I saw her hold Earl Percy at the point
With lustier maintenance than I did look for
Of such an ungrown warrior.
--King Henry IV
As soon as Violet could leave her little boy without anxiety, the two
sisters deposited Charles Layton at the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, with
hopes that a few years’ training there would enable him to become Miss
Martindale’s little page, the grand object of his desires.
Their next and merriest excursion was to Percy’s lodgings, where he had
various Greek curiosities which he wished to show them; and
Theodora consented to come with her brother and sister in a simple
straightforward way that Violet admired.
His rooms were over a toy-shop in Piccadilly, in such a roar of sounds
that the ladies exclaimed, and Arthur asked him how much he paid for
noise.
‘It is worth having,’ said Percy; ‘it is cheerful.’
‘Do you think so?’ exclaimed Violet. ‘I think carriages, especially late
at night, make a most dismal dreary sound.’
‘They remind me of an essay of Miss Talbot’s where she speaks of
her companions hastening home from the feast of empty shells,’ said
Theodora.
‘Ay! those are your West-end carriages,’ said Percy; ‘I will allow
them a dreary dissatisfied sound. Now mine are honest, business-like
market-waggons, or hearty tradesfolk coming home in cabs from treating
their children to the play. There is sense in those! I go to sleep
thinking what drops of various natures make up the roar of that great
human cataract, and wake up dreaming of the Rhine falls.
“Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide,
And a river flows down the vale of Cheapside.”
Eh, Mrs. Martindale?’
Violet, who always received a quotation of Wordsworth as a compliment to
the north, smiled and answered, ‘I am afraid with me it would end in,
“The stream will not flow, the hill will not rise.”’
‘Pish, Violet,’ said her husband, ‘how can you expect to feel like poets
and lovers? And halloo! he is coming it strong! “Poems by A.”; “The
White Hind and other Poems”; “Gwyneth: a tale in verse”; “Farewell
to Pausilippo”, by the Earl of St. Erme. Well done, Percy! Are you
collecting original serenades for Theodora? I’ll never betray where they
came from.’
‘It is all in the way of trade,’ said Percy.
‘Reviewing?’ said Theodora.
‘Yes; there has been such an absurd amount of flattery bestowed on them
that it must provoke any reasonable being. It really is time to put
forth a little common sense, since the magazines will have it that earls
write better than other people.’
‘Some of the verses in Lord St. Erme’s last volume seem to me very
pretty,’ said Violet.
‘There, she is taking up the cudgels for her countryman,’ said Arthur,
always pleased when she put herself forward.
‘Which do you mean?’ said Percy, turning on her incredulously.
‘I like those about the Bay of Naples,’ she answered.
‘You do not mean these?’ and he read them in so good-humoured a tone
that no one could be vexed, but marking every inconsistent simile and
word tortured out of its meaning, and throwing in notes and comments on
the unfaithfulness of the description.
‘There! it would do as well for the Bay of Naples as for the farm-yard
at Martindale--all water and smoke.’
Arthur and Theodora laughed, but Violet stood her ground, blushingly but
resolutely.
‘Anything so read would sound ill,’ she said. ‘I dare say it is all
right about the faults, but some parts seem to me very pretty. This
stanza, about the fishermen’s boats at night, like sparks upon the
water, is one I like, because it is what John once described to me.’
‘You are right, Mrs. Martindale,’ said Percy, reading a second time the
lines to which she alluded. ‘They do recall the evening scene; Mount
Vesuvius and its brooding cloud, and the trails of phosphoric light upon
the sea. I mark these for approval. But have you anything to say for
this Address to the Mediterranean?’
He did not this time mar the poem in the reading, and it was not needed,
the compound words and twisted epithets were so extravagant that no one
gainsaid Arthur’s sentence, ‘Stilts and bladders!’
‘And all that abuse of the savage north is unpardonable,’ said Theodora.
‘Sluggish torpid minds, indeed, frozen by skies bound in mist belts! If
he would stay at home and mind his own business, he would not have time
to talk such nonsense.’
‘Now,’ said the still undaunted Violet, when the torrent of unsparing
jest had expended itself, ‘now it is my turn. Let me show you one short
piece. This--“To L.”’
It was an address evidently to his orphan sister, very beautiful and
simple; and speaking so touchingly of their loneliness together and
dependence on each other, that Mr. Fotheringham was overcome, and fairly
broke down in the reading--to the dismay of Violet, who had little
thought his feelings so easily excited.
‘Think of the man going and publishing it,’ said Theodora. ‘If I was
Lady Lucy, I should not care a rush for it now.’
‘That is what you get by belonging to a poet,’ said Arthur. ‘He wears
his heart outside.’
‘This came straight from the heart, at least,’ said Percy. ‘It is good,
very good. I am glad you showed it to me. It would never do not to be
candid. I will turn him over again.’
‘Well done, councillor,’ cried Arthur. ‘She has gained a verdict for
him.’
‘Modified the sentence, and given me some re-writing to do,’ said Percy.
‘I cannot let him off; the more good there is in him, the more it
is incumbent on some one to slash him. Authors are like spaniels, et
cetera.’
‘Hear, hear, Theodora!’ cried Arthur. ‘See there, he has the stick
ready, I declare.’
For in truth Arthur would hardly have been so patient of hearing so much
poetry, if it had not been for the delight he always took in seeing
his wife’s opinion sought by a clever man, and he was glad to turn for
amusement to Percy’s curiosities. Over the mantel-piece there was a sort
of trophy in imitation of the title-page to Robinson Crusoe, a thick
hooked stick set up saltire-wise with the green umbrella, and between
them a yataghan, supporting a scarlet blue-tasselled Greek cap. Percy
took down the stick, and gave it into Theodora’s hand, saying, ‘It has
been my companion over half Europe and Asia; I cut it at--’
‘By the well of St. Keyne?’ suggested the malicious brother.
‘No, at the source of the Scamander,’ said Percy. It served us in good
stead when we got into the desert of Engaddi.’
‘Oh! was that when the robbers broke into John’s tent?’ exclaimed
Violet. ‘Surely you had some better weapon?’
‘Not I; the poor rogues were not worth wasting good powder on, and a
good English drubbing was a much newer and more effective experiment.
I was thenceforth known by the name of Grandfather of Clubs, and Brown
always manoeuvred me into sleeping across the entrance of the tent. I do
believe we should have left him entombed in the desert sands, if John’s
dressing-case had been lost!’
‘What a capital likeness of John,’ said Theodora. ‘Mamma would be quite
jealous of it.’
‘It belonged to my sister,’ said Percy. ‘He got it done by an Italian,
who has made him rather theatrically melancholy; but it is a good
picture, and like John when he looked more young-mannish and sentimental
than he does now.’
A hiss and cluck made Violet start. In a dark corner, shrouded by the
curtain, sat Pallas Athene, the owl of the Parthenon, winking at the
light, and testifying great disapproval of Arthur, though when her
master took her on his finger, she drew herself up and elevated her
pretty little feathery horns with satisfaction, and did not even object
to his holding her to a great tabby cat belonging to the landlady, but
which was most at home on the hearth-rug of the good-natured lodger.
‘I always read my compositions to them,’ said Percy. ‘Pallas acts
sapient judge to admiration, and Puss never commits herself, applauding
only her own music--like other critics. We reserve our hisses for
others.’
‘How do you feed the owl, Percy?’
‘A small boy provides her with sparrows and mice for sixpence a dozen.
I doubted whether it was cruelty to animals, but decided that it was
diverting the spirit of the chase to objects more legitimate than
pocket-handkerchiefs.’
‘Ho! so there you seek your proteges!’
‘He sought me. I seized him fishing in my pocket. I found he had no
belongings, and that his most commodious lodging-house was one of the
huge worn-out boilers near Nine-Elms--an illustration for Watts’s Hymns,
Theodora.’
‘Poor little creature!’ said Violet, horrified. ‘What will become of
him?’
‘He is doing justice to the patronage of the goddess of wisdom,’ said
Percy. ‘He is as sharp as a needle, and gets on in the world--has
discarded “conveying,” and promoted himself to selling lucifers.’
‘A happy family theirs will be,’ said Arthur. ‘Cat, owl, and two rival
pages!’
So, having duly admired all, curious books, potteries, red and black,
tiles and lachrymatories, coins, scraps of ancient armour, a stuffed
bee-eater, and the bottled remains of a green lizard that had been a pet
at Constantinople--and having been instructed in the difference between
various Eastern modes of writing--the merry visit closed; and as the two
sisters went home they planned a suit of clothes for the owl’s provider,
Theodora stipulating for all the hard and unusual needlework.