The doctor stole back to the room, and presently Sir Robert came forth.
He kissed me on the forehead while his tears fell upon my head.
“My dear,” he said, “I ask your pardon in the name of my headstrong son. We have held an honourable name for five hundred years and more: in all that time no deed so dastardly has been attempted by any one of our house. Yet the poor wretch hath paid dearly for his wickedness.”
“Oh, sir!” I cried, “there is no reason why you should speak of forgiveness, who have ever been so kind to me. Poor Will will repent and be very good when he recovers.”
“I think,” said his father sadly, “that he will not recover. Go, child. Ask not to see the boy’s mother, because women are unreasonable in their grief, and she might perchance say things of which she would afterwards be ashamed. Go to Mrs. Pimpernel, and tell her of thy safety.”
This was, indeed, all that could be done. Yet after allaying the terrors and soothing the agitated spirits of Mrs. Esther, whose imagination had conjured up, already, the fate of Clarissa, and who saw in headstrong Will another Lovelace, without, to be sure, the graces and attractions of that dreadful monster, I went to inquire after my gallant little Poet.
He was lying on his bed, with orders not to move, and wrapped up like a baby.
I thanked him for his brave defence, which I said would have been certainly efficacious, had it not been for the cowardly blow on the back of his head. I further added, that no man in the world could have behaved more resolutely, or with greater courage.
“This day,” he said, “has been the reward for a Poet’s devotion. In those bowers, Miss Kitty, when first we met”—the bower was the Fleet Market—“beside that stream”—the Fleet Ditch—“where the woodland choir was held”—the clack of the poultry about to be killed—“and the playful lambs frisked”—on their way to the butchers of Newgate Street—“I dared to love a goddess who was as much too high for me as ever Beatrice was for her Italian worshipper. I refer not to the disparity of birth, because (though brought up in a hosier’s shop) the Muse, you have acknowledged, confers nobility. An attorney is by right of his calling styled a gentleman; but a Poet, by right of his genius, is equal of—ay, even of Lord Chudleigh.”
“Surely, dear sir,” I replied, “no one can refuse the highest title of distinction to a gentleman of merit and genius.”