one day making drawings for them, which the good painter never tired to sketch.
Now if those children would but have kept Ridley's sketches, and waited for a
good season at Christy's, I have no doubt they might have got scores of pounds
for the drawings, but then, you see, they chose to improve the drawings with
their own hands. They painted the soldiers yellow, the horses blue, and so
forth. On the horses they put soldiers of their own construction. Ridley's
landscapes were enriched with representations of "Omnibuses," which the children
saw and admired in the neighbouring New Road. I dare say, as the fever left her,
and as she came to see things as they were, Charlotte's eyes dwelt fondly on the
pictures of the omnibuses inserted in Mr. Ridley's sketches, and she put some
aside and showed them to her friends, and said, "Doesn't our darling show
extraordinary talent for drawing? Mr. Ridley says he does. He did a great part
of this etching."
But, beside the drawings, what do you think Master Ridley offered to draw for
his friends? Besides the prescriptions of medicine, what drafts did Dr.
Goodenough prescribe? When nurse Brandon came to Mrs. Philip in her anxious
time, we know what sort of payment she proposed for her services. Who says the
world is all cold? There is the sun and the shadow. And the heaven which ordains
poverty and sickness, sends pity, and love, and succour.
During Charlotte's fever and illness, the Little Sister had left her but for one
day, when her patient was quiet, and pronounced to be mending. It appears that
Mrs. Charlotte was very ill indeed on this occasion; so ill that Dr. Goodenough
thought she might have given us all the slip: so ill that, but for Brandon, she
would, in all probability, have escaped out of this troublous world and left
Philip and her orphaned little ones. Charlotte mended then: could take food and
liked it, and was specially pleased with some chickens which her nurse informed
her were "from the country." "From Sir John Ringwood, no doubt?" said Mrs.
Firmin, remembering the presents sent from Berkeley Square, and the mutton and
the turnips.
"Well, eat and be thankful!" says the Little Sister, who was as gay as a little
sister could be, and who had prepared a beautiful bread sauce for the fowl; and
who had tossed the baby, and who showed it to its admiring brother and sister
ever so many times; and who saw that Mr. Philip had his dinner comfortable; and
who never took so much as a drop of porter??at home a little glass sometimes was
comfortable, but on duty, never, never! No, not if Dr. Goodenough ordered it!
she vowed. And the Doctor wished he could say as much, or believe as much, of
all his nurses.
Milman Street is such a quiet little street that our friends had not carpeted it
in the usual way; and three days after her temporary absence, as nurse Brandon
sits by her patient's bed, powdering the back of a small pink infant that makes
believe to swim upon her apron, a rattle of wheels is heard in the quiet
street??of four wheels, of one horse, of a jingling carriage, which stops before
Philip's door. "It's the trap," says nurse Brandon, delighted. "It must be those
kind Ringwoods," says Mrs. Philip. "But stop, Brandon. Did not they, did not
we???oh, how kind of them!" She was trying to recal the past. Past and present
for days had been strangely mingled in her fevered brain. "Hush, my dear, you
are to be kep' quite still," says the nurse??and then proceeded to finish the
polishing and powdering of the pink frog on her lap.
The bedroom window was open towards the sunny street: but Mrs. Philip did not
hear a female voice say, "'Old the 'orses 'ead, Jim," or she might have been
agitated. The horse's head was held, and a gentleman and a lady with a great
basket containing pease, butter, greens, flowers, and other rural produce,
descended from the vehicle and rang at the bell.
Philip opened it; with his little ones, as usual, trotting at his knees.
"Why, my darlings, how you air grown!" cries the lady.
"Bygones be bygones. Give us your 'and, Firmin: here's mine. My missus has
brought some country butter and things for your dear good lady. And we hope you
liked the chickens. And God bless you, old fellow, how are you?" the tears were
rolling down the good man's cheeks as he spoke. And Mrs. Mugford was likewise
exceedingly hot, and very much affected. And the children said to her, "Mamma is
better now: and we have a little brother, and he is crying now upstairs."
"Bless you, my darlings!" Mrs. Mugford was off by this time. She put down her
peace-offering of carrots, chickens, bacon, butter. She cried plentifully. "It
was Brandon came and told us," she said; "and when she told us how all your
great people had flung you over, and you'd been quarrelling again, you naughty
fellar, I says to Mugford, let's go and see after that dear thing, Mugford, I
says. And here we are. And year's two nice cakes for your children" (after a
forage in the cornucopia), "and, 'lor, how they are grown!"
A little nurse from the upstairs regions here makes her appearance, holding a
bundle of cashmere shawls, part of which is removed, and discloses a being
pronounced to be ravishingly beautiful, and "jest like Mrs. Mugford's Emaly!"
"I say," says Mugford, "the 'old shop's still open to you. T'other chap wouldn't
do at all. He was wild when he got the drink on board. Hirish. Pitched into
Bickerton, and black'd 'is eye. It was Bickerton who told you lies about that
poor lady. Don't see 'em no more now. Borrowed some money of me; haven't seen
him since. We were both wrong, and we must make it up??the missus says we must."
"Amen!" said Philip, with a grasp of the honest fellow's hand. And next Sunday
he and a trim little sister, and two children, went to an old church in Queen
Square, Bloomsbury, which was fashionable in the reign of Queen Anne, when
Richard Steele kept house, and did not pay rent, hard by. And when the clergyman
in the Thanksgiving particularized those who desired now to "offer up their
praises and thanksgiving for late mercies vouchsafed to them," once more Philip
Firmin said "Amen," on his knees, and with all his heart.
CHAPTER XIII. THE REALMS OF BLISS.
You know??all good boys and girls at Christmas know ??that, before the last
scene of the pantomime, when the Good Fairy ascends in a blaze of glory, and
Harlequin and Columbine take hands, having danced through all their tricks and
troubles and tumbles, there is a dark, brief, seemingly meaningless penultimate
scene, in which the performers appear to grope about perplexed, whilst the music
of bassoons and trombones, and the like, groans tragically. As the actors, with
gestures of dismay and outstretched arms, move hither and thither, the wary
frequenter of pantomimes sees the illuminators of the Abode of Bliss and Hall of
Prismatic Splendour nimbly moving behind the canvas, and streaking the darkness
with twinkling fires??fires which shall blaze out presently in a thousand
colours round the Good Fairy in the Revolving Temple of Blinding Bliss. Be
happy, Harlequin! Love and be happy and d
ance, pretty Columbine! Children, mamma
bids you put your shawls on. And Jack and Mary (who are young and love
pantomimes,) look lingeringly still over the ledge of the box, whilst the fairy
temple yet revolves, whilst the fireworks play, and ere the Great Dark Curtain
descends.
My dear young people, who have sate kindly through the scenes during which our
entertainment has lasted, be it known to you that last chapter was the dark
scene. Look to your cloaks, and tie up your little throats, for I tell you the
great baize will soon fall down. Have I had any secrets from you all through the
piece? I tell you the house will be empty and you will be in the cold air. When
the boxes have got their nightgowns on, and you are all gone, and I have turned
off the gas, and am in the empty theatre alone in the darkness, I promise you I
shall not be merry. Never mind! We can make jokes though we are ever so sad. We
can jump over head and heels, though I declare the pit is half emptied already,
and the last orange-woman has slunk away. Encore une pirouette, Colombine!
Saute, Arlequin, mon ami! Though there are but five bars more of the music, my
good people, we must jump over them briskly, and then go home to supper and bed.
Philip Firmin, then, was immensely moved by this magnanimity and kindness on the
part of his old employer, and has always considered Mugford's arrival and
friendliness as a special interposition in his favour. He owes it all to
Brandon, he says. It was she who bethought herself of his condition, represented
it to Mugford, and reconciled him to his enemy. Others were most ready with
their money. It was Brandon who brought him work rather than alms, and enabled
him to face fortune cheerfully. His interval of poverty was so short, that he
actually had not occasion to borrow. A week more, and he could not have held
out, and poor Brandon's little marriage present must have gone to the coenotaph
of sovereigns??the dear Little Sister's gift which Philip's family cherish to
this hour.
So Philip, with a humbled heart and demeanour, clambered up on his sub-editorial
stool once more at the Pall Mall Gazette, and again brandished the paste pot and
the scissors. I forget whether Bickerton still remained in command at the Pall
Mall Gazette, or was more kind to Philip than before, or was afraid of him,
having heard of his exploits as a fire-eater; but certain it is, the two did not
come to a quarrel, giving each other a wide berth, as the saying is, and each
doing his own duty. Good-by, Monsieur Bickerton. Except, mayhap, in the final
group round the Fairy Chariot (when, I promise you, there will be such a blaze
of glory that he will be invisible), we shall never see the little spiteful
envious creature more. Let him pop down his appointed trap-door; and, quick
fiddles! let the brisk music jig on.
Owing to the coolness which had arisen between Philip and his father on account
of their different views regarding the use to be made of Philip's signature, the
old gentleman drew no further bills in his son's name, and our friend was spared
from the unpleasant persecution. Mr. Hunt loved Dr. Firmin so ardently that he
could not bear to be separated from the doctor long. Without the doctor, London
was a dreary wilderness to Hunt. Unfortunate remembrances of past pecuniary
transactions haunted him here. We were all of us glad when he finally retired
from the Covent Garden taverns and betook himself to the Bowery once more.
And now friend Philip was at work again, hardly earning a scanty meal for self,
wife, servant, children. It was indeed a meagre meal, and a small wage.
Charlotte's illness, and other mishaps, had swept away poor Philip's little
savings. It was determined that we would let the elegantly furnished apartments
on the first floor. You might have fancied the proud Mr. Firmin rather repugnant
to such a measure. And so he was on the score of convenience, but of dignity,
not a whit. To this day, if necessity called, Philip would turn a mangle with
perfect gravity. I believe the thought of Mrs. General Baynes's horror at the
idea of her son-in-law letting lodgings greatly soothed and comforted Philip.
The lodgings were absolutely taken by our country acquaintance, Miss Pybus, who
was coming up for the May meetings, and whom we persuaded (heaven be good to us)
that she would find a most desirable quiet residence in the house of a man with
three squalling children. Miss P. came, then, with my wife to look at the
apartments; and we allured her by describing to her the delightful musical
services at the Foundling hard by; and she was very much pleased with Mrs.
Philip, and did not even wince at the elder children, whose pretty faces won the
kind old lady's heart: and I am ashamed to say we were mum about the baby: and
Pybus was going to close for the lodgings, when Philip burst out of his little
room, without his coat, I believe, and objurgated a little printer's boy, who
was sitting in the hall, waiting for some "copy" regarding which he had made a
blunder; and Philip used such violent language towards the little lazy boy, that
Pybus said "she never could think of taking apartments in that house," and
hurried thence in a panic. When Brandon heard of this project of letting
lodgings, she was in a fury. She might let lodgin's, but it wasn't for Philip to
do so. "Let lodgin's, indeed! Buy a broom, and sweep a crossin'!" Brandon always
thought Charlotte a poor-spirited creature, and the way she scolded Mrs. Firmin
about this transaction was not a little amusing. Charlotte was not angry. She
liked the scheme as little as Brandon. No other person ever asked for lodgings
in Charlotte's house. May and its meetings came to an end. The old ladies went
back to their country towns. The missionaries returned to Caffraria. (Ah! where
are the pleasant-looking Quakeresses of our youth, with their comely faces, and
pretty dove-coloured robes? They say the goodly sect is dwindling??dwindling.)
The Quakeresses went out of town: then the fashionable world began to move: the
Parliament went out of town. In a word, everybody who could, made away for a
holiday, whilst poor Philip remained at his work, snipping and pasting his
paragraphs, and doing his humble drudgery.
A sojourn on the sea-shore was prescribed by Dr. Goodenough, as absolutely
necessary for Charlotte and her young ones, and when Philip pleaded certain
cogent reasons why the family could not take the medicine prescribed by the
doctor, that eccentric physician had recourse to the same pocket-book which we
have known him to produce on a former occasion; and took from it, for what I
know, some of the very same notes which he had formerly given to the Little
Sister. "I suppose you may as well have them as that rascal Hunt?" said the
doctor, scowling very fiercely. "Don't tell me. Stuff and nonsense. Pooh! Pay me
when you are a rich man!" And this Samaritan had jumped into his carriage, and
was gone, before Philip or Mrs. Philip could say a word of thanks. Look at him
as he is going off. See the green brougham drive away, and turn westward, and
mark it well. A
shoe go after thee, John Goodenough; we shall see thee no more
in this story. You are not in the secret, good reader: but I, who have been
living with certain people for many months past, and have a hearty liking for
some of them, grow very soft when the hour for shaking hands comes, to think we
are to meet no more. Go to! when this tale began, and for some months after, a
pair of kind old eyes used to read these pages, which are now closed in the
sleep appointed for all of us. And so page is turned after page, and behold
Finis and the volume's end.
So Philip and his young folks came down to Periwinkle Bay, where we were
staying, and the girls in the two families nursed the baby, and the child and
mother got health and comfort from the fresh air, and Mr. Mugford??who believes
himself to be the finest sub-editor in the world??and I can tell you there is a
great art in sub-editing a paper??Mr. Mugford, I say, took Philip's scissors and
paste-pot, whilst the latter enjoyed his holiday. And J. J. Ridley, R.A., came
and joined us presently, and we had many sketching parties, and my drawings of
the various points about the bay, viz., Lobster Head, the Mollusc Rocks, are
considered to be very spirited, though my little boy (who certainly has not his
father's taste for art) mistook for the rock a really capital portrait of
Philip, in a gray hat and paletot, sprawling on the sand.
Some twelve miles inland from the bay is the little town of Whipham Market, and
Whipham skirts the park palings of that castle where Lord Ringwood had lived,
and where Philip's mother was born and bred. There is a statue of the late lord
in Whipham marketplace. Could he have had his will, the borough would have
continued to return two members to Parliament, as in the good old times before
us. In that ancient and grass-grown little place, where your footsteps echo as
you pass through the street, where you hear distinctly the creaking of the sign
of the "Ringwood Arms" hotel and posting-house, and the opposition creaking of
the "Ram Inn" over the way??where the half-pay captain, the curate, and the
medical man stand before the fly-blown window-blind of the "Ringwood Institute"
and survey the strangers??there is still a respect felt for the memory of the
great lord who dwelt behind the oaks in yonder hall. He had his faults. His
lordship's life was not that of an anchorite. The company his lordship kept,
especially in his latter days, was not of that select description which a
nobleman of his lordship's rank might command. But he was a good friend to
Whipham. He was a good landlord to a good tenant. If he had his will, Whipham
would have kept its own. His lordship paid half the expense after the burning of
the town-hall. He was an arbitrary man, certainly, and he flogged Alderman
Duffle before his own shop, but he apologized for it most handsome afterwards.
Would the gentlemen like port or sherry? Claret not called for in Whipham; not
at all: and no fish, because all the fish at Periwinkle Bay is bought up and
goes to London. Such were the remarks made by the landlord of the Ringwood Arms
to three cavaliers who entered that hostelry. And you may be sure he told us
about Lord Ringwood's death in the postchaise as he came from Turreys Regum; and
how his lordship went through them gates (pointing to a pair of gates and lodges
which skirt the town), and was drove up to the castle and laid in state; and his
lordship never would take the railway, never; and he always travelled like a
nobleman, and when he came to a hotel and changed horses, he always called for a
bottle of wine, and only took a glass, and sometimes not even that. And the
present Sir John has kept no company here as yet; and they say he is close of
his money, they say he is. And this is certain, Whipham haven't seen much of it,
Whipham haven't.