The Cornhill Magazine (Vol. I, No. 4, April 1860)

by Various

Lovel the Widower.

CHAPTER IV.
A Black Sheep.

The being for whom my friend Dick Bedford seemed to have a special contempt and aversion, was Mr. Bulkeley, the tall footman in attendance upon Lovel’s dear mother-in-law. One of the causes of Bedford’s wrath, the worthy fellow explained to me. In the servants’ hall, Bulkeley was in the habit of speaking in disrespectful and satirical terms of his mistress, enlarging upon her many foibles, and describing her pecuniary difficulties to the many habitués of that second social circle at Shrublands. The hold which Mr. Bulkeley had over his lady lay in a long unsettled account of wages, which her ladyship was quite disinclined to discharge. And, in spite of this insolvency, the footman must have found his profit in the place, for he continued to hold it from year to year, and to fatten on his earnings such as they were. My lady’s dignity did not allow her to travel without this huge personage in her train; and a great comfort it must have been to her, to reflect that in all the country houses which she visited (and she would go wherever she could force an invitation), her attendant freely explained himself regarding her peculiarities, and made his brother servants aware of his mistress’s embarrassed condition. And yet the woman, whom I suppose no soul alive respected (unless, haply, she herself had a hankering delusion that she was a respectable woman), thought that her position in life forbade her to move abroad without a maid, and this hulking incumbrance in plush; and never was seen anywhere in watering-place, country-house, hotel, unless she was so attended.

Between Bedford and Bulkeley, then, there was feud and mutual hatred. Bedford chafed the big man by constant sneers and sarcasms, which penetrated the other’s dull hide, and caused him frequently to assert that he would punch Dick’s ugly head off. The housekeeper had frequently to interpose, and fling her matronly arms between these men of war; and perhaps Bedford was forced to be still at times, for Bulkeley was nine inches taller than himself, and was perpetually bragging of his skill and feats as a bruiser. This sultan may also have wished to fling his pocket-handkerchief to Miss Mary Pinhorn, who, though she loved Bedford’s wit and cleverness, might also be not insensible to the magnificent chest, calves, whiskers, of Mr. Bulkeley. On this delicate subject, however, I can’t speak. The men hated each other. You have, no doubt, remarked in your experience of life, that when men do hate each other, about a woman, or some other cause, the real reason is never assigned. You say, “The conduct of such and such a man to his grandmother—his behaviour in selling that horse to Benson—his manner of brushing his hair down the middle”—or what you will, “makes him so offensive to me that I can’t endure him.” His verses, therefore, are mediocre; his speeches in parliament are utter failures; his practice at the bar is dwindling every year; his powers (always small) are utterly leaving him, and he is repeating his confounded jokes until they quite nauseate. Why, only about myself, and within these three days, I read a nice little article—written in sorrow, you know, not in anger—by our eminent confrère Wiggins,[1] deploring the decay of, &c. &c. And Wiggins’s little article which was not found suitable for a certain Magazine?—Allons donc! The drunkard says the pickled salmon gave him the headache; the man who hates us gives a reason, but not the reason. Bedford was angry with Bulkeley for abusing his mistress at the servants’ table? Yes. But for what else besides? I don’t care—nor possibly does your worship, the exalted reader, for these low vulgar kitchen quarrels.

Out of that ground-floor room, then, I would not move in spite of the utmost efforts of my Lady Baker’s broad shoulder to push me out; and with many grins that evening, Bedford complimented me on my gallantry in routing the enemy at luncheon. I think he may possibly have told his master, for Lovel looked very much alarmed and uneasy when we greeted each other on his return from the city, but became more composed when Lady Baker appeared at the second dinner-bell, without a trace on her fine countenance of that storm which had caused all her waves to heave with such commotion at noon. How finely some people, by the way, can hang up quarrels—or pop them into a drawer, as they do their work, when dinner is announced, and take them out again at a convenient season! Baker was mild, gentle, a thought sad and sentimental—tenderly interested about her dear son and daughter, in Ireland, whom she must go and see—quite easy in hand, in a word, and to the immense relief of all of us. She kissed Lovel on retiring, and prayed blessings on her Frederick. She pointed to the picture: nothing could be more melancholy or more gracious.

“She go!” says Mr. Bedford to me at night—“not she. She knows when she’s well off; was obliged to turn out of Bakerstown before she came here: that brute Bulkeley told me so. She’s always quarrelling with her son and his wife. Angels don’t grow everywhere as they do at Putney, Mr. B.! You gave it her well to-day at lunch, you did though!” During my stay at Shrublands, Mr. Bedford paid me a regular evening visit in my room, set the carte du pays before me, and in his curt way acquainted me with the characters of the inmates of the house, and the incidents occurring therein.

Captain Clarence Baker did not come to Shrublands on the day when his anxious mother wished to clear out my nest (and expel the amiable bird in it) for her son’s benefit. I believe an important fight, which was to come off in the Essex Marshes, and which was postponed in consequence of the interposition of the county magistrates, was the occasion, or at any rate, the pretext of the captain’s delay. “He likes seeing fights better than going to ’em, the captain does,” my major-domo remarked. “His regiment was ordered to India, and he sold out: climate don’t agree with his precious health. The captain ain’t been here ever so long, not since poor Mrs. L.’s time, before Miss P. came here: Captain Clarence and his sister had a tremendous quarrel together. He was up to all sorts of pranks, the captain was. Not a good lot, by any means, I should say, Mr. Batchelor.” And here Bedford begins to laugh. “Did you ever read, sir, a farce called Raising the Wind? There’s plenty of Jeremy Diddlers now, Captain Jeremy Diddlers and Lady Jeremy Diddlers too. Have you such a thing as half-a-crown about you? If you have, don’t invest it in some folks’ pockets—that’s all. Beg your pardon, sir, if I am bothering you with talking!”

As long as I was at Shrublands, and ready to partake of breakfast with my kind host and his children and their governess, Lady Baker had her own breakfast taken to her room. But when there were no visitors in the house, she would come groaning out of her bedroom to be present at the morning meal; and not uncommonly would give the little company anecdotes of the departed saint, under whose invocation, as it were, we were assembled, and whose simpering effigy looked down upon us, over her harp, and from the wall. The eyes of the portrait followed you about, as portraits’ eyes so painted will; and those glances, as it seemed to me, still domineered over Lovel, and made him quail as they had done in life. Yonder, in the corner, was Cecilia’s harp, with its leathern cover. I likened the skin to that drum which the dying Zisca ordered should be made out of his hide, to be beaten before the hosts of his people and inspire terror. Vous conçevez, I did not say to Lovel at breakfast, as I sat before the ghostly musical instrument, “My dear fellow, that skin of Cordovan leather belonging to your defunct Cecilia’s harp, is like the hide which,” &c.; but I confess, at first, I used to have a sort of crawly sensation, as of a sickly genteel ghost flitting about the place, in an exceedingly peevish humour, trying to scold and command, and finding her defunct voice couldn’t be heard—trying to re-illume her extinguished leers and faded smiles and ogles, and finding no one admired or took note. In the gray of the gloaming, in the twilight corner where stands the shrouded companion of song—what is that white figure flickering round the silent harp? Once, as we were assembled in the room at afternoon tea, a bird, entering at the open window, perched on the instrument. Popham dashed at it. Lovel was deep in conversation upon the wine duties with a member of parliament he had brought down to dinner. Lady Baker, who was, if I may use the expression, “jawing,” as usual, and telling one of her tremendous stories about the Lord Lieutenant to Mr. Bonnington, took no note of the incident. Elizabeth did not seem to remark it: what was a bird on a harp to her, but a sparrow perched on a bit of leather-casing! All the ghosts in Putney churchyard might rattle all their bones, and would not frighten that stout spirit!

I was amused at a precaution which Bedford took, and somewhat alarmed at the distrust towards Lady Baker which he exhibited, when, one day on my return from town—whither I had made an excursion of four or five hours—I found my bedroom door locked, and Dick arrived with the key. “He’s wrote to say he’s coming this evening, and if he had come when you was away, Lady B. was capable of turning your things out, and putting his in, and taking her oath she believed you was going to leave. The long-bows Lady B. do pull are perfectly awful, Mr. B.! So it was long-bow to long-bow, Mr. Batchelor; and I said you had took the key in your pocket, not wishing to have your papers disturbed. She tried the lawn window, but I had bolted that, and the captain will have the pink room, after all, and must smoke up the chimney. I should have liked to see him, or you, or any one do it in poor Mrs. L.’s time—I just should!”

During my visit to London, I had chanced to meet my friend Captain Fitzb—dle, who belongs to a dozen clubs, and knows something of every man in London. “Know anything of Clarence Baker?” “Of course, I do,” says Fitz; “and if you want any renseignement, my dear fellow, I have the honour to inform you that a blacker little sheep does not trot the London pavé. Wherever that ingenious officer’s name is spoken—at Tattersall’s, at his clubs, in his late regiments, in men’s society, in ladies’ society, in that expanding and most agreeable circle which you may call no society at all—a chorus of maledictions rises up at the mention of Baker. Know anything of Clarence Baker! My dear fellow, enough to make your hair turn white, unless (as I sometimes fondly imagine) nature has already performed that process, when of course I can’t pretend to act upon more hair-dye.” (The whiskers of the individual who addressed me, innocent, stared me in the face as he spoke, and were dyed of the most unblushing purple.) “Clarence Baker, sir, is a young man who would have been invaluable in Sparta as a warning against drunkenness and an exemplar of it. He has helped the regimental surgeon to some most interesting experiments in delirium tremens. He is known, and not in the least trusted, in every billiard-room in Brighton, Canterbury, York, Sheffield,—on every pavement which has rung with the clink of dragoon boot-heels. By a wise system of revoking at whist he has lost games which have caused not only his partners, but his opponents and the whole club to admire him and to distrust him: long before and since he was of age, he has written his eminent name to bills which have been dishonoured, and has nobly pleaded his minority as a reason for declining to pay. From the garrison towns where he has been quartered, he has carried away not only the hearts of the milliners, but their gloves, haberdashery, and perfumery. He has had controversies with Cornet Green, regarding horse transactions; disputed turf-accounts with Lieutenant Brown; and betting and backgammon differences with Captain Black. From all I have heard he is the worthy son of his admirable mother. And I bet you even on the four events, if you stay three days in a country house with him, which appears to be your present happy idea,—that he will quarrel with you, insult you, and apologize; that he will intoxicate himself more than once; that he will offer to play cards with you, and not pay on losing (if he wins, I perhaps need not state what his conduct will be); and that he will try to borrow money from you, and most likely from your servant, before he goes away.” So saying, the sententious Fitz strutted up the steps of one of his many club-haunts in Pall Mall, and left me forewarned, and I trust forearmed against Captain Clarence and all his works.

The adversary, when at length I came in sight of him, did not seem very formidable. I beheld a weakly little man with Chinese eyes, and pretty little feet and hands, whose pallid countenance told of Finishes and Casinos. His little chest and fingers were decorated with many jewels. A perfume of tobacco hung round him. His little moustache was twisted with an elaborate gummy curl. I perceived that the little hand which twirled the moustache shook woefully: and from the little chest there came a cough surprisingly loud and dismal.

He was lying on a sofa as I entered, and the children of the house were playing round him. “If you are our uncle, why didn’t you come to see us oftener?” asks Popham.

“How should I know that you were such uncommonly nice children?” asks the captain.

“We’re not nice to you,” says Popham. “Why do you cough so? Mamma used to cough. And why does your hand shake so?”

“My hand shakes because I am ill: and I cough because I’m ill. Your mother died of it, and I daresay I shall too.”

“I hope you’ll be good, and repent before you die, uncle, and I will lend you some nice books,” says Cecilia.

“Oh, bother books!” cries Pop.

“And I hope you’ll be good, Popham,” and “You hold your tongue, Miss,” and “I shall,” and “I shan’t,” and “You’re another,” and “I’ll tell Miss Prior,”—“Go and tell, telltale,”—“Boo”—“Boo”—“Boo”—“Boo”—and I don’t know what more exclamations came tumultuously and rapidly from these dear children, as their uncle lay before them, a handkerchief to his mouth, his little feet high raised on the sofa cushions.

Captain Baker turned a little eye towards me, as I entered the room, but did not change his easy and elegant posture. When I came near to the sofa where he reposed, he was good enough to call out:

“Glass of sherry!”

“It’s Mr. Batchelor; it isn’t Bedford, uncle,” says Cissy.

“Mr. Batchelor ain’t got any sherry in his pocket:—have you, Mr. Batchelor? You ain’t like old Mrs. Prior, always pocketing things, are you?” cries Pop, and falls a-laughing at the ludicrous idea of my being mistaken for Bedford.

“Beg your pardon. How should I know, you know?” drawls the invalid on the sofa. “Everybody’s the same now, you see.”

“Sir!” says I, and “sir” was all I could say. The fact is, I could have replied with something remarkably neat and cutting, which would have transfixed the languid little jackanapes who dared to mistake me for a footman; but, you see, I only thought of my repartee some eight hours afterwards when I was lying in bed, and I am sorry to own that a great number of my best bon mots have been made in that way. So, as I had not the pungent remark ready when wanted, I can’t say I said it to Captain Baker, but I daresay I turned very red, and said “Sir!” and—and in fact that was all.

“You were goin’ to say somethin’?” asked the captain, affably.

“You know my friend, Mr. Fitzboodle, I believe?” said I; the fact is, I really did not know what to say.

“Some mistake—think not.”

“He is a member of the Flag Club,” I remarked, looking my young fellow hard in the face.

“I ain’t. There’s a set of cads in that club that will say anything.”

“You may not know him, sir, but he seemed to know you very well. Are we to have any tea, children?” I say, flinging myself down on an easy chair, taking up a magazine and adopting an easy attitude, though I daresay my face was as red as a turkey-cock’s, and I was boiling over with rage.

As we had a very good breakfast and a profuse luncheon at Shrublands, of course we could not support nature till dinner-time without a five-o’clock tea; and this was the meal for which I pretended to ask. Bedford, with his silver kettle, and his buttony satellite, presently brought in this refection, and of course the children bawled out to him—

“Bedford—Bedford! uncle mistook Mr. Batchelor for you.”

“I could not be mistaken for a more honest man, Pop,” said I. And the bearer of the tea-urn gave me a look of gratitude and kindness which, I own, went far to restore my ruffled equanimity.

“Since you are the butler, will you get me a glass of sherry and a biscuit?” says the captain. And Bedford retiring, returned presently with the wine.

The young gentleman’s hand shook so, that, in order to drink his wine, he had to surprise it, as it were, and seize it with his mouth, when a shake brought the glass near his lips. He drained the wine, and held out his hand for another glass. The hand was steadier now.

“You the man who was here before?” asks the captain.

“Six years ago, when you were here, sir,” says the butler.

“What! I ain’t changed, I suppose?”

“Yes, you are, sir.”

“Then, how the dooce do you remember me?”

“You forgot to pay me some money you borrowed of me, one pound five, sir,” says Bedford, whose eyes slyly turned in my direction.

And here, according to her wont at this meal, the dark-robed Miss Prior entered the room. She was coming forward with her ordinarily erect attitude and firm step, but paused in her walk an instant, and when she came to us, I thought, looked remarkably pale. She made a slight curtsey, and it must be confessed that Captain Baker rose up from his sofa for a moment when she appeared. She then sate down, with her back towards him, turning towards herself the table and its tea apparatus.

At this board my Lady Baker found us assembled when she returned from her afternoon drive. She flew to her darling reprobate of a son. She took his hand, she smoothed back his hair from his damp forehead. “My darling child,” cries this fond mother, “what a pulse you have got!”

“I suppose, because I’ve been drinking,” says the prodigal.

“Why didn’t you come out driving with me? The afternoon was lovely!”

“To pay visits at Richmond? Not as I knows on, ma’am,” says the invalid. “Conversation with elderly ladies about poodles, bible-societies, that kind of thing? It must be a doocid lovely afternoon that would make me like that sort of game.” And here comes a fit of coughing, over which mamma ejaculates her sympathy.

“Kick—kick—killin’ myself!” gasps out the captain, “know I am. No man can lead my life, and stand it. Dyin’ by inches! Dyin’ by whole yards, by Jo—ho—hove, I am!” Indeed, he was as bad in health as in morals, this graceless captain.

“That man of Lovel’s seems a d—— insolent beggar,” he presently and ingenuously remarks.

“O uncle, you mustn’t say those words!” cries niece Cissy.

“He’s a man, and may say what he likes, and so will I, when I’m a man. Yes, and I’ll say it now, too, if I like,” cries Master Popham.

“Not to give me pain, Popham? Will you?” asks the governess.

On which the boy says,—“Well, who wants to hurt you, Miss Prior?”

And our colloquy ends by the arrival of the man of the house from the city.

What I have admired in some dear women is their capacity for quarrelling and for reconciliation. As I saw Lady Baker hanging round her son’s neck, and fondling his scanty ringlets, I remembered the awful stories with which in former days she used to entertain us regarding this reprobate. Her heart was pincushioned with his filial crimes. Under her chesnut front her ladyship’s real head of hair was grey, in consequence of his iniquities. His precocious appetite had devoured the greater part of her jointure. He had treated her many dangerous illnesses with indifference: had been the worst son, the worst brother, the most ill-conducted school-boy, the most immoral young man—the terror of households, the Lovelace of garrison towns, the perverter of young officers; in fact, Lady Baker did not know how she supported existence at all under the agony occasioned by his crimes, and it was only from the possession of a more than ordinarily strong sense of religion that she was enabled to bear her burden.

The captain himself explained these alternating maternal caresses and quarrels in his easy way.

“Saw how the old lady kissed and fondled me?” says he to his brother-in-law. “Quite refreshin’, ain’t it? Hang me, I thought she was goin’ to send me a bit of sweetbread off her own plate. Came up to my room last night, wanted to tuck me up in bed, and abused my brother to me for an hour. You see, when I’m in favour, she always abuses Baker; when he’s in favour she abuses me to him. And my sister-in-law, didn’t she give it my sister-in-law! Oh! I’ll trouble you! And poor Cecilia—why hang me, Mr. Batchelor, she used to go on—this bottle’s corked, I’m hanged if it isn’t—to go on about Cecilia, and call her.... Hullo!”

Here he was interrupted by our host, who said sternly—

“Will you please to forget those quarrels, or not mention them here? Will you have more wine, Batchelor?”

And Lovel rises, and haughtily stalks out of the room. To do Lovel justice, he had a great contempt and dislike for his young brother-in-law, which, with his best magnanimity, he could not at all times conceal.

So our host stalks towards the drawing-room, leaving Captain Clarence sipping wine.

“Don’t go, too,” says the captain. “He’s a confounded rum fellow, my brother-in-law is. He’s a confounded ill-conditioned fellow, too. They always are, you know, these tradesmen fellows, these half-bred ’uns. I used to tell my sister so; but she would have him, because he had such lots of money, you know. And she threw over a fellar she was very fond of; and I told her she’d regret it. I told Lady B. she’d regret it. It was all Lady B.’s doing. She made Cissy throw the fellar over. He was a bad match, certainly, Tom Mountain was; and not a clever fellow, you know, or that sort of thing; but at any rate, he was a gentleman, and better than a confounded sugar-baking beggar out Ratcliff Highway.”

“You seem to find that claret very good!” I remark, speaking, I may say, Socratically, to my young friend, who had been swallowing bumper after bumper.

“Claret good! Yes, doosid good!”

“Well, you see our confounded sugar-baker gives you his best.”

“And why shouldn’t he, hang him? Why, the fellow chokes with money. What does it matter to him how much he spends? You’re a poor man, I dare say. You don’t look as if you were over-flush of money. Well, if you stood a good dinner, it would be all right—I mean it would show—you understand me, you know. But a sugar-baker with ten thousand a year, what does it matter to him, bottle of claret more—less?”

“Let us go into the ladies,” I say.

“Go into mother! I don’t want to go into my mother,” cried out the artless youth. “And I don’t want to go into the sugar-baker, hang him! and I don’t want to go into the children; and I’d rather have a glass of brandy-and-water with you, old boy. Here, you! What’s your name? Bedford! I owe you five-and-twenty shillings, do I, old Bedford? Give us a good glass of Schnaps, and I’ll pay you! Look here, Batchelor. I hate that sugar-baker. Two years ago I drew a bill on him, and he wouldn’t pay it—perhaps he would have paid it, but my sister wouldn’t let him. And, I say, shall we go and have a cigar in your room? My mother’s been abusing you to me like fun this morning. She abuses everybody. She used to abuse Cissy. Cissy used to abuse her—used to fight like two cats....”

And if I narrate this conversation, dear Spartan youth! if I show thee this Helot maundering in his cups, it is that from his odious example thou mayest learn to be moderate in the use of thine own. Has the enemy who has entered thy mouth ever stolen away thy brains? Has wine ever caused thee to blab secrets; to utter egotisms and follies? Beware of it. Has it ever been thy friend at the end of the hard day’s work, the cheery companion of thy companions, the promoter of harmony, kindness, harmless social pleasure? be thankful for it. Two years since, when the comet was blazing in the autumnal sky, I stood on the château-steps of a great claret proprietor. “Boirai-je de ton vin, O comète?” I said, addressing the luminary with the flaming tail. Shall those generous bunches which you ripen yield their juices for me morituro? It was a solemn thought. Ah! my dear brethren! who knows the Order of the Fates? When shall we pass the Gloomy Gates? Which of us goes, which of us waits to drink those famous Fifty-eights? A sermon, upon my word! And pray why not a little homily on an autumn eve over a purple cluster?... If that rickety boy had only drunk claret, I warrant you his tongue would not have blabbed, his hand would not have shaken, his wretched little brain and body would not have reeled with fever.

“’Gad,” said he next day to me, “cut again last night. Have an idea that I abused Lovel. When I have a little wine on board, always speak my mind, don’t you know. Last time I was here in my poor sister’s time, said somethin’ to her, don’t quite know what it was, somethin’ confoundedly true and unpleasant I daresay. I think it was about a fellow she used to go on with before she married the sugar-baker. And I got orders to quit, by Jove, sir—neck and crop, sir, and no mistake! And we gave it one another over the stairs. O my! we did pitch in!—And that was the last time I ever saw Cecilia—give you my word. A doosid unforgiving woman, my poor sister was, and between you and me, Batchelor, as great a flirt as ever threw a fellar over. You should have heard her and my Lady B. go on, that’s all!—Well, mamma, are you going out for a drive in the coachy-poachy?—Not as I knows on, thank you, as I before had the honour to observe. Mr. Batchelor and me are going to play a little game at billiards.” We did, and I won; and, from that day to this, have never been paid my little winnings.

On the day after the doughty captain’s arrival, Miss Prior, in whose face I had remarked a great expression of gloom and care, neither made her appearance at breakfast nor at the children’s dinner. “Miss Prior was a little unwell,” Lady Baker said, with an air of most perfect satisfaction. “Mr. Drencher will come to see her this afternoon, and prescribe for her, I daresay,” adds her ladyship, nodding and winking a roguish eye at me. I was at a loss to understand what was the point of humour which amused Lady B., until she herself explained it.

“My good sir,” she said, “I think Miss Prior is not at all averse to being ill.” And the nods recommenced.

“As how?” I ask.

“To being ill, or at least to calling in the medical man.”

“Attachment between governess and Sawbones I make bold for to presume?” says the captain.

“Precisely, Clarence—a very fitting match. I saw the affair, even before Miss Prior owned it—that is to say, she has not denied it. She says she can’t afford to marry, that she has children enough at home in her brothers and sisters. She is a well-principled young woman, and does credit, Mr. Batchelor, to your recommendation, and the education she has received from her uncle, the Master of St. Boniface.”

“Cissy to school; Pop to Eton; and Miss Whatdyoucall to grind the pestle in Sawbones’ back-shop: I see!” says Captain Clarence. “He seems a low, vulgar blackguard, that Sawbones.”

“Of course, my love; what can you expect from that sort of person?” asks mamma, whose own father was a small attorney, in a small Irish town.

“I wish I had his confounded good health,” cries Clarence, coughing.

“My poor darling!” says mamma.

I said nothing. And so Elizabeth was engaged to that great, broad-shouldered, red-whiskered, young surgeon with the huge appetite and the dubious h’s! Well, why not? What was it to me? Why shouldn’t she marry him? Was he not an honest man, and a fitting match for her? Yes. Very good. Only if I do love a bird or flower to glad me with its dark blue eye, it is the first to fade away. If I have a partiality for a young gazelle it is the first to——paha! What have I to do with this namby-pamby? Can the heart that has truly loved ever forget, and doesn’t it as truly love on to the—stuff! I am past the age of such follies. I might have made a woman happy: I think I should. But the fugacious years have lapsed, my Posthumus! My waist is now a good bit wider than my chest, and it is decreed that I shall be alone!

My tone, then, when next I saw Elizabeth, was sorrowful—not angry. Drencher, the young doctor, came punctually enough, you may be sure, to look after his patient. Little Pinhorn, the children’s maid, led the young practitioner smiling towards the schoolroom regions. His creaking highlows sprang swiftly up the stairs. I happened to be in the hall, and surveyed him with a grim pleasure. “Now he is in the schoolroom,” I thought. “Now he is taking her hand—it is very white—and feeling her pulse. And so on, and so on. Surely, surely Pinhorn remains in the room?” I am sitting on a hall-table as I muse plaintively on these things, and gaze up the stairs by which the Hakeem (great, carroty-whiskered cad!) has passed into the sacred precincts of the harem. As I gaze up the stair, another door opens into the hall; a scowling face peeps through that door, and looks up the stair, too. ’Tis Bedford, who has slid out of his pantry, and watches the doctor. And thou, too, my poor Bedford! Oh! the whole world throbs with vain heart-pangs, and tosses and heaves with longing, unfulfilled desires! All night, and all over the world, bitter tears are dropping as regular as the dew, and cruel memories are haunting the pillow. Close my hot eyes, kind Sleep! Do not visit it, dear delusive images out of the Past! Often your figure shimmers through my dreams, Glorvina. Not as you are now, the stout mother of many children—you always had an alarming likeness to your own mother, Glorvina—but as you were—slim, black-haired, blue-eyed—when your carnation lips warbled the Vale of Avoca, or the Angels’ Whisper. “What!” I say then, looking up the stair, “am I absolutely growing jealous of yon apothecary?—O fool!” And at this juncture, out peers Bedford’s face from the pantry, and I see he is jealous too. I tie my shoe as I sit on the table; I don’t affect to notice Bedford in the least (who, in fact, pops his own head back again as soon as he sees mine). I take my wide-awake from the peg, set it on one side my head, and strut whistling out of the hall door. I stretch over Putney Heath, and my spirit resumes its tranquillity.

I sometimes keep a little journal of my proceedings, and on referring to its pages, the scene rises before me pretty clearly to which the brief notes allude. On this day I find noted: “Friday, July, 14.—B. came down to-day. Seems to require a great deal of attendance from Dr.—Row between dowagers after dinner.” “B.,” I need not remark, is Bessy. “Dr.,” of course, you know. “Row between dowagers,” means a battle royal between Mrs. Bonnington and Lady Baker, such as not unfrequently raged under the kindly Lovel’s roof.

Lady Baker’s gigantic menial Bulkeley condescended to wait at the family dinner at Shrublands, when perforce he had to put himself under Mr. Bedford’s orders. Bedford would gladly have dispensed with the London footman, over whose calves, he said, he and his boy were always tumbling; but Lady Baker’s dignity would not allow her to part from her own man; and her good-natured son-in-law allowed her, and indeed almost all other persons, to have their own way. I have reason to fear Mr. Bulkeley’s morals were loose. Mrs. Bonnington had a special horror of him; his behaviour in the village public-houses where his powder and plush were for ever visible—his freedom of behaviour and conversation before the good lady’s nurse and parlour-maids—provoked her anger and suspicion. More than once, she whispered to me her loathing of this flour-besprinkled monster; and, as much as such a gentle creature could, she showed her dislike to him by her behaviour. The flunkey’s solemn equanimity was not to be disturbed by any such feeble indications of displeasure. From his powdered height, he looked down upon Mrs. Bonnington, and her esteem or her dislike was beneath him.

Now on this Friday night the 14th, Captain Clarence had gone to pass the day in town, and our Bessy made her appearance again, the doctor’s prescriptions having, I suppose, agreed with her. Mr. Bulkeley, who was handing coffee to the ladies, chose to offer none to Miss Prior, and I was amused when I saw Bedford’s heel scrunch down on the flunkey’s right foot, as he pointed towards the governess. The oaths which Bulkeley had to devour in silence must have been frightful. To do the gallant fellow justice, I think he would have died rather than speak before company in a drawing-room. He limped up and offered the refreshment to the young lady, who bowed and declined it.

“Frederick,” Mrs. Bonnington begins, when the coffee-ceremony is over, “now the servants are gone, I must scold you about the waste at your table, my dear. What was the need of opening that great bottle of champagne? Lady Baker only takes two glasses. Mr. Batchelor doesn’t touch it.” (No, thank you, my dear Mrs. Bonnington: too old a stager.) “Why not have a little bottle instead of that great, large, immense one? Bedford is a teetotaler. I suppose it is that London footman who likes it.”

“My dear mother, I haven’t really ascertained his tastes,” says Lovel.

“Then why not tell Bedford to open a pint, dear?” pursues mamma.

“Oh, Bedford—Bedford, we must not mention him, Mrs. Bonnington!” cries Lady Baker. “Bedford is faultless. Bedford has the keys of everything. Bedford is not to be controlled in anything. Bedford is to be at liberty to be rude to my servant.”

“Bedford was admirably kind in his attendance on your daughter, Lady Baker,” says Lovel, his brow darkening: “and as for your man, I should think he was big enough to protect himself from any rudeness of poor Dick!” The good fellow had been angry for one moment, at the next he was all for peace and conciliation.

Lady Baker puts on her superfine air. With that air she had often awe-stricken good, simple Mrs. Bonnington; and she loved to use it whenever city folks or humble people were present. You see she thought herself your superior and mine: as de par le monde there are many artless Lady Bakers who do. “My dear Frederick!” says Lady B. then, putting on her best Mayfair manner, “excuse me for saying, but you don’t know the—the class of servant to which Bulkeley belongs. I had him as a great favour from Lord Toddleby’s. That—that class of servant is not generally accustomed to go out single.”

“Unless they are two behind a carriage-perch they pine away, I suppose,” remarks Mr. Lovel, “as one love-bird does without his mate.”

“No doubt—no doubt,” says Lady B., who does not in the least understand him; “I only say you are not accustomed here—in this kind of establishment, you understand—to that class of——”

But here Mrs. Bonnington could contain her wrath no more. “Lady Baker!” cries that injured mother, “is my son’s establishment not good enough for any powdered wretch in England? Is the house of a British merchant——”

“My dear creature—my dear creature!” interposes her ladyship, “it is the house of a British merchant, and a most comfortable house too.”

“Yes, as you find it,” remarks mamma.

“Yes, as I find it, when I come to take care of that departed angel’s children, Mrs. Bonnington!” (Lady B. here indicates the Cecilian effigy)—“of that dear seraph’s orphans, Mrs. Bonnington! You cannot. You have other duties—other children—a husband, whom you have left at home in delicate health, and who——”

“Lady Baker!” exclaims Mrs. Bonnington, “no one shall say I don’t take care of my dear husband!”

“My dear Lady Baker!—my dear—dear mother!” cries Lovel, éploré, and whimpers aside to me, “They spar in this way every night, when we’re alone. It’s too bad, ain’t it, Batch?”

“I say you do take care of Mr. Bonnington,” Baker blandly resumes (she has hit Mrs. Bonnington on the raw place, and smilingly proceeds to thong again): “I say you do take care of your husband, my dear creature, and that is why you can’t attend to Frederick! And as he is of a very easy temper,—except sometimes with his poor Cecilia’s mother,—he allows all his tradesmen to cheat him; all his servants to cheat him; Bedford to be rude to everybody; and if to me, why not to my servant Bulkeley, with whom Lord Toddleby’s groom of the chambers gave me the very highest character?”

Mrs. Bonnington in a great flurry broke in by saying she was surprised to hear that noblemen had grooms in their chambers: and she thought they were much better in the stables: and when they dined with Captain Huff, you know, Frederick, his man always brought such a dreadful smell of the stable in with him, that——Here she paused. Baker’s eye was on her; and that dowager was grinning a cruel triumph.

“He!—he! You mistake, my good Mrs. Bonnington!” says her ladyship. “Your poor mother mistakes, my dear Frederick. You have lived in a quiet and most respectable sphere, but not, you understand, not——”

“Not what, pray, Lady Baker? We have lived in this neighbourhood twenty years: in my late husband’s time, when we saw a great deal of company, and this dear Frederick was a boy at Westminster School. And we have paid for everything we have had for twenty years; and we have not owed a penny to any tradesman. And we may not have had powdered footmen, six feet high, impertinent beasts, who were rude to all the maids in the place. Don’t—I will speak, Frederick! But servants who loved us, and who were paid their wages, and who—o—ho—ho—ho!”

Wipe your eyes, dear friends! out with all your pocket-handkerchiefs. I protest I cannot bear to see a woman in distress. Of course Fred Lovel runs to console his dear old mother, and vows Lady Baker meant no harm.

“Meant harm! My dear Frederick, what harm can I mean? I only said your poor mother did not seem to know what a groom of the chambers was! How should she?”

“Come—come,” says Frederick, “enough of this! Miss Prior, will you be so kind as to give us a little music?”

Miss Prior was playing Beethoven at the piano, very solemnly and finely, when our Black Sheep returned to this quiet fold, and, I am sorry to say, in a very riotous condition. The brilliancy of his eye, the purple flush on his nose, the unsteady gait, and uncertain tone of voice, told tales of Captain Clarence, who stumbled over more than one chair before he found a seat near me.

“Quite right, old boy,” says he, winking at me. “Cut again—dooshid good fellosh. Better than being along with you shtoopid-old-fogish.” And he began to warble wild “Fol-de-rol-lolls” in an insane accompaniment to the music.

“By heavens, this is too bad!” growls Lovel. “Lady Baker, let your big man carry your son to bed. Thank you, Miss Prior!”

At a final yell, which the unlucky young scapegrace gave, Elizabeth stopped, and rose from the piano, looking very pale. She made her curtsey, and was departing when the wretched young captain sprang up, looked at her, and sank back on the sofa with another wild laugh. Bessy fled away scared, and white as a sheet.

“Take the brute to bed!” roars the master of the house, in great wrath. And scapegrace was conducted to his apartment, whither he went laughing wildly, and calling out, “Come on, old sh-sh-shugarbaker!”

The morning after this fine exhibition, Captain Clarence Baker’s mamma announced to us that her poor dear suffering boy was too ill to come to breakfast, and I believe he prescribed for himself devilled drum-stick and soda-water, of which he partook in his bedroom. Lovel, seldom angry, was violently wrath with his brother-in-law; and, almost always polite, was at breakfast scarcely civil to Lady Baker. I am bound to say that female abused her position. She appealed to Cecilia’s picture a great deal too much during the course of breakfast. She hinted, she sighed, she waggled her head at me, and spoke about “that angel” in the most tragic manner. Angel is all very well: but your angel brought in à tout propos; your departed blessing called out of her grave ever so many times a day; when grandmamma wants to carry a point of her own; when the children are naughty, or noisy; when papa betrays a flickering inclination to dine at his club, or to bring home a bachelor friend or two to Shrublands;—I say your angel always dragged in by the wings into the conversation loses her effect. No man’s heart put on wider crape than Lovel’s at Cecilia’s loss. Considering the circumstances, his grief was most creditable to him: but at breakfast, at lunch, about Bulkeley the footman, about the barouche or the phaeton, or any trumpery domestic perplexity, to have a Deus intersit was too much. And I observed, with some inward satisfaction, that when Baker uttered her pompous funereal phrases, rolled her eyes up to the ceiling, and appealed to that quarter, the children ate their jam and quarrelled and kicked their little shins under the table, Lovel read his paper and looked at his watch to see if it was omnibus time; and Bessy made the tea, quite undisturbed by the old lady’s tragical prattle.

When Baker described her son’s fearful cough and dreadfully feverish state, I said, “Surely, Lady Baker, Mr. Drencher had better be sent for;” and I suppose I uttered the disgusting dissyllable Drencher with a fine sarcastic accent; for once, just once, Bessy’s grey eyes rose through the spectacles and met mine with a glance of unutterable sadness, then calmly settled down on to the slop-basin again, or the urn in which her pale features, of course, were odiously distorted.

“You will not bring anybody home to dinner, Frederick, in my poor boy’s state?” asks Lady B.

“He may stay in his bedroom, I suppose?” replies Lovel.

“He is Cecilia’s brother, Frederick!” cries the lady.

“Conf——” Lovel was beginning. What was he about to say?

“If you are going to confound your angel in heaven, I have nothing to say, sir!” cries the mother of Clarence.

“Parbleu, madame!” cried Lovel, in French; “if he were not my wife’s brother, do you think I would let him stay here?”

“Parly Français? Oui, oui, oui!” cries Pop. “I know what Pa means!”

“And so do I know. And I shall lend uncle Clarence some books which Mr. Bonnington gave me, and——”

“Hold your tongue all!” shouts Lovel, with a stamp of his foot.

“You will, perhaps, have the great kindness to allow me the use of your carriage—or, at least, to wait here until my poor suffering boy can be moved, Mr. Lovel?” says Lady B., with the airs of a martyr.

Lovel rang the bell. “The carriage for Lady Baker—at her ladyship’s hour, Bedford: and the cart for her luggage. Her ladyship and Captain Baker are going away.”

“I have lost one child, Mr. Lovel, whom some people seem to forget. I am not going to murder another! I will not leave this house, sir, unless you drive me from it by force, until the medical man has seen my boy!” And here she and sorrow sat down again. She was always giving warning. She was always fitting the halter and traversing the cart, was Lady B., but she for ever declined to drop the handkerchief and have the business over. I saw by a little shrug in Bessy’s shoulders, what the governess’s views were of the matter: and, in a word, Lady B. no more went away on this day, than she had done on forty previous days when she announced her intention of going. She would accept benefits, you see, but then she insulted her benefactors, and so squared accounts.

That great healthy, florid, scarlet-whiskered, medical wretch came at about twelve, saw Mr. Baker and prescribed for him: and of course he must have a few words with Miss Prior, and inquire into the state of her health. Just as on the previous occasion, I happened to be in the hall when Drencher went upstairs; Bedford happened to be looking out of his pantry-door: I burst into a yell of laughter when I saw Dick’s livid face—the sight somehow suited my savage soul.

No sooner was Medicus gone, when Bessy, grave and pale, in bonnet and spectacles, came sliding downstairs. I do not mean down the banister, which was Pop’s favourite method of descent, but slim, tall, noiseless, in a nunlike calm, she swept down the steps. Of course, I followed her. And there was Master Bedford’s nose peeping through the pantry-door at us, as we went out with the children. Pray, what business of his was it to be always watching anybody who walked with Miss Prior?

“So, Bessy,” I said, “what report does Mr.—hem!—Mr. Drencher—give of the interesting invalid?”

“Oh, the most horrid! He says that Captain Baker has several times had a dreadful disease brought on by drinking, and that he is mad when he has it. He has delusions, sees demons, when he is in this state—wants to be watched.”

“Drencher tells you everything.”

She says meekly: “He attends us when we are ill.”

I remark, with fine irony: “He attends the whole family: he is always coming to Shrublands!”

“He comes very often,” Miss Prior says, gravely.

“And do you mean to say, Bessy,” I cry, madly cutting off two or three heads of yellow broom with my stick—“do you mean to say a fellow like that, who drops his h’s about the room, is a welcome visitor?”

“I should be very ungrateful if he were not welcome, Mr. Batchelor,” says Miss Prior. “And call me by my surname, please—and he has taken care of all my family—and——”

“And of course, of course, of course, Miss Prior!” say I, brutally; “and this is the way the world wags; and this is the way we are ill, and are cured; and we are grateful to the doctor that cures us!”

She nods her grave head. “You used to be kinder to me once, Mr. Batchelor, in old days—in your—in my time of trouble! Yes, my dear, that is a beautiful bit of broom! Oh, what a fine butterfly!” (Cecilia scours the plain after the butterfly.) “You used to be kinder to me once—when we were both unhappy.”

“I was unhappy,” I say, “but I survived. I was ill, but I am now pretty well, thank you. I was jilted by a false, heartless woman. Do you suppose there are no other heartless women in the world?” And I am confident, if Bessy’s breast had not been steel, the daggers which darted out from my eyes would have bored frightful stabs in it.

But she shook her head, and looked at me so sadly that my eye-daggers tumbled down to the ground at once; for you see, though I am a jealous Turk, I am a very easily appeased jealous Turk; and if I had been Bluebeard, and my wife, just as I was going to decapitate her, had lifted up her head from the block and cried a little, I should have dropped my scimitar, and said, “Come, come, Fatima, never mind for the present about that key and closet business, and I’ll chop your head off some other morning.” I say, Bessy disarmed me. Pooh! I say. Women will make a fool of me to the end. Ah! ye gracious Fates! Cut my thread of life ere it grow too long. Suppose I were to live till seventy, and some little wretch of a woman were to set her cap at me? She would catch me—I know she would. All the males of our family have been spoony and soft, to a degree perfectly ludicrous and despicable to contemplate——Well, Bessy Prior, putting a hand out, looked at me, and said,—

“You are the oldest and best friend I have ever had, Mr. Batchelor—the only friend.”

“Am I, Elizabeth?” I gasp, with a beating heart.

“Cissy is running back with a butterfly.” (Our hands unlock.) “Don’t you see the difficulties of my position? Don’t you know that ladies are often jealous of governesses; and that unless—unless they imagined I was—I was favourable to Mr. Drencher, who is very good and kind—the ladies at Shrublands might not like my remaining alone in the house with—with—you understand?” A moment the eyes look over the spectacles: at the next, the meek bonnet bows down towards the ground.

I wonder did she hear the bump—bumping of my heart? O heart!—O wounded heart! did I ever think thou wouldst bump—bump again? “Egl—Egl—izabeth,” I say, choking with emotion, “do, do, do you—te—tell me—you don’t—don’t—don’t—lo—love that apothecary?”

She shrugs her shoulder—her charming shoulder.

“And if,” I hotly continue, “if a gentleman—if a man of mature age certainly, but who has a kind heart and four hundred a-year of his own—were to say to you, ‘Elizabeth! will you bid the flowers of a blighted life to bloom again?—Elizabeth! will you soothe a wounded heart?’”——

“Oh, Mr. Batchelor!” she sighed, and then added quickly, “Please, don’t take my hand. Here’s Pop.”

And that dear child (bless him!) came up at the moment, saying, “Oh, Miss Prior! look here! I’ve got such a jolly big toadstool!” And next came Cissy, with a confounded butterfly. O Richard the Third! Haven’t you been maligned because you smothered two little nuisances in a Tower? What is to prove to me that you did not serve the little brutes right, and that you weren’t a most humane man? Darling Cissy coming up, then, in her dear, charming way, says, “You shan’t take Mr. Batchelor’s hand, you shall take my hand!” And she tosses up her little head, and walks with the instructress of her youth.

“Ces enfans ne comprennent guère le Français,” says Miss Prior, speaking very rapidly.

“Après lonche?” I whisper. The fact is, I was so agitated, I hardly knew what the French for lunch was. And then our conversation dropped: and the beating of my own heart was all the sound I heard.

Lunch came. I couldn’t eat a bit: I should have choked. Bessy ate plenty, and drank a glass of beer. It was her dinner, to be sure. Young Blacksheep did not appear. We did not miss him. When Lady Baker began to tell her story of George IV. at Slane Castle, I went into my own room. I took a book. Books? Paha! I went into the garden. I took out a cigar. But no, I would not smoke it. Perhaps she——many people don’t like smoking.

I went into the garden. “Come into the garden, Maud.” I sate by a large lilac bush. I waited. Perhaps, she would come. The morning-room windows were wide open on to the lawn. Will she never come? Ah! what is that tall form advancing? gliding—gliding into the chamber like a beauteous ghost? Who most does like an angel show, you may be sure ’tis she. She comes up to the glass. She lays her spectacles down on the mantel-piece. She puts a slim white hand over her auburn hair and looks into the mirror. Elizabeth, Elizabeth! I come!

As I came up, I saw a horrid little grinning, debauched face surge over the back of a great arm-chair and look towards Elizabeth. It was Captain Blacksheep, of course. He laid his elbows over the chair. He looked keenly and with a diabolical smile at the unconscious girl; and just as I reached the window, he cried out, “Betsy Bellenden, by Jove!”

Elizabeth turned round, gave a little cry, and——but what happened I shall tell in the ensuing chapter.