"Encore!" exclaimed Mr Catsbach, striking his bow across the fiddle. "Donner und blitzen!—der teufel!—now, den!" and the dancing was once more resumed. So I sat silent and horror-struck, with my flute lying quietly on the ledge of the music-desk before me. I had blackened my eyebrows, and wore a false beard, with a tuft on the lower lip. There was no chance of recognition, and I had a curiosity to see the gentleman who had been so generous and friendly at the examination of Puddlecombe-Regis school. I was anxious, also, to see the beautiful little girl who had made such an impression on the hearts of all the scholars, and deepest, perhaps of all, on mine.
"Very odd," continued Mr Baggles, renewing the conversation with his friend, "that we should be speaking of the Pybuses at the very moment they made their appearance. Emily, I suppose, would never forgive you if she thought you cared a straw for Malvina Hoddie?"
"She would be very severe," replied Mr Hooker. "She's very sharp, and can say such cutting things." At which words he seemed to shudder, as if at some appalling recollection of her powers of repartee.
"Why don't you read Punch and Joe Miller, and learn to retort? She's very young, and ought to be put down."
"She doesn't think sixteen so very young; and as she is the pet at home, and an immense heiress, it is not so very easy to gain a victory over her, if you were as witty as the Honourable Bob Chockers of the Blues."
"Your true plan is to keep in with the father. He is a jolly old ass, and very fond of high society. If you were a lord, you might have Emily for the asking."
"I know a good many lords," replied Mr Hooker, "and that's the next thing to being one myself. But here comes Emily and the ancients."
O, the change that two years produce on a girl of fourteen!—two years of health, and wealth, and education! There came towards us, from the outer drawing-room, a figure as perfect as ever was revealed to sculptor—with intelligence and sweetness radiating from a countenance such as no sculptor could ever fix in marble. She did not walk, she touched the floor with her feet, and seemed to repress a bound at every step, that would have sent her dancing in like a Hebe holding forth a wine-cup, or like one of the nymphs of Venus, who are all far prettier, I beg to say, than Venus herself—tripping forward and scattering roses on the pathway of the goddess. Never did I see so radiant a beauty, combined (when you examined the features, the firm lip, and high imperial brow) with as much dignity and power. The dignity and power were hidden, to be sure, below the transparent veil of her sixteen summers; but there they were, ready to expand when that veil was removed—a dissolving view, as it were, where the solid outlines and severe majesty of a Grecian temple were already faintly visible over the disappearing lineaments of a bower in fairyland. From this glorious apparition I looked to Mr Hooker—good features, but inexpressive; eyes blue and feeble; nose finely chiselled, but effeminate; lips well shaped, but uneducated; and a bearing mock-easy, mock-aristocratic—loud, conceited, contemptible! I could have killed him with ineffable delight.
Her father was unchanged; the same stately presence, the same benevolent smile, the same appearance of having Golconda in one pocket, and the Bank of England in the other, and a chuckle in his voice as if his throat was filled with guineas. How is it, thought I, as I looked at the father and daughter, that wealth always softens and refines the woman, while it only swells out and amplifies the man? In the man, we see the counting-house resisting, or ill accommodating itself to the drawing-room. There is either an uneasy effort to escape from the ledger, or a still more painful attempt to convert it into a book of fashionable life. He has had fights about sugar in the morning, disquisitions with underwriters, reports of bankruptcies in Ceylon, of short crops in Jamaica, or a fall in the funds in Mexico, and he finds it impossible to give himself up entirely to the careless enjoyment of an evening assemblage of friends, and yet cannot relieve his mind by making the objects of his thoughts the subject of his conversation. So he takes to political talk, by way of doing the genteel, and discusses Lord George, or Sir Robert, or Lord John, in the violent effort he makes to escape from indigo and muscovadoes. With the daughter how different! Here wealth merely represents the absence of those petty and worrying annoyances which narrow the circle of thought, when a grim vision of the weekly bills is seldom long absent from the mind. She has magnificence, luxury, refinement all round her, and imbibes a grace from the very furniture and ornaments of her room. A blue sea with its tossing waves, by Stanfield, insinuates its life and freshness into her habitual thoughts—vases from the antique, statues from Canova, and flowers from Chiswick, are her daily and homely companions. Her nature gets raised to what it works in; and though her mother is not very intimate with Lindley Murray, and her father has some strange ideas about the letter H, she is as graceful, as pure, and elegant, as if she could trace up her lineage to the Plantagenets.
"O, such a funny thing!" said Mr Hooker, as Emily came up to where he stood. "Your very name made a conquest of one of the fiddlers, and he broke down the moment you came in. He'll get such a wigging from his commander-in-chief."