What Will He Do with It? Part 10

"It was not our fault: we pressed him cordially," said Lionel.

"You did indeed, sir, thank you! And I don't know why he refused you."

The young men exchanged compa.s.sionate glances.

Lionel then sought to make her talk of her past life, tell him more of Mrs. Crane. Who and what was she?

Sophy could not or would not tell. The remembrances were painful; she had evidently tried to forget them. And the people with whom Waife had placed her, and who had been kind?

The Misses Burton; and they kept a day-school, and taught Sophy to read, write, and cipher. They lived near London, in a lane opening on a great common, with a green rail before the house, and had a good many pupils, and kept a tortoise sh.e.l.l cat and a canary. Not much to enlighten her listener did Sophy impart here.

And now they neared that stately palace, rich in a.s.sociations of storm and splendour,--of the grand Cardinal; the iron-clad Protector; Dutch William of the immortal memory, whom we tried so hard to like, and in spite of the great Whig historian, that t.i.tian of English prose, can only frigidly respect. Hard task for us Britons to like a Dutchman who dethrones his father-in-law, and drinks schnaps! Prejudice certainly; but so it is. Harder still to like Dutch William's unfilial Fran! Like Queen Mary! I could as soon like Queen Goneril! Romance flies from the prosperous phlegmatic AEneas; flies from his plump Lavinia, his "fidus Achates," Bentinck; flies to follow the poor deserted fugitive Stuart, with all his sins upon his head. Kings have no rights divine, except when deposed and fallen; they are then invested with the awe that belongs to each solemn image of mortal vicissitude,--vicissitude that startles the Epicurean, "insanientis sapientiae consultus," and strikes from his careless lyre the notes that attest a G.o.d! Some proud shadow chases another from the throne of Cyrus, and Horace hears in the thunder the rush of Diespiter, and identifies Providence with the Fortune that s.n.a.t.c.hes off the diadem in her whirring swoop. But fronts discrowned take a new majesty to generous natures: in all sleek prosperity there is something commonplace; in all grand adversity, something royal.

The boat shot to the sh.o.r.e; the young people landed, and entered the arch of the desolate palace. They gazed on the great hall and the presence-chamber, and the long suite of rooms with faded portraits; Vance as an artist, Lionel as an enthusiastic, well-read boy, Sophy as a wondering, bewildered, ignorant child. And then they emerged into the n.o.ble garden, with its regal trees. Groups were there of well dressed persons. Vance heard himself called by name. He had forgotten the London world,--forgotten, amidst his midsummer ramblings, that the London season was still ablaze; and there, stragglers from the great focus, fine people, with languid tones and artificial jaded smiles, caught him in his wanderer's dress, and walking side by side with the infant wonder of Mr. Rugge's show, exquisitely neat indeed, but still in a coloured print, of a pattern familiar to his observant eye in the windows of many a shop lavish of tickets, and inviting you to come in by the a.s.surance that it is "selling off." The artist stopped, coloured, bowed, answered the listless questions put to him with shy haste: he then attempted to escape; they would not let him.

"You MUST come back and dine with us at the Star and Garter," said Lady Selina Vipont. "A pleasant party,--you know most of them,--the Dudley Slowes, dear old Lady Frost, those pretty Ladies Prymme, Janet and Wilhelmina."

"We can't let you off," said, sleepily, Mr. Crampe, a fashionable wit, who rarely made more than one bon mot in the twenty-four hours, and spent the rest of his time in a torpid state.

VANCE.--"Really you are too kind, but I am not even dressed for--"

LADY SELINA.--"So charmingly dressed-so picturesque! Besides, what matters? Every one knows who you are. Where on earth have you been?"

VANCE.--"Rambling about, taking sketches."

LADY SELINA (directing her eyegla.s.s towards Lionel and Sophy, who stood aloof).--"But your companions, your brother? and that pretty little girl,--your sister, I suppose?"

VANCE (shuddering).--"No, not relations. I took charge of the boy,--clever young fellow; and the little girl is--"

LADY SELINA.--"Yes. The little girl is--"

VANCE.--"A little girl, as you see: and very pretty, as you say,--subject for a picture."

LADY SELINA (indifferently).--"Oh, let the children go and amuse themselves somewhere. Now we have found you; positively you are our prisoner."

Lady Selina Vipont was one of the queens of London; she had with her that habit of command natural to such royalties. Frank Vance was no tuft-hunter, but once under social influences, they had their effect on him, as on most men who are blest with noses in the air. Those great ladies, it is true, never bought his pictures; but they gave him the position which induced others to buy them. Vance loved his art; his art needed its career. Its career was certainly brightened and quickened by the help of rank and fashion.

In short, Lady Selina triumphed, and the painter stepped back to Lionel.

"I must go to Richmond with these people. I know you'll excuse me.

I shall be back to-night somehow. By the by, as you are going to the post-office here for the letter you expect from your mother, ask for my letters too. You will take care of little Sophy, and [in a whisper]

hurry her out of the garden, or that Grand Mogul feminine, Lady Selina, whose condescension would crush the Andes, will be stopping her as my _protege_, falling in raptures with that horrid coloured print, saying, 'Dear, what pretty sprigs! where can such things be got?' and learning perhaps how Frank Vance saved the Bandit's Child from the Remorseless Baron. 'T is your turn now. Save your friend. The Baron was a lamb compared to a fine lady." He pressed Lionel's unresponding hand, and was off to join the polite merrymaking of the Frosts, Slowes, and Prymmes.

Lionel's pride ran up to the fever-heat of its thermometer; more roused, though, on behalf of the unconscious Sophy than himself.

"Let us come into the town, lady-bird, and choose a doll. You may have one now, without fear of distracting you from what I hate to think you ever stooped to perform."

As Lionel, his crest erect and nostril dilated, and holding Sophy firmly by the hand, took his way out from the gardens, he was obliged to pa.s.s the patrician party, of whom Vance now made one.

His countenance and air, as he swept by, struck them all, especially Lady Selina. "A very distinguished-looking boy," said she. "What a fine face! Who did you say he was, Mr. Vance?"

VANCE.--"His name is Haughton,--Lionel Haughton."

LADY SELINA.--"Haughton! Haughton! Any relation to poor dear Captain Haughton,--Charlie Haughton, as he was generally called?"

Vance, knowing little more of his young friend's parentage than that his mother let lodgings, at which, once domiciliated himself, he had made the boy's acquaintance, and that she enjoyed the pension of a captain's widow, replied carelessly,--

"His father was a captain, but I don't know whether he was a Charlie."

MR. CRAMPE (the wit).--"Charlies are extinct! I have the last in a fossil,--box and all."

General laugh. Wit shut up again.

LADY SELINA.--"He has a great look of Charlie Haughton. Do you know if he is connected with that extraordinary man, Mr. Darrell?"

VANCE.--"Upon my word, I do not. What Mr. Darrell do you mean?"

Lady Selina, with one of those sublime looks of celestial pity with which personages in the great world forgive ignorance of names and genealogies in those not born within its...o...b..t, replied, "Oh, to be sure. It is not exactly in the way of your delightful art to know Mr.

Darrell, one of the first men in Parliament, a connection of mine."

LADY FROST (nippingly).--"You mean Guy Darrell, the lawyer."

LADY SELINA.--"Lawyer--true; now I think of it, he was a lawyer. But his chief fame was in the House of Commons. All parties agreed that he might have commanded any station; but he was too rich perhaps to care sufficiently about office. At all events, Parliament was dissolved when he was at the height of his reputation, and he refused to be re-elected."

One SIR GREGORY STOLLHEAD (a member of the House of Commons, young, wealthy, a constant attendant, of great promise, with speeches that were filled with facts, and emptied the benches).--"I have heard of him.

Before my time; lawyers not much weight in the House now."

LADY SELINA.--"I am told that Mr. Darrell did not speak like a lawyer.

But his career is over; lives in the country, and sees n.o.body; a thousand pities; a connection of mine, too; great loss to the country.

Ask your young friend, Mr. Vance, if Mr. Darrell is not his relation. I hope so, for his sake. Now that our party is in power, Mr. Darrell could command anything for others, though he has ceased to act with us. Our party is not forgetful of talent."

LADY FROST (with icy crispness).--"I should think not: it has so little of that kind to remember."

SIR GREGORY.--"Talent is not wanted in the House of Commons now; don't go down, in fact. Business a.s.sembly."

LADY SELINA (suppressing a yawn).--"Beautiful day! We had better think of going back to Richmond."

General a.s.sent, and slow retreat.

CHAPTER XV.

The historian records the attachment to public business which distinguishes the British legislator.--Touching instance of the regret which ever in patriotic bosoms attends the neglect of a public duty.

From the dusty height of a rumble-tumble affixed to Lady Selina Vipont's barouche, and by the animated side of Sir Gregory Stollhead, Vance caught sight of Lionel and Sophy at a corner of the s.p.a.cious green near the Palace. He sighed; he envied them. He thought of the boat, the water, the honeysuckle arbour at the little inn,--pleasures he had denied himself,--pleasures all in his own way. They seemed still more alluring by contrast with the prospect before him; formal dinner at the Star and Garter, with t.i.tled Prymmes, Slowes, and Frosts, a couple of guineas a head, including light wines, which he did not drink, and the expense of a chaise back by himself. But such are life and its social duties,--such, above all, ambition and a career. Who that would leave a name on his tombstone can say to his own heart, "Perish Stars and Garters: my existence shall pa.s.s from day to day in honeysuckle arbours!"

Sir Gregory Stollhead interrupted Vance's revery by an impa.s.sioned sneeze. "Dreadful smell of hay!" said the legislator, with watery eyes. "Are you subject to the hay fever? I am! A-tisha-tisha-tisha [sneezing]--country frightfully unwholesome at this time of year. And to think that I ought now to be in the House,--in my committee-room; no smell of hay there; most important committee."

VANCE (rousing himself).--"Ah--on what?"