"May I go and see Bold, sir?" said I, summoning up courage as my late captors quitted the room.
"Quite right, my little man," replied the Baronet, "so you shall, this evening; but in the meantime, I hope you'll all stay and dine with me. I'll write to your master--what's his name?--and send you back in the carriage at night; what say you, Mr. Ropsley? I can give you a capital bottle of claret."
So here were we, who one short hour before had been making up our minds to endure with fortitude the worst that could happen,--who had expected to be driven with ignominy from Beverley, and handed over to condign punishment on our return to school, if indeed we were fortunate enough to escape committal and imprisonment in the County Gaol,--now installed as honoured guests in the very mansion which we had so long looked upon as a terra incognita of fairyland, free to visit the "hins-and-houts" of Beverley, with no thanks to the "King of Naples" for his assistance, and, in short, raised at one step from the abyss of schoolboy despair to the height of schoolboy gratification. Victor's delight was even greater than mine as we were shown into a pretty little dressing-room overlooking the garden, to wash our hands before dinner. He said it reminded him of home, and made him feel "like a gentleman" once more.
What a dinner that was to which we sat down in the stately old dining-room, served upon massive plate by a butler and two footmen, whose magnificence made me feel quite shy in my comparative insignificance. Ropsley of course seemed as much at home as if he was in the habit of dining there every day, and Victor munched away with an appetite that seemed to afford our good-natured host immense gratification. Soup and fish, entrées of every description, hashed venison, iced champagne--how grateful after our hot pursuit in the summer sun--and all the minor luxuries of silver forks, clean napkins, finger-glasses, etc., were indeed a contrast to the plain roast mutton and potatoes, the two-pronged fork, and washy table-beer of our Everdon bill-of-fare. What I liked, though, better than all the eatables and drinkables, was a picture opposite which I sat, and which riveted my attention so much as to attract the observation of Sir Harry himself.
"Ha! Egerton," said he, "you are your father all over, I see. Just like him, wild about painting. Now I'll bet my life you're finding fault with the colouring of that picture. The last time he was here he vowed, if I would let him, he would paint it all over again; and yet it's one of the best pictures in England at this moment. What do you think of it, my boy? Could you paint as good a one?"
"No, sir," I replied modestly, and rather annoyed at my reverie being interrupted; "my father tries to teach me, but--but I cannot learn to paint."
Sir Harry turned away, and Ropsley whispered something about "very odd"--"poor little fellow." The dessert had just been put on the table, and Victor was busy with his strawberries and cream. There must be some truth in magnetism, there must be something in the doctrine of attraction and repulsion: why do we like some people as we dislike others, without any shadow of a reason? Homoeopathists tell us that the nausea which contracts our features at the smell of a drug, is a provision of Nature to guard us against poison. Can it be that these antipathies are implanted in our being to warn us of those who shall hereafter prove our enemies? it is not a charitable theory nor a Christian-like, and yet in my experience of life I have found many instances in which it has borne a strange semblance of truth.
"Men feel by instinct swift as light
The presence of the foe,
Whom God has marked in after years
To strike the mortal blow.
The other, though his brand be sheathed,
At banquet or in hall,
Hath a forebodement of the time
When one or both must fall."
So sings "the minstrel" in his poem of Bothwell, but Bothwell was not written at the time of which I speak, and the only poetry I had ever heard to justify my antipathies was the homely quatrain of Dr. Fell. Still I felt somehow from that moment I hated Ropsley; it was absurd, it was ungrateful, it was ungentlemanlike, but it was undeniable.
So I buried myself in the contemplation of the picture, which possessed for me a strange fascination. The subject was Queen Dido transfixed on her funeral pyre, the very infandum regina to whose history I owed so many school-room sorrows. I began to think I should never hate Virgil again. The whole treatment of the picture was to the last degree unnatural, and the colouring, even to my inexperienced eye, faulty and overdone. Yet that face of mute sorrow and resignation spoke at once to the heart; the Queen lay gazing on the distant galleys which were bearing away her love, and curling their beaks and curvetting, so to speak, up-hill on a green sea, in a manner that must have made the task of Palinurus no easy one when he undertook to steer the same. Her limbs were disposed stiffly, but not ungracefully, on the fatal couch, and her white bosom was pierced by the deadly blade. Yet on her sweet, sad countenance the artist had depicted with wonderful skill the triumph of mental over bodily anguish; and though the features retained all woman's softness and woman's beauty, you read the breaking heart beneath. I could have looked at that picture for hours, I was lost in it even then, but the door opened, and whilst Ropsley got up with a flourish and his most respectful bow, in walked the young lady whom we had met under far different circumstances some three hours before in the shrubbery, and quietly took her place by the side of her papa.