Lovel the Widower.
CHAPTER II.
In which Miss Prior is kept at the Door.
Of course we all know who she was, the Miss Prior of Shrublands, whom papa and grandmamma called to the unruly children. Years had passed since I had shaken the Beak Street dust off my feet. The brass plate of “Prior” was removed from the once familiar door, and screwed, for what I can tell, on to the late reprobate owner’s coffin. A little eruption of mushroom-formed brass knobs I saw on the door-post when I passed by it last week, and Café des Ambassadeurs was thereon inscribed, with three fly-blown blue teacups, a couple of coffee-pots of the well-known Britannia metal, and two freckled copies of the Indépendance Belge hanging over the window blind. Were those their Excellencies the Ambassadors at the door, smoking cheroots? Pool and Billiards were written on their countenances, their hats, their elbows. They may have been ambassadors down on their luck, as the phrase is. They were in disgrace, no doubt, at the court of her imperial majesty Queen Fortune. Men as shabby have retrieved their disgraces ere now, washed their cloudy faces, strapped their dingy waistcoats with cordons, and stepped into fine carriages from quarters not a whit more reputable than the Café des Ambassadeurs. If I lived in the Leicester Square neighbourhood, and kept a café, I would always treat foreigners with respect. They may be billiard-markers now, or doing a little shady police business; but why should they not afterwards be generals and great officers of state? Suppose that gentleman is at present a barber, with his tongs and stick of fixature for the mustachios, how do you know he has not his epaulettes and his bâton de maréchal in the same pouch? I see engraven on the second-floor bell, on my rooms, “Plugwell.” Who can Plugwell be, whose feet now warm at the fire where I sate many a long evening? And this gentleman with the fur collar, the straggling beard, the frank and engaging leer, the somewhat husky voice, who is calling out on the door-step, “Step in, and ’ave it done. Your correct likeness, only one shilling”—is he an ambassador, too? Ah, no: he is only the Chargé d’affaires of a photographer who lives upstairs: no doubt where the little ones used to be. Law bless me! Photography was an infant, and in the nursery, too, when we lived in Beak Street.
Shall I own that, for old time’s sake, I went upstairs, and “’ad it done”—that correct likeness, price one shilling? Would Some One (I have said, I think, that the party in question is well married in a distant island) like to have the thing, I wonder, and be reminded of a man whom she knew in life’s prime, with brown curly locks, as she looked on the effigy of this elderly gentleman, with a forehead as bare as a billiard ball? As I went up and down that darkling stair, the ghosts of the Prior children peeped out from the banisters; the little faces smiled in the twilight: it may be wounds (of the heart) throbbed and bled again,—oh, how freshly and keenly! How infernally I have suffered behind that door in that room—I mean that one where Plugwell now lives. Confound Plugwell! I wonder what that woman thinks of me as she sees me shaking my fist at the door? Do you think me mad, madam? I don’t care if you do. Do you think when I spoke anon of the ghosts of Prior’s children, I mean that any of them are dead? None are, that I know of. A great hulking Bluecoat boy, with fluffy whiskers, spoke to me not long since, in an awful bass voice, and announced his name as “Gus Prior.” And “How’s Elizabeth?” he added, nodding his bullet head. Elizabeth, indeed, you great vulgar boy! Elizabeth,—and, by the way, how long we have been keeping her waiting!
You see, as I beheld her, a heap of memories struck upon me, and I could not help chattering; when of course—and you are perfectly right, only you might just as well have left the observation alone: for I knew quite well what you were going to say—when I had much better have held my tongue. Elizabeth means a history to me. She came to me at a critical period of my life. Bleeding and wounded from the conduct of that other individual (by her present name of Mrs. O’D—her present O’D-ous name—I say, I will never—never call her)—desperately wounded and miserable on my return from a neighbouring capital, I went back to my lodgings in Beak Street, and there there grew up a strange intimacy between me and my landlady’s young daughter. I told her my story—indeed, I believe I told anybody who would listen. She seemed to compassionate me. She would come wistfully into my rooms, bringing me my gruel and things (I could scarcely bear to eat for awhile after—after that affair to which I may have alluded before)—she used to come to me, and she used to pity me, and I used to tell her all, and to tell her over and over again. Days and days have I passed tearing my heart out in that second-floor room which answers to the name of Plugwell now. Afternoon after afternoon have I spent there, and poured out my story of love and wrong to Elizabeth, showed her that waistcoat I told you of—that glove (her hand wasn’t so very small either)—her letters, those two or three vacuous, meaningless letters, with “My dear sir, mamma hopes you will come to tea;” or, “If dear Mr. Batchelor should be riding in the Phœnix Park near the Long Milestone, about 2, my sister and I will be in the car, and,” &c.; or, “Oh, you kind man! the tickets (she called it tickuts—by heaven! she did) were too welcome, and the bouquays too lovely” (this word, I saw, had been operated on with a penknife. I found no faults, not even in her spelling—then); or—never mind what more. But more of this puling, of this humbug, of this bad spelling, of this infernal jilting, swindling, heartless hypocrisy (all her mother’s doing, I own; for until he got his place, my rival was not so well received as I was)—more of this RUBBISH, I say, I showed Elizabeth, and she pitied me!
She used to come to me day after day, and I used to talk to her. She used not to say much. Perhaps she did not listen; but I did not care for that. On—and on—and on I would go with my prate about my passion, my wrongs, and despair; and untiring as my complaints were, still more constant was my little hearer’s compassion. Mamma’s shrill voice would come to put an end to our conversation, and she would rise up with an “Oh, bother!” and go away: but the next day the good girl was sure to come to me again, when we would have another repetition of our tragedy.
I daresay you are beginning to suppose (what, after all, is a very common case, and certainly no conjuror is wanted to make the guess) that out of all this crying and sentimentality, which a soft-hearted old fool of a man poured out to a young girl—out of all this whimpering and pity, something which is said to be akin to pity might arise. But in this, my good madam, you are utterly wrong. Some people have the small-pox twice, I do not. In my case, if a heart is broke, it’s broke: if a flower is withered, it’s withered. If I choose to put my grief in a ridiculous light, why not? Why do you suppose I am going to make a tragedy of such an old, used-up, battered, stale, vulgar, trivial, every-day subject as a jilt who plays with a man’s passion, and laughs at him, and leaves him? Tragedy indeed! Oh, yes! poison—black-edged note-paper—Waterloo Bridge—one more unfortunate, and so forth! No: if she goes, let her go!—si celeres quatit pennas, I puff the what-d’ye-call away! But I’ll have no tragedy, mind you!
Well! it must be confessed that a man desperately in love (as I fear I must own I then was, and a good deal cut up by Glorvina’s conduct) is a most selfish being: whilst women are so soft and unselfish that they can forget or disguise their own sorrows for awhile, whilst they minister to a friend in affliction. I did not see, though I talked with her daily, on my return from that accursed Dublin, that my little Elizabeth was pale and distraite, and sad, and silent. She would sit quite dumb whilst I chattered, her hands between her knees, or draw one of them over her eyes. She would say, “Oh, yes! Poor fellow—poor fellow!” now and again, as giving a melancholy confirmation of my dismal stories; but mostly she remained quiet, her head drooping towards the ground, a hand to her chin, her feet to the fender.
I was one day harping on the usual string. I was telling Elizabeth how, after presents had been accepted, after letters had passed between us (if her scrawl could be called letters, if my impassioned song could be so construed), after everything but the actual word had passed our lips—I was telling Elizabeth how, on one accursed day, Glorvina’s mother greeted me on my arrival in M-rr-n Square, by saying, “Dear—dear Mr. Batchelor, we look on you quite as one of the family! Congratulate me—congratulate my child! Dear Tom has got his appointment as Recorder of Tobago; and it is to be a match between him and his cousin Glory.”
“His cousin What!” I shriek with a maniac laugh.
“My poor Glorvina! Sure the children have been fond of each other ever since they could speak. I knew your kind heart would be the first to rejoice in their happiness!”
And so, say I—ending the story—I, who thought myself loved, was left without a pang of pity: I, who could mention a hundred reasons why I thought Glorvina well disposed to me, was told she regarded me as an uncle! Were her letters such as nieces write? Whoever heard of an uncle walking round Merrion Square for hours of a rainy night, and looking up to a bedroom window, because his niece, forsooth, was behind it? I had set my whole heart on the cast, and this was the return I got for it. For months she cajoles me—her eyes follow me, her cursed smiles welcome and fascinate me, and at a moment, at the beck of another—she laughs at me and leaves me!
At this, my little pale Elizabeth, still hanging down, cries, “Oh, the villain! the villain!” and sobs so that you might have thought her little heart would break.
“Nay,” said I, “my dear, Mr. O’Dowd is no villain. His uncle, Sir Hector, was as gallant an old officer as any in the service. His aunt was a Molloy, of Molloy’s Town, and they are of excellent family, though, I believe, of embarrassed circumstances; and young Tom——”
“Tom?” cries Elizabeth, with a pale, bewildered look. “His name wasn’t Tom, dear Mr. Batchelor; his name was Woo-woo-illiam!” and the tears begin again.
Ah, my child! my child! my poor young creature! and you, too, have felt the infernal stroke. You, too, have passed the tossing nights of pain—have heard the dreary hours toll—have looked at the cheerless sunrise with your blank sleepless eyes—have woke out of dreams, mayhap in which the beloved was smiling on you, whispering love-words—oh! how sweet and fondly remembered! What!—your heart has been robbed, too, and your treasury is rifled and empty!—poor girl! And I looked in that sad face, and saw no grief there! You could do your little sweet endeavour to soothe my wounded heart, and I never saw yours was bleeding! Did you suffer more than I did, my poor little maid? I hope not. Are you so young, and is all the flower of life blighted for you? the cup without savour, the sun blotted, or almost invisible over your head? The truth came on me all at once: I felt ashamed that my own selfish grief should have made me blind to hers.
“What!” said I, “my poor child. Was it...?” and I pointed with my finger downwards.
She nodded her poor head.
I knew it was the lodger who had taken the first floor shortly after Slumley’s departure. He was an officer in the Bombay Army. He had had the lodgings for three months. He had sailed for India shortly before I returned home from Dublin.
Elizabeth is waiting all this time—shall she come in? No, not yet. I have still a little more to say about the Priors.
You understand that she was no longer Miss Prior of Beak Street, and that mansion, even at the time of which I write, had been long handed over to other tenants. The captain dead, his widow with many tears pressed me to remain with her, and I did, never having been able to resist that kind of appeal. Her statements regarding her affairs were not strictly correct.—Are not women sometimes incorrect about money matters?—A landlord (not unjustly indignant) quickly handed over the mansion in Beak Street to other tenants. The Queen’s taxes swooped down on poor Mrs. Prior’s scanty furniture—on hers?—on mine likewise: on my neatly-bound college books, emblazoned with the effigy of Bonifacius, our patron, and of Bishop Budgeon, our founder; on my elegant Raphael Morghen prints, purchased in undergraduate days—(ye Powers! what did make us boys go tick for fifteen-guinea proofs of Raphael, Dying Stags, Duke of Wellington Banquets, and the like?); my harmonium, at which SOME ONE has warbled songs of my composition—(I mean the words, artfully describing my passions, my hopes, or my despair); on my rich set of Bohemian glass, bought on the Zeil, Frankfort O. M.; on my picture of my father, the late Captain Batchelor (Hopner), R.N., in white ducks, and a telescope, pointing, of course, to a tempest, in the midst of which was a naval engagement; on my poor mother’s miniature, by old Adam Buck, in pencil and pink, with no waist to speak of at all; my tea and cream pots (bullion), with a hundred such fond knicknacks as decorate the chamber of a lonely man. I found all these household treasures in possession of the myrmidons of the law, and had to pay the Priors’ taxes with this hand, before I could be redintegrated in my own property. Mrs. Prior could only pay me back with a widow’s tears and blessings (Prior had quitted ere this time a world where he had long ceased to be of use or ornament). The tears and blessings, I say, she offered me freely, and they were all very well. But why go on tampering with the tea-box, madam? Why put your finger—your finger?—your whole paw—in the jam-pot? And it is a horrible fact that the wine and spirit bottles were just as leaky after Prior’s decease as they had been during his disreputable lifetime. One afternoon, having a sudden occasion to return to my lodgings, I found my wretched landlady in the very act of marauding sherry. She gave an hysterical laugh, and then burst into tears. She declared that since her poor Prior’s death she hardly knew what she said or did. She may have been incoherent; she was; but she certainly spoke truth on this occasion.
I am speaking lightly—flippantly, if you please—about this old Mrs. Prior, with her hard, eager smile, her weazened face, her frowning look, her cruel voice; and yet, goodness knows, I could, if I liked, be serious as a sermonizer. Why, this woman had once red cheeks, and was well-looking enough, and told few lies, and stole no sherry, and felt the tender passions of the heart, and I daresay kissed the weak old beneficed clergyman her father very fondly and remorsefully that night when she took leave of him to skip round to the back garden-gate and run away with Mr. Prior. Maternal instinct she had, for she nursed her young as best she could from her lean breast, and went about hungrily, robbing and pilfering for them. On Sundays she furbished up that threadbare black silk gown and bonnet, ironed the collar, and clung desperately to church. She had a feeble pencil drawing of the vicarage in Dorsetshire, and silhouettes of her father and mother, which were hung up in the lodgings wherever she went. She migrated much: wherever she went she fastened on the gown of the clergyman of the parish; spoke of her dear father the vicar, of her wealthy and gifted brother the Master of Boniface, with a reticence which implied that Dr. Sargent might do more for his poor sister and her family, if he would. She plumed herself (oh! those poor moulting old plumes!) upon belonging to the clergy; had read a good deal of good sound old-fashioned theology in early life, and wrote a noble hand, in which she had been used to copy her father’s sermons. She used to put cases of conscience, to present her humble duty to the Rev. Mr. Green, and ask explanation of such and such a passage of his admirable sermon, and bring the subject round so as to be reminded of certain quotations of Hooker, Beveridge, Jeremy Taylor. I think she had an old commonplace book with a score of these extracts, and she worked them in very amusingly and dexterously into her conversation. Green would be interested: perhaps pretty young Mrs. Green would call, secretly rather shocked at the coldness of old Dr. Brown, the rector, about Mrs. Prior. Between Green and Mrs. Prior money transactions would ensue: Mrs. Green’s visits would cease: Mrs. Prior was an expensive woman to know. I remember Pye of Maudlin, just before he “went over,” was perpetually in Mrs. Prior’s back parlour with little books, pictures, medals, &c. &c.—you know. They called poor Jack a Jesuit at Oxbridge; but one year at Rome I met him (with a half-crown shaved out of his head, and a hat as big as Don Basilio’s); and he said, “My dear Batchelor, do you know that person at your lodgings? I think she was an artful creature! She borrowed fourteen pounds of me, and I forget how much of—seven, I think—of Barfoot, of Corpus, just—just before we were received. And I believe she absolutely got another loan from Pummel, to be able to get out of the hands of us Jesuits. Are you going to hear the Cardinal? Do—do go and hear him—everybody does: it’s the most fashionable thing in Rome.” And from this I opine that there are slyboots in other communions besides that of Rome.
Now Mamma Prior had not been unaware of the love passages between her daughter and the fugitive Bombay captain. Like Elizabeth, she called Captain Walkingham “villain” readily enough; but, if I know woman’s nature in the least (and I don’t), the old schemer had thrown her daughter only too frequently in the officer’s way, had done no small portion of the flirting herself, had allowed poor Bessy to receive presents from Captain Walkingham, and had been the manager and directress of much of the mischief which ensued. You see, in this humble class of life, unprincipled mothers will coax and wheedle and cajole gentlemen whom they suppose to be eligible, in order to procure an establishment for their darling children! What the Prioress did was done from the best motives of course. “Never—never did the monster see Bessy without me, or one or two of her brothers and sisters, and Jack and dear Ellen are as sharp children as any in England!” protested the indignant Mrs. Prior to me; “and if one of my boys had been grown up, Walkingham never would have dared to act as he did—the unprincipled wretch! My poor husband would have punished the villain as he deserved; but what could he do in his shattered state of health? Oh! you men,—you men, Mr. Batchelor! how unprincipled you are!”
“Why, my good Mrs. Prior,” said I, “you let Elizabeth come to my room often enough.”
“To have the conversation of her uncle’s friend, of an educated man, of a man so much older than herself! Of course, dear sir! Would not a mother wish every advantage for her child? and whom could I trust, if not you, who have ever been such a friend to me and mine?” asks Mrs. Prior, wiping her dry eyes with the corner of her handkerchief, as she stands by my fire, my monthly bills in hand,—written in her neat old-fashioned writing, and calculated with that prodigal liberality which she always exercised in compiling the little accounts between us. “Why, bless me!” says my cousin, little Mrs. Skinner, coming to see me once when I was unwell, and examining one of the just-mentioned documents,—“bless me! Charles, you consume more tea than all my family, though we are seven in the parlour, and as much sugar and butter,—well, it’s no wonder you are bilious!”
“But then, my dear, I like my tea so very strong,” says I; “and you take yours uncommonly mild. I have remarked it at your parties.”
“It’s a shame that a man should be robbed so,” cried Mrs. S.
“How kind it is of you to cry thieves, Flora!” I reply.
“It’s my duty, Charles!” exclaims my cousin. “And I should like to know who that great, tall, gawky red-haired girl in the passage is!”
Ah me! the name of the only woman who ever had possession of this heart was not Elizabeth; though I own I did think at one time that my little schemer of a landlady would not have objected if I had proposed to make Miss Prior Mrs. Batchelor. And it is not only the poor and needy who have this mania, but the rich, too. In the very highest circles, as I am informed by the best authorities, this match-making goes on. Ah woman—woman!—ah wedded wife!—ah fond mother of fair daughters! how strange thy passion is to add to thy titles that of mother-in-law! I am told, when you have got the title, it is often but a bitterness and a disappointment. Very likely the son-in-law is rude to you, the coarse, ungrateful brute! and very possibly the daughter rebels, the thankless serpent! And yet you will go on scheming: and having met only with disappointment from Louisa and her husband, you will try and get one for Jemima, and Maria, and down even to little Toddles coming out of the nursery in her red shoes! When you see her with little Tommy, your neighbour’s child, fighting over the same Noah’s ark, or clambering on the same rocking-horse, I make no doubt, in your fond silly head, you are thinking, “Will those little people meet some twenty years hence?” And you give Tommy a very large piece of cake, and have a fine present for him on the Christmas tree—you know you do, though he is but a rude, noisy child, and has already beaten Toddles, and taken her doll away from her, and made her cry. I remember, when I myself was suffering from the conduct of a young woman in—in a capital which is distinguished by a viceregal court—and from her heartlessness, as well as that of her relative, who I once thought would be my mother-in-law—shrieking out to a friend who happened to be spouting some lines from Tennyson’s Ulysses:—“By George! Warrington, I have no doubt that when the young syrens set their green caps at the old Greek captain and his crew, waving and beckoning him with their white arms and glancing smiles, and wheedling him with their sweetest pipes—I make no doubt, sir, that the mother syrens were behind the rocks (with their dyed fronts and cheeks painted, so as to resist water), and calling out—‘Now, Halcyone, my child, that air from the Pirata! Now, Glaukopis, dear, look well at that old gentleman at the helm! Bathykolpos, love, there’s a young sailor on the maintop, who will tumble right down into your lap if you beckon him!’ And so on—and so on.” And I laughed a wild shriek of despair. For I, too, have been on the dangerous island, and come away thence, mad, furious, wanting a strait-waistcoat.
And so, when a white-armed syren, named Glorvina, was bedevilling me with her all too tempting ogling and singing, I did not see at the time, but now I know, that her artful mother was egging that artful child on.
How when the captain died, bailiffs and executions took possession of his premises, I have told in a previous page, nor do I care to enlarge much upon the odious theme. I think the bailiffs were on the premises before Prior’s exit: but he did not know of their presence. If I had to buy them out, ’twas no great matter: only I say it was hard of Mrs. Prior to represent me in the character of Shylock to the Master of Boniface. Well—well! I suppose there are other gentlemen besides Mr. Charles Batchelor who have been misrepresented in this life. Sargent and I made up matters afterwards, and Miss Bessy was the cause of our coming together again. “Upon my word, my dear Batchelor,” says he one Christmas, when I went up to the old college, “I did not know how much my—ahem!—my family was obliged to you! My—ahem!—niece, Miss Prior, has informed me of various acts of—ahem!—generosity which you showed to my poor sister, and her still more wretched husband. You got my second—ahem!—nephew—pardon me if I forget his Christian name—into the what-d’you-call’em—Bluecoat school; you have been, on various occasions, of considerable pecuniary service to my sister’s family. A man need not take high university honours to have a good—ahem!—heart; and, upon my word, Batchelor, I and my—ahem!—wife, are sincerely obliged to you!”
“I tell you what, Master,” said I, “there is a point upon which you ought really to be obliged to me, and in which I have been the means of putting money into your pocket too.”
“I confess I fail to comprehend you,” says the Master, with his grandest air.
“I have got you and Mrs. Sargent a very good governess for your children, at the very smallest remuneration,” says I.
“Do you know the charges that unhappy sister of mine and her family have put me to already?” says the Master, turning as red as his hood.
“They have formed the frequent subject of your conversation,” I replied. “You have had Bessy as a governess....”
“A nursery governess—she has learned Latin, and a great deal more, since she has been in my house!” cries the Master.
“A nursery governess at the wages of a housemaid,” I continued, as bold as Corinthian brass.
“Does my niece, does my—ahem!—children’s governess, complain of my treatment in my college?” cries the Master.
“My dear Master,” I asked, “you don’t suppose I would have listened to her complaints, or, at any rate, have repeated them, until now?”
“And why now, Batchelor, I should like to know?” says the Master, pacing up and down his study in a fume, under the portraits of Holy Bonifacius, Bishop Budgeon, and all the defunct bigwigs of the college. “And why now, Batchelor, I should like to know?” says he.
“Because, though after staying with you for three years, and having improved herself greatly, as every woman must in your society, my dear Master, Miss Prior is worth at least fifty guineas a year more than you give her, I would not have had her speak until she had found a better place.”
“You mean to say she proposes to go away?”
“A wealthy friend of mine, who was a member of our college, by the way, wants a nursery governess, and I have recommended Miss Prior to him, at seventy guineas a year.”
“And pray who’s the member of my college who will give my niece seventy guineas?” asks the Master, fiercely.
“You remember Lovel, the gentleman-pensioner?”
“The sugar-baking man—the man who took you out of ga...?”
“One good turn deserves another,” says I, hastily. “I have done as much for some of your family, Sargent!”
The red Master, who had been rustling up and down his study in his gown and bands, stopped in his walk as if I had struck him. He looked at me. He turned redder than ever. He drew his hand over his eyes. “Batchelor,” says he, “I ask your pardon. It was I who forgot myself—may heaven forgive me!—forgot how good you have been to my family, to my—ahem!—humble family, and—and how devoutly thankful I ought to be for the protection which they have found in you.” His voice quite fell as he spoke; and of course any little wrath which I might have felt was disarmed before his contrition. We parted the best friends. He not only shook hands with me at the study door, but he actually followed me to the hall door, and shook hands at his lodge porch, sub Jove, in the quadrangle. Huckles, the tutor (Highlow Huckles we used to call him in our time), and Botts (Trumperian professor), who happened to be passing through the court at the time, stood aghast as they witnessed the phenomenon.
“I say, Batchelor,” asks Huckles, “have you been made a marquis by any chance?”
“Why a marquis, Huckles?” I ask.
“Sargent never comes to his lodge-door with any man under a marquis,” says Huckles, in a low whisper.
“Or a pretty woman,” says that Botts (he will have his joke). “Batchelor, my elderly Tiresias, are you turned into a lovely young lady par hasard?”
“Get along, you absurd Trumperian professor!” say I. But the circumstance was the talk not only in Compotation Room that evening over our wine, but of the whole college. And further, events happened which made each man look at his neighbour with wonder. For that whole term Sargent did not ask our nobleman Lord Sackville (Lord Wigmore’s son) to the lodge. (Lord W.’s father, you know, Duff, was baker to the college.) For that whole term he was rude but twice to Perks, the junior tutor, and then only in a very mild way: and what is more, he gave his niece a present of a gown, of his blessing, of a kiss, and a high character, when she went down;—and promised to put one of her young brothers to school—which promise, I need not say, he faithfully kept: for he has good principles, Sargent has. He is rude: he is ill-bred: he is bumptious beyond almost any man I ever knew: he is spoiled not a little by prosperity;—but he is magnanimous: he can own that he has been in the wrong; and oh me! what a quantity of Greek he knows!
Although my late friend the captain never seemed to do aught but spend the family money, his disreputable presence somehow acted for good in the household. “My dear husband kept our family together,” Mrs. Prior said, shaking her lean head under her meagre widow’s cap. “Heaven knows how I shall provide for these lambs now he is gone.” Indeed, it was not until after the death of that tipsy shepherd that the wolves of the law came down upon the lambs—myself included, who have passed the age of lambhood and mint sauce a long time. They came down upon our fold in Beak Street, I say, and ravaged it. What was I to do? Could I leave that widow and children in their distress? I was not ignorant of misfortune, and knew how to succour the miserable. Nay, I think, the little excitement attendant upon the seizure of my goods, &c., the insolent vulgarity of the low persons in possession—with one of whom I was very near coming to a personal encounter—and other incidents which occurred in the bereft household, served to rouse me, and dissipate some of the languor and misery under which I was suffering, in consequence of Miss Mulligan’s conduct to me. I know I took the late captain to his final abode. My good friends the printers of the Museum took one of his boys into their counting-house. A blue coat and a pair of yellow stockings were procured for Augustus; and seeing the Master’s children walking about in Boniface gardens with a glum-looking old wretch of a nurse, I bethought me of proposing to him to take his niece Miss Prior—and, heaven be good to me! never said one word to her uncle about Miss Bellenden and the Academy. I daresay I drew a number of long bows about her. I managed about the bad grammar pretty well, by lamenting that Elizabeth’s poor mother had been forced to allow the girl to keep company with ill-educated people: and added, that she could not fail to mend her English in the house of one of the most distinguished scholars in Europe, and one of the best-bred women. I did say so, upon my word, looking that half-bred stuck-up Mrs. Sargent gravely in the face; and I humbly trust, if that bouncer has been registered against me, the Recording Angel will be pleased to consider that the motive was good, though the statement was unjustifiable. But I don’t think it was the compliment: I think it was the temptation of getting a governess for next to nothing that operated upon Madam Sargent. And so Bessy went to her aunt, partook of the bread of dependence, and drank of the cup of humiliation, and ate the pie of humility, and brought up her odious little cousins to the best of her small power, and bowed the head of hypocrisy before the don her uncle, and the pompous little upstart her aunt. She the best-bred woman in England, indeed! She, the little vain skinflint!
Bessy’s mother was not a little loth to part with the fifty pounds a year which the child brought home from the Academy; but her departure thence was inevitable. Some quarrel had taken place there, about which the girl did not care to talk. Some rudeness had been offered to Miss Bellenden, to which Miss Prior was determined not to submit: or was it that she wanted to go away from the scenes of her own misery, and to try and forget that Indian captain? Come, fellow-sufferer! Come, child of misfortune, come hither! Here is an old bachelor who will weep with thee tear for tear!
I protest here is Miss Prior coming into the room at last. A pale face, a tawny head of hair combed back, under a black cap: a pair of blue spectacles, as I live! a tight mourning dress, buttoned up to her white throat; a head hung meekly down: such is Miss Prior. She takes my hand when I offer it. She drops me a demure little curtsey, and answers my many questions with humble monosyllabic replies. She appeals constantly to Lady Baker for instruction, or for confirmation of her statements. What! have six years of slavery so changed the frank daring young girl whom I remember in Beak Street? She is taller and stouter than she was. She is awkward and high-shouldered, but surely she has a very fine figure.
“Will Miss Cecy and Master Popham have their teas here or in the schoolroom?” asks Bedford, the butler, of his master. Miss Prior looks appealingly to Lady Baker.
“In the sch——” Lady Baker is beginning.
“Here—here!” bawl out the children. “Much better fun down here: and you’ll send us out some fruit and things from dinner, papa!” cries Cecy.
“It’s time to dress for dinner,” says her ladyship.
“Has the first bell rung?” asks Lovel.
“Yes, the first bell has rung, and grandmamma must go, for it always takes her a precious long time to dress for dinner!” cries Pop. And, indeed, on looking at Lady Baker, the connoisseur might perceive that her ladyship was a highly composite person, whose charms required very much care and arrangement. There are some cracked old houses where the painters and plumbers and puttyers are always at work.
“Have the goodness to ring the bell!” she says, in a majestic manner, to Miss Prior, though I think Lady Baker herself was nearest.
I sprang towards the bell myself, and my hand meets Elizabeth’s there, who was obeying her ladyship’s summons, and who retreats, making me the demurest curtsey. At the summons, enter Bedford the butler (he was an old friend of mine, too) and young Buttons, the page under that butler.
Lady Baker points to a heap of articles on a table, and says to Bedford: “If you please, Bedford, tell my man to give those things to Pinhorn, my maid, to be taken to my room.”
“Shall not I take them up, dear Lady Baker?” says Miss Prior.
But Bedford, looking at his subordinate, says: “Thomas! tell Bulkeley, her ladyship’s man, to take her ladyship’s things, and give them to her ladyship’s maid.” There was a tone of sarcasm, even of parody, in Monsieur Bedford’s voice; but his manner was profoundly grave and respectful. Drawing up her person, and making a motion, I don’t know whether of politeness or defiance, exit Lady Baker, followed by page, bearing bandboxes, shawls, paper parcels, parasols—I know not what. Dear Popham stands on his head as grandmamma leaves the room. “Don’t be vulgar!” cries little Cecy (the dear child is always acting as a little Mentor to her brother). “I shall, if I like,” says Pop; and he makes faces at her.
“You know your room, Batch?” asks the master of the house.
“Mr. Batchelor’s old room—always has the blue room,” says Bedford, looking very kindly at me.
“Give us,” cries Lovel, “a bottle of that Sau....”
“... Terne, Mr. Batchelor used to like. Château Yquem. All right!” says Mr. Bedford. “How will you have the turbot done you brought down?—Dutch sauce?—Make lobster into salad? Mr. Bonnington likes lobster salad,” says Bedford. Pop is winding up the butler’s back at this time. It is evident Mr. Bedford is a privileged person in the family. As he had entered it on my nomination several years ago, and had been ever since the faithful valet, butler, and major-domo of Lovel, Bedford and I were always good friends when we met.
“By the way, Bedford, why wasn’t the barouche sent for me to the bridge?” cries Lovel. “I had to walk all the way home, with a bat and stumps for Pop, with the basket of fish, and that bandbox with my lady’s——”
“He—he!” grins Bedford.
“‘He—he!’ Confound you, why do you stand grinning there? Why didn’t I have the carriage, I say?” bawls the master of the house.
“You know, sir,” says Bedford. “She had the carriage.” And he indicated the door through which Lady Baker had just retreated.
“Then why didn’t I have the phaeton?” asks Bedford’s master.
“Your ma and Mr. Bonnington had the phaeton.”
“And why shouldn’t they, pray? Mr. Bonnington is lame: I’m at my business all day. I should like to know why they shouldn’t have the phaeton?” says Lovel, appealing to me. As we had been sitting talking together previous to Miss Prior’s appearance, Lady Baker had said to Lovel, “Your mother and Mr. Bonnington are coming to dinner of course, Frederick;” and Lovel had said, “Of course they are,” with a peevish bluster, whereof I now began to understand the meaning. The fact was, these two women were fighting for the possession of this child; but who was the Solomon to say which should have him? Not I. Nenni. I put my oar in no man’s boat. Give me an easy life, my dear friends, and row me gently over.
“You had better go and dress,” says Bedford sternly, looking at his master; “the first bell has rung this quarter of an hour. Will you have some 34?”
Lovel started up; he looked at the clock. “You are all ready, Batch, I see. I hope you are going to stay some time, ain’t you?” And he disappeared to array himself in his sables and starch. I was thus alone with Miss Prior, and her young charges, who resumed straightway their infantine gambols and quarrels.
“My dear Bessy!” I cry, holding out both hands, “I am heartily glad to——”
“Ne m’appelez que de mon nom paternel devant tout ce monde s’il vous plait, mon cher ami, mon bon protecteur!” she says, hastily, in very good French, folding her hands and making a curtsey.
“Oui, oui, oui! Parlez-vous Français? J’aime, tu aimes, il aime!” cries out dear Master Popham. “What are you talking about? Here’s the phaeton!” and the young innocent dashes through the open window on to the lawn, whither he is followed by his sister, and where we see the carriage containing Mr. and Mrs. Bonnington rolling over the smooth walk.
Bessy advances towards me, and gives me readily enough now the hand she had refused anon.
“I never thought you would have refused it, Bessy,” said I.
“Refuse it to the best friend I ever had!” she says, pressing my hand. “Ah, dear Mr. Batchelor, what an ungrateful wretch I should be, if I did!”
“Let me see your eyes. Why do you wear spectacles? You never wore them in Beak Street,” I say. You see I was very fond of the child. She had wound herself around me in a thousand fond ways. Owing to a certain Person’s conduct my heart may be a ruin—a Persepolis, sir—a perfect Tadmor. But what then? May not a traveller rest under its shattered columns? May not an Arab maid repose there till the morning dawns and the caravan passes on? Yes, my heart is a Palmyra, and once a queen inhabited me (O Zenobia! Zenobia! to think thou shouldst have been led away captive by an O’D.!) Now, I am alone, alone in the solitary wilderness. Nevertheless, if a stranger comes to me I have a spring for his weary feet, I will give him the shelter of my shade. Rest thy cheek awhile, young maiden, on my marble—then go thy ways, and leave me.
This I thought, or something to this effect, as in reply to my remark, “Let me see your eyes,” Bessy took off her spectacles, and I took them up and looked at her. Why didn’t I say to her, “My dear brave Elizabeth! as I look in your face, I see you have had an awful deal of suffering. Your eyes are inscrutably sad. We who are initiated, know the members of our Community of Sorrow. We have both been wrecked in different ships, and been cast on this shore. Let us go hand-in-hand, and find a cave and a shelter somewhere together.” I say, why didn’t I say this to her? She would have come, I feel sure she would. We would have been semi-attached as it were. We would have locked up that room in either heart where the skeleton was, and said nothing about it, and pulled down the party-wall and taken our mild tea in the garden. I live in Pump Court now. It would have been better than this dingy loneliness and a snuffy laundress who bullies me. But for Bessy? Well—well, perhaps better for her too.
I remember these thoughts rushing through my mind whilst I held the spectacles. What a number of other things too? I remember two canaries making a tremendous concert in their cage. I remember the voices of the two children quarrelling on the lawn, the sound of the carriage-wheels grinding over the gravel; and then of a little old familiar cracked voice in my ear, with a “La, Mr. Batchelor! are you here?” And a sly face looks up at me from under an old bonnet.
“It is mamma,” says Bessy.
“And I’m come to tea with Elizabeth and the dear children; and while you are at dinner, dear Mr. Batchelor, thankful—thankful for all mercies! And, dear me! here is Mrs. Bonnington, I do declare! Dear madam, how well you look—not twenty, I declare! And dear Mr. Bonnington! Oh, sir! let me—let me, I must press your hand. What a sermon last Sunday! All Putney was in tears!”
And the little woman, flinging out her lean arms, seizes portly Mr. Bonnington’s fat hand: as he and kind Mrs. Bonnington enter at the open casement. The little woman seems inclined to do the honours of the house. “And won’t you go upstairs, and put on your cap? Dear me, what a lovely ribbon! How blue does become Mrs. Bonnington! I always say so to Elizabeth,” she cries, peeping into a little packet which Mrs. Bonnington bears in her hand. After exchanging friendly words and greetings with me, that lady retires to put the lovely cap on, followed by her little jackal of an aide-de-camp. The portly clergyman surveys his pleased person in the spacious mirror. “Your things are in your old room—like to go in, and brush up a bit?” whispers Bedford to me. I am obliged to go, you see, though, for my part, I had thought, until Bedford spoke, that the ride on the top of the Putney omnibus had left me without any need of brushing; having aired my clothes, and given my young cheek a fresh and agreeable bloom.
My old room, as Bedford calls it, was that snug apartment communicating by double doors with the drawing-room, and whence you can walk on to the lawn out of the windows.
“Here’s your books, here’s your writing-paper,” says Bedford, leading the way into the chamber. “Does sore eyes good to see you down here again, sir. You may smoke now. Clarence Baker smokes when he comes. Go and get some of that wine you like for dinner.” And the good fellow’s eyes beam kindness upon me as he nods his head, and departs to superintend the duties of his table. Of course you understand that this Bedford was my young printer’s boy of former days. What a queer fellow! I had not only been kind to him, but he was grateful.