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_ BOOK I CHAPTER XIV
The historian takes advantage of the summer hours vouchsafed to the
present life of Mr. Waife's grandchild, in order to throw a few
gleams of light on her past.--He leads her into the palace of our
kings, and moralizes thereon; and, entering the Royal Gardens, shows
the uncertainty of human events, and the insecurity of British laws,
by the abrupt seizure and constrained deportation of an innocent and
unforeboding Englishman.
Such a glorious afternoon! The capricious English summer was so kind
that day to the child and her new friends! When Sophy's small foot once
trod the sward, had she been really Queen of the Green People, sward
and footstep could not more joyously have met together. The grasshopper
bounded in fearless trust upon the hem of her frock; she threw herself
down on the grass and caught him, but, oh, so tenderly! and the gay
insect, dear to poet and fairy, seemed to look at her from that quaint
sharp face of his with sagacious recognition, resting calmly on the
palm of her pretty hand; then when he sprang off, little moth-like
butterflies peculiar to the margins of running waters quivered up from
the herbage, fluttering round her. And there, in front, lay the Thames,
glittering through the willows, Vance getting ready the boat, Lionel
seated by her side, a child like herself, his pride of incipient manhood
all forgotten; happy in her glee; she loving him for the joy she felt,
and blending his image evermore in her remembrance with her first summer
holiday,--with sunny beams, glistening leaves, warbling birds, fairy
wings, sparkling waves. Oh, to live so in a child's heart,--innocent,
blessed, angel-like,--better, better than the troubled reflection upon
woman's later thoughts, better than that mournful illusion, over which
tears so bitter are daily shed,--better than First Love! They entered
the boat. Sophy had never, to the best of her recollection, been in
a boat before. All was new to her: the lifelike speed of the little
vessel; that world of cool green weeds, with the fish darting to and
fro; the musical chime of oars; those distant stately swans. She was
silent now--her heart was very full.
"What are you thinking of, Sophy?" asked Lionel, resting on the oar.
"Thinking!--I was not thinking."
"What then?"
"I don't know,--feeling, I suppose."
"Feeling what?"
"As if between sleeping and waking; as the water perhaps feels, with the
sunlight on it!"
"Poetical," said Vance, who, somewhat of a poet himself, naturally
sneered at poetical tendencies in others; "but not so bad in its way.
Ah, have I hurt your vanity? there are tears in your eyes."
"No, sir," said Sophy, falteringly. "But I was thinking then."
"Ah," said the artist, "that's the worst of it; after feeling ever comes
thought; what was yours?"
"I was sorry poor Grandfather was not here, that's all."
"It was not our fault: we pressed him cordially," said Lionel.
"You did indeed, sir, thank you! And I don't know why he refused you."
The young men exchanged compassionate glances.
Lionel then sought to make her talk of her past life, tell him more of
Mrs. Crane. Who and what was she?
Sophy could not or would not tell. The remembrances were painful; she
had evidently tried to forget them. And the people with whom Waife had
placed her, and who had been kind?
The Misses Burton; and they kept a day-school, and taught Sophy to read,
write, and cipher. They lived near London, in a lane opening on a great
common, with a green rail before the house, and had a good many pupils,
and kept a tortoise shell cat and a canary. Not much to enlighten her
listener did Sophy impart here.
And now they neared that stately palace, rich in associations of storm
and splendour,--of the grand Cardinal; the iron-clad Protector; Dutch
William of the immortal memory, whom we tried so hard to like, and in
spite of the great Whig historian, that Titian of English prose, can
only frigidly respect. Hard task for us Britons to like a Dutchman who
dethrones his father-in-law, and drinks schnaps! Prejudice certainly;
but so it is. Harder still to like Dutch William's unfilial Fran! Like
Queen Mary! I could as soon like Queen Goneril! Romance flies from the
prosperous phlegmatic AEneas; flies from his plump Lavinia, his "fidus
Achates," Bentinck; flies to follow the poor deserted fugitive Stuart,
with all his sins upon his head. Kings have no rights divine, except
when deposed and fallen; they are then invested with the awe that
belongs to each solemn image of mortal vicissitude,--vicissitude that
startles the Epicurean, "insanientis sapientiae consultus," and strikes
from his careless lyre the notes that attest a god! Some proud shadow
chases another from the throne of Cyrus, and Horace hears in the thunder
the rush of Diespiter, and identifies Providence with the Fortune that
snatches off the diadem in her whirring swoop. But fronts discrowned
take a new majesty to generous natures: in all sleek prosperity there is
something commonplace; in all grand adversity, something royal.
The boat shot to the shore; the young people landed, and entered the
arch of the desolate palace. They gazed on the great hall and the
presence-chamber, and the long suite of rooms with faded portraits;
Vance as an artist, Lionel as an enthusiastic, well-read boy, Sophy as
a wondering, bewildered, ignorant child. And then they emerged into the
noble garden, with its regal trees. Groups were there of well dressed
persons. Vance heard himself called by name. He had forgotten the London
world,--forgotten, amidst his midsummer ramblings, that the London
season was still ablaze; and there, stragglers from the great focus,
fine people, with languid tones and artificial jaded smiles, caught him
in his wanderer's dress, and walking side by side with the infant wonder
of Mr. Rugge's show, exquisitely neat indeed, but still in a coloured
print, of a pattern familiar to his observant eye in the windows of many
a shop lavish of tickets, and inviting you to come in by the assurance
that it is "selling off." The artist stopped, coloured, bowed, answered
the listless questions put to him with shy haste: he then attempted to
escape; they would not let him.
"You MUST come back and dine with us at the Star and Garter," said Lady
Selina Vipont. "A pleasant party,--you know most of them,--the Dudley
Slowes, dear old Lady Frost, those pretty Ladies Prymme, Janet and
Wilhelmina."
"We can't let you off," said, sleepily, Mr. Crampe, a fashionable wit,
who rarely made more than one bon mot in the twenty-four hours, and
spent the rest of his time in a torpid state.
VANCE.--"Really you are too kind, but I am not even dressed for--"
LADY SELINA.--"So charmingly dressed-so picturesque! Besides, what
matters? Every one knows who you are. Where on earth have you been?"
VANCE.--"Rambling about, taking sketches."
LADY SELINA (directing her eyeglass towards Lionel and Sophy, who stood
aloof).--"But your companions, your brother? and that pretty little
girl,--your sister, I suppose?"
VANCE (shuddering).--"No, not relations. I took charge of the
boy,--clever young fellow; and the little girl is--"
LADY SELINA.--"Yes. The little girl is--"
VANCE.--"A little girl, as you see: and very pretty, as you
say,--subject for a picture."
LADY SELINA (indifferently).--"Oh, let the children go and amuse
themselves somewhere. Now we have found you; positively you are our
prisoner."
Lady Selina Vipont was one of the queens of London; she had with her
that habit of command natural to such royalties. Frank Vance was no
tuft-hunter, but once under social influences, they had their effect
on him, as on most men who are blest with noses in the air. Those great
ladies, it is true, never bought his pictures; but they gave him the
position which induced others to buy them. Vance loved his art; his art
needed its career. Its career was certainly brightened and quickened by
the help of rank and fashion.
In short, Lady Selina triumphed, and the painter stepped back to Lionel.
"I must go to Richmond with these people. I know you'll excuse me.
I shall be back to-night somehow. By the by, as you are going to the
post-office here for the letter you expect from your mother, ask for
my letters too. You will take care of little Sophy, and [in a whisper]
hurry her out of the garden, or that Grand Mogul feminine, Lady Selina,
whose condescension would crush the Andes, will be stopping her as my
_protege_, falling in raptures with that horrid coloured print, saying,
'Dear, what pretty sprigs! where can such things be got?' and learning
perhaps how Frank Vance saved the Bandit's Child from the Remorseless
Baron. 'T is your turn now. Save your friend. The Baron was a lamb
compared to a fine lady." He pressed Lionel's unresponding hand, and was
off to join the polite merrymaking of the Frosts, Slowes, and Prymmes.
Lionel's pride ran up to the fever-heat of its thermometer; more roused,
though, on behalf of the unconscious Sophy than himself.
"Let us come into the town, lady-bird, and choose a doll. You may have
one now, without fear of distracting you from what I hate to think you
ever stooped to perform."
As Lionel, his crest erect and nostril dilated, and holding Sophy firmly
by the hand, took his way out from the gardens, he was obliged to pass
the patrician party, of whom Vance now made one.
His countenance and air, as he swept by, struck them all, especially
Lady Selina. "A very distinguished-looking boy," said she. "What a fine
face! Who did you say he was, Mr. Vance?"
VANCE.--"His name is Haughton,--Lionel Haughton."
LADY SELINA.--"Haughton! Haughton! Any relation to poor dear Captain
Haughton,--Charlie Haughton, as he was generally called?"
Vance, knowing little more of his young friend's parentage than that his
mother let lodgings, at which, once domiciliated himself, he had made
the boy's acquaintance, and that she enjoyed the pension of a captain's
widow, replied carelessly,--
"His father was a captain, but I don't know whether he was a Charlie."
MR. CRAMPE (the wit).--"Charlies are extinct! I have the last in a
fossil,--box and all."
General laugh. Wit shut up again.
LADY SELINA.--"He has a great look of Charlie Haughton. Do you know if
he is connected with that extraordinary man, Mr. Darrell?"
VANCE.--"Upon my word, I do not. What Mr. Darrell do you mean?"
Lady Selina, with one of those sublime looks of celestial pity with
which personages in the great world forgive ignorance of names and
genealogies in those not born within its orbit, replied, "Oh, to be
sure. It is not exactly in the way of your delightful art to know Mr.
Darrell, one of the first men in Parliament, a connection of mine."
LADY FROST (nippingly).--"You mean Guy Darrell, the lawyer."
LADY SELINA.--"Lawyer--true; now I think of it, he was a lawyer. But his
chief fame was in the House of Commons. All parties agreed that he
might have commanded any station; but he was too rich perhaps to care
sufficiently about office. At all events, Parliament was dissolved
when he was at the height of his reputation, and he refused to be
re-elected."
One SIR GREGORY STOLLHEAD (a member of the House of Commons, young,
wealthy, a constant attendant, of great promise, with speeches that
were filled with facts, and emptied the benches).--"I have heard of him.
Before my time; lawyers not much weight in the House now."
LADY SELINA.--"I am told that Mr. Darrell did not speak like a lawyer.
But his career is over; lives in the country, and sees nobody; a
thousand pities; a connection of mine, too; great loss to the country.
Ask your young friend, Mr. Vance, if Mr. Darrell is not his relation. I
hope so, for his sake. Now that our party is in power, Mr. Darrell could
command anything for others, though he has ceased to act with us. Our
party is not forgetful of talent."
LADY FROST (with icy crispness).--"I should think not: it has so little
of that kind to remember."
SIR GREGORY.--"Talent is not wanted in the House of Commons now; don't
go down, in fact. Business assembly."
LADY SELINA (suppressing a yawn).--"Beautiful day! We had better think
of going back to Richmond."
General assent, and slow retreat. _
Read next: Book 1: Chapter 15
Read previous: Book 1: Chapter 13
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