“Who are we to have, Clare?--let us hear. You don’t suppose that my
mind, weighed down with the responsibilities of law-making, can remember
everything, eh?--even my wife’s guests?” said Derwent, rubbing his
hands, as we sat after dinner near the fire in the warm crimson
dining-room. When we were alone I gave Mr. Crofton’s claret my benign
countenance till he was ready to go with me to the drawing-room. There
were not enough of us to separate at that genial hour, especially as
little Derwent sat between us peeling his orange, and quite ready to
give his opinion on any knotty point that might occur.
“Papa, please give Willie Sedgwick the little grey pony,” said Derwie,
“to ride when he’s here; he says his papa will never let him take his
horse anywhere with him--there’s such a lot of children,” added my boy,
parenthetically, with some pity and contempt. “I like little Clary
best--I like her because her name’s the same as mamma’s, and because she
has blue eyes, and because she likes me, and she’s good to that poor
old nurse, too, who has her daughter in a fever, and daren’t go to see
her.”
“How do you know about the nurse’s daughter’s fever, Derwie?” asked I.
“Mamma, they sent _me_ to the nursery, when you were calling there,”
said Derwie, with some emphasis, “and she told me she has the scarlet
fever, and Mrs. Sedgwick won’t let her mamma go to see her, for fear of
the children taking it--isn’t it a shame? Clary told me she said her
prayers for her every night, to get her well; and so,” said Derwent,
coloring, and looking up with some apparent idea that this was not
perfectly right, and the most manful intention to stand out the
consequences, “and so do I.”
His father and I looked at each other, and neither of us said anything
just for that moment, which silence emboldened Derwie to believe that no
harm was coming of his confession, and to go on with his story.
“And Mr. Sedgwick’s man--he’s such a funny fellow. I wish you’d ask him
to tell you one of his stories, mamma,” said Derwie, “for I know he’s
coming here with them. He has a brother like Johnny Harley--just as
lame--and he got cured in Wales, at St. Winifred’s Well. Why don’t you
ask Mrs. Harley to send Johnny to St. Winifred’s Well, mamma?--she only
laughed at me when I said so. I say, mamma,” continued Derwie, with his
mouth full of his orange, “I’ll tell Russell he’s to tell you one of his
stories--I never knew a fellow that could tell such famous stories--I
wish you had a man like Russell, papa. He’s been all over the world, and
he’s got two children at home, and the name of one of them is John--John
Russell--like the little gentleman in _Punch_.”
“Don’t be personal, Derwie,” said Mr. Crofton, laughing; “we are to have
Mr. Sedgwick’s Russell, and Mrs. Sedgwick’s nurse--who else?”
“The Harleys,” said I, “for we’ll postpone for a little, if you please,
Derwie, your friends below-stairs; and Mr. Reredos and his sister, and
Miss Polly Greenfield, and her little nieces. I fear the womankind will
rather predominate in our Easter party--though Maurice Harley, to be
sure”----
“Yes--Maurice Harley, to be sure,” said Derwent, still with a smile,
“is--what should you call him now, Clare--a host in himself?”
“Fellow of Exeter College, Cambridge,” said I, demurely; “he has it on
his card.”
“Mamma, is Maurice Harley a clergyman?--shouldn’t a clergyman care about
people?” said little Derwent; “I don’t think _he_ does. He likes
books.”
“And what do you mean by people?--and don’t you like books?” I asked.
“Oh! yes, sometimes,” said my son; “when there’s pictures in them. But
_you_ know what people mean, mamma--quite well! You talk to them, _you_
do--but Maurice Harley puts up his shoulders like this, and looks more
tired than Bob Dawkes does after his ploughing--so tired--just as if he
could drop down with tiredness. Oh!” cried Derwent, with a sudden burst
of enthusiasm, “I would not give our Johnnie for a hundred of _him_.”
“A hundred of _him_!” I confess the thought filled me with alarm. In my
heart I doubted, with a little shudder of apprehension, whether the
country, not to speak of Hilfont, could have survived the invasion of a
hundred such accomplished men. “But, Derwie,” said I, recovering from
that shock, “if you do not like books except when they have pictures in
them, how do you think you are ever to learn all the things that Maurice
Harley knows?”
“Mr. Sedgwick says he’s a prig,” says little Derwent, with great
seriousness, “and I know more things now than he does--I know how to
make rabbits’ houses. If you were to get some little white rabbits,
mamma, I could make a beautiful house for them. Will Morris taught me
how. Oh! papa, don’t you know Will Morris wants to marry little Susan at
the shop?--he has her picture, and it’s not the least like her, and I
heard Maurice Harley say the photographs _must_ be like, because the sun
took them. Does the sun see better than other people? That one’s like
you with the paper in your hand; but Will Morris’s picture, instead of
being Susan, is anybody in a checked dress.”
“I begin to think you will turn out a great critic, Derwie,” said his
admiring father, who desired no better than to spend his after-dinner
hour listening to the wisdom of his son.
“What’s a critic? is it anything like a prig?” asked Derwent, who was
trying hard to set up the crooked stem of a bunch of raisins--now, alas,
denuded of every vestige of its fruit--like a tree upon his plate; the
endeavor was not very successful, although when propped up on each side
by little mounds of orange-peel, the mimic tree managed to hold a very
slippery and precarious footing, and for a few minutes kept itself
upright. We two sat looking at this process in a hush of pleased and
interested observation. Maurice Harley, with all his powers and
pretensions, could neither have done nor said anything which could thus
have absorbed us, and I doubt whether we would have looked at the
highest triumphs of art or genius with admiration as complete as that
with which we regarded little Derwie setting up the stalk of the bunch
of raisins between these little mounds of orange-peel.
“Clare, how old is he now?” said Mr. Crofton to me.
As if he did not know! but I answered with calm pride, “Seven on Monday,
Derwent--and you remember it was Easter Monday too that year--and tall
for his age, certainly--but he is not so stout as Willie Sedgwick.”
“Ah, Monday’s your birthday, is it, old fellow?” said Derwent; “what
should you like on your birthday, Derwie--let us hear?”
“May I have anything I like, papa?” asked the child, throwing down
immediately both the raisin-stalk and the orange-skin. His father nodded
in assent. I, a little in terror of what “anything I like” at seven
years old might happen to be, hastened to interpose.
“Anything in reason, Derwie, dear--not the moon, you know, nor the
crown, nor an impossible thing. You are a very sensible little boy when
you please; think of something in papa’s power.”
“It is only little babies that cry for the moon,” said Derwie,
contemptuously, “and I’ve got it in the stereoscope--and what’s the good
of it if one had it? nobody lives there; but, papa, I’ll tell you what I
should like--give me the key of the door of the House of Commons, where
you go every day when we are in town. That’s what I should like for my
birthday; what makes you laugh?” continued my boy, coming to a sudden
pause and growing red, for he was deeply susceptible to ridicule, bold
as he was.
“Why on earth do you want to go to the House of Commons?” cried his
father, when his laughter permitted him to speak.
“It’s in the Bible that the people used to come to tell everything to
the king,” said Derwie, a little peevishly; “and isn’t the House of
Commons instead of the king in this country? and doesn’t everybody go to
the House of Commons when they want anything? I should like to see them
all coming and telling their stories--what fun it must be! That’s why
you go there, I suppose, every night? but I don’t know why you never
should take mamma or me.”
“It would never do to let the ladies come in,” said Derwent, with mock
seriousness; “you know they would talk so much that we could never hear
what the people had to say.”
“Mamma does not talk very much,” said Derwie, sharply; “nor Alice
either. Old Mrs. Sedgwick, to be sure--but then it’s some good when she
talks; it isn’t all about books or things I can’t understand, it’s about
people--that’s real talk, that is. Before I go to school--just till this
session is over--oh, papa, will you give me that key?”
“My boy,” said Derwent, with the love and the laughter rivalling each
other in his eyes, “they don’t give me any key, or you should have
it--there’s a turnkey at the door, who opens it to let the poor people
out and in; but some day you and mamma shall go and be shut up in a cage
we have for the ladies, and hear all that’s said. I’m afraid, Derwie,
when you’ve once been there you won’t want to go again.”
“Yes, I shall!” cried Derwie, all his face glowing with eagerness; when
there suddenly appeared a solemn and silent apparition at the door,
namely Nurse, under whose iron rule the young gentleman, much resisting,
was still held, so far at least as his toilette was concerned. That
excellent woman said not a word. She opened the door with noiseless
solemnity, came in, and stood smoothing down her spotless apron by the
wall. No need for words to announce the presence of that messenger of
fate; Derwie made some unavailing struggles with destiny, and at last
resigned himself and marched off defiantly, followed by the mighty
Nemesis. When the door closed upon the well-preserved skirts of that
brown silk gown, in which, ever since little Derwie emerged from
babyhood, nurse had presented herself in the dining-room to fetch him to
bed, Mr. Crofton and I once more looked at each other with those looks
of fondness and praise and mutual congratulation which our boy had
brought to our eyes. We had already exhausted all the phrases of
parental wonder and admiration; we only looked at each other with a
mutual tender delight and congratulation. Nobody else, surely, since the
beginning of the world, ever had such a boy!