A Red Wallflower Part 67

'You may thank heaven for some of the work they did. But for them, you would not be here to-day in a land of freedom.'

'Too much freedom,' said Mrs. Dallas. 'I believe it is good to have a king over a country.'

'Well, go on from Charing Cross, won't you,' said Miss Frere. 'I am interested. I never studied a map of London before. I am not sure I ever saw one.'

'I do not know which way to go,' said Pitt. 'Every step brings us to new a.s.sociations; every street opens up a chapter of history. Here is Northumberland House; a grand old building, full of its records.

Howards and Percys and Seymours have owned it and built it; and there General Monk planned the bringing back of the Stuarts. Going along the Strand, every step is full of interest. Just _here_ used to be the palace of Sir Nicholas Baron and his son; then James the First's favourite, the Duke of Buckingham, lived in it; and the beautiful water-gate is yet standing which Inigo Jones built for him. All the Strand was full of palaces which have pa.s.sed away, leaving behind the names of their owners in the streets which remain or have been built since. Here Sir Walter Raleigh lived; _here_ the Dudleys had their abode, and Lady Jane Grey was married; here was the house of Lord Burleigh. But let us go on to the church of St. Mary-le-Strand. Here once stood a great Maypole, round which there used to be merry doings.

The Puritans took that down too, mother.'

'What for?'

'They held it to be in some sort a relic of heathen manners. Then under Charles II. it was set up again. And here, once, four thousand children were gathered and sang a hymn, on some public occasion of triumph in Queen Anne's reign.'

'It is not there now?'

'Oh, no! It was given to Sir Isaac Newton, and made to subserve the uses of a telescope.'

'How do you know all these things, Mr. Pitt.'

'Every London antiquary knows them, I suppose. And I told you, I have an old uncle who is a great antiquary; London is his particular hobby.'

'He must have had an apt scholar, though.'

'Much liking makes good learning, I suppose,' said the young man. 'A little further on is the church of St. Clement Danes, where Dr. Johnson used to attend divine service. About _here_ stands Temple Bar.'

'Temple Bar!' said Miss Frere. 'I have heard of Temple Bar all my life, and never connected any clear idea with the name. What _is_ Temple Bar?'

'It is not very much of a building. It is the barrier which marks the bound of the city of London.'

'Isn't it London on both sides of Temple Bar?'

'London, but not the City. The City proper begins here. On the west of this limit is Westminster.'

'There are ugly a.s.sociations with Temple Bar, I know,' said Miss Frere.

'There are ugly a.s.sociations with everything. Down here stood Ess.e.x House, where Ess.e.x defended himself, and from which he was carried off to the Tower. _There_, in Lincoln's Inn fields, Thomas Babington and his party died for high treason, and there Russell died. And just up here is Smithfield. It is all over, the record of violence, intolerance, and brutality. It meets you at every turn.'

'It is only what would be in any other place as old as London,' said Mrs. Dallas. 'In old times people were rough, of course, but they were rough everywhere.'

'I was thinking'-- said Miss Frere. 'Mr. Dallas gives a somewhat singular justification of his liking for London.'

'Is it?' said Pitt. 'It would be singular if the violence were there now; but to read the record and look on the scene is interesting, and for me fascinating. The record is of other things too. See,--in this place Milton lived and wrote; here Franklin abode; here Charles Lamb; from an inn in this street Bishop Hooper went away to die. And so I might go on and on. At every step there is the memorial of some great man's life, or some noted man's death. And with all that, there are also the most exquisite bits of material antiquity. Old picturesque houses; old crypts of former churches, over which stands now a modern representative of the name; old monuments many; old doorways, and courts, and corners, and gateways. Come over to London, and I will take you down into the crypt of St. Paul's, and show you how history is presented to you there.'

'The crypt?' said Miss Frere, doubting somewhat of this invitation.

'Yes, the old monuments are in the crypt.'

'My dear,' said Mrs. Dallas, 'I do not understand how all these things you have been talking about should have so much charm for you. I should think the newer and handsomer parts of the city, the parks and the gardens, and the fine squares, would be a great deal more agreeable.'

'To live in, mother.'

'And don't you go to the British Museum, and to the Tower, and to Hyde Park?'

'I have been there hundreds of times.'

'And like these old corners still?'

'I am very fond of the Museum.'

'There is nothing like that is this country,' said Mrs. Dallas, with an accent of satisfaction.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

_INTERPRETATIONS_.

Miss Betty hereupon begged to be told more distinctly what was in the British Museum, that anybody should go there 'hundreds of times.' Pitt presently got warm in his subject, and talked long and well; as many people will do when they are full of their theme, even when they can talk upon nothing else. Pitt was not one of those people; he could talk well upon anything, and now he made himself certainly very entertaining. His mother thought so, who cared nothing for the British Museum except in so far that it was a great inst.i.tution of an old country, which a young country could not rival. She listened to Pitt.

Miss Betty gave him even more profound interest and unflagging attention; whether she too were not studying the speaker full as much as the things spoken, I will not say. They had a very pleasant morning of it; conversation diverging sometimes to a.s.syria and Egypt, and ancient civilizations and arts, and civilization in general. Mrs.

Dallas gradually drew back from mingling in the talk, and watched, well pleased, to see how eager the two other speakers became, and how they were lost in their subject and in each other.

In the afternoon there was another drive, to which Pitt did not need to be stimulated; and all the evening the two young people were busy with something which engaged them both. Mrs. Dallas breathed freer.

'I _think_ he is smitten,' she said privately to her husband. 'How could he help it? He has seen n.o.body else to be smitten with.'

But Betty Frere was not sure of any such thing; and the very fact of Pitt's disengagedness made him more ensnaring to her. There was n.o.body else in the village to divert his attention, and the two young people were thrown very much together. They went driving, they rode, and they talked, continually. The map of London was often out, and Mrs. Dallas saw the two heads bent over it, and interested faces looking into each other; and she thought things were going on very fairly. If only the vacation were not so short! For only a little time more, and Pitt must be back at his chambers in London. The mother sighed to herself. She was paying rather a heavy price to keep her son from Dissenters!

Betty Frere too remembered that the vacation was coming to an end, and drew her breath rather short. She was depending on Pitt too much for her amus.e.m.e.nt, she told herself, and to be sure there were other young men in the world that could talk; but she felt a sort of disgust at the thought of them all. They were not near so interesting. They all flattered her, and some of them were supposed to be brilliant; but Betty turned from the thought of them to the one whose lips never condescended to say pretty things, nor made any effort to say witty things. They behaved towards her with a sort of obsequious reverence, which was the fashion of that day much more than of this; and Betty liked far better a manner which never made pretence of anything, was thoroughly natural and perfectly well-bred, but which frankly paid more honour to his mother than to herself. She admired Pitt's behaviour to his mother. Even to his mother it had less formality than was the custom of the day; while it gave her every delicate little attention and every possible graceful observance. The young beauty had sense enough to see that this promised more for Pitt's future wife than any amount of civil subserviency to herself. Perhaps there is not a quality which women value more in a man, or miss more sorely, than what we express by the term manliness. And she saw that Pitt, while he was enthusiastic and eager, and what she called fanciful, always was true, honest, and firm in what he thought right. From that no fancy carried him away.

And Miss Betty found the days pa.s.s with almost as much charm as fleetness. How fleet they were she did not bear to think. She found herself recognising Pitt's step, distinguishing his voice in the distance, and watching for the one and the other. Why not? He was so pleasant as a companion. But she found herself also starting when he appeared suddenly, thrilled at the unexpected sound of his voice, and conscious of quickened pulses when he came into the room. Betty did not like these signs in herself; at the same time, that which had wrought the spell continued to work, and the spell was not broken. In justice to the young lady, I must say that there was not the slightest outward token of it. Betty was as utterly calm and careless in her manner as Pitt himself; so that even Mrs. Dallas--and a woman in those matters sees far--could not tell whether either or both of the young people had a liking for the other more than the social good-fellowship which was frank and apparent. It might be, and she confessed also to herself that it might not be.

'You must give that fellow time,' said her husband. Which Mrs. Dallas knew, if she had not been so much in a hurry.

'If he met those Gainsboroughs by chance, I would not answer for anything,' she said.

'How should he meet them? They are probably as poor as rats, and have drawn into some corner, out of the way. He will never see them.'

'Pitt is so persistent!' said Mrs. Dallas uneasily.

'He'll be back in England in a few weeks.'

'But when he comes again!'

'He shall not come again. We will go over to see him ourselves next year.'

'That is a very good thought,' said Mrs. Dallas.