The next day, perhaps with the idea of removing all scruple from Sophy’s mind, Waife had already gone after his investment when the friends arrived. Sophy at first was dull and dispirited, but by degrees she brightened up; and when, the sitting over and the picture done (save such final touches as Vance reserved for solitary study), she was permitted to gaze at her own effigy, she burst into exclamations of frank delight. “Am I like that! is it possible? Oh, how beautiful! Mr. Merle, Mr. Merle, Mr. Merle!” and running out of the room before Vance could stop her, she returned with the Cobbler, followed, too, by a thin gaunt girl, whom he pompously called his housekeeper, but who in sober truth was servant-of-all-work. Wife he had none: his horoscope, he said, having Saturn in square to the Seventh House, forbade him to venture upon matrimony. All gathered round the picture; all admired, and with justice: it was a chef-d’oeuvre. Vance in his maturest day never painted more charmingly. The three pounds proved to be the best outlay of capital he had ever made. Pleased with his work, he was pleased even with that unsophisticated applause.
“You must have Mercury and Venus very strongly aspected,” quoth the Cobbler; “and if you have the Dragon’s Head in the Tenth House, you may count on being much talked of after you are dead.”
“After I am dead!—sinister omen!” said Vance, discomposed. “I have no faith in artists who count on being talked of after they are dead. Never knew a dauber who did not! But stand back: time flies; tie up your hair; put on your bonnet, Titania. You have a shawl?—not tinsel, I hope! quieter the better. You stay and see to her, Lionel.”
Said the gaunt servant-of-all-work to Mr. Merle, “I’d let the gentleman paint me, if he likes: shall I tell him, master?”
“Go back to the bacon, foolish woman. Why, he gave L3 for her likeness, ‘cause of her Benefics! But you’d have to give him three years’ wages afore he’d look you straight in the face, ‘cause, you see, your Aspects are crooked. And,” added the Cobbler, philosophizing, “when the Malefics are dead agin a girl’s mug, man is so constituted by natur’ that he can’t take to that mug unless it has a golden handle. Don’t fret, ‘t is not your fault: born under Scorpio,—coarse-limbed,—dull complexion; and the Head of the Dragon aspected of Infortunes in all your Angles.”
CHAPTER XIV.
The historian takes advantage of the summer hours vouchsafed to the
present life of Mr. Waife’s grandchild, in order to throw a few
gleams of light on her past.—He leads her into the palace of our
kings, and moralizes thereon; and, entering the Royal Gardens, shows
the uncertainty of human events, and the insecurity of British laws,
by the abrupt seizure and constrained deportation of an innocent and
unforeboding Englishman.
Such a glorious afternoon! The capricious English summer was so kind that day to the child and her new friends! When Sophy’s small foot once trod the sward, had she been really Queen of the Green People, sward and footstep could not more joyously have met together. The grasshopper bounded in fearless trust upon the hem of her frock; she threw herself down on the grass and caught him, but, oh, so tenderly! and the gay insect, dear to poet and fairy, seemed to look at her from that quaint sharp face of his with sagacious recognition, resting calmly on the palm of her pretty hand; then when he sprang off, little moth-like butterflies peculiar to the margins of running waters quivered up from the herbage, fluttering round her. And there, in front, lay the Thames, glittering through the willows, Vance getting ready the boat, Lionel seated by her side, a child like herself, his pride of incipient manhood all forgotten; happy in her glee; she loving him for the joy she felt, and blending his image evermore in her remembrance with her first summer holiday,—with sunny beams, glistening leaves, warbling birds, fairy wings, sparkling waves. Oh, to live so in a child’s heart,—innocent, blessed, angel-like,—better, better than the troubled reflection upon woman’s later thoughts, better than that mournful illusion, over which tears so bitter are daily shed,—better than First Love! They entered the boat. Sophy had never, to the best of her recollection, been in a boat before. All was new to her: the lifelike speed of the little vessel; that world of cool green weeds, with the fish darting to and fro; the musical chime of oars; those distant stately swans. She was silent now—her heart was very full.
“What are you thinking of, Sophy?” asked Lionel, resting on the oar.