CHAPTER XXVII. PLEASANT, AND UNPLEASANT THINGS.
Everybody said, without one exception, unless it were that of some low-minded fellow, that I had performed a most gallant, valiant, and you might fairly term it, heroic deed. But I could not at all take this view of it myself; not only because of that modesty which sometimes suffers misunderstanding, from its terror of becoming conspicuous, but also because I had acted purely from instinct, and without two thoughts. If there had been two thoughts, the first would have been to save Laura—an act of mere selfishness; and the second would have been to save myself—an act of almost equal selfishness. However, casuistry is not in my line, and if people chose to think me a very fine fellow, I should have been guilty of self-assertion, if I had kept on contradicting them.
Nobody was allowed to contradict me, for at least a fortnight; and everything was done to anticipate my wishes. I lay on a beautiful couch, and read novels, for fear of any harm to my system; and although there was a great deal of "débris" in them, and most of the heroes had been pushed off cliffs, and some of them overwhelmed in caverns, I did not find one who had saved, at a stroke, his lady-love's bones, and his own, and a dragon's. And the best thing of all was, that Laura made a point of coming to see me, three times every day. Her mother was generally with her, it is true; but there are methods of exchanging glances, over kind shoulders, or behind beloved backs; and sometimes Lady Twentifold was called away, while her daughter must be left, just to say good-bye.
In another thing also, I was very lucky. My affection for my mother was intense and deep: but to be assured of her welfare was enough just now. By no means did I want her indefatigable love, and assiduous devotion, at this crisis. Lady Twentifold had written, in the-kindest manner, to suggest that she could come to assuage anxiety, and contribute her tender care; but the letter had arrived at "Placid Bower"—as we had beautifully named our house—to distinguish it from the Boiling scenes—one hour after my dear mother's hasty departure for the port of Liverpool. By the earlier post, she had received a letter from the Manager of a "Sailor's Refuge" there, requesting her to set off by the next Express train, if she wished to see her dear brother William alive. This was that very same Uncle Bill of mine, who had tossed me through the ceiling, as above recorded; and partly in consequence of that exploit, had betaken himself to the briny waves again, and had long been supposed to be lying beneath them. That, however, he had forborne to do, contriving on the contrary to keep above them, during many adventurous years; until he was landed quite lately at Liverpool, in the last stage, as every one declared, of a long low African fever. He had not heard a word of our changes in life, but had given the address of the Soap-works, and the new Boiler had forwarded the letter.
My mother's kind heart was affected deeply; and she left home in such a hot flurry, with nothing but a few clothes and her cheque-book, that she never even thought of leaving any address, or orders concerning her letters. And we might have heard none of all this, for a month—for she was rather superstitious about sending bad news, and had not heard a word about my accident—except for the kindness of Miss Windsor, who happened to call at "Placid Bower," as she often did for a good luncheon. The cook gave her this, with much good-will, being troubled with the knife-boy (who had tried to kiss her, and did not care, how or when, he came home at night), as well as in distress, about her wages, and the emptiness of the beer-cask; and then Polly, like the mistress of the house, sat down, and examined the outsides of all the letters; not in any spirit of curiosity, in which, (as she confessed) she had always been too deficient, but to find whether she could be of any service. Knowing Lady Twentifold's letter at a glance, not so much by the post-mark, or the crest, as its "unstudied air of aristocracy," she went to my four-legged desk, and wrote a letter beginning—"Dear Tommy" (which some one far superior to herself considered a very great liberty indeed, and had a great mind not to call me Tommy any more), and covering four sides, with a galloping scrawl, all about nothing, except that my mother had been suddenly called away to Liverpool, and no one knew when she would come back again.
I endeavoured to reconcile my mind to this, trusting that my excellent mother would take good care of herself, as she generally did, and feeling how very much better it was, that her mind should be free from anxiety, until I could announce my own recovery. And for this latter blessing I was not in any haste, finding all my medicaments wonderfully nice, and clinical treatment exceedingly fine.
"When are you coming downstairs, old chap?" Sir Roland inquired, in his brisk short style, when I had endured with all resignation a fortnight of these therapeutics. "The world won't stand still for the best of us, you know. The Professor has packed up his bones, and is going. He can't hope for any more big lizards; and of this one he has got every bit of scurf left, I believe. Wonderful, what fancies people have! If you offered him the Blue Ribbon, not a smile would appear on his philosophic countenance. But offer him a thread from the tail, or the pelvis, or the pubes, or whatever he calls it, of some hideous beast that died when mirrors were invented, and you'll get a smile worth walking ten miles to see. I tried to take a rise out of him the other day, with a big marrow-bone I mashed up, and stuck together inside out; and I rode twenty miles, to put the product into a petrifying well, for three days and nights. I made sure of having him; it looked so natural, and every bit of join was sawdered over with the drip-stuff.
"'New specimen from our cliff, sir,' I said. 'I hope it may induce you to prolong your stay.'
"And really for a moment, he looked puzzled, and I made sure of having fetched him. Then he stood up, and put his hand upon my shoulder; and you should have seen the laugh in his great eyes.
"'I hope, my young friend, you will retire from the House, when the question of our next grant is discussed,' he said; 'I shall put this in a case, as a great curiosity; and label it "Specimen of a Conservative M.P." The inversion, and the petrification, are the leading features of the type.'
"What do you think of that now, Tommy?"
"Well, I think that it served you most splendidly right, and will teach you how to play tricks with great men. I should like to have seen you, with his strong hand on your shoulder."
"Come, if you can laugh like that, you heartless radical, there can't be much the matter with your inner parts, unless it is your heartless heart. And very little wrong with your outward either, to judge by the colour on your cheeks, when I came in. You were as bright, as 'a red red rose newly blown in June.'"
"Because your sweet sister had just been with me," thought I; but I only said, "Yes, I am a little better. My strength is coming back to me gradually, I believe. With your dear mother's wonderful kindness, and the help of a good constitution, I hope to be toddling about as usual, before very long. But Professor Megalow says, that I must shun most carefully every possible form of excitement."
"No doubt of that. But you appeared to me to be in a state of excitement, when I came in. And there was somebody going down the other stairs, I thought; a quick light foot it seemed to be."
"There are so many echoes in this house," I answered, throwing one weary arm across my face; "if you had only got to keep in one room, and listen to them, hour after hour, as I have got to do, you would find out that a very little thing excites one."
"Well, I beg your pardon, dear Tommy," he replied; "I should be the last to hurry you, I am sure; after all the great things that you have done for us. But I do want you to be about again, for a lot of reasons; if it were only to canvass Larkmount, before they forget your exploit, and before that very dainty colour has time to get spoilt. All the Larkmount females will be in love with you; and everything is driven by the thimble there. The Rads are going to be fools enough, I hear, to bring forward an oily fellow, fifty years old, pitted with the small-pox, and with stubby black hair, against your soft carmine, and ambrosial curls. And another thing I forgot to tell you, Counterpagne will be here to-morrow, or the next day; and he is such an awful stick over the wine. He thinks himself wronged, with less than two hours of it; and what I shall do with him, when the Professor is gone, surpasses my imagination. He never says anything, except what he has read in the papers of the morning; and whatever they have said, he repeats word for word, for he has got a tremendous memory. And he does it all the same, if he has happened to get hold of a Radical journal, before the sound doctrine; whichever side he gets first, he swallows; and his stubbornness, pegs him fast to it; and whatever the other side says is therefore all rubbish, and rot, and roguery. His temper is none of the best; and that makes it so much harder to get on with him."
"But what can you do with him, all day long, if he is that sort of fellow?" I asked; "surely he must be even worse, before he has read anything at all; because he must want you, to settle his mind."
"Not at all; he would resent it deeply. He must have a thing in type, and take it in slowly, before his opinion—as he calls it—can be formed. And then, I am relieved of him for several hours, and am only too glad to be out of the way, while he marches all over the gardens, and shrubberies, and even the chase—as he calls the home-farm—for hours of spooning with poor Laura."
"What an atrocious thing to do!" I cried, feeling indignation almost lift me from the couch. "It is bad enough to spoil your evenings; but to ruin all her mornings is ten thousand times worse. How can you bring yourself to allow it?"
"I am thankful for the mercies that I thus ensue," he answered, with heartless, and most infinite levity; "what can be the value of a girl's time, Tommy? And she likes it, of course—for he makes fine speeches. Or if she doesn't like it, why she ought to do so, and the sooner she learns the way the better. She will have to put up with him, all day long, as soon as they are married, which it is high time now to settle. I may tell you, in confidence, that Counterpagne is just the fellow to be made a fool of; and so we must fix him, before that happens. Not that he is any great catch, you know. He will take quite as much as he brings; and his family is ever so much newer than ours is, for he only belongs to us in the female line. Still, this 'alliance' (as the cads of the papers call it) has been determined on, for very good reasons; and it plugs up a leak in some wicked old will."
"A very wicked will, I call it, a very wicked will, and a still more wicked deed—to bind two persons together for life, without asking whether they suit each other. If you were a beautiful, clever, sweet-tempered, warm-hearted, pure-minded, and lovely young lady, without a particle of selfishness, or two thoughts of a trumpery coronet—how would you like to marry Lord Counterpagne, taking him according to your own account? His temper is bad, to begin with—and to end with too, for any one who cares about his sister's welfare. Roly, bad temper is the curse of life. Those who are plagued with it, should live apart, or only with those they are afraid of; unless they have enough of self-knowledge, and enough strong will, to quench it utterly. Has the Earl of Counterpagne got those?"
"If he has, he has concealed them from me, thus far. He thinks his bad temper a very fine thing. But, my dear Tommy, what concern is this of yours?"
"None, I suppose; because she is not my sister. But I will say my say, and have done with it; and you may think me an upstart meddler, if you like. All of you have been so kind to me, and above all your dear mother, that I would rather die out of the way, than see a great misery falling upon you. And the greatest misery in all the world is, for a gentle, sweet, loving, and sensitive creature, to be shackled for life to a man, conceited, stuck-up, narrow-minded, cold-hearted, selfish, and above all black-tempered. And if you bring such a thing to pass, you will rue it to the last day of your life, dear Roland."
"Come, come, he is not half so bad as all that?" Sir Roland replied, with more self-command, than I expected from him. "Counterpagne is a gentleman, in his way, and only requires humouring. Tommy, I thank you for your warning, which is uncommonly impressive, and disinterested"—here he fixed his piercing eyes on mine, but I was not thinking of myself at all, in the larger interests my own words had aroused; "but you have talked a great deal too much for your good. Go to sleep, and allow me to consider—what comes next."
He was going to say something harsher, as I saw. But his manly sense of my condition, and of the service I had been happy enough to render, withheld him from speaking out his mind, just then. And I was glad, when he was gone, and I could think things over.