Exeter-hall they wend,"
till the low places of the Strand blossom with white cravats, those lilies of the valley, types of meekness and humility, at least in the pious palmer—and why not of similar virtues in the undertaker, the concert-singer, the groom, the tavern-waiter, the croupier at the gaming-table, and Frederick Augustus Lord Scoutbush, who, white-cravated like the rest, is just getting into his cab at the door of the Never-mind-what Theatre, to spend an hour at Kensington before sauntering in to Lady M——'s ball?
Why not, I ask, at least in the case of little Scoutbush? For Guardsman though he be, coming from a theatre and going to a ball, there is meekness and humility in him at this moment, as well as in the average of the white-cravated gentlemen who trotted along that same pavement about eleven o'clock this forenoon. Why should not his white cravat, like theirs, be held symbolic of that fact? However, Scoutbush belongs rather to the former than the latter of Chaucer's categories; for a "smale foule" he is, a little bird-like fellow, who maketh melodie also, and warbles like a cock-robin; we cannot liken him to any more dignified songster. Moreover, he will sleep all night with open eye; for he will not be in bed till five to-morrow morning; and pricked he is, and that sorely, in his courage; for he is as much in love as his little nature can be, with the new actress, La Signora Cordifiamma, of the Never-mind-what Theatre.
How exquisitely, now (for this is one of the rare occasions in which a man is permitted to praise himself), is established hereby an unexpected bond of linked sweetness long drawn out between things which had, ere they came beneath the magic touch of genius, no more to do with each other than this book has with the Stock Exchange. Who would have dreamed of travelling from the Tabard in Southwark to the last new singer,viâExeter-hall and the lilies of the valley, and touching en passant on to cardinal virtues and an Irish Viscount? But see; given only a little impudence, and less logic, and hey presto! the thing is done; and all that remains to be done is to dilate (as the Rev. Dionysius O'Blareaway would do at this stage of the process) upon the moral question which has been so cunningly raised, and to inquire, firstly,—how the virtues of meekness and humility could be predicated of Frederick Augustus St. Just, Viscount Scoutbush and Baron Torytown, in the peerage of Ireland; and secondly,—how those virtues were called into special action by his questionably wise attachment to a new actress, to whom he had never spoken a word in his life.
First, then, "Little Freddy Scoutbush," as his compeers irreverently termed him, was, by common consent of her Majesty's Guards, a "good fellow." Whether the St. James' Street definition of that adjective be the perfect one or not, we will not stay to inquire; but in the Guards' club-house it meant this: that Scoutbush had not an enemy in the world, because he deserved none; that he lent, and borrowed not; gave, and asked not again; envied not; hustled not; slandered not; never bore malice, never said a cruel word, never played a dirty trick, would hear a fellow's troubles out to the end, and if he could not counsel, at least would not laugh at them, and at all times and in all places lived and let live, and was accordingly a general favourite. His morality was neither better nor worse than the average of his companions; but if he was sensual, he was at least not base; and there were frail women who blessed "little Freddy," and his shy and secret generosity, from having saved them from the lowest pit.
Au reste, he was idle, frivolous, useless; but with these two palliating facts, that he knew it and regretted it; and that he never had a chance of being aught else. His father and mother had died when he was a child. He had been sent to Eton at seven, where he learnt nothing, and into the Guards at seventeen, where he learnt less than nothing. His aunt, old Lady Knockdown, who was a kind old Irish woman, an ex-blue and ex-beauty, now a high Evangelical professor, but as worldly as her neighbours in practice, had tried to make him a good boy in old times: but she had given him up, long before he left Eton, as a "vessel of wrath" (which he certainly was, with his hot Irish temper); and since then she had only spoken of him with moans, and to him just as if he and she had made a compact to be as worldly as they could, and as if the fact that he was going, as she used to tell her private friends, straight to the wrong place, was to be utterly ignored before the pressing reality of getting him and his sisters well married. And so it befell, that Lady Knockdown, like many more, having begun with too high (or at least precise) a spiritual standard, was forced to end practically in having no standard at all; and that for ten years of Scoutbush's life, neither she nor any other human being had spoken to him as if he had a soul to be saved, or any duty on earth save to eat, drink, and be merry.
And all the while there was a quaint and pathetic consciousness in the little man's heart that he was meant for something better; that he was no fool, and was not intended to be one. He would thrust his head into lectures at the Polytechnic and the British Institution, with a dim endeavour to guess what they were all about, and a good-natured envy of the clever fellows who knew about "science, and all that." He would sit and listen, puzzled and admiring, to the talk of statesmen, and confide his woe afterwards to some chum.—"Ah, if I had had the chance now that my cousin Chalkclere has! If I had had two or three tutors, and a good mother, too, keeping me in a coop, and cramming me with learning, as they cram chickens for the market, I fancy I could have shown my comb and hackles in the House as well as some of them. I fancy I could make a speech in parliament now, with the help of a little Irish impudence, if I only knew anything to speak about."
So Scoutbush clung, in a childish way, to any superior man who would take notice of him, and not treat him as the fribble which he seemed. He had taken to that well-known artist, Claude Mellot, of late, simply from admiration of his brilliant talk about art and poetry; and boldly confessed that he preferred one of Mellot's orations on the sublime and beautiful, though he didn't understand a word of them, to the songs and jokes (very excellent ones in their way) of Mr. Hector Harkaway, the distinguished Irish novelist, and boon companion of her Majesty's Life Guards Green. His special intimate and Mentor, however, was a certain Major Campbell, of whom more hereafter; who, however, being a lofty-minded and perhaps somewhat Pharisaic person, made heavier demands on Scoutbush's conscience than he had yet been able to meet; for fully as he agreed that Hercules' choice between pleasure and virtue was the right one, still he could not yet follow that ancient hero along the thorny path, and confined his conception of "duty" to the minimum guard and drill. He had estates in Ireland, which had almost cleared themselves during his long minority, but which, since the famine, had cost him about as much as they brought him in; and estates in the West, which, with a Welsh slate-quarry, brought him in some seven or eight thousand a-year; and so kept his poor little head above water, to look pitifully round the universe, longing for the life of him to make out what it all meant, and hoping that somebody would come and tell him.
So much for his meekness and humility in general; as for the particular display of those virtues which he has shown to-day, it must be understood that he has given a promise to Mrs. Mellot not to make love to La Cordifiamma; and, on that only condition, has been allowed to meet her to-night at one of Claude Mellot's petits soupers.
La Cordifiamma has been staying, ever since she came to England, with the Mellots in the wilds of Brompton; unapproachable there, as in all other places. In public, she is a very Zenobia, who keeps all animals of the other sex at an awful distance; and of the fifty young puppies who are raving about her beauty, her air, and her voice, not one has obtained an introduction; while Claude, whose studio used to be a favourite lounge of young Guardsmen, has, as civilly as he can, closed his doors to those magnificent personages ever since the new singer became his guest.
Claude Mellot seems to have come into a fortune of late years, large enough, at least, for his few wants. He paints no longer, save when he chooses; and has taken a little old house in one of those back lanes of Brompton, where islands of primaeval nursery garden still remain undevoured by the advancing surges of the brick and mortar deluge. There he lives, happy in a green lawn, and windows opening thereon; in three elms, a cork, an ilex, and a mulberry, with a great standard pear, for flower and foliage the queen of all suburban trees. There he lies on the lawn, upon strange skins, the summer's day, playing with cats and dogs, and making love to his Sabina, who has not lost her beauty in the least, though she is on the wrong side of five-and-thirty. He deludes himself, too, into the belief that he is doing something, because he is writing a treatise on the "Principles of Beauty;" which will be published, probably, about the time the Thames is purified, in the season of Latter Lammas and the Greek Kalends; and the more certainly so, because he has wandered into the abyss of conic sections and curves of double curvature, of which, if the truth must be spoken, he knows no more than his friends of the Life Guards Green.
To this charming little nest has Lord Scoutbush procured an evening's admission after abject supplication to Sabina, who pets him because he is musical, and solemn promises neither to talk or look any manner of foolishness.
"My dearest Mrs. Mellot," says the poor wretch, "I will be good, indeed I will; I will not even speak to her. Only let me sit and look,—and—and—why, I thought you understood all about such things, and could pity a poor fellow who was spoony."
And Sabina, who prides herself much on understanding such things, and on having, indeed, reduced them to a science in which she gives gratuitous lessons to all young gentlemen and ladies of her acquaintance, receives him pityingly, in that delicious little back drawing-room, whither whosoever enters is in no hurry to go out again.
Claude's house is arranged with his usual defiance of all conventionalities. Dining or drawing-room proper there is none; the large front room is the studio, where he and Sabina eat and drink, as well as work and paint but out of it opens a little room, the walls of which are so covered with gems of art (where the rogue finds money to buy them is a puzzle), that the eye can turn nowhere without taking in some new beauty, and wandering on from picture to statue, from portrait to landscape, dreaming and learning afresh after every glance. At the back, a glass bay has been thrown out, and forms a little conservatory, for ever fresh and gay with tropic ferns and flowers; gaudy orchids dangle from the roof, creepers hide the framework, and you hardly see where the room ends, and the winter-garden begins; and in the centre an ottoman invites you to lounge. It costs Claude money, doubtless; but he has his excuse,—"Having once seen the tropics, I cannot live without some love-tokens from their lost paradises; and which is the wiser plan, to spend money on a horse and brougham, which we don't care to use, and on scrambling into society at the price of one great stupid party a year, or to make our little world as pretty as we can, and let those who wish to see us, take us as they find us?"
In this "nest," as Claude and Sabina call it, sacred to the everlasting billing and cooing of that sweet little pair of human love-birds who have built it, was supper set. La Cordifiamma, all the more beautiful from the languor produced by the excitement of acting, lay upon a sofa; Claude attended, talking earnestly; Sabina, according to her custom, was fluttering in and out, and arranging supper with her own hands; both husband and wife were as busy as bees; and yet any one accustomed to watch the little ins and outs of married life, could have seen that neither forgot for a moment that the other was in the room, but basked and purred, like two blissful cats, each in the sunshine of the other's presence; and he could have seen, too, that La Cordifiamma was divining their thoughts, and studying all their little expressions, perhaps that she might use them on the stage; perhaps, too, happy in sympathy with their happiness: and yet there was a shade of sadness on her forehead.
Scoutbush enters, is introduced, and receives a salutation from the actress haughty and cold enough to check the forwardest; puts on the air of languid nonchalance which is considered (or was before the little experiences of the Crimea) fit and proper for young gentlemen of rank and fashion. So he sits down, and feasts his foolish eyes upon his idol, hoping for a few words before the evening is over. Did I not say well, then, that there was as much meekness and humility under Scoutbush's white cravat as under others? But his little joy is soon dashed; for the black boy announces (seemingly much to his own pleasure) a tall personage, whom, from his dress and his moustachio, Scoutbush takes for a Frenchman, till he hears him called Stangrave. The intruder is introduced to Lord Scoutbush, which ceremony is consummated by a microscopic nod on either side; he then walks straight up to La Cordifiamma; and Scoutbush sees her cheeks flush as he does so. He takes her hand, speaks to her in a low voice, and sits down by her, Claude making room for him; and the two engage earnestly in conversation.
Scoutbush is much inclined to walk out of the room;—was he brought there to see that? Of course, however, he sits still, keeps his own counsel, and makes himself agreeable enough all the evening, like a good-natured kind-hearted little man, as he is. Whereby he is repaid; for the conversation soon becomes deep, and even too deep for him; and he is fain to drop out of the race, and leave it to his idol and to the new-comer, who seems to have seen, and done, and read everything in heaven and earth, and probably bought everything also; not to mention that he would be happy to sell the said universe again, at a very cheap price, if any one would kindly take it off his hands. Not that he boasts, or takes any undue share of the conversation; he is evidently too well bred for that; but every sentence shows an acquaintance with facts of which Eton has told Scoutbush nothing, the barrack-room less, and after which he still craves, the good little fellow, in a very honest way, and would soon have learnt, had he had a chance; for of native Irish smartness he had no lack.
"Poor Flake was half mad about you, Signora, in the stage-box to-night," said Sabina. "He says that he shall not sleep till he has painted you."
"Do let him!" cried Scoutbush: "what a picture he will make!"
"He may paint a picture, but not me; it is quite enough, Lord Scoutbush, to be some one else for two hours every night, without going down to posterity, as some one else for ever. If I am painted, I will be painted by no one who cannot represent my very self."
"You are right!" said Stangrave: "and you will do the man himself good by refusing; he has some notion still of what a portrait ought to be. If he once begins by attempting passing expressions of passion, which is all stage portraits can give, he will find them so much easier than honest representations of character, that he will end, where all our moderns seem to do, in merest melodrama."
"Explain!" said she.
"Portrait painters now depend for their effect on the mere accidents of theentourage; on dress, on landscape, even on broad hints of a man's occupation, putting a plan on the engineer's table, and a roll in the statesman's hands, like the old Greek who wrote 'this is an ox' under his picture. If they wish to give the face expression, though they seldom aim so high, all they can compass is a passing emotion; and one sitter goes down to posterity with an eternal frown, another with an eternal smile."
"Or, if he be a poet," said Sabina, "rolls his eye for ever in a fine frenzy."
"But would you forbid them to paint passion?"
"Not in its place; when the picture gives the causes of the passion, and the scene tells its own story. But then let us not have merely Kean as Hamlet, but Hamlet's self; let the painter sit down and conceive for himself a Hamlet, such as Shakspeare conceived; not merely give us as much of him as could be pressed at a given moment into the face of Mr. Kean. He will be only unjust to both actor and character. If Flake paints Marie as Lady Macbeth, he will give us neither her nor Lady Macbeth; but only the single point at which their two characters can coincide."
"How rude!" said Sabina, laughing; "what is he doing but hinting that La Signora's conception of Lady Macbeth is a very partial and imperfect one?"
"And why should it not be?" asked the actress, humbly enough.
"I meant," he answered warmly, "that there was more, far more in her than in any character which she assumes; and I do not want a painter to copy only one aspect, and let a part go down to posterity as a representation of the whole."
"If you mean that, you shall be forgiven. No; when she is painted, she shall be painted as herself, as she is now. Claude shall paint her."
"I have not known La Signora long enough," said Claude, "to aspire to such an honour. I paint no face which I have not studied for a year."
"Faith!" said Scoutbush, "you would find no more in most faces at the year's end, than you did the first day."
"Then I would not paint them. If I paint a portrait, which I seldom do, I wish to make it such a one as the old masters aimed at,—to give the sum total of the whole character; traces of every emotion, if it were possible, and glances of every expression which have passed over it since it was born into the world. They are all here, the whole past and future of the man; and every man, as the Mohammedans say, carries his destiny on his forehead."
"But who has eyes to see it?"
"The old masters had; some of them at least. Raphael had; Sebastian del Piombo had; and Titian, and Giorgione. There are portraits painted by them which carry a whole life-history concentrated into one moment."
"But they," said Stangrave, "are the portraits of men such as they saw around them; natures who were strong for good and evil, who were not ashamed to show their strength. Where will a painter find such among the poor, thin, unable mortals who come to him to buy immortality at a hundred and fifty guineas apiece, after having spent their lives in religiously rubbing off their angles against each other, and forming their characters, as you form shot, by shaking them together in a bag till they have polished each other into dullest uniformity?"
"It's very true," said Scoutbush, who suffered much at times from a certain wild Irish vein, which stirred him up to kick over the traces. "People are horribly like each other; and if a poor fellow is bored, and tries to do anything spicy or original, he has half-a-dozen people pooh-poohing him down on the score of bad taste."
"Men can be just as original now as ever," said La Signora, "if they had but the courage, even the insight. Heroic souls in old times had no more opportunities than we have: but they used them. There were daring deeds to be done then—are there none now? Sacrifices to be made—are there none now? Wrongs to be redressed—are there none now? Let any one set his heart, in these days, to do what is right, and nothing else; and it will not be long ere his brow is stamped with all that goes to make up the heroical expression—with noble indignation, noble self-restraint, great hopes, great sorrows; perhaps, even, with the print of the martyr's crown of thorns."
She looked at Stangrave as she spoke, with an expression which Scoutbush tried in vain to read. The American made no answer, and seemed to hang his head awhile. After a minute he said tenderly:—
"You will tire yourself if you talk thus, after the evening's fatigue. Mrs. Mellot will sing to us, and give us leisure to think over our lesson."
And Sabina sang; and then Lord Scoutbush was made to sing; and sang his best, no doubt.
So the evening slipt on, till it was past eleven o'clock, and Stangrave rose. "And now," said he, "I must go to Lady M——'s ball; and Marie must rest."
As he went, he just leaned over La Cordifiamma.
"Shall I come in to-morrow morning? We ought to read over that scene together before the rehearsal."
"Early then, or Sabina will be gone out; and she must play soubrette to our hero and heroine."
"You will rest? Mrs. Mellot, you will see that she does not sit up."
"It is not very polite to rob us of her, as soon as you cannot enjoy her yourself."
"I must take care of people who do not take care of themselves;" andStangrave departed.
Great was Scoutbush's wrath when he saw Marie rise and obey orders."Who was this man? what right had he to command her?"
He asked as much of Sabina the moment La Cordifiamma had retired.
"Are you not going to Lady M—— 's, too?"
"No; that is, I won't go yet; not till you have explained all this to me."
"Explained what?" asked Sabina, looking as demure as a little brown mouse.
"Why, what did you ask me here for?"
"Lord Scoutbush should recollect that he asked himself."
"You cruel venomous creature! do you think I would have come, if I had known that I was to see another man making love to her before my very eyes? I could kill the fellow;—who is he?"
"A New York merchant, unworthy of your aristocratic powder and ball."
"The confounded Yankee!" muttered Scoutbush.
"If people swear in my house, I fine them a dozen of kid gloves. Did you not promise me that you would not make love to her yourself?"
"Well—but, it is too cruel of you, before my very eyes."
"I saw no love-making to-night."
"None? Were you blind?"
"Not in the least; but you cannot well see a thing making which has been made long ago."
"What! Is he her husband?"
"No."
"Engaged to her?"
"No."
"What then!"
"Don't you know already that this is a house of mystery, full of mysterious people? I tell you this only, that if she ever marries any one, she will marry him; and that if I can, I will make her."
"Then you are my enemy after all."
"I! Do you think that Sabina Mellot can see a young viscount loose upon the universe, without trying to make up a match for him? No; I have such a prize for you,—young, handsome, better educated than any woman whom you will meet to-night. True, she is a Manchester girl: but then she has eighty thousand pounds."
"Eighty thousand nonsense? I'd sooner have that divine creature without a penny, than—"
"And would my lord viscount so far debase himself as to marry an actress?"
"Humph! Faith, my grandmother was an actress; and we St. Justs are none the worse for that fact, as far as I can see,—and certainly none the uglier—the women at least. Oh Sabina—Mrs. Mellot, I mean—only help me this once!"
"This once? Do you intend to marry by my assistance this time, and by your own the next? How many viscountesses are there to be?"
"Don't laugh at me, you cruel woman: you don't know; you fancy that I am not in love—" and the poor fellow began pouring out these commonplaces, which one has heard too often to take the trouble of repeating, and yet which are real enough, and pathetic too; for in every man, however frivolous, or even worthless, love calls up to the surface the real heroism, the real depth of character—all the more deep because common to poet and philosopher, guardsman and country clod.
"I'll leave town to-morrow. I'll go to the Land's-end,—to Norway,—toAfrica—"
"And forget her in the bliss of lion-hunting."
"Don't, I tell you; here I will not stay to be driven mad. To think that she is here, and that hateful Yankee at her elbow. I'll go—"
"To Lady M——'s ball?"
"No, confound it; to meet that fellow there! I should quarrel with him, as sure as there is hot Irish blood in my veins. The self-satisfied puppy! to be flirting and strutting there, while such a creature as that is lying thinking of him."
"Would you have him shut himself up in his hotel, and write poetry; or walk the streets all night, sighing at the moon?"
"No; but the cool way in which he went off himself, and sent her to bed. Confound him! commanding her. It made my blood boil."
"Claude, get Lord Scoutbush some iced soda-water."
"If you laugh at me, I'll never speak to you again."
"Or buy any of Claude's pictures?"
"Why do you torment me so? I'll go, I say,—leave town to-morrow,—only I can't with this horrid depot work! What shall I do? It's too cruel of you, while Campbell is away in Ireland, too; and I have not a soul but you to ask advice of, for Valencia is as great a goose as I am;" and the poor little fellow buried his hands in his curls, and stared fiercely into the fire, as if to draw from thence omens of his love, by the spodomantic augury of the ancient Greeks; while Sabina tripped up and down the room, putting things to rights for the night, and enjoying his torments as a cat does those of the mouse between her paws; and yet not out of spite, but from pure and simple fun.
Sabina is one of those charming bodies who knows everybody's business, and manages it. She lives in a world of intrigue, but without a thought of intriguing for her own benefit. She has always a match to make, a disconsolate lover to comfort, a young artist to bring forward, a refugee to conceal, a spendthrift to get out of a scrape; and, like David in the mountains, "every one that is discontented, and every one that is in debt, gather themselves to her." The strangest people, on the strangest errands, run over each other in that cosy little nest of hers. Fine ladies with over-full hearts, and seedy gentlemen with over-empty pockets, jostle each other at her door; and she has a smile, and a repartee, and good, cunning, practical wisdom for each and every one of them, and then dismisses them to bill and coo with Claude, and laugh over everybody and everything. The only price which she demands for her services is, to be allowed to laugh; and if that be permitted, she will be as busy, and earnest, and tender, as Saint Elizabeth herself. "I have no children of my own," she says, "so I just make everybody my children, Claude included; and play with them, and laugh at them, and pet them, and help them out of their scrapes, just as I should if they were in my own nursery." And so it befalls that she is every one's confidant; and though every one seems on the point of taking liberties with her, yet no one does: partly because they are in her power, and partly because, like an Eastern sultana, she carries a poniard, and can use it, though only in self-defence. So if great people, or small people either (who can give themselves airs as well as their betters), take her plain speaking unkindly, she just speaks a little more plainly, once for all, and goes off smiling to some one else; as a hummingbird, if a flower has no honey in it, whirs away, with a saucy flirt of its pretty little tail, to the next branch on the bush.
"I must know more of this American," said Scoutbush, at last.
"Well, he would be very improving company for you; and I know you like improving company."
"I mean—what has he to do with her?"
"That is just what I will not tell you. One thing I will tell you, though, for it may help to quench any vain hopes on your part; and that is, the reason which she gives for not marrying him."
"Well?"
"Because he is an idler."
"What would she say of me, then?" groaned Scoutbush.
"Very true; for, you must understand, this Mr. Stangrave is not what you or I should call an idle man. He has travelled over half the world and made the best use of his eyes. He has filled his house in New York, they say, with gems of art gathered from every country in Europe. He is a finished scholar; talks half-a-dozen different languages, sings, draws, writes poetry, reads hard every day, at every subject, from gardening to German metaphysics—altogether, one of the most highly cultivated men I know, and quite an Admirable Crichton in his way."
"Then why does she call him an idler?"
"Because, she says, he has no great purpose in life. She will marry no one who will not devote himself, and all he has, to some great, chivalrous, heroic enterprise; whose one object is to be of use, even if he has to sacrifice his life to it. She says that there must be such men still left in the world; and that if she finds one, him she will marry, and no one else."
"Why, there are none such to be found now-a-days, I thought?"
"You heard what she herself said on that very point."
There was a silence for a minute or two. Scout-bush had heard, and was pondering it in his heart. At last,—
"I am not cut out for a hero; so I suppose I must give her up. But I wish sometimes I could be of use, Mrs. Mellot: but what can a fellow do?"
"I thought there was an Irish tenantry to be looked after, my lord, and a Cornish tenantry too."
"That's what Campbell is always saying: but what more can I do than I do? As for those poor Paddies, I never ask them for rent; if I did, I should not get it; so there is no generosity in that. And as for the Aberalva people, they have got on very well without me for twenty years; and I don't know them, nor what they want; nor even if they do want anything, except fish enough, and I can't put more fish into the sea, Mrs. Mellot!"
"Try and be a good soldier, then," said she, laughing. "Why should notLord Scoutbush emulate his illustrious countryman, conquer at a secondWaterloo, and die a duke?"
"I'm not cut out for a general, I am afraid; but if—I don't say if I could marry that woman—I suppose it would be a foolish thing—though I shall break my heart, I believe, if I do not. Oh, Mrs. Mellot, you cannot tell what a fool I have made myself about her; and I cannot help it! It's not her beauty merely; but there is something so noble in her face, like one of those Greek goddesses Claude talks of; and when she is acting, if she has to say anything grand, or generous—or—you know the sort of thing,—she brings it out with such a voice, and such a look, from the very bottom of her heart,—it makes me shudder; just as she did when she told that Yankee, that every one could be a hero, or a martyr, if he chose. Mrs. Mellot, I am sure she is one, or she could not look and speak as she does."
"She is one!" said Sabina; "a heroine, and a martyr too."
"If I could,—that was what I was going to say,—if I could but win that woman's respect—as I live, I ask no more; only to be sure she didn't despise me. I'd do—I don't know what I wouldn't do. I'd—I'd study the art of war: I know there are books about it. I'd get out to the East, away from this depôt work; and if there is no fighting there, as every one says there will not be, I'd go into a marching regiment, and see service. I'd,—hang it, if they'd have me,—I'd even go to the senior department at Sandhurst, and read mathematics!"
Sabina kept her countenance (though with difficulty) at this magnificent bathos; for she saw that the little man was really in earnest; and that the looks and words of the strange actress had awakened in him something far deeper and nobler than the mere sensual passion of a boy.
"Ah, if I had but gone out to Varna with the rest! I thought myself a lucky fellow to be left here."
"Do you know that it is getting very late?"
So Frederick Lord Scoutbush went home to his rooms: and there sat for three hours and more with his feet on the fender, rejecting the entreaties of Mr. Bowie, his servant, either to have something, or to go to bed; yea, he forgot even to smoke, by which Mr. Bowie "jaloused" that he was hit very hard indeed: but made no remark, being a Scotchman, and of a cautious temperament.
However, from that night Scoutbush was a changed man, and tried to be so. He read of nothing but sieges and stockades, brigade evolutions, and conical bullets; he drilled his men till he was an abomination in their eyes, and a weariness to their flesh; only every evening he went to the theatre, watched La Cordifiamma with a heavy heart, and then went home to bed; for the little man had good sense enough to ask Sabina for no more interviews with her. So in all things he acquitted himself as a model officer, and excited the admiration and respect of Serjeant Major MacArthur, who began fishing at Bowie to discover the cause of this strange metamorphosis in the rackety little Irishman.
"Your master seems to be qualifying himself for the adjutant's post, Mr. Bowie. I'm jalousing he's fired with martial ardour since the war broke out."
To which Bowie, being a brother Scot, answered Scotticè, by a crafty paralogism.
"I've always held it as my opeeeenion, that his lordship is a youth of very good parts, if he was only compelled to employ them."
Whosoever enjoys the sight of an honest man doing his work well, would have enjoyed the sight of Tom Thurnall for the next two months. In-doors all the morning, and out of doors all the afternoon, was that shrewd and good-natured visage, calling up an answering smile on every face, and leaving every heart a little lighter than he found it. Puzzling enough it was, alike to Heale and to Headley, how Tom contrived, as if by magic, to gain every one's good word—their own included. For Frank, in spite of Tom's questionable opinions, had already made all but a confidant of the Doctor; and Heale, in spite of envy and suspicion, could not deny that the young man was a very valuable young man, if he wasn't given so much to those new-fangled notions of the profession.
By which term Heale indicated the, to him, astounding fact, that Tom charged the patients as little, instead of as much as possible, and applying to medicine the principles of an enlightened political economy, tried to increase the demand by cheapening the supply.
"Which is revolutionary doctrine, sir," said Heale to Lieutenant Jones, over the brandy-and-water, "and just like what the Cobden and Bright lot used to talk, and have been the ruin of British agriculture, though don't say I said so, because of my Lord Minchampstead. But, conceive my feelings, sir, as the father of a family, who have my bread to earn, this very morning.—In comes old Dame Penaluna (which is good pay I know, and has two hundred and more out on a merchant brig) for something; and what was my feelings, sir, to hear this young party deliver himself—'Well, ma'am,' says he, as I am a living man, 'I can cure you, if you like, with a dozen bottles of lotion, at eighteenpence a-piece; but if you'll take my advice, you'll buy two pennyworth of alum down street, do what I tell you with it, and cure yourself.' It's robbery, sir, I say, all these out-of-the-way cheap dodges, which arn't in the pharmacopoeia, half of them; it's unprofessional, sir—quackery."
"Tell you what, Doctor, robbery or none, I'll go to him to-morrow, d'ye see, if I live as long, for this old ailment of mine. I never told you of it, old pill and potion, for fear of a swinging bill: but just grinned and bore it, d'ye see."
"There it is again," cries Heale in despair. "He'll ruin me."
"No, he won't, and you know it."
"What d'ye think he served me last week? A young chap comes in, consumptive, he said, and I dare say he's right—he is uncommonly 'cute about what he calls diagnosis. Says he, 'You ought to try Carrageen moss. It's an old drug, but it's a good one.' There was a drawer full of it to his hand; had been lying there any time this ten years: I go to open it; but what was my feelings when he goes on, as cool as a cucumber—'And there's bushels of it here,' says he, 'on every rock; so if you'll come down with me at low tide this afternoon, I'll show you the trade, and tell you how to boil it.' I thought I should have knocked him down."
"But you didn't," said Jones, laughing in every muscle of his body. "Tell you what, Doctor, you've got a treasure; he's just getting back your custom, d'ye see, and when he's done that, he'll lay on the bills sharp enough. Why, I hear he's up at Mrs. Vavasour's every day."
"And not ten shillings' worth of medicine sent up to the house any week."
"He charges for his visits, I suppose."
"Not he! If you'll believe me, when I asked him if he wasn't going to, he says, says he, that Mrs. Vavasour's company was quite payment enough for him."
"Shows his good taste. Why, what now, Mary?" as the maid opens the door.
"Mr. Thurnall wants Mr. Heale."
"Always wanting me," groans Heale, hugging his glass, "driving me about like any negro slave. Tell him to come in."
"Here, Doctor," says the Lieutenant, "I want you to prescribe for me, if you'll do it gratis, d'ye see. Take some brandy and water."
"Good advice costs nothing," says Tom, filling; "Mr. Heale, read that letter."
And the Lieutenant details his ailments, and their supposed cause, till Heale has the pleasure of hearing Tom answer—
"Fiddlesticks! That's not what's the matter with you. I'll cure you for half-a-crown, and toss you up double or quits.
"Oh!" groans Heale, as he spells away over the letter,—
"Lord Minchampstead having been informed by Mr. Armsworth that Mr. Thurnall is now in the neighbourhood of his estates of Pentremochyn, would feel obliged to him at his earliest convenience to examine into the sanitary state of the cottages thereon, which are said to be much haunted by typhus and other epidemics, and to send him a detailed report, indicating what he thinks necessary for making them thoroughly healthy. Mr. Thurnall will be so good as to make his own charge."
"Well, Mr. Thurnall, you ought to turn a good penny by this," said Heale, half envious of Tom's connection, half contemptuous at his supposed indifference to gain.
"I'll charge what it's worth," said Tom. "Meanwhile, I hope you're going to see Miss Beer to-night."
"Couldn't you just go yourself, my dear sir? It is so late."
"No; I never go near young women. I told you so at first, and I stick to my rule. You'd better go, sir, on my word, or if she's dead before morning, don't say it's my fault."
"Did you ever hear a poor old man so tyrannised over?" said Heale, as Tom coolly went into the passage, brought in the old man's great coat and hat, arrayed him and marched him out, civilly, but firmly.
"Now, Lieutenant, I've half an hour to spare; let's have a jolly chat about the West Indies."
And Tom began with anecdote and joke, and the old seaman laughed till he cried, and went to bed vowing that there never was such a pleasant fellow on earth, and he ought to be physician to Queen Victoria.
Up at five the next morning, the indefatigable Tom had all his work done by ten; and was preparing to start for Pentremochyn, ere Heale was out of bed, when a customer came in who kept him half an hour.
He was a tall broad-shouldered young man, with a red face, protruding bull's eyes, and a moustachio. He was dressed in a complete suit of pink and white plaid, cut jauntily enough. A bright blue cap, a thick gold watch-chain, three or four large rings, a dog-whistle from his button-hole, a fancy cane in his hand, and a little Oxford meerschaum in his mouth, completed his equipment. He lounged in, with an air of careless superiority, while Tom, who was behind the counter, cutting up his day's provision of honey-dew, eyed him curiously.
"Who are you, now? A gentleman? Not quite, I guess. Some squireen of the parts adjacent, and look in somewhat of a crapulocomatose state moreover. I wonder if you are the great Trebooze of Trebooze."
"I say," yawned the young gentleman, "where's old Heale?" and an oath followed the speech, as it did every other one herein recorded.
"The playing half of old Heale is in bed, and I'm his working half.Can I do anything for you?"
"Cool fish," thought the customer. "I say—what have you got there?"
"Australian honey-dew. Did you ever smoke it?"
"I've heard of it; let's see:" and Mr. Trebooze—for it was he—put his hand across the counter unceremoniously, and clawed up some.
"Didn't know you sold tobacco here. Prime stuff. Too strong for me, though, this morning, somehow."
"Ah? A little too much claret last night? I thought so. We'll set that right in five minutes."
"Eh? How did you guess that?" asked Trebooze, with a larger oath than usual.
"Oh, we doctors are men of the world," said Tom, in a cheerful and insinuating tone, as he mixed his man a draught.
"You doctors? You're a cock of a different hackle from old Heale, then."
"I trust so," said Tom.
"By George, I feel better already. I say, you're a trump; I suppose you're Heale's new partner, the man who was washed ashore!"
Tom nodded assent;
"I say—How do you sell that honey-dew?"
"I don't sell it; I'll give you as much as you like, only you shan't smoke it till after dinner."
"Shan't?" said Trebooze, testy and proud.
"Not with my leave, or you'll be complaining two hours hence that I am a humbug, and have done you no good. Get on your horse, and have four hours' gallop on the downs, and you'll feel like a buffalo bull by two o'clock."
Trebooze looked at him with a stupid curiosity and a little awe. He saw that Tom's cool self-possession was not meant for impudence; and something in his tone and manner told him that the boast of being "a man of the world" was not untrue. And of all kinds of men, a man of the world was the man of whom Trebooze stood most in awe. A small squireen, cursed with six or seven hundreds a year of his own, never sent to school, college, or into the army, he had grown up in a narrow circle of squireens like himself, without an object save that of gratifying his animal passions; and had about six years before, being then just of age, settled in life by marrying his housemaid—the only wise thing, perhaps, he ever did. For she, a clever and determined woman, kept him, though not from drunkenness and debt, at least from delirium tremens and ruin, and was, in her rough, vulgar way, his guardian angel—such a one at least, as he was worthy of. More than once has one seen the same seeming folly turn out in practice as wise a step as could well have been taken; and the coarse nature of the man, which would have crushed and ill-used a delicate and high-minded wife, subdued to something like decency by a help literally meet for it.
There was a pause. Trebooze fancied, and wisely, that the Doctor was a cleverer man than he, and of course would want to show it. So, after the fashion of a country squireen, he felt a longing to "set him down." "He's been a traveller, they say," thought he in that pugnacious, sceptical spirit which is bred, not, as twaddlers fancy, by too extended knowledge, but by the sense of ignorance, and a narrow sphere of thought, which makes a man angry and envious of any one who has seen more than he.
"Buffalo bulls?" said he, half contemptuously; "what do you know about buffalo bulls?"
"I was one once myself," said Tom, "where I lived before."
Trebooze swore. "Don't you put your traveller's lies on me, sir."
"Well, perhaps I dreamt it," said Tom, placidly; "I remember I dreamt at the same time that you were a grizzly bear, fourteen feet long, and wanted to eat me up: but you found me too tough about the hump ribs."
Trebooze stared at his audacity.
"You're a rum hand."
To which Tom made answer in the same elegant strain; and then began a regular word-battle of slang, in which Tom showed himself so really witty a proficient, that Mr. Trebooze laughed himself into good-humour, and ended by—
"I say, you're a good fellow, and I think you and I shall suit."
Tom had his doubts, but did not express them.
"Come up this afternoon and see my child; Mrs. Trebooze thinks it's got swelled glands, or some such woman's nonsense. Bother them, why can't they let the child alone, fussing and doctoring; and she will have you. Heard of you from Mrs. Vavasour, I believe. Our doctor and I have quarrelled, and she said, if I could get you, she'd sooner have you than that old rum-puncheon Heale. And then, you'd better stop and take pot-luck, and we'll make a night of it."
"I have to go round Lord Minchampstead's estates, and will take you on my way: but I'm afraid I shall be too dirty to have the pleasure of dining with Mrs. Trebooze coming back."
"Mrs. Trebooze! She must take what I like; and what's good enough for me is good enough for her, I hope. Come as you are—Liberty Hall at Trebooze;" and out he swaggered.
"Does he bully her?" thought Tom, "or is he hen-pecked, and wants to hide it? I'll see to-night, and play my cards accordingly."
All which Miss Heale had heard. She had been peeping and listening at the glass-door, and her mother also; for no sooner had Trebooze entered the shop, than she had run off to tell her mother the surprising fact, Trebooze's custom having been, for some years past, courted in vain by Heale. So Miss Heale peeped and peeped at a man whom she regarded with delighted curiosity, because he bore the reputation of being "such a naughty wicked man!" and "so very handsome too, and so distinguished as he looks!" said the poor little fool, to whose novel-fed imagination Mr. Trebooze was an ideal Lothario.
But the surprise of the two dames grew rapidly as they heard Tom's audacity towards the country aristocrat.
"Impudent wretch!" moaned Mrs. Heale to herself. "He'd drive away an angel if he came into the shop."
"Oh, ma! hear how they are going on now."
"I can't bear it, my dear. This man will be the ruin of us. His manners are those of the pot-house, when the cloven foot is shown, which it's his nature as a child of wrath, and we can't expect otherwise."
"Oh, ma! do you hear that Mr. Trebooze has asked him to dinner?"
"Nonsense!"
But it was true.
"Well! if there ain't the signs of the end of the world, which is? All the years your poor father has been here, and never so much as send him a hare, and now this young penniless interloper; and he to dine at Trebooze off purple and fine linen."
"There is not much of that there, ma; I'm sure they are poor enough, for all his pride; and as for her—"
"Yes, my dear; and as for her, though we haven't married squires, my dear, yet we haven't been squires' housemaids, and have adorned our own station, which was good enough for us, and has no need to rise out of it, nor ride on Pharaoh's chariot-wheels after filthy lucre—"
Miss Heale hated poor Mrs. Trebooze with a bitter hatred, because she dreamed insanely that, but for her, she might have secured Mr. Trebooze for herself. And though her ambition was now transferred to the unconscious Tom, that need not make any difference in the said amiable feeling.
But that Tom was a most wonderful person, she had no doubt. He had conquered her heart—so she informed herself passionately again and again; as was very necessary, seeing that the passion, having no real life of its own, required a good deal of blowing to keep it alight. Yes, he had conquered her heart, and he was conquering all hearts likewise. There must be some mystery about him—there should be. And she settled in her novel-bewildered brain, that Tom must be a nobleman in disguise—probably a foreign prince exiled for political offences. Bah! perhaps too many lines have been spent on the poor little fool; but as such fools exist, and people must be as they are, there is no harm in drawing her; and in asking, too—Who will help those young girls of the middle class who, like Miss Heale, are often really less educated than the children of their parents' workmen; sedentary, luxurious, full of petty vanity, gossip, and intrigue, without work, without purpose, except that of getting married to any one who will ask them—bewildering brain and heart with novels, which, after all, one hardly grudges them; for what other means have they of learning that there is any fairer, nobler life possible, at least on earth, than that of the sordid money-getting, often the sordid puffery and adulteration, which is the atmosphere of their home? Exceptions there are, in thousands, doubtless; and the families of the great city tradesmen, stand, of course, on far higher ground, and are often far better educated, and more high-minded, than the fine ladies, their parents' customers. But, till some better plan of education than the boarding-school is devised for them; till our towns shall see something like in kind to, though sounder and soberer in quality than, the high schools of America; till in country villages the ladies who interest themselves about the poor will recollect that the farmers' and tradesmen's daughters are just as much in want of their influence as the charity children, and will yield a far richer return for their labour, though the one need not interfere with the other; so long will England be full of Miss Heales; fated, when they marry, to bring up sons and daughters as sordid and unwholesome as their mothers.
Tom worked all that day in and out of the Pentremochyn cottages, noting down nuisances and dilapidations: but his head was full of other thoughts; for he had received, the evening before, news which was to him very important, for more reasons than one.
The longer he stayed at Aberalva, the longer he felt inclined to stay. The strange attraction of Grace had, as we have seen, something to do with his purpose: but he saw, too, a good opening for one of those country practices, in which he seemed more and more likely to end. At his native Whitbury, he knew, there was no room for a fresh medical man; and gradually he was making up his mind to settle at Aberalva; to buy out Heale, either with his own money (if he recovered it), or with money borrowed from Mark; to bring his father down to live with him, and in that pleasant wild western place, fold his wings after all his wanderings. And therefore certain news which he had obtained the night before was very valuable to him, in that it put a fresh person into his power, and might, if cunningly used, give him a hold upon the ruling family of the place, and on Lord Scoutbush himself. He had found out that Lucia and Elsley were unhappy together; and found out, too, a little more than was there to find. He could not, of course, be a month among the gossips of Aberalva, without hearing hints that the great folks at the court did not always keep their tempers; for, of family jars, as of everything else on earth, the great and just law stands true:—"What you do in the closet, shall be proclaimed on the housetop."
But the gossips of Aberalva, as women are too often wont to do, had altogether taken the man's side in the quarrel. The reason was, I suppose, that Lucia, conscious of having fallen somewhat in rank, "held up her head" to Mrs. Trebooze and Mrs. Heale (as they themselves expressed it), and to various other little notabilities of the neighbourhood, rather more than she would have done had she married a man of her own class. She was afraid that they might boast of being intimate with her; that they might take to advising and patronising her as an inexperienced young creature; afraid, even, that she might be tempted, in some unguarded moment, to gossip with them, confide her unhappiness to them, in the blind longing to open her heart to some human being; for there were no resident gentry of her own rank in the neighbourhood. She was too high-minded to complain much to Clara; and her sister Valencia was the very last person to whom she would confess that her run-away-match had not been altogether successful. So she lived alone and friendless, shrinking into herself more and more, while the vulgar women round mistook her honour for pride, and revenged themselves accordingly. She was an uninteresting fine lady, proud and cross, and Elsley was a martyr. "So handsome and agreeable as he was—(and to do him justice, he was the former, and he could be the latter when he chose)—to be tied to that unsociable, stuck-up woman;" and so forth.
All which Tom had heard, and formed his own opinion thereof; which was,—
"All very fine: but I flatter myself I know a little what women are made of; and this I know, that where man and wife quarrel, even if she ends the battle, it is he who has begun it. I never saw a case yet where the man was not the most in fault; and I'll lay my life John Briggs has led her a pretty life: what else could one expect of him?"
However, he held his tongue, and kept his eyes open withal whenever he went up to Penalva Court, which he had to do very often; for though he had cured the children of their ailments, yet Mrs. Vavasour was perpetually, more or less, unwell, and he could not cure her. Her low spirits, headaches, general want of tone and vitality, puzzled him at first; and would have puzzled him longer, had he not settled with himself that their cause was to be sought in the mind, and not in the body; and at last, gaining courage from certainty, he had hinted as much to Miss Clara the night before, when she came down (as she was very fond of doing) to have a gossip with him in his shop, under the pretence of fetching medicine.
"I don't think I shall send Mrs. Vavasour any more, Miss Clara. There is no use running up a long bill when I do no good; and, what is more, suspect that I can do none, poor lady." And he gave the girl a look which seemed to say, "You had better tell me the truth; for I know everything already."
To which Clara answered by trying to find out how much he did know: but Tom was a cunninger diplomatist than she; and in ten minutes, after having given solemn promises of secresy, and having, by strong expressions of contempt for Mrs. Heale and the village gossips, made Clara understand that he did not at all take their view of the case, he had poured out to him across the counter all Clara's long-pent indignation and contempt.
"I never said a word of this to a living soul, sir; I was too proud, for my mistress's sake, to let vulgar people know what we suffered. We don't want any of their pity indeed; but you, sir, who have the feelings of a gentleman, and know what the world is, like ourselves—"
"Take care," whispered Tom; "that daughter of Heale's may be listening."
"I'd pull her hair about her ears if I caught her!" quoth Clara; and then ran on to tell how Elsley "never kept no hours, nor no accounts either; so that she has to do everything, poor thing; and no thanks either. And never knows when he'll dine, or when he'll breakfast, or when he'll be in, wandering in and out like a madman; and sits up all night, writing his nonsense. And she'll go down twice and three times a night in the cold, poor dear, to see if he's fallen asleep; and gets abused like a pickpocket for her pains (which was an exaggeration); and lies in bed all the morning, looking at the flies, and calls after her if his shoes want tying, or his finger aches; as helpless as the babe unborn; and will never do nothing useful himself, not even to hang a picture or move a chair, and grumbles at her if he sees her doing anything, because she ain't listening to his prosodies, and snaps, and worrits, and won't speak to her sometimes for a whole morning, the brute."
"But is he not fond of his children?"
"Fond? Yes, his way, and small thanks to him, the little angels! To play with 'em when they're good, and tell them cock-and-a-bull fairy tales—wonder why he likes to put such stuff into their heads—and then send 'em out of the room if they make a noise, because it splits his poor head, and his nerves are so delicate. Wish he had hers, or mine either, Doctor Thurnall; then he'd know what nerves was, in a frail woman, which he uses us both as his negro slaves, or would if I didn't stand up to him pretty sharp now and then, and give him a piece of my mind, which I will do, like the faithful servant in the parable, if he kills me for it, Doctor Thurnall!"
"Does he drink?" asked Tom, bluntly.
"He!" she answered, in a tone which seemed to imply that even one masculine vice would have raised him in her eyes. "He's not man enough, I think; and lives on his slops, and his coffee, and his tapioca; and how's he ever to have any appetite, always a sitting about, heaped up together over his books, with his ribs growing into his backbone?—If he'd only go and take his walk, or get a spade and dig in the garden, or anything but them everlasting papers, which I hates the sight of;" and so forth.
From all which Tom gathered a tolerably clear notion of the poor poet's state of body and mind; as a self-indulgent, unmethodical person, whose ill-temper was owing partly to perpetual brooding over his own thoughts, and partly to dyspepsia, brought on by his own effeminacy—in both cases, not a thing to be pitied or excused by the hearty and valiant Doctor. And Tom's original contempt for Vavasour took a darker form, perhaps one too dark to be altogether just.
"I'll tackle him, Miss Clara."
"I wish you would: I'm sure he wants some one to look after him just now. He's half wild about some review that somebody's been and done of him in The Times, and has been flinging the paper about the room, and calling all mankind vipers and adders, and hooting herds—it's as bad as swearing, I say—and running to my mistress, to make her read it, and see how the whole world's against him, and then forbidding her to defile her eyes with a word of it; and so on, till she's been crying all the morning, poor dear!"
"Why not laughing at him?"
"Poor thing; that's where it all is: she's just as anxious about his poetry as he is, and would write it just as well as he, I'll warrant, if she hadn't better things to do; and all her fuss is, that people should 'appreciate' him. He's always talking about appreciating, till I hate the sound of the word. How any woman can go on so after a man that behaves as he does! but we're all soft fools, I'm afraid, Doctor Thurnall." And Clara began a languishing look or two across the counter, which made Tom answer to an imaginary Doctor Heale, whom he heard calling from within.
"Yes, Doctor! coming this moment, Doctor! Good-bye, Miss Clara. I must hear more next time; you may trust me, you know; secret as the grave, and always your friend, and your lady's too, if you will allow me to do myself such an honour. Coming, Doctor!"
And Tom bolted through the glass door, till Miss Clara was safe on her way up the street.
"Very well," said Tom to himself. "Knowledge is power: but how to use it? To get into Mrs. Vavasour's confidence, and show an inclination to take her part against her husband? If she be a true woman, she would order me out of the house on the spot, as surely as a fish-wife would fall tooth and nail on me as a base intruder, if I dared to interfere with her sacred right of being beaten by her husband when she chooses. No; I must go straight to John Briggs himself, and bind him over to keep the peace; and I think I know the way to do it."
So Tom pondered over many plans in his head that day; and then went to Trebooze, and saw the sick child, and sat down to dinner, where his host talked loud about the Treboozes of Trebooze, who fought in the Spanish Armada—or against it; and showed an unbounded belief in the greatness and antiquity of his family, combined with a historic accuracy about equal to that of a good old dame of those parts, who used to say "her family comed over the water, that she knew; but whether it were with the Conqueror, or whether it were wi' Oliver, she couldn't exactly say!"
Then he became great on the subject of old county families in general, and poured out all the vials of his wrath on "that confounded upstart of a Newbroom, Lord Minchampstead," supplanting all the fine old blood in the country—"Why, sir, that Pentremochyn, and Carcarrow moors too (—good shooting there, there used to be), they ought to be mine, sir, if every man had his rights!" And then followed a long story; and a confused one withal, for by this time Mr. Trebooze had drunk a great deal too much wine, and as he became aware of the fact, became proportionately anxious that Tom should drink too much also; out of which story Tom picked the plain facts, that Trebooze's father had mortgaged Pentremochyn estate for more than its value, and that Lord Minchampstead had foreclosed; while some equally respectable uncle, or cousin, just deceased, had sold the reversion of Carcarrow to the same mighty Cotton Lord twenty years before. "And this is the way, sir, the land gets eaten up by a set of tinkers, and cobblers, and money-lending jobbers, who suck the blood of the aristocracy!" The oaths we omit, leaving the reader to pepper Mr. Trebooze's conversation therewith, up to any degree of heat which may suit his palate.
Tom sympathised with him deeply, of course; and did not tell him, as he might have done, that he thought the sooner such cumberers of the ground were cleared off, whether by an encumbered estates' act, such as we may see yet in England, or by their own suicidal folly, the better it would be for the universe in general, and perhaps for themselves in particular. But he only answered with pleasant effrontery—
"Ah, my dear sir, I am sure there are hundreds of good sportsmen who can sympathise with you deeply. The wonder is, that you do not unite and defend yourselves. For not only in the West of England, but in Ireland, and in Wales, and in the north, too, if one is to believe those novels of Currer Bell's and her sister, there is a large and important class of landed proprietors of the same stamp as yourself, and exposed to the very same dangers. I wonder at times that you do not all join, and use your combined influence on the Government."
"The Government? All a set of Whig traitors! Call themselves Conservative, or what they like. Traitors, sir! from that fellow Peel upwards—all combined to crush the landed gentry—ruin the Church—betray the country party—D'Israeli—Derby—Free trade—ruined, sir!—Maynooth—Protection—treason—help yourself, and pass the—you know, old fellow—"
And Mr. Trebooze's voice died away, and he slumbered, but not softly.
The door opened, and in marched Mrs. Trebooze, tall, tawdry, and terrible.
"Mr. Trebooze! it's past eleven o'clock!"
"Hush, my dear madam! He is sleeping so sweetly," said Tom, rising, and gulping down a glass, not of wine, but of strong ammonia and water. The rogue had put a phial thereof in his pocket that morning, expecting that, as Trebooze had said, he would be required to make a night of it,
She was silent; for to rouse her tyrant was more than she dare do. If awakened, he would crave for brandy and water; and if he got that sweet poison, he would probably become furious. She stood for half a minute; and Tom, who knew her story well, watched her curiously.
"She is a fine woman: and with a far finer heart in her than that brute. Her eyebrow and eye, now, have the true Siddons' stamp; the great white forehead, and sharp-cut little nostril, breathing scorn—and what a Siddons-like attitude!—I should like, madam, to see the child again before I go."
"If you are fit, sir," answered she.
"Brave woman; comes to the point at once, I am a poor doctor, madam, and not a country gentleman; and have neither money nor health to spend in drinking too much wine."
"Then why do you encourage him in it, sir? I had expected a very different sort of conduct from you, sir."
Tom did not tell her what she would not (no woman will) understand; that it is morally and socially impossible to escape from the table of a fool, till either he or you are conquered; and she was too shrewd to be taken in by commonplace excuses; so he looked her very full in the face, and replied a little haughtily, with a slow and delicate articulation, using his lips more than usual, and yet compressing them:—
"I beg your pardon, madam, if I have unintentionally displeased you: but if you ever do me the honour of knowing more of me, you will be the first to confess that your words are unjust. Do you wish me to see your son, or do you not?"
Poor Mrs. Trebooze looked at him, with an eye which showed that she had been accustomed to study character keenly, perhaps in self-defence. She saw that Tom was sober; he had taken care to prove that, by the way in which he spoke; and she saw, too, that he was a better bred man than her husband, as well as a cleverer. She dropped her eye before his; heaved something very like a sigh; and then said, in her curt, fierce tone, which yet implied a sort of sullen resignation—
"Yes; come up-stairs."
Tom went up, and looked at the boy again, as he lay sleeping. A beautiful child of four years old, as large and fair a child as man need see; and yet there was on him the curse of his father's sins; and Tom knew it, and knew that his mother knew it also.