"These good people bid me forgive my enemies. Easy enough for them, who have no enemies to forgive. Forgive? Forgive injustice, oppression, baseness, cruelty? Forgive the devil, and bid him go in peace, and work his wicked will? Why have they put into my hands, these last three years, books worthy of a free nation?—books which call patriotism divine; which tell me how in every age and clime men have been called heroes who rose against their conquerors; women martyrs who stabbed their tyrants, and then died? Hypocrites! Did their grandfathers meekly turn the other cheek when your English taxed them somewhat too heavily? Do they not now teach every school-child to glory in their own revolution, their own declaration of independence, and to flatter themselves into the conceit that they are the lords of creation, and the examples of the world, because they asserted that sacred right of resistance which is discovered to be unchristian in the African? They will free us, forsooth, in good time (is it to be in God's good time, or in their own?) if we will but be patient, and endure the rice-swamp, the scourge, the slave-market, and shame unspeakable, a few years more, till all is ready and safe,—for them. Dreamers as well as hypocrites! What nation was ever freed by others' help? I have been reading history to see,—you do not know how much I have been reading,—and I find that freemen have always freed themselves, as we must do; and as they will never let us do, because they know that with freedom must come retribution; that our Southern tyrants have an account to render, which the cold Northerner has no heart to see him pay. For, after all, he loves the Southerner better than the slave; and fears him more also. What if the Southern aristocrat, who lords it over him as the panther does over the ox, should transfer (as he has threatened many a time) the cowhide from the negro's loins to his? No; we must free ourselves! And there lives one woman, at least, who, having gained her freedom, knows how to use it in eternal war against all tyrants. Oh, I could go down, I think at moments, down to New Orleans itself, with a brain and lips of fire, and speak words—you know how I could speak them—which would bring me in a week to the scourge, perhaps to the stake. The scourge I could endure. Have I not felt it already? Do I not bear its scars even now, and glory in them; for they were won by speaking as a woman should speak? And even the fire?—Have not women been martyrs already? and could not I be one? Might not my torments madden a people into manhood, and my name become a war-cry in the sacred fight? And yet, oh my friend, life is sweet!—and my little day has been so dark and gloomy!—may I not have one hour's sunshine, ere youth and vigour are gone, and my swift-vanishing Southern womanhood wrinkles itself up into despised old age? Oh, counsel me,—help me, my friend, my preserver, my true master now, so brave, so wise, so all-knowing; under whose mask of cynicism lies hid (have I not cause to know it?) the heart of a hero.
"MARIE"
If Miss Heale could have watched Tom's face as he read, much more could she have heard his words as he finished, all jealousy would have passed from her mind: for as he read, the cynical smile grew sharper and sharper, forming a fit prelude for the "Little fool!" which was his only comment.
"I thought you would have fallen in love with some honest farmer years ago: but a martyr you shan't be, even if I have to send for you hither; though how to get you bread to eat I don't know. However, you have been reading your book, it seems,—clever enough you always were, and too clever; so you could go out as governess, or something. Why, here's a postscript dated three months afterwards! Ah, I see; this letter was written last July, in answer to my Australian one. What's the meaning of this?" And he began reading again.
"I wrote so far; but I had not the heart to send it: it was so full of repinings. And since then,—must I tell the truth?—I have made a step; do not call it a desperate one; do not blame me, for your blame I cannot bear: but I have gone on the stage. There was no other means of independence open to me; and I had a dream, I have it still, that there, if anywhere, I might do my work. You told me that I might become a great actress: I have set my heart on becoming one; on learning to move the hearts of men, till the time comes when I can tell them, show them, in living flesh and blood, upon the stage, the secrets of a slave's sorrows, and that slave a woman. The time has not come for that yet here: but I have had my success already, more than I could have expected; and not only in Canada, but in the States. I have been at New York, acting to crowded houses. Ah, when they applauded me, how I longed to speak! to pour out my whole soul to them, and call upon them, as men, to—. But that will come in time. I have found a friend, who has promised to write dramas especially for me. Merely republican ones at first; in which I can give full vent to my passion, and hurl forth the eternal laws of liberty, which their consciences may—must—at last, apply for themselves. But soon, he says, we shall be able to dare to approach the real subject, if not in America, still in Europe; and then, I trust, the coloured actress will stand forth as the championess of her race, of all who are oppressed, in every capital in Europe, save, alas! Italy and the Austria who crushes her. I have taken, I should tell you, an Italian name. It was better, I thought, to hide my African taint, forsooth, for awhile. So the wise New Yorkers have been feting, as Maria Cordifiamma, the white woman (for am I not fairer than many an Italian signora?), whom they would have looked upon as an inferior being under the name of Marie Lavington: though there is finer old English blood running in my veins, from your native Berkshire, they say, than in any a Down-Easter's who hangs upon my lips. Address me henceforth, then, as La Signora Maria Cordifiamma. I am learning fast, by the by, to speak Italian. I shall be at Quebec till the end of the month. Then, I believe, I come to London; and we shall meet once more: and I shall thank you, thank you, thank you, once more, for all your marvellous kindness."
"Humph!" said Tom, after a while. "Well, she is old enough to choose for herself. Five-and-twenty she must be by now…. As for the stage, I suppose it is the best place for her; better, at least, than turning governess, and going mad, as she would do, over her drudgery and her dreams. But who is this friend? Singing-master, scribbler, or political refugee? or perhaps all three together? A dark lot, those fellows. I must keep my eye on him; though it's no concern of mine. I've done my duty by the poor thing; the devil himself can't deny that. But, somehow, if this play-writing worthy plays her false, I feel very much as if I should be fool enough to try whether I have forgotten my pistol-shooting."
CHAPTER VI.
AN OLD FOE WITH A NEW FACE
"This child's head is dreadfully hot; and how yellow he does look!" says Mrs. Vavasour, fussing about in her little nursery. "Oh, Clara, what shall I do? I really dare not give them any more medicine myself; and that horrid old Doctor Heale is worse than no one."
"Ah, ma'am," says Clara, who is privileged to bemoan herself, and to have sad confidences made to her, "if we were but in town now, to see Mr. Chilvers, or any one that could be trusted; but in this dreadful out-of-the-way place—"
"Don't talk of it, Clara! Oh, what will become of the poor children?" And Mrs. Vavasour sits down and cries, as she does three times at least every week.
"But indeed, ma'am, if you thought you could trust him, there is that new assistant—"
"The man who was saved from the wreck? Why, nobody knows who he is."
"Oh, but indeed, ma'am, he is a very nice gentleman, I can say that; and so wonderfully clever; and has cured so many people already, they say, and got down a lot of new medicines (for he has great friends among the doctors in town), and such a wonderful magnifying glass, with which he showed me himself, as I dropped into the shop promiscuous, such horrible things, ma'am, in a drop of water, that I haven't dared hardly to wash my face since."
"And what good will the magnifying glass do to us?" says the poor little Irish soul, laughing up through its tears. "He won't want it to see how ill poor Frederick is, I'm sure; but you may send for him, Clara."
"I'll go myself, ma'am, and make sure," says Clara; glad enough of a run, and chance of a chat with the young Doctor.
And in half an hour Mr. Thurnall is announced.
Though Mrs. Vavasour has a flannel apron on (for she will wash the children herself, in spite of Elsley's grumblings), Tom sees that she is a lady; and puts on, accordingly, his very best manner, which, as his experience has long since taught him, is no manner at all.
He does his work quietly and kindly, and bows himself out.
"You will be sure to send the medicine immediately, Mr. Thurnall."
"I will bring it myself, madam; and, if you like, administer it. I think the young gentleman has made friends with me sufficiently already."
Tom keeps his word, and is back, and away again to his shop, in a marvellously short space, having "struck a fresh root," as he calls it; for—
"What a very well-behaved sensible man that Mr. Thurnall is," says Lucia to Elsley, an hour after, as she meets him coming in from the garden, where he has been polishing his "Wreck." "I am sure he understands his business; he was so kind and quiet, and yet so ready, and seemed to know all the child's symptoms beforehand, in such a strange way. I do hope he'll stay here. I feel happier about the poor children than I have for a long time."
"Thurnall?" asks Elsley, who is too absorbed in the "Wreck" to ask after the children; but the name catches his ear.
"Mr. Heale's new assistant—the man who was wrecked," answers she, too absorbed, in her turn, in the children to notice her husband's startled face.
"Thurnall? Which Thurnall?"
"Do you know the name? It's not a common one," says she, moving to the door.
"No—not a common one at all! You said the children were not well?"
"I am glad that you thought of asking after the poor things."
"Why, really, my dear—" But before he can finish his excuse (probably not worth hearing), she has trotted up-stairs again to the nest, and is as busy as ever. Possibly Clara might do the greater part of what she does, and do it better: but still, are they not her children? Let those who will call a mother's care mere animal instinct, and liken it to that of the sparrow or the spider: shall we not rather call it a Divine inspiration, and doubt whether the sparrow and the spider must not have souls to be saved, if they, too, show forth that faculty of maternal love which is, of all human feelings, most inexplicable and most self-sacrificing; and therefore, surely, most heavenly? If that does not come down straight from heaven, a "good and perfect gift," then what is heaven, and what the gifts which it sends down?
But poor Elsley may have had solid reasons for thinking more of the name of Thurnall than of his children's health: we will hope so for his sake; for, after sundry melodramatic pacings and starts (Elsley was of a melodramatic turn, and fond of a scene, even when he had no spectator, not even a looking-glass;) besides ejaculations of "It cannot be!" "If it were!" "I trust not!" "A fresh ghost to torment me!" "When will come the end of this accursed coil which I have wound round my life?" and so forth, he decided aloud that the suspense was intolerable; and enclosing himself in his poetical cloak and Mazzini wide-awake, strode down to the town, and into the shop. And as he entered it, "his heart sank to his midriff, and his knees below were loosed." For there, making up pills, in a pair of brown holland sleeves of his own manufacture (for Tom was a good seamster, as all travellers should be), whistled Lilliburlero, as of old, the Tom of other days, which Elsley's muse would fain have buried in a thousand Lethes.
Elsley came forward to the counter carelessly, nevertheless, after a moment. "What with my beard, and the lapse of time," thought he, "he cannot know me." So he spoke,—
"I understand you have been visiting my children, sir. I hope you did not find them seriously indisposed?"
"Mr. Vavasour?" says Tom, with a low bow.
"I am Mr. Vavasour!" But Elsley was a bad actor, and hesitated and coloured so much as he spoke, that if Tom had known nothing, he might have guessed something.
"Nothing serious, I assure you, sir: unless you are come to announce any fresh symptom."
"Oh, no—not at all—that is—I was passing on my way to the quay, and thought it as well to have your own assurance; Mrs. Vavasour is so over-anxious."
"You seem to partake of her infirmity, sir," says Tom, with a smile and a bow. "However, it is one which does you both honour."
An awkward pause.
"I hope I am not taking a liberty, sir; but I think I am bound to—"
"What in heaven is he going to say?" thought Elsley to himself, feeling very much inclined to run away.
"Thank you for all the pleasure and instruction which your writings have given me in lonely hours, and lonely places too. Your first volume of poems has been read by one man, at least, beside wild watchfires in the Rocky Mountains."
Tom did not say that he pitched the said volume into the river in disgust; and that it was, probably, long since used up as house material by the caddis-baits of those parts,—for doubtless there are caddises there as elsewhere.
Poor Elsley rose at the bait, and smiled and bowed in silence.
"I have been so long absent from England, and in utterly wild countries, too, that I need hardly be ashamed to ask if you have written anything since 'The Soul's Agonies'? No doubt if you have, I might have found it at Melbourne, on my way home: but my visit there was a very hurried one. However, the loss is mine, and the fault too, as I ought to call it."
"Pray make no excuses," says Elsley, delighted. "I have written, of course. Who can help writing, sir, while Nature is so glorious, and man so wretched? One cannot but take refuge from the pettiness of the real in the contemplation of the ideal. Yes, I have written. I will send you my last book down. I don't know whether you will find me improved."
"How can I doubt that I shall?"
"Saddened, perhaps; perhaps more severe in my taste; but we will not talk of that. I owe you a debt, sir, for having furnished me with one of the most striking 'motifs' I ever had. I mean that miraculous escape of yours. It is seldom enough, in this dull every-day world, one stumbles on such an incident ready made to one's hands, and needing only to be described as one sees it."
And the weak, vain man chatted on, and ended by telling Tom all about his poem of "The Wreck," in a tone which seemed to imply that he had done Tom a serious favour, perhaps raised him to immortality, by putting him in a book.
Tom thanked him gravely for the said honour, bowed him at last out of the shop, and then vaulted back clean over the counter, as soon as Elsley was out of sight, and commenced an Indian war-dance of frantic character, accompanying himself by an extemporary chaunt, with which the name of John Briggs was frequently intermingled;—
"If I don't know you, Johnny, my boy,
In spite of all your beard;
Why then I am a slower fellow,
Than ever has yet appeared,
"Oh if it was but he! what a card for me! What a world it is for poor honest rascals like me to try a fall with!—
"Why didn't I take bad verse to make,
And call it poetry;
And so make up to an earl's daughter,
Which was of high degree?
"But perhaps I am wrong after all: no—I saw he knew me, the humbug; though he never was a humbug, never rose above the rank of fool. However, I'll make assurance doubly sure, and then,—if it pays me not to tell him I know him, I won't tell him; and if it pays me to tell him, I will tell him. Just as you choose, my good Mr. Poet." And Tom returned to his work, singing an extempore parody of "We met, 'twas in a crowd," ending with—
"And thou art the cause of this anguish, my pill-box,"
in a howl so doleful, that Mrs. Heale marched into the shop, evidently making up her mind for an explosion.
"I am very sorry, sir, to have to speak to you upon such a subject, but I must say, that the profane songs, sir, which our house is not at all accustomed to them; not to mention that at your time of life, and in your position, sir, as my husband's assistant, though there's no saying (with a meaning toss of the head) how long it may last,"—and there, her grammar having got into a hopeless knot, she stopped.
Tom looked at her cheerfully and fixedly. "I had been expecting this," said he to himself. "Better show the old cat at once that I carry claws as well as she."
"There is saying, madam, humbly begging your pardon, how long my present engagement will last. It will last just as long as I like."
Mrs. Heale boiled over with rage: but ere the geyser could explode, Tom had continued in that dogged, nasal Yankee twang which he assumed when he was venomous:
"As for the songs, ma'am, there are two ways of making oneself happy in this life; you can judge for yourself which is best. One is to do one's work like a man, and hum a tune, to keep one's spirits up; the other is to let the work go to rack and ruin, and keep one's spirits up, if one is a gentleman, by a little too much brandy;—if one is a lady, by a little too much laudanum."
"Laudanum, sir?" almost screamed Mrs. Heale, turning pale as death.
"The pint bottle of best laudanum, which I had from town a fortnight ago, ma'am, is now nearly empty, ma'am. I will make affidavit that I have not used a hundred drops, or drunk one. I suppose it was the cat. Cats have queer tastes in the west, I believe. I have heard the cat coming down stairs into the surgery, once or twice after I was in bed; so I set my door ajar a little, and saw her come up again: but whether she had a vial in her paws—"
"Oh, sir!" says Mrs. Heale, bursting into tears. "And after the dreadful toothache which I have had this fortnight, which nothing but a little laudanum would ease it; and at my time of life, to mock a poor elderly lady's infirmities, which I did not look for this cruelty and outrage!"
"Dry your tears, my dear madam," says Tom, in his most winning tone. "You will always find me the thorough gentleman, I am sure. If I had not been one, it would have been easy enough for me, with my powerful London connections,—though I won't boast,—to set up in opposition to your good husband, instead of saving him labour in his good old age. Only, my dear madam, how shall I get the laudanum-bottle refilled without the doctor's—you understand?"
The wretched old woman hurried upstairs, and brought him down a half-sovereign out of her private hoard, trembling like an aspen leaf, and departed.
"So—scotched, but not killed. You'll gossip and lie too. Never trust a laudanum-drinker. You'll see me, by the eye of imagination, committing all the seven deadly sins; and by the tongue of inspiration go forth and proclaim the same at the town-head. I can't kill you, and I can't cure you, so I must endure you. What said old Goethe, in all the German I ever cared to recollect:—
"'Der Wallfisch hat doch seine Laus;
Muss auch die meine haben.'
"Now, then, for Mrs. Penberthy's draughts. I wonder how that pretty schoolmistress goes on. If she were but honest, now, and had fifty thousand pounds—why then, she wouldn't marry me; and so why now, I wouldn't marry she,—as my native Berkshire grammar would render it."
CHAPTER VII.
LA CORDIFIAMMA
This chapter shall begin, good reader, with one of those startling bursts of "illustration," with which our most popular preachers are wont now to astonish and edify their hearers, and after starting with them at the opening of the sermon from the north-pole, the Crystal Palace, or the nearest cabbage-garden, float them safe, upon the gushing stream of oratory, to the safe and well-known shores of doctrinal commonplace, lost in admiration at the skill of the good man who can thus make all roads lead, if not to heaven, at least to strong language about its opposite. True, the logical sequence of their periods may be, like that of the coming one, somewhat questionable, reminding one at moments of Fluellen's comparison between Macedon and Monmouth, Henry the Fifth and Alexander: but, in the logic of the pulpit, all's well that ends well, and the end must needs sanctify the means. There is, of course, some connection or other between all things in heaven and earth, or how would the universe hold together? And if one has not time to find out the true connection, what is left but to invent the best one can for oneself? Thus argues, probably, the popular preacher, and fills his pews, proving thereby clearly the excellence of his method. So argue also, probably, the popular poets, to whose "luxuriant fancy" everything suggests anything, and thought plays leap-frog with thought down one page and up the next, till one fancies at moments that they had got permission from the higher powers, before looking at the universe, to stir it all up a few times with a spoon. It is notorious, of course, that poets and preachers alike pride themselves upon this method of astonishing; that the former call it, "seeing the infinite in the finite;" the latter—"pressing secular matters into the service of the sanctuary," and other pretty phrases which, for reverence' sake, shall be omitted. No doubt they have their reasons and their reward. The style takes; the style pays; and what more would you have? Let them go on rejoicing, in spite of the cynical pedants in the Saturday Review, who dare to accuse (will it be believed?) these luminaries of the age of talking merely irreverent nonsense. Meanwhile, so evident is the success (sole test of merit) which has attended the new method, that it is worth while trying whether it will not be as taking in the novel as it is in the chapel; and therefore the reader is requested to pay special attention to the following paragraph, modelled carefully after the exordiums of a famous Irish preacher, now drawing crowded houses at the West End of Town. As thus;—"It is the pleasant month of May, when, as in old Chaucer's time, the—
"Smale foules maken melodie,
That slepen alle night with open eye
So priketh hem nature in their corages.
Then longen folk to goe on pilgrimages,
And specially from every shire's end
Of Englelond, to Exeter-hall they wend,"
till the low places of the Strand blossom with white cravats, those lilies of the valley, types of meekness and humility, at least in the pious palmer—and why not of similar virtues in the undertaker, the concert-singer, the groom, the tavern-waiter, the croupier at the gaming-table, and Frederick Augustus Lord Scoutbush, who, white-cravated like the rest, is just getting into his cab at the door of the Never-mind-what Theatre, to spend an hour at Kensington before sauntering in to Lady M–'s ball?
Why not, I ask, at least in the case of little Scoutbush? For Guardsman though he be, coming from a theatre and going to a ball, there is meekness and humility in him at this moment, as well as in the average of the white-cravated gentlemen who trotted along that same pavement about eleven o'clock this forenoon. Why should not his white cravat, like theirs, be held symbolic of that fact? However, Scoutbush belongs rather to the former than the latter of Chaucer's categories; for a "smale foule" he is, a little bird-like fellow, who maketh melodie also, and warbles like a cock-robin; we cannot liken him to any more dignified songster. Moreover, he will sleep all night with open eye; for he will not be in bed till five to-morrow morning; and pricked he is, and that sorely, in his courage; for he is as much in love as his little nature can be, with the new actress, La Signora Cordifiamma, of the Never-mind-what Theatre.
How exquisitely, now (for this is one of the rare occasions in which a man is permitted to praise himself), is established hereby an unexpected bond of linked sweetness long drawn out between things which had, ere they came beneath the magic touch of genius, no more to do with each other than this book has with the Stock Exchange. Who would have dreamed of travelling from the Tabard in Southwark to the last new singer, viâ Exeter-hall and the lilies of the valley, and touching en passant on to cardinal virtues and an Irish Viscount? But see; given only a little impudence, and less logic, and hey presto! the thing is done; and all that remains to be done is to dilate (as the Rev. Dionysius O'Blareaway would do at this stage of the process) upon the moral question which has been so cunningly raised, and to inquire, firstly,—how the virtues of meekness and humility could be predicated of Frederick Augustus St. Just, Viscount Scoutbush and Baron Torytown, in the peerage of Ireland; and secondly,—how those virtues were called into special action by his questionably wise attachment to a new actress, to whom he had never spoken a word in his life.
First, then, "Little Freddy Scoutbush," as his compeers irreverently termed him, was, by common consent of her Majesty's Guards, a "good fellow." Whether the St. James' Street definition of that adjective be the perfect one or not, we will not stay to inquire; but in the Guards' club-house it meant this: that Scoutbush had not an enemy in the world, because he deserved none; that he lent, and borrowed not; gave, and asked not again; envied not; hustled not; slandered not; never bore malice, never said a cruel word, never played a dirty trick, would hear a fellow's troubles out to the end, and if he could not counsel, at least would not laugh at them, and at all times and in all places lived and let live, and was accordingly a general favourite. His morality was neither better nor worse than the average of his companions; but if he was sensual, he was at least not base; and there were frail women who blessed "little Freddy," and his shy and secret generosity, from having saved them from the lowest pit.
Au reste, he was idle, frivolous, useless; but with these two palliating facts, that he knew it and regretted it; and that he never had a chance of being aught else. His father and mother had died when he was a child. He had been sent to Eton at seven, where he learnt nothing, and into the Guards at seventeen, where he learnt less than nothing. His aunt, old Lady Knockdown, who was a kind old Irish woman, an ex-blue and ex-beauty, now a high Evangelical professor, but as worldly as her neighbours in practice, had tried to make him a good boy in old times: but she had given him up, long before he left Eton, as a "vessel of wrath" (which he certainly was, with his hot Irish temper); and since then she had only spoken of him with moans, and to him just as if he and she had made a compact to be as worldly as they could, and as if the fact that he was going, as she used to tell her private friends, straight to the wrong place, was to be utterly ignored before the pressing reality of getting him and his sisters well married. And so it befell, that Lady Knockdown, like many more, having begun with too high (or at least precise) a spiritual standard, was forced to end practically in having no standard at all; and that for ten years of Scoutbush's life, neither she nor any other human being had spoken to him as if he had a soul to be saved, or any duty on earth save to eat, drink, and be merry.
And all the while there was a quaint and pathetic consciousness in the little man's heart that he was meant for something better; that he was no fool, and was not intended to be one. He would thrust his head into lectures at the Polytechnic and the British Institution, with a dim endeavour to guess what they were all about, and a good-natured envy of the clever fellows who knew about "science, and all that." He would sit and listen, puzzled and admiring, to the talk of statesmen, and confide his woe afterwards to some chum.—"Ah, if I had had the chance now that my cousin Chalkclere has! If I had had two or three tutors, and a good mother, too, keeping me in a coop, and cramming me with learning, as they cram chickens for the market, I fancy I could have shown my comb and hackles in the House as well as some of them. I fancy I could make a speech in parliament now, with the help of a little Irish impudence, if I only knew anything to speak about."
So Scoutbush clung, in a childish way, to any superior man who would take notice of him, and not treat him as the fribble which he seemed. He had taken to that well-known artist, Claude Mellot, of late, simply from admiration of his brilliant talk about art and poetry; and boldly confessed that he preferred one of Mellot's orations on the sublime and beautiful, though he didn't understand a word of them, to the songs and jokes (very excellent ones in their way) of Mr. Hector Harkaway, the distinguished Irish novelist, and boon companion of her Majesty's Life Guards Green. His special intimate and Mentor, however, was a certain Major Campbell, of whom more hereafter; who, however, being a lofty-minded and perhaps somewhat Pharisaic person, made heavier demands on Scoutbush's conscience than he had yet been able to meet; for fully as he agreed that Hercules' choice between pleasure and virtue was the right one, still he could not yet follow that ancient hero along the thorny path, and confined his conception of "duty" to the minimum guard and drill. He had estates in Ireland, which had almost cleared themselves during his long minority, but which, since the famine, had cost him about as much as they brought him in; and estates in the West, which, with a Welsh slate-quarry, brought him in some seven or eight thousand a-year; and so kept his poor little head above water, to look pitifully round the universe, longing for the life of him to make out what it all meant, and hoping that somebody would come and tell him.