bare old poll with the roses of her youth. Complexion? What contrast is sweeter
and more touching than Desdemona's golden ringlets on swart Othello's shoulder.
A past life of selfishness and bad company? Come out from among the swine, my
prodigal, and I will purify thee!
This is what is called cynicism, you know. Then I suppose my wife is a cynic,
who clutches her children to her pure heart, and prays gracious heaven to guard
them from selfishness, from worldliness, from heartlessness, from wicked greed.
CHAPTER IX. CONTAINS ONE RIDDLE WHICH IS SOLVED, AND PERHAPS SOME MORE.
Mine is a modest muse, and as the period of the story arrives when a description
of love-making is justly due, my Mnemosyne turns from the young couple, drops a
little curtain over the embrasure where they are whispering, heaves a sigh from
her elderly bosom, and lays a finger on her lip. Ah, Mnemosyne dear! we will not
be spies on the young people. We will not scold them. We won't talk about their
doings much. When we were young, we too, perhaps, were taken in under Love's
tent; we have eaten of his salt, and partaken of his bitter, his delicious
bread. Now we are padding the hoof lonely in the wilderness, we will not abuse
our host, will we? We will couch under the stars, and think fondly of old times,
and to-morrow resume the staff and the journey.
And yet, if a novelist may chronicle any passion, its flames, its raptures, its
whispers, its assignations, its sonnets, its quarrels, sulks, reconciliations,
and so on, the history of such a love as this first of Phil's may be excusable
in print, because I don't believe it was a real love at all, only a little brief
delusion of the senses, from which I give you warning that our hero will recover
before many chapters are over. What! my brave boy, shall we give your heart away
for good and all, for better or for worse, till death do you part? What! my
Corydon and sighing swain, shall we irrevocably bestow you upon Phyllis, who,
all the time you are piping and paying court to her, has Meliboeus in the
cupboard, and ready to be produced should he prove to be a more eligible
shepherd than t'other? I am not such a savage towards my readers or hero, as to
make them undergo the misery of such a marriage.
Philip was very little of a club or society man. He seldom or ever entered the
Megatherium, or when there stared and scowled round him savagely, and laughed
strangely at the ways of the inhabitants. He made but a clumsy figure in the
world, though, in person, handsome, active, and proper enough; but he would for
ever put his great foot through the World's flounced skirts, and she would
stare, and cry out, and hate him. He was the last man who was aware of the
Woolcomb flirtation, when hundreds of people, I dare say, were simpering over
it.
"Who is that little man who comes to your house, and whom I sometimes see in the
park, aunt??that little man with the very white gloves and the very tawny
complexion?" asks Philip.
"That is Mr. Woolcomb, of the Life Guards Green," aunt remembers.
"An officer, is he?" says Philip, turning round to the girls. "I should have
thought he would have done better for the turban and cymbals." And he laughs,
and thinks he has said a very clever thing. Oh, those good things about people
and against people! Never, my dear young friend, say them to anybody??not to a
stranger, for he will go away and tell; not to the mistress of your affections,
for you may quarrel with her, and then she will tell; not to your son, for the
artless child will return to his schoolfellows and say: "Papa says Mr.
Blenkinsop is a muff." My child, or what not, praise everybody: smile on
everybody: and everybody will smile on you in return, a sham smile, and hold you
out a sham hand; and, in a word, esteem you as you deserve. No. I think you and
I will take the ups and the downs, the roughs and the smooths of this daily
existence and conversation. We will praise those whom we like, though nobody
repeat our kind sayings; and say our say about those whom we dislike, though we
are pretty sure our words will be carried by tale-bearers, and increased, and
multiplied, and remembered long after we have forgotten them. We drop a little
stone??a little stone that is swallowed up, and disappears, but the whole pond
is set in commotion, and ripples in continually-widening circles long after the
original little stone has popped down and is out of sight. Don't your speeches
of ten years ago??maimed, distorted, bloated, it may be out of all
recognition??come strangely back to their author?
Phil, five minutes after he had made the joke, so entirely forgot his saying
about the Black Prince and the cymbals, that, when Captain Woolcomb scowled at
him with his fiercest eyes, young Firmin thought that this was the natural
expression of the captain's swarthy countenance, and gave himself no further
trouble regarding it. "By George! sir," said Phil afterwards, speaking of this
officer, "I remarked that he grinned, and chattered, and showed his teeth; and
remembering it was the nature of such baboons to chatter and grin, had no idea
that this chimpanzee was more angry with me than with any other gentleman. You
see, Pen, I am a white-skinned man, I am pronounced even red-whiskered by the
ill-natured. It is not the prettiest colour. But I had no idea that I was to
have a Mulatto for a rival. I am not so rich, certainly, but I have enough. I
can read and spell correctly, and write with tolerable fluency. I could not, you
know, could I, reasonably suppose that I need fear competition, and that the
black horse would beat the bay one? Shall I tell you what she used to say to me?
There is no kissing and telling, mind you. No, by George. Virtue and prudence
were for ever on her lips! She warbled little sermons to me; hinted gently that
I should see to safe investments of my property, and that no man, not even a
father, should be the sole and uncontrolled guardian of it. She asked me, sir,
scores and scores of little sweet, timid, innocent questions about the doctor's
property, and how much did I think it was, and how had he laid it out? What
virtuous parents that angel had! How they brought her up, and educated her dear
blue eyes to the main chance! She knows the price of housekeeping, and the value
of railway shares; she invests capital for herself in this world and the next.
She mayn't do right always, but wrong? O fie, never! I say, Pen, an undeveloped
angel with wings folded under her dress, not perhaps your mighty, snow-white,
flashing pinions that spread out and soar up to the highest stars, but a pair of
good, serviceable, drab, dove-coloured wings, that will support her gently and
equably just over our heads, and help to drop her softly when she condescends
upon us. When I think, sir, that I might have been married to a genteel angel,
and am single still,??oh! it's despair, it's despair!"
But Philip's little story of disappointed hopes and bootless passion must be
told in terms less acrimonious and unfair than the gentleman would use,
naturally of a sanguine swaggering talk, prone to exaggerate his
own
disappointments, and call out, roar??I daresay swear?? if his own corn was
trodden upon, as loudly as some men who may have a leg taken off.
This I can vouch for Miss Twysden, Mrs. Twysden, and all the rest of the
family:??that if they, what you call, jilted Philip, they did so without the
slightest hesitation or notion that they were doing a dirty action. Their
actions never were dirty or mean: they were necessary, I tell you, and calmly
proper. They ate cheese-parings with graceful silence: they cribbed from
board-wages; they turned hungry servants out of doors; they remitted no chance
in their own favour; they slept gracefully under scanty coverlids; they lighted
niggard fires; they locked the caddy with the closest lock, and served the
teapot with the smallest and least frequent spoon. But you don't suppose they
thought they were mean, or that they did wrong? Ah! it is admirable to think of
many, many, ever so many respectable families of your acquaintance and mine, my
dear friend, and how they meet together and humbug each other! "My dear, I have
cribbed half an inch of plush out of James's small-clothes." "My love, I have
saved a half-penny out of Mary's beer. Isn't it time to dress for the duchess's;
and don't you think John might wear that livery of Thomas's who only had it a
year, and died of the small-pox? It's a little tight for him, to be sure, but,"
What is this? I profess to be an impartial chronicler of poor Phil's fortunes,
misfortunes, friendships, and what-nots, and am getting almost as angry with
these Twysdens as Philip ever was himself.
Well, I am not mortally angry with poor Traviata tramping the pavement, with the
gas-lamp flaring on her poor painted smile, else my indignant virtue and
squeamish modesty would never walk Piccadilly, or get the air. But Lais, quite
moral, and very neatly, primly, and straitly laced;??Phryne, not the least
dishevelled, but with a fixature for her hair, and the best stays, fastened by
mamma;??your High Church or Evangelical Aspasia, the model of all proprieties,
and owner of all virgin purity blooms, ready to sell her cheek to the oldest old
fogey who has money and a title;??these are the Unfortunates, my dear brother
and sister sinners, whom I should like to see repentant and specially trounced
first. Why, some of these are put into reformatories in Grosvenor Square. They
wear a prison dress of diamonds and Chantilly lace. Their parents cry, and thank
heaven as they sell them; and all sorts of revered bishops, clergy, relations,
dowagers, sign the book, and ratify the ceremony. Come! let us call a midnight
meeting of those who have been sold in marriage, I say; and what a respectable,
what a genteel, what a fashionable, what a brilliant, what an imposing, what a
multitudinous assembly we will have; and where's the room in all Babylon big
enough to hold them?
Look into that grave, solemn, dingy, somewhat naked but elegant drawing-room, in
Beaunash Street, and with a little fanciful opera-glass you may see a pretty
little group or two engaged at different periods of the day. It is after lunch,
and before Rotten Row ride time (this story, you know, relates to a period ever
so remote, and long before folks thought of riding in the park in the forenoon).
After lunch, and before Rotten Row time, saunters into the drawing-room a
fair-haired young fellow with large feet and chest, careless of gloves, with
auburn whiskers blowing over a loose collar, and??must I confess it??? a most
undeniable odour of cigars about his person. He breaks out regarding the debate
of the previous night, or the pamphlet of yesterday, or the poem of the day
previous, or the scandal of the week before, or upon the street-sweeper at the
corner, or the Italian and monkey before the door??upon whatever, in a word,
moves his mind for the moment. If Philip has had a bad dinner yesterday (and
happens to remember it), he growls, grumbles, nay, I daresay, uses the most
blasphemous language against the cook, against the waiters, against the steward,
against the committee, against the whole society of the club where he has been
dining. If Philip has met an organ girl with pretty eyes and a monkey in the
street, he has grinned and wondered over the monkey; he has wagged his head, and
sung all the organ's tunes; he has discovered that the little girl is the most
ravishing beauty eyes ever looked on, and that her scoundrelly Savoyard father
is most likely an Alpine miscreant who has bartered away his child to a pedlar
of the beggarly cheesy valleys, who has sold her to a friend qui fait la traite
des hurdigurdies, and has disposed of her in England. If he has to discourse on
the poem, pamphlet, magazine article??it is written by the greatest genius, or
the greatest numskull that the world now exhibits. He write! A man who makes
fire rhyme with Marire! This vale of tears and world which we inhabit does not
contain such an idiot. Or have you seen Dobbins's poem? Agnes, mark my words for
it, there is a genius in Dobbins which some day will show what I have always
surmised, what I have always imagined possible, what I have always felt to be
more than probable, what, by George, I feel to be perfectly certain, and any man
is a humbug who contradicts it, and a malignant miscreant, and the world is full
of fellows who will never give another man credit, and I swear that to recognize
and feel merit in poetry, painting, music, rope-dancing, anything, is the
greatest delight and joy of my existence. I say??what was I saying?
"You were saying, Philip, that you love to recognize the merits of all men whom
you see," says gentle Agnes, "and I believe you do."
"Yes!" cries Phil, tossing about the fair locks. "I think I do. Thank heaven, I
do. I know fellows who can do many things better than I do??everything better
than I do."
"Oh, Philip!" sighs the lady.
"But I don't hate 'em for it."
"You never hated any one, sir. You are too brave! Can you fancy Philip hating
any one, mamma?"
Mamma is writing, "Mr. and Mrs. Talbot Twysden request the honour of Admiral and
Mrs. Davis Locker's company at dinner on Thursday the so-and-so." "Philip what?"
says mamma, looking up from her card. "Philip hating any one! Philip eating any
one! Philip! we have a little dinner on the 24th. We shall ask your father to
dine. We must not have too many of the family. Come in afterwards, please."
"Yes, aunt," says downright Phil, "I'll come, if you and the girls wish. You
know tea is not my line; and I don't care about dinners, except in my own way,
and with??"
"And with your own horrid set, sir!"
"Well," says Sultan Philip, flinging himself out on the sofa, and lording on the
ottoman, "I like mine ease and mine inn."
"Ah, Philip! you grow more selfish every day. I mean men do," sighed Agnes.
You will suppose mamma leaves the room at this juncture. She has that confidence
in dear Philip and the dear girls, that she sometimes does leave the room when
Agnes and Phil are together. She will leave Reuben, the eldest born, with her
daughters: but my poor dear litt
le younger son of a Joseph, if you suppose she
will leave the room and you alone in it??O my dear Joseph, you may just jump
down the well at once! Mamma, I say, has left the room at last, bowing with a
perfect sweetness and calm grace and gravity; and she has slipped down the
stairs, scarce more noisy than the shadow that slants over the faded
carpet??(oh! the faded shadow, the faded sunshine!)??mamma is gone, I say, to
the lower regions, and with perfect good breeding is torturing the butler on his
bottle-rack??is squeezing the housekeeper in her jam-closet??is watching the
three cold cutlets, shuddering in the larder behind the wires??is blandly
glancing at the kitchen-maid until the poor wench fancies the piece of bacon is
discovered which she gave to the crossing-sweeper?? and calmly penetrating John
until he feels sure his inmost heart is revealed to her, as it throbs within his
worsted-laced waistcoat, and she knows about that pawning of master's old boots
(beastly old highlows!), and??and, in fact, all the most intimate circumstances
of his existence. A wretched maid, who has been ironing collars, or what not,
gives her mistress a shuddering curtsey, and slinks away with her laces; and
meanwhile our girl and boy are prattling in the drawing-room.
About what? About everything on which Philip chooses to talk. There is nobody to
contradict him but himself, and then his pretty hearer vows and declares he has
not been so very contradictory. He spouts his favourite poems. "Delightful! Do,
Philip, read us some Walter Scott! He is, as you say, the most fresh, the most
manly, the most kindly of poetic writers??not of the first class, certainly; in
fact, he has written most dreadful bosh, as you call it so drolly; and so has
Wordsworth, though he is one of the greatest of men, and has reached sometimes
to the very greatest height and sublimity of poetry; but now you put it, I must
confess he is often an old bore, and I certainly should have gone to sleep
during the Excursion, only you read it so nicely. You don't think the new
composers as good as the old ones, and love mamma's old-fashioned playing? Well,
Philip, it is delightful, so ladylike, so feminine!" Or, perhaps, Philip has
just come from Hyde Park, and says, "As I passed by Apsley House, I saw the Duke
come out, with his old blue frock and white trousers and clear face. I have seen
a picture of him in an old European Magazine, which I think I like better than
all??gives me the idea of one of the brightest men in the world. The brave eyes
gleam at you out of the picture; and there's a smile on the resolute lips, which
seems to ensure triumph. Agnes, Assaye must have been glorious!"
"Glorious, Philip!" says Agnes, who had never heard of Assaye before in her
life. "Arbela, perhaps; Salamis, Marathon, Agincourt, Blenheim, Busaco?? where
dear grandpapa was killed??Waterloo, Armageddon; but Assaye? What on earth is
Assaye?"
"Think of that ordinarily prudent man, and how greatly he knew how to dare when
occasion came! I should like to have died after winning such a game. He has
never done anything so exciting since."
"A game? I thought it was a battle just now," murmurs Agnes in her mind; but
there may be some misunderstanding. "Ah, Philip," she says, "I fear excitement
is too much the life of all young men now. When will you be quiet and steady,
sir?"
"And go to an office every day, like my uncle and cousin; and read the newspaper
for three hours, and trot back and see you."
"Well, sir! that ought not to be such very bad amusement," says one of the
ladies.
"What a clumsy wretch I am! My foot is always trampling on something or
somebody!" groans Phil.
"You must come to us, and we will teach you to dance, Bruin!" says gentle Agnes,
smiling on him. I think, when very much agitated, her pulse must have gone up to