“Yes,” resumed Mrs. Arundel, “as you say, Rose, what can it be? something in one of the Government offices, perhaps.”
“Curator of Madame Tussaud’s Exhibition, and Master of the Robes to the waxwork figures, more likely,” replied Lewis, laughing. “Or what say you to a civic appointment? Mace-bearer to the Lord Mayor, for instance; though I believe it requires a seven years’ apprenticeship to eating turtle soup and venison to entitle one to such an honour. Seriously, though, if Frere wishes me to take it, I will, whatever it may be, after all his kindness to me, and Faust too. Faust, mein kind! here’s an invitation for you, and a mutton bone in prospect—hold up your head, my dog, you are come to honour.” And thus Lewis rattled on, partly because the ray of sunshine that gleamed on his darkened fortunes had sufficed to raise his naturally buoyant spirits, and partly to prevent the possibility of his mother offering any effectual resistance to his wish—or, more properly speaking, his resolution—to devote himself to the one object of supporting her and Rose in their present position.
It was well for the success of his scheme that Mrs. Arundel had, on the strength of the £300 per annum, allowed her imagination to depict some distinguished appointment (of what nature she had not the most distant notion), which, with innumerable prospective advantages, was about to be submitted to her son’s consideration. Dazzled by this brilliant phantom, she allowed herself to be persuaded to write a civil rejection of Lady Lombard’s patronage, and took leave of her son with an April face, in which, after a short struggle, the smiles had it all their own way.
Rose neither laughed nor cried, but she clung to her brother’s neck (standing on tiptoe to do it, for she was so good, every bit of her, that Nature could not afford to make a very tall woman out of such precious materials), and whispered to him, in her sweet, silvery voice, if he should not quite like this appointment, or if he ever for a moment wished to change his plan, how very happy it would make her to be allowed to go out and earn money by teaching, just for a few years, till they grew richer; and Lewis pressed her to his heart, and loved her so well for saying it, ay, and meaning it too, that he felt he would die rather than let her do it. And so two people who cared for each other more than for all the world beside, parted, having, after a three years’ separation, enjoyed each other’s society for two days. Not that there was anything remarkable in this, it being a notorious though inexplicable fact that the more we like people, the less we are certain to see of them.
We have wearied our brain in the vain endeavour to find a reason for this phenomenon, and should feel greatly indebted to any philosophical individual who would write a treatise on “The perversity of remote contingencies, and the aggravating nature of things in general,” whereby some light might be thrown upon this obscure subject. We recommend the matter more particularly to the notice of the British Association of Science.
And having seated Lewis on the box of a real good old-fashioned stage coach (alas! that, Dodo-like, the genus should be all but extinct, and nothing going, nowadays, but those wonderful, horrible, convenient, stupendous nuisances, railroads; rattling, with their “resonant steam-eagles,” as Mrs. Browning calls the locomotives), with Faust between his knees, apparently studying with the air of a connoisseur the “get up” of a spanking team of greys, we will leave him to prosecute his journey to London; reserving for another chapter the adventures which befell him in the modern Babylon.
CHAPTER III.—IN WHICH RICHARD FRERE MENDS THE BACK OF ST. THOMAS AQUINAS, AND THE READER IS INTRODUCED TO CHARLEY LEICESTER.
Richard Frere lived in a moderate-sized house in a street in the vicinity of Bedford Square. It was not exactly a romantic situation, neither was it aristocratic nor fashionable; but it was respectable and convenient, and therefore had Frere chosen it; for he was a practical man in the proper sense of the term—by which we do not mean that he thought James Watt greater than Shakespeare, but that he possessed that rare quality, good common sense, and regulated his conduct by it; and as in the course of this veracious history we shall hear and see a good deal of Richard Frere, it may tend to elucidate matters if we tell the reader at once who and what he was, and “in point of fact,” as Cousin Phoenix would say, all about him.