L I B R.AFLY OF THL U N IVLR.5ITY Of ILLINOIS 823 Sa3U v.l T * m- . W. H. SM & SON'S subscription library, 186,,,^/nd, LONDON, AND AT THE RAILWAY BOOKSTALLS 1 QUITE ALONE. CxEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY. 1864. [The Right of Trmisldtii'ii is resei M&] LONDON : PRINTED BY C. WHITING, BEAUFORT HOUSE, STRAND. So. 2/ v./ ADVERTISEMENT. The concluding portion of these volumes — that is to say, from page 185, vol. iii., to the end — is not mine. " Quite Alone" has been finished during my absence from England by " another hand." It is now my duty, in fairness to the public, and in justice to my publishers and myself, briefly and candidly to explain how it has come about that a work put forth under my name contains many pages not written by me. I will at once drop the convenient, but very fre- quently disingenuous, plea of ill health. I was, it is true, when I left this country more than a year since, exceedingly unwell, and have had since then several attacks of influenza, a calenture or two, a low fever, and a touch of what seemed to be pre- monitory of the vomito negro ; but, on the whole, I have been no more an invalid than could be ex- pected in the case of a traveller rushing from one trying climate to another, and have, thank God, " kept my health" in a remarkable degree. When I quitted home, in November, 1863, the novel of "Quite Alone" was about half finished. 11 ADVERTISEMENT. It was entirely owing to the exceptional kind- ness of Mr. Charles Dickens that its publication was commenced in "All the Year Round :" it being, I believe, the rule with the proprietors of that periodical never to commence a serial story without the whole of the manuscript having come into their hands. But Mr. Dickens was good enough to hope, and I was sanguine enough to believe, that I could, within four or five months from the date of my departure, remit to him the concluding portion of the work. I am sure I did my best to bring about this consummation, so desirable to us both ; but I signally failed. Page by page, like so many drops of blood, about two hundred slips of manuscript oozed from me between spring and summer. They were written with a hard lead pencil on slips of carbonized paper placed upon tissue. I was obliged to "manifold" my manuscript, to guard against the uncertainties of the post. They were written at intervals of many days, and of thousands of miles. They were written in a hammock in Cuba, on board steamers, in railway cars, in hotel ve- randahs, in the midst of noise, confusion, smoke, cursing and swearing, battle, murder, and sudden death. In the month of August I broke down altogether, and the mails went out without any more of my tissue paper. I had lost the thread of my narrative. I had forgotten the very names of my dramatis })erso?i IV CONTENTS. CHAPTER IX. PAGE Introductory to a Wild Animal .... 131 CHAPTER X. Begins an Idyll 1 13 CHAPTER XI. Ends an Idyll 158 CHAPTER XII. The Wild Animal 193 CHAPTER XIII. To Gamridge's 204 CHAPTER XIY. At Gamridge's 216 CHAPTER XV. Getting Up 228 CHAPTER XVI. Lily begins to learn Things 244 CHAPTER XVII. The Young Ladies '2:>'j CHAPTER XVIII. Lily is sent for to the Drawing-room . . .278 CHAPTER XIX. Lily's Visitors 284 CHAPTER XX. Lily goes out to Dinner 308 QUITE ALONE. CHAPTER I. SEULE AU MONDE. This is Hyde Park, at the most brilliant mo- ment in the afternoon, at the most brilliant period in the season. What a city of magnificence, of luxury, of pleasure, of pomp, and of pride, this London seems to be. Can there be any poor or miserable people — any dingy grubs among these gaudy butterflies? What are the famed Elysian fields of Paris, to Hyde Park at this high tide of splendour? What the cavalcade of the Boia de Boulogne, or the promenade of Longchamps, to the long stream of equipages noiselessly rolling along the bank of the Serpentine? Everybody in VOL. I. B Quite Alone. London (worth naming) is being carried along on wheels, or bestrides pigskin girthed o'er hundred guinea horseflesh, or struts in bright boots, or trips in soft sandalled prunella, or white satin with high heels. There is Royal Blood in a mail phaeton. Royal Blood smokes a large cigar, and handles its ribbons scientifically. There is a Duke in the dumps, and behind him is the Right Reverend Father, in a silk apron and a shovel hat, who made that fierce verbal assault upon his Grace in the House of Lords last night. There is the crack advocate of the day, the successful defender of the young lady who was accused of poisoning her mamma with mix vomica in her negus ; and there is the young lady herself, encompassed with a nimbus of petticoat, lolling back in a miniature Brougham with a gentleman old enough to be her grandfather, in a high stock, and a wig dyed deep indigo. Is that Anonyma driving twin ponies in a low phaeton, a parasol attached to her whip, and a groom with folded arms behind her ? Bah ! there are so many Anoirymas now-a-days. If it isn't the Nameless one herself, it is Synonyma. Do you see that stout gentleman with the coal-black beard and the tarnished fez cap ! That is the Syrian Seule an Monde. ambassador. The liver-coloured man in the dingy white turban, the draggletailed blue burnous, the cotton stockings, and the alpaca umbrella, is the Maronite envoy. The nobleman who is driving that four-in-hand, and is got up to such a perfection of imitation of the manners and costume of a stage- coachman, has a rental of a hundred and thirty thousand a year. He passes his time mostly among ostlers, engine-drivers, and firemen. He swears, smokes a cutty pipe, and of his two intimate friends, one is a rough-rider and the other a rat- catcher. Mr. Benazi, the great Hebrew Financier, you must know: yonder cadaverous, dolorous-look- ing figure in shabby clothes, huddled up in a corner of the snuff-coloured chariot, drawn by the spare-ribbed horses that look as though they had never enough to eat. He is Baron Benazi in the Grand-Duchy of Sachs-Pfeifigen, where he lent the Grand-Duke money to get the crown jewels out of pawn. That loan was the making of Ben. There is nothing remarkable about him save his which stands out, a hooked promontory, like the prow of a Roman galley, from among the shadows cast by the squabs of the snuff-coloured chariot. That nose is a power in the state. Thai nose B 2 4 Quite Alone. represents millions. When Baron Benazi's no shows signs of flexibility, monarchs may breathe again, for loans can be negotiated. But when the Benazian proboscis looks stern and rigid, and its owner rubs it with an irritable finger, it is a sadly ominous sign of something being rotten in the state of Sachs-Pfeifigen, and of other empires and mo- narchies, which I will not stay to name. What else ? Everything. Whom else ? Every- body. Dandies and swells, smoothed-cheeked and heavy-moustached, twiddling their heavy guard- chains, caressing their fawn-coloured favor-is, clank- ing their spurred heels, screwing their eye-glasses into the creases of their optic muscles, haw-hawing vacuous common-places to one another, or leaning over the rails to stare at all, to gravely wag the head to some, to nod superciliously to others, to grin familiarly to a select few. Poor little snobs and government clerks aping the Grand Manner, and succeeding only in looking silly. Any number of quiet sensible folks surveying the humours of the scene with much amusement, and without envy. Foreigners who, after a rive years' residence in London, may have discovered that Leicester- square, the Ilaymarket, and the lower part of Settle ait Monde. Regent-street, are not the only promenades in London, and so come swaggering and jabbering here, in their braid and their pomatum and their dirt, poisoning the air with the fumes of bad tobacco. An outer fringe of nursemaids — then some soldiers listlessly sucking the knobs of their canes, and looking very much as if they considered themselves as flies in amber, neither rich nor rare, and wondering how the deuce they got there. As useless as chimneys in summer, seemingly, are these poor strong men done up in scarlet blanket- ing, with three halfpence a day spending money, and nobody to kill, and severely punished by illogical magistrates if they take to jumping upon policemen, or breaking civilians' heads with the buckles of their belts, through their weariness. Aggravated assaults, says the magistrate, as he signs their mittimus, are not to be tolerated. Anything else in Hyde Park at this high tide of the season % Much : only a score of pages would be required to describe the scene. All is here — the prologue, the drama, the epilogue; for here is Life. Life from the highest to the lowest rung of the ladder; nut only in earliest youth and extreme old age, in comely virtue and ruddled vice, in wisdom 6 Quite Alone. and folly, complacency and discontent ; but — look yonder, far beyond the outer fringe — in utter want and misery. There, under the trees, the ra woman opens her bundle, and distributes among her callous brood the foul scraps she has begged at area gates, or picked from gutters. There, on the sunny sward the shoeless tramp sprawls on his brawny back, grinning in impudent muscularity from the windows of his tatters in the very face of well-dressed Kespectability passing shuddering by. And the whole "huge foolish whirligig were kings and beggars, angels and demons, and stars and street-sweepings chaotically whirled," the Spirit of Earth surveys and plies his eternal task. Where is my Faustus 1 There — I cannot read the Ger- man. Here is Monsieur Henri Blaze's French interpretation of the mystic utterances of the Esprit do la Terre: "Dans les flots de la vie, dans Forage de Taction, je monte et descends, flotte ici et la : naissance, tombeau, mer eternelle, tissu changeant, vie ardente : c'est ainsi je travaille sur le bruyant metier du temps, et tisse le manteau vivant de la Divinite." Sufficiently weak, limp, and wishy- washy, is this French Faustus of Monsieur Henri Blaze, I wot. It savours of absinthe, and an esta- Settle au Monde. miiiet where they charge nothing for stationery. Turn I now to another, and immeasurably greater translator : In Being's flood, in Action's storm I walk and work, above beneath Work and weave in endless motion : Birth and Death, An infinite ocean ; A seizing and giving The fire of living "lis thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply And weave for God the garment thou seest him by. "Of twenty millions," asks the author of Sartor Kesartus, " that have read and spouted this thunder- speech of the Erd Geist, are there yet twenty of us that have learned the meaning thereof ?" But, Sage, is not the Spirit of Earth the Spirit of Nature? Is not Life the warp and Humanity the woof over which, spread on the " Roaring Loom of Time," the shuttle of production is always plying; and what is Nature : a field, a flower, a shell, a seaweed, a bird's feather, but the woven garment that we see God by? When Humanity begins to fade out of Hyde Park, and goes home to dinner, or to brood by the ingle nook, dinnerless, or betakes itself to el; holes and corners where it may languish, panting. Quite Alone. until bread or death come ; when only a few idlers are to be met in the King, or Rotten Row, or on the Knightsbridge road, you sometimes see a solitary horsewoman. She is Quite Alone. No passing dandy ventures to bow, much less to accost, or condescends to grin as she passes. A spare slight little woman enough, not in her first youth — not in her second yet ; but, just entre chien et loup, between the lights of beauty at blind man's holiday time, she might be Yenus. She wears a very plain cloth habit, and a man's hat. I mean the chimney-pot. She has a veil often down. Great masses of brown hair are neatly screwed under her hat. She rides easily, quietly, un demonstratively. If her habit blow aside you may see a neat boot and a faultless ankle, wreathed in white drapery, but no sign of the cloth and chamois leather riding trouser affectation. She carries a light switch with an ivory handle, which she never uses. That tall lustrous black mare never came out of a livery stable you may be sure. She pats and pets, and makes much of her, and very placidly she paces beneath her light weight. The groom keeps his distance ; she is always alone : cpiite alone. "Who the doose is that woman on the black Settle ait Monde. mare, one sees when everybody else has left the Row?" ask Faineant number one of Faineant number two at the Club. " Sure I don't know. Seen her hundreds of times. Ask Tom Fibbs. He knows everybody." Tom Fibbs is asked, and takes a "sensation header" at a {mess. " That's the Princess Ogurzi, who was knouted at the office of the Secret Police, by Count Orloffs private secretary and two sergeants of the In- nailoffsky guards, for sending soundings of the harbour of Helsingfors to Sir Charles Napier." "Won't do, Fibbs. Try again. The Princess Ogurzi died at Spa the year before last, and the whole story about the knout turned out to be a hoax." "Then I am sure I don't know," answers Tom Fibbs (who is never disconcerted when detected in a fiction); "I give her up in despair. V\r been trying to find out who she is, for months. She is always alone; epiite alone. A Brougham meets her at Apsley House, and the groom takes her mare away. I asked him one day who she was, and lie called me Paid Pry, and threatened to knock me down. She dines, sometimes, quite 10 Quite Alone. alone, at the Castlemaine Hotel in Bond-street. The waiters think, either that she's a duchess, or that she's mad. She's the only woman who ever dined alone in the coffee-room at the Castlemaine, but nobody dares to be rude to her. I've seen her at the Star and Garter at Richmond, at Greenwich, at Brighton, at Ventnor, in Paris, always quite alone. She's an enigma. She's a Sphinx." "Is she demi-monde?" Thus, one Insolent. " Nobody knows. Nobody ever presumes to speak to her, and she never was seen to speak to anybody save her groom and the waiters. She goes to the Opera ; to the theatres ; always quite alone. Upon my word, I think that woman would turn up at a prize fight: alone. I've seen her myself at Ascot." As Tom Fibbs said this, a very tall angular well-dressed gentleman, with grizzled hair, and close upon fifty years of age, who had been sitting in an arm-chair close by, hastily flung down the Globe he was glancing over, darting a by no means complimentary look at Mr. Fibbs, and strode out of the room. "I think Billy Long must know the Mysterious Stranger," languidly remarked Faineant number Seule au Monde. 11 one, as the door closed. " He knows all sorts of monstrous queer people, and he didn't half seem to like what Fibbs said." " Very likely. He's a cranky fellow." "Very rich, isn't lie?" "Disgustingly so. What he wants in parlia- ment with twenty thousand a year I can't make out. He never speaks, and passes most of his time in the smoking-room." " Twenty thousand. That's a tremendous screw for a Catholic baronet." " Yes : but he was as poor as Job till his father died. Painted pictures, or went on the stage, or turned billiard-marker, or did something low for a living, I'm told ; but he's all right now." As Thomas Fibbs, Esq., member of the Com- mittee of the United Fogies Club, of the Turnpike Ticket Commutation Commission (salary 1500/. per annum, hours of business 3 to ^ past 3 p.m., 3 times a week, 3 months in the year), w as selecting his umbrella from the stand about twenty minutes subsequent to this conversation, preparatory to looking in at the Burke and I lure Club, to which he also belongs, and which is younger and more convivial than the Fogies, he found Sir William 12 Quite Alone. Long, Bart., M.P., in the act of lighting one of those cigars which he "was almost continually smoking. " Might I trouble Mr. Fibbs," said the baronet, in a slow and rather hesitating tone, " to refrain in promiscuous conversation from hazarding conjec- tures as to the identity of a lady with whom I am acquainted, and who, I can assure him, is a most resj>ectable and exemplary person % " " Certainly — oh, certainly, Sir William/' stam- mered Fibbs. "I meant no offence. I'm sure I didn't." And, so saying, he buttoned up his over- coat, and trotted down the steps of the Fogies con- siderably flurried. Sir William Long had been a member of the club for five years, and this was the first time he had ever spoken to Fibbs. That worthy, however, recovered himself by the time he reached the Burke and Hare, and hinted as myste- riously as mendaciously, that " Billy Long'' — he called him Billy — had told him all about the Sphinx of Rotten Row. "No offence," murmured the tall baronet, as puffing his cigar he strode clown Pall-Mail. "I dare say you didn't mean any. Mischief-makers never do, and burn down the temple at Ephesus Seule au Monde. 13 with the best intentions in the world. Ah, Lily !" he continued, bitterly, u how long will you give all these idle tongues some grounds to tattle? How long will you persist in being quite alone ? " Still quite alone. Who was this female Robin- son Crusoe ? 'Tis a question which I shall en- deavour in the course of the next few hundred pages to solve. 14 Quite Alone, CHAPTER II. BETWEEN HAMMERSMITH AND CHIS WICK-LANE. One bright afternoon, in the summer of 1836, the whole fashionable world of London had chosen to abandon Hyde Park, Pali-Mall, Regent-street, and its other habitual resorts, and to betake itself to the flower-show at Chiswick. Probably about one per cent, of the ladies who thus patronised the exhibition of the Royal Hor- ticultural Society cared one cloit about the products collected in the conservatories and the tents. The Botanical Revival (which owes so much to Puseyism and the Tracts for the Times) was then but in its infancy; and, besides, a life passed in the con- templation of artificial flowers is not very favour- Betivee?i Hammerfmith and Chifivich-lane, 15 able to the study of real flowers. People went to this oreat annual garden crush less to look at the roses in the pots than at those on the cheeks of other people ; and fuchsias on their branches were at a discount with them, as objects of attraction, compared with fuchsias that grew in white satin bonnets. Yes, ladies, white satin bonnets were worn in 1836 ; and for dresses even that sheeny material had not incurred the cruel proscription under which it seems to languish in 1863. But if one in a hundred among the ladies were flonculturally inclined, what shall be said of the o-entlemen ? Did one in a thousand trouble him- self concerning roses, or fuchsias, or geraniums, or pelargoniums ? It did not much matter. People went to Chiswick because other people went to Chiswick. It was the thing, and a very nice, amusing, and fashionable tiling, too. So all the jobbed horses in London were spruced up, and currycombed, and polished ; and all the footmen underwent dry cascades through the medium of the flour-dredger ; and nil the grandees in Granductoo stepped into their carriages, and were wafted rapidly to Chiswick. What pails of water had been dashed over plated axles in liny 16 Quite Alone. and clover-smelling mews behind the mansions of the great ! What spun-glass or floss silk wigs had been smoothed over the crania of ruddy double- chinned coachmen ! What fashionable milliners had sat up all night to complete the radiant flower- show toilettes : the subordinates wearily wishing for morning to come and the dolorous task to be got through ; the principals uttering devout aspira- tions that their bills might be paid at the end of the season. If poor Mademoiselle Ruche, of Mount-street, Grosvenor-square, did not obtain a settlement of her small account (904/. 3s. 6d.) from the Marchioness of Cceurdesart, when the season and the session were over, and did in consequence go bankrupt; if the flower-show was to unhappy Miss Pincothek, the "first hand," the seed-time for the harvest which death reaped next spring; or if the night before Chiswick was to Jane Thumb, the apprentice girl, the last straw that broke the consumptive camel's back — what were such little mischances in comparison with the im- mense benefit which of course accrues to the com- munity at large from all fashionable gatherings ? That the few must suffer for the benefit of the many, is an axiom admitted in the conduct of all Between Hammerfmith and Chifwick-lane. 17 human affairs. According to the rules of fashion- able polity, the many must suffer for the benefit of the few. There could not have been a more magnificent day for the holding of a patrician festival. It had rained the preceding year, and snowed the year before that; but the show of 1836 was favoured by the elements in an almost unprecedented degree. Although the gracious Lady who now rules over this empire was then but a pretty young princess, it was really " Queen's weather " with which the visitors to Chiswick were for a brief afternoon en- dowed. One cannot have everything one's own way, of course, and although the sky was very blue, the sun very warm and bright, and the sum- mer breeze very gentle, there was rebellion under- foot ; and if the worm in the dust didn't turn when trodden upon, the dust itself did, even to rising up and eddying about, and covering the garments of fashion with pulverulent particles, and half choking every man, woman, and child who happened to be in the open between Hyde Park Corner and Kew Bridge. The young ladies and gentlemen belonging to the various colleges, academies, seminaries, and VOL. I. C 18 Quite Alone. educational institutions in the high road from Hammersmith Broadway to Turnham-green — for of course there could be no such vulgar things as schools iii a main thoroughfare, such low places being only to be found in by-lanes where children are cuffed and kicked, and don't learn calisthenics, and have fevers, and don't have French lessons — the fortunate little boys and girls attached to those gymnasia had a half-holiday on the flower-show afternoon, just as their tiny brethren and sisters at Clapham and Mitcham are exempted from lessons and permitted to be all eyes for the passing caval- cade on the Derby Day. Their shiny well-washed faces were visible over the copings of many brick walls ; their eyes shone brighter than many brass plates whereon the academical degrees of their preceptors were engraved; their pleasant counte- nances were embowered in green foliage, so de- lightfully as to make the speculative wayfarer ponder on the possibility of there having been child-trees among the horticultural phenomena of the garden of Eden ; their silver laughter, and the ringing clack of their chubby hands as they smote them in applause, made the same wayfarers (if they happened to be philanthropists) hope that those Between Hammerfmith and Chifiuick-lane '. 19 argentine tones were never turned to wails of dis- tress, nor that same sound of applause derived from cruel smacks administered by their pastors and masters. The domestic servants, likewise, alono- the line of road, if they had not had a half-holiday conceded to them voluntarily, took one without leave, and appeared at many up-stairs windows in much beribboned caps, and with lips ceaselessly mobile, now in admiration, now in disparagement of the male and female fashionables whom the carnages bore by. Nor were their mistresses, young, old, and middle-aged, employed in a very different manner at the drawing-room and parlour casements, from which points of espial they in- dulged in criticisms identical in spirit, if not in language, with those of the upper regions, and bearing mainly on how beautiful the gentlemen looked, and what frights the women were ! Al- though, thus much must be stated in mitigation : That while they animadverted on the bad make of the toilettes, and the awkwardness or oglinee the ladies, they did not withhold warm commenda- tion from the quality of the garments themselves. Enthusiastic admiration for a moire antique is c2 20 Quite Alone. quite compatible with intense dislike of the lady inside it. It is one thing to like a dress, but an- other to like the wearer. The lower orders were determined also to have their part in this great afternoon. All over the world, when sunshine is once given, the principal part of a festival is secured. This is why the Italians are so lazy. As it is almost always sunny in Italy, the sun-worshippers (and it is astonishing how many Ghebirs there are among Christians) are nearly always doing nothing, or celebrating Saint Somebody's festa, which is next door to it. We see so little of the sun in England, that we are bound to make the most of him whenever he favours us with an appearance. The trading classes on the road to Chiswick enjoyed their holi- days according to the promptings of their several imaginations. One abandoned his shop to the care of an apprentice, and took a stroll towards the Packhorse, where he met other tradesmen similarly minded, and was, perhaps, after many admiring comments on the carriages, the horses, the foot- men, and the fashionables, induced to stroll back again, diverge from the main road, and take a boat at Hammersmith Suspension Bridge for a quiet Between Hammerfmith and Chifiuick-lane. 21 row up the river. Another (but he would he in a small way of business) gravely instructed the wife of his bosom to place a row of chairs outside his domicile, and there, enthroned with the partner of his joys and his olive-branches, would smoke his pipe and take his placid glass, exchanging the time of day and the news of the afternoon with neigh- bours similarly employed, and otherwise behaving in quite a patriarchal manner. A third, with an eye to business, wafered up sanguine placards re- lative to tea and coffee and hot water always ready; or displayed in front of his establishment, boards on tressels covered with fair white cloths, and creaking, if not groaning, beneath the weight of half-cut hams, fruit tarts, buns, and ginger beer. For do what Fashion will to keep itself exclusive, and have the cream of things, the common people will not be banished from the fes- tivals altogether. They will peep over the palings or through the chinks thereof; they will peep round the carnages and criticise the occupants ; and what can Fashion, itself, do more? Often, the common see the best of the fireworks ; and the music of the brass bands, coming from a distance, falls more sweetly on their ears than of those who 22 Quite Alone. are privileged to stand within the inner enclosure, and to be half deafened by the blasting and the braying. The purest pleasures in life are the cheapest ones. Once the writer knew a gentleman of a lively and convivial turn, but whose circle of acquaintances was limited, and who was, besides, so chronic an invalid as to be almost permanently confined to the house. At the back there was an- other house, almost always full of company, and where balls, supper-parties, and other merry meet- ings, were continually going on. It was the vale- tudinarian philosopher's delight to sit sipping his sassafras tea at his open window and cry " Hear, hear," with due attention to the proprieties of time and place, to the eloquent speeches, and sometimes to join in choruses when songs were sung in the convivial chambers whose lights glimmered in the distance. No pleasure coidd be cheaper ; yet he enjoyed it amazingly. There was no trouble about dressing, about being introduced, about meeting people he didn't care for. He went away when he liked, without having to make, perhaps, a men- dacious assurance to the hostess of having spent a delightful evening; and he rose next morning without a headache, or, worse still, the loss of his heart to that pretty girl in blue. Between Hammerfmith and Ch'ifiv'ick-lane. 23 If some of the traders just glanced at did not make holiday in honour of the sun ; if one crusty- looking cheesemonger denounced the whole pro- ceedings as rubbish, and another secreted himself in his back parlour to brood over his speech at the next vestry, or Board of Guardians meeting ; or if another, the worst of all, shut himself up to grumble over his books and hard times, and scold his wife and children, and curse because the people outside were enjoying themselves — what were these but the little flaws and specks that must needs be found in the brightest social diamond ! If every- body were happy, what good would there be in ex- patiating on the blessings of happiness? It is certain, however, that the grumblers this sunny afternoon were in a grave minority. Troops of children who did not belong to seminaries or edu- cational institutes, and perhaps came out of the by-lanes before alluded to, invaded the footway, screamed with delight at the processional pageantry, and endangered themselves, as usual, under the carriages without getting run over. It is certain that the offspring of Want very rarely enjoj a ride in Fortune's chariot, yet arc they for ever hanging on behind, running close to the wheels, and diving beneath the horses' hoofs. 24 Quite Alone. Many persons of grave mien and determined ap- pearance — peripatetic, not stationary, traders — were turning the sunshine and its consequent holiday to commercial account. There did not seem any great likelihood, at the first blush, of the Court Guide, the Blue Book, the Peerage or the Baronetage, descending from their equipages to purchase lucifer-matches or knitted babies' caps, or to partake of jam tarts, gingerbread nuts, or apples three a penny ; and the numbers of specu- lations entered into towards that end, on the foot- way, must have appeared to the superficial as rash in conception and pregnant with disaster. But the peripatetic merchants knew perfectly well what they were about. There was somebody to buy everything they had to sell, and they sold accord- ingly. Somebody was the great wandering fluc- tuating stream of poor people ; and poor people are always buying something, and must perforce have ready money to pay for it. More remarkable was the fact that all the taverns and beer-shops on the line of road were full of guests ; the men all , smoking pipes and drinking beer ; the vast majority of the women holding babies in one hand and Abernethy biscuits in the other. Why was this ? Between Hammerfmlth and Chifivick-lane. 25 Why is this ? Why will it be so, if augury can be hazarded, in ages to come ? This flower-show was not a popular gathering. The tickets were ten shillings each. The people had nothing to do with it. They just took a good long stare — not of envy, be it understood, but of lazy and listless curiosity, at the fine folks in the carriages, and then trooped into the nearest public-house for beer, tobacco, baby-nursing and biscuit-munching. There is surely a dreary sameness about the amusements of the English people ; and, for aught we know, the system adopted of rigorously excluding them from anything that is to be seen, and fencing them off by barriers and reserved seats, just as though they were unclean animals, from every trumpery section of infinite space where something humanly con- sidered grand is going on, may have been carried a little too far. Gentility has robbed the poor play- goer of his best seats in the pit, and made them into stalls. The gallery even, once specially appropriated to the gods, has now its amphitheatre stalls. The. railway formula has penetrated everywhere. All is first, second, and third class, from refreshment- rooms to funerals. Neither pit-stalls nor railway formulae were 2Q Quite Alone. thought much of, however, in the year '36, and the honest folk enjoying their outing, took their pipes and malt liquor, nursed their bantlings and ate their biscuits because there was nothing else for them to do, and without asking the reason why. The present age is always asking the reason why, and may be much the better for it ; — which I hope it is. It was about five o'clock in the evening when the gardens at Chiswick were most thronged, and when a Babel of silvery tongues echoed on mala- chite lawn and gravel walk, that a gentleman's cabriolet of the period — a "cab," as it was very modestly named (at the risk of being confounded with the plebeian high-hung saffron-hued vehicles with a seat for the driver at one side), passed swiftly by Turnham-green, and so to the gardens of the Horticultural Society. It was a faultless cab; exquisitely appointed, shining in its even- part like a pair of Wellingtons fresh home from the tip-top maker's. The tiger was a Lilliputian phenomenon, with apparently three tightly-fitting natural skins: one of leather, bifurcated for his nethers : another of pepper and salt cloth for his coat : a third of jetty-black surmounted with brown Between Hammerfmith and Chifivick-lane . 27 streaks for his top-boots. Portions of his epidermis they must have been ; for although, if artificial, he might have got them on, it was beyond the range of human possibility that he could ever get them off. Stay, an additional article must be mentioned in regard to his buckskin gloves. With shining livery buttons, with a tight little belt round his tight little waist, and a hat bound with silver cord, this domestic was surely the tightest tiger that ever was seen. He leaped down, like an elfin groom as he was, when the cab stopped, and in three bounds was at the head of the great brown champing horse. Then the apron was flung open, and a gentleman de- scended, and said, " Drive back to town !" Where- upon the nimble tiger skimmed, so to speak, in the airiest manner to the vacant place, gathered up the reins in his tiny buckskinned hand, gave the whip a gentle flourish about the plated har- ness of the brown horse, and departed at an agile trot. The late occupant, and, it is to be presumed, owner, of this vehicle, having been duly brushed down by one of the red jackets who had conn 1 specially from Pall-Mall for the occasion, presented 28 Quite Alone. his ticket and entered the gardens. He was a tre- mendous dandy, in an age of dandies. The Brummel type was not yet extinct. The heavy languid dragoon-like dandy, with his loose clothes, looser slouch, and pendent moustaches, had not yet made his appearance. The only thing loose about the dandy, then, were his morals. The owner of the cabriolet was the brisk, alert, self-satisfied dandy of the time. The tailor, the shirtmaker, the bootmaker, the staymaker, the hairdresser, could do no more for him than they had done. They had exhausted their faculties in adorning him. Another lappel to the coat, another curl to the coiffure, another whiff of perfume about him, and the dandy would have been spoiled. As it was, he was as perfect as a man could be with three under waistcoats, a very high shouldered higher collared coat with velvet collar and cuffs, lavender pantaloons very tightly strapped over his boots, a hat with a turned up brim, a voluminous shirt frill with diamond studs down the breast, white kid gloves, and a gold-headed cane with a long silk tassel. Dress makes up so much of the dandiacal entity that the description of this ineffable person's coun- tenance has been temporarily overlooked. It was Between Hammerfmith and Chifwich-lane, 29 worth looking at. A dandy face, but not a monkey- fied, not a simpering one. His age seemed to be between thirty and forty ; but it was evident that at no very remote period he had been an eminently handsome man. His teeth were beautiful. His hands and feet were in a concatenation accordingly. He had a charming red and white complexion. His hair was black and glossy, and admirably adjusted. So, too, with his mathematically cut whiskers and chin tuft. Moustaches he had none. When he smiled, he showed the beautiful teeth a good deal ; when his glove was off, he made a liberal display of the emerald and diamond rings on his dainty white hand. There was no finding any fault with the man's outward appearance, for albeit ex- pensively dressed, and with a great gold chain meandering over his cut velvet waistcoat, and a double diamond pin in his cravat, he looked from head to foot a gentleman. It should finally be mentioned that there were two trifling drawbacks to his good looks. Across his left cheek, almost from the corner of the mouth to the eye, there ran a very deep scar, which when he talked turned livid. His eyes, too, were very colourless and sunken, and there were brownish rings beneath 30 Quite Alone. them. But for these the dandy would have been an Adonis. He was evidently very well known. He stopped to speak to ladies belonging to the elite. He was asked whether he had been to the duchess's ball ; whether he was going to the marchioness's rout. His replies were affirmative. He was tapped on the arm with pretty parasols and scent bottles, and scolded prettily for not having executed some commission, accepted some invitation, joined some junketing recently afoot. Clearly our dandy was very popular among the sex. Nor did the men treat him with less favour. There came up my Lord Carlton, a wild rake of the time, and deep player, with little Harry Jermyn, his admirer, crony, toady, on his arm. "How do, Griffin?" was his lordship's saluta- tion. " Monsous baw stopping here. Confounded military band blows roof of one's head off. Come away, Griffin, and have a hand at piquet at my rooms in town." " I would with pleasure," Griffin answered, "but I've a little business to transact in this neighbourhood before I return." "Business?" echoed his lordship. " Business at Between Hammerfmith and Ghifivick-lane. 31 a flower-show ? Dooced queer place for business, Griffin. You haven't turned market gardener ? " "H y a des fleurs animees," quoth little hlv. Jermyn. " All the Chiswick roses don't grow on bushes." "None are growing elsewhere hereabouts for me/' smiled the dandy, lifting his hat for the hundredth time to a passing party of ladies. "Then what are you going to stop here for, when it's time to go back to town ? " Lord Carl- ton pursued, elevating his eyebrows in pardonable amazement. " Going to look at a horse ? " "No." "Going to dine at Richmond'?" — his lordship said "Wichmond," but it would be both tedious, and indecorous to give typographical expression to his defective Unguals. "No. I lunched very late, just before coming down; and if I dine at all, it will not be till night." "Never mind, my boy, you'll get plenty of supper at Crocky's," Mr. Jermyn here cut in. A slight cloud passed across the white forehead of the dandy, but he chased it away with an airy toss of the head. 32 Quite Alone. "Of which club/' he blandly retorted, "Mr. Jermyn is not, I fear, a member ! " "Got nothing but black balls," his lordship added, by way of confirmation, and with a loud chuckle. " Poor fellow, his proposer stayed away, and his seconder came from Scotland on purpose to pill him. There was one white ball, but that was from a fellow who was short-sighted, and popped his pill into the wrong side." "Mr. Jermyn mil have, I trust, better luck next time," remarked Griffin. "Had I not been in Paris " " At Frascati's ? " interposed his noble friend. "In Paris," he continued, taking no notice of the interruption, " Mr. Jermyn might have reckoned on my humble support. I should have been de- lighted to find him one of us." "Yes, I dare say you would," acquiesced Lord Carlton. "Harry's a very good fellow, and has plenty of feathers ready to be plucked, before he is fit to be made into a compote de pigeons. You'd have given him two white balls, I'm sure you would, Griffin." "Oh yes, I'm sure you would," repeated Mr. Jermyn. The assurance was double-barrelled — Between Hammerfmith and Ghifwick-lane. 33 susceptible of two meanings. Mr. Henry Jermyn hated the dandy for belonging to a club to which he had himself failed to procure admittance, although he well knew that the honorary co-membership might prove in the long run costly if not ruinous. Yet he would have jumped for joy, had the ex- quisite addressed as Griffin offered to propose him. " Never mind, Harry," his good-natured lordship observed. " Safe to get in next time. Can't keep you out. Besides," he added, turning to the dandy, u the fellows made a mistake after all. They took Harry for big Jack Jermyn — you know big Jack — the racing man who was in the Eighth, and levanted after Newmarket the year before last. They thought it was all up with Jack, and didn't care about having a rook in the dovecot. By Jove! If they knew that Harry was to have all his grandmother's money — how old is she, Harry .' — he'd have been elected unanimously, and received with a salute of twenty-one guns." "Mr. Crockford must have shed tears when in- formed of the sad truth," remarked the dandy, with sardonic politeness. "However, fortune will make amends. I hope to meet Mr. Jermyn :i-< a fellow-member at supper in St. James's-streel as VOL. I. D 34 Quite Alone. soon after his grandmamma's decease as possible." And the dandy, lifting his hat for the hundred and tenth time that afternoon, strolled away. "Monsous well-preserved man, Griffin Blunt," Lord Carlton said, looking with careless admira- tion after his retreating friend; "wears very well. Must be forty, if he's a day." "He looks queer about the eyes," Mr. Jermyn ventured to observe, in mild disparagement. " Late hours," explained his lordship, who gene- rally went to bed about four in the morning and rose about three in the afternoon. "Griffin is a shocking night-crow." "What do they call him Griffin for, and who is he?" " How amazingly raw you are ! " exclaimed his lordship, elevating his eyebrows in some surprise. "Don't you know that Frank Blunt goes by the name of Griffin, because he used to wear a scaly green-silk coat when he drove his curricle at the time of the Regency % Dooced queer time it must have been, too, and dooced queer fellows. Should have liked to belong to that set, only they drank so dooced hard:" "Has he any money? How does he get his living?" Between Hamrnerfmitb and Chifivick-lane. 35 "How should I know? P'r'aps lie's Lis grand- mothers heir, if he hasn't sold the reversion. You'd better ask him. He's apt to turn crusty sometimes. He got that sear on his cheek in '15, in a duel \\ irli a French dragoon officer in Paris. Griffin Blunt was in garrison at Versailles, and came up to dine in the Palais Royal, and the dragoon picked a quarrel with him about Waterloo — they were always picking quarrels, those French fellows, at that time — and Griffin knocked him down ; and then they fought with sabres in the Bois de Vincenncs, and Griffin had his pretty face laid open ; but, by Jove ! he killed the dragoon." "And what dues lie do now '. " " AVhat a lot of questions you ask ! I'm not his godfathers and his godmothers. I. believe h< out after the peace, and went to India to grow indigo, or buy opium, or shake the pagoda-tree, or something of that sort. Well, lie came back, and he's been on town these ten years: at least, I've known him ever since I came up from Oxford." " Est-il mauvais strjet \ " Mr. Jerinyn asked. "I believe lie's about as bad :i- bad cai coolly replied Lord Carlton. "He's worse than 1 am, and that's saying a good deal." d2 36 Quite Alone. " And about his money ? " "Don't know anything about it. He lives high, and must spend three thousand a year. Charming little house in Curzon-street. Goes in for deep play, and bets, and so forth ; but I don't know whether he's worth twopence in the world or not." "Is he married?" " Married ! By Jove ! one would think you wanted me to say my catechism. What do I know? Griffin Blunt never said anything about his being married, and there's nobody in Mayfair who owns to the name of Mrs. Blunt. Come along." Mr. Blunt was a squire of dames. Group after group of ladies took him up, and did not drop him after brief parley, as I am told it is the elegant but rather embarrassing custom of the ladies of the great world to do. They were sorry to part with him, for it was agreed on all sides that Mr. Blunt was most amusing and agreeable. There were some prudent mammas who looked upon him as a dangerous man, and warned their daughters to be- ware of him ; but then it was impossible to be very severe with a gentleman who went into the very best houses, who was undeniably accomplished, Betwee?i Hammerfmith mid Chifivick-Ia/w. 37 faultlessly dressed, exquisitely well bred, and who could always procure a voucher for Almack's. Be- sides, Blunt had the rare art, or rather the rare tact, of paying court before the world to old and middle-aged ladies. He cast himself, morally, at their feet, and overwhelmed them with attentions, as though they were in all the bloom and freshness of youth. It was only when the world was not looking that Mr. Blunt occupied himself with young people ; and it was on the staircase and in the conservatory that the sleek Griffin put forth his claws. "There are always young people growing up for one," he would say, in his air}- manner; "but the dowagers who have places to give and money to leave, pass away. Let us cultivate the dowager. If a man wants to get on in life, he can't do better than study the History of the Middle Ages." To which Moyen Age culture Mr. Blunt owed much of his success. Thus, floating through the sunny crowd, went on Griffin Blunt, admired, caressed, envied by struggling tuft-hunters, who would have given their ears (long ones, and good measure) for a nod or a half-civil word from half the people he was with. When a man comes to propounding conun- 38 Quite Alone. drums to duchesses, and promising to draw carica- tures in the albums of ambassadresses, it is palpable that lie must be well placed in society. "My humble proficiency in the fine arts," Blunt would occasionally say, u is worth fifty dinners, a hundred balls, and a week in each of the best country- houses, a year, to me. Of what use should I be in Dorset or Russell square? What do they know about the fine arts there, beyond the c Beauties of England and "Wales,' the portrait of the late Prin- cess Charlotte, and the view of the Temple of Concord in Hyde Park ? At her grace's it is quite another thing, and I go to her water-parties at Kew. My little musical accomplishments would be worth an heiress or an Indian widow to me if I were a marrying man. If I could play the violon- cello, I should be invited to his Royal Highness's Wednesdays. I must learn the violoncello. Tell me where Dragonetti lives, and I will give him a guinea a lesson." "You're an ambitious fellow, Griffin," would that shrewd novelist and newspaper writer, Whip- staff, to whom Blunt sometimes imparted these demi-confidences, remark. u You sail well before the wind, and in a short heat I'll back you to dis- Between Hammerfmith and Chifiutch-lane. 39 tance the best ; but you've no ballast, my boy, and you'll founder. Take my advice, and if you haven't laid by for a rainy day, borrow somebody else's um- brella, and don't give it back again." " You are an excellent moralist," thus Mr. Blunt, with a pleasant sneer. "Are you, too, ready for the wrath of Jupiter Pluvius % " "Never mind," retorted Whipstaff, who was notoriously not worth a penny, and in dire diffi- culties. " Let me alone, and I shall turn up trumps yet. Every bird feathers his nest in a different manner. The wisest one after all is, perhaps, he who never troubles himself with making a nest of his own, but pops into somebody else's. There are still a few sinecures left, that confounded Reform Bill" — Whipstaff was a staunch Conservative — "notwithstanding. The wind is tempered to the shorn lamb, and the old ravens of the Treasury Bench will provide for the barrister of seven years' standing." Such was the worldly wisdom of Mr. Whipstaff, who had eaten his terms some years before at his own expense, with the firm and fixed resolve of eating a great many more terms, one day or another, at the expense of the country. Whipstaff was at the (lower-sin >\v, and remarked 40 Quite Alone. to several acquaintances that he never saw Griffin Blunt looking better. " Plow he manages it," he continued, "I can't imagine. I wish he'd give me his recipe for living at the rate of two or three thousand a year upon nothing." " Shakes his elbow," suggested purple-faced Cap- tain Hanger, who hated Blunt. "Perhaps," acquiesced Whipstaff, with a sigh, " and is lucky. With me that species of paralysis has always proved the costliest of diseases." And so the Whirligig went on in the Chi s wick Gardens. Now Scandal's sirocco seized a spiteful anecdote, and twirled and twisted and sent it spinning from one end of the gardens to the other. Now it caught up a woman's reputation, and eddied it in wild hide-and-seek through the summer leaves. It was the merriest kind of word-waltzing ima- ginable ; and never a sneer, an innuendo, a wicked bon mot, but found a partner. And in the midst of it all, the band of the Koyal Horse Guards Blue brayed forth Suoni la Tromba with tremendous and sonorous emphasis. What did it all matter to them? It was their business to blow, and they blew as though they would have blown for ever. So the huntsman winds a find, a check, a mort Between Hammerfmtih and Chif wick-lane. 41 So the drummer beats the charge or the chamade — the advance or the retreat. I myself think that the band of the Royal Horse Guards Blue, at the Chiswick Flower Show, had the best of it. When their labour was over they enjoyed gratuitous cold meats and beer, and the band-master shared be- tween them a handsome donative. 42 Quite Alone. CHAPTER III. NURSE PIGOTT. The Chiswick festival came to an end, and the company departed. Griffin Blnnt lingered to the last, and wound his way to the door of egress, through a silken labyrinth of polite conversations and bowing adieux. Ivanhoff's last aria, and Ma- libran's last cadence ; Prince Esterhazy's last con- versazione, and the Duke of Devonshire's last ball at Brighton ; the odds for the St. Leger, the beauties of drawn tulle bonnets ; taste and the musical glasses — without Shakspeare — had each their graceful mention, as Blunt fluttered in and about the parterres of beauty and fashion. The scene at the gate was like the crush-room at the Nurfe Pigott. 43 Opera, only with mellow sunlight turned on, in- stead of garish gas — like the "pin" at St. James's without the trains and plumes. The company had begun to yawn. Even Fashion is not exempt from the laws of fatigue ; and perhaps one reason why great people grow tired of one another, is that they see one another so frequently — the endurable world being so extremely small. Mr. Blunt had divers offers of conveyance to town. He might have continued a Squire of Dames to the last, and sat behind the most ex- pensively jobbed horses in the metropolis. But he courteously declined all such proposals. lie had a little business to transact, he said, and he was everybody's humble and devoted servant, lie remained, however, chatting, bowing, smiling, until the crush grew thin, until the shamefaced people who had come down in glass-coaches and hackneys took heart of grace and bade the red jackets summon their hired vehicles, and until one or two attaches of foreign legations, and hardened Guardsmen, kindled their cigars before strolling away. In justice to them it must be admitted, that even these offenders peeped round to there were no ladies near. Now-*ndays, shame 44 Quite Alone. and the smoker have been hopelessly divorced. So far from hesitating as to lighting a cigar in a lady's presence, the worshipper of nicotine well- nigh presumes to ask Beauty for a Vesuvian. A qui la faute ? Is Beauty or Boeotia to blame \ The trees of Chiswick were bathed in crimson and burnished gold, and cast shadows of deepest purple, before Blunt himself ventured to light his cigar. When he began to smoke, he smoked vigo- rously, and as he walked away with a firm hasty tread, the white wreaths of vapour circling behind him, his gait seemed very different from that of the mincing tripping exquisite of half an hour ago. Had you had Fortunatus's cap, or had you been in the receipt of fern seed, you might have availed yourself of the privilege of invisibility, trodden on his varnished heel — marked how nervously he turned and started, although he had but scrunched a pebble — and then, looking in his face, have dis- covered, not without amazement, that his face was as the face of an old man. Terribly jaded, haggard, and careworn. A film seemed to have come over the eyes. No silver, but a rust rather, mingled with the jetty hair and whiskers. And the smile had fled away from the Nurfe Pigott. 45 mouth, and left only furrows of cruelty and hard- ness there. He struck into a by-lane, green and solitary as though it had been fifty miles from London, and walking rapidly, soon came upon a mean little wayside tavern, all thatch and ivy and honey- suckle, and "with the sign of the Goat swinging before it. He passed through the bar, where two market gardeners sprawled over their pipes and beer on a bench — one, awake and uproarious ; the other, asleep and snoring ; both as happy, doubt- less, as the Great Mogul. He turned to a little side-window, and in the most unaffected manner in the world ordered a glass of brandy. He, order brandy ! Nevertheless, he not only did order brandy, but drank it without flinching; and, what is still more singular, paid for it — a performance to which he was, to say the Least, unaccustomed. However, this was to be for Mr. Blunt an evening unusually marked by the dis- bursement of ready money. "There is a person here with a child,'' he said, Less asking a question than asserting something of which he entertained no doubt. " In the parlour, sir," the landlady replied, with 46 Quite Ah a low curtsey ; for gentlemen so gallantly accou- tred were by no means frequent customers at the Goat. He looked inquiringly for the parlour's where- about. The landlady bustled from behind her counter, and ushered him into a little room at the extremity of the passage, and then returned to gossip with her daughter about the beautiful teeth and whiskers and gold chain of the distin its occupants. These salutations were of a twofold nature. 48 Quite Ah " How do you do, Nurse Pigott ? " he said, with an affable nod and a forced smile, to a fubsy dumpy woman with a very red round face, and for whose attire the brief but graphic summary given by the landlady to her daughter will amply suffice. " All well with you at home, I hope \ " "Nicely, sir, which it also left my husband, thankin' you kindly, and glory be/' responded the dumpy woman, rising and dropping a profound reverence. " But oh, sir, Miss Lily have been a takin' on dreadful." " What's the matter with her — the little puss '. " exclaimed Blunt, sharply. And this was his se- cond salutation. The " little puss" was sitting on the dumpy woman's knee. Indeed, she was a very little puss — a tiny fair girl of three years old. She had very long brown hair curling in thick profusion round her chubby face. She had very large won- dering blue eyes ; but these, on the present occa- sion, were red and swollen. Her whole face was suffused with the moisture of sorrow. Her little lips were twitching. It was evident that the "little puss" had been crying her eyes out. " Be quiet, miss, and don't be naughty, or I Nurfe Pigott. 49 shall tell Nurse Pigott to give you a whipping," said Blunt. His words were harsh and unfeeling ; but oddly enough his manner was not so. He spoke less in anger than in the languid tone of an Indian Begum telling her slave-girl that really, if she gave her any more trouble, she would be com- pelled to have her buried alive. It may be that he had enjoyed very very little experience of children, and erroneously imagined that whipping was the only specific course of treatment available in the case of tears. At any rate, the threat had not the desired effect, the child being evidently aware that Nurse Pigott was no more likely to execute it than to cut her head off with a carving- knife. So she began to cry louder than ever. " Tut, tut, tut ! " Mr. Blunt murmured, pacing the room in vexation. " Dear me, dear me, Nurse Pigott, this is very embarrassing, and not at all fair to me, you know. When I paid your last month's bill, and told you I was obliged to take Miss Lily away, I distinctly informed you there was to be no crying. My nerves can't stand it, they can't, indeed." But there was little good in reasoning with Nurse Pigott. VOL. I. E 50 Quite Alone. " Oh ! sir," she sobbed out, half essaying to comfort Lily, and half to dry her own eyes with the corner of her shawl, u I can't help it, I can't indeed, sir, when I thinks of that there blessed innocent which I took from the breast, and have never left, night nor day, for three years Jani- werry, likewise nursing her through measles and hoopin'-cough, and all her pretty ways, a pulling of us all to pieces, and hangin' round us, and my 'usband is a-fond of her as if she was his own, which we have buried two and the twins being the one of them that's left is but sickly, and will never make old bones, which the doctor told me only last Tuesday was a fortnight, it breaks my heart, it do, indeed, to part with the little darling. Oh, sir, let the child bide with us, and don't take her away." Griffin Blunt was too well bred to bite his nails — besides, he had not taken off his gloves ; but he bit his lips, and contracted his brows, and paced the room more nervously than ever. u You're a stupid old woman," he muttered, pettishly. " I know I am," acquiesced Nurse Pigott, with a fresh succession of sobs, " and so's my 'usband, that is in bein' fond of the little cherub, and glad would he be for us to keep it, though only a Nurfe Pigott. 51 journeyman plasterer, and times is hard as hard can be." " She is trying it on for more money, the old hypocrite ! " Mr. Blunt said, internally. " I told you," he continued aloud, turning to Nurse Pigott, "that it was absolutely necessary for me to re- move the little girl. I am about to take her to a place where she will be well educated." " She ain't old enough to be educated," moaned Nurse Pigott. " Besides, my 'usband reads beau- tiful, and there's a lovely school round the corner at twopence a week, and let alone teaching, there's nobody but me knows how much bread-and-butter she wants." "Pray let me have no more of this painful dis- cussion," the dandy, with calm dignity, interposed. "When I made an appointment with you to meet me here, you understood the purpose for which you were to bring the child. You have been paid for her maintenance, and I must tell you, that if yon have any views of gaming more money by her, they will be disappoint^!." "Money!" exclaimed Nurse Pigott, half choking, and by this time as much with indignation as with grief. "Money! I scorns it. It isn't money 1 E 2 LIBRARY UNIVERSITY Of HI 52 Quite Alone. want, nor my 'usband neither. If the dear child had been put out to us by the parish, we'd ha' done our dooty by it. If its fathers and mothers were lords and ladies and hemperors, we'd ha' done the same. It isn't for the money, though little enough, goodness knows, and not paid regular, which you know, sir, not being disrespectable to you. And if you'd leave the darling with us, and money was a little short, I'm sure we'd wait for better times, and never trouble you for one brass farthing, if you'd only let us 'ave our little little Lily." Nurse Pigott subsided after this into mere incoherence of grief. Mr. Blunt winced when reminded that he had not been too punctual a paymaster. He could see, however, that the remark was totally devoid of malice. He could not help acknowledging that the child, whom he had seen, perhaps, six times during three years, had been reared with infinite love and tenderness by Nurse Pigott, all vulgar and dumpy as she was. And something like a feeling of shame made his mind blush at the remembrance that this love and tenderness had been bestowed upon Lily by strangers. " There, there, Nurse Pigott," he said, as sooth- Nurfe Pigott. 53 ingly as lie could, " I'm sure you ve done your best with the little thing, and her papa and her mamma (who is too ill, poor thing, to come and see her) are very much obliged to you. Only, you know, the best of friends must part. I told you that, ever so long ago. Come, don't let us have any more fuss — you can't tell how it injures my nerves — and kiss the child and all that sort of thing, for I'm rather pressed for time." Nurse Pigott had her nerves too, and for days she had been attempting to nerve herself to undergo with fortitude a separation, which Blunt, to do him justice, had warned her was inevitable. For you see that to part with a domestic pet round which the chords of your heart have twined themselves, is very very hard. And Nurse Pigott had known Lily long before she could speak or walk. She had sat by her night after night in those sicknesses when the life of a little child is as easily blown out as a rushlight. She had rejoiced in her growing strength and beauty. For what light and know- ledge there was already in Lily's mind, Nurse Pigott, with rough homely kindly hands, had opened the door. She had taught the little morsel of Christianity to prattle Borne prayers, n> 54 Quite Alone. lisp some key-notes of reverence and fear, and to look up at the sky, and talk of what became of good and naughty people. Lily used to call her "mumma," and the male Pigott (plasterer by trade, honest and kind-hearted fellow by nature) she' accosted as " dada." Yes; the divorce was hard, albeit the youngling was none of then own. They had no girls; but Lily had possessed as a foster-brother the surviving twin, a tranquil little boy, with wisdom far beyond his years, who passed the major part of his time in sprawling on the ground (probably out of doors), in earnest contem- plation of the curious features of that external world which the doctor forbade his parents to entertain a hope of his long living to investigate. Lily's nurture under the auspices of Nurse Pigott had been the reverse of refined, but it had never lacked affectionate and sedulous care. The good woman absolutely doted on her charge, although five shillings a week was all the remuneration Blue received for tending her. Work was sometimes slack with the plasterer, and he, his wife and the twin (whose profoundly philosophical temperament led him to regard potato-peelings as an aliment equal in succulence to bread-and-butter, or even to Nter/e Pigott. 55 meat), had occasionally to go on short commons ; but Lily was never bereft of a meal abundant in quantity and nourishing in quality. She had never known what it was to go without pudding. A slight meat eater she was, as beseemed her age ; yet what morsels of flesh she required were never wanting, even if they had to be purchased from the proceeds accruing from the deposit in tribulation of the plasterer's great silver watch. The male Pigott's affection for her was prodigious. In her earliest youth he could with difficulty be deterred from offering her sups of beer from his evening pint ; and when told that the fermented infusion of malt and hops was improper refreshment for a child, lie, of his own motion, absolutely forewent a nightly moiety of his beer money in order to purchase apples and gingerbread for his foster-baby. The price of half a pint of porter was not a very sumptuous bounty; but a penny goes a very long way in a poor man's household. Lily's stock of clothes had never been very ex- tensive nor very abundant ; but Nurse Pigott had kept the little wardrobe with admirable and scru- pulous neatness. Only once during the three years and a half had she ever importuned .Mr. Bluni 56 Quite Alone. (with whom she was instructed to correspond through the medium of a London post-office, and the initials F. B.) for money. That was after a journey to Kensington undertaken by the nurse, when in the window of a certain haberdasher's in the High-street, she had seen a robe of mouse- coloured merino, so curiously embroidered with silken braid, that she had there and then deter- mined to secure it for Lily either by the legitimate means of asking Mr. Blunt for the money, or by selling or pawning her own goods and chattels, or by bursting bodily into the shop and making off with the much-coveted robe. Fortunately, how- ever, measures so desperate had not to be resorted to. Mr. Blunt happened to be in funds and in a good humour, when he received a pathetic and ill- spelt letter directed to F. B. ; and the sum de- manded, which was but two guineas, was for- warded. But chiefly had Mrs. Pigott found favour in the fine gentleman's eyes from the exquisite cleanliness and neatness in which she had always kept Lily. The philosophical twin objected on principle to soap, and his father deprecated Ins being subjected to much lavatory discipline, on the ground that he (the twin) would be washed away if he were washed often; but there was always Nurfi Pigott. 57 warm water for Lily and Windsor soap for Lily ; nay, on one occasion good Nurse Pigott had pur- chased a bar of Castile soap, the which, from its curiously marbled appearance, the child imagined to be sweetstuff, and essayed to suck. Winter and summer she never went without her bath, and although her poor little garments had frequently to be pieced and darned, she was always shining as the newest of pins. A very few words will suffice to explain how Lily came into Nurse Pigott's custody. Three years and a half before the commencement of this history, the plasterer became cognisant of an adver- tisement in the day before yesterday's Morning Advertiser (it was before the days of penny journalism), which he was in the habit of borrow- ing from the hostelry where he purchased his modest allowance of beer. This advertisement set forth that a lady and gentleman were desirous of placing an infant at nurse with some respectable person in the immediate vicinity of London. The Pigotts then occupied a diminutive cottage ;it Brentford. Forthwith they answered the adver- tisement, in an epistlr which the plasterer con- sidered to be a ehef-d'oeuvre of caligraphy and composition, and which was, indeed, a marvel of 58 Quite Alone. archaic orthography and abnormal pothooks and hangers. In due time an answer arrived, and an appointment was made to meet the advertiser in London. Thither went Nurse Pigott, arrayed in her Sunday best; and, at a specified hotel in Dover-street, Piccadilly, she was received — not by Mr. Blunt, but by Monsieur Sournois, from Swit- zerland, his valet, who made all the necessary arrangements for the reception of an infant six months old, and paid a month in advance of the sum stipulated for. Being asked whether the child was christened (for Nurse Pigott was a staunch Church of England woman), he replied that it did not matter. Being pressed on this point, he said it was all right, and that the child's name was Lily Smith. And as Lily Smith she was received by Nurse Pigott. The good woman did not feel her- self called upon to ask any more questions. Infants are put out to nurse every year, and by the thou- sand, in and about London, without references more searching than a money-payment in advance. Very often no name at all is asked for or fur- nished. I wonder whether such a system en- courages immorality. I should like to hear, on this subject, those blessed Sisters of La Sainte Enfance, "the Holy Childhood" at Hong-Kong, Nurfe Pigott. 59 who buy babies from the Chinese mothers to save the little innocents from being cast into the sea, or thrown (as they are in the interior of China) to the pigs. The little Lily Smith throve apace, and had not more than an average share of infantile ailments. Monsieur Sournois came at first once a month to see Baby, and greatly impressed Nurse Pigott with the amenity of his manners and the affability of his conversation. By-and-by he was succeeded by Mr. Blunt, who never kissed the child, or fondled it, or took much more notice of it, in a languid survey through the medium of his eye-glass, than if Lily had been a waxen doll in a toy-shop. Thus did the little girl remain until she was nearly four years of age ; and it was a day of bitter sorrow for Nurse Pigott and the plasterer, when a curt letter arrived from Mr. Blunt — or F. B., as he continued to sign himself — directing the child to be made ready and brought to the present place of ren- dezvous. So Lily, poor little shorn lamb, after having the wind tempered to her, was suddenly to be given up to the grim g.iunt wolf. I retract — gaunt if you please, but not grim ; for while I hare been u-lling the story of Lily's baby- hood, Mr. Blunt's countenance has been robed in 60 Quite Alone. his most dulcet smile, and he has been exhausting his seductive arsenal to soothe and conciliate the sobbing child. He has done everything but kiss her. One loses the taste for innocent kisses as one loses the taste for bread-and-jam. The nurse was consoled and the child quieted at last ; and after an infinity of hugging, the plas- terer's wife announced that she was ready to go, and that she was sorry for having kept the gentle- man so long. Between the spasms of her parting embrace she told Lily that she should see her again very soon. "And I may, mayn't I, sir?" she continued, turning with an appealing look to the dandy. " Oh say that I may, if it's only once a year. I shall break my 'art, I know I shall, if I don't see my darling again." " Of course, of course ! " replied Blunt, who would have promised anything to secure a good deliverance. " The child shall write to you" — poor little Lily, who didn't know great A from a bull's foot : u that is, I'll write, yes, yes. Now, my good Nurse Pigott, we really' must be going, you know." So two heavy hearts and one veiy callous heart Nurfe Pigott. 61 went out of the little tavern parlour and into the road: the landlady and her inquisitive daughter craning their necks after all the hearts. There was no luggage to cany. Lily's effects would not have filled an ordinary carpet-bag ; but Blunt had graciously informed Mrs. Pigott that she might keep the child's clothes, as new clothes would be provided for her at the place whither she was bound. Where that place might be, the good woman did not venture to ask. At the end of the lane — not that by which Mr. Blunt had approached, but its opposite extremity — a hackney-coach was waiting. It was now nearly dark. By F. B.'s direction Nurse Pigott lifted Lily into the vehicle, which had already, as she could obscurely discern, one occupant, and that a man. The child was by this time wholly tired, and half asleep. The dandy condescendingly gave Nurse Pigott a couple of fingers, dexterously hustled her on one side, and in another minute die found herself crying in the middle of the road, quite alone. But not so lonely as poor little Lily, albeit she was in a carriage with two men, one of whom told her that he was her papa. 62 Quite Alone. CHAPTER IV. THE MISS BUNNYCASTLES' ESTABLISHMENT. Early to bed and early to rise was the time- honoured maxim in the establishment of the Miss Bmmycastles, Rhododendron House, Rhododen- dron private road, Stockwell. Time-honoured in- deed, and with justice it might be called, for it had been acted upon for at least twenty years, during which lengthened period the Bonnycastle family had kept a ladies' school in Rhododendron- road, as aforesaid. Stay ; I have fallen into a slight error. When Mrs. Bunnycastle first under- took, in the second decade of the nineteenth cen- tury, those scholastic duties at Stockwell which her daughters subsequently and efficiently per- The Mijs Bumiycajlles EJlabllshment. 63 formed, Rhododendron private road existed only in the form of a narrow path between two market gardens, and went, I fear, by the painfully un- academic name of Cut-throat-lane. But when culture came to Clapham, and civilisation to Stock- well, the by-path became a " private road," neatly gravelled, and bordered by trim villas. The old market gardener's habitation indeed remained, but was rechristened Rhododendron House. Formerly it had been known as Bubb's Folly. Bubb was the last market gardener, and inherited the house : a rambling one-storied structure of red brick : from his grandfather. Long and careful atten- tion to horticulture brought him riches, and in his old age it was bruited about that he bad become somewhat mad, though not so mad as t<> require any restraint, or being in any way incapable of managing his own affairs ; for he was to the day of his death as avaricious an old screw, and as keen a hand at a bargain, as could be found be- tween Bermondsey and Brixton. His madness did not go further than that harmless eccentricity to wMcd physiologists may have observed that enriched tailors, hatters, and market gardeners, are frequently subject. In pursuance of this 64 Quite Alo?ie. craze, Bubb turned all his nephews and nieces out of doors, contracted a morganatic alliance with a bold-faced housekeeper with an abusive tongue and an uncontrollable taste for silk dresses and ardent spirits, and — he who had sat for so many years under the Reverend Mr. Bradbody of Stock- well, and had even been a deacon to that shining congregational light — plunged headlong into secu- larism, attended infidel lectures, and ceased to be- lieve in anything. He took to drinking also. In a word, Mr. Bubb was in his latter days that by no means uncommon character, a "wicked old man ;" a quarrelsome old curmudgeon, who swore hard, drank hard, and didn't wash. As a climax to his strange proceedings, he added a tower, or belvedere, to his grandfather's old brick house. At the summit of this edifice, which resembled externally a Chinese pagoda brick faced, and with a dash of the truncated factory chimney about it, he built a smoking-room, where he swore and drank and took tobacco, till his time came, and he died. The pagoda-chimney belvedere had caused the house to be called Bubb's Folly; and long after Bubb's decease, ancient people persisted in applying the old title to Rhododendron House. The Mifs Bumiycaftlef Eftablijhment. Qo If the belvedere, however, were Bubb's Folly, the surrounding ground, which he directed in his will to be carefully let out in building lots, might, with equal propriety, have been designated Bubb's Common Sense. The morganatic housekeeper, to the rage and despair of the nephews and nieces, came into all the property, and even the High Court of Chancery could not pick a hole in the crazy old market gardener's last will and testa- ment. The enriched housekeeper removed to grander quarters at Clapham, and the old brick Folly passed through many vicissitudes, while houses in the most modern style of domestic archi- tecture sprang up on either side. Bubb, however, had willed that his Folly was not to be demolished, and, being advertised, at last, as " eligible school premises," with "an observatory admirably suited for scientific purposes," it was taken about the year eighteen hundred and sixteen by Mrs. Bunny- castle, and turned into an establishment for young ladies. Mrs. Bunnycastle's husband was a gentleman who had taught writing, arithmetic, and the use of the globes, in suburban seminaries, for many years. He also gave instruction in the Belles VOL. I. F 66 Quite Alone. Lettres : that is to say, lie would recite, with the sonorous emphasis of the late John Kemble, any number of pages from the " Elegant Extracts" and " Enfield's Speaker." To this declamation young ladies of a literary turn (it was a blue-stock- ing age) listened with intense admiration. Mrs. Bunnycastle (nee Lappin) had been in her youth a nursery-governess in a great family, and was of a soft sentimental disposition. She was a great educational theorist, and had so filled her head with dogmas of tuition out of Jean Jacques Kousseau, Madame Leprince de Beaumont, and Mesdames Chapone, Trimmer, and Hannah More — to say nothing of Dr. Edgworth, and the Eeverends Messrs. Gisborne and Chirol, and Dr. Fordyce's " Discom-se on the Character and Con- duct of the Female Sex" — that her educational system ended in her permitting her pupils to do pretty well as they liked. She was much beloved by them, in consequence. Her favourite work, after " Emile," was " Adelaide and Theodore, or Letters upon Education:" that dreary simpering old farrago of well-meaning inanities, in which the baroness writes to Madame d'Ostalis to tell her how Seraphine has bitten her little brother, The Mifs Bunnycajlles EJtabhfiment . 67 but how she has succeeded in " producing perfec- tion" in her daughter Adelaide, who is " fourteen years old, an excellent musician, drawing with amazing proficiency, speaking and singing Italian like a native, and absolutely cured of all little female deficiencies." Happy Adelaide, and thrice happy baroness ! The worthy Bunnycastle died a year before Rhododendron House was taken. His widow was faithful to his memory, and brought up her three daughters, Adelaide (so christened after the ba- roness's paragon), Celia, and Barbara, in love and reverence of their inoffensive papa's portrait, with its shirt frill, and its hair powder (the latter beau- tifully painted), and with the silver standish " pre- sented to him by the young ladies of Ostrolenko Lodge, Camberwell, in slight testimony of his unwearied exertions in teaching them plain and ornamental writing, arithmetic (on Mr. Walkin- game's principle), the use of the globes, and other polite accomplishments, for many year-." In this history's year 1830 the three Miss Bunnycafltlefl were all old maids. There is no use in disguising the matter; it was palpable. With Adelaide and with Celia the ease was hopeless. They were both f2 68 Quite Alone. past thirty, and had made up their minds to celi- bacy. About Barbara, only, who was barely twenty-five, could any faint and feeble matri- monial hopes be entertained. When such hopes were hinted in her presence by the charitable- minded among her own sex — the married ladies, bien entendu — Barbara shrugged her pretty shoulders — she was pretty — and sometimes smiled, and sometimes sio;hed. Meanwhile she went on watching the pianoforte practice, and the small- tooth combing (after sundry soap and towel pre- liminaries) of the little ones on Saturday nights. That was her department in the economy of Eho- dodendron House. She did not murmur. She was perfectly resigned. Only, if any eligible young man had suddenly appeared before her, say from the Planet Mars, or from the bowels of the earth, and had said, " It is true that I am a returned convict, a professed forger and coiner, and a monster in human form — that I have a blighted heart and a seared conscience — that I murdered my great-aunt, and sold my country, and picked a gentleman's pocket of a yellow ban- danna at Camberwell Fair; but still my inten- tions are strictly honourable. I have a marriage The M'ifs Bunny caftlef Efiablijfjment. 69 license in my right-hand trousers-pocket, and a ring and a pair of white kid gloves in my left. There is a glass-coach at the door, the pew-opener will officiate as bridesmaid, and the beadle will be my best man. Come, my beloved, and I will lead thee to the hymeneal altar," I am inclined to think that Barbara Bunnycastle would incontinently have cast her arms about that eligible young man's neck, and cried out " Take me, interesting stranger !" In 1836, Mrs. Bunnycastle was a very old smiling lady, with glossy-white ringlets. Her coun- tenance was wrinkled, but it was rosy still. She was still soft and sentimental, and much addicted to the perusal of novels : standing, as regards these characteristics, in strong contradistinction to her eldest daughter, Adelaide, who was an exceed- ingly practical spinster, and the inflexible disci- plinarian of the establishment. I have said that " early to bed and early to rise" was the golden rule abided by at Rhodo- dendron House. The younger pupils retired to rest at half-past seven. Those of medium age, that is, under twelve, went to roost at eight By nine, the elder girls reached their dormitories. At 70 Quite Alone. ten, the governesses and parlour-boarders bade Mrs. Bunnycastle good night. At half-past ten, the three daughters of that estimable and vene- rable person kissed, each, her parent on the fore- head ; and by eleven o'clock every light in Rhodo- dendron House was extinguished. All the girls and their teachers were up by six o'clock in the morning ; the three sisters only indulged in half an hour's extra somnolence ; and, punctually at eight o'clock, Mrs. Bunnycastle, in her unvarying cap with yellow satin bows, and her white ringlets arranged in faultless symmetry, made her appear- ance at the common breakfast-table. All their meals, with one exception, pupils and preceptresses took together. Breakfast, dinner, and tea, were served in the great bow-windowed dining-room giving on to the lawn ; but supper was a special and exclusive meal which none of the children partook of at all, which the parlour- boarders and teachers consumed in a kind of still- room adjoining the pantry, but which Mis. Bunnycastle and her daughters enjoyed in their own little parlour. The meal was served (tea having been got through at five^) at nine P.M. The mother and daughters loved to linger over their The Mifs Bunnycajtlef EJlabliJImunt. 7 1 meal, and, although they ate and drank hut little, it was often prolonged to close upon the time for retiring to rest. It was the only season throughout the weary monotonous day when they were alone, and at their ease. They were free from the constraint of keeping on their counte- nance that expression of simulated gravity, not to say severity, which all those whose vocation it is to educate youth, whether male or female, think it their bounden duty to assume while occupying the rostrum of pedagogic authority. This is why schoolmasters and schoolmistresses get prematurely worn, wrinkled, and shrunken. Supper-time, then, was an hour of anxningled delectation for the Bunnycastle family. Then, they were free from the heated and half-stifling atmosphere of the schoolrooms; for ventilation, as an adjunct to education, had not been thought of in 1836. Then, they were quit of the brawling exasperating swarm of youngsters, the scarcely less tiresome elder girls, and the exacting parlour- boarders, who, because their parents paid fifty guineas pea* annum for their maintenance at Rho- dodendron House, deemed it a prime article in their creed to hold, in secret, if not openly, Nfrs. 72 Quite Alone. and the Miss Bunnycastles as the dust beneath their feet. At supper-time, the schoolmistress and her daughters were relieved from the presence of these superb ones of the earth in short skirts and frilled trousers. At supper-time, they were rid, too, of the teachers : amiable and worthy young persons all of them, no doubt, but wearisome on daily and unremitting acquaintance. At supper- time, they could chat without let or hindrance. They could run over the occurrences of the day. They could dwell, now with satisfaction, now with discontent, upon how much their young charges paid, and how much they ate. They could con- coct letters of thanks to complimentary parents, or of deprecation to remonstrant ones. They could revolve plans of scholastic aggrandisement, discuss points of discipline, compare methods of instruc- tion, grumble at their lot in that luxuriousness of complaint which is well-nigh akin to content, and gossip about their neighbours. Thus, supper in the little back parlour at Rhododendron House, combined the gravity of a cabinet council with the hilarity of a symposium. The Bunny caftles in Council. 73 CHAPTER V. THE BUNNYCASTLES IN COUNCIL. The back parlour at Rhododendron House, de- dicated to the nocturnal meal spoken of in the pre- ceding chapter, was a very moderately-sized apart- ment. Indeed, if an observer of its dimensions had hazarded an opinion that there wasn't room to swing a cat in it, the remark, although coarse (and, as such, naturally intolerable in an establishment so genteel as Rhododendron House), would not have fallen very far short of the truth. This is intended to be a candid history ; so I will at once confess that the back parlour was — well, whal shall I say? — poky. A pair of folding-doors took up very nearly one of its sides, and these gave ad- 74 Quite Alone. mittance to the front parlour, or drawing-room, or state saloon, which was furnished in a style of classic but frigid splendour, and where parents, guardians, and other visitors, to whom the Bunny- castles desired to show ceremonial honour, were received. No pupil dared to enter that sacred apartment without permission. Many, indeed, never saw it from the day when they arrived at school, and were regaled with the sacrificial cake and wine (both of British manufacture), to the day when their friends came to fetch them away. Even the Bunnycastles were chary about intruding on their Sala Regia, save on festive or solemn oc- casions. The back parlour was essentially their keeping and sitting chamber — their bower and their home. The late Mr. Bunnycastle's portrait hung on one side of the modest pier-glass on the mantel, and an effigy — a veiy vile one — in crayons, of Mrs. Bunnycastle, flanked it. Opposite, was a small cottage piano ; and you will sec, by-and-by, that Rhododendron House was famous for its spe- cimens of modern improvements on the harpsi- chord and the spinet. The window-curtains were of a dull decorous moreen ; the carpets of a faded The Bwinycajiles in Council. 75 crimson. The table had a cloth in imitation needlework, like a school-girl's sampler of un- wonted size taken out of its frame. The chairs were of well-worn green leather. In a recess were three handsome mahogany desks and three rose- wood workboxes, respectively pertaining to the three sisters Bunnycastle. Mrs. B.'s great black leather writing-case, where she kept her school register, and her account-books, and her valuables, had an occasional table to itself ; and when I have added to the pictorial embellishments of the room, an agreeable although somewhat faded engraving of Pharaoh's Daughter finding the Infant Moses in the Bulrushes, and when I have remarked that on each side of the window hung a cage containing a canary, both of which were unceasingly watched by a grey cat of sly and Jesuitical mien, I may be absolved from further performance of my favourite but unpopular part of the broker's man. It was the same summer evening— the evening of the day of the flower-show at Chiswick, and of Griffin Blunt' s rendezvous with the plasterer's wife at the sign of the Goat. The hour was halt-past nine, and the Bunnycastlcs were sitting t'i-. 80 Quite Alone. question. There were no actual wrinkles on the Draxian countenance, and the slight puckerings under his eyes and about his mouth might have been the result of arduous study of his art; for, although I have hastily dubbed him apothecary, Parfitt Drax had passed both Hall and College, and was a general practitioner. He wore spec- tacles, he said, because he was short-sighted; but nobody knew whether his imperfect vision was in- born, or had grown upon him with years. He was too discreet to tell you. If he were, indeed, a pro- found dissembler and young, his spectacles, his wig, and his white tie, relieved him from that ap- pearance of juvenility which, in discreet boarding- schools, at Clapham and elsewhere, would have been a reproach and a stumbling-block to him. If he were old, his make-up was perfect, and he, or his wig-maker, or his tailor, had triumphed over Time, who ordinarily triumphs over all. The ac- complished Madame Rachel, and her more accom- plished daughter, with all their Arabian, Indo- Syriac, and Mesopotamian enamels and varnishes, could not have made Drax look more " beautiful for ever" than he looked of himself under the influence of imperturbable discretion, scrupulous The Bunnycaflles in Council. 81 cleanliness, a neckerchief of white cambric, a pair of glasses, and a false head of hair. This head, this wig, was in itself an achievement. It was discreet, like its possessor. It showed no tell-tale parting. It was rigid with no unnaturally crisp curls. It was a waving, flowing, reasonably tumbled, human-looking scalp covering, of a dis- creet mouse colour, that might have begun to turn grey the next moment, or have preserved its na- tural hue until Drax was gathered to his fathers. It was a wig for any age, or for no age at all. Drax, I say, wore a white tie ; a strictly medical neckband, a consulting neckcloth, a family cravat — symmetrical without being formal — degage* with- out being careless — tied in a little square bow. Drax wore very large and stiff wristbands, in hue and consistence belonging to the glacial period. They added to his discreet appearance. His right middle finger was adorned with a mourning ring- containing a lady's hair, and an indecipherable monogram. The hair was of an ambiguous shade. It might have been that of his deceased wife, or of his sister, or of his sweetheart, or of his grand- mother. It formed an additional piece of artillery in his discretional battery. VOL. I. G 82 Quite Ah Mr. Drax was a frequent visitor at the school, not only in his professional capacity, but as a friend of the family. He was allowed to come as often as he liked,' and to supper uninvited. In fact, he " dropped in." But on this particular evening his presence at the usual repast was not due to the immediate exercise of his own personal volition. The Bunny castles had agreed, early in the afternoon, that Mr. Drax should be invited to supper, and in pursuance of the resolution unani- mously arrived at in solemn family council, Miss Barbara Bunnycastle had, in her own exqui- site (though somewhat attenuated) Italian hand, written to him, " Dear Mr. Drax, pray come to supper, as soon after nine as ever you possibly can. We want so very much to see you, and consult with you on a most particular and important matter." The original underscorings are Miss Barbara Bunnycastle's, and not mine. This missive, signed with the initials B. B., and " your ever faithfully," and sealed with Barbara's own signet, bearing the charming enough little motto of " Dinna forget," was duly despatched at tea-time by the page and knife-boy (the only male creature, with the exception of the gardener, who came once a week for four hours, forming part of The Bunny caflles in Council. 83 the Rhododendronian retinue) to Mr. Drax's surgery or shop in College-street ; and punctually at half- past nine, the discreet apothecary made his ap- pearance in the little back parlour. He had as small an appetite — or, in his discretion, chose to be as abstemious — as the Bunnycastles themselves; and so, after he had consumed a very thin slice of the grinning mutton, and sipped a very small quantity of the table-ale, Miss Adelaide Bunny- castle mixed him, with her own fair hands (never mind if they were slightly bony), a tumbler full of the warm, colourless, but comforting mixture which her mamma was in the habit of imbibing after supper. Then the conversation, which had hitherto been fitful and desultory, became concentrated and engrossing. "Did you ever hear of such a strange romantic affair ? " asked Miss Adelaide. "Only fancy," Miss Celia continued, "no name given — at least, no real one — no address, no refer- ence^ but an offer of fifty guineas a year, payable in advance, for a little girl not yet four yean of "And such a beautiful spoken gentleman i- the rliai g2 dark one," remarked Barbara 84 Quite Alone. " And so beautifully spoken is the one with the bald head," interposed Adelaide. " Rubbish, girls," quoth good Mrs. Bunnycastle. "The bald-headed one isn't a gentleman at all. He's the dark one's man-servant." "He has lovely eyes," pleaded Barbara, "and charming teeth, and an angel smile." "He wears a diamond ring as big as a four- penny-piece," said the practical Adelaide. " I tell you he's nothing but the other one's valet. He as much as owned it to me, the last time he was here. But, master or man, it doesn't much matter. Do tell us now, my dear doctor, whether we ought to take this little girl or not ? " All Mr. Drax's discretion was required to enable him to give this interrogation a fitting reply. He stroked his chin with his hands, and crossed the foot of one leg over the knee of the other, his favourite attitude when in profound meditation. Then he softly swayed his discreet head upward and downward, as though he were weighing the pros and cons of the momentous question. The Bunnycastles regarded him with anxious interest. They had unlimited confidence in his discretion. At last the wise man spake. The Bunhyca/lles in Council. 85 " Your usual sums, my dear Mrs. Bunnycastle, are " " We say forty, and take thirty, or whatever we can get," the lady superior responded, with a sigh. " Miss Furblow, it is true, pays fifty ; but then she's a parlour-boarder, and her father a purse-proud tradesman, with more money than wit." " Parents are growing stingier and stingier every day," added Adelaide. " They think washing costs nothing, and they won't even pay for a seat at church, or for stationery. That's why we've adopted the viva voce system of instruction, and so saved half the copybooks." " They have the impudence to come and tell us that there are schools advertised, with unlimited diet, twenty-seven acres of ground, a carriage kept, lectures by university professors, weekly examina- tions by a clergyman, a drill-sergeant to teach calisthenics, milk from the cow, and all the ac- complishments, including the harmonium and the Indian sceptre, for sixteen pounds a year. And no vacations, and the quarter to commence from the day of entrance ! " "I wonder what they feed the children uim.h I ** Quite Alo?ie. quoth Miss Barbara, disdainfully : " snips and snails, and puppy-dogs' tails, I should imagine." " I thank Heaven we have never advertised," re- marked, with proper pride, Mrs. Bunnycastle. " That degradation has at least been spared the principals of Rhododendron House." " Which always will continue to be exempt from such a humiliation," Mr. Drax put in, with a dis- creet bow. " Advertising has been overdone, even in the case of patent medicines." The discreet Drax had committed one indiscre- tion in the course of his professional career. He had dreamed of a Pill which should eclipse the re- nown of all other pills, which should be vended by millions of boxes at one shilling and a penny-half- penny each (government stamp included), and which should realise a rapid and splendid future for himself. Drax's Antiseptic, Antizymotic, Anti- vascular Herbal Pills were launched, but did not attain success. Either they were not advertised enough, or they were puffed through wrong channels. The pills were a sore point with Drax ; and his cellar was full of them. I hope the con- stitution of the rats benefited by their consumption, and that the old women supplied with the pills at The Bunnycajtles in Council, Mr. Drax's gratuitous consultations were likewise the better for them. " Well, doctor, what do you say ? " Miss Adelaide continued. "Your terms are forty, and you take thirty, making even a further reduction when vacancies are numerous, and an increase in numbers is de- sirable. You had rather a bad time last quarter but one, when, scarlet fever having broken out, of thirty-eight pupils who were sent home to escape infection, only twenty-nine returned to resume their studies." "And then, you know, Mr. Legg, the coal- merchant, who had four daughters here with the smallest heads and the largest appetites it is pos- sible to conceive, had the wickedness and dishonesty to go bankrupt, and we never got a penny for two quarters' schooling of the whole four/' " Rent and taxes are heavy ; risks are numerous : parents are, as you remark with pardonable severity, stingy; provisions are dear" — thus went on, dis- creetly pondering aloud, Mr. Drax — u and the fifty guineas are to be paid by half-yearly payments, in advance. Well, dear ladies, [think, it" I were you, I should take the little girl." 88 Quite Alone. 66 So young a child can't eat much," mused Miss Adelaide. " She won't want any accomplishments yet awhile, and when she does we must ask higher terms." " And her papa is evidently a gentleman," [Miss Barbara added. "To say nothing of the man-servant with the diamond ring," interposed Adelaide, somewhat ma- liciously. " With one so young," wound up Mrs. Bunny- castle, with soft didacticism, " on a mind so tender and so plastic, who shall say what durable and valuable impressions may not be made ? How many children are treated with harshness and want of consideration; how many have been set down as dunces and idlers, because their natures have not been understood ; because their capacities have not been discriminatingly ascertained; because their susceptibilities have not been worked upon ; be- cause the responsive chords in their characters have not been touched by the judicious fingers of kind- ness and sympathy " " There, ma, that will do," Miss Adelaide broke in, with a shake of sadness in her voice; "we're The Bunnycaflles in Council. 89 talking business, and don't want extracts from the prospectus at supper-time. The principal stumbling- block to me, dear doctor, is the absence of refer- ences. We are, you know, so very exclusive." Exclusiveness at Rhododendron House meant this — and it has pretty nearly the same significa- tion at five hundred boarding-schools — the Bunny- castles had a decided objection to taking any pupils unless they were perfectly certain of punctuality in the receipt of quarterly payments from their rela- tives or friends. "Admitting that the want of satisfactory refer- ences is a serious impediment," remarked Mr. Drax, with his discreetest smile, " is it an insuper- able one?" "It may have been a love-match," suggested Adelaide. a Or a scion of nobility," added Celia. " Or one against whom great machinations have been formed," said Barbara. " Stuff and nonsense ! " exclaimed Mrs. Bunny- castle, with an energy unusual to one of her soft and sentimental nature. "When you've kept a school as long as I have, girls, you'll know that there are, as the doctor says, hundreds of reasons 90 Quite Alone. for putting a little bit of a child away, and leaving her under proper care till she's grown up. I think we're all agreed? The little one is to be taken ? " " Certainly," chorused the three maidens. u You could not have arrived at a more sagacious o decision," acquiesced Mr. Drax. "But the most embarrassino; tluW of all is" 7 Miss Adelaide resumed, " that she is to be brought here this very night. We expect her papa every minute. The gentleman with the diamond ring — the man-servant, I mean — said they might be as late as half-past ten. Only fancy a visit, at so late an hour, and from a stranger too, at Rhododendron House ! Such a thing has never happened to us since we first came here. And it was principally for that reason, doctor, that we asked you to come. We wished, in case you advised us to take this little thing, to have you here, as a kind of witness, as it were, when her papa brought her." " Perhaps her papa will object," remarked Bar- bara. "To what? To something he cant see any more than the man in the moon can 1 " retorted her sister, snappishly. " Nothing would be likelier than his objection to a stranger being present if his The Bunnycaflles hi Council. 91 object is to secure secresy ; but, at the same time, nothing is easier than to avoid the slightest un- pleasantness." " Of course, of course," said the discreet apothe- cary. u I apprehend your meaning in a moment, my dear young lady. You wish me to be a witness, but an invisible one. You must receive the visitors in the front drawing-room. If you will kindly have the lamp lighted there, and leave me here in dark- ness" (and, he might have added, "in discretion"), u with one of the folding-doors the slightest degree in the world on the jar, I shall be an auditor to all that passes, and you may depend on my adroitness to see as well as hear." Miss Adelaide Bunnycastle clapped her hands in grave applause at the apothecary's suggestion. Celia regarded' him with eyes of favour. Barbara smiled upon him. Old Mrs. Bunnycastle was just on the point of asking him if he would take just one little drop more of spirits- an d-water (although I am cer- tain that Drax, in his discretion, would have re- fused), when the gate bell was rung, and, a moment afterwards, the sound of carriage-wheels was heard crunching the gravel-walk before Rhododendron House. The ladies hurried into the drawing-room. 92 Quite Alone. A solemn lamp with a green shade round it was hastily illumined ; and presently Pepper announced that two gentlemen, with a little child, requested an interview with Mrs. and the ' Miss Bunny- castles. Lily Jits up Late. 93 CHAPTER VI. LILY SITS UP LATE. Francis Blunt, Esq., sometimes called Frank, but familiarly known as Griffin, entered the scho- lastic presence with the assured step of one who felt himself among those ready to do him homage. He was still exquisitely polite — indeed, courting was second nature to him; but his politeness was the condescension of a sovereign among his subjects — of the Marquis de Carabas among his vassals. Mr. Blunt had thrown over his attire of the afternoon a long ample cloak of circular cut, deeply faced with velvet, and made of the finest broad- cloth. It was called a "Spanish" clonk ; and in Spanish I am afraid the eminent Mr. Nogee, the 94 Quite Alone. tailor who had made it, was paid. Blunt had long since passed into that state of indebtedness when a man gets credit solely on the strength of his already owing so much. Close upon his heels, and carrying a slight childish form wrapped up in a cloak, was Mr. Blunt's friend. Yes ; he was his friend — his guide and philosopher too, although to the world the relation in which he stood towards the man of fashion was not more exalted than that of a valet de chambre. Mr. Blunt's friend was hero and valet in one, and looked each character equally well. In his way he was as exquisitely dressed as his master. It is difficult to make anything remarkable out of a full suit of glossy black. You must needs look, in general, either like a waiter, or a doctor, or a schoolmaster, or an undertaker. The friend and valet of Francis Blunt, Esq., did not approach any one of the above-mentioned types of humanity. Mr. Nugee made the coats of the man as well as of the master. The valet's coat was perfection. It wasn't a body-coat, and it wasn't a swallow-tail — nay, nor a frock, nor a surtout, nor a spenser, nor a shooting-jacket. It was a coat with which no Lily fits up Late. 95 one could quarrel. It had the slightest clerical appearance, just tinged with a shade of the sporting cut. There is little need to say anything of the supplementary garments worn by Mr. Blunt's friend. That incomparable coat disarmed all ulterior criticism, and would have compensated for any short-comings in the remainder of the attire. Such short-comings, however, were non- existent. Everything came up to a high standard of excellence. A delicate appreciation of art was shown in the thin brown gaiter with pearl buttons, that showed itself between the termination of the pantaloon and the foot of the varnished boot. A refined spirit of propriety was manifest in the narrow shirt-collar, and the quietly-folded scarf of black ribbed silk, fastened with a subdued cameo representing the profile of a Roman emper< >r. Even that diamond ring to which Miss Bimnycastle had called attention, large and evidently valuable as it was, had nothing about it on which the imputation of obtrusiveness or vainglory could be fixed. It was worn on the little finger of the left hand, and rarely brought into play. It is time to say a few words about the indi- vidual for whom a skilful tailor and ld^ 0WB 96 Quite Alone. delicacy of taste had done so much. Nature had been partially kind, but, with her usual caprice, here and there hostile, to the individual. He was of the middle size, and clean limbed, but all the powers of the coat were needed — and they nearly but not entirely succeeded — in disguising the fact that he was so round-shouldered as to be almost humpbacked. Without the coat, he would have been Quasimodo; with the coat, he was only a gentleman who, unfortunately, stooped a good deal. His head was large, but the collar of that in- valuable coat was so cut as to make his neck sit well on his torso. His hair was of the deepest raven black — blue in the reflexions indeed — and, had it had its own way, would have grown in wildly tufted luxuriance. But from nape to temples his locks had been shorn to inexorable shortness ; yet, close as the scissors had gone, you could tell at a glance that a forest had been there. In the whole attitude of the man there was repose, concealed strength, abnegation of outward show. Had he given his eyes and lips full play, the expression of his countenance would have been terrible. But, with rare self-denial, he kept his eyelids habitually drawn down, and veiled his Lily fits up Late. 97 great, flashing, devouring orbs with the yellow nimbus round each pupil. In the same spirit of abstention from show, his lips, naturally full and pulpy, were under inflexible management, and were kept firmly set together. Not half the world knew what large, regular, white teeth he had. He some- times smiled, but he never bit, in public. There was one concealment he could not, or had not, cared to make. The very large, bushy black eye- brows were untampered with, and notwithstanding the laboured amenity of his physiognomy, gave him a somewhat forbidding look. Add to this that his complexion was dark, but so far removed from sanguineous hues as to be well-nigh sallow, and that on each cheek he wore a short closely- cropped triangular whisker strongly resembling a mutton-cutlet, and you have him complete. This individual was Monsieur Constant, valet de chambre and confidential factotum to Francis Blunt, Esq., and speaking English fluently and idiomatically. He knew all that his master did ; and there were a great many things within Ins the servant's ken, of which the master had n<>t the slightest idea. Monsieur Constant -aid that he was five-and-thirty years of age, biensonnes, which \ <>L. I. II 98 Quite Alone. means that lie might have been between five-and- thirty and forty ; and there was no reason for dis- believing his statement. Monsieur Constant came from Switzerland — from one of the cantons border- ing upon Italy, I should opine, to judge from his swarthy complexion. I believe his christian name was Jean Baptiste. Of his foreign antecedents he was reticent. His English antecedents could be known to all who were at the pains to inquire. They were enrolled in a long catalogue of distin- guished service with the British aristocracy. His character, or rather his characters, were stainless. He had been the Marchioness of Coeurdesart's courier. He had valeted the Duke of Pamposter, and attended on his son and heir, the young Mar- quis of TrufHeton, at Oxford, and throughout the grand tour. He had been for a short time groom of the chambers to Lord Buffborough, when that nobleman was ambassador at Paris. Griffin Blunt had won him from the diplomatic service, and although he lost promotion, if not caste, by the change, the valet clung with strange tenacity to his new master, in whose service he had now been three years. Master and man alike suited each other. Each, perchance, had his own game to Lily fits up Late. 99 play, and played it with tranquil skill. Mr. Blunt declared that his man Constant was unrivalled. " None of your five-act comedy valets," he would say, " but a steady-going, responsible fellow, who knows his business, and goes about it without boring you. He's a proud fellow enough. Sells my old clothes to a Jew, and has his own coats made by my tailor. Never dresses beyond his station, however. He does me credit ; and, egad ! I fancy he shares in it, though I dare say he's got much more money than I have." I fancy Mon- sieur Jean Baptiste Constant had. As for the third person in this group, poor little Lily, the child was placidly slumbering in the folds of the great warm shawl. She had cried herself to sleep in the hackney-coach, and her waking, when the vehicle stopped at Rhododendron House, was but for a moment. Monsieur Jean Baptiste Constant laid her gently down in the state arm- chair, with its elaborately worked anti-mar slightly to the horror of Miss Celia Bunnyc who had never seen a new pupil permitted to occupy that imposing throne of maroon-coloured morocco, and then stood respectfully in the ground, a demure smile mantling on his dark ii 2 100 Quite Alone. Adelaide Bunnycastle admitted in the inmost re- cesses of lier heart that the scene was eminently romantic. It was like Lara ; it was like the Cor- sair ; it was like Thaddeus of Warsaw. Meanwhile, Mr. Blunt had allowed his mantle to drop gently from his shoulders, and accepted with his gracefullest bow the seat offered him by Mrs. Bunnycastle, who had reserved the moreen morocco fauteuil for his reception, but had, in stress of upholstery, been fain to fall back on a high-backed chair of walnut wood. He was over- whelming in compliments and apologies for in- truding on the ladies at so unseemly an hour: pleaded stress of business, and an imminent de- parture for foreign parts. " Ah ! he's been abroad, has he ? " mused Mr. Drax, in the dark. " The man-servant's a foreigner too. Let's have another look at him." And in his anxiety to obtain a better view, Mr. Drax, slightly derogating from his reputation for discre- tion, opened one of the doors yet a little and a little more, till it creaked. Mr. Blunt started. "What the devil is that noise ? " he asked, with an abruptness not pre- cisely in unison with the tone of mellifluous suavity he had adopted a moment before. Lily fits up Late. 101 Mrs. Bunnycastle had no time to be shocked at the irreverence of the stranger's query. She was too much flurried by the creaking of the door, and in a nervous murmur laid the blame of the occur- rence on the cat. Mr. Blunt seemed perfectly satisfied when the grave, respectful voice of Mon- sieur Constant gave a fresh turn to the conversa- tion. He had politely declined the seat offered him by the youngest Miss Bunnycastle, and remained standing; but now advanced a couple of paces. "Monsieur, whom I have the honour to serve/' he said, "has brought the little girl of whom mention has already been made. Monsieur is ready t<> pay the sum agreed upon, fifty guineas, for one year's board and education, and only requires a little paper of receipt undertaking that no further de- mand shall be made upon him until a year is past." "We don't even know the gentleman's name if we made such a demand," Mrs. Bunnycastle re- marked, with a smile. " But the young lady must be called by some name or other." "Certainly, certainly," broke in the dandy. •< : her Floris. Vm Mr. Floris." "Floris; a very pretty name indeed," said Miss 102 Quite Alone. Barbara, writing it clown on a sheet of paper. " And her christian name ? " The master looked uneasily at the valet. I think he had forgotten his daughter's name. " Lily," said Monsieur Constant, thus appealed to. As he spoke, the child woke up from her sleep, and thinking herself called, answered with a sob that she was " vay tyde." The sound of her voice was a signal to the two younger Miss Bunnycastles to hasten to the arm-chair, to unrol the little one from her shawl, to kiss her, and smooth her hair, and fondle her, and go through the remainder of the etiquette invariably observed at Rhododendron House at the reception of a new pupil of tender age. Not that the Miss Bunnycastles were either hypocritical or ill natured. They were naturally very fond of children, but they saw so many, and so much of them. The required paper was duly made out, and signed by Mrs. Bunnycastle ; and Monsieur Con- stant, advancing to the table, respectfully placed a little wash-leather bag, containing fifty-two pounds ten, in the hands of the schoolmistress. Nothing loth, Mrs. Bunnycastle proceeded to count it ; and Lily fits tip Late. 103 even the eyes of lier two eldest daughters twinkled as the sovereigns gave out their faint "chink, chink." Barbara Bunnycastle was insensible to the gold's seductive sound. Her eyes wandered from the master to the valet, and her soul was filled with wonder and admiration for both. It was like the Cottagers of Glenburnie. It was like the Children of the Abbey. It grew more and more romantic every moment. " There is only one little thing more," said Mrs. Bunnycastle, rather hesitatingly. " Has — a — has your — has the gentleman (she indicated Monsieur Constant) brought the young lady's boxes % " "What boxes?" asked the dandy, witli a polite stare. " Her clothes — her linen," explained all the Bunnycastle family with one voice. Francis Blunt, Esq., looked at them, generally, in blank discomposure. He turned to Monsieur Constant; but that retainer shrugged his shoulders as though it were beyond his province or bis power to interfere. "Confound it!" cried the dandy. "It's wry vexatious; but the fact is, we've forgotten the cloth' 104 Quite Alone. "A nice affectionate father," murmured Mr. Drax, in the dark. The dilemma was perplexing, but not irremedi- able. Monsieur Constant explained that Monsieur whom he had the honour to serve, had left Made- moiselle's petit trousseau at his hotel in London. Would the ladies undertake to procure clothes for the child, if a sum were left in advance, sufficient for what she might probably require? Mrs. Bunnycastle bowed her head in gracious approval of this proposal. What sum would be requisite ? Oh ! merely a few pounds. The valet whispered the master. The latter, looking anything but pleased, but, from a purse elegantly embroidered with beads and gold thread, took out a couple of crisp five-pound notes, which he handed to Mrs. Bunnycastle. Then he rose, suppressing a slight yawn, saying that it was past eleven o'clock, and that he had detained the ladies an unconscionably long time. All the women's garments rustled — for they had dressed themselves in silk attire, in expectation of his visit — as he made his reverence of farewell. Mrs. Bunnycastle was profuse in her thanks, and protestations of solicitude for Lily's welfare. The young ladies chimed in harmoniously. Lily fits up Late. ■ 105 " She is to be brought up in the principles of the Church of England?" " Of course, of course. By all means ; eh, Constant?" Monsieur Constant bowed diplomatically, as though to convey that, professing as he might himself a different creed, he had the profoundest respect for the Church of England, as that of the ladies before him, of Monsieur whom he had the honour to serve, and of the genteel classes gene- rally. "As her little mind expands," said Mrs. Bunny- castle, "no efforts of ours shall be spared, not only to instil into her piety and virtue, but to lay the foundation of clever ornate accomplish- ments " "Thank you, thank you," Mr. Blunt returned, rather hastily, and cutting short a further instal- ment of the paraphrased prospectus ; "when She's old enough, of course she'll learn French and drawing, and that sort of thing." "And. dancing," suggested the valet, in a low, deeply respectful voice. Mr. Blunt started, as though a wasp had stung him. When he spoke again, there was a strange dry harshness in his voice. "Madam," he 106 Quite Ah turning to the schoolmistress with a sternness un- wonted in so urbane a gentleman, " I do not want my daughter to learn to dance. Mind that, if you please. No dancing for Miss Lily Floris. I have the honour to wish you a very good night." He was going. He was on the threshold, when Monsieur Constant whispered to him : "Monsieur has forgotten to bid adieu to la petite." With his usual charming grace, he imprinted a kiss on Lily's brow. The little one did not heed him. She had fallen asleep again. He turned, bowed, and touched the tips of all the ladies' fingers in succession. He w T as unrivalled in the art of touching your hand, without shaking it. The women's garments rustled again as they bent in eddying curtseys. Monsieur Constant bestowed a bow on the company, reverential but not servile, as became his degree ; and Pepper ushered the two to the door, and they went away. The first thing the Bunnycastles did when the sound of the hackney-coach wheels had died away, was to bear the lamp and the money into the back parlour, and rejoin the discreet Mr. Drax. Then Lily fits up Late. 107 they proceeded to count the fifty -two sovereigns and a half, all over again. Then they examined the crisp bank-notes, from the medallion of Bri- tannia to the signature of Mr. Henry Hase. Then they turned to the backs of those documents, scanning the much-blotted dorsal scribblino-s — the worst pens, the worst ink, and the worst pothooks and hangers in the world always seem called into play for the endorsement of bank-notes — and won- dered whether "Blogg," who dated from Isle worth, or " Cutchins and Co.," who gave their address in Leather-lane, or " C. J. Gumby," who seemingly resided at Bow, could have anything to do with the mysterious strangers who had just faded away from their ken, leaving a little child not four years old, a checked woollen shawl, and sixty pounds odd, sterling money of this realm, behind them. They could make nothing of the notes, however, beyond the fact that they were genuine, or of the save that it chinked cheerily, or of either, saw that the money looked very nice. Then they drew breath, and interchanged glances of pleasing perplexity. I think it was Mr. Drax who, with his never- failing discretion, now suggested that it might 108 Quite Alone. perhaps be better to put the "new pupil" to bed, as she had come a long way, and must be very- tired. Poor little "new pupil!" The Bunny- castles had forgotten all about her. Adelaide acknowledged with a smile that the little body had quite slipped her memory, and, while she rang the bell for Pepper, requested Barbara to fetch the child from the drawing-room. The child looked up when she was brought into the cozy back parlour, but did not cry. She seemed to be rather relieved by the absence of the two men who had brought her to Rhododendron House. The dandy's resplendent attire and dazzling teeth, and the valet's coat, cameo, and smile, had alike failed in producing a favourable effect on her. On the other hand, while she submitted to be patted on the head by Mrs. Bunnycastle, and severely smiled at by the three young ladies, she took very kindly to Mr. Drax, and, coming toddling towards him, essayed to climb upon his knees, stretching forward one of her plump little hands as though she desired to touch his discreet and mystic neckcloth. " Ah ! " smiled Mr. Drax, as he lifted her up and imprinted a discreet kiss on her forehead, just Lily fits tip Late. 109 at the roots of her hair. " She won't be so very fond of me when she has taken half the nasty things I shall be obliged to o;ive her. Poor little thing ! I wonder whether she's had the measles '." He leaned back in his chair and regarded her in fond anticipation, as though mildly gloating over a subject who was to conduce to the enlarge- ment of his professional experience, and in the increase of his quarterly bills. His reverie was put an end to by the arrival of Pepper, who, like a good-natured 1 woman as she was, had in a few moments stroked Lily's brown curls, kissed her on both cheeks, chucked her under the chin, hoisted her up in her arms, and told her half a merry story about a little girl who was always ready to go to bed, and was, in consequence, much beloved by all the angels. "This is Miss Floris, Miss Lily Floris, Pepper," Mrs. Bunnycastle remarked, with calm dignity. "Her papa, who is going abroad, was obliged to bring her very late. What beds are there vacant, Pepper \ " "There's number two, in the firsl room, mum," answered the domestic. "Among the elder girls/" interposed Adelaide; 110 Quite Ahne. " that would never do. They never go to sleep until daybreak, I do believe, and they'd question her out of her life before breakfast-time. And Mamselle, though it's her duty not to allow them to talk, is just as bad as they are." " There's five and nine in the second room : but there's no mattress on five ; and as for nine, you know, mum " " Well, what do we know?" asked Miss Celia, sharply. " It's the bed Miss Kitty died in," Pepper re- turned, with an effort. There was a prejudice in Rhododendron House against sleeping in the bed that Kitty had died in. " Stuff and nonsense ! " cried Mrs. Bunnycastle. "Well, where are we to put her?" Adelaide asked, impatiently. "We can't keep the child up all night." Lily looked remarkably wide awake, and as though she intended to remain so. She was play- ing with the ribbons in Pepper's cap, and appa- rently would not have had the slightest objection to the continuance of that amusement until cock- crow. As for Mr. Drax, his discretion stood him in wod stead during this csscntiallv domestic con- Lily fits up Late. \ \ \ versation, and he feigned to be immersed in the perusal of a volume of the Missionary Magazine for 1829. " Well, if you please, mum," Pepper ventured to represent, " I think that as the dear little girl's so young, and so tired, and so strange, I'd better take her to bed with me, mum, and then, to- morrow, you know, mum, you can see about it."' The ladies were graciously pleased to accept this suggestion, and it was agreed to nem. con. And then — it being now fully half-after eleven o'clock — Lily and her new guardian disappeared, and the discreet Mr. Drax took his leave, promising to call in on the morrow afternoon, in case his advice should be needed. "A very nice girl is Barbara Bunnycastle,*' said Mr. Drax, softly to himself, as he walked home to College-street. "A very nice girl, and one who would make any man's home happy." Both Adelaide and Barbara dreamed of Mr. Drax. 112 Quite Alone. CHAPTER VII. WHEN WILLIAM THE FOURTH WAS KING. The epoch, there was no denying it, was a wild and dissolute one. The imprint of the Regent's cloven foot had not yet worn away. A man was upon the throne. He made a decorous king enough in his old age, mainly through the influence of a pious and admirable wife ; but his youth had been the converse of reputable. The sons of George the Third had not contributed in any degree to the elevation of the moral tone of the country. The trial of Queen Caroline, and the private life of George the Fourth, had done a good deal towards depraving the national manners. There were no young princesses save one, the Hope of England, When William the Fourth luas King. 113 whom her good mother kept sedulously aloof from the polluting atmosphere of the age. The Duchess of Kent and her daughter went tranquilly about from watering-place to watering-place, and gathered shells and weeds upon the sands, and visited poor people in their cottages, and sat under evangelical ministers, and allowed the age to go by, and to be as wild and dissolute as it chose. They hoped and waited for better times, and the better times came at last, and have continued, and will endure, we trust. Party spirit ran high. We had been on the verge of a revolution about Catholic Emancipation, of another about Parliamentary Reform. Every- thing was disorganised. There were commissions sitting upon everything, with a view to the abroga- tion of most things. Barristers of seven years' standing, fattened upon the treasures wrung from the sinecurists, and the pension-holders of the old Black Book. Commissioners and inspectors be- came as great a nuisance and burden to the country as the clerks of the Pipe or the Tellers of the Ex- chequer had been. Everybody had his theory for regenerating society, but lacked sincere faith in his own nostrums; and so, after a while, deserted vol. i. I 114 Quite Alone. them. It was a reign of terror without much blood. The warfare was mostly one of words and principles, abusive language being in vogue among perfectly unscrupulous party-writers. Reverence, gratitude, decency, had gone to sleep for a while. O'Connell called Wellington a u stunted corporal," and Alvanley a "bloated buffoon," and Disraeli the younger " a lineal descendant of the impenitent thief." One Cocking had cast himself into space in a parachute, and, coming into contact with the earth, was smashed to death. A crafty French- man lured many hundreds of simpletons into taking tickets for a passage in his navigable balloon or aerial ship. Then, timeously, he ran away, and left them with their tickets, and an empty bag of oiled silk. There were people who did not believe in steam. There were others who did believe in it, but held that locomotives and paddle-steamers were only the precursors of the end of the world. Mean- while, Chat Moss had been drained by Stephenson, and Brunei was piercing the Thames Tunnel. But nothing was settled. Nobody knew where any- thing was to end. Steam and scepticism and trac- tarianism and Murphy's weather almanack, the abolition of slavery and the labour of children in When William the Fourth was King. 115 factories, lions and tigers at Drury Lane, and the patents taken away therefrom, and from Oovent Garden too; commutation of tithes and reform of municipal corporations, charity commissions and the new Poor-law, chartism, trades-unionism and the unknown tongues ; oceans of pamphlets ; new clubs starting up all over the West-end ; pigtails, knee-breeches and 'hair-powder beginning to be laughed at ; the Chancellor jumping up and down on the woolsack like a parched pea in a fire-shovel, instead of gravely doubting and doubting for years, and working no end of misery and ruin, as Chan- cellor Eldon had done : all these things, with Irish outrages, colonial discontents and embarrassing re- lations with foreign powers (order reigned in War- saw and "Vivcnt les Polonais!" in Paris meant the erection of barricades and a tussle between the blouses and the soldiery), made up a chaotic • wind of sand and pebbles and brickbats and scrips of paper, the whole accompanied by a prodigious noise, driving peaceably-minded people half blind, and half deaf, and parcel-mad. Francis Blunt, Esq., and Monsieur Constant, left Stockwell shortly after eleven o'clock. The hackney-coachman had been we!! paid, and pro- i 2 116 Quite Alone. mised an extra fee for speed ; but the era of rapid Hansoms was yet to come, and it was nearly mid- night when the two jaded horses that drew the vehicle clattered over Westminster Bridge. Mr. Blunt felt so exhausted that he was compelled to descend at a tavern on the Surrey side of the bridge and refresh himself with a small glass of brandy. He re-entered the coach, making wry faces, and declaring the liquor abominable. Con- stant treated the coachman to a glass of ale, but did not presume to accompany his master to the bar of the tavern. He partook, outside, of a moderate sip of his own from a small pocket- flask. " Why didn't you tell me you had something to drink with you ? " said Blunt, pettishly, as he saw his companion replace the flask in a side-pocket. " I could not venture to ask monsieur " began the valet, gravely. "I dare say you couldn't, Constant. You're a sly fox, and always keep the best of the game to yourself. Here, give me the bottle. I have need of a little Dutch courage to-night." Mr. Blunt took a pretty heavy draught of the Dutch courage, which was, indeed, the very best When William the Fourth was King. 117 French cognac. He took a pretty deep draught of it, for a man of such delicately-strung nerves. " Capital brandy," he murmured, smacking his lips. " You have a talent for buying the best of everything for yourself. Why on earth did you allow me to go into that atrocious gin-palace ? " " It is for monsieur to lead the way." "And for you constantly and carefully to avoid following me, and to allow me to fall into the lions' den. Constant, do you know what I have to do to-night?" "To be bold, and to win." "You have taught me how to manage the one. I think I can depend on my own presence of mind for the other. But do you know how much 1 want?" " Monsieur's wants are extensive. " " And so are yours, monsieur the sleeping partner. Eo-ad, unless I rise from the table a winner of five thousand pounds I am a ruined man ! " "Monsieur's creditors indeed are pressing." "The creditors be hanged," Francis Blunt, E .. returned, with much equanimity. " It isn't for them I shall have to sit up till five o'clock \\\U morning. But there are debts of honour, Constant, that must 118 Quite Alone. be paid. I owe Carlton fifteen hundred. I owe the Italian prince, what's his name? — Marigliano — a monkey. I must send that she-wolf of mine a hundred pounds before to-morrow afternoon, or she will be crawling after me as usual. And then my ready money is all gone, or nearly so. I don't think I've got fifty pounds in my pocket. I've dropped over sixty pounds at that school at Clap- ham, Rhodo-something House, to pay for that little brat: — by your advice, Monsieur Jean Baptiste. I tell you, I must have five thousand pounds out of Debonnair before sunrise, or I am done. I must have ready money to go abroad with, and then Dobree has most of my valuables ; and then there are your wages, Constant." "And my commission, if monsieur pleases." "And your commission, most immaculate of commercial agents. Five per cent., is it not ? You go abroad with me, Constant, so that you know I am perfectly safe. By the way, you couldn't manage to take the hundred to the she-wolf to- night, could you % " "Ready money is not very plentiful," returned the valet, after some consideration; "but I think I can contrive to obtemperate, by a little finessing, When William the Fourth was King. 119 to monsieur's demand. Might I, however, ask him to promise me one little thing? " " What is it, Constant : a rise in your wages ? " " Monsieur's service is sufficiently remunerative/' answered the valet, and I believe lie spoke with perfect sincerity. " It is not that." "What then?" " Not to touch the dice to-night. As an amuse- ment, they are admirable ; as a commercial opera- tion, they are' destruction." "Confound the bones, I know they are," Mr. Blunt, with some discomposure, acknowledged. " If I had stuck to the coups you taught me at Van- jolm, I should have made ten thousand tlii- season alone. I never get that infernal box in my hand without coining to grief in some way or other. And yet what money I have won ! " " And what money lost ! " "Your answer is unanswerable. Yes; 1 will promise you. I will keep my head cool, and won't touch ivory to-night." " You arc ^oino- to Crockford's? " "Must go there, you know. Shan't stop :m hour. The only way of luring my pigeon "lit." "And then!" 120 Quite Alone. " To the umbrella-shop, of course. The worthy Count Cubford will expect his commission on the transaction, for permission to play Vanjohn in his sanctum. Everybody wants his commission now- a-days. I wonder Langhorne, of the Guards, doesn't ask for fifteen per cent, for having intro- duced me to Debonnair." u You will be able to afford it if you only follow the instructions I gave you. You — I mean mon- sieur — must keep his head very cool, and, as much as possible, his eyes fixed on his opponent. Mon- sieur must never lose his temper, and must never grow tired. Then, if he takes care, and Debonnair is oris enough, he will win his five thousand louis before morning." " I believe I shall. Five thousand pounds are more than five thousand louis, most unsophisti- cated foreigner. Where are we? Oh, Charing- cross. We'll get rid of this ramshackle old tub here. I shall go to the club, have a warm bath, and then " "To St. James's-street?" " Xo. Gamridge's. After that, the business of the evening will commence. The night is young yet. It isn't a quarter-past twelve.'' When William the Fourth was Kim* 121 " I shall therefore have the honour to leave monsieur \ *w arm-chair k 2 1 32 Quite Alone. covered with Utrecht velvet, for Mademoiselle Adele ; another, higher and black leather covered, for La Mere Thomas. Madame Rataplan was seldom seen in the upper regions. She was, in fact, head chambermaid, her assistant being a dirty Irish girl, with a face like a kidney potato, and many chilblains, who got on very well with the Rataplans principally for the reason that they were all Roman Catholics. The salle a manger was a long low room, nncarpeted, and the floor bees- waxed; furnished with the usual array of rush- bottomed chairs, the usual litter of half-emptied wine bottles, dingy napkins in dingier bone rings, knives that wouldn't cut, forks lacking their proper complement of prongs, copies of the Siecle and the Charivari seven days old, and a big mezzotint en- graving after Horace Vernet, representing Napo- leon rising from the Tomb. Everything was very French indeed. Everything was very dear indeed. There was a table d'hote every day at half-past six, at which the cookery was admirable and the wines were detestable. The hotel was generally full of foreigners. The Rataplan clientele abroad was extensive ; and foreign visitors to England were accustomed to declare that, although the hotel The Hotel Rataplan. 133 accommodation of perfidious Albion was in general execrable, that offered by the Hotel Rataplan was passable, mais diablement cher. They did not seem to be aware of the possibility of any hotels existing anywhere in London out of Leicester- place, or at least " Laycesterre-squarr." Rataplan, then, prospered. He only kept one waiter : a young man from Alencon, named An- toine, with a red head and a face like a fox. This serviteur appeared by day in a waistcoat with black calico sleeves and baggy pantaloons of blue canvas terminating in stocking feet. At table d'hote time he attired himself in the black tail-coat and white cravat de rigueur, and carried a serviette in lieu of a feather broom under his arm. He was very good natured, and, save on the question of the reckoning, passably honest. He had taught the Irish servant girl to play piquet with him, and, when any of the lodgers wanted a little quiet gambling, Antoine was always ready with a portable roulette box with an ivory ball. He did not appear to cheat until he was found out. I have forgotten to state that from basement to roof the Hotel Rataplan smelt very strongly of tobacco-smoke. 134 Quite Alone, CHAPTER IX. INTRODUCTORY TO A WILD ANIMAL. Rataplan was entirely deficient in the Rhodo- dendron characteristic. It was a very late house. Nobody dreamt of going to bed till one or two o'clock in the morning, save Mademoiselle Adele, who retired at eleven, comme il convenait a une jeune personne. The French are accustomed to treat their daughters like children till they are twenty years of age, and their sons like grown up persons when they are ten. The paternal Rataplan came up from the regions of the kitchen towards eleven, and played cards or smoked a cigar with one of his guests for a couple of hours. People used to treat him to innumerable small glasses to hear him brag Introductory to a Wild Animal. 135 of his exploits during his campaigns with the Grand Army, and his colloquy with the Emperor at Mon- tereau ; although there were those of a malevolent turn of mind who insinuated that he had never been at the Beresina or at Montereau: but that happening to keep a small wine-shop at the corner of a street in Paris during the three glorious days of July, 1830, a barricade had been erected close to his door, and at a critical moment he had rushed out, and crying " Vive la Charte ! " had stricken down a corporal of grenadiers with a soup ladle, whereupon he had become a decore de Juillet. It was half-past twelve on a summer night — I need not further particularise it, for I have not yet passed the limits of the four-and-twenty hours in the course of which all the events hitherto narrated have occurred — when Monsieur Jean Bnptiste Con- stant, in his master's Spanish cloak, entered the marble hall of the Hotel Rataplan, and passed into the salle a manger, as one well accustomed to the locality. Rataplan was alone, smoking and sipping hifl "•gzogs" (as be was accustomed to call a very little brandy with a great deal of sugar and Lukewarm ), and endeavouring to spell through one of 136 Quite Alone. the seven days' old Siecles. The gallant warrior- cook's education was defective. His womankind kept his books and wrote his letters for him. " How goes it, mon vieux ? Touchez-la ! " said the valet. And he extended his palm, and Eata- plan smote his own palm thereupon, and went on reading. "Will you smoke?" asked Kataplan, after a moment. "Business to attend to" — the two men spoke French — "else I would first have presented my homages to the ladies. Is the Countess at home?" "Half an hour ago. Is having her supper now." " And her little temper? " "Ouf! n'en parlez pas. The whole menagerie of the Jarclin des Plantes does not contain such a wild animal. The bear Martin, when the nurse refused to throw him the second of her babies, when he had played off the little practical joke of eating the first, was never in such a temper. Temper ! It is a mania ! A delirium, an ecstasy of spasmodic and anarchical passions. That woman is all the furies rolled into one, plus Fredegonde, Clytemnestra, and Madame Croquemitaine." Introductory to a Wild Animal. 137 Rataplan had been a great frequenter of the Boulevard theatres in his youth, and piqued him- self on his familiarity with dramatic literature. He was given, besides quoting Beranger, to spout- ing long harangues from tragedies, both in prose and verse. " What is the matter with the Countess ! " "Matter! what else but her diabolical, sulphu- reous, Mount Etna of a temper can be the matter with her? They are not words, but red-hot lava streams, that flow from her lips. You are Hercu- laneum and Pompeii before her, and she engulphs you. But, pardieu, she is not the Muette de Portici ! She has a tongue as long as an academic discourse. There is no stopping, no satisfying, no pacifying, her. She is implacable in her rages. She comes in here, after midnight ; and, without the slightest salutation, says, 'Papa Rataplan, is my supper ready ? ' I make her a reverence. I say, taking off my cook's cap — an act of homage I would not render to Louis Philippe, roi des Franca is et des pekins — ' Madame told me on going out that she would take no supper.' 'What?' responds Bhe. ' Papa Rataplan, you are a ganache ! On the in-tant let me have oysters of Colchesterre, a trout fried, 138 Quite Alone. all that you have in the way of cutlets, a sweet omelette, a Charlotte aux pommes, a salade cle niaches, some champagne, Burgundy, Bordeaux, and so forth.' And all this on the instant ! ( Madame,' I humbly represent, 'there are no oysters fit for the palate of a lady. There is no salade de niaches. Covent Garden goes to bed at eight o'clock pre- cisely. As to the cutlets, you can have some. As to the omelette, by all means. As to the Charlotte, it is an impossibility, seeing that I have no apples — unless you would condescend to potatoes. As for the wines, you bring them with you, paying me a shilling a cork, and saying that mine are not fit to drink, so you know best. In effect, I am deso- lated that I cannot give you to eat as you desire ; but if you would like a mayonnaise de homard, or some pickelle sammone de chez ce bon Monsieur Quin in the Aimarkette, in ten minutes vous serez a votre aise.' " " And what does she reply ? " u She tells me to go to the five hundred devils* She outrages the Mere Thomas. She affronts Antoine. That woman's language smells of the stable in which she passes her time. ' Oni, Rata- plan,' she says to me, i je vous considere comme le Introductory to a Wild Animal. 139 dernier des derniers.' And then, forsooth, she mnst insult my sleeping cherub, and say that poor little Adele' s pianoforte practice distracts her nerves, and that if I do not put a stop to it she must find another hotel. It is likely, eh? When I pay Signor Tripanelli half a guinea a lesson for her in- struction, and know that with two years' more practice she will be the first pianiste of the world, and cause Thalberg and Chopin to hang them- selves in envious despair." u Why don't you give her her cong£ ? " Rataplan shrugged his shoulders. u One does not like to lose so excellent a customer. She is worth ten guineas a week to us whenever she comes to stay at the Hotel Rataplan. I should not like that Grossous, at the Hotel Belgiosso, to get hold of her. Tripefourbe, of the Hotel du Belvedere dans le Soho, has already endeavoured to seduce her away from us. And even the wild animal lias her moments of amiability. She gave only last week to Adele, a brooch — malachite, I think you call it. I saw a snuff-box made of it, winch the Cossack Alexander gave to the Emperor at Tilsit. Only yesterday, -lie threw Adele a cashmere, a true cachemire des Indes, in which she had burnt a 140 Quite Alone. hole with a red-hot poker, in a rage because milord did not come. Adele will soon darn up that hole. It is a cashmere of a ravishing nature ! " " Ah ! And so milord did not come, and miladi was in a rage. Perhaps she expected him to supper to-night, and his failure was the secret of her temper." "Tiens, I think not. To be sure, she sent the commissionnaire this morning to the Albany, where milord lives, and he was out, and lo and behold, when she made her appearance this night, there was a note waiting for her — a little pink note — and having read it, she ordered the supper I told you of." " Then milord may be coming." " Not at all ! A little jockey, with breeches of leather and top-boots, was here not five minutes before your arrival. By word of mouth he de- livered the message that his master was very sorry, but could not come. Antoine went up and told her. She flew into one of her sulphureous ecstasies, and nearly strangled him." "It is now half-past twelve. Is she gone to bed?" " To bed ! She won't seek her couch till three. Introductory to a Wild Animal. 141 She will scold that unhappy Barbette, her femme de chambre, till past two. Then she will walk about the room, and smoke like a sapper, and swear like a cuirassier, for another hour. To bed ! It is lucky for her bed that she goes to it so late. She must quarrel with the bolster, and kick the counterpane all night." u I think you had better announce me." "I warn you that she is exceedingly ferocious to-night, and that grave results may follow even my intrusion to announce you." " Have no fear. She may bite, but I don't fear her barking. I have been a keeper in the Jardin des Plantes, and am not afraid of wild animals. Allons, mon bon. Do as I tell you." Rataplan rose with anything but a good grace, and murmuring something about the inexpediency of bearding tigresses in their den. He shuffled up-stairs. Constant heard him timorously tap at a door. Then there was a tempest of words audible — confined, however, to a single voice ; and after a while the host descended to the salle a manger again, with something positively approaching a faint violet flush on his pale face. "I told you so," he said. " She is a panther of 142 Quite Alone. the Island of Java. A beautiful jaguar. How- ever, if you are fond of wild beasts, there she is. Go, my friend, and be devoured." And he sat down, drew the candle closer to him, mixed himself a fresh tumbler of "gzog," re-illumined the butt- end of his cigar — a Frenchman never desists until the weed begins to burn the tip of his nose, and then he sticks the stump on the point of a penknife — and so resumed his perusal of the Siecle seven days old. Monsieur Constant went quietly up-stairs, and softly laid his hand upon the handle of the door of the front drawing-room. I must keep Monsieur Constant with his hand upon the handle for the space of two chapters, while I cross the water on an excursion very necessary to this narrative. Begins an Idyll. \\\\ CHAPTER X. BEGINS AN IDYLL. In the department of the Bouches du Rhone, and in the neighbourhood of Avignon, there are few prettier villages than Marouille-le-Gencv. in the sous-prefecture of Nougat. There are not ten houses of more than one story, and not above a hundred cottages ; but they are all pretty. They are built mostly of stone, or of sun- burnt bricks whitened over, and roofed in with those convex tiles, laid on loose, and secured only by pegs, such as you see in Italian villages. White as an- their fronts, they were lialf hidden by cluster- ing vines. A vineyard, itself, is not ordinarily in- viting to the sight. In its picturesque as] 144 Quite Alone. exists only in the imagination of scene-painters, in the engravings of defunct landscape annuals, and in the fancy performances, in oil and water colours, sent every year to exhibitions. For real beauty, I will match a Kentish hop-garden, or a Twickenham orchard, against the most luxuriant vineyard in the sunny south. We say little about the south being chronically stormy as well as sunny. It is only on the banks of the Khine, where the grapes grow in terraces, one above the other, to the very tops of the hills, that a wine-bearing district assumes a romantic look. It is the same with olive-trees. Olives in their saline solution, popularly, but erro- neously, supposed to be sea-water, are very nice to eat with your claret, and very nice to talk or sing about in ballad poetry ; but a plantation of olive- trees is, next to a field of mangold-wurzel, about the ugliest object in nature you can come across. Hemp beats it. Flax beats it. Clover demolishes it utterly, hi an artistic sense. The vines, however, that cluster beneath the cottage roof, and the olives that grow in the front garden, are certainly charm- ing ; and Marouille-le-Gency had an abundance of both. The little river] Bave, one of the tributaries of Idyll 145 the Khone, ran right across the village street, and the villagers were great people for clean linen. They were even given to washing themselves as well as their clothes : a strange thing in the south. The village was girt abont with real orange-groves. There was an abundance of myrtles. The entrance to the hamlet was planted with gigantic plants of the cactus tribe. The rarest and most beautiful flowers grew nearly all the year in the open air. Turtle-doves cooed from the tiles. Thickets of the maritime stone pine covered the hills behind Ma- rouille, over which frowned the grey mediaeval Chateau of Ocques, once a baronial residence, then a fortress, then a barrack, now a penitentiary. The " correctionnaires," or inmates of this house of penance, did not trouble the inhabitants much. They were kept with commendable stringency behind the strong stone walls of the Castle of Ocques, where they worked for their sins at sail- cloth weaving, rope-making, and mat-plaiting. Once in six months or so, one of their number escaped; but Marouille-le-Gency had a breed of strong savage ddgs, and, a substantial reward being offered for the capture of fugitives, the refugee was soon hunted down. The house of correction VOL. I. L 146 Quite Alone. was principally useful to the villagers as a bug- bear, or bete noire, to scare their refractory chil- dren withal, who, when they did not behave them- selves, were threatened with being sent la-haut, up there, to the big old castle. The inhabitants were mostly small proprietors, each cultivating his own particular patch of vine- yard or olive garden, and contriving to make both ends meet, in a scrambling kind of manner, at the end of the year. The necessaries of life were cheap. Bread was coarse, but plentiful. Meat was seldom eaten, but as seldom asked for. Beyond a few river trout and some salt fish in Lent, there was no consumption of piscine delicacies. Oranges and grapes cost nothing at all. The country wine cost only four sous the litre, and for luxuries the denizens of Marouille-le-Gency had a profound disregard. They did not occupy themselves much with con- temporary politics. Theoretically they were legi- timists, and kept as a fete the anniversary of the grand day A.D. 1815, when Monseigneur Louis Antoine, Fils de France and Duke of Angouleme, had passed through Marouille-le-Gency on his way to unfurl the white flag at Bordeaux. By the Begins an Idyll. 147 same token, their usual mild natures had undergone an eclipse of ferocity, and they mobbed and nearly murdered Napoleon on his way to Elba after his first abdication at Fontainebleau. The ex-imperial carriage halted to change horses at the village posthouse ; the moody occupant was recognised, hooted, insulted, stoned ; knives were brandished at the windows ; inflamed faces with fiery eyes glared in upon him ; and, but for the presence of mind of the mayor, who was known to be a Bour- bonist, and who, baring his breast, stood at the coach door pointing to his breast, and crying, " He is a tyrant, but you shall kill me first!" they would have dragged the fallen hero from his vehicle and flung him under the wheels. It is said that Napo- leon shed tears of rage and shame at this unman- nerly reception, and that as soon as he was clear of Marouille he changed clothes with one of his postilions, and in jack-boots, a red waistcoat, and :i hat flaunting with ribbons, clacked his whip, and bestrode the leader, in order to avoid similar insults at the next stage. It must be admitted th.it. al- though inveterate against him in adversity, the Marouillaifl had never fawned upon him in pro- Bperity. They had invariably detested Id- rule. l2 148 Quite Alone. The mothers and sweethearts of Marouille cursed him consistently and continually. The flower of their youth had been taken away from their vine- yards to shed their blood in his incessant battles. Nevertheless, for years after 1821, they obsti- nately refused to believe at Marouille in Napoleon's death, holding that he was still secured by the English with a strong chain riveted to the wall of a dungeon in the island of St. Helena ; and as a "bogie" for naughty children he divided popularity with the Chateau d'Ocques. Da capo. For the rest they were very pious, and the most docile of parishioners to their cure, believing implicitly in relics, the genuineness of modern miracles, and the direct intervention of the saints in curing the dis- eases of cattle, and in assisting the cultivation of the vine. Spells, incantations, second sight, and the evil eye, were in high repute among the Ma- rouillais. In the year 1825, Charles the Tenth being king of France and Navarre, there came to live at Marouille-le-Gency, as landlord of its solitary au- berge and posthouse — a long low tenement by the sien of The Lilies of France — a vounjr Swiss called Jean Baptiste Constant. Begins an Idyll. 149 He had been, according to his own account, in domestic service, and had saved some money. There was no mystery about him. His appearance harmonised with the signalement on his passport, and his papers were perfectly en regie. He had bought the Food will of the Lilies of France out of a notary's etude at Avignon, where it had been de- posited for sale by the executors of Madame the Widow Barrichon, who had been its hostess ever since the days of the Great Revolution. Carrier had once set up a guillotine in her back yard, and decapitated half a score of " arestos" there. The villagers declared that, ever since that hideous day, the water of the well in the back yard had worn a purple tinge. The in-coming tenant of the auberge had paid a handsome price for it — twenty-five thousand francs, so the gossips of the village said — half down and half at mortgage on the security of the premises. A man who cguld command such an amount of capital was looked upon as a person- age, and the villagers determined to be very civil to him. The mayor called on him the d.iv after his arrival at Marouille. M. le Cure set him down as one of the future corporation of the fabrique. Fortunately for his peace of mind at Marouille, he 150 Quite Alone. was, although a Swiss, a Catholic, hailing from some canton on the Italian frontier. This was fortunate, because the Marouillais dislike heretics, classing them with gipsies, poachers, and escaped correctionnaires. He was, likewise, a bachelor, of about twenty-eight apparently, and, although somewhat swarthy and down-looking, athletic, vivacious, and, on the whole, a very personable fellow. He brought neither kith nor kin with him to his new abiding-place, and the mothers of the village who had marriageable daughters looked upon him favourably from a matrimonial point of view. He was a good man of business, and looked keenly after the main chance ; but he was no niggard. He was willing to be treated, but could treat, too, in his turn, upon occasion. He soon drove a very prosperous trade at the Lilies of France, and, being postmaster, made a good deal out of the rich English travellers on their way to Nice. He engaged as housekeeper, a strong old woman called La Beugleuse. She was not hand- some, and far from amiable, and had a desperate potency of harsh lungs, whence her name: but she was very strong, and had a mania for hard Begins a?i Idyll. 151 work. She kept the stable-boys and postilions sober, and up to their duties, and she looked after the lodgers while Constant served in the bar or waited on the customers in the billiard-room. Moreover, she brought a pair of hands with her in addition to her own. These supplementary hands belonged to her niece, Valerie, who, in 1825, was a slut of a girl not more than fifteen years of age. She was an overgrown loutish kind of a lass, and yet, for all her long limbs, seemed dwarfed and stunted about the head and shoulders. Her skin was coarse; her hands were tanned with hard labour; her voice was harsh and strident, her manners were uncouth and boorish. She' had magnificent brown hair, which hung about her head and neck in a tangled mass, and she had big blue eyes, at which few people cared to look ad- miringly, seeing that they were enshrined in a sun- burnt, dirty face. She was an incorrigible slattern, and her temper was abominable. Children arc rarely beaten in France; it is looked upon as a Cruel and dastardly tiling even to box a girl's ear- ; but no one blamed La Beugleuse when she thrashed her refractory niece with a knotted rope or a leathern trace, or tied her up to one of the mangers 152 Quite Alone. in the stable. It seemed natural that Vaurien- Valerie should be treated like a stubborn horse or mule. She was held up as a warning and example to the insubordinate juveniles of the village. " If you don't mind what's said to you, and give way to your temper, you will come to be flogged and tied up in a stable, like Valerie a la Beugleuse." Nobody cared to inquire what her patronymic was, so they gave her a share of her aunt's nickname. Perhaps the education she had received was not very conducive to the development of feminine character, or the cultivation of delicate manners. Her mother had died in bearing her. Her father had run away from his employment as a postilion, after drawing a bad number in the conscription, and had then sold himself as a substitute in the army. It was in 1815, when the Emperor was desperately in need of men, and pressing questions were not asked. The substitute was three times promoted, through sheer desperate valour in the field of battle, to the rank of sergeant ; and was as many times reduced to the ranks for flagrant mis- conduct. He didn't drink, he didn't gamble ; he was honest, but incurably insubordinate. For- tunately for the glory of France, and the interests Begins an Idyll. 153 of society, Valerie's father got himself killed at the battle of Waterloo, where he was found by a party of Prussian foragers under a heap of slain, riddled with lance wounds, and his arms firmly locked round those of an English dragoon, whom he had dragged off his horse, and killed by tearing his throat in sunder with his teeth. La Beugleuse took care, after a fashion, of the little orphan Valerie, who in her cradle bawled more than fifty ordinary babies. La Beugleuse was miserably poor. She earned her daily bread by working in the fields as a day labourer. When Valeric was old enough — that is to say, when she was seven — she too went into the fields, to scare the birds away. La Beugleuse sent her to the village school, but she would learn nothing there. They put her on the fool's cap, or bonnet d'ane ; they made her kneel across sharp rulers, but in vain . Frequently she pi ayed truan t, and remained away, among the thickets on the hill, for days together. The cure preached against her in church, for she declined to be catechised, and was the only black sheep among the snowy little flock whom he prepared for their first communion. When she was ten, she might have earned ten sous a day by 154 Quite Alone. picking up stones in the vineyards : but she de- stroyed more vines than she picked up stones. The cure advised La Beugleuse to send her to Avignon, to a convent, where the good sisters received such undisciplined colts as she, and broke them in with mingled kindness and severity ; but Valerie coolly announced her determination of setting fire to the convent and murdering one of the sisters in con- secration of the first night she passed under a monastic roof. She was now between thirteen and fourteen, and at about this time Jean Baptiste Constant came to Marouille and entered into pos- session of the Lilies of France. La Beugleuse took service with him, and Valerie accompanied her. The vaurien soon grew familiar with the stable, and on most friendly terms with the horses and mules, would ride them bare-backed to water, would litter and rub them down, and feed them, and, indeed, was in a short time quite as useful as an ostler. Partly from compassion, and partly from an idea that the girl could be overcome by other means than violence, Jean Baptiste persuaded the housekeeper to abandon her formerly unvaried specific of flogging. For a time the girl went on worse, and was intolerably riotous and rebellious ; Begins an Idyll. 155 but, after a while, she came to show, towards Jean Baptiste at least, a strange surly docility which seemed to be in some degree due to affection, and to some extent to fear. She came at his call, and almost at his whistle, like a dog. She obeyed all his orders without a murmur. A stern word or a stern look from Jean Baptiste was sufficient to render her meek and submissive whenever she showed a disposition to defy her aunt. The mayor, M. le Cure, all the villagers, marvelled at the phe- nomenon. Valerie was wholly changed. But a stranger phenomenon was soon to take place. When the girl came to be sixteen she grew with astounding rapidity exceedingly beautiful. Like Peau d'ane in the fairy tale, she seemed, all at once, to have changed from a grubby little raga- muffin, a sordid beggar's brat, into a lovely and elegant princess. A princess in rags she might have remained, certainly ; but that the landlord <>t" the Lilies of France brought her back, after one of his visits to Avignon, enough cotton print of Rouen manufacture for two work-a-day frocks, and a piece of mingled silk and wool for a Sunday dress. Valerie, who had hitherto been mocked at and despised, as the lowest of the low, was now 156 Quite Alone. envied. She went through her long-deferred first communion with unexceptionable decorum. She combed out her tangled brown hair, and arranged it in sumptuous plaits beneath a natty little lace cap. She washed her face, and her big blue eyes shone out from the cleared surface, like stars. A film seemed to have been removed from her voice, even as a cataract is removed by a skilful operator from a diseased eye. The voice was harsh and strident no longer, but full of deep rich tones, and low whispers. When she was in a passion now, she was sublime, not repulsive. The angular movements of her limbs were replaced by an in- describable suppleness and grace. She began to dance without ever having learnt. She began to sing without ever having been taught. She was evidently one of those raw creatures who " pick up" accomplishments, or are gifted with them naturally. Her capacity had flowered late, but the product was marvellous in exuberant beauty. Her curious obedience to the behests of Jean Baptiste Constant endured during a transitory period. When her beauty was definitively mani- fest, the shackles, as well as the dirt and the coarse- ness and the clumsiness, fell from her limbs. The Begins an Idyll. 157 slave became a tyrant. She turned sharply round on the strong old woman who used to flog her, and in a moment, morally, trampled her aunt under her heel. La Beugleuse was dazed and bewildered by this radiant serpent, so suddenly emergent from a scaly skin. She gave in at once, and became Valerie's very humble and obedient servant. Her master, Jean Baptiste, held out a little longer, and once or twice essayed to scold the girl; but she soon determined the relations that were in future to exist between them. u There is only one person who shall say in this house I will, and that person is myself." Thus she said, stamping her foot. The innkeeper bit his lips, and, looking at her curiously from under his drooping eyelids, said "I will" no more — so far at least as she was concerned — at the Lilies of France. 158 Quite Alo CHAPTEK XI. ENDS AN IDYLL. The Marouillais began to talk scandal about J. B. Constant and bis too precocious stable-girl and chambermaid, for she now officiated in both capa- cities, still preserving her ascendancy as mistress of the horse, but having a lad to assist her. The mayor warned the innkeeper against the "whis- pering tongues that poison truth." M. le Cure insisted that, for morality's sake, the girl should be sent away. " She is fit for something better than a fille d'auberge," he represented. " Granted, monsieur," returned Constant. " But how is her condition to be bettered ? " Ends an Idyll. 159 "The good sisters at Avignon," hinted thee siastic. Constant shook his head. " The good sisters," he remarked, " would, I much fear, be powerless in turning Valerie into a Sister of Charity or a village schoolmistress, and what more could they do with her? It is a pity that she was not sent to them two years ago. Then they might have had the credit of her sudden conversion. For the rest, it is no affair of mine. An innkeeper may have a servant- maid. She is a capital servant, and her aunt is there to watch over her." It was the curate's turn to shake his head. "Mon ami," he said, "that poor ignorant old woman is a mere baby in the hands of that girL She can no longer be chastised. The time for the cord and the thong is past." "I should like to see any one attempting to lay a hand on Valerie," exclaimed the innkeeper, with a sudden start, and clenching his fists. " Ma parole d'honneur ! I would exterminate him." "There is no fear of such an eventuality," ilk' cure returned ; "nor," he continued, in gentle re- proof, "is there any need for a fallible human 160 Quite Alone. creature to speak of ' extermination' — a terrible power, vested only in Omnipotence." " I ask your pardon, M. le Cure." " 'Tis granted, my friend. But, nevertheless, get rid of that young creature; if you don't, malicious tongues will continue to wag, and evil will follow." Constant was privately of the priest's opinion, but certain reasons, at which the intelligent reader may have already hazarded a surmise, rendered him reluctant to follow the friendly advice of his pastor. He passed several days in perplexity, anxiously revolving plans in his mind for modify- ing the condition of his too handsome servant, when Valerie brought the matter to a solution by a voluntary suggestion that she should be sent to school for a couple of years. " I am tired of tending horses," she said. " My hands are not yet quite spoiled ; but six months more of stable-work will make them as hard as buffalo-skin. I am tired of being ignorant. It is as much as I can do to read the big painted letters under the four lilies on the signboard. I can't write at all. I want to be able to read the Gazette de France, and to play the piano, and paint pic- tures, and write letters, and be a lady." Ends an Idyll. 161 "Vastly well, mademoiselle," replied Constant, with subdued irony. "But who, pray, is to pay for your education ? " " That is your affair, not mine. If you choose to send me to school it will be better for you. If you won't, I will get a livret from M. le Maire, and seek a servant's place at Avignon. My aunt will give me permission, and you must give me a character." The argument was unanswerable. Jean Bap- tiste had prospered at the Lilies of France, and could well afford the outlay. For the sum of a thousand francs, a lady keeping a boarding-school at Lyons consented to receive Mademoiselle Yah ;rie Sablon — for that was the real name of her aunt — for twelve months, and to instruct her in all the accomplishments. The girl had refused point- blank to enter a conventual school, and had selected Lyons in preference to Avignon, because, she said, she did not wish to meet any of those people of Marouille by chance in their visits to the town. J. B. Constant agreed that in this particular she Avas in the right; nor, when she left Marouille-le- Gency, did he make public the fact that she was about to proceed to school to receive a polite educa- VOL. I. M 162 Quite Alone. tion. He merely said that a married sister of his, who kept an hotel at Lyons, had agreed to receive Valerie, and to look after her morals, and make her useful. La Beugleuse did not care to contradict this statement. Perhaps she was .never enlightened as to the real state of the case. In truth, she had not f airly recovered from the state of bewilderment into which the sudden metamorphosis of the little grubby good-for-nothing she had adopted had thrown her. So, when Valerie went away, La Beugleuse looked upon her withdrawal very much in the light of a relief from an embarrassing position. But why this concealment on the part of Jean Baptiste? Why should the upright J. B. Con- stant think Lyons preferable to Avignon? Why should he have given an untruthful account of the girl's change of life ? The always intelligent reader will have little difficulty in answering these ques- tions. Yes, the bushy-headed down-looking innkeeper was savagely in love with Valerie. I say savagely, because there was something morose and ferocious in the passion that devoured him. He coidd not bear the girl to be out of his sight. He chafed at Ends an Idyll. 1G3 the necessity of parting with her, even for a time, and for her benefit. He went into silent raws at her caprice, her arrogance, her cool assumption of superiority over him — all ignorant as she was, and next door to a castaway. He loathed and longed to rend in pieces all whom she talked or laughed with. He was madly jealous of her, mere child as she was. He had no bad designs towards Valerie. At this time he was an honest man, and there was not much harm about J. B. Constant. He had never loved till now. His only hope was, that the girl would be grateful to him. His wish was, that she should grow up a beautiful and accomplished woman, and become his wife. "I will leave this wretched little hole of a vil- lage," he said to himself in his day-dreams; "I have made some money and can borrow more. I will take a grand hotel in Paris — in the English quarter in the Faubourg St. Honore. Valerie will be my wife. She will sit in the bureau, in a black satin robe, and with a gold chain round her neck, and keep the accounts. The waiters will bow and call hei Madame la Patronnc. She will go to mass at St. Koch or the Madeleine. On Sundays, m 2 1 64 Quite Alone. we will dine here and there, go to St. Cloud, and to the Opera, and the theatres. Jean Baptiste, my boy, you shall be envied ; you shall be happy." So he thought, and so he dreamed. Poor fellow ! "If she should be ungrateful!" a voice some- times whispered to him. The fear of her ingrati- tude was a black phantom not to be conjured away. " She cannot, she will not," he would mutter. "If she refuses to love me, I will kill her." When Valerie had been six months at school, J. B. Constant undertook a journey to Lyons to see her. He found her more beautiful than before. The schoolmistress said that her progress was won- derful ; that she had already distanced many girls who had been in the establishment — and with the advantages of previous education — three and four years ; and that, if she were allowed to remain with her, two years instead of one, she would answer for her leaving, fitted to move in the very highest circles. She did not know that J. B. Constant was a mere village innkeeper. He had seen the world, and served noblemen, and at Lyons he put on his best clothes and his best manners. Ends an Idyll. 165 There was one drop of bitterness in the hurried account the governess gave of her pupil. Made- moiselle, she said, was a young person difficult to manage. She would not endure reproof. She would not hear reason. Her temper was terrible. " We will make the pension twelve hundred francs a year instead of a thousand, and you must make allowances for Mademoiselle's temper," said Con- stant. "Poor child, she never knew her mother, and in early years was unkindly treated ! " The schoolmistress was a sagacious as well as a sym- pathising instructress, and for the extra stipend agreed to say nothing more about Valerie's indis- position to hear reason. When J. B. Constant had an interview with his protegee, the governess being present, she received him with a stately curtsey, and eyes demurely cast down; but when Madame du Verger discreetly left them together, she accosted the innkeeper with a haughty familiarity that was half redolent of the old rough manners of the stable-girl, and half satirical. " Ali. oa, mon homme ! " she cried. " What <1'> you think of me now? Am I grown? Arc my hands coarse ? Is my voice harsh ? " 166 Quite Alone. As lie was going away, full of love and hope, though slightly discomfited by this reception : " And La Beugleuse, the old hag who used to flog me — is she dead ? " "Your aunt is alive, Valerie," Constant said, with a reproachful look. u I am sorry for it. Such old witches ought to die. I hate her, and will pay her out for all the blows she has given me. Besides, when I go into the world she will disgrace me. To have an aunt who has worked in the fields ! To have an aunt who was a mere beast of burden ! Quoi ! Mon homme, you must take care that she never leaves Marouille." And so, with the stately curtsey, in strange disunion with her hard and bitter talk, the girl left him. She never wrote to her aunt. The old woman was by no means despondent under this neglect. She merely muttered that Valerie would be a good- for-nothing, even if she were married to M. le Prefet, and then went on working harder than ever. To Jean Baptiste the exemplary pension- naire at Madame du Verger's wrote with tolerable regularity once a month. Her letters always began " Mon bon ami," as if this young pauper had been Ends an Idyll. 16' au empress, and Constant president of a republic. Madame du Verger had suggested " Mon cher bienfaiteur," but Valerie had refused point-blank to adopt the formula. She wrote in a bold flowing hand, her letters contained a dry summary of her educational progress — of the books she had read, and the accomplishments she had mastered — and ended, "Valerie Sablon" tout court. Madame du Verger had hinted that " votre toujours reconnais- sante Valerie/' would be a slightly graceful acknow- ledgment of the kindness of the person who was paying for her education, but Mademoiselle Sablon very scornfully replied, "I shall do what I like, and I am not his Valerie." She left Lyons when she was on the verge of eighteen. This was in 1828. Constant was fear- ful of her coming back to Marouille yet awhile. He wished her to return only once, as his wife, to astound those who had known her in her povertj and her degradation, and then quit the place far ever. His plan was, that she should enter a school in Paris or in England for another year or fifteen months — not as a pupil, but afl a boarder — and that she should then make him happy. He unfolded this scheme to her, in the parlour of the 168 Quite Alone. school, on the very day when he went to fetch her away. He avowed his love, and said, with a smile, that it was pure and honourable. The girl laughed at him. " What a fairy tale ! " she cried. " Beauty and the Beast over again ! Yes, monsieur, I am Beauty, and you are the Beast, with your sleepy eyes, and your great black head like a primeval forest. Ah ! you thought a pretty grape-vine was growing up for you. Ah ! you thought you had but to shake the tree, and the pear would fall into your mouth ! " "Valerie," the innkeeper humbly expostulated, "I implore you not to speak in that mocking spirit. Think of my devotion, of my love." " I know nothing about it," sneered Valerie. "What should I, a school-girl of eighteen, . know about devotion! Love was not taught in this school. It was forbidden." Again, and with the eloquence which sincerity alone can give, and gives, too, to the most tongue- tied man, he pressed his suit. " Don't be absurd," was Valerie's reply. " You will bore me. I know nothing of life yet. I have only seen one stupid provincial town. I am tired of schools, whether as pupil or boarder. I have Ends an Idyll. 109 had enough of books, and want to see the world. I must be free and independent. I don't want to tie myself for life to a stupid old man with a head like a grisly bear. Do you wish to ruin my career ? " " Your career," repeated Constant, in sorrowful surprise. " Valerie, what would your career have been but for me ? Ah ! do not be ungrateful." "Do not exaggerate your claims to my grati- tude. It appears you had your own purpose to serve, in educating me. You merely picked up what had been abandoned. The next passer-by might have done the same, and not have been a village publican. Men are not so blind as you take them to be. Somebody would have been sure to have discovered the pearl on the dunghill, sooner or later." So she reasoned with the pitiless logic of an un- grateful heart. There was no moving or softening her. In a moment of justifiable irritation Con- stant threatened to withdraw his protection. She coolly answered, as before, that her character was unimpeached ; that the mayor of her native place was bound by law to give her a passport and a livret ; and that she would have QO difficulty in 170 Quite Alone. obtaining employment as a servant in town or country. Constant knew that in this matter she had right on her side, and that he could gain no- thing by breaking with her. He thought that to lose her would be death or madness to him. He suggested a negotiation, a compromise. Valerie was willing to negotiate — in the spirit and on the same bases recently proposed by Ins Majesty the Emperor of all the Kussias, when the great Powers remonstrated with him on his flagrant violations of the treaties of 1815, and his atrocious treatment of the Poles. The autocrat, if I remember right (for I am no politician), expressed his benevolent wil- lingness to a show clemency" to the Poles, " after the insurrectionary bands had been dispersed." So Valerie argued. " Grovel in the dust at my feet," she implied. " Abandon all your preten- sions, and then I may extend some l clemency' to you." The negotiation was concluded in this wise : When J. B. Constant had told the Ma- rouillais that Valerie was to be placed under the protection of a married sister who kept an hotel in Lyons, he had told a lie — but a white one. There were extenuating circumstances in his fraud. He really had a sister, and a married sister, who kept Ends an Idyll. 171 an hotel — but she lived in Paris, and not in Lyons. She should go to Paris, and live a year with this sister, Madame Hummelhausen, wife of a Ger- man, formerly of the profession of bootmaking, but now principally of certain sixth-rate estaminets on the Boulevards, where he smoked, drank beer, and played endless parties of dominoes, while his wife worked hard at home. She would go to Madame Hummelhausen, but a wardrobe suit- able to the position of a young lady brought up in affluence was to be provided for her, and she was to be completely her own mistress. A strange treaty, of a verity ! Where one of the contracting parties had all, and the other nothing, and whore the pauper dictated terms to the capitalist ! And yet such treaties are registered by the bundle in Love's chancery. Constant signed all the pro- tocols, as, in this issue he would have signed away his last crust, his liberty, his life. There was no need for Valerie to return yet awhile to Maronille. She was not so very anxious to see her aunt again. There arc handsome and well-stocked shops in Lyons, and the expenditure of some fifteen hun- dred francs soon furnished Mademoiselle Valerie Sablon with the articles of wearing apparel she 172 Quite Alone. required for the moment. " "When I want more dresses/' she said to her slave, calmly, " I will write, and you will open a credit for me with Madame what do you call her — Hummelhausen — quel nom de Visigoth ! As for jewellery, there will be time enough to think about that, after- wards. That gold cross you were ridiculous enough to buy me yesterday, I shall not wear. It is absurd. Je ne suis pas vouee a la Vierge, moi ! " The innkeeper uttered a low moan of rage, dis- appointment, wounded love. " I thought you would have admired it, Va- lerie." "And I don't. Take me to the Palais Eoyal, and I will talk to you about ornaments. How I long to see that Palais Eoyal ! These Lyons goldsmiths are barbarians." He had taken a place for her in the coupe of the diligence to Paris, and was bidding her fare- well. He looked at her with gloomy, greedy eyes. " Ah ! bah ! " she cried ; " one would think you were the wolf, and I Little Red Riding Hood. Is it for my pot of butter that you make those great Ends an Idyll. 173 eyes, monsieur ! What large eyes you have, grandmamma ! " Constant abandoned further conflict. " I am ready to accompany you to the coach-office," he said, with dolorous meekness. " There is a ' good little wolf. You'll make Little Ked Riding Hood quite fond of you if you go on in that way. Je pourrais m'amouracher, Je pourrais m'amouracher, Je pourrais m'amouracher, D'un riche, riche, riche, tres riche richard. Do you know the chanson ? The master didn't teach it me. The girls used to sing it in the dor- mitory under the bed-clothes. Ah ! we learn a great deal at school." " I am ready, Valerie." "And I too. It is agreed upon, n'est-ce pas, that you leave me in peace for six months '. " " For six months I will not trouble you. I will not even write to you if you are averse to receiving communications from me. What I have to Bay shall be said through my sister." "No; that looks like surveillance. Write to me : it will amuse me." 174 Quite Alone. A gleam of passionate satisfaction shot across Constant's face. u I will write," he said, his heart palpitating. " But no long letters. No love, or nonsense of that kind. Don't bore me. Now I am ready. Nay, perhaps you would like to kiss my hand." She held out her hand to him as she spoke. She had never granted him that slight favour before. It was not a small hand. She was a grandiose woman ; but it was very white, and soft, and plump. Who to look upon it could have thought that it had drawn country wine for bumpkins and stable-boys, or wielded a pitch- fork to toss stable-litter about ? He accompanied her to the coach-office, put her in her seat, wrapped her up in warm shawls and rugs, placed a basket full of dainties and wine by her side, and would have pressed if not kissed her hand once more, even in the open coach-yard, but that she said sharply : " Enough of that ! You nearly bit my hand just now, besides all but wrenching it from the wrist. You are too affectionate, mon homme. Good-by, and go back as fast as ever you can to that stupid old Marouille-le-Gency. Adieu ! Ends an Idyll. 175 Love for yon, life for me!" And the diligence' clattered and rumbled away Parisward, and Jean Baptiste Constant was left desolate. He could not make up his mind to return to the village. He wandered about Lyons for two whole days. He called again on Madame du Verger, asking her futile questions. The school- mistress knew well enough what ailed him. He had been a good customer, and she sympathised with him. The girl had left some inconsiderable fal-lals behind her — a gauze scarf, a pair or two of gloves, a piece of music. These were given to him, and he treasured them with burning avidity. Then he went to the theatre, and tried to listen to an opera; but the mocking ysoic Valerie rose high above the braying and tinkling of trumpet and cymbal, and the flourishes of the singers. He went from cafe to cafe, and drank deep — which was not his custom ; but Valerie's scornful accents were audible, to him, above the clattering of the dominoes, the jangling of the coffee-cups, the cries of a Trois, six !" k - A < j ui l:i pose!" and the shrill "Via monsieur 1" of the waiters. Valerie's face was in the cup, and Va- lerie's form wreathed itself out from the thready 176 Quite Alone. vapour of the cigars. At last he went back to Marouille, to see after the wants of the billiard players, and to scold the postilions and stable- boys. But, two days after his return, he went to Avignon, and instructed the same notary of whom he had purchased the good will of the Lilies of France, to advertise the Lilies again for immediate disposal. It was a month before any reasonable offer was made. At last a customer was found, in the person of an Avignon linen draper, who thought that country air would do him good. After much haggling, he agreed to give forty thousand francs for the premises and good will — a considerable advance on the sum Constant had paid for them ; but, by his energy and perseverance, he had much improved the property. He had written to his sister to inform her of his approaching departure, but begged her to keep it, for a while, a secret from Valerie. He wished to be in Paris without the girl's knowledge. His successor in the post- office promised, in case any letters arrived for him with the Paris postmark, to re-direct them to him. Then he took his place in the diligence, and, in two days' time, found himself in the French capital. Ends an Idyll. 177 When he arrived in Paris he wrote to his sister, telling her to meet him at an obscure furnished lodgings in the Marais. The Hummelhausens lived in the Rue St. Lazare, in one of the noisiest, liveliest quarters of the brawling capital. Madame Hummelhausen came, and brought her budget of news with her. Valerie was more beau- tiful than ever. She had engaged a music-master. She sang divinely. She was passionately fond of the Opera and the theatres ; but her temper was insupportable. "And I for one will not put up with it," quoth Madame Hummelhausen. Jean Baptiste, my brother, you are a simple. Turn this girl out of doors if she won't have you, and make the happiness of some honest woman whose temper does not turn the world topsy-turvy, and who knows how to love and obey a good kind man." J. B. Constant was far too much in love to see the force of this argument. He implored his Bister to wait until the expiration of the stipulated twelve months — or at least of six, when he would see Valerie, and come to some definite understanding witli her. Meanwhile, faithful to his promise of leaving Valerie in peace, he waited patiently for the post from Avignon to bring him thai long-ex- VOL. I. N 178 Quite Alone. pected re-directed letter with the Paris postmark. But it never came. At his instigation, Madame Hummelhausen gently hinted to Valerie that it might be as well to write a line to her brother. "A qnoi bon?" retorted the girl. "That my letter should travel five hundred leagues back- wards and forwards to no purpose % Do you think I am an idiot ? The great dolt is here. Yes ; Monsieur Jean Baptiste Constant has been prowl- ing about Paris these two months, engaged in the highly dignified occupation of playing the spy over a young girl. Since when have you kept spies in your family, madame 1 Does Monsieur Constant belong to the police? I have caught sight of him hundreds of times, on the Boulevards, hi the Luxembourg and Tuileries gardens, at the theatres, at church even. What does he mean by this in- solence, in dogging my footsteps ? Why does he not come here, like an honest man, and tell me what he wants ? " " He promised to leave you in peace for six months," pleaded Madame Hummelhausen. " Let him come now. I wish to see him. I have something to say to him." He went to her, his heart bounding with the Ends an Idyll. 179 hope that she had relented ; that she would say to him, u Constant, I have teased you long enough. I am changed. I am grateful. I am yours." But, the nether millstone still held its place in her breast. She received him with the old mockery, the old disdain. Her inflexibility had gotten a Parisian gloss upon it, and would have been hor- rible, had she not looked more beautiful than ever. " I am sick of being a pensioner," she said ; " of being told that I ought to be grateful for this and for that. I want to be free, and to earn my own livelihood." She had the hardihood to tell Jean Baptiste that she wished to go on the sta^e. " I have a mission for the dramatic career," she said, with lofty conceit. "And you should enter me as a student of the Conservatory, as a singer, or a dancer, or an actress; but that I abhor discipline, and before a week was over should undoubtedly box the ears of one of the professors. Imagine boxing the ears of Monsieur Cheruhini ! N<> : I must go where I can give orders, instead of re- ceiving them." She unfolded her plans. She had made quaintancc, through the Hummelhausens, with one N 2 180 Quite Alone. Duruflee, who had a kind of private theatre for dramatic aspirants at the Batignolles. She would pay him a premium — the funds, of course, to be furnished by M. Constant — and would practise among his pupils for a few months. Then Duru- flee would get her, for a commission, an engage- ment at one of the petty Boulevard theatres. Thence to the Gaite, thence to the Porte St. Martin, thence to the Theatre-Francais. J. B. Constant understood, and shuddered, but he did not demur. « And after that?" he asked. " After that, we shall see," she replied ; " after that, if you are very, very quiet, and well behaved, the ice may melt. How many years did the bon homme Jacob wait for Laban's daughter?" 'Twas the first inkling of a promise she had ever given him. It threw him into an ecstasy of joy- He agreed to all she asked. Madame Hummel- hausen was glad to be rid of her troublesome charge, but said little to encourage her brother s hopes. " She has no heart, not an atom," she per- sisted. J. B. Constant would not listen to his sister. He would not have lent an ear, where Valerie was concerned, to Solomon, or to Nathan Ends an Idyll. 181 the Wise, or to the seven sapient men of Gotham. What could those last-named wiseacres have done beyond advising him to go to sea in a bowl ? And was he not already launched upon the ocean in a skiff quite as frail ! Valerie chose to have apartments of her own, at the Batignolles, close to M. Duruflee's private theatre. This worthy had been a chorister at the Academie till he lost his voice, when he turned chef de claque, or head of a band of hired ap- plauders at the theatre. He lost his place through venality — for there is a code of honour even among claqueurs — being detected in taking money from two rival actresses who were to make their debut on the same night. The claque applauded both. The two affirmatives made a negative : neither triumphed. The rivals were furious ; the direc- tion scandalised, and Duruflee had his conge. After such a Fontainebleau (if to be kicked out can be considered an abdication) there was clearly no Elba for the banished potentate of the claque but in the Rue de Jerusalem. lie became affiliated to the police ; then he served the Tribunal of ( Jom- merce as one of its bailiffs; then he went on the Bourse, and, by assiduous speculation for a hill, 182 Quite Atone, contrived to win some ten thousand francs of the basest money in the world. His dramatic pro- pensities were still strong within him, and he in- vested his gains in the organisation of a Theatre de Jeunes Eleves at the Batignolles. He was very fat, good natured, clever, gross, humorous, astute, and a consummate blackguard. He still kept up his connexion with the Prefecture. His insatiable thirst for absinthe made him one of those rare monstrosities — a drunken Frenchman ; but he was a better spy when intoxicated than when sober. In the spring of 1831, Valerie, being then in her twenty-first year, made her first appearance at the Folies Dramatiques. She came out in some sanguinolent drama of the then new romantic school. She represented some great wicked lady covered with guilt and diamonds, and created a furore. The wickedness she was enabled to por- tray with rare fidelity from her accurate observa- tion of human nature. It was J. B. Constant who found the diamonds. The money he had received from the sale of the inn at Marouille was all gone by this time. He was taking up money at a hun- dred per cent, from the usurers. He had borrowed from his sister all she could afford to lend, and Ends an Idyll. 183 more ; but Valerie wanted diamonds, real diamonds — she laughed paste to scorn — and she had them. If she had ordered J. B. Constant to forge the name of M. Jacques Lafitte to bills to the extent of five hundred thousand francs, with a certainty of the court of assizes, the pillory, and the galleys, in perpetuity, commencing from the very next day, he would have obeyed her. She was soon engaged at a handsome salary, at the Porte St. Martin. Her wish was attained. She was free and independent ; but she did not offer to give back to J. B. Constant the money he had spent on her education, or the diamonds lie had lavished upon her. On the . contrary, she wanted more diamonds from him, and she had them. J. B. Constant was living, in usurers' clutches, at the rate of fifty thousand francs a year, and his clothes were growing shabby, and he dined even' day at a restaurant for thirty-two sous. Valerie played in a piece in which she bad t<> wear a robe of flame -coloured satin, and to show a considerable amount of her leus. Paris wa>< en- tranced. A sculptor modelled the legs In wax, and they were exhibited, under a glass case, in tin- 184 Quite Alone. Galerie d' Orleans. Her bust was carved. Her portrait was lithographed. Beranger went to see her. His criticism was conclusive, but not com- plimentary. a Vous n'etes pas Lisette," he mur- mured, and walked out of the box. The romancer, M. Honore de Balzac, then beginning to make his way in literature, looked at her, long and anxiously, through his opera-glass. " She is a Cossack in petticoats," he said, " and will occupy Paris." Up to this time she seemed impregnable. Dia- monds, from other quarters than poor Constant, were laid at her feet. She took them up and laughed in the face of the donors. She had a won- derful power of digestion. She took everything — songs, dedications, money, jewels, bouquets, love- letters, compliments, and gave nothing in return, but scorn. She was a Bacchante in cold blood. She was "Venus rising from the ice. At this time there was a great English dandy in Paris, by the name of Blunt. The French had got it into their heads that he was " Sir Francois Blunt, Baronnet ;" but, titled or untitled, they per- sisted in declaring him to be the wealthiest and most sumptuous of milords. He lived in great state, on a first floor in the Rue de la Madeleine. Ends an Idyll. 185 He associated with all the English aristocracy resi- dent in or visiting Paris. He played high, at Frascati's and elsewhere. He had his baignoires at the little theatres. He gave his dinners at Ve- four's, or the Rocher de Cancale ; he gave his suppers at the Cafe Anglais. He drove a four-in- hand — a vehicle the Parisians had never set eyes upon before — a cabriolet, a phaeton, a dog-cart — — he drove anything you please. He was a capital French scholar, and a great favourite in women's society. He could ply the small-sword if chal- lenged, and could hit the ace of hearts thrown up in the air, with a pistol-shot at fifty paces. Blunt was a great play-goer. He went to the Porte St. Martin to see the actress after whom all Paris was flocking. It is not veiy difficult for an Englishman, who is cultivated and fashionable, and is supposed to be rich, to procure an introduc- tion to a French actress. He was in a short time permitted to make his obeisance to Valerie. There was a quiet mocking manner about him, a polished impertinence, which at first pleased her infinitely. "At all events," she said, with an engaging candour to Constant, in one of the rare audiences she now granted him in the forenoon, and in her 186 Quite Ahne. boudoir, "he is neither imbecile, like the young Frenchmen who buzz about me, nor ridiculous, like the English dandies. If he is insolent, he is witty. If he can give sharp stabs, he can take them. He pleases me, ce Sir Blunt." She believed in the stories of his rank and wealth, although she often said that it mattered little to her whether the man she chose to favour was a prince or a rag-picker. She determined, on New Year's Day, 1832, to give a grand supper in a gorgeous new suite of apartments she had taken in the Chaussee d'Antin. Half the fashionable roues and actresses in Paris were to be there. She was good enough to ask Constant to come — and also to condescend to borrow from him a thousand francs towards the expenses of the entertainment. Constant gave her the money, and found himself at four in the afternoon of the day on which the party was to come off, with exactly twenty-seven francs in his pocket. He was proceeding to dine at his usual thirty-two sous restaurant in the Eue de l'Ancienne Comedie, when he was arrested on two bills of exchange for ten thousand francs each, held by one Nabal Pixerifort, a Jew, and was car- ried off to a debtors' prison. Ends an Idyll. 187 Some other judgments crowded in upon him, and he found himself detained for a total of sixty thousand francs. As a foreigner, he was liable to lie in prison for a long term of years, his creditors being merely bound to pay a sum of ninepence- halfpenny per diem for his maintenance ; but for- tunately he had not been incarcerated a month before he found succour. The Hummelhausens, who were worthy people, would gladly have " exe- cuted" themselves — that is to say, would have sold their hotel stock, cock and barrel — to help their suffering kinsman, but there was no need for this. An uncle of the Constants happened to die at Ticino, leaving an inheritance of two hundred thousand francs. The use of this, for her life, he left to his wife, who was eighty-two years of age, and bedridden. At her death, a hundred thousand francs were to come to Jean Baptiste, and fifty thousand to the Hummelhausens. The prisoner found no difficulty in selling his reversion for a hundred and twenty thousand francs. He paid the- usurers in full, and left the whitewashed walk, comparatively a rich man. On the day of his enlargement, and while he was treating to a vin d'honneur some of the gentleman 188 Quite Alone. captives in the establishment, one of the turnkeys brought him a copy of the National, asking him if he would like to look at it. The ex-innkeeper's eye fell on a paragraph, in which it was stated among the Faits Divers that one of the " illustrations dra- matiques," or theatrical celebrities of the day, " la belle Mademoiselle Valerie," had suddenly broken her engagement with the direction of the Porte St. Martin, and winged her way to the "brumous" land of Albion, where she was "incessantly" to be united in marriage to the Honourable Sir Francis Blunt, Baronet, and member of the Upper Chamber. Jean Baptiste Constant rushed out of prison to his sister. He had written to Valerie half a dozen times since his arrest, not asking for money, but craving a word of sympathy. She had not sent him one. His devotion to her was so servile, so houndlike, that he had never murmured. Madame Hummelhausen had no good news to tell him. The paragraph in the National was true. At least she had Valerie's word for its genuineness. The girl had written her a cool letter from Dover, saying that she had been married there, and that she was now Miladi Blunt. "As to Constant," she went Ends an Idyll. 189 on, u you will say to him that I am very sorry for him, but that he bored me." This was his dis- missal : this his recompense for all he had done to train and nurture this beautiful devil. She had married another man. She was sorry for Con- stant ; but he bored her ; he made her yawn ; she needed amusement, and the other man could amuse her. There was an end of the idyll. Constant said nothing, but asked Madame Hum- melhausen to give him the letter. " I shall go to England," he said. "To kill Sir Blunt? " asked his sister, terrified. "AVe are not in the middle ages. Lucreee Borgia is all very well on the stage, but will not do in private life. I have been in England before. I have served in noble families. I have the most flattering testimonials. I will serve in noble fami- lies again. Good-by, my good sister. Perhaps some day I shall have the high honour to stand behind Miladi Blunt's chair." Miladi Blunt's honeymoon was soon over. The honeymoon was very speedily followed by the bees- wax-moon, and that, by the gall-and-wormwood- moon. Valerie discovered that she bad wedded a gentleman with no money, and who was over head 190 Quite Alone. and ears in debt. Blunt told her so plainly, and that it was useless to think of going to London. They crossed from Dover to Ostend, and thence went to Brussels, where, Valerie's Paris prestige being thick upon her, she easily obtained an en- gagement. This was in the spring of 1832. By December, in the same year, they had separated. Her accusations against her husband were no fictions. He had insulted, outraged, beaten, her. He had lived in luxury upon her earnings. She gave birth in Brussels, and at Christmas-time in this same year '32, to a child, a girl, who was christened Lily by the English chaplain resident in the Belgian capital. The day after the perform- ance of the ceremony, Blunt deserted his wife, but took his child and his child's nurse with him. He had made an acquaintance in Brussels at this time, who lent him money, and talked to him of brilliant prospects, but whose name he kept secret from Miladi. The acquaintance accompanied him to England, and there became his valet de chambre. And this valet's name was Jean Baptiste Constant, Swiss by birth. After her abandonment by her legitimate pro- tector, the career of Madame Valerie Blunt was Ends an Idyll. 191 rather more varied than reputable. She did not bewail the loss of her infant much. She was more in a rage with the infant's papa. She went back to Paris, and purged her contempt towards the direction of the Porte St. Martin by payment of a round sum of money which somebody paid for her. Somebody had become necessary now; and when she grew tired of somebody, she changed somebody. But, although her beauty was now in its zenith, her prestige as an actress was gone. Some other " illus- tration dramatique," who showed more of her legs, wore a grass-green tunic, and had more diamonds than she, was convulsing Paris with admiration. "I will never sink to the second-rate," said Valerie. "I am tired of men and women. Let us see what can be made out of horses." Madame Hummel]] ausen and her husband, going, one summer night, in 1834, to Franconi's Circus. saw Valerie, in a riding-habit and a man's hat, ca- racoling on a beautiful brown marc in the midst of the tan-carpeted ring. Stout Monsieur Adolphe Franconi followed her obsequiously not so much as venturing to crack his whip. Monsieur Auriol, the clown, suspended his jokes during her per- formance. She was doing the haute 6cole. V - 192 Quite Alone. lerie of the Circus, had become a greater celebrity than Valerie of the Porte St. Martin. She was the rage. When she came to England in the summer of '35, and to Astley's Theatre, Mr. Ducrow gladly paid her thirty guineas a week salary. She came again in '37 at higher terms ; but she always wanted money, and more money. This was the lady who was good enough to patronise the Hotel Rataplan. Constant had found her there, and walking straight up to her room, had looked at her. She would have struck him, but there was something in his look that cowed her. He was no longer humble ; no longer her slave. She held out her hand. " Let us sign a treaty. Allons ! Let us be friends ! " So, without pens or paper, and on the basis of this protocol, the treaty was signed, and they were friends, after a fashion. And now that I have kept Monsieur J. B. Constant so long with his hand on the handle of the She- Wolf s door, he may surely turn it, and go in. The Wild Animal 193 CHAPTER XII. THE WILD ANIMAL. Monsieur Constant, giving one low but au- thoritative tap at the door of the front drawing- room, turned the handle, and found himself in a moment in the presence of the " wild animal." She was not lying on straw. There were no bars before her. She was not grovelling a quatre pattes. The wild animal was merely a very beauti- ful young woman in a black satin dress and with a great diamond necklace round her neck, and great diamond bracelets on her arms. Neck and arms were bare. "I put on these for him, I dressed for supper," she cried, in a fury, so soon as she saw the valet, VOL. I. O 194 Quite Akne. " and the traitor sends me word that he cannot come ! Sends me word by a vile little jockey — a lacquey. He has the soul of one," she continued, paraphrasing, perhaps unconsciously, Euy Bias. " I will poison him. I will trample upon him. My next guest shall be that brute of a German ambas- sador, who eats onions and drinks stout." The Countess was a Frenchwoman, pur sang. " Tut, tut, tut," quoth Monsieur Constant, in French. " What a disturbance you raise, to be sure. You should have devoted yourself to melo- drama, Madame, and not to the manege. What a pity that you should now have nothing better to say in public than c Haoup ! hup la ! ' and that to a horse too ! " " Coquin ! " screamed the lady. " Are you come to insult me?" " Do you want to wake Mademoiselle Rataplan, who sleeps the sleep of the just % She does not ask milords to sup with her. Nor would you — -were you wise — the wife of an English gentleman, un fashionable, un lion, quoi ! " A deep crimson veil — a blush, not of shame, but of rage — fell, like a gauze in a scene in a spectacle, over the woman's white neck and arms. She set The Wild Animal. 195 her teeth for a moment and ground them, and then, starting up, began with the passionate volu- bility of her nation : " The wife of an English gentleman ! The wife of a swindler, un escroc ! a gambler, a rascal ! He was to have millions, forsooth. I was to have a carriage. I was to have horses, parks, chateaux." u Well ; you have four horses as it is." " Yes. My beautiful husband allows me to be- come a horse-rider in a circus. I am the Honour- able Lady Blunt." " Xot a bit of it. Your husband is not in the least a titled personage. He is an English gentle- man, nothing more." " lie is a swindler, a gambler, a rascal!" the lady repeated, with concentrated bitterness. " Enfin, I am the wedded wife of Monsieur Francois Blunt. Monsieur je suis votre tres devouee ! Oh ! he is an angel, my husband ! " "Mon pore m'a donne pour man, Mon dieu, quel homme, quel homme petit.'' Thus softly whistled between his teeth Monsieur ( lonstant. k - Say, rather, un homme l&che — a prodigy of o2 196 Quite Alone. baseness. He married me by subterfuge and fraud." "He did," Constant echoed, agreeing with the wild animal for once ; " subterfuge and fraud are the words. Apres." " His millions turned out to be all in protested bills, long overdue, and for which he was respon- sible. He was crible de dettes. He made me dance and sing at his infamous supper-parties for the amusement of his vagabond aristocrat friends. It was I who paid the champagne a ces beaux f estins. Monsieur was not too proud to draw my salary month after month. Monsieur was unfaithful to me." " Vous lui avez donne la replique, ma belle." " He insulted me, neglected me," the lady went on, seeming not to have heard the valet's scornful remark. " He beat me. Beat me, on whom no parent or governess ever dared to lay a finger." "Don't you remember the Beugleuse. You tried to strangle Blunt twice, to stab him once. You would have put something in his coffee had you dared." " Only when the marks of his hands were on my face. There are women who like to be beaten. The Wild Animal. 197 He should have married one of them. I tell you he is un lache." "I know it was not a happy menage. Love flew out of the window soon after the honeymoon, and the furniture flew after it. You used to smash a great deal of crockery-ware between you. Well ; you would have your own way. It has brought you to the Hotel Rataplan." " He deprived me of my child — of my little Lile," the lady went on, after a few moments' silence, during which her bosom heaved, and she panted : as though want of breath, and not want of grievances, compelled her to a temporary sur- cease in invective. " No," cried Constant, quietly. " You have no- thing to accuse him of, with respect to the child. lie didn't deprive you of it. i" did." " Monster ! " cried the lady. Her looks, how- ever, did not bear out the acerbity of her speech. "Benefactor rather. I did not choose to have the little one continue in the inferno its papa and mamma were making round it. If Blunt had been left alone with it, he is so lazy, insouciant — thoroughly and incurably heartless, if you will — that he would have left it in the street, or sent it to 198 Quite Alone. the workhouse. Had it been confided to you, it would have had its brains dashed out in one of your mad rages ; or else it would have been edu- cated for the pad-saddle and the circus. One Amazon in a family is quite enough, Countess." He gave her the name bestowed upon her, half in envy, half in mockery, by her comrades of the theatre: whom she offended by her haughtiness, and terrified by her temper. " Bon ; and the child, where is it % " " Safe and sound, at school. When she is old enough, she shall be a nun, and pray for her wicked papa and mamma." "It is the child of Francis Blunt, and that is enough to make me hate it," said the woman. " A pretty speech for a mother. Nature, you are a potent influence ! To be sure, you have scarcely ever seen the poor little thing. It was ample time, however, to deprive you of it. Since the morrow of her christening you have never set eyes upon her. I will take care you never do again, if I can help it. Your tenderness is of a dangerous nature. When Heaven gave you that beautiful form, and that brilliant intellect, how was it that so trifling a matter, such a mere bagatelle, as a heart, was left out, Madame ? " The Wild Animal 199 As lie spoke, he raised his flaccid lids and gazed upon her with gloomy intensity. She tossed her head scornfully, and adjusted the glittering trinkets on her arms. "Do you wish to revive the old story ? " she asked. a I thought that in our treaty of amity and alliance, offensive and defensive, there was a secret article to the effect that nothing ever was to be said about the days when we were young and foolish." " When I was young, and a fool, a madman," the valet retorted. " I am growing old, now. You are still young, but foolish no more. You never were. Oh no ! You were always wonderfully wise ! " "As you please," the wild animal, who had be- come strangely tranquil, perchance through sheer lassitude, uttered. " I must beg you, however, not to bore me with these old histories of Colin and Jacqueline. They are all very well in pastel, or in porcelaine de Saxe, but they bore me in prose. What do you want here, so late at night?" "We are both night-birds. My visit in the end will be a welcome one. I have brought you I hundred pounds from your husband." 200 Quite Alone. " Donnez ! " said the lady, coolly, and held out her hand. "Not so fast. I know your capacity for ab- sorbing money. Certain conditions, and not very hard ones, are attached to this advance. We, that is Monsieur," he was respectful to the dandy even in his absence, " must not be annoyed for six months." "And you offer a miserable hundred pounds? C'est peu." " It is all we can give. Business has not been prosperous. Times are very hard with us ; and even this hundred pounds can be ill spared." " I dare say. Times also are very hard with me. But tell me, Monsieur rAmbassadeur, has my precious husband any funds of his own ? " " Not a sou. He ate up his patrimony years ago." "Have you?" Constant shrugged his shoulders. " What can a poor domestique at wages be worth ? " he re- plied. "Then it is stolen money. You have stolen this hundred pounds. Keep it. I will not have it." " Hypocrite ! Your mouth is watering for it, The Wild Animal. 201 and you only wish that it were ten times as much. No, Madame, it is not money stolen ; it is money won." "By cheating !" "As you please. I have it here, in five-pound notes." " Give it me, then. I don't think my husband has yet devoted himself to forgery. He has not application enough. You may tell him from me that I shall not trouble him again for six months." u What are you going to do with your milord ? " the valet asked, with a darkling look. "C'est mon affaire. But if you must know what I mean to do with milord, then by Debon- nair it is to bleed him for the good of his constitu- tion. II a trop de sang, ce moutard-la." " lie is not of age." " The usurers are kind to him." " You do not love him ? " " Did I ever love anybody, Jean Baptiste Con- stant? It is growing very late. I think you had better give me the money and let me go to bed." lie ] landed her a packet of notes. " Thank you. It is not much, though." " Good night, Valerie." 202 Quite Alone. u Hun ? " quoth the wild animal, with a look of simulated surprise, but profound disdain. " Since when, Monsieur who brushes my hus- band's clothes?" " Good night, Mrs, Blunt, then." " The Honourable Lady Blunt, you mean ! " but this last she said in mockery. " Be sure you give my love to my husband." " I will give him as much love as you send liim ; and shall not waste much breath. Again good night." " Good night, my bear." He had never taken a seat during the interview, but had half stood, half lounged, against the con- sole on which he had placed his hat. Without directing another glance towards her, he left the room. His face had turned white, and he was trembling all over. But he had great command over his emotions, and by the time he reached the salle a manger his countenance was as un- ruffled as ever. Rataplan had gone to bed. Constant, however, was an old habitue of the house, and made himself comfortable with the female night-porter, La Mere Thomas. He was no smoker : but she brewed him The Wild Animal. 203 some mulled claret, of which he partook in modera- tion. And so remained, after a game or two at dominoes with the mahogany -coloured sentinel, until past four in the morning. His conversation was mainly about the " Countess " and her temper. 204 Quite Alone. CHAPTER XIII. TO GAMRIDGE'S. Gamridge's Hotel was in Pump-street, Regent- street. Gamridge's was much frequented by the junior members of the aristocracy, and by officers bearing his Majesty's commission. Gamridge's was the legitimate and lineal successor of the old Slaughter's Coffee-house in St. Martin' s-lane, of whose ancient waiter and young military frequenters Thackeray's Vanity Fair discourses delightfully. Gamridge's, in 1836, was at the apogee of its popularity and renown; but, a few years after- wards — such is the mutability of human affairs — Gamridge's was destined to be eclipsed by the Rag and Famish. 'To Gamridges. 205 Why "Rag" and why "Famish" ? I, as a poor slouching civilian, am not, I hope, bound to know. The Rag and Famish seems to me a most palatial edifice, superb in all its exterior appointments. I have heard that its inner chambers are decorated in the most lavish style of Oriental splendour; that its smoking-room vies in gorgeousness with the Court of the Lions at the Alhambra ; that, in its drawing-rooms, the genius of the most eminent upholsterers in London has run riot. Nobody can be in rags, nobody can possibly be famished at the R. and F. The cuisine, I have heard, is exquisite, the wines and liquors are beyond compare. The lightest-vested and brightest-buttoned foot-pages in the parish of St. James's gambol and grin behind the plate-glass doors. The most majestic and the longest-moustached military bricks puff their cigars on the steps. There are always half a dozen Han- soms in waiting before the portal. On the Derby Day, drags by the score start from the Rag. The prizes in the race sweeps at the Rag are said to be enormous. Let me see, what is the pay of a subaltern in the Line? Some seventy or eighty pounds a year, I believe. What is the half-pay of a genera] officer I 206 Quite Alone. Not many hundreds per annum, I am afraid. It strikes me that the establishment, not only of the Rag, but of the Senior and Junior United Service Clubs, must have been an inestimable boon to the young warriors who are ready to fight their country's battles, and to the old braves who have fought them, and retired to grass, and whose helmets are now hives for bees. To live like a fighting-cock, and to be housed like a prince ; to have all the newspapers and periodicals, and a first-rate library; billiard and smoking-rooms, baths and lavatories, lounging and elbow-resting room ; a numerous staff of silent, civil, and deferential servants in imposing liveries, and as much stationery as ever you want; these are joys familiar to the members of the Rag, and of other cognate mansions. The young fellow on active service can run up from Chatham or Alder- shot, and have the free range of a Venetian palace till his leave is out. The battered half-pay has but to provide himself with a bedroom at half a guinea a week in Jermyn-street, or St. AlbanVplace, and, from nine of the clock on one morning till two or three of the clock on the next, he may live as luxuriously as a Sultan of Cathay. The annual subscription is moderate. The table-money is in- To Gamridges. 20" considerable. Beer, bread, and pickles, are dis- pensed gratuitously. The cigars are foreign. The provisions and wines are supplied at rates very little exceeding cost price. Whereas, I can't see what a civilian wants with a club at all. He has a home, which the soldier and sailor, as a rule, have not. He has a cook at home. He may refect himself in a decorous dining- room at home. If he wants books, let him subscribe to the London Library, or ask Mr. Panizzi for a ticket for the Museum Reading-room. He needs no smoking-room. Civilians have no right to smoke. He needs no billiard -room. Civilians should be men of business, and men of business have no right to play billiards. "Clubs," says Solomon Buck, in one of his wisest apophthegms, "are weapons of offence, wielded by savages for the purpose of keeping off the white women.'' S. B. is right. Clubs, for your dashing, rollicking, harum- scarum soldiers and sailors, are all very well. The gallant fellows need a little relaxation after the irksome restraints of barracks or ship-board : but clubs, to the unworthy civilian class, are merely the meanest pretexts for selfishness and self-indulgence. Having, 1 flatter myself, in the preceding para- 208 Quite Alone. graph, set myself right with the ladies (whom I am always trying to conciliate, and always unsuccess- fully), I will proceed to the consideration of Gam- ridge's. Social clubs of the palatial order were rare in 1836. St. James's had its exclusive poli- tical reunions — White's, Brooks's, Boodle's, and the like; but none save the elect of the elect could obtain admission to them. Crockford's was very fashionable, but it was a gaming-house. The Carlton wasn't built. The Athenaeum and the Reform were arrogant with the flush of the March of Intellect, and looked down upon the men of the sword. The members of the now defunct Alfred were quarrelling among themselves. The United Service only admitted officers of high grade. What remained, then, for the young or middle-aged war- riors but Gamridge's ? Gamridge's was not a club ; its coffee-room was open to all comers; yet the character of its fre- quenters was so strongly marked, that an outsider rarely, if ever, ventured to set foot within the mysterious precincts. A bagman who presumed to enter Gamridge's would have had a bad time of it. There would have been wailing in Lancashire? if a Manchester man had so far forgotten himself To Gamridge's. 209 as to intrude, uninvited, on the Gamridgean ex- clusiveness. In its distinctive typification, and its invisible but impassable barriers, Gamridge's re- sembled one of the old coffee-houses of the pre- ceding century. They, too, were open to all ; yet you seldom found any but merchants at Garraway's or Jonathan's, soldiers at the Crown in Whitehall, gamesters at Sam's in St. James' s-street, country squires at the Star and Garter in Pali-Mall, Jaco- bites at the Harp at Cornhill, booksellers' hacks at the Devil in Fleet-street, lawyers at the Cock, and publishers at the Ball in Long-acre. There had never, in the memory of the oldest inhabitant of the parish, been a Gamridge. Who he was, if ever he were at all, there is no knowing. In '36 the landlord — landlady, rather — was Mrs. Vash : a handsome portly widow, who wore bishop's sleeves, and a multitude of ribbons in her cap. She had many daughters, whom she kept scrupulously at boarding-school to preserve them from the perils of Gamridge's; for, if the "wild prince" was dead, " Poins" was about, wilder than ever. Mrs. Vast was a woman of the world. A few, a very few, <>t" her oldesl customers — old gentlemen who had been so long and so consistently raking about town that VOL. I. P 210 Quite Alone. they seemed, on the principle of extremes meeting, almost steady — were sometimes admitted to the luxurious privacy of Mrs. Vash's bar-parlour. She was an excellent judge of port wine, and, being a generous hostess, would occasionally treat some of her prime favourites to a bottle with a peculiar tawny seal. In the coffee-room Mrs. Vash tolerated cigars, and carefully charged ninepence apiece for them. She was equally careful to charge exor- bitant prices for every article consumed. You might give a dinner now-a-days at the Bag, for what a breakfast cost at Gamridge's. The politics of Gamridge's were High Tory in tone. The true blue patrician class had lost much power and influence by Catholic Emancipation and the Reform Bill, and threw themselves for a change into dissipation. Liberal Conservatives had not yet perked up into existence. Among the Whigs and Radicals it was held to be the orthodox thing, just then, to be steady and sober, to bring in moral acts of parliament, to attend lectures at the Royal In- stitution. The Tories sneered contemptuously at education and morality. They were staunch church- men, but in the " flying buttress " sense, like Lord Eklon, supporting the sacred edifice from the out- To Gamridges. 211 side. They called the London University " Stink- omalee," or the u Gower-street Pig and Whistle." They held schools where the birch was not in daily use, as the vilest hotbeds of sedition, and were careful to send their children to seminaries where they knew they would have plenty of flogging in the good old Tory style. The society at Gam- ridge's was a permanent protest against the Penny Magazine, and the steam-engine, and the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties, and the educa- tional whimsies of your Broughams, Benthains, Faradays, De Morgans, and compeers. Nothing useful, save eating and drinking, was ever at- tempted at Gamridge's ; and even those elementary functions were performed in the manner most cal- culated to confer the least amount of benefit on the human frame. The guests breakfasted at three in the afternoon, and dined at midnight. Gas blazed in the coffee-room at noon, and knocked-up roues went to bed at tea-time. There were many white- faced waiters who never seemed to go to bed at all, and to like this perpetual insomnolence. Pale ale was unknown in England then, but the popping of corks from bottles of mineral waters was audible all day long. Dice, only, Mrs. Vash rigidly refused to p 2 212 Quite Alone. wink at. "If gentlemen, who were gentlemen," she remarked, " wanted to call a main, they must do it in the parish of St. James's, and not in the parish of St. George's." Mrs. Vash was one of the old school, and liked to see things done in their proper places. It was a vicious time, and yet somewhat of the patriarchal element remained. Plebeian dissipa- tion was confined to the youngsters. The old gentlemen went to the Deuce, mounted on steady ambling cobs. A new race of rakes drove them gradually from the coffee-room at Gamridge's, and Mrs. Vash's back parlour, where they piped dis- paragement of the rapscallion age over their port with the tawny seal. Thence by slow degrees they subsided into Pump-street, and to Bath, and Chel- tenham, and Fogey dom, and went home to bed, and fell paralytic, and so died. Mr. Francis Blunt walked into Gamridge's at about a quarter to one in the morning, with a light tight-fitting overcoat buttoned over him, swinging his cane, and looking, on the whole, " as fresh as paint." The coarseness of the simile may find an excuse in its literal fidelity. A fresh pair of lemon- coloured kid gloves decorated his hands, the many To Gamridges. 213 rings bulging from beneath the soft leather. His whiskers had been rearranged — perhaps those orna- ments and his hair were not strangers to a recent touch from the curling-irons, for there were hair- dressers in the Quadrant who kept open till past midnight for the behoof of exquisites such as he — his clothes had been brushed, his whole exterior spruced and polished up. He had passed a hard day, but he was ready to begin a night as hard. There was nothing particular about the exterior of Gamridge's. It was a George-the-Second man- sion of sad-coloured brick with stone dressings, and the lamp before the door was generally in a state of compound fracture from the exuberant playful- ness of late-returning guests. " Lamp-glass broken, one pound five," was a common item in Mrs. Vash's long bills. When the late-returning lodgers didn't smash the lamp, they smashed the fanlight, or the soda-water tumblers, or the coffee-room panels, or the waiters' heads. They were always breaking something, and everything was charged in the bill. You entered Gamridge's by a long, low, oblique passage, Beemingly specially designed for the benefit of gentlemen who came home late, overtaken with liquor, and swerved in their gait. They COuld nol 214 Quite Alone. well tumble down in their progress along that sporting passage. The coffee-room was almost de- void of decoration. Had it been papered, the gentlemen would have torn the paper off; had there been a pier-glass, somebody would have smashed it, but, as pier-glasses then cost twenty pounds, the item might have been subject to in- convenient dispute in the bill. So, to be on the safe side, Mrs. Vash provided her guests with a thick circular mirror in a nubbly frame, which de- fied even a poker. En revanche, the gallant youths who frequented the coffee-room had scratched their names on it, as well as on the window-panes, in a hundred places, with their diamond rings. There was an immense dumb-waiter. The tables were of mahogany, brightly polished ; wax candle- sticks, in silver sconces, were always used, to the disdainful exclusion of gas — and with one of those same candlesticks many a tall fellow had been laid low — but the floor was sanded, and triangular spit- toons were dispersed about. It was the oddest combination of luxury and coarseness, of a club- room and a pot-house. In this room, a dozen of the greatest dandies in England were assembled. Some had fifty thousand To Gamridgis. 215 a year, and some had nothing, and owed thrice fifty thousand pounds ; but, poor or rich, all were fashionable. It was a congregation of prodigal sons and prodigal fathers, but fathers and sons were both accustomed to sit in the high places, and to have room made for them. 216 Quite Alone. CHAPTER XIV. AT GAMRIDGE'S. It was very late, or rather very early, and Gamridge's was in full conclave. There was laughing, and there was swearing; bets were laid, and taken, and booked ; stories were told : and jokes were created ; and scandals were, not covertly buzzed, but openly roared about. There was much sincerity at Gamridge's, towards two in the morning. A few of the dandies were drunk, and their candour was, consequently, comprehen- sible ; but others, older and more seasoned vessels, were quite as sincere, being simply cynical. They did not, perhaps, wear their hearts upon their sleeves, the majority of the possible wearers not At Gamridgis. 217 being troubled with centres of vitality; but they wore, instead, an impudent glorying in unholy lives, an insolent contempt for all that was good or pure — or stupid — which was the Gamridgean synonyme for goodness and purity ; a bold, de- fiant, almost chivalrous, and completely diabolical pride — pride of birth, pride of rank, pride of person, pride of dress, pride of intellect (there were some fools there, certainly, and they were proud of their folly, and plumed themselves upon their drawl or their lisp), pride, in fine, of the power of doing evil, and of impunity in wrong- doing. When a very vicious man has very good health, he becomes, indeed, the roaring lion, raging up and down, and seeking whom he may devour. It is only when his constitution is impaired, and his limbs grow shaky, that lie begins to crawl in the dust, like a serpent, and wind his body round trees, and whisper counsels full of perdition to the silly. So, most present spoke their minds at Gram- ridge's. There was no concealment. Everybody was as bad as his neighbour. At two o'clock in the morning there was no need for concealment In the daytime, at the clubs, at Chiswick, m the 218 Quite Alone. parks, at the theatres, you saw the beautiful Gobelins tapestry, marvellous in the minute finish of its work, suffused with glowing yet tender tints. But at two o'clock in the morning, at Gamridge's, the tapestry was turned up and pinned against the wall. You saw the reverse of the picture — you saw what was behind the exquisite work and the glowing tints. A lamentable arras, indeed: full of knots, and loops, and cobbles, and darns, and frayed ends of dirty worsted protruding from a coarse canvas ground. A roar of acclaim broke forth as Blunt entered the room. He was a great favourite among the dandies. The famous marquis of those days thrust forward his shoulder-of-mutton palm and squeezed Blunt's delicate hand. Francis Blunt, Esquire, was, perhaps, the only frequenter of Gamridge's who kept his mask on at two o'clock in the morning. The dandies crowded round him, for he had a renown for saying things which, if not brilliantly clever, were at least spiteful, and consequently amusing. But Mr. Blunt was, this morning, in no mood for venting epigrams or retailing scan- dalous anecdotes. He could ill conceal his pre- occupation. At Gamrldges. 219 " Is Debonnair here I " lie asked. " Been here these two hours/' answered the colleague he addressed, Captain Langhorne, of the Guards. " Been drinking oceans of soda- and-B., and getting very spooney. Mounthawk- ington says he's in love. I say it's lush." In the reign of King William the Fourth the aristocracy were not ashamed to use habitually the language of costermongers. In these days, the writer believes, the superior orders never soil their lips with slang terms. " Will he play 1 " Blunt whispered to the Guardsman. " Whom d'ye mean % Mounthawkington ! " e t He play ? A hurdy-gurdy, perhaps. I don't mean him. He's not worth playing beggar-my- neighbour with ; for my neighbour, Mounthawk- ington, is beggared already. I mean Debonnair." " I tell you he's spooney. He'd do anything you told him to do. He is the soft and verdant spinach, and sighs for the due accompaniment of gammon. If you stretched a tight n>pc across the room he'd dance upon it like Madame Saqui — till he tumbled off tipsy. Be's game to play anything, from blind hookey up to chicken hazard. BEec very spooney, and decidedly sprung." 220 Quite Alone. " Will you see that he doesn't drink too much I Keep him off champagne. It'll drive him mad. Keep him on his soda-and-B. That won't do him any harm." "Do you want him, then, that you're so very anxious about his precious health ? " " My dear fellow, I want him between this and five in the morning, for as much as ready money and I.O.U.s payable within four-and-twenty hours, will give me." The Guardsman whistled. "You've been hit rather hard, Blunt, lately," he remarked, "and you want your innings, I suppose ? Well, Debon- nair is as good as another, I suppose. Only don't knock him down as though you were pitching at the pins in a skittle alley. Let him down softly, poor lad. Let him fall on a feather-bed." " Have you so much sympathy for him ? " " Well, he's only a boy, you know. It's a pity to knock him down all at once, because — because, you know, he's young, and there's a good deal more plucking about him — and if you skin him alive all at once, he might get sick of the thing, and turn steady." " I see. Well, you shall have him when I've At Gamridges. 221 clone with him. There'll be plenty of pickings left, I'll promise you." " Deuce doubt you. Do you want any fellow to-night in with you ? " " Thanks, not one. Lord Henry Debonnair and self ; that's all." " And old Nick as double dummy. Well, I've no wish to spoil sport. Good digestion wait on ap- petite, and luck on both, and a pot full of ready on all three. What do you go in for % The bones ? " " No ; not for serious business. We must, for form's sake, have an hour at Crockey's, but the real affair must come off at the count's. I want him at King John, in a side-room, while the rest of you fellows are deep at hazard. Debonnair, how are you, old fellow?" All this, save the concluding salutation, had been uttered in the discreetest whisper ; but, "Debonnair, how are you, old fellow?" was voiced in the bland and cheery tone of which Francis Blunt, Esquire, was an admirable master. "The Griffin means mischief to-night," Mi-. Langhorne, <>f the Guards, cursorily remarked :i few momenta afterwards to Lord Claude Monnt- hawkington. 222 Quite Alone. " Oh ! confound him," replied the dandy ad- dressed, who was a younger son of a poor noble- man, and had been ruined too early : " he always does mean mischief after midnight. He has had me many a time, and for many a thousand. How in the world does he manage it? He plays on the square, I s'pose ? " " On the squarest of squares. A perfect cube. He's the soul of honour, my dear fellow. I'm peckish, and want some oysters and stout." And Mr. Langhorne, of the Guards, passed on. " Debonnair, old fellow, how are you ? " Lord Henry Debonnair liked to be called " old fellow." He was very young. He was a boy. He had a fair round smooth face, quite innocent and blooming. His russet hah* curled about an un- furrowed brow. His blue eyes were cloudless. His pretty lips seemed quite untainted by contact with pollution. How should they be ? If the in- clinations of his secret soul had been laid bare, the discovery that he was still fond of lollipops, and never passed an apple-stall without longing to pilfer a couple of the rosy-cheeked fruit of the dozing Irishwoman to whom they belonged, might have been made. He smoked, and the act of At Gamridges. 223 fumigation made him very sick ; but he continued to smoke, almost without intermission, because the other fellows did it, and it was the thing. It was likewise the thing, in those days, to drink ; so Lord Henry Debonnair drank — cham- pagne, Moselle, Tokay, soda-and-B., and not un- frequently the fortifying but stupifying dog's-nose with the friendly cabman, or the enlivening but poisonous Geneva with the convivial gladiator, or affable hanger-on of the prize-ring. It was the thing in the reign of King William the Fourth, to associate with cabmen and pugilists. As Lord Henry's little head was very weak, intoxication, in its most demonstrative form, was of by no means rare occurrence with him ; and he had been at least half a dozen times locked up in various metropolitan station-houses, and the next morning fined five shillings. It was the thing to be locked up at night, and banter the police magistrate in the morning. He had always — from reason's first dawn at Leaai — experienced considerable difficulty in settling, to his own satisfaction, that two and two made four. But he kept a voluminous betting-book, and backed the favourite, or laid against the field, for all sorts 224 Quite Alone. of events, double and single, to the extent of some thousands of pounds yearly. He betted, as he gambled, as he drank, as he did worse, as he went to prize-fights and cock-fights and ratting matches, as he drove a four-in-hand (he who was hardly out of a go-cart), as he kept race-horses and bulldogs : not because he cared much about those amuse- ments, or those luxuries — for next to lollipops his most pronounced taste was for boiled mutton and turnips, suet-pudding, and ginger-beer — but be- cause it was the " thing" among the " set" to which he belonged. He was very lazy, very thoughtless, and very profligate, because it was the thing to be so, and he had never done, and never intended, any harm to any living crea- ture. Lord Henry Debonnair belonged to a class common enough in the reign of William the Fourth, but whose type in the reign of Queen Victoria is extinct. Francis Blunt, Esquire, had twisted this young nobleman round his finger. He had passed a silken string through his nose, and led him by it, with perfect ease and comfort to both parties. He was far too clever to toady the young lord. Pie patronised him. Lord Henry looked up to At Gamrldges. 22 i him, with implicit trust and confidence, as guide, philosopher, and friend. He recognised all the attraction of Griffin Blunt's brilliant depravity. He felt, in his boyish mind, proud to know so ex- perienced a profligate, so cultivated a master of nefarious arts. It was the respect a youngster at school pays to an oldster. Blunt was too wary to borrow ready money of his protege. It was not the thing to be in need of a five-pound note. But Blunt obtained the noble name of Debonnair as acceptor, as endorser, or as drawer, to innumerable bills of exchange at all kinds of dates. His lord- ship was never troubled to part with ready cash when the bills came due. He had only to sign his noble name once more, and so, the interest was paid, the bills were renewed, and Francis Blunt, Esquire, was flush of cash, and would be able even to give Jean Baptiste Constant a trifle on account of his w r ages. Oh, the wonderful power of paper- money, and how wide-spreading are the wings of barns until the wax melts off. Then lie comes down plump; as Law did; as Turgot did; as the Latest edition of Chevy Chase will do. Frank Blunt drew his arm through thai of Lord Henry, and soothed, and flattered, and told gay VOL. I. Q 226 Quite Alone. stories to the noble boy he meant to cheat before sunrise, and whose brains he would have been, under any circumstances, glad enough to blow out : believing, as he did, that Debonnair admired his wife too much. Poor boy! Has there not been seen, ere now, a little spaniel puppy dog frisking about in the den of a Bengal tigress? Blunt allowed no trace either of his design or of his resentment to show itself. He was a diplomatic villain, not a melodramatic one. Plunder your enemy first, and murder him afterwards, if there be occasion for it : so ran the cautious current of Francis Blunt, Esquire's, reasoning. As fate would have it, he was destined, that night or morning, neither to rob nor to kill Lord Henry Debonnair. For, just as the boy and he had quitted Gamridge's hospitable roof, and were mounting the former's cabriolet, en route for Crockey's, two men of mildewed, slightly greasy, decidedly shabby, and unmistakably Jewish, mien, made their appearance in the lamplight, one on either side of the aforesaid cabriolet. A third man, who was older, and shabbier, and greasier. and more mildewed, but not Jewish, appeared, with pantomimic suddenness, at the horse's head. At Gamridges. 227 " Good Heavens, Blunt, what is the meaning of this ? " cried Lord Henry. "It only means," replied the dandy, with well- assumed coolness, but with a very pale face, " that I am taken in execution — arrested, as it is called — for three thousand five hundred pounds, and that, instead of going in your cab to Crockford's, I must take a hackney-coach, with these respected gentlemen, to Chancery-lane." Q2 228 Quite Alone. CHAPTER XV. GETTING UP. The morning broke very sadly and drearily to the little child, left, quite alone, at Rhododendron House. The servant-maid, with whom she had been put to sleep, had risen at six o'clock, for her work was of the hardest, and her pabulum of rest infinitesimal. So, when, about half an hour after- wards, the bold sun came hammering through Lily's eyelids, preaching, to old and young alike, that eternal sermon against Sloth, the girl's place beside her being yet warm, but deserted, it is not, I hope, to be taken as a very wonderful event, if Lily began immediately to cry. It does not take much to bring tears from the eyes of a little child. Getting Up. 229 The infant weeps instead of cogitating; and the result arrived at is about as logical in the one case as in the other. Lily's dolour was as yet of no very outrageous kind. It was less a fractious roar than a meek wail of expostulation. Her sorrows dawned with the day : the noontide of misery was to come. She had but a very faint idea of where she was, and a fainter still of how she had come there. Everything was strange to her. Her memory was naturally short. The events of the previous day had been rapid, crowded, and un- usual. The upshot was hopeless confusion. So she betook herself to tears. The sun, however, after vindicating his dignity and potency before stirring her up so rudely, seemed to relent. He condescended to console her. He was a generous giant after all, and acknowledged that so tiny a lie- a-bed might urge some plea in abatement of his wrath. There was time — hard and cruel time enough — for Lily to acquire habits of early rising. So, murmuring (if the Sun indeed can sing) thai beautiful burden to the old nurses ballad, Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee, When thou art old there's quite enough for thee, lie, too, began to smile on Lily, and to show her 230 Quite Alone. wonderful things. He had a plenteous store, and a rich, and a brave ; and the child smiled in his company. The sun's beams dried her eyes. She looked, and saw the motes dancing in the golden rays; the strip of drugget tesselated in a bright pattern, the knobs on the chest of drawers gleam- ing in the shine. Then, outside, some creeping green plants, stirred by the morning breeze, chose, with a merry furtiveness, to peep in upon her through the panes ; and the sun tinned them to all kinds of colours. Her mind was yet as light as a leaf; volatile, and earned hither and thither as the wind listed. She laughed, and forgot her little woe, and found herself playing with the pillow, which, to her, speedily became animate, and a thing to be fondled, dandled, chidden, and apos- trophised. It is the privilege of very little girls to be able to turn anything into a puppet ; as it is of very little boys to make anything into soldiers. I once knew the small daughter, aged three, of a tinker, who nursed, for a whole hour, a dead rat for a doll. As nobody came, however, and the painful fact of the pillow having no legs, became apparent, and the sun went in (to cast up his yesterday's Getting Up. 231 accounts, may be), after showing, for a moment, his jolly red face at the door of his dwelling, gloom came again to overshadow Lily's soul. The petty horizon was very soon darkened, and the rain-drops began once more to patter. She felt very lonely, very friendless, very hungry ; and though the sun, in his back parlour, hearing her sobbing, looked up from his ledger, and opening a casement drove a lively beam across her bed, she was inconsolable, now, and wept with unassuageable bitterness. All at once there came a dreadful bell. It must have been made of Chinese gongs, melted down with revolutionary tocsins, fire-alarums, jarring chimes from brick chapels in grim towns of the shoddy country, peals from jails and workhouses, bells from men-o'-war where discipline was rigid, and whose captains were Tartars : the whole hung in the Tower of Babel, furnished with a clapper forged from Xantippe's tongue, and finally cracked and flawed under the especial auspices of Mr. Denison, Q.C. It was a most appalling belL Ir elected, first, to creak and groan, and then to emit a frightful rasping clangour thai sel jour teeth on edge, and made your bosom's lord sit bo uneasily on his throne as to seem in dancer of tumbling off. 232 Quite Alone. You could hear the duller sound of the tugging at the rope, and the thud of the outer rim of the hell against the brick wall by the side of which it was hung, besides the persistent bang, bang, banging of the clapper itself. It was a campanile of evil omen, a sound of doom, a most abominable bell — the school-bell of Rhododendron House. The five-and-thirty boarders in Rhododendron House knew well enough, from long and sad ex- perience, what the bell meant. It signified Get up ! Get up this minute ! Get up this instant ! Get up, you lazy little minxes, under pain of ever so many bad marks, extra lessons, and diminished rations of bread-and-butter! So, sluggishly or speedily, but still inevitably, the pupils proceeded to rise, to dress, and to lave themselves. All of these processes were ill done ; and at prayer-time, few of the five-and-thirty were more than half- dressed, half-washed, or half-awake. But they were all there. To poor little Lily the bell represented only so much deafening noise, mingled with some vague and indefinite menace of she knew not what. It made her cry more than aught else that had pre- viously excited her emotion ; and if, at the end of Getting Up. 233 five minutes, or thereabouts, the horrible instru- ment had not surceased in its uproar, it is not at all out of the range of probability that the terrified child might have screamed herself into a fit. "Hoity-toity!" quoth Miss Barbara Bunny- castle, entering the room at this juncture, " -what's all this noise about ? No crying allowed here, Miss Floris. You should have been up and dressed half an hour ago, little one." She was quite another Miss Barbara Bunny- castle to the young lady -who had received Lily the night before. Her voice was sharper, her gait firmer, her manner more determined. She seemed to forget that there were any such persons as parents, and spoke only to pupils. Cake and wine existed no more in her allure ; she was suggestive only of bread and scrape and sky-blue. The holi- days were a million miles, and ten centuries, away. She was not cruel, only cross; not severe, only strict. She was still the guide, philosopher, and friend of her young charges; but .^Ih 1 was, above all, their governess. Miss Barbara had al first some difficulty in re- conciling herself to the gross infraction of scholastic 234 Quite Alone. discipline committed by a young lady-boarder, who had not only neglected to leave her couch at the first sound of the "getting-up bell," and apparel herself in her every-day garments, but was also so. ignorant of the arts of the toilette as to be behind- hand in reaching the dingy corridor, dignified with the name of a lavatory, where the five-and-thirty matutinally fought for the possession of two jack- towels and three squares of yellow soap. Miss Floris was not even competent to hook-and-eye another young lady's frock, or entreat her, in return, to tie her pinafore. What was to be done with a pupil who could not even part her hair, and knew nothing of the proper maintenance of a comb- bag? But, by degrees, it dawned on Miss Bar- bara that Lily Floris was a very little, little child — a mere baby, in fact — and that there was plenty of time to break her into the manege pursued at the Stockwell academy of female equitation. Even the education of Adelaide and Theodora, those paragons of judicious training, must have had a beginning. Next, it occurred to Miss Barbara that the little one represented so much good money, already paid in her behalf, and that she might be made to represent much more, equally good. Ac- Getting Up. 235 cordingly, bowing to the force of circumstances, she shrugged the shoulders of her mind, and con- cluded that the affair, although dreadfully ir- regular, must be made the best of; and, in pur- suance of this sage resolve, she condescended to order up Miss Floris's trunk, and to array the new inmate in the garments provided for her. Nay, she even went so far as to take soap and towel in hand, and to frictionise and slouch, in alternate douches and dry rubs, the face and hands of her protegee. Lily felt more alone than ever. She missed the warm bath, the soft sponge, the soothing words and merry tales, with which her old nurse used to make the ordeal of the tub tolerable. Now, the tub was replaced by the servant-girl's wash-hand basin, a fictile bowl of many cracks, not much bigger than a pie-dish. She was dreadfully afraid — she knew not why — of her instructress ; but she could not subdue a stifled sobbing. When, added to anguish of mind, you happen to have some soap in your . it is hard to refrain from lamentation. Miss Barbara observed the child's grief, and, as she washed her, chid her. "You mustn't cry," she said, sharply. "It's 236 Quite Alone. wrong, and foolish ; and, besides, it'll prevent your learning your lessons. Do you know what it is to learn lessons ? " u Ess," replied Lily, who had once or twice es- sayed to put a doll through a course of elementary instruction, but, for the rest, had no more idea of lessons than of the Teeloocroo lannmao-e. " That's right," quoth Barbara. " You'll have plenty to learn while you're here, I can tell you. Idleness is the parent of vice; and you'd better be dead than a dunce. Above all, no crying — it's wicked. Do you understand me ? " " Ess," replied Lily again, feeling that she was called upon to say something, but understanding about as much of the drift of the query as of the primordial organisation of matter. "Then, dry your eyes directly. Yon mustn't look as if you were unhappy. Nobody is allowed to be unhappy here. You're to be brought up under the law of kindness. I've washed and dressed you this morning, and, till you're able to do it yourself, the servant will see after you. I'm not a nurserymaid, understand that. Xow, come along." " Ess," replied Lily again, bewildered between Getting Up. 237 the exposition of the law of kindness, and the soap still smarting in the aqueous humours of her eyes. " Then, why don't you do as you are bidden ? " pursued Miss Barbara, giving a very slight stamp with her foot. Somehow, Lily couldn't do as she was bidden. She was not naturally rebellious — only dismayed. But, in her helplessness, and with this terrible personage who spoke so sharply and scrubbed so hard, hovering over her, an indefinable feeling of insubordination took possession of her small frame. She was a very tiny leveret to stand at bay ; but she clenched her fists, and crammed them into her eyes, and, stammering out, "I won't," sat down in the middle of the drugget ; and the rest was in- articulate moaning. Here was a fine piece of work! The logical Miss Barbara felt that it would be a lamentable dereliction of the law of kindness to have recourse to slapping ; on the other hand, the child only responded to commands by more passionate out- cries. So Miss Barbara took a middle course, and, seizing the recalcitrant by one arm, shook her. k - Will you come now, you aggravating little thing V 1 >\ic exclaimed. 238 Quite Alone. The shaking was slight enough; but it was quite sufficient to subdue the aggravating little thing — she, who up to that moment, had never had a finger laid upon her in anger. Miss Barbara had not clutched her with any extraordinary vigour ; but she was muscular, and her fingers had left faint red streaks on Lily's baby-flesh. The child looked at these marks, and acknowledged at once the presence of superior will, of irresistible force. An extinguisher descended quickly, and for good, on the flickering flame of revolt. She gave in — rose — suffered Miss Barbara to rearrange h&r rumpled frock — and very meekly followed her down stairs, clinging to the bombazine skirt of her instructress. Miss Barbara Bunnycastle had, probably, never perused the famous work on Education written by Mr. John Locke, author of an Essay on the Con- duct of the Human Understanding, in which that profound philosopher relates a light-hearted anec- dote of a lady — a most affable maternal person, and an ornament to her sex, I am sure — who whipped her little daughter on her coming home from nurse, eight times in succession, in the course of one morning, before she could subdue her obsti- Getting Up. 239 nacv. " And, had she stopped at the seventh whipping," opines the grave Mr. Locke, " the child would have been ruined." Fortunately, Lily's little outbreak had been got under by the first overt act of coercion. I am not prepared to surmise what the result might have been after eight shakings. So, down they went, passing through the lava- tory before mentioned, when two or three lagging boarders, who had been late in obtaining a hold on the jack-towels and the yellow soap, or were still dallying with the comb-bag, or vainly endeavour- ing to find eyes for their hooks, fled, half unkempt, before Miss Bunnycastle's face, like chaff before the wind. Then they descended half a dozen break-neck stairs, and leaving a lobby, hung with bags, and cloaks, and playground hats and bonnet-, behind them, entered n long low whitewashed room, barely furnished with desks painted 1)1 nek, and wooden forms, and a few maps, and a closed book- case strongly resembling a meat-screen, and at the upper end of which, at a raised rostrum, sat Mrs. I>nnn\ castle, with a pile of open volumes before lie]-. She was supported <>n cither side, like her Majesty in the House of Lords, by Lower chairs of estate, occupied by Miss Celia and ^\li-s Adelaide 240 Quite Alone. Bunnycastle. The English and the French go- vernesses, or " teachers/' as they were less reve- rently called by the pupils, occupied desks at the further end of the schoolroom, and Miss Barbara had a kind of roving commission all over the academic premises, to inspect, to watch, to report, and to reprove. Her eye was everywhere, and her body was in most places. It would seem that, on this particular morning, the whole pomp and state of the establishment of Rhododendron House had been brought out to impress the new pupil — though she was such a little one — with a due sense of awe and reverence. It was rarely, under ordinary circumstances, that Mrs. Bunnycastle made her appearance in the schoolroom until after breakfast ; and as seldom did more than two of the sisters deign to attend the earliest assembly of the pupils. However, on the first appearance of Lily in the schoolroom, she found herself face to face with the whole dread hierarchy of her future home — to say nothing of the five-and-thirty boarders sitting at their desks, whose gaze appeared to be directed towards Miss Floris with the concentrated force of one eye. "Don't stare about you so," whispered Miss Getting Up. 241 Barbara to Lily; she had to stoop a long way down to whisper. " Little girls shouldn't stare. It's an idle wicked habit. Now, kneel down, and be very quiet." Happily, Lily needed but slender instruction in this last particular. She had been taught to pray. She plumped down on her little knees, and, fold- ing her hands with edifying decorum, bent her fair head, and began to murmur God knows what. Emphatically, He knew what. There was a shuffling, rustling noise as the girls, at a signal, rose from their desks to kneel upon the forms. Then Mrs. Bunnycastle read prayers in a mild bleating voice, taking care to pronounce u knowledge" with an omega. After the orthodox orisons, she read a lengthy homily from a thin dog's-eared book, which, according to a tradition among the girls, had been written by a dean, who was Mrs. Bunnycastle's grandpapa. The homily was full of very hard words, ami, consequently, ni<>-t wholesome and improving; but its arguments seemed to have a director reference to some by- gone theological controversies than to the imme- diate spiritual w ants <>t' the five-and-thirty boarders. However, there was a beautiful passage about the VOL. I. R 242 Quite Alone. idolatries of Kome — which Mrs. Bunnycastle, ac- cording to diaconal precedent, scrupulously pro- nounced Eoom — and the homily was accompanied by at least one gratifying circumstance, that every- body seemed very glad when it was over. The girls, who had joined in the responses to the prayers with great zeal and apparent zest, and in divers degrees of shrillness, now rustled and shuffled into their places again, and Mrs. Bunny castle pro- ceeded to promulgate divers bills of pains and penalties, in the shape of lessons and bad marks for offences committed between the setting of the sun on the previous evening, and the rising of the same that morning ; and then, when one young lady had broken into a dismal howl at being con- demned to learn by heart a whole page of Tele- maque, and another had been relegated to the penal study of a cheerful genealogy in Genesis, and a third had seen the prospect of the after- dinner play-hour dashed from her lips by the stern behest to copy out thrice the verb Se Desobeir, and when all the inculpated young ladies had vehe- mently denied the sins of omission and commission imputed to them, and when the governesses ap- pealed to had emitted lava floods of crimination Getting Up. 243 and recrimination, and when Mrs. Bunnycastle had rapped her desk several times in a minatory manner, with the dean's volume of homilies, and somebody's ears had been boxed — for the law of kindness did not exclude some occasional com- mentaries and marginal references of a sterner character — the cook of Rhododendron House who, to all appearance, had been lying in wait below till the climax of shrill outcry and uproar should be reached, suddenly burst upon the assembly, not in person, but vicariously, by ringing the bell for breakfast. A very hot person was the cook. She would bend over her saucepans in the kitchen till she attained, as it seemed, a red heat, and would then rush up stairs into the playground, and tug at the bell till she was cool : thus triumphantly vindicating the principle of counter-irritation. 244 Quite Alone. CHAPTER XVI. LILY BEGINS TO LEARN THINGS. Rhododendron House was to Lily a myste- rious monster, a dragon that devoured children. After the first " getting-up bell," the first prayer- meeting, and the first school-breakfast, he gobbled her up ; and she, a very small Jonah indeed, be- came absorbed in him, and dwelt in his immensity. Of the great boiling, turbid sea of the external world she could know nothing — the dragon's jaws formed the entrance to the school, and were gar- nished with many fangs. So she abode within, and at first trembled, but gradually grew accus- tomed to the arched-inwards, and ribbed sides, and vast viscera of the monster; and, as it was her Lily begins to learn Things. 245 nature to love things when she became accustomed to them, the school dragon lost, at last, all his terrors for the child, and Lily became that ex- ceeding rarity, a little girl who was fond of her school. Quite alone, she had nothing else in the world to be fond of. The people who had brought her to school had forgotten to put any toys among her needments. Her exquisite papa had, probably, never heard of such vulgar frivolities, and Jean Baptiste Constant had, perhaps, matters more im- portant to think of at the moment. Lily had not so much as a doll. The rough old playthings she used to potter about with in the plasterer s house soon faded into the nothingness of oblivion. So, too, did the plasterer himself, and his wife her old nurse, and their little boy her foster-brother. First, she forgot their names, and only bore them in mind as the good people far away, who used to be fond of her, and romp with her, and bear with her little tempers. Then, the plasterers face and form began to 1)*' a matter of doubt, and she could not tell whether he had red hair or black hair — whether lie wore a beard, or whiskers, or both, or neither. Curiously, Bhe remembered latest, his strong ribbed 246 Quite Alone. corduroy trousers — probably because she bad careered on them so many times cockhorse to Coventry, and she connected with these garments the strong acrid fumes of the tobacco he smoked. Blue vapour, hot and pungent, was always curling from that excellent man; without his pipe, Lily would have lost her last definite conception of her foster-father. But the pipe w T ent out at last, and the smoke mingled with the clouds, and drifted away into space. The boy, her playmate, she forgot in one sudden landslip of recollection. He was there, for a moment, with a rough head she used to touzle, a top he used to spin for her amusement, a back that was always at her service. He was her horse, her dog, her coach, her ship, her steam- engine, but all at once his fastenings loosened, and he tumbled down into the gulf for ever. And then, last of all, poor nurse went. Lily clung to her image as long as ever she could, and struggled hard to retain it, but the inevitable law asserted it, and nurse melted away. She came to have two faces, like Janus, and then none at all. Her hands and feet disappeared in a wreath of filmy imaginations. Long after that, her checked apron remained — the apron on which Lily used to Lily begins to learn Ihings. 247 sit before the fire, warm and dry and glowing from her bath, purring like a kitten — the apron which had strings to be pulled, and twisted, and untied by her uncertain little fingers, to the great dis- comfort, but never-failing delight of the good woman — the apron to whose corner Lily used to cling in her first venturesome excursions into the back garden. But the apron was doomed. The records of that court of exchequer crumbled into decay, and away went nurse, apron, and all, not to be remembered again on this side death, when — oh ! joy for some, and woe unutterable for others — we shall remember everything. This last holdfast being taken away, what re- mained ? Rhododendron House, and nothing more. The apparition of the two strange men who had brought her by night to school had scarcely ruffled the surface of the lake, had scarcely breathed upon the mirror. They could scarcely have been for- gotten, for they had never been remembered. When the Miss Bunnycastles spoke to Lily about her papa, and told her that he was a perfect gen- tleman, and brought a man-servant with him who was almost as grand a gentleman as he, she could respond only by a vacant stare. She knew no 248 Quite Alone. papa. Little by little, there came over her a vague consciousness that she ought properly to have one, for most of the young ladies were con- tinually vaunting their possession of such a parent ; and when she was about six, she toddled up one day to Mr. Drax, when he was paying one of his periodical visits, and with a very grave and know- ledge-seeking visage, asked him this alarming cnies- tion : " Missa Drax, are you my pappa ? " The discreet medical practitioner was dreadfully dis- concerted at this crude interrogatory. Old Mrs. Bunnycastle bleated, " Lawk a' mercy, what next ? " Two of the Miss Bunny castles tittered ; but the third, Miss Barbara, told Lily, severely, that she would never be anything better than a little idiot. Meanwhile, she had set herself, first intuitively, next, of her own volition, to learn things. I don't mean lessons. For the first year all the resources of the law of kindness were powerless to teach her, even her lessons ; and although Miss Barbara had a dim impression that she should properly by this time be deep in the mysteries of Mangnall, she forbore, after a while, to set her tasks which she could not by any Ability grasp even the re- Lily begins to learn Things. 249 motest meaning of, and consoled herself with the thought that there was plenty of time to rescue her from the perilous condition of a dunce. So Lily was left to a few books that had pictures in them, and but few attempts were made to drum the sig- nificance of the accompanying letter-press into her head. She was too small to stand up in a class — too small to have copy-books, or good marks, or bad marks — too small for anything, in fact, save to wander or trot about as she listed from house to playground, from playground to school-ground — now talking to the furniture, and now to the teaohers — now listening, with demure astonish- ment, to the eloquence of Mrs. Bunnycastle, which was Greek to her — to the orations of the gover- 3, which were Hebrew to her — and to the monotonous drone of the young ladies, as at appointed times and seasons they repeated their lessons. In fine, she became as much a pet and play tiling in the establishment as any very tiny domestic animal that was neither troublesome nor spiteful, but very playful and very affectionate, mighl have been. Miss Barbara was of opinion ili.it -lie should lie kept u strict ;" but, at Last, even she joined in the genera]