A TALE OF 1787.
Any old directory of the latter half of the last century will still show, to the curious in such matters, the address of Messrs. Hope and Bullion, merchants and general dealers at No. 4, in a certain high and narrow street in the city of London. Not that this, in itself, is a very valuable part of history; but to those who look up at the dirty windows of the house as it now stands, and compare the narrow pavement and cit-like appearance of the whole locality with the splendours of Oxford Square or Stanhope Place, where the business occupant of the premises has now his residence, it will be a subject of doubt, if not of unbelief, that Mr Bullion—who dwelt in the upper portions of the building—was as happy, and nearly as proud, as his successor at the present time. Yet so it is; and, without making invidious comparisons with the distinguished-looking lady who does the honours of the mansion in Oxford Square—her father was a sugar baker, and lived in a magnificent country house at Mussel hill. I will venture to state, that Mr Bullion had great reason to be satisfied with the manners and appearance of the young person who presided at his festive board. Such a rich laugh, and such a sweet voice, were heard in no other house in the town. And as to her face and figure, the only dispute among painters and sculptors was, whether the ever-varying expression of her features did not constitute her the true property of the Reynoldses and Romneys,—or the ever-exquisite moulding of her shape did not bring her within the province of the severer art. At the same time it must be confessed, that the subject of these disputes took no interest either in brush or chisel. A bright, happy, clever creature—but no judge of sciences and arts—was Louise Bullion. Books she had read a few, and music she had studied a little; yet, with her slender knowledge of the circulating library, she talked more pleasantly than Madame de Staël, and sang so sweetly, so naturally, and so truly, that Mrs Billington was a fool to her. She was a parlour Jenny Lind. But Mrs Billington was not the only person who was a fool to her. Oh no!—that sort of insanity was epidemic, and seized on all that came near her. Even Mr Cocker the book-keeper—a little man of upwards of fifty, who was so simple, and knew so little of anything but arithmetic, that he always considered himself, and was considered by the people, a boy just getting on in his teens—even Mr Cocker was a fool to her too. For when he was invited to tea, and had his cups sweetened by her hand, and his whole heart turned, by some of her pathetic ballads, into something so soft and oily that it must have been just like one of the muffins she laid on his plate, he used to go away with a very confused idea of cube roots, and get into the most extraordinary puzzles in the rule of three. Miss Louise, he said, would never go out of his head; whereas she had never once got into it, having established her quarters very comfortably in another place a little lower down, just inside of the brass buttons on his left breast; and yet the poor old fellow went down to his grave without the remotest suspicion that he had ever been in love. The people used to say that his perplexities, on those occasions, were principally remarkable after supper—for an invitation to tea, in those hospitable times, included an afterpiece in the shape of some roaring hot dishes, and various bowls of a stout and jovial beverage, whose place, I beg to say, is poorly supplied by any conceivable quantity of negus and jellies! Yes, the people used to say that Cocker's difficulties in calculation arose from other causes than his admiration of Miss Louise and her songs; but this was a calumny—and, in fact, any few extra glasses he took were for the express purpose of clearing his head, after it had got bewildered by her smiles and music; and therefore how could they possibly be the cause of his bewilderment? I repeat that Mr Cocker was afflicted by the universal disease, and would have died with the greatest happiness to give her a moment's satisfaction. And so would all the clerks, except one, who was very short-sighted and remarkably deaf, and who was afterwards tried on suspicion of having poisoned his wife; and so would her aunt, Miss Lucretia Smith, though her kindness was so wonderfully disguised that the whole world would have been justified in considering it harshness and ill-nature. It was only her way of bestowing it—as if you were to pour out sugar from a vinegar cruet; and a good old, fussy, scolding, grumbling, advising, tormenting, and very loving lady was Miss Lucretia Smith—very loving, I say, not only of her niece, and her brother-in-law, but of anybody that would agree to be loved. Traditions existed that, in her youth, she had been a tremendous creature for enthusiasms and romances; that she had flirted with all the officers of the city militia, from the colonel downwards, and with all the Lord Mayors' chaplains for an infinite series of years; and that, though nothing came of all her praiseworthy efforts, time had had a strengthening instead of a weakening effect on all these passages—till now, in her fifty-third year, she actually believed she had been in love with them all, and on the point of marriage with more than half.
And this constituted the whole of Mr Bullion's establishment—at least all his establishment which was regularly on the books; but there was a young man so constantly in the house—so much at home there—so welcome when he came, so wondered at when he staid away—in short, so much one of the family, that I will only say, if he was not considered a member of it, he ought to have been. For what, I pray you, constitutes membership, if intimacy, kindness, perpetual presence, and filial and fraternal affection—filial to the old man, fraternal to the young lady—do not constitute it? You might have sworn till doomsday, but Mr Cecil Hope would never have believed that his home was anywhere but at No. 4. Nay, when, by some accident, he found himself for a day in a very pretty, very tasteful, and very spacious house he had in Hertfordshire, with a ring-fence of fourteen hundred acres round it, he felt quite disconsolate, and as if he were in a strange place. The estate had been bought, the house had been built—as the money had been acquired, by his father, who was no less a person than the senior partner in the firm of Hope and Bullion, but had withdrawn his capital from the trade, laid it out in land, superintended the erection of his mansion, pined for his mercantile activities, and died in three years of having nothing to do. So Cecil was rich and unencumbered; he was also as handsome as the Apollo, who, they say, would be a very vulgar-looking fellow if he dressed like a Christian; and he (not the Apollo, but Cecil Hope) was four-and-twenty years of age, five feet eleven in height, and as pleasant a fellow as it is possible to conceive. So you may guess whether or not he was in love with Louise. Of course he was,—haven't I said he was a young man of some sense, and for whom I have a regard? He adored her. And now you will, perhaps, be asking if the admiration was returned—and that is one of the occasions on which an impertinent reader has a great advantage over the best and cunningest of authors. They can ask such impudent questions,—which they would not dare to do unless under the protection and in the sanctuary, as it were, of print, and look so amazingly knowing while pausing for a reply, that I have no patience with the fellows at all; and, in answer to their demand whether Louise returned the love of Cecil Hope, I will only say this—I will see them hanged first, before I gratify their curiosity. Indeed, how could I hold up my head in any decent society again, if I were to commit such a breach of confidence as that? Imagine me confessing that she looked always fifty times happier in his presence than when he was away—imagine me confessing that her heart beat many thumps quicker when anybody mentioned his name—imagine me, I say, confessing all this, and fifty things more, and then calling myself a man of honour and discretion! No: I say again I will see the reader hanged first, before I will answer his insolent question; so let that be an understood thing between us, that I will never reveal any secret with which a young lady is kind enough to intrust me.
And this, I think, is a catalogue of all the household above the good old warehouse. Ah! no,—there is the excellent Mr Bullion himself. He is now sixty; he has white hair, a noble, even a distingué figure: look into any page of any fashionable novel of any year, for an explanation of what that means. On the present occasion, you would perhaps conclude that the long-backed, wide-tailed blue coat, the low-flapped waistcoat, tight-fitting knee-br—ch—s, white cotton stockings in-doors, long gaiters out, with bright-buckled square-toed shoes, may be a little inconsistent with the epithet distingué. But this is a vulgar error, and would argue that nobody could look distingué without lace and brocade. Now, only imagine Mr Bullion in a court-dress, with a silk bag floating over his shoulder, to tie up long tresses which have disappeared from his head for many years; a diamond-hilted rapier that probably has no blade, and all the other portions of that graceful and easy style of habiliment,—dress him in this way, and look at him bowing gracefully by means of his three-cornered hat, and you will surely grant he would be a distingué figure then,—and why not in his blue coat and smalls?
But distingué-looking men, even in court-dresses, may be great rascals, and even considerable fools. Then was Mr Bullion a rascal?—no. A fool?—no. In short, he was one of the best of men, and could have been recognised during his life, if any one had described him in the words of his epitaph.
Well,—we must get on. Day after day, for several months before the date we have got to, a sort of mystery seemed to grow deeper and deeper on the benevolent features of the father of Louise. Something—nobody could tell what—had lifted him out of his ordinary self. He dropt dark hints of some great change that was shortly to take place in the position of the family: he even took many opportunities of lecturing Cecil Hope on the miseries of ill-assorted marriages, particularly where the lady was of a family immeasurably superior to the man's. Miss Smith thought he was going to be made Lord Mayor; Cecil Hope supposed he was about to be appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer; and Louise thought he was growing silly, and took no notice of all the airs he put on, and the depreciatory observations he made on the rank of a country squire. As to Mr Cocker, he was already fully persuaded that his master was the greatest man in the world, and, if he had started for king, would have voted him to the throne without a moment's hesitation. At last the origin of all these proceedings on the part of Mr Bullion began to be suspected. A little dark man, with the brightest possible eyes, shrouded in a great cloak, with a broad-brimmed hat carefully drawn over his brows, and just showing to the affrighted maid who opened the door the aforesaid eyes, fixed on her with such an expression of inquiry that they fully supplied the difficulty he experienced in asking for Mr Bullion in words,—for he was a foreigner, not much gifted with the graces of English pronunciation. This little dark and inquisitive man came to the house two or three times a-week, and spent several hours in close consultation with Mr Bullion. On emerging from these councils, it was easy to see, by that gentleman's countenance, whether the affair, whatever it was, was in a prosperous condition or not. Sometimes he came into the supper-room gloomy and silent, sometimes tripping in like a sexagenarian Taglioni, and humming a French song,—for his knowledge of that language was extraordinary,—and his whole idea of a daughter's education seemed to be, to make her acquire the true Parisian accent, and to read Molière and Corneille. So Louise, to gratify the whim of her father, had made herself perfect in the language, and could have entered into a correspondence with Madame de Sevigné without a single false concord, or a mistake in spelling. Who could this little man be, who had such influence on her father's spirits? They watched him, but could see nothing but the dark cloak and slouched hat, which disappeared down some side street, and would have puzzled one of the detective police to keep them in view. Her thoughts rested almost constantly on this subject. Even at church—for they were regular church-goers, and very decided Protestants, as far as their religious feelings could be shown in hating the devil and the Pope—she used to watch her father's face, but could read nothing there but a quiet devotion during the prayers, and an amiable condescension while listening to the sermon. Rustlings of papers as the little visitor slipt along the passage, revealed the fact that there were various documents required in their consultations; and on one particular occasion, after an interview of unusual duration, Mr Bullion accompanied his mysterious guest to the door, and was overheard, by the conclave who were assembled in the little parlour for supper, very warm in his protestations of obligation for the trouble he had taken, and concluding with these remarkable words—"Assure his Excellency of my highest consideration, and that I shall not lose a moment in throwing myself at the feet of the King." Louise looked at Cecil on hearing these words; and as Cecil would probably have been looking at Louise, whether he had heard these words or not, their eyes met with an expression of great bewilderment and surprise,—the said bewilderment being by no means diminished when his visitor replied—"His Excellency kisses your hands, and I leave your Lordship in the holy keeping of the saints."
"Papa is rather flighty—don't you think so, Cecil?" said Louise.
"Both mad," answered that gentleman with a shake of the head.
"Mr Bullion is going to be Lord Mayor," said Miss Lucretia, with a vivid remembrance of the flirtations and grandeurs of the Mansion-house.
Mr Cocker said nothing aloud, and was sorely puzzled for a long time, but ended with a confused notion, derived principally from the protection of the saints, that his patron was likely to be Pope. All, however, sank into a gaping silence of anticipation, when Mr Bullion, after shutting the door, as soon as his visitor had departed, began to whistle Malbrook, and came into the supper-room.