Suddenly across the gaze of Percival St. John there flashed a face that
woke him from his abstraction, as a light awakes the sleeper. It was as
a recognition of something seen dimly before,--a truth coming out from
a dream. It was not the mere beauty of that face (and beautiful it
was) that arrested his eye and made his heart beat more quickly, it was
rather that nameless and inexplicable sympathy which constitutes love
at first sight,--a sort of impulse and instinct common to the dullest as
the quickest, the hardest reason as the liveliest fancy. Plain Cobbett,
seeing before the cottage-door, at her homeliest of house-work, the
girl of whom he said, “That girl should be my wife,” and Dante, first
thrilled by the vision of Beatrice,--are alike true types of a common
experience. Whatever of love sinks the deepest is felt at first sight;
it streams on us abrupt from the cloud, a lightning flash,--a destiny
revealed to us face to face.
Now, there was nothing poetical in the place or the circumstance, still
less in the companionship in which this fair creature startled the
virgin heart of that careless boy; she was leaning on the arm of a
stout, rosy-faced matron in a puce-coloured gown, who was flanked on the
other side by a very small, very spare man, with a very wee face, the
lower part of which was enveloped in an immense belcher. Besides these
two incumbrances, the stout lady contrived to carry in her hands an
umbrella, a basket, and a pair of pattens.
In the midst of the strange, unfamiliar emotion which his eye conveyed
to his heart, Percival’s ear was displeasingly jarred by the loud,
bluff, hearty voice of the girl’s female companion--
“Gracious me! if that is not John Ardworth. Who’d have thought it? Why,
John,--I say, John!” and lifting her umbrella horizontally, she poked
aside two city clerks in front of her, wheeled round the little man on
her left, upon whom the clerks simultaneously bestowed the appellation
of “feller,” and driving him, as being the sharpest and thinnest wedge
at hand, through a dense knot of some half-a-dozen gapers, while,
following his involuntary progress, she looked defiance on the
malcontents, she succeeded in clearing her way to the spot where stood
the young man she had discovered. The ambitious dreamer, for it was
he, thus detected and disturbed, looked embarrassed for a moment as the
stout lady, touching him with the umbrella, said,--
“Well, I declare if this is not too bad! You sent word that you should
not be able to come out with us to see the ‘luminations, and here you
are as large as life!”
“I did not think, at the moment you wrote to me, that-”
“Oh, stuff!” interrupted the stout woman, with a significant,
good-humoured shake of her head; “I know what’s what. Tell the truth,
and shame the gentleman who objects to showing his feet. You are a wild
fellow, John Ardworth, you are! You like looking after the pretty faces,
you do, you do--ha, ha, ha! very natural! So did you once,--did not you,
Mr. Mivers, did not you, eh? Men must be men,--they always are men, and
it’s my belief that men they always will be!”
With this sage conjecture into the future, the lady turned to Mr.
Mivers, who, thus appealed to, extricated with some difficulty his chin
from the folds of his belcher, and putting up his small face, said, in a
small voice, “Yes, I was a wild fellow once; but you have tamed me, you
have, Mrs. M.!”
And therewith the chin sank again into the belcher, and the small voice
died into a small sigh.
The stout lady glanced benignly at her spouse, and then resuming her
address, to which Ardworth listened with a half-frown and a half-smile,
observed encouragingly,--
“Yes, there’s nothing like a lawful wife to break a man in, as you
will find some day. Howsomever, your time’s not come for the altar, so
suppose you give Helen your arm, and come with us.”
“Do,” said Helen, in a sweet, coaxing voice.
Ardworth bent down his rough, earnest face to Helen’s, and an evident
pleasure relaxed its thoughtful lines. “I cannot resist you,” he began,
and then he paused and frowned. “Pish!” he added, “I was talking folly;
but what head would not you turn? Resist you I must, for I am on my way
now to my drudgery. Ask me anything some years hence, when I have time
to be happy, and then see if I am the bear you now call me.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Mivers, emphatically, “are you coming, or are you not?
Don’t stand there shilly-shally.”
“Mrs. Mivers,” returned Ardworth, with a kind of sly humour, “I am sure
you would be very angry with your husband’s excellent shopmen if
that was the way they spoke to your customers. If some unhappy
dropper-in,--some lady who came to buy a yard or so of Irish,--was
suddenly dazzled, as I am, by a luxury wholly unforeseen and eagerly
coveted,--a splendid lace veil, or a ravishing cashmere, or whatever
else you ladies desiderate,--and while she was balancing between
prudence and temptation, your foreman exclaimed: `Don’t stand
shilly-shally’--come, I put it to you.”
“Stuff!” said Mrs. Mivers.
“Alas! unlike your imaginary customer (I hope so, at least, for the sake
of your till), prudence gets the better of me; unless,” added Ardworth,
irresolutely, and glancing at Helen,--“unless, indeed, you are not
sufficiently protected, and--”
“Purtected!” exclaimed Mrs. Mivers, in an indignant tone of
astonishment, and agitating the formidable umbrella; “as if I was not
enough, with the help of this here domestic commodity, to purtect a
dozen such. Purtected, indeed!”
“John is right, Mrs. M.,--business is business,” said Mr. Mivers. “Let
us move on; we stop the way, and those idle lads are listening to us,
and sniggering.”
“Sniggering!” exclaimed the gentle helpmate. “I should like to see
those who presume for to snigger;” and as she spoke, she threw a look
of defiance around her. Then, having thus satisfied her resentment,
she prepared to obey, as no doubt she always did, her lord and master.
Suddenly, with a practised movement, she wheeled round Mr. Mivers, and
taking care to protrude before him the sharp point of the umbrella, cut
her way through the crowd like the scythed car of the Ancient Britons,
and was soon lost amidst the throng, although her way might be guessed
by a slight ripple of peculiar agitation along the general stream,
accompanied by a prolonged murmur of reproach or expostulation which
gradually died in the distance.
Ardworth gazed after the fair form of Helen with a look of regret; and
when it vanished, with a slight start and a suppressed sigh he turned
away, and with the long, steady stride of a strong man, cleared his path
through the Strand towards the printing-office of a journal on which he
was responsibly engaged.
But Percival, who had caught much of the conversation that took place so
near him,--Percival, happy child of idleness and whim,--had no motive
of labour and occupation to stay the free impulse of his heart, and his
heart drew him on, with magnetic attraction, in the track of the first
being that had ever touched the sweet instincts of youth.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Mivers was destined to learn--though perhaps the lesson
little availed her--that to get smoothly through this world it is
necessary to be supple as well as strong; and though, up to a certain
point, man or woman may force the way by poking umbrellas into people’s
ribs and treading mercilessly upon people’s toes, yet the endurance of
ribs and toes has its appointed limits.
Helen, half terrified, also half amused by her companion’s robust
resolution of purpose, had in Mrs. Mivers’s general courage and success
that confidence which the weak repose in the strong; and though whenever
she turned her eyes from the illuminations, she besought Mrs. Mivers to
be more gentle, yet, seeing that they had gone safely from St. Paul’s
to St. James’s, she had no distinct apprehension of any practically ill
results from the energies she was unable to mitigate. But now, having
just gained the end of St. James’s Street, Mrs. Mivers at last found her
match. The crowd here halted, thick and serried, to gaze in peace upon
the brilliant vista which the shops and clubs of that street presented.
Coaches and carriages had paused in their line, and immediately before
Mrs. Mivers stood three very thin, small women, whose dress bespoke them
to be of the humblest class.
“Make way, there; make way, my good women, make way!” cried Mrs. Mivers,
equally disdainful of the size and the rank of the obstructing parties.
“Arrah, and what shall we make way for the like of you, you old
busybody?” said one of the dames, turning round, and presenting a very
formidable squint to the broad optics of Mrs. Mivers.
Without deigning a reply, Mrs. Mivers had recourse to her usual
tactics. Umbrella and husband went right between two of the feminine
obstructives; and to the inconceivable astonishment and horror of the
assailant, husband and umbrella instantly vanished. The three small
furies had pounced upon both. They were torn from their natural owner;
they were hurried away; the stream behind, long fretted at the path so
abruptly made amidst it, closed in, joyous, with a thousand waves. Mrs.
Mivers and Helen were borne forward in one way, the umbrella and the
husband in the other; in the distance a small voice was heard: “Don’t
you! don’t! Be quiet! Mrs.--Mrs. M.! Oh, oh, Mrs. M.!” At that last
repetition of the beloved and familiar initial, uttered in a tone
of almost superhuman anguish, the conjugal heart of Mrs. Mivers was
afflicted beyond control.
“Wait here a moment, my dear; I’ll just give it them, that’s all!” And
in another moment Mrs. Mivers was heard bustling, scolding, till all
trace of her whereabout was gone from the eyes of Helen. Thus left
alone, in exceeding shame and dismay, the poor girl cast a glance
around. The glance was caught by two young men, whose station, in these
days when dress is an equivocal designator of rank, could not be guessed
by their exterior. They might be dandies from the west,--they might be
clerks from the east.
“By Jove,” exclaimed one, “that’s a sweet pretty girl!” and, by a sudden
movement of the crowd, they both found themselves close to Helen.
“Are you alone, my dear?” said a voice rudely familiar. Helen made no
reply; the tone of the voice frightened her. A gap in the mob showed
the space towards Cleveland Row, which, leading to no illuminations, was
vacant and solitary. She instantly made towards this spot; the two men
followed her, the bolder and elder one occasionally trying to catch hold
of her arm. At last, as she passed the last house to the left, a house
then owned by one who, at once far-sighted and impetuous, affable and
haughty, characterized alike by solid virtues and brilliant faults,
would, but for hollow friends, have triumphed over countless foes,
and enjoyed at last that brief day of stormy power for which statesmen
resign the health of manhood and the hope of age,--as she passed that
memorable mansion, she suddenly perceived that the space before her had
no thoroughfare; and, while she paused in dismay, her pursuers blockaded
her escape.
One of them now fairly seized her hand. “Nay, pretty one, why so cruel?
But one kiss,--only one!” He endeavoured to pass his arm round her waist
while he spoke. Helen eluded him, and darted forward, to find her way
stopped by her persecutor’s companion, when, to her astonishment,
a third person gently pushed aside the form that impeded her path,
approached, and looking mute defiance at the unchivalric molesters,
offered her his arm. Helen gave but one timid, hurrying glance to
her unexpected protector; something in his face, his air, his youth,
appealed at once to her confidence. Mechanically, and scarce knowing
what she did, she laid her trembling hand on the arm held out to her.
The two Lotharios looked foolish. One pulled up his shirt-collar, and
the other turned, with a forced laugh, on his heel. Boy as Percival
seemed, and little more than boy as he was, there was a dangerous fire
in his eye, and an expression of spirit and ready courage in his whole
countenance, which, if it did not awe his tall rivals, made them at
least unwilling to have a scene and provoke the interference of a
policeman; one of whom was now seen walking slowly up to the spot. They
therefore preserved a discomfited silence; and Percival St. John, with
his heart going ten knots a beat, sailed triumphantly off with his
prize.
Scarcely knowing whither he went, certainly forgetful of Mr. Mivers, in
his anxiety to escape at least from the crowd, Percival walked on till
he found himself with his fair charge under the trees of St. James’s
Park.
Then Helen, recovering herself, paused, and said, alarmed: “But this is
not my way; I must go back to the street!”
“How foolish I am! That is true,” said Percival, looking confused. “I--I
felt so happy to be with you, feel your hand on my arm, and think
that we were all by ourselves, that--that---But you have dropped your
flowers!”
And as a bouquet Helen wore, dislodged somehow or other, fell to the
ground, both stooped to pick it up, and their hands met. At that touch,
Percival felt a strange tremble, which perhaps communicated itself (for
such things are contagious) to his fair companion. Percival had got
the nosegay, and seemed willing to detain it; for he bent his face
lingeringly over the flowers. At length he turned his bright, ingenuous
eyes to Helen, and singling one rose from the rest, said beseechingly:
“May I keep this? See, it is not so fresh as the others.”
“I am sure, sir,” said Helen, colouring, and looking down, “I owe you so
much that I should be glad if a poor flower could repay it.”
“A poor flower! You don’t know what a prize this is to me!” Percival
placed the rose reverently in his bosom, and the two moved back slowly,
as if reluctant both, through the old palace-court into the street.
“Is that lady related to you?” asked Percival, looking another way, and
dreading the reply,--“not your mother, surely!”
“Oh, no! I have no mother!”
“Forgive me!” said Percival; for the tone of Helen’s voice told him that
he had touched the spring of a household sorrow. “And,” he added, with
a jealousy that he could scarcely restrain from making itself evident
in his accent, “that gentleman who spoke to you under the Colonnade,--I
have seen him before, but where I cannot remember. In fact, you have put
everything but yourself out of my head. Is he related to you?”
“He is my cousin.”
“Cousin!” repeated Percival, pouting a little; and again there was
silence.
“I don’t know how it is,” said Percival at last, and very gravely, as if
much perplexed by some abstruse thought, “but I feel as if I had known
you all my life. I never felt this for any one before.”
There was something so irresistibly innocent in the boy’s serious,
wondering tone as he said these words that a smile, in spite of herself,
broke out amongst the thousand dimples round Helen’s charming lips.
Perhaps the little witch felt a touch of coquetry for the first time.
Percival, who was looking sidelong into her face, saw the smile, and
said, drawing up his head, and shaking back his jetty curls: “I dare say
you are laughing at me as a mere boy; but I am older than I look. I
am sure I am much older than you are. Let me see, you are seventeen, I
suppose?”
Helen, getting more and more at her ease, nodded playful assent.
“And I am not far from twenty-one. Ah, you may well look surprised, but
so it is. An hour ago I felt a mere boy; now I shall never feel a boy
again!”
Once more there was a long pause, and before it was broken, they had
gained the very spot in which Helen had lost her friend.
“Why, bless us and save us!” exclaimed a voice “loud as a trumpet,” but
not “with a silver sound,” “there you are, after all;” and Mrs. Mivers
(husband and umbrella both regained) planted herself full before them.
“Oh, a pretty fright I have been in! And now to see you coming along as
cool as if nothing had happened; as if the humbrella had not lost its
hivory ‘andle,--it’s quite purvoking. Dear, dear, what we have gone
through! And who is this young gentleman, pray?”
Helen whispered some hesitating explanation, which Mrs. Mivers did not
seem to receive as graciously as Percival, poor fellow, had a right to
expect. She stared him full in the face, and shook her head suspiciously
when she saw him a little confused by the survey. Then, tucking Helen
tightly under her arm, she walked back towards the Haymarket, merely
saying to Percival,--
“Much obligated, and good-night. I have a long journey to take to set
down this here young lady; and the best thing we can all do is to get
home as fast as we can, and have a refreshing cup of tea--that’s my
mind, sir. Excuse me!”
Thus abruptly dismissed, poor Percival gazed wistfully on his Helen as
she was borne along, and was somewhat comforted at seeing her look
back with (as he thought) a touch of regret in her parting smile. Then
suddenly it flashed across him how sadly he had wasted his time. Novice
that he was, he had not even learned the name and address of his new
acquaintance. At that thought he hurried on through the crowd, but only
reached the object of his pursuit just in time to see her placed in a
coach, and to catch a full view of the luxuriant proportions of Mrs.
Mivers as she followed her into the vehicle.
As the lumbering conveyance (the only coach on the stand) heaved itself
into motion, Percival’s eye fell on the sweeper, who was still
leaning on his broom, and who, in grateful recognition of the unwonted
generosity that had repaid his service, touched his ragged hat, and
smiled drowsily on his young customer. Love sharpens the wit and
animates the timid; a thought worthy of the most experienced inspired
Percival St. John; he hurried to the sweeper, laid his hand on his
patchwork coat, and said breathlessly,--
“You see that coach turning into the square? Follow it,--find out where
it sets down. There’s a sovereign for you; another if you succeed. Call
and tell me your success. Number ---- Curzon Street! Off, like a shot!”
The sweeper nodded and grinned; it was possibly not his first commission
of a similar kind. He darted down the street; and Percival, following
him with equal speed, had the satisfaction to see him, as the coach
traversed St. James’s Square, comfortably seated on the footboard.
Beck, dull clod, knew nothing, cared nothing, felt nothing as to the
motives or purpose of his employer. Honest love or selfish vice, it was
the same to him. He saw only the one sovereign which, with astounded
eyes, he still gazed at on his palm, and the vision of the sovereign
that was yet to come.
“Scandit aeratas vitiosa naves Cura; nee turmas equitum relinquit.”
It was the Selfishness of London, calm and stolid, whether on the track
of innocence or at the command of guile.
At half-past ten o’clock Percival St. John was seated in his room, and
the sweeper stood at the threshold. Wealth and penury seemed brought
into visible contact in the persons of the visitor and the host. The
dwelling is held by some to give an index to the character of the owner;
if so, Percival’s apartments differed much from those generally favoured
by young men of rank and fortune. On the one hand, it had none of that
affectation of superior taste evinced in marqueterie and gilding, or
the more picturesque discomfort of high-backed chairs and mediaeval
curiosities which prevails in the daintier abodes of fastidious
bachelors; nor, on the other hand, had it the sporting character which
individualizes the ruder juveniles qui gaudent equis, betrayed by
engravings of racers and celebrated fox-hunts, relieved, perhaps, if
the Nimrod condescend to a cross of the Lovelace, with portraits of
figurantes, and ideals of French sentiment entitled, “Le Soir,” or “La
Reveillee,” “L’Espoir,” or “L’Abandon.” But the rooms had a physiognomy
of their own, from their exquisite neatness and cheerful simplicity.
The chintz draperies were lively with gay flowers; books filled up the
niches; here and there were small pictures, chiefly sea-pieces,--well
chosen, well placed.
There might, indeed, have been something almost effeminate in a certain
inexpressible purity of taste, and a cleanliness of detail that seemed
actually brilliant, had not the folding-doors allowed a glimpse of a
plainer apartment, with fencing-foils and boxing-gloves ranged on the
wall, and a cricket-bat resting carelessly in the corner. These gave a
redeeming air of manliness to the rooms; but it was the manliness of a
boy,--half-girl, if you please, in the purity of thought that pervaded
one room, all boy in the playful pursuits that were made manifest in the
other. Simple, however, as this abode really was, poor Beck had never
been admitted to the sight of anything half so fine. He stood at the
door for a moment, and stared about him, bewildered and dazzled. But his
natural torpor to things that concerned him not soon brought to him
the same stoicism that philosophy gives the strong; and after the first
surprise, his eye quietly settled on his employer. St. John rose eagerly
from the sofa, on which he had been contemplating the starlit treetops
of Chesterfield Gardens,--
“Well, well?” said Percival.
“Hold Brompton,” said Beck, with a brevity of word and clearness of
perception worthy a Spartan.
“Old Brompton?” repeated Percival, thinking the reply the most natural
in the world.
“In a big ‘ous by hisself,” continued Beck, “with a ‘igh vall in front.”
“You would know it again?”
“In course; he’s so wery peculiar.”
“He,--who?”
“Vy, the ‘ous. The young lady got out, and the hold folks driv back. I
did not go arter them!” and Beck looked sly.
“So! I must find out the name.”
“I axed at the public,” said Beck, proud of his diplomacy. “They keeps
a sarvant vot takes half a pint at her meals. The young lady’s mabe a
foriner.”
“A foreigner! Then she lives there with her mother?”
“So they s’pose at the public.”
“And the name?”
Beck shook his head. “‘T is a French ‘un, your honour; but the sarvant’s
is Martha.”
“You must meet me at Brompton, near the turnpike, tomorrow, and show me
the house.”
“Vy, I’s in bizness all day, please your honour.”
“In business?”’
“I’s the place of the crossing,” said Beck, with much dignity; “but
arter eight I goes vere I likes.”
“To-morrow evening, then, at half-past eight, by the turnpike.”
Beck pulled his forelock assentingly.
“There’s the sovereign I promised you, my poor fellow; much good may
it do you. Perhaps you have some father or mother whose heart it will
glad.”
“I never had no such thing,” replied Beck, turning the coin in his hand.
“Well, don’t spend it in drink.”
“I never drinks nothing but svipes.”
“Then,” said Percival, laughingly, “what, my good friend, will you ever
do with your money?”
Beck put his finger to his nose, sunk his voice into a whisper, and
replied solemnly: “I ‘as a mattris.”
“A mistress,” said Percival. “Oh, a sweetheart. Well, but if she’s a
good girl, and loves you, she’ll not let you spend your money on her.”
“I haint such a ninny as that,” said Beck, with majestic contempt. “I
‘spises the flat that is done brown by the blowens. I ‘as a mattris.”
“A mattress! a mattress! Well, what has that to do with the money?”
“Vy, I lines it.”
Percival looked puzzled. “Oh,” said he, after a thoughtful pause, and in
a tone of considerable compassion, “I understand: you sew your money in
your mattress. My poor, poor lad, you can do better than that! There are
the savings banks.”
Beck looked frightened. “I ‘opes your honour von’t tell no vun. I ‘opes
no vun von’t go for to put my tin vere I shall know nothing vatsomever
about it. Now, I knows vere it is, and I lays on it.”
“Do you sleep more soundly when you lie on your treasure?”
“No. It’s hodd,” said Beck, musingly, “but the more I lines it, the
vorse I sleeps.”
Percival laughed, but there was melancholy in his laughter; something
in the forlorn, benighted, fatherless, squalid miser went to the core of
his open, generous heart.
“Do you ever read your Bible,” said he, after a pause, “or even the
newspaper?”
“I does not read nothing; cos vy? I haint been made a scholard, like
swell Tim, as was lagged for a forgery.”
“You go to church on a Sunday?”
“Yes; I ‘as a weekly hingagement at the New Road.”
“What do you mean?”
“To see arter the gig of a gemman vot comes from ‘Igate.”
Percival lifted his brilliant eyes, and they were moistened with a
heavenly dew, on the dull face of his fellow-creature. Beck made a
scrape, looked round, shambled back to the door, and ran home, through
the lamp-lit streets of the great mart of the Christian universe, to sew
the gold in his mattress.