MADCAP VIOLET.
By William Black.
CHAPTER XLIV.
JOY AND FEAR.
Was this man mad, that he, an invalid, propped up in his chair, and scarcely able to move a wine-glass out of his way, should play pranks with the whole created order of things, tossing about solar systems as if they were no more than juggler's balls, and making universal systems of philosophy jump through hoops as if he were a lion tamer in a den? These poor women did not know where to catch him. Violet used to say that he was like a prism, taking the ordinary daylight of life and splitting it up into a thousand gay and glancing colors. That was all very well as a spectacular exhibition; but how when he was apparently instructing them in some serious matter? Was it fair to these tender creatures who had so lovingly nursed him, that he should assume the airs of a teacher, and gravely lead out his trusting disciples into the desert places of the earth, when his only object was to get them into a bog and then suddenly reveal himself as a will-o'-the-wisp, laughing at them with a fiendish joy?
What, for example, was all this nonsense about the land question—about the impossibility of settling it in England so long as the superstitious regard for land existed in the English mind? They were quite ready to believe him. They deprecated that superstition most sincerely. They could not understand why a moneyed Englishman's first impulse was to go and buy land; they could give no reason for the delusion existing in the bosom of every Englishman that he, if no one else, could make money out of the occupation of a farm that had ruined a dozen men in succession. All this was very well; but what were they to make of his sudden turning round and defending that superstition as the most beautiful sentiment in human nature? It was, according to him, the sublimest manifestation of filial love—the instinct of affection for the great mother of us all. And then the flowers became our small sisters and brothers; and the dumb look of appeal in a horse's eye, and the singing of a thrush at the break of day—these were but portions of the inarticulate language now no longer known to us. What was any human being to make of this rambling nonsense?
It all came of the dress coat, and of his childish vanity in his white wristbands. It was the first occasion on which he had ceremoniously dressed for dinner; and Violet had come over; and he was as proud of his high and stiff collar, and of his white necktie, as if they had been the ribbon and star of a royal order. And then they were all going off the next morning—Miss North included—to a strange little place on the other side of the Isle of Wight; and he had gone "clean daft" with the delight of expectation. There was nothing sacred from his mischievous fancy. He would have made fun of a bishop. In fact he did; for, happening to talk of inarticulate language, he described having seen "the other day," in Buckingham Palace road, a bishop who was looking at some china in a shop window; and he went on to declare how a young person driving a perambulator, and too earnestly occupied with a sentry on the other side of the road, incontinently drove that perambulator right on to the carefully swathed toes of the bishop; and then he devoted himself to analyzing the awful language which he saw on the afflicted man's face.
"But, uncle," said Amy Warrener, with the delightful freshness of fifteen, "how could you see anybody in Buckingham Palace road the other day, when you haven't been out of the house for months?"