The Caxtons: A Family Picture — Complete. Эдвард Бульвер-Литтон
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as he saw me,—and his smile was charming, though rare. “Humph, young sir, I came to seek for you,—I have been rude, I fear; pardon it. That thought has only just occurred to me, so I left my Blue Books, and my amanuensis hard at work on them, to ask you to come out for half an hour,—just half an hour, it is all I can give you: a deputation at one! You dine and sleep here, of course?”
“Ah, sir, my mother will be so uneasy if I am not in town to-night!”
“Pooh!” said the member; “I’ll send an express.”
“Oh, no indeed; thank you.”
“Why not?”
I hesitated. “You see, sir, that my father and mother are both new to London; and though I am new too, yet they may want me,—I may be of use.” Lady Ellinor put her hand on my head and sleeked down my hair as I spoke.
“Right, young man, right; you will do in the world, wrong as that is. I don’t mean that you’ll succeed, as the rogues say,—that’s another question; but if you don’t rise, you’ll not fall. Now put on your hat and come with me; we’ll walk to the lodge,—you will be in time for a coach.”
I took my leave of Lady Ellinor, and longed to say something about “compliments to Miss Fanny;” but the words stuck in my throat, and my host seemed impatient.
“We must see you soon again,” said Lady Ellinor, kindly, as she followed us to the door.
Mr. Trevanion walked on briskly and in silence, one hand in his bosom, the other swinging carelessly a thick walkingstick.
“But I must go round by the bridge,” said I, “for I forgot my knapsack. I threw it off when I made my leap, and the old lady certainly never took charge of it.”
“Come, then, this way. How old are you?”
“Seventeen and a half.”
“You know Latin and Greek as they know them at schools, I suppose?”
“I think I know them pretty well, sir.”
“Does your father say so?”
“Why, my father is fastidious; however, he owns that he is satisfied on the whole.”
“So am I, then. Mathematics?”
“A little.”
“Good.”
Here the conversation dropped for some time. I had found and restrapped the knapsack, and we were near the lodge, when Mr. Trevanion said abruptly, “Talk, my young friend, talk; I like to hear you talk,—it refreshes me. Nobody has talked naturally to me these last ten years.”
The request was a complete damper to my ingenuous eloquence; I could not have talked naturally now for the life of me.
“I made a mistake, I see,” said my companion, good-humoredly, noticing my embarrassment. “Here we are at the lodge. The coach will be by in five minutes: you can spend that time in hearing the old woman praise the Hogtons and abuse me. And hark you, sir, never care three straws for praise or blame,—leather and prunella! Praise and blame are here!” and he struck his hand upon his breast with almost passionate emphasis. “Take a specimen. These Hogtons were the bane of the place,—uneducated and miserly; their land a wilderness, their village a pig-sty. I come, with capital and intelligence; I redeem the soil, I banish pauperism, I civilize all around me: no merit in me, I am but a type of capital guided by education,—a machine. And yet the old woman is not the only one who will hint to you that the Hogtons were angels, and myself the usual antithesis to angels. And what is more, sir, because that old woman, who has ten shillings a week from me, sets her heart upon earning her sixpences,—and I give her that privileged luxury,—every visitor she talks to goes away with the idea that I, the rich Mr. Trevanion, let her starve on what she can pick up from the sightseers. Now, does that signify a jot? Good-by! Tell your father his old friend must see him,—profit by his calm wisdom; his old friend is a fool sometimes, and sad at heart. When you are settled, send me a line to St. James’s Square, to say where you are. Humph! that’s enough.”
Mr. Trevanion wrung my hand, and strode off.
I did not wait for the coach, but proceeded towards the turn-stile, where the old woman (who had either seen, or scented from a distance that tizzy of which I was the impersonation),—
“Hushed in grim repose, did wait her morning prey.”
My opinions as to her sufferings and the virtues of the departed Hogtons somewhat modified, I contented myself with dropping into her open palm the exact sum virtually agreed on. But that palm still remained open, and the fingers of the other clawed hold of me as I stood, impounded in the curve of the turn-stile, like a cork in a patent corkscrew.
“And threepence for nephy Bob,” said the old lady.
“Threepence for nephew Bob, and why?”
“It is his parquisites when he recommends a gentleman. You would not have me pay out of my own earnings; for he will have it, or he’ll ruin my bizziness. Poor folk must be paid for their trouble.”
Obdurate to this appeal, and mentally consigning Bob to a master whose feet would be all the handsomer for boots, I threaded the stile and escaped.
Towards evening I reached London. Who ever saw London for the first time and was not disappointed? Those long suburbs melting indefinably away into the capital forbid all surprise. The gradual is a great disenchanter. I thought it prudent to take a hackney-coach, and so jolted my way to the Hotel, the door of which was in a small street out of the Strand, though the greater part of the building faced that noisy thoroughfare. I found my father in a state of great discomfort in a little room, which he paced up and down like a lion new caught in his cage. My poor mother was full of complaints: for the first time in her life, I found her indisputably crossish. It was an ill time to relate my adventures.
I had enough to do to listen. They had all day been hunting for lodgings in vain. My father’s pocket had been picked of a new India handkerchief. Primmins, who ought to know London so well, knew nothing about it, and declared it was turned topsy-turvy, and all the streets had changed names. The new silk umbrella, left for five minutes unguarded in the hall, had been exchanged for an old gingham with three holes in it.
It was not till my mother remembered that if she did not see herself that my bed was well aired I should certainly lose the use of my limbs, and therefore disappeared with Primmins and a pert chambermaid, who seemed to think we gave more trouble than we were worth, that I told my father of my new acquaintance with Mr. Trevanion.
He did not seem to listen to me till I got to the name “Trevanion.” He then became very pale, and sat down quietly. “Go on,” said he, observing I stopped to look at him.
When I had told all, and given him the kind messages with which I had been charged by husband and wife, he smiled faintly; and then, shading his face with his hand, he seemed to muse, not cheerfully, perhaps, for I heard him sigh once or twice.
“And Ellinor,” said he at last, without looking up,—“Lady Ellinor, I mean; she is very—very—”
“Very what, sir?”
“Very handsome still?”
“Handsome! Yes, handsome, certainly; but I thought more of her manner than her face. And then Fanny, Miss Fanny, is so young!”
“Ah!” said my father, murmuring in Greek the celebrated lines of which Pope’s translation is familiar to all,—
“‘Like leaves on trees, the race of man is found,
Now green in youth, now withering on the ground.’
“Well,