LIII. Where we remain at the Court End of the Town…

LIII. Where we remain at the Court End of the Town

George Warrington had related the same story, which we have just heard, to Madame de Bernstein on the previous evening--a portion, that is, of the history; for the old lady nodded off to sleep many times during the narration, only waking up when George paused, saying it was most interesting, and ordering him to continue. The young gentleman hem'd and ha'd, and stuttered, and blushed, and went on, much against his will, and did not speak half so well as he did to his friendly little auditory in Hill Street, where Hetty's eyes of wonder and Theo's sympathising looks, and mamma's kind face, and papa's funny looks, were applause sufficient to cheer any modest youth who required encouragement for his eloquence. As for mamma's behaviour, the General said, 'twas as good as Mr. Addison's trunk-maker, and she would make the fortune of any tragedy by simply being engaged to cry in the front boxes. That is why we chose my Lord Wrotham's house as the theatre where George's first piece should be performed, wishing that he should speak to advantage, and not as when he was heard by that sleepy, cynical old lady, to whom he had to narrate his adventures.

“Very good and most interesting, I am sure, my dear sir,” says Madame Bernstein, putting up three pretty little fingers covered with a lace mitten, to hide a convulsive movement of her mouth. “And your mother must have been delighted to see you.”

George shrugged his shoulders ever so little, and made a low bow, as his aunt looked up at him for a moment with her keen old eyes.

“Have been delighted to see you” she continued drily, “and killed the fatted calf, and--and that kind of thing. Though why I say calf, I don't know, nephew George, for you never were the prodigal. I may say calf to thee, my poor Harry! Thou hast been amongst the swine sure enough. And evil companions have robbed the money out of thy pocket and the coat off thy back.

“He came to his family in England, madam,” says George, with some heat, “and his friends were your ladyship's.”

“He could not have come to worse advisers, nephew Warrington, and so I should have told my sister earlier, had she condescended to write to me by him, as she has done by you,” said the old lady, tossing up her head. “Hey! hey!” she said, at night, as she arranged herself for the rout to which she was going, to her waiting-maid: “this young gentleman's mother is half sorry that he has come to life again, I could see that in his face. She is half sorry, and I am perfectly furious! Why didn't he lie still when he dropped there under the tree, and why did that young Florac carry him to the fort? I knew those Floracs when I was at Paris, in the time of Monsieur le Regent. They were of the Floracs of Ivry. No great house before Henri IV. His ancestor was the king's favourite. His ancestor--he! he!--his ancestress! Brett! entendez-vous? Give me my card-purse. I don't like the grand airs of this Monsieur George; and yet he resembles, very much, his grandfather--the same look and sometimes the same tones. You have heard of Colonel Esmond when I was young? This boy has his eyes. I suppose I liked the Colonel's because he loved me.”

Being engaged, then, to a card-party,--an amusement which she never missed, week-day or Sabbath, as long as she had strength to hold trumps or sit in a chair,--very soon after George had ended his narration the old lady dismissed her two nephews, giving to the elder a couple of fingers and a very stately curtsey; but to Harry two hands and a kindly pat on the cheek.

“My poor child, now thou art disinherited, thou wilt see how differently the world will use thee!” she said. “There is only, in all London, a wicked, heartless old woman who will treat thee as before. Here is a pocket-book for you, child! Do not lose it at Ranelagh to-night. That suit of yours does not become your brother half so well as it sat upon you! You will present your brother to everybody, and walk up and down the room for two hours at least, child. Were I you, I would then go to the Chocolate-House, and play as if nothing had happened. Whilst you are there, your brother may come back to me and eat a bit of chicken with me. My Lady Flint gives wretched suppers, and I want to talk his mother's letter over with him. Au revoir, gentlemen!” and she went away to her toilette. Her chairmen and flambeaux were already waiting at the door.

The gentlemen went to Ranelagh, where but a few of Mr. Harry's acquaintances chanced to be present. They paced the round, and met Mr. Tom Claypool with some of his country friends; they heard the music; they drank tea in a box; Harry was master of ceremonies, and introduced his brother to the curiosities of the place; and George was even more excited than his brother had been on his first introduction to this palace of delight. George loved music much more than Harry ever did; he heard a full orchestra for the first time, and a piece of Mr. Handel satisfactorily performed; and a not unpleasing instance of Harry's humility and regard for his elder brother was, that he could even hold George's love of music in respect at a time when fiddling was voted effeminate and unmanly in England, and Britons were, every day, called upon by the patriotic prints to sneer at the frivolous accomplishments of your Squallinis, Monsieurs, and the like. Nobody in Britain is proud of his ignorance now. There is no conceit left among us. There is no such thing as dulness. Arrogance is entirely unknown... Well, at any rate, Art has obtained her letters of naturalisation, and lives here on terms of almost equality. If Mrs. Thrale chose to marry a music-master now, I don't think her friends would shudder at the mention of her name. If she had a good fortune and kept a good cook, people would even go and dine with her in spite of the misalliance, and actually treat Mr. Piozzi with civility.

After Ranelagh, and pursuant to Madam Bernstein's advice, George returned to her ladyship's house, whilst Harry showed himself at the club, where gentlemen were accustomed to assemble at night to sup, and then to gamble. No one, of course, alluded to Mr. Warrington's little temporary absence, and Mr. Ruff, his ex-landlord, waited upon him with the utmost gravity and civility, and as if there had never been any difference between them. Mr. Warrington had caused his trunks and habiliments to be conveyed away from Bond Street in the morning, and he and his brother were now established in apartments elsewhere.

But when the supper was done, and the gentlemen, as usual, were about to seek the macco-table upstairs, Harry said he was not going to play any more. He had burned his fingers already, and could afford no more extravagance.

“Why,” says Mr. Morris, in a rather flippant manner, “you must have won more than you have lost, Mr. Warrington, after all is said and done.”

“And of course I don't know my own business as well as you do, Mr. Morris,” says Harry sternly, who had not forgotten the other's behaviour on hearing of his arrest; “but I have another reason. A few months or days ago, I was heir to a great estate, and could afford to lose a little money. Now, thank God, I am heir to nothing.” And he looked round, blushing not a little, to the knot of gentlemen, his gaming associates, who were lounging at the tables or gathered round the fire.

“How do you mean, Mr. Warrington?” cries my Lord March, “Have you lost Virginia, too? Who has won it? I always had a fancy to play you myself for that stake.”

“And grow an improved breed of slaves in the colony,” says another.

“The right owner has won it. You have heard me tell of my twin elder brother?”

“Who was killed in that affair of Braddock's two years ago! Yes. Gracious goodness, my dear sir, I hope in heaven he has not come to life again?”

“He arrived in London two days since. He has been a prisoner in a French fort for eighteen months; he only escaped a few months ago, and left our house in Virginia very soon after his release.”

“You haven't had time to order mourning, I suppose, Mr. Warrington?” asks Mr. Selwyn very good-naturedly, and simple Harry hardly knew the meaning of his joke until his brother interpreted it to him.

“Hang me, if I don't believe the fellow is absolutely glad of the reappearance of his confounded brother!” cries my Lord March, as they continued to talk of the matter when the young Virginian had taken his leave.

“These savages practise the simple virtues of affection--they are barely civilised in America yet,” yawns Selwyn.

“They love their kindred, and they scalp their enemies,” simpers Mr. Walpole. “It's not Christian, but natural. Shouldn't you like to be present at a scalping-match, George, and see a fellow skinned alive?”

“A man's elder brother is his natural enemy,” says Mr. Selwyn, placidly ranging his money and counters before him.

“Torture is like broiled bones and pepper. You wouldn't relish simple hanging afterwards, George!” continues Horry.

“I'm hanged if there's any man in England who would like to see his elder brother alive,” says my lord.

“No, nor his father either, my lord!” cries Jack Morris.

“First time I ever knew you had one, Jack. Give me counters for five hundred.”

“I say, 'tis all mighty fine about dead brothers coming to life again,” continues Jack. “Who is to know that it wasn't a scheme arranged between these two fellows? Here comes a young fellow who calls himself the Fortunate Youth, who says he is a Virginian Prince and the deuce knows what, and who gets into our society----”

A great laugh ensues at Jack's phrase of “our society.”

“Who is to know that it wasn't a cross?” Jack continues. “The young one is to come first. He is to marry an heiress, and, when he has got her, up is to rise the elder brother! When did this elder brother show? Why, when the younger's scheme was blown, and all was up with him! Who shall tell me that the fellow hasn't been living in Seven Dials, or in a cellar dining off tripe and cow-heel until my younger gentleman was disposed of? Dammy, as gentlemen, I think we ought to take notice of it: and that this Mr. Warrington has been taking a most outrageous liberty with the whole club.”

“Who put him up? It was March, I think, put him up?” asks a bystander.

“Yes. But my lord thought he was putting up a very different person. Didn't you, March?”

“Hold your confounded tongue, and mind your game!” says the nobleman addressed: but Jack Morris's opinion found not a few supporters in the world. Many persons agreed that it was most indecorous of Mr. Harry Warrington to have ever believed in his brother's death: that there was something suspicious about the young man's first appearance and subsequent actions, and, in fine, that regarding these foreigners, adventurers, and the like, we ought to be especially cautious.

Though he was out of prison and difficulty; though he had his aunt's liberal donation of money in his pocket; though his dearest brother was restored to him, whose return to life Harry never once thought of deploring, as his friends at White's supposed he would do; though Maria had shown herself in such a favourable light by her behaviour during his misfortune: yet Harry, when alone, felt himself not particularly cheerful, and smoked his pipe of Virginia with a troubled mind. It was not that he was deposed from his principality; the loss of it never once vexed him; he knew that his brother would share with him as he would have done with his brother; but after all those struggles and doubts in his own mind, to find himself poor, and yet irrevocably bound to his elderly cousin! Yes, she was elderly, there was no doubt about it. When she came to that horrible den in Cursitor Street and the tears washed her rouge off, why, she looked as old as his mother! her face was all wrinkled and yellow, and as he thought of her he felt just such a qualm as he had when she was taken ill that day in the coach on their road to Tunbridge. What would his mother say when he brought her home, and, Lord, what battles there would be between them! He would go and live on one of the plantations--the farther from home the better--and have a few negroes, and farm as best he might, and hunt a good deal; but at Castlewood or in her own home, such as he could make it for her, what a life for poor Maria, who had been used to go to court and to cards and balls and assemblies every night! If he could be but the overseer of the estates--oh, he would be an honest factor, and try and make up for his useless life and extravagance in these past days! Five thousand pounds, all his patrimony and the accumulations of his long minority squandered in six months! He a beggar, except for dear George's kindness, with nothing in life left to him but an old wife,--a pretty beggar, dressed out in velvet and silver lace forsooth--the poor lad was arrayed in his best clothes--a pretty figure he had made in Europe, and a nice end he was come to! With all his fine friends at White's and Newmarket, with all his extravagance, had he been happy a single day since he had been in Europe? Yes, three days, four days, yesterday evening, when he had been with dear dear Mrs. Lambert, and those affectionate kind girls, and that brave good Colonel. And the Colonel was right when he rebuked him for his spendthrift follies, and he had been a brute to be angry as he had been, and God bless them all for their generous exertions in his behalf! Such were the thoughts which Harry put into his pipe, and he smoked them whilst he waited his brother's return from Madame Bernstein.

LIV. During which Harry sits smoking his Pipe at Home

The maternal grandfather of our Virginians, the Colonel Esmond of whom frequent mention has been made, and who had quitted England to reside in the New World, had devoted some portion of his long American leisure to the composition of the memoirs of his early life. In these volumes, Madame de Bernstein (Mrs. Beatrice Esmond was her name as a spinster) played a very considerable part; and as George had read his grandfather's manuscript many times over, he had learned to know his kinswoman long before he saw her,--to know, at least, the lady, young, beautiful, and wilful, of half a century since, with whom he now became acquainted in the decline of her days. When cheeks are faded and eyes are dim, is it sad or pleasant, I wonder, for the woman who is a beauty no more, to recall the period of her bloom! When the heart is withered, do the old love to remember how it once was fresh and beat with warm emotions? When the spirits are languid and weary, do we like to think how bright they were in other days, the hope how buoyant, the sympathies how ready, the enjoyment of life how keen and eager? So they fall--the buds of prime, the roses of beauty, the florid harvests of summer,--fall and wither, and the naked branches shiver in the winter.

“And that was a beauty once!” thinks George Warrington, as his aunt, in her rouge and diamonds, comes in from her rout, “and that ruin was a splendid palace. Crowds of lovers have sighed before those decrepit feet, and been bewildered by the brightness of those eyes.” He remembered a firework at home, at Williamsburg, on the King's birthday, and afterwards looking at the skeleton-wheel and the sockets of the exploded Roman candles. The dazzle and brilliancy of Aunt Beatrice's early career passed before him, as he thought over his grandsire's journals. Honest Harry had seen them, too, but Harry was no bookman, and had not read the manuscript very carefully: nay, if he had, he would probably not have reasoned about it as his brother did, being by no means so much inclined to moralising as his melancholy senior.

Mr. Warrington thought that there was no cause why he should tell his aunt how intimate he was with her early history, and accordingly held his peace upon that point. When their meal was over, she pointed with her cane to her escritoire, and bade her attendant bring the letter which lay under the inkstand there; and George, recognising the superscription, of course knew the letter to be that of which he had been the bearer from home.

“It would appear by this letter,” said the old lady, looking hard at her nephew, “that ever since your return, there have been some differences between you and my sister.”

“Indeed? I did not know that Madam Esmond had alluded to them,” George said.

The Baroness puts a great pair of glasses upon eyes which shot fire and kindled who knows how many passions in old days, and, after glancing over the letter, hands it to George, who reads as follows:--

“RICHMOND, VIRGINIA, December 26th, 1756.

“HONOURED MADAM! AND SISTER!--I have received, and thankfully acknowledge, your ladyship's favour, per Rose packet, of October 23 ult.; and straightway answer you at a season which should be one of goodwill and peace to all men: but in which Heaven hath nevertheless decreed we should still bear our portion of earthly sorrow and trouble. My reply will be brought to you by my eldest son, Mr. Esmond Warrington, who returned to us so miraculously out of the Valley of the Shadow of Death (as our previous letters have informed my poor Henry), and who is desirous, not without my consent to his wish, to visit Europe, though he has been amongst us so short a while. I grieve to think that my dearest Harry should have appeared at home--I mean in England--under false colours, as it were; and should have been presented to his Majesty, to our family, and his own, as his father's heir, whilst my dear son George was still alive, though dead to us. Ah, madam! During the eighteen months of his captivity, what anguish have his mother's, his brother's, hearts undergone! My Harry's is the tenderest of any man's now alive. In the joy of seeing Mr. Esmond Warrington returned to life, he will forget the worldly misfortune which befalls him. He will return to (comparative) poverty without a pang. The most generous, the most obedient of human beings, of sons, he will gladly give up to his elder brother that inheritance which had been his own but for the accident of birth, and for the providential return of my son George.

“Your beneficent intentions towards dearest Harry will be more than ever welcome, now he is reduced to a younger brother's slender portion! Many years since, an advantageous opportunity occurred of providing for him in this province, and he would by this time have been master of a noble estate and negroes, and have been enabled to make a figure with most here, could his mother's wishes have been complied with, and his father's small portion, now lying at small interest in the British funds, have been invested in this most excellent purchase. But the forms of the law, and, I grieve to own, my elder son's scruples, prevailed, and this admirable opportunity was lost to me! Harry will find the savings of his income have been carefully accumulated--long, long may he live to enjoy them! May Heaven bless you, dear sister, for what your ladyship may add to his little store! As I gather from your letter, that the sum which has been allowed to him has not been sufficient for his expenses in the fine company which he has kept (and the grandson of the Marquis of Esmond--one who had so nearly been his lordship's heir--may sure claim equality with any other nobleman in Great Britain), and having a sum by me which I had always intended for the poor child's establishment, I entrust it to my eldest son, who, to do him justice, hath a most sincere regard for his brother, to lay it out for Harry's best advantage.”

“It took him out of prison yesterday, madam. I think that was the best use to which we could put it,” interposed George, at this stage of his mother's letter.

“Nay, sir, I don't know any such thing! Why not have kept it to buy a pair of colours for him, or to help towards another estate and some negroes, if he has a fancy for home?” cried the old lady. “Besides, I had a fancy to pay that debt myself.”

“I hope you will let his brother do that. I ask leave to be my brother's banker in this matter, and consider I have borrowed so much from my mother, to be paid back to my dear Harry.”

“Do you say so, sir? Give me a glass of wine! You are an extravagant fellow! Read on, and you will see your mother thinks so. I drink to your health, nephew George! 'Tis good Burgundy. Your grandfather never loved Burgundy. He loved claret, the little he drank.”

And George proceeded with the letter:

“This remittance will, I trust, amply cover any expenses which, owing to the mistake respecting his position, dearest Harry may have incurred. I wish I could trust his elder brother's prudence as confidently as my Harry's! But I fear that, even in his captivity, Mr. Esmond W. has learned little of that humility which becomes all Christians, and which I have ever endeavoured to teach to my children. Should you by chance show him these lines, when, by the blessing of Heaven on those who go down to the sea in ships, the Great Ocean divides us! he will know that a fond mother's blessing and prayers follow both her children, and that there is no act I have ever done, no desire I have ever expressed (however little he may have been inclined to obey it!) but hath been dictated by the fondest wishes for my dearest boys' welfare.”

“There is a scratch with a penknife, and a great blot upon the letter there, as if water had fallen on it. Your mother writes well, George. I suppose you and she had a difference?” said George's aunt, not unkindly.

“Yes, ma'am, many,” answered the young man, sadly. “The last was about a question of money--of ransom which I promised to the old lieutenant of the fort who aided me to make my escape. I told you he had a mistress, a poor Indian woman, who helped me, and was kind to me. Six weeks after my arrival at home, the poor thing made her appearance at Richmond, having found her way through the wood by pretty much the same track which I had followed, and bringing me the token which Museau had promised to send me when he connived to my flight. A commanding officer and a considerable reinforcement had arrived at Duquesne. Charges, I don't know of what peculation (for his messenger could not express herself very clearly), had been brought against this Museau. He had been put under arrest, and had tried to escape; but, less fortunate than myself, he had been shot on the rampart, and he sent the Indian woman to me, with my grandfather's watch, and a line scrawled in his prison on his deathbed, begging me to send ce que je scavais to a notary at Havre de Grace in France to be transmitted to his relatives at Caen in Normandy. My friend Silverheels, the hunter, had helped my poor Indian on her way. I don't know how she would have escaped scalping else. But at home they received the poor thing sternly. They hardly gave her a welcome. I won't say what suspicions they had regarding her and me. The poor wretch fell to drinking whenever she could find means. I ordered that she should have food and shelter, and she became the jest of our negroes, and formed the subject of the scandal and tittle-tattle of the old fools in our little town. Our Governor was, luckily, a man of sense, and I made interest with him, and procured a pass to send her back to her people. Her very grief at parting with me only served to confirm the suspicions against her. A fellow preached against me from the pulpit, I believe; I had to treat another with a cane. And I had a violent dispute with Madam Esmond--a difference which is not healed yet--because I insisted upon paying to the heirs Museau pointed out the money I had promised for my deliverance. You see that scandal flourishes at the borders of the wilderness, and in the New World as well as the Old.”

“I have suffered from it myself, my dear!” said Madame Bernstein, demurely. “Fill thy glass, child! A little tass of cherry-brandy! 'Twill do thee all the good in the world.”

“As for my poor Harry's marriage,” Madam Esmond's letter went on, “though I know too well, from sad experience, the dangers to which youth is subject, and would keep my boy, at any price, from them, though I should wish him to marry a person of rank, as becomes his birth, yet my Lady Maria Esmond is out of the question. Her age is almost the same as mine; and I know my brother Castlewood left his daughters with the very smallest portions. My Harry is so obedient that I know a desire from me will be sufficient to cause him to give up this imprudent match. Some foolish people once supposed that I myself once thought of a second union, and with a person of rank very different from ours. No! I knew what was due to my children. As succeeding to this estate after me, Mr. Esmond W. is amply provided for. Let my task now be to save for his less fortunate younger brother: and, as I do not love to live quite alone, let him return without delay to his fond and loving mother.

“The report which your ladyship hath given of my Harry fills my heart with warmest gratitude. He is all indeed a mother may wish. A year in Europe will have given him a polish and refinement which he could not acquire in our homely Virginia. Mr. Stack, one of our invaluable ministers in Richmond, hath a letter from Mr. Ward--my darlings' tutor of early days--who knows my Lady Warrington and her excellent family, and saith that my Harry has lived much with his cousins of late. I am grateful to think that my boy has the privilege of being with his good aunt. May he follow her counsels, and listen to those around him who will guide him on the way of his best welfare! Adieu, dear madam and sister! For your kindness to my boy accept the grateful thanks of a mother's heart. Though we have been divided hitherto, may these kindly ties draw us nearer and nearer. I am thankful that you should speak of my dearest father so. He was, indeed, one of the best of men! He, too, thanks you, I know, for the love you have borne to one of his children; and his daughter subscribes herself,--With sincere thanks, your ladyship's most dutiful and grateful sister and servant, RACHEL ESMOND WN.

“P.S.--I have communicated with my Lady Maria; but there will no need to tell her and dear Harry that his mother or your ladyship hope to be able to increase his small fortune. The match is altogether unsuitable.”

“As far as regards myself, madam,” George said, laying down the paper, “my mother's letter conveys no news to me. I always knew that Harry was the favourite son with Madam Esmond, as he deserves indeed to be. He has a hundred good qualities which I have not the good fortune to possess. He has better looks----”

“Nay, that is not your fault,” said the old lady, slily looking at him; “and, but that he is fair and you are brown, one might almost pass for the other.”

Mr. George bowed, and a faint blush tinged his pale cheek.

“His disposition is bright, and mine is dark,” he continued; “Harry is cheerful, and I am otherwise, perhaps. He knows how to make himself beloved by every one, and it has been my lot to find but few friends.”

“My sister and you have pretty little quarrels. There were such in old days in our family,” the Baroness said; “and if Madam Esmond takes after our mother----”

“My mother has always described hers as an angel upon earth,” interposed George.

“Eh! That is a common character for people when they are dead!” cried the Baroness; “and Rachel Castlewood was an angel, if you like--at least your grandfather thought so. But let me tell you, sir, that angels are sometimes not very commodes a vivre. It may be they are too good to live with us sinners, and the air down below here don't agree with them. My poor mother was so perfect that she never could forgive me for being otherwise. Ah, mon Dieu! how she used to oppress me with those angelical airs!”

George cast down his eyes, and thought of his own melancholy youth. He did not care to submit more of his family secrets to the cynical inquisition of this old worldling, who seemed, however, to understand him in spite of his reticence.

“I quite comprehend you, sir, though you hold your tongue,” the Baroness continued. “A sermon in the morning: a sermon at night: and two or three of a Sunday. That is what people call being good. Every pleasure cried fie upon; all us worldly people excommunicated; a ball an abomination of desolation; a play a forbidden pastime; and a game of cards perdition! What a life! Mon Dieu, what a life!”

“We played at cards every night, if we were so inclined,” said George, smiling; “and my grandfather loved Shakspeare so much, that my mother had not a word to say against her father's favourite author.”

“I remember. He could say whole pages by heart; though, for my part, I like Mr. Congreve a great deal better. And then, there was that dreadful, dreary Milton, whom he and Mr. Addison pretended to admire!” cried the old lady, tapping her fan.

“If your ladyship does not like Shakspeare, you will not quarrel with my mother for being indifferent to him, too,” said George. “And indeed I think, and I am sure, that you don't do her justice. Wherever there are any poor she relieves them; wherever there are any sick she----”

“She doses them with her horrible purges and boluses!” cried the Baroness. “Of course, just as my mother did!”

“She does her best to cure them! She acts for the best, and performs her duty as far as she knows it.”

“I don't blame you, sir, for doing yours, and keeping your own counsel about Madam Esmond,” said the old lady. “But at least there is one point upon which we all three agree--that this absurd marriage must be prevented. Do you know how old the woman is? I can tell you, though she has torn the first leaf out of the family Bible at Castlewood.”

“My mother has not forgotten her cousin's age, and is shocked at the disparity between her and my poor brother. Indeed, a city-bred lady of her time of life, accustomed to London gaiety and luxury, would find but a dismal home in our Virginian plantation. Besides, the house, such as it is, is not Harry's. He is welcome there, Heaven knows; more welcome, perhaps, than I, to whom the property comes in natural reversion; but, as I told him, I doubt how his wife would--would like our colony,” George said, with a blush, and a hesitation in his sentence.

The old lady laughed shrilly. “He, he! nephew Warrington!” she said, “you need not scruple to speak your mind out. I shall tell no tales to your mother: though 'tis no news to me that she has a high temper, and loves her own way. Harry has held his tongue, too; but it needed no conjurer to see who was the mistress at home, and what sort of a life my sister led you. I love my niece, my Lady Molly, so well, that I could wish her two or three years of Virginia, with your mother reigning over her. You may well look alarmed, sir! Harry has said quite enough to show me who governs the family.”

“Madam,” said George, smiling, “I may say as much as this, that I don't envy any woman coming into our house against my mother's will: and my poor brother knows this perfectly well.”

“What? You two have talked the matter over? No doubt you have. And the foolish child considers himself bound in honour--of course he does, the gaby!”

“He says Lady Maria has behaved most nobly to him. When he was sent to prison, she brought him her trinkets and jewels, and every guinea she had in the world. This behaviour has touched him so, that he feels more deeply than ever bound to her ladyship. But I own my brother seems bound by honour rather than love--such at least is his present feeling.”

“My good creature,” cries Madame Bernstein, “don't you see that Maria brings a few twopenny trinkets and a half-dozen guineas to Mr. Esmond, the heir of the great estate in Virginia,--not to the second son, who is a beggar, and has just squandered away every shilling of his fortune? I swear to you, on my credit as a gentlewoman, that, knowing Harry's obstinacy, and the misery he had in store for himself, I tried to bribe Maria to give up her engagement with him, and only failed because I could not bribe high enough! When he was in prison, I sent my lawyer to him, with orders to pay his debts immediately, if he would but part from her, but Maria had been beforehand with us, and Mr. Harry chose not to go back from his stupid word. Let me tell you what has passed in the last month!” And here the old lady narrated at length the history which we know already, but in that cynical language which was common in her times, when the finest folks and the most delicate ladies called things and people by names which we never utter in good company nowadays. And so much the better on the whole. We mayn't be more virtuous, but it is something to be more decent: perhaps we are not more pure, but of a surety we are more cleanly.

Madame Bernstein talked so much, so long, and so cleverly, that she was quite pleased with herself and her listener; and when she put herself into the hands of Mrs. Brett to retire for the night, informed the waiting-maid that she had changed her opinion about her eldest nephew, and that Mr. George was handsome, that he was certainly much wittier than poor Harry (whom Heaven, it must be confessed, had not furnished with a very great supply of brains), and that he had quite the bel air--a something melancholy--a noble and distinguished je ne scais quoy--which reminded her of the Colonel. Had she ever told Brett about the Colonel? Scores of times, no doubt. And now she told Brett about the Colonel once more. Meanwhile, perhaps, her new favourite was not quite so well pleased with her as she was with him. What a strange picture of life and manners had the old lady unveiled to her nephew! How she railed at all the world round about her! How unconsciously did she paint her own family--her own self; how selfish, one and all; pursuing what mean ends; grasping and scrambling frantically for what petty prizes; ambitious for what shabby recompenses; trampling--from life's beginning to its close--through what scenes of stale dissipations and faded pleasures! “Are these the inheritors of noble blood?” thought George, as he went home quite late from his aunt's house, passing by doors whence the last guests of fashion were issuing, and where the chairmen were yawning over their expiring torches. “Are these the proud possessors of ancestral honours and ancient names, and were their forefathers, when in life, no better? We have our pedigree at home with noble coats-of-arms emblazoned all over the branches, and titles dating back before the Conquest and the Crusaders. When a knight of old found a friend in want, did he turn his back upon him, or an unprotected damsel, did he delude her and leave her? When a nobleman of the early time received a young kinsman, did he get the better of him at dice, and did the ancient chivalry cheat in horseflesh? Can it be that this wily woman of the world, as my aunt has represented, has inveigled my poor Harry into an engagement, that her tears are false, and that as soon as she finds him poor she will desert him? Had we not best pack the trunks and take a cabin in the next ship bound for home?” George reached his own door revolving these thoughts, and Gumbo came up yawning with a candle, and Harry was asleep before the extinguished fire, with the ashes of his emptied pipe on the table beside him.

He starts up; his eyes, for a moment dulled by sleep, lighten with pleasure as he sees his dear George. He puts his arm round his brother with a boyish laugh.

“There he is in flesh and blood, thank God!” he says; “I was dreaming of thee but now, George, and that Ward was hearing us our lesson! Dost thou remember the ruler, Georgy? Why, bless my soul, 'tis three o'clock! Where have you been a-gadding, Mr. George? Hast thou supped? I supped at White's, but I'm hungry again. I did not play, sir,--no, no; no more of that for younger brothers! And my Lord March paid me fifty he lost to me. I bet against his horse and on the Duke of Hamilton's! They both rode the match at Newmarket this morning, and he lost because he was under weight. And he paid me, and he was as sulky as a bear. Let us have one pipe, Georgy!--just one.”

And after the smoke the young men went to bed, where I, for one, wish them a pleasant rest, for sure it is a good and pleasant thing to see brethren who love one another.

LV. Between Brothers

Of course our young men had had their private talk about home, and all the people and doings there, and each had imparted to the other full particulars of his history since their last meeting. How were Harry's dogs, and little Dempster, and good old Nathan, and the rest of the household? Was Mountain well, and Fanny grown to be a pretty girl? So Parson Broadbent's daughter was engaged to marry Tom Barker of Savannah, and they were to go and live in Georgia! Harry owns that at one period he was very sweet upon Parson Broadbent's daughter, and lost a great deal of pocket-money at cards, and drank a great quantity of strong-waters with the father, in order to have a pretext for being near the girl. But, Heaven help us! Madam Esmond would never have consented to his throwing himself away upon Polly Broadbent. So Colonel G. Washington's wife was a pretty woman, very good-natured and pleasant, and with a good fortune? He had brought her into Richmond, and paid a visit of state to Madam Esmond. George described, with much humour, the awful ceremonials at the interview between these two personages, and the killing politeness of his mother to Mr. Washington's young wife. “Never mind, George, my dear!” says Mrs. Mountain. “The Colonel has taken another wife, but I feel certain that at one time two young gentlemen I know of ran a very near chance of having a tall stepfather six feet two in his boots.” To be sure, Mountain was for ever match-making in her mind. Two people could not play a game at cards together, or sit down to a dish of tea, but she fancied their conjunction was for life. It was she--the foolish tattler--who had set the report abroad regarding the poor Indian woman. As for Madam Esmond, she had repelled the insinuation with scorn when Parson Stack brought it to her, and said, “I should as soon fancy Mr. Esmond stealing the spoons, or marrying a negro woman out of the kitchen.” But, though she disdained to find the poor Biche guilty, and even thanked her for attending her son in his illness, she treated her with such a chilling haughtiness of demeanour, that the Indian slunk away into the servants' quarters, and there tried to drown her disappointments with drink. It was not a cheerful picture that which George gave of his two months at home. “The birthright is mine, Harry,” he said, “but thou art the favourite, and God help me! I think my mother almost grudges it to me. Why should I have taken the pas, and preceded your worship into the world? Had you been the eider, you would have had the best cellar, and ridden the best nag, and been the most popular man in the country, whereas I have not a word to say for myself, and frighten people by my glum face: I should have been second son, and set up as lawyer, or come to England and got my degrees, and turned parson, and said grace at your honour's table. The time is out of joint, sir. O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right!”

“Why, Georgy, you are talking verses, I protest you are!” says Harry.

“I think, my dear, some one else talked those verses before me,” says George, with a smile.

“It's out of one of your books. You know every book that ever was wrote, that I do believe!” cries Harry, and then told his brother how he had seen the two authors at Tunbridge, and how he had taken off his hat to them. “Not that I cared much about their books, not being clever enough. But I remembered how my dear old George used to speak of 'em,” says Harry, with a choke in his voice, “and that's why I liked to see them. I say, dear, it's like a dream seeing you over again. Think of that bloody Indian with his knife at my George's head! I should like to give that Monsieur de Florac something for saving you--but I haven't got much now, only my little gold knee-buckles, and they ain't worth two guineas.”

“You have got the half of what I have, child, and we'll divide as soon as I have paid the Frenchman,” George said.

On which Harry broke out not merely into blessings but actual imprecations, indicating his intense love and satisfaction; and he swore that there never was such a brother in the world as his brother George. Indeed, for some days after his brother's arrival his eyes followed George about: he would lay down his knife and fork, or his newspaper, when they were sitting together, and begin to laugh to himself. When he walked with George on the Mall or in Hyde Park, he would gaze round at the company, as much as to say, “Look here, gentlemen! This is he. This is my brother, that was dead and is alive again! Can any man in Christendom produce such a brother as this?”

Of course he was of opinion that George should pay to Museau's heirs the sum which he had promised for his ransom. This question had been the cause of no small unhappiness to poor George at home. Museau dead, Madam Esmond argued with much eagerness, and not a little rancour, the bargain fell to the ground, and her son was free. The man was a rogue in the first instance. She would not pay the wages of iniquity. Mr. Esmond had a small independence from his father, and might squander his patrimony if he chose. He was of age, and the money was in his power; but she would be no party to such extravagance, as giving twelve thousand livres to a parcel of peasants in Normandy with whom we were at war, and who would very likely give it all to the priests and the pope. She would not subscribe to any such wickedness. If George wanted to squander away his father's money (she must say that formerly he had not been so eager, and when Harry's benefit was in question had refused to touch a penny of it!)--if he wished to spend it now, why not give it to his own flesh and blood, to poor Harry, who was suddenly deprived of his inheritance, and not to a set of priest-ridden peasants in France? This dispute had raged between mother and son during the whole of the latter's last days in Virginia. It had never been settled. On the morning of George's departure, Madam Esmond had come to his bedside after a sleepless night, and asked him whether he still persisted in his intention to fling away his father's property?

He replied in a depth of grief and perplexity, that his word was passed, and he must do as his honour bade him. She answered that she would continue to pray that Heaven might soften his proud heart, and enable her to bear her heavy trials: and the last view George had of his mother's face was as she stood yet a moment by his bedside, pale and with tearless eyes, before she turned away and slowly left his chamber.

“Where didst thou learn the art of winning over everybody to thy side, Harry?” continued George; “and how is it that you and all the world begin by being friends? Teach me a few lessons in popularity, nay, I don't know that I will have them; and when I find and hear certain people hate me, I think I am rather pleased than angry. At first, at Richmond, Mr. Esmond Warrington, the only prisoner who had escaped from Braddock's field--the victim of so much illness and hardship--was a favourite with the town-folks, and received privately and publicly with no little kindness. The parson glorified my escape in a sermon; the neighbours came to visit the fugitive; the family coach was ordered out, and Madam Esmond and I paid our visits in return. I think some pretty little caps were set at me. But these our mother routed off, and frightened with the prodigious haughtiness of her demeanour; and my popularity was already at the decrease before the event occurred which put the last finishing stroke to it. I was not jolly enough for the officers, and didn't care for their drinking-bouts, dice-boxes, and swearing. I was too sarcastic for the ladies, and their tea and tattle stupefied me almost as much as the men's blustering and horse-talk. I cannot tell thee, Harry, how lonely I felt in that place, amidst the scandal and squabbles: I regretted my prison almost, and found myself more than once wishing for the freedom of thought, and the silent ease of Duquesne. I am very shy, I suppose: I can speak unreservedly to very few people. Before most, I sit utterly silent. When we two were at home, it was thou who used to talk at table, and get a smile now and then from our mother. When she and I were together we had no subject in common, and we scarce spoke at all until we began to dispute about law and divinity.

“So the gentlemen had determined I was supercilious, and a dull companion (and, indeed, I think their opinion was right), and the ladies thought I was cold and sarcastic,--could never make out whether I was in earnest or no, and, I think, generally voted I was a disagreeable fellow, before my character was gone quite away; and that went with the appearance of the poor Biche. Oh, a nice character they made for me, my dear!” cried George, in a transport of wrath, “and a pretty life they led me after Museau's unlucky messenger had appeared amongst us! The boys hooted the poor woman if she appeared in the street; the ladies dropped me half-curtseys, and walked over to the other side. That precious clergyman went from one tea-table to another preaching on the horrors of seduction, and the lax principles which young men learned in popish countries and brought back thence. The poor Fawn's appearance at home a few weeks after my return home, was declared to be a scheme between her and me; and the best informed agreed that she had waited on the other side of the river until I gave her the signal to come and join me in Richmond. The officers bantered me at the coffee-house, and cracked their clumsy jokes about the woman I had selected. Oh, the world is a nice charitable world! I was so enraged that I thought of going to Castlewood and living alone there,--for our mother finds the place dull, and the greatest consolation in precious Mr. Stack's ministry,--when the news arrived of your female perplexity, and I think we were all glad that I should have a pretext for coming to Europe.”

“I should like to see any of the infernal scoundrels who said word against you, and break their rascally bones,” roars out Harry, striding up and down the room.

“I had to do something like it for Bob Clubber.”

“What! that little sneaking, backbiting, toad-eating wretch, who is always hanging about my lord at Greenway Court, and spunging on every gentleman in the country? If you whipped him, I hope you whipped him well, George?”

“We were bound over to keep the peace; and I offered to go into Maryland with him and settle our difference there, and of course the good folk said, that having made free with the seventh commandment I was inclined to break the sixth. So, by this and by that--and being as innocent of the crime imputed to me as you are--I left home, my dear Harry, with as awful a reputation as ever a young gentleman earned.”

Ah, what an opportunity is there here to moralise! If the esteemed reader and his humble servant could but know--could but write down in a book--could but publish, with illustrations, a collection of the lies which have been told regarding each of us since we came to man's estate,--what a harrowing and thrilling work of fiction that romance would be! Not only is the world informed of everything about you, but of a great deal more. Not long since the kind postman brought a paper containing a valuable piece of criticism, which stated--“This author states he was born in such and such a year. It is a lie. He was born in the year so and so.” The critic knew better: of course he did. Another (and both came from the country which gave MULLIGAN birth) warned some friend, saying, “Don't speak of New South Wales to him. He has a brother there, and the family never mention his name.” But this subject is too vast and noble for a mere paragraph. I shall prepare a memoir, or let us have rather, par une societe de gens de lettres, a series of biographies, of lives of gentlemen, as told by their dear friends whom they don't know.

George having related his exploits as champion and martyr, of course Harry had to unbosom himself to his brother, and lay before his elder an account of his private affairs. He gave up all the family of Castlewood--my lord, not for getting the better of him at play; for Harry was a sporting man, and expected to pay when he lost, and receive when he won; but for refusing to aid the chaplain in his necessity, and dismissing him with such false and heartless pretexts. About Mr. Will he had made up his mind, after the horse-dealing matter, and freely marked his sense of the latter's conduct upon Mr. Will's eyes and nose. Respecting the Countess and Lady Fanny, Harry spoke in a manner more guarded, but not very favourable. He had heard all sorts of stories about them. The Countess was a card-playing old cat; Lady Fanny was a desperate flirt. Who told him? Well, he had heard the stories from a person who knew them both very well indeed. In fact, in those days of confidence, of which we made mention in the last volume, Maria had freely imparted to her cousin a number of anecdotes respecting her stepmother and her half-sister, which were by no means in favour of those ladies.

But in respect to Lady Maria herself, the young man was staunch and hearty. “It may be imprudent: I don't say no, George. I may be a fool: I think I am. I know there will be a dreadful piece of work at home, and that Madam and she will fight. Well! we must live apart. Our estate is big enough to live on without quarrelling, and I can go elsewhere than to Richmond or Castlewood. When you come to the property, you'll give me a bit--at any rate, Madam will let me off at an easy rent--or I'll make a famous farmer or factor. I can't and won't part from Maria. She has acted so nobly by me, that I should be a rascal to turn my back on her. Think of her bringing me every jewel she had in the world, dear brave creature! and flinging them into my lap with her last guineas,--and--and--God bless her!” Here Harry dashed his sleeve across his eyes, with a stamp of his foot, and said, “No, brother, I won't part with her--not to be made Governor of Virginia tomorrow; and my dearest old George would never advise me to do so, I know that.”

“I am sent here to advise you,” George replied. “I am sent to break the marriage off, if I can: and a more unhappy one I can't imagine. But I can't counsel you to break your word, my boy.”

“I knew you couldn't! What's said is said, George. I have made my bed, and must lie on it,” says Mr. Harry, gloomily.

Such had been the settlement between our two young worthies, when they first talked over Mr. Harry's love affair. But after George's conversation with his aunt, and the further knowledge of his family, which he acquired through the information of that keen old woman of the world, Mr. Warrington, who was naturally of a sceptical turn, began to doubt about Lady Maria, as well as regarding her brothers and sister, and looked at Harry's engagement with increased distrust and alarm. Was it for his wealth that Maria wanted Harry? Was it his handsome young person that she longed after? Were those stories true which Aunt Bernstein had told of her? Certainly he could not advise Harry to break his word; but he might cast about in his mind for some scheme for putting Maria's affection to the trial; and his ensuing conduct, which appeared not very amiable, I suppose resulted from this deliberation.

LVI. Ariadne

My Lord Castlewood had a house in Kensington Square spacious enough to accommodate the several members of his noble family, and convenient for their service at the palace hard by, when his Majesty dwelt there. Her ladyship had her evenings, and gave her card-parties here for such as would come; but Kensington was a long way from London a hundred years since, and George Selwyn said he for one was afraid to go, for fear of being robbed of a night,--whether by footpads with crape over their faces, or by ladies in rouge at the quadrille-table, we have no means of saying. About noon on the day after Harry had made his reappearance at White's, it chanced that all his virtuous kinsfolks partook of breakfast together, even Mr. Will being present, who was to go into waiting in the afternoon.

The ladies came first to their chocolate: them Mr. Will joined in his court suit; finally, my lord appeared, languid, in his bedgown and nightcap, having not yet assumed his wig for the day. Here was news which Will had brought home from the Star and Garter last night, when he supped in company with some men who had heard it at White's and seen it at Ranelagh!

“Heard what? seen what?” asked the head of the house, taking up his Daily Advertiser.

“Ask Maria!” says Lady Fanny. My lord turns to his elder sister, who wears a face of portentous sadness, and looks as pale as a tablecloth.

“'Tis one of Will's usual elegant and polite inventions,” says Maria.

“No,” swore Will, with several of his oaths; “it was no invention of his. Tom Claypool of Norfolk saw 'em both at Ranelagh; and Jack Morris came out of White's, where he heard the story from Harry Warrington's own lips. Curse him, I'm glad of it!” roars Will, slapping the table. “What do you think of your Fortunate Youth, your Virginian, whom your lordship made so much of, turning out to be a second son?”

“The elder brother not dead?” says my lord.

“No more dead than you are. Never was. It's my belief that it was a cross between the two.”

“Mr. Warrington is incapable of such duplicity!” cries Maria.

“I never encouraged the fellow, I am sure you will do me justice there,” says my lady. “Nor did Fanny: not we, indeed!”

“Not we, indeed!” echoes my Lady Fanny.

“The fellow is only a beggar, and, I dare say, has not paid for the clothes on his back,” continues Will. “I'm glad of it, for, hang him, I hate him!”

“You don't regard him with favourable eyes; especially since he blacked yours, Will!” grins my lord. “So the poor fellow has found his brother, and lost his estate!” And here he turned towards his sister Maria, who, although she looked the picture of woe, must have suggested something ludicrous to the humourist near whom she sate; for his lordship, having gazed at her for a minute, burst into a shrill laugh, which caused the poor lady's face to flush, and presently her eyes to pour over with tears. “It's a shame! it's a shame!” she sobbed out, and hid her face in her handkerchief. Maria's stepmother and sister looked at each other. “We never quite understand your lordship's humour,” the former lady remarked, gravely.

“I don't see there is the least reason why you should,” said my lord, coolly. “Maria, my dear, pray excuse me if I have said--that is, done anything, to hurt your feelings.”

“Done anything! You pillaged the poor lad in his prosperity, and laugh at him in his ruin!” says Maria, rising from table, and glaring round at all her family.

“Excuse me, my dear sister, I was not laughing at him,” said my lord, gently.

“Oh, never mind at what or whom else, my lord! You have taken from him all he had to lose. All the world points at you as the man who feeds on his own flesh and blood. And now you have his all, you make merry over his misfortune!” And away she rustled from the room, flinging looks of defiance at all the party there assembled.

“Tell us what has happened, or what you have heard, Will, and my sister's grief will not interrupt us.” And Will told, at great length, and with immense exultation at Harry's discomfiture, the story now buzzed through all London, of George Warrington's sudden apparition. Lord Castlewood was sorry for Harry: Harry was a good, brave lad, and his kinsman liked him, as much as certain worldly folks like each other. To be sure he played Harry at cards, and took the advantage of the market upon him; but why not? The peach which other men would certainly pluck, he might as well devour. Eh! if that were all my conscience had to reproach me with, I need not be very uneasy! my lord thought. “Where does Mr. Warrington live?”

Will expressed himself ready to enter upon a state of reprobation if he knew or cared.

“He shall be invited here, and treated with every respect,” said my lord.

“Including piquet, I suppose!” growls Will.

“Or will you take him to the stables, and sell him one of your bargains of horseflesh, Will?” asks Lord Castlewood. “You would have won of Harry Warrington fast enough, if you could; but you cheat so clumsily at your game that you got paid with a cudgel. I desire, once more, that every attention may be paid to our cousin Warrington.”

“And that you are not to be disturbed, when you sit down to play, of course, my lord!” cries Lady Castlewood.

“Madam, I desire fair play, for Mr. Warrington, and for myself, and for every member of this amiable family,” retorted Lord Castlewood, fiercely.

“Heaven help the poor gentleman if your lordship is going to be kind to him,” said the stepmother, with a curtsey; and there is no knowing how far this family dispute might have been carried, had not, at this moment, a phaeton driven up to the house, in which were seated the two young Virginians.

It was the carriage which our young Prodigal had purchased in the days of his prosperity. He drove it still: George sate in it by his side; their negroes were behind them. Harry had been for meekly giving the whip and reins to his brother, and ceding the whole property to him. “What business has a poor devil like me with horses and carriages, Georgy?” Harry had humbly said. “Beyond the coat on my back, and the purse my aunt gave me, I have nothing in the world. You take the driving-seat, brother; it will ease my mind if you will take the driving-seat.” George laughingly said he did not know the way, and Harry did; and that, as for the carriage, he would claim only a half of it, as he had already done with his brother's wardrobe. “But a bargain is a bargain; if I share thy coats, thou must divide my breeches' pocket, Harry; that is but fair dealing!” Again and again Harry swore there never was such a brother on earth. How he rattled his horses over the road! How pleased and proud he was to drive such a brother! They came to Kensington in famous high spirits; and Gumbo's thunder upon Lord Castlewood's door was worthy of the biggest footman in all St. James's.

Only my Lady Castlewood and her daughter Lady Fanny were in the room into which our young gentlemen were ushered. Will had no particular fancy to face Harry, my lord was not dressed, Maria had her reasons for being away, at least till her eyes were dried. When we drive up to friends' houses nowadays in our coaches-and-six, when John carries up our noble names, when, finally, we enter the drawing-room with our best hat and best Sunday smile foremost, does it ever happen that we interrupt a family row! that we come simpering and smiling in, and stepping over the delusive ashes of a still burning domestic heat? that in the interval between the hall-door and the drawing-room, Mrs., Mr., and the Misses Jones have grouped themselves in a family tableau; this girl artlessly arranging flowers in a vase, let us say; that one reclining over an illuminated work of devotion; mamma on the sofa, with the butcher's and grocer's book pushed under the cushion, some elegant work in her hand, and a pretty little foot pushed out advantageously; while honest Jones, far from saying, “Curse that Brown, he is always calling here!” holds out a kindly hand, shows a pleased face, and exclaims, “What, Brown my boy, delighted to see you! Hope you've come to lunch!” I say, does it ever happen to us to be made the victims of domestic artifices, the spectators of domestic comedies got up for our special amusement? Oh, let us be thankful, not only for faces, but for masks! not only for honest welcome, but for hypocrisy, which hides unwelcome things from us! Whilst I am talking, for instance, in this easy, chatty way, what right have you, my good sir, to know what is really passing in my mind? It may be that I am racked with gout, or that my eldest son has just sent me in a thousand pounds' worth of college-bills, or that I am writhing under an attack of the Stoke Pogis Sentinel, which has just been sent me under cover, or that there is a dreadfully scrappy dinner, the evident remains of a party to which I didn't invite you, and yet I conceal my agony, I wear a merry smile; I say, “What! come to take pot-luck with us, Brown my boy! Betsy! put a knife and fork for Mr. Brown. Eat! Welcome! Fall to! It's my best!” I say that humbug which I am performing is beautiful self-denial--that hypocrisy is true virtue. Oh, if every man spoke his mind what an intolerable society ours would be to live in!

As the young gentlemen are announced, Lady Castlewood advances towards them with perfect ease and good-humour. “We have heard, Harry,” she says, looking at the latter with a special friendliness, “of this most extraordinary circumstance. My Lord Castlewood said at breakfast that he should wait on you this very day, Mr. Warrington, and, cousin Harry, we intend not to love you any the less because you are poor.”

“We shall be able to show now that it is not for your acres that we like you, Harry!” says Lady Fanny, following her mamma's lead.

“And I to whom the acres have fallen?” says Mr. George, with a smile and a bow.

“Oh, cousin, we shall like you for being like Harry!” replies the arch Lady Fanny.

Ah! who that has seen the world, has not admired that astonishing ease with which fine ladies drop you and pick you up again? Both the ladies now addressed themselves almost exclusively to the younger brother. They were quite civil to Mr. George: but with Mr. Harry they were fond, they were softly familiar, they were gently kind, they were affectionately reproachful. Why had Harry not been for days and days to see them?

“Better to have had a dish of tea and a game at piquet with them than with some other folks,” says Lady Castlewood. “If we had won enough to buy a paper of pins from you we should have been content; but young gentlemen don't know what is for their own good,” says mamma.

“Now you have no more money to play with, you can come and play with us, cousin!” cries fond Lady Fanny, lifting up a finger, “and so your misfortune will be good fortune to us.”

George was puzzled. This welcome of his brother was very different from that to which he had looked. All these compliments and attentions paid to the younger brother, though he was without a guinea! Perhaps the people were not so bad as they were painted? The Blackest of all Blacks is said not to be of quite so dark a complexion as some folks describe him.

This affectionate conversation continued for some twenty minutes, at the end of which period my Lord Castlewood made his appearance, wig on head, and sword by side. He greeted both the young men with much politeness: one not more than the other. “If you were to come to us--and I, for one, cordially rejoice to see you--what a pity it is you did not come a few months earlier! A certain evening at piquet would then most likely never have taken place. A younger son would have been more prudent.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Harry.

“Or a kinsman more compassionate. But I fear that love of play runs in the blood of all of us. I have it from my father, and it has made me the poorest peer in England. Those fair ladies whom you see before you are not exempt. My poor brother Will is a martyr to it; and what I, for my part, win on one day, I lose on the next. 'Tis shocking, positively, the rage for play in England. All my poor cousin's bank-notes parted company from me within twenty-four hours after I got them.”

“I have played, like other gentlemen, but never to hurt myself, and never indeed caring much for the sport,” remarked Mr. Warrington.

“When we heard that my lord had played with Harry, we did so scold him,” cried the ladies.

“But if it had not been I, thou knowest, cousin Warrington, some other person would have had thy money. 'Tis a poor consolation, but as such Harry must please to take it, and be glad that friends won his money, who wish him well, not strangers, who cared nothing for him, and fleeced him.”

“Eh! a tooth out is a tooth out, though it be your brother who pulls it, my lord!” said Mr. George, laughing. “Harry must bear the penalty of his faults, and pay his debts, like other men.”

“I am sure I have never said or thought otherwise. 'Tis not like an Englishman to be sulky because he is beaten,” says Harry.

“Your hand, cousin! You speak like a man!” cries my lord, with delight. The ladies smiled to each other.

“My sister, in Virginia, has known how to bring up her sons as gentlemen!” exclaims Lady Castlewood, enthusiastically.

“I protest you must not be growing so amiable now you are poor, cousin Harry!” cries cousin Fanny. “Why, mamma, we did not know half his good qualities when he was only Fortunate Youth and Prince of Virginia! You are exactly like him, cousin George, but I vow you can't be as amiable as your brother!”

“I am the Prince of Virginia, but I fear I am not the Fortunate Youth,” said George, gravely.

Harry was beginning, “By Jove, he is the best----” when the noise of a harpsichord was heard from the upper room. The lad blushed: the ladies smiled.

“'Tis Maria, above,” said Lady Castlewood. “Let some of us go up to her.”

The ladies rose, and made way towards the door; and Harry followed them, blushing very much. George was about to join the party, but Lord Castlewood checked him. “Nay, if all the ladies follow your brother” his lordship said, “let me at least have the benefit of your company and conversation. I long to hear the account of your captivity and rescue, cousin George!”

“Oh, we must hear that too!” cried one of the ladies, lingering.

“I am greedy, and should like it all by myself,” said Lord Castlewood, looking at her very sternly; and followed the women to the door, and closed it upon them with a low bow.

“Your brother has no doubt acquainted you with the history of all that has happened to him in this house, cousin George?” asked George's kinsman.

“Yes, including the quarrel with Mr. Will and the engagement to my Lady Maria,” replies George, with a bow. “I may be pardoned for saying that he hath met with but ill fortune here, my lord.”

“Which no one can deplore more cordially than myself. My brother lives with horse jockeys and trainers, and the wildest bloods of the town, and between us there is very little sympathy. We should not all live together, were we not so poor. This is the house which our grandmother occupied before she went to America and married Colonel Esmond. Much of the furniture belonged to her.” George looked round the wainscoted parlour with some interest. “Our house has not flourished in the last twenty years; though we had a promotion of rank a score of years since, owing to some interest we had at court, then. But the malady of play has been the ruin of us all. I am a miserable victim to it: only too proud to sell myself and title to a roturiere, as many noblemen, less scrupulous, have done. Pride is my fault, my dear cousin. I remember how I was born!” And his lordship laid his hand on his shirt-frill, turned out his toe, and looked his cousin nobly in the face.

Young George Warrington's natural disposition was to believe everything which everybody said to him. When once deceived, however, or undeceived about the character of a person, he became utterly incredulous, and he saluted this fine speech of my lord's with a sardonical, inward laughter, preserving his gravity, however, and scarce allowing any of his scorn to appear in his words.

“We have all our faults, my lord. That of play hath been condoned over and over again in gentlemen of our rank. Having heartily forgiven my brother, surely I cannot presume to be your lordship's judge in the matter; and instead of playing and losing, I wish sincerely that you had both played and won!”

“So do I, with all my heart!” says my lord with a sigh. “I augur well for your goodness when you can speak in this way, and for your experience and knowledge of the world, too, cousin, of which you seem to possess a greater share than most young men of your age. Your poor Harry hath the best heart in the world; but I doubt whether his head be very strong.”

“Not very strong, indeed. But he hath the art to make friends wherever he goes, and in spite of all his imprudences most people love him.”

“I do--we all do, I'm sure! as if he were our brother!” cries my lord.

“He has often described in his letters his welcome at your lordship's house. My mother keeps them all, you may be sure. Harry's style is not very learned, but his heart is so good, that to read him is better than wit.”

“I may be mistaken, but I fancy his brother possesses a good heart and a good wit, too!” says my lord, obstinately gracious.

“I am as Heaven made me, cousin; and perhaps some more experience and sorrow than has fallen to the lot of most young men.”

“This misfortune of your poor brother--I mean this piece of good fortune, your sudden reappearance--has not quite left Harry without resources?” continued Lord Castlewood, very gently.

“With nothing but what his mother can leave him, or I, at her death, can spare him. What is the usual portion here of a younger brother, my lord?”

“Eh! a younger brother here is--you know--in fine, everybody knows what a younger brother is,” said my lord, and shrugged his shoulders and looked his guest in the face.

The other went on: “We are the best of friends, but we are flesh and blood: and I don't pretend to do more for him than is usually done for younger brothers. Why give him money? That he should squander it at cards or horse-racing? My lord, we have cards and jockeys in Virginia, too; and my poor Harry hath distinguished himself in his own country already, before he came to yours. He inherits the family failing for dissipation.”

“Poor fellow, poor fellow, I pity him!”

“Our estate, you see, is great, but our income is small. We have little more money than that which we get from England for our tobacco--and very little of that too--for our tobacco comes back to us in the shape of goods, clothes, leather, groceries, ironmongery, nay, wine and beer for our people and ourselves. Harry may come back and share all these: there is a nag in the stable for him, a piece of venison on the table, a little ready money to keep his pocket warm, and a coat or two every year. This will go on whilst my mother lives, unless, which is far from improbable, he gets into some quarrel with Madam Esmond. Then, whilst I live he will have the run of the house and all it contains: then, if I die leaving children, he will be less and less welcome. His future, my lord, is a dismal one, unless some strange piece of luck turn up on which we were fools to speculate. Henceforth he is doomed to dependence, and I know no worse lot than to be dependent on a self-willed woman like our mother. The means he had to make himself respected at home he hath squandered away here. He has flung his patrimony to the dogs, and poverty and subserviency are now his only portion.” Mr. Warrington delivered this speech with considerable spirit and volubility, and his cousin heard him respectfully.

“You speak well, Mr. Warrington. Have you ever thought of public life?” said my lord.

“Of course I have thought of public life like every man of my station--every man, that is, who cares for something beyond a dice-box or a stable,” replies George. “I hope, my lord, to be able to take my own place, and my unlucky brother must content himself with his. This I say advisedly, having heard from him of certain engagements which he has formed, and which it would be misery to all parties were he to attempt to execute now.”

“Your logic is very strong,” said my lord. “Shall we go up and see the ladies? There is a picture above-stairs which your grandfather is said to have executed. Before you go, my dear cousin, you will please to fix a day when our family may have the honour of receiving you. Castlewood, you know, is always your home when we are there. It is something like your Virginian Castlewood, cousin, from your account. We have beef, and mutton, and ale, and wood, in plenty; but money is woefully scarce amongst us.”

They ascended to the drawing-room, where, however, they found only one of the ladies of the family. This was my Lady Maria, who came out of the embrasure of a window, where she and Harry Warrington had been engaged in talk.

George made his best bow, Maria her lowest curtsey. “You are indeed wonderfully like your brother,” she said, giving him her hand. “And from what he says, cousin George, I think you are as good as he is.”

At the sight of her swollen eyes and tearful face George felt a pang of remorse. “Poor thing!” he thought. “Harry has been vaunting my generosity and virtue to her, and I have beer, playing the selfish elder brother downstairs! How old she looks! How could he ever have a passion for such a woman as that?” How? Because he did not see with your eyes, Mr. George. He saw rightly too now with his own, perhaps. I never know whether to pity or congratulate a man on coming to his senses.

After the introduction a little talk took place, which for a while Lady Maria managed to carry on in an easy manner: but though ladies in this matter of social hypocrisy are, I think, far more consummate performers than men, after a sentence or two the poor lady broke out into a sob, and, motioning Harry away with her hand, fairly fled from the room.

Harry was rushing forward, but stopped--checked by that sign. My lord said his poor sister was subject to these fits of nerves, and had already been ill that morning. After this event our young gentlemen thought it was needless to prolong their visit. Lord Castlewood followed them downstairs, accompanied them to the door, admired their nags in the phaeton, and waved them a friendly farewell.

“And so we have been coaxing and cuddling in the window, and we part good friends, Harry? Is it not so?” says George to his charioteer.

“Oh, she is a good woman!” cries Harry, lashing the horses. “I know you'll think so when you come to know her.”

“When you take her home to Virginia? A pretty welcome our mother will give her. She will never forgive me for not breaking the match off, nor you for making it.”

“I can't help it, George! Don't you be popping your ugly head so close to my ears, Gumbo! After what has passed between us, I am bound in honour to stand by her. If she sees no objection, I must find none. I told her all. I told her that Madam would be very rusty at first; but that she was very fond of me, and must end by relenting. And when you come to the property, I told her that I knew my dearest George so well, that I might count upon sharing with him.”

“The deuce you did! Let me tell you, my dear, that I have been telling my Lord Castlewood quite a different story. That as an elder brother I intend to have all my rights--there, don't flog that near horse so--and that you can but look forward to poverty and dependence.”

“What! You won't help me?” cries Harry, turning quite pale.

“George, I don't believe it, though I hear it out of your own mouth! There was a minute's pause after this outbreak, during which Harry did not even look at his brother, but sate, gazing blindly before him, the picture of grief and gloom. He was driving so near to a road-post that the carriage might have been upset but for George's pulling the rein.

“You had better take the reins, sir,” said Harry. “I told you you had better take them.”

“Did you ever know me fail you, Harry?” George asked.

“No,” said the other, “not till now”--the tears were rolling down his cheeks as he spoke.

“My dear, I think one day you will say I have done my duty.”

“What have you done? asked Harry.

“I have said you were a younger brother--that you have spent all your patrimony, and that your portion at home must be very slender. Is it not true?”

“Yes, but I would not have believed it, if ten thousand men had told me,” said Harry. “Whatever happened to me, I thought I could trust you, George Warrington.” And in this frame of mind Harry remained during the rest of the drive.

Their dinner was served soon after their return to their lodgings, of which Harry scarce ate any, though he drank freely of the wine before him.

“That wine is a bad consoler in trouble, Harry,” his brother remarked.

“I have no other, sir,” said Harry, grimly; and having drunk glass after glass in silence, he presently seized his hat, and left the room.

He did not return for three hours. George, in much anxiety about his brother, had not left home meanwhile, but read his book, and smoked the pipe of patience. “It was shabby to say I would not aid him, and, God help me, it was not true. I won't leave him, though he marries a blackamoor,” thought George “have I not done him harm enough already, by coming to life again? Where has he gone; has he gone to play?”

“Good God! what has happened to thee?” cried George Warrington, presently, when his brother came in, looking ghastly pale.

He came up and took his brother's hand. “I can take it now, Georgy,” he said. “Perhaps what you did was right, though. I for one will never believe that you would throw your brother off in distress. I'll tell you what. At dinner, I thought suddenly, I'll go back to her and speak to her. I'll say to her, 'Maria, poor as I am, your conduct to me has been so noble, that, by heaven! I am yours to take or to leave. If you will have me, here I am: I will enlist: I will work: I will try and make a livelihood for myself somehow, and my bro----my relations will relent, and give us enough to live on.' That's what I determined to tell her; and I did, George. I ran all the way to Kensington in the rain--look, I am splashed from head to foot,--and found them all at dinner, all except Will, that is. I spoke out that very moment to them all, sitting round the table, over their wine. 'Maria,' says I, 'a poor fellow wants to redeem his promise which he made when he fancied he was rich. Will you take him?' I found I had plenty of words, and didn't hem and stutter as I'm doing now. I spoke ever so long, and I ended by saying I would do my best and my duty by her, so help me God!

“When I had done, she came up to me quite kind. She took my hand, and kissed it before the rest. 'My dearest, best Harry!' she said (those were her words, I don't want otherwise to be praising myself), 'you are a noble heart, and I thank you with all mine. But, my dear, I have long seen it was only duty, and a foolish promise made by a young man to an old woman, that has held you to your engagement. To keep it would make you miserable, my dear. I absolve you from it, thanking you with all my heart for your fidelity, and blessing and loving my dear cousin always.' And she came up and kissed me before them all, and went out of the room quite stately, and without a single tear. They were all crying, especially my lord, who was sobbing quite loud. I didn't think he had so much feeling. And she, George? Oh, isn't she a noble creature?”

“Here's her health!” cries George, filling one of the glasses that still stood before him.

“Hip, hip, huzzay!” says Harry. He was wild with delight at being free.

LVII. In which Mr. Harry's Nose continues to be put out of joint

Madame de Bernstein was scarcely less pleased than her Virginian nephews at the result of Harry's final interview with Lady Maria. George informed the Baroness of what had passed, in a billet which he sent to her the same evening; and shortly afterwards her nephew Castlewood, whose visits to his aunt were very rare, came to pay his respects to her, and frankly spoke about the circumstances which had taken place; for no man knew better than my Lord Castlewood how to be frank upon occasion, and now that the business between Maria and Harry was ended what need was there of reticence or hypocrisy? The game had been played, and was over: he had no objection now to speak of its various moves, stratagems, finesses. “She is my own sister,” said my lord, affectionately; “she won't have many more chances--many more such chances of marrying and establishing herself. I might not approve of the match in all respects, and I might pity your ladyship's young Virginian favourite: but of course such a piece of good fortune was not to be thrown away, and I was bound to stand by my own flesh and blood.”

“Your candour does your lordship honour,” says Madame de Bernstein, “and your love for your sister is quite edifying!”

“Nay, we have lost the game, and I am speaking sans rancune. It is not for you, who have won, to bear malice,” says my lord, with a bow.

Madame de Bernstein protested she was never in her life in better humour. “Confess, now, Eugene, that visit of Maria to Harry at the spunging-house--that touching giving up of all his presents to her, was a stroke of thy invention?”

“Pity for the young man, and a sense of what was due from Maria to her friend--her affianced lover--in misfortune, sure these were motives sufficient to make her act as she did,” replies Lord Castlewood, demurely.

“But 'twas you advised her, my good nephew?”

Castlewood, with a shrug of his shoulders, owned that he did advise his sister to see Mr. Henry Warrington. “But we should have won, in spite of your ladyship,” he continued, “had not the elder brother made his appearance. And I have been trying to console my poor Maria by showing her what a piece of good fortune it is after all, that we lost.”

“Suppose she had married Harry, and then cousin George had made his appearance?” remarks the Baroness.

“Effectivement,” cries Eugene, taking snuff. “As the grave was to give up its dead, let us be thankful to the grave for disgorging in time! I am bound to say, that Mr. George Warrington seems to be a man of sense, and not more selfish than other elder sons and men of the world. My poor Molly fancied that he might be a--what shall I say?--a greenhorn perhaps is the term--like his younger brother. She fondly hoped that he might be inclined to go share and share alike with Twin junior; in which case, so infatuated was she about the young fellow, that I believe she would have taken him. 'Harry Warrington, with half a loaf, might do very well,' says I, 'but Harry Warrington with no bread, my dear!'”

“How no bread?” asks the Baroness.

“Well, no bread except at his brother's side-table. The elder said as much.”

“What a hard-hearted wretch!” cries Madame de Bernstein.

“Ah, bah! I play with you, aunt, cartes sur table! Mr. George only did what everybody else would do; and we have no right to be angry with him, really we haven't. Molly herself acknowledged as much, after her first burst of grief was over, and I brought her to listen to reason. The silly old creature! to be so wild about a young lad at her time of life!”

“'Twas a real passion, I almost do believe,” said Madame de Bernstein.

“You should have heard her take leave of him. C'etait touchant, ma parole d'honneur! I cried. Before George, I could not help myself. The young fellow with muddy stockings, and his hair about his eyes, flings himself amongst us when we were at dinner; makes his offer to Molly in a very frank and noble manner, and in good language too; and she replies. Begad, it put me in mind of Mrs. Woffington in the new Scotch play, that Lord Bute's man has wrote--Douglas--what d'ye call it? She clings round the lad: she bids him adieu in heartrending accents. She steps out of the room in a stately despair--no more chocolate, thank you. If she had made a mauvais pas no one could retire from it with more dignity. 'Twas a masterly retreat after a defeat. We were starved out of our position, but we retired with all the honours of war.”

“Molly won't die of the disappointment!” said my lord's aunt, sipping her cup.

My lord snarled a grin, and showed his yellow teeth. “He, he!” he said, “she hath once or twice before had the malady very severely, and recovered perfectly. It don't kill, as your ladyship knows, at Molly's age.”

How should her ladyship know? She did not marry Doctor Tusher until she was advanced in life. She did not become Madame de Bernstein until still later. Old Dido, a poet remarks, was not ignorant of misfortune, and hence learned to have compassion on the wretched.

People in the little world, as I have been told, quarrel and fight, and go on abusing each other, and are not reconciled for ever so long. But people in the great world are surely wiser in their generation. They have differences; they cease seeing each other. They make it up and come together again, and no questions are asked. A stray prodigal, or a stray puppy-dog, is thus brought in under the benefit of an amnesty, though you know he has been away in ugly company. For six months past, ever since the Castlewoods and Madame de Bernstein had been battling for possession of poor Harry Warrington, these two branches of the Esmond family had remained apart. Now, the question being settled, they were free to meet again, as though no difference ever had separated them: and Madame de Bernstein drove in her great coach to Lady Castlewood's rout, and the Esmond ladies appeared smiling at Madame de Bernstein's drums, and loved each other just as much as they previously had done.

“So, sir, I hear you have acted like a hard-hearted monster about your poor brother Harry!” says the Baroness, delighted, and menacing George with her stick.

“I acted but upon your ladyship's hint, and desired to see whether it was for himself or his reputed money that his kinsfolk wanted to have him,” replies George, turning rather red.

“Nay, Maria could not marry a poor fellow who was utterly penniless, and whose elder brother said he would give him nothing!”

“I did it for the best, madam,” says George, still blushing.

“And so thou didst, O thou hypocrite!” cries the old lady.

“Hypocrite, madam! and why?” asks Mr. Warrington, drawing himself up in much state.

“I know all, my infant!” says the Baroness in French. “Thou art very like thy grandfather. Come, that I embrace thee! Harry has told me all, and that thou hast divided thy little patrimony with him!”

“It was but natural, madam. We have had common hearts and purses since we were born. I but feigned hard-heartedness in order to try those people yonder,” says George, with filling eyes.

“And thou wilt divide Virginia with him too?” asks the Bernstein.

“I don't say so. It were not just,” replied Mr. Warrington. “The land must go to the eldest born, and Harry would not have it otherwise: and it may be I shall die, or my mother outlive the pair of us. But half of what is mine is his: and he, it must be remembered, only was extravagant because he was mistaken as to his position.”

“But it is a knight of old, it is a Bayard, it is the grandfather come to life!” cried Madame de Bernstein to her attendant, as she was retiring for the night. And that evening, when the lads left her, it was to poor Harry she gave the two fingers, and to George the rouged cheek, who blushed, for his part, almost as deep as that often-dyed rose, at such a mark of his old kinswoman's favour.

Although Harry Warrington was the least envious of men, and did honour to his brother as in all respects his chief, guide, and superior, yet no wonder a certain feeling of humiliation and disappointment oppressed the young man after his deposition from his eminence as Fortunate Youth and heir to boundless Virginian territories. Our friends at Kensington might promise and vow that they would love him all the better after his fall; Harry made a low bow and professed himself very thankful; but he could not help perceiving, when he went with his brother to the state entertainment with which my Lord Castlewood regaled his new-found kinsman, that George was all in all to his cousins: had all the talk, compliments, and petits soins for himself, whilst of Harry no one took any notice save poor Maria, who followed him with wistful looks, pursued him with eyes conveying dismal reproaches, and, as it were, blamed him because she had left him. “Ah!” the eyes seemed to say, “'tis mighty well of you, Harry, to have accepted the freedom which I gave you; but I had no intention, sir, that you should be so pleased at being let off.” She gave him up, but yet she did not quite forgive him for taking her at her word. She would not have him, and yet she would. Oh, my young friends, how delightful is the beginning of a love-business, and how undignified, sometimes, the end! What a romantic vista is before young Damon and young Phillis (or middle-aged ditto ditto) when, their artless loves made known to each other, they twine their arms round each other's waists and survey that charming pays du tendre which lies at their feet! Into that country, so linked together, they will wander from now until extreme old age. There may be rocks and roaring rivers, but will not Damon's strong true love enable him to carry Sweetheart over them? There may be dragons and dangers in the path, but shall not his courageous sword cut them down? Then at eve, how they will rest cuddled together, like two pretty babes in the wood, the moss their couch, the stars their canopy, their arms their mutual pillows! This is the wise plan young folks make when they set out on the love journey; and--O me!--they have not got a mile when they come to a great wall and find they must walk back again. They are squabbling with the post-boy at Barnet (the first stage on the Gretna Road, I mean), and, behold, perhaps Strephon has not got any money, or here is papa with a whacking horsewhip, who takes Miss back again, and locks her up crying in the schoolroom. The parting is heart-breaking; but, when she has married the banker and had eight children, and he has become, it may be, a prosperous barrister,--it may be, a seedy raff who has gone twice or thrice into the Gazette; when, I say, in after years Strephon and Delia meet again, is not the meeting ridiculous? Nevertheless, I hope no young man will fall in love, having any doubt in his mind as to the eternity of his passion. 'Tis when a man has had a second or third amorous attack that he begins to grow doubtful; but some women are romantic to the end, and from eighteen to eight-and-fifty (for what I know) are always expecting their hearts to break. In fine, when you have been in love and are so no more, when the King of France, with twenty thousand men, with colours flying, music playing, and all the pomp of war, having marched up the hill, then proceeds to march down again, he and you are in an absurd position.

This is what Harry Warrington, no doubt, felt when he went to Kensington and encountered the melancholy, reproachful eyes of his cousin. Yes! it is a foolish position to be in; but it is also melancholy to look into a house you have once lived in, and see black casements and emptiness where once shone the fires of welcome. Melancholy? Yes; but, ha! how bitter, how melancholy, how absurd to look up as you pass sentimentally by No. 13, and see somebody else grinning out of window, and evidently on the best terms with the landlady. I always feel hurt, even at an inn which I frequent, if I see other folks' trunks and boots at the doors of the rooms which were once mine. Have those boots lolled on the sofa which once I reclined on? I kick you from before me, you muddy, vulgar highlows!

So considering that his period of occupation was over, and Maria's rooms, if not given up to a new tenant, were, at any rate, to let, Harry did not feel very easy in his cousin's company, nor she possibly in his. He found either that he had nothing to say to her, or that what she had to say to him was rather dull and commonplace, and that the red lip of a white-necked pipe of Virginia was decidedly more agreeable to him now than Maria's softest accents and most melancholy moue. When George went to Kensington, then, Harry did not care much about going, and pleaded other engagements.

At his uncle's house in Hill Street the poor lad was no better amused, and, indeed, was treated by the virtuous people there with scarce any attention at all. The ladies did not scruple to deny themselves when he came; he could scarce have believed in such insincerity after their caresses, their welcome, their repeated vows of affection; but happening to sit with the Lamberts for an hour after he had called upon his aunt, he saw her ladyship's chairmen arrive with an empty chair, and his aunt step out and enter the vehicle, and not even blush when he made her a bow from the opposite window. To be denied by his own relations--to have that door which had opened to him so kindly, slammed in his face! He would not have believed such a thing possible, poor simple Harry said. Perhaps he thought the door-knocker had a tender heart, and was not made of brass; not more changed than the head of that knocker was my Lady Warrington's virtuous face when she passed her nephew.

“My father's own brother's wife! What have I done to offend her? Oh, Aunt Lambert, Aunt Lambert, did you ever see such cold-heartedness?” cries out Harry, with his usual impetuosity.

“Do we make any difference to you, my dear Harry?” says Aunt Lambert, with a side look at her youngest daughter. “The world may look coldly at you, but we don't belong to it: so you may come to us in safety.”

“In this house you are different from other people,” replies Harry. “I don't know how, but I always feel quiet and happy somehow when I come to you.”

“Quis me uno vivit felicior? aut magis hac est Optandum vita dicere quis potuit?”

calls out General Lambert. “Do you know where I got these verses, Mr. Gownsman?” and he addresses his son from college, who is come to pass an Easter holiday with his parents. “You got them out of Catullus, sir,” says the scholar.

“I got them out of no such thing, sir. I got them out of my favourite Democritus Junior--out of old Burton, who has provided many indifferent scholars with learning;” and who and Montaigne, were favourite authors with the good General.

LVIII. Where we do what Cats may do

We have said how our Virginians, with a wisdom not uncommon in youth, had chosen to adopt strong Jacobite opinions, and to profess a prodigious affection for the exiled royal family. The banished prince had recognised Madam Esmond's father as Marquis of Esmond, and she did not choose to be very angry with an unfortunate race, that, after all, was so willing to acknowledge the merits of her family. As for any little scandal about her sister, Madame de Bernstein, and the Old Chevalier, she tossed away from her with scorn the recollection of that odious circumstance, asserting, with perfect truth, that the two first monarchs of the House of Hanover were quite as bad as any Stuarts in regard to their domestic morality. But the king de facto was the king, as well as his Majesty de jure. De Facto had been solemnly crowned and anointed at church, and had likewise utterly discomfited De Jure, when they came to battle for the kingdom together. Madam's clear opinion was, then, that her sons owed it to themselves as well as the sovereign to appear at his royal court. And if his Majesty should have been minded to confer a lucrative post, or a blue or red ribbon upon either of them, she, for her part, would not have been in the least surprised. She made no doubt but that the King knew the Virginian Esmonds as well as any other members of his nobility. The lads were specially commanded, then, to present themselves at court, and, I dare say, their mother would have been very angry had she known that George took Harry's laced coat on the day when he went to make his bow at Kensington.

A hundred years ago the King's drawing-room was open almost every day to his nobility and gentry; and loyalty--especially since the war had begun--could gratify itself a score of times in a month with the august sight of the sovereign. A wise avoidance of the enemy's ships of war, a gracious acknowledgment of the inestimable loss the British Isles would suffer by the seizure of the royal person at sea, caused the monarch to forgo those visits to his native Hanover which were so dear to his royal heart, and compelled him to remain, it must be owned, unwillingly amongst his loving Britons. A Hanoverian lady, however, whose virtues had endeared her to the prince, strove to console him for his enforced absence from Herrenhausen. And from the lips of the Countess of Walmoden (on whom the imperial beneficence had gracefully conferred a high title of British honour) the revered Defender of the Faith could hear the accents of his native home.

To this beloved Sovereign, Mr. Warrington requested his uncle, an assiduous courtier, to present him; and as Mr. Lambert had to go to court likewise, and thank his Majesty for his promotion, the two gentlemen made the journey to Kensington together, engaging a hackney-coach for the purpose, as my Lord Wrotham's carriage was now wanted by its rightful owner, who had returned to his house in town. They alighted at Kensington Palace Gate, where the sentries on duty knew and saluted the good General, and hence modestly made their way on foot to the summer residence of the sovereign. Walking under the portico of the Palace, they entered the gallery which leads to the great black marble staircase (which hath been so richly decorated and painted by Mr. Kent), and then passed through several rooms, richly hung with tapestry and adorned with pictures and bustos, until they came to the King's great drawing-room, where that famous “Venus” by Titian is, and, amongst other masterpieces, the picture of “St. Francis adoring the infant Saviour,” performed by Sir Peter Paul Rubens; and here, with the rest of the visitors to the court, the gentlemen waited until his Majesty issued from his private apartments, where he was in conference with certain personages who were called in the newspaper language of that day his M-j-ty's M-n-st-rs.

George Warrington, who had never been in a palace before, had leisure to admire the place, and regard the people round him. He saw fine pictures for the first time too, and I dare say delighted in that charming piece of Sir Athony Vandyck, representing King Charles the First, his Queen and Family, and the noble picture of “Esther before Ahasuerus,” painted by Tintoret, and in which all the figures are dressed in the magnificent Venetian habit. With the contemplation of these works he was so enraptured, that he scarce heard all the remarks of his good friend the General, who was whispering into his young companion's almost heedless ear the names of some of the personages round about them.

“Yonder,” says Mr. Lambert, “are two of my Lords of the Admiralty, Mr. Gilbert Elliot and Admiral Boscawen: your Boscawen, whose fleet fired the first gun in your waters two years ago. That stout gentleman all belated with gold is Mr. Fox, that was Minister, and is now content to be Paymaster with a great salary.

“He carries the auri fames on his person. Why, his waistcoat is a perfect Potosi!” says George.

“Aliena appetens--how goes the text? He loves to get money and to spend it,” continues General Lambert. “Yon is my Lord Chief Justice Willes, talking to my Lord of Salisbury, Doctor Headley, who, if he serve his God as he serves his King, will be translated to some very high promotion in Heaven. He belongs to your grandfather's time, and was loved by Dick Steele and hated by the Dean. With them is my Lord of London, the learned Doctor Sherlock. My lords of the lawn sleeves have lost half their honours now. I remember when I was a boy in my mother's hand, she made me go down on my knees to the Bishop of Rochester; him who went over the water, and became Minister to somebody who shall be nameless--Perkin's Bishop. That handsome fair man is Admiral Smith. He was president of poor Byng's court-martial, and strove in vain to get him off his penalty; Tom of Ten Thousand they call him in the fleet. The French Ambassador had him broke, when he was a lieutenant, for making a French man-of-war lower topsails to him, and the King made Tom a captain the next day. That tall, haughty-looking man is my Lord George Sackville, who, now I am a Major-General myself, will treat me somewhat better than a footman. I wish my stout old Blakeney were here; he is the soldier's darling, and as kind and brave as yonder poker of a nobleman is brave and--I am your lordship's very humble servant. This is a young gentleman who is just from America, and was in Braddock's sad business two years ago.”

“Oh, indeed!” says the poker of a nobleman. “I have the honour of speaking to Mr.----?”

“To Major-General Lambert, at your lordship's service, and who was in his Majesty's some time before you entered it. That, Mr. Warrington, is the first commoner in England, Mr. Speaker Onslow. Where is your uncle? I shall have to present you myself to his Majesty if Sir Miles delays much longer.” As he spoke, the worthy General addressed himself entirely to his young friend, making no sort of account of his colleague, who stalked away with a scared look as if amazed at the other's audacity. A hundred years ago, a nobleman was a nobleman, and expected to be admired as such.

Sir Miles's red waistcoat appeared in sight presently, and many cordial greetings passed between him, his nephew, and General Lambert: for we have described how Sir Miles was the most affectionate of men. So the General had quitted my Lord Wrotham's house? It was time, as his lordship himself wished to occupy it? Very good; but consider what a loss for the neighbours!

“We miss you, we positively miss you, my dear General,” cries Sir Miles. “My daughters were in love with those lovely young ladies--upon my word, they were; and my Lady Warrington and my girls were debating over and over again how they should find an opportunity of making the acquaintance of your charming family. We feel as if we were old friends already; indeed we do, General, if you will permit me the liberty of saying so; and we love you, if I may be allowed to speak frankly, on account of your friendship and kindness to our dear nephews: though we were a little jealous, I own a little jealous of them, because they went so often to see you. Often and often have I said to my Lady Warrington, 'My dear, why don't we make acquaintance with the General? Why don't we ask him and his ladies to come over in a family way and dine with some other plain country gentlefolks?' Carry my most sincere respects to Mrs. Lambert, I pray, sir; and thank her for her goodness to these young gentlemen. My own flesh and blood, sir; my dear, dear brother's boys!” He passed his hand across his manly eyes: he was choking almost with generous and affectionate emotion.

Whilst they were discoursing--George Warrington the while restraining his laughter with admirable gravity--the door of the King's apartments opened, and the pages entered, preceding his Majesty. He was followed by his burly son, his Royal Highness the Duke, a very corpulent Prince, with a coat and face of blazing scarlet: behind them came various gentlemen and officers of state; among whom George at once recognised the famous Mr. Secretary Pitt, by his tall stature, his eagle eye and beak, his grave and majestic presence. As I see that solemn figure passing, even a hundred years off, I protest I feel a present awe, and a desire to take my hat off. I am not frightened at George the Second; nor are my eyes dazzled by the portentous appearance of his Royal Highness the Duke of Culloden and Fontenoy; but the Great Commoner, the terrible Cornet of Horse! His figure bestrides our narrow isle of a century back like a Colossus; and I hush as he passes in his gouty shoes, his thunderbolt hand wrapped in flannel. Perhaps as we see him now, issuing with dark looks from the royal closet, angry scenes have been passing between him and his august master. He has been boring that old monarch for hours with prodigious long speeches, full of eloquence, voluble with the noblest phrases upon the commonest topics; but, it must be confessed, utterly repulsive to the little shrewd old gentleman, “at whose feet he lays himself,” as the phrase is, and who has the most thorough dislike for fine boedry and for fine brose too! The sublime Minister passes solemnly through the crowd; the company ranges itself respectfully round the wall; and his Majesty walks round the circle, his royal son lagging a little behind, and engaging select individuals in conversation for his own part.

The monarch is a little, keen, fresh-coloured old man, with very protruding eyes, attired in plain, old-fashioned, snuff-coloured clothes and brown stockings, his only ornament the blue ribbon of his Order of the Garter. He speaks in a German accent, but with ease, shrewdness, and simplicity, addressing those individuals whom he has a mind to notice, or passing on with a bow. He knew Mr. Lambert well, who had served under his Majesty at Dettingen, and with his royal son in Scotland, and he congratulated him good-humouredly on his promotion.

“It is not always,” his Majesty was pleased to say, “that we can do as we like; but I was glad when, for once, I could give myself that pleasure in your case, General; for my army contains no better officer as you.”

The veteran blushed and bowed, deeply gratified at this speech. Meanwhile, the Best of Monarchs was looking at Sir Miles Warrington (whom his Majesty knew perfectly, as the eager recipient of all favours from all Ministers), and at the young gentleman by his side.

“Who is this?” the Defender of the Faith condescended to ask, pointing towards George Warrington, who stood before his sovereign in a respectful attitude, clad in poor Harry's best embroidered suit.

With the deepest reverence Sir Miles informed his King, that the young gentleman was his nephew, Mr. George Warrington, of Virginia, who asked leave to pay his humble duty.

“This, then, is the other brother?” the Venerated Prince deigned to observe. “He came in time, else the other brother would have spent all the money. My Lord Bishop of Salisbury, why do you come out in this bitter weather? You had much better stay at home!” and with this, the revered wielder of Britannia's sceptre passed on to other lords and gentlemen of his court. Sir Miles Warrington was deeply affected at the royal condescension. He clapped his nephew's hands. “God bless you, my boy,” he cried; “I told you that you would see the greatest monarch and the finest gentleman in the world. Is he not so, my Lord Bishop?”

“That, that he is!” cried his lordship, clasping his ruffled hands, and turning his fine eyes up to the sky, “the best of princes and of men.”

“That is Master Louis, my Lady Yarmouth's favourite nephew,” says Lambert, pointing to a young gentleman who stood with a crowd round him; and presently the stout Duke of Cumberland came up to our little group.

His Royal Highness held out his hand to his old companion-in-arms. “Congratulate you on your promotion, Lambert,” he said good-naturedly. Sir Miles Warrington's eyes were ready to burst out of his head with rapture.

“I owe it, sir, to your Royal Highness's good offices,” said the grateful General.

“Not at all; not at all: ought to have had it a long time before. Always been a good officer; perhaps there'll be some employment for you soon. This is the gentleman whom James Wolfe introduced to me?”

“His brother, sir.”

“Oh, the real Fortunate Youth! You were with poor Ned Braddock in America--a prisoner, and lucky enough to escape. Come and see me, sir, in Pall Mall. Bring him to my levee, Lambert.” And the broad back of the Royal Prince was turned to our friends.

“It is raining! You came on foot, General Lambert? You and George must come home in my coach. You must and shall come home with me, I say. By George, you must! I'll have no denial,” cried the enthusiastic Baronet; and he drove George and the General back to Hill Street, and presented the latter to my Lady Warrington and his darlings, Flora and Dora, and insisted upon their partaking of a collation, as they must be hungry after their ride. “What, there is only cold mutton? Well, an old soldier can eat cold mutton. And a good glass of my Lady Warrington's own cordial, prepared with her own hands, will keep the cold wind out. Delicious cordial! Capital mutton! Our own, my dear General,” says the hospitable Baronet, “our own from the country, six years old if a day. We keep a plain table; but all the Warringtons since the Conqueror have been remarkable for their love of mutton; and our meal may look a little scanty, and is, for we are plain people, and I am obliged to keep my rascals of servants on board-wages. Can't give them seven-year-old mutton, you know.”

Sir Miles, in his nephew's presence and hearing, described to his wife and daughters George's reception at court in such flattering terms that George hardly knew himself, or the scene at which he had been present, or how to look his uncle in the face, or how to contradict him before his family in the midst of the astonishing narrative he was relating. Lambert sat by for a while with open eyes. He, too, had been at Kensington. He had seen none of the wonders which Sir Miles described.

“We are proud of you, dear George. We love you, my dear nephew--we all love you, we are all proud of you--”

“Yes; but I like Harry best,” says a little voice.

“--not because you are wealthy! Screwby, take Master Miles to his governor. Go, dear child. Not because you are blest with great estates and an ancient name; but because, George, you have put to good use the talents with which Heaven has adorned you; because you have fought and bled in your country's cause, in your monarch's cause, and as such are indeed worthy of the favour of the best of sovereigns. General Lambert, you have kindly condescended to look in on a country family, and partake of our unpretending meal. I hope we may see you some day when our hospitality is a little less homely. Yes, by George, General, you must and shall name a day when you and Mrs. Lambert, and your dear girls, will dine with us. I'll take no refusal now, by George I won't,” bawls the knight.

“You will accompany us, I trust, to my drawing-room?” says my lady, rising.

Mr. Lambert pleaded to be excused; but the ladies on no account would let dear George go away. No, positively, he should not go. They wanted to make acquaintance with their cousin. They must hear about that dreadful battle and escape from the Indians. Tom Claypool came in and heard some of the story. Flora was listening to it with her handkerchief to her eyes, and little Miles had just said--

“Why do you take your handkerchief, Flora? You're not crying a bit.”

Being a man of great humour, Martin Lambert, when he went home, could not help entertaining his wife with an account of the new family with which he had made acquaintance. A certain cant word called humbug had lately come into vogue. Will it be believed that the General used it to designate the family of this virtuous country gentleman? He described the eager hospitalities of the father, the pompous flatteries of the mother, and the daughters' looks of admiration; the toughness and security of the mutton, and the abominable taste and odour of the cordial; and we may be sure Mrs. Lambert contrasted Lady Warrington's recent behaviour to poor Harry with her present conduct to George.

“Is this Miss Warrington really handsome?” asks Mrs Lambent.

“Yes; she is very handsome indeed, and the most astounding flirt I have ever set eyes on,” replies the General.

“The hypocrite! I have no patience with such people!” cries the lady.

To which the General, strange to say, only replied by the monosyllable “Bo!”

“Why do you say 'Bo!' Martin?” asks the lady.

“I say 'Bo!' to a goose, my dear,” answers the General.

And his wife vows she does not know what he means, or of what he is thinking, and the General says--

“Of course not.”

LIX. In which we are treated to a Play

The real business of life, I fancy, can form but little portion of the novelist's budget. When he is speaking of the profession of arms, in which men can show courage or the reverse, and in treating of which the writer naturally has to deal with interesting circumstances, actions, and characters, introducing recitals of danger, devotedness, heroic deaths, and the like, the novelist may perhaps venture to deal with actual affairs of life: but otherwise, they scarcely can enter into our stories. The main part of Ficulnus's life, for instance, is spent in selling sugar, spices and cheese; of Causidicus's in poring over musty volumes of black-letter law; of Sartorius's in sitting, cross-legged, on a board after measuring gentlemen for coats and breeches. What can a story-teller say about the professional existence of these men? Would a real rustical history of hobnails and eighteenpence a day be endurable? In the days whereof we are writing, the poets of the time chose to represent a shepherd in pink breeches and a chintz waistcoat, dancing before his flocks, and playing a flageolet tied up with a blue satin ribbon. I say, in reply to some objections which have been urged by potent and friendly critics, that of the actual affairs of life the novelist cannot be expected to treat--with the almost single exception of war before named. But law, stockbroking, polemical theology, linen-drapery, apothecary-business, and the like, how can writers manage fully to develop these in their stories? All authors can do, is to depict men out of their business--in their passions, loves, laughters, amusements, hatreds, and what not--and describe these as well as they can, taking the business part for granted, and leaving it as it were for subaudition.

Thus, in talking of the present or the past world, I know I am only dangling about the theatre-lobbies, coffee-houses, ridottos, pleasure-haunts, fair-booths, and feasting- and fiddling-rooms of life; that, meanwhile, the great serious past or present world is plodding in its chambers, toiling at its humdrum looms, or jogging on its accustomed labours, and we are only seeing our characters away from their work. Corydon has to cart the litter and thresh the barley, as well as to make love to Phillis; Ancillula has to dress and wash the nursery, to wait at breakfast and on her misses, to take the children out, etc., before she can have her brief sweet interview through the area-railings with Boopis, the policeman. All day long have his heels to beat the stale pavement before he has the opportunity to snatch the hasty kiss or the furtive cold pie. It is only at moments, and away from these labours, that we can light upon one character or the other; and hence, though most of the persons of whom we are writing have doubtless their grave employments and avocations, it is only when they are disengaged and away from their work, that we can bring them and the equally disengaged reader together.

The macaronis and fine gentlemen at White's and Arthur's continued to show poor Harry Warrington such a very cold shoulder, that he sought their society less and less, and the Ring and the Mall and the gaming-table knew him no more. Madame de Bernstein was for her nephew's braving the indifference of the world, and vowed that it would be conquered, if he would but have courage to face it; but the young man was too honest to wear a smiling face when he was discontented; to disguise mortification or anger; to parry slights by adroit flatteries or cunning impudence; as many gentlemen and gentlewomen must and do who wish to succeed in society.

“You pull a long face, Harry, and complain of the world's treatment of you,” the old lady said. “Fiddlededee, sir! Everybody has to put up with impertinences: and if you get a box on the ear now you are poor and cast down, you must say nothing about it, bear it with a smile, and if you can, revenge it ten years after. Moi qui vous parle, sir!--do you suppose I have had no humble-pie to eat? All of us in our turn are called upon to swallow it: and, now you are no longer the Fortunate Youth, be the Clever Youth, and win back the place you have lost by your ill luck. Go about more than ever. Go to all the routs and parties to which you are asked, and to more still. Be civil to everybody--to all women especially. Only of course take care to show your spirit, of which you have plenty. With economy, and by your brother's, I must say, admirable generosity, you can still make a genteel figure. With your handsome person, sir, you can't fail to get a rich heiress. Tenez! You should go amongst the merchants in the City, and look out there. They won't know that you are out of fashion at the Court end of the town. With a little management, there is not the least reason, sir, why you should not make a good position for yourself still. When did you go to see my Lady Yarmouth, pray? Why did you not improve that connexion? She took a great fancy to you. I desire you will be constant at her ladyship's evenings, and lose no opportunity of paying court to her.”

Thus the old woman who had loved Harry so on his first appearance in England, who had been so eager for his company, and pleased with his artless conversation, was taking the side of the world, and turning against him. Instead of the smiles and kisses with which the fickle old creature used once to greet him, she received him with coldness; she became peevish and patronising; she cast gibes and scorn at him before her guests, making his honest face flush with humiliation, and awaking the keenest pangs of grief and amazement in his gentle, manly heart. Madame de Bernstein's servants, who used to treat him with such eager respect, scarcely paid him now any attention. My lady was often indisposed or engaged when he called on her; her people did not press him to wait; did not volunteer to ask whether he would stay and dine, as they used in the days when he was the Fortunate Youth and companion of the wealthy and great. Harry carried his woes to Mrs. Lambert. In a passion of sorrow he told her of his aunt's cruel behaviour to him. He was stricken down and dismayed by the fickleness and heartlessness of the world in its treatment of him. While the good lady and her daughters would move to and fro, and busy themselves with the cares of the house, our poor lad would sit glum in a window-seat, heart-sick and silent.

“I know you are the best people alive,” he would say to the ladies, “and the kindest, and that I must be the dullest company in the world--yes, that I am.”

“Well, you are not very lively, Harry,” says Miss Hetty, who began to command him, and perhaps to ask herself, “What? Is this the gentleman whom I took to be such a hero?”

“If he is unhappy, why should he be lively?” asks Theo, gently. “He has a good heart, and is pained at his friends' desertion of him. Sure there is no harm in that?”

“I would have too much spirit to show I was hurt, though,” cries Hetty, clenching her little fists. “And I would smile, though that horrible old painted woman boxed my ears. She is horrible, mamma. You think so yourself, Theo! Own, now, you think so yourself! You said so last night, and acted her coming in on her crutch, and grinning round to the company.”

“I mayn't like her,” said Theo, turning very red. “But there is no reason why I should call Harry's aunt names before Harry's face.”

“You provoking thing; you are always right!” cries Hetty, “and that's what makes me so angry. Indeed, Harry, it was very wrong of me to make rude remarks about any of your relations.”

“I don't care about the others, Hetty; but it seems hard that this one should turn upon me. I had got to be very fond of her; and you see, it makes me mad, somehow, when people I'm very fond of turn away from me, or act unkind to me.”

“Suppose George were to do so?” asks Hetty. You see, it was George and Hetty, and Theo and Harry, amongst them now.

“You are very clever and very lively, and you may suppose a number of things; but not that, Hetty, if you please,” cried Harry, standing up and looking very resolute and angry. “You don't know my brother as I know him--or you wouldn't take--such a--liberty as to suppose--my brother George could do anything unkind or unworthy!” Mr. Harry was quite in a flush as he spoke.

Hetty turned very white. Then she looked up at Harry, and then she did not say a single word.

Then Harry said, in his simple way, before taking leave, “I'm very sorry, and I beg your pardon, Hetty, if I said anything rough, or that seemed unkind; but I always fight up if anybody says anything against George.”

Hetty did not answer a word out of her pale lips, but gave him her hand, and dropped a prim little curtsey.

When she and Theo were together at night, making curl-paper confidences, “Oh!” said Hetty, “I thought it would be so happy to see him every day, and was so glad when papa said we were to stay in London! And now I do see him, you see, I go on offending him. I can't help offending him; and I know he is not clever, Theo. But oh! isn't he good, and kind, and brave? Didn't he look handsome when he was angry?”

“You silly little thing, you are always trying to make him look handsome,” Theo replied.

It was Theo and Hetty, and Harry and George, among these young people, then; and I dare say the reason why General Lambert chose to apply the monosyllable “Bo” to the mother of his daughters, was as a rebuke to that good woman for the inveterate love of sentiment and propensity to match-making which belonged to her (and every other woman in the world whose heart is worth a fig); and as a hint that Madam Lambert was a goose if she fancied the two Virginian lads were going to fall in love with the young women of the Lambert house. Little Het might have her fancy; little girls will; but they get it over: “and you know, Molly” (which dear, soft-hearted Mrs. Lambert could not deny), “you fancied somebody else before you fancied me,” says the General; but Harry had evidently not been smitten by Hetty; and now he was superseded, as it were, by having an elder brother over him, and could not even call the coat upon his back his own, Master Harry was no great catch.

“Oh yes: now he is poor we will show him the door, as all the rest of the world does, I suppose,” says Mrs. Lambert.

“That is what I always do, isn't it, Molly? turn my back on my friends in distress?” asks the General.

“No, my dear! I am a goose, now, and that I own, Martin!” says the wife, having recourse to the usual pocket-handkerchief.

“Let the poor boy come to us and welcome: ours is almost the only house in this selfish place where so much can be said for him. He is unhappy, and to be with us puts him at ease; in God's name let him be with us!” says the kind-hearted officer. Accordingly, whenever poor crestfallen Hal wanted a dinner, or an evening's entertainment, Mr. Lambert's table had a corner for him. So was George welcome, too. He went among the Lamberts, not at first with the cordiality which Harry felt for these people, and inspired among them: for George was colder in his manner, and more mistrustful of himself and others than his twin-brother: but there was a goodness and friendliness about the family which touched almost all people who came into frequent contact with them; and George soon learned to love them for their own sake, as well as for their constant regard and kindness to his brother. He could not but see and own how sad Harry was, and pity his brother's depression. In his sarcastic way, George would often take himself to task before his brother for coming to life again, and say, “Dear Harry, I am George the Unlucky, though you have ceased to be Harry the Fortunate. Florac would have done much better not to pass his sword through that Indian's body, and to have left my scalp as an ornament for the fellow's belt. I say he would, sir! At White's the people would have respected you. Our mother would have wept over me, as a defunct angel, instead of being angry with me for again supplanting her favourite--you are her favourite, you deserve to be her favourite: everybody's favourite: only, if I had not come back, your favourite, Maria, would have insisted on marrying you; and that is how the gods would have revenged themselves upon you for your prosperity.”

“I never know whether you are laughing at me or yourself, George” says the brother. I never know whether you are serious or jesting.

“Precisely my own case, Harry, my dear!” says George.

“But this I know, that there never was a better brother in the world; and never better people than the Lamberts.”

“Never was truer word said!” cries George, taking his brother's hand.

“And if I'm unhappy, 'tis not your fault--nor their fault--nor perhaps mine, George,” continues the younger. 'Tis fate, you see, 'tis the having nothing to do. I must work; and how, George? that is the question.”

“We will see what our mother says. We must wait till we hear from her,” says George.

“I say, George! Do you know, I don't think I should much like going back to Virginia?” says Harry, in a low, alarmed voice.

“What! in love with one of the lasses here?”

“Love 'em like sisters--with all my heart, of course, dearest, best girls! but, having come out of that business, thanks to you, I don't want to go back, you know. No! no! It is not for that I fancy staying in Europe better than going home. But, you see, I don't fancy hunting, duck-shooting, tobacco-planting, whist-playing, and going to sermon, over and over and over again, for all my life, George. And what else is there to do at home? What on earth is there for me to do at all, I say? That's what makes me miserable. It would not matter for you to be a younger son you are so clever you would make your way anywhere; but, for a poor fellow like me, what chance is there? Until I do something, George, I shall be miserable, that's what I shall!”

“Have I not always said so? Art thou not coming round to my opinion?”

“What opinion, George? You know pretty much whatever you think, I think, George!” says the dutiful junior.

“That Florac had best have left the Indian to take my scalp, my dear!”

At which Harry bursts away with an angry exclamation; and they continue to puff their pipes in friendly union.

They lived together, each going his own gait; and not much intercourse, save that of affection, was carried on between them. Harry never would venture to meddle with George's books, and would sit as dumb as a mouse at the lodgings whilst his brother was studying. They removed presently from the Court end of the town, Madame de Bernstein pishing and pshaing at their change of residence. But George took a great fancy to frequenting Sir Hans Sloane's new reading-room and museum, just set up in Montagu House, and he took cheerful lodgings in Southampton Row, Bloomsbury, looking over the delightful fields towards Hampstead, at the back of the Duke of Bedford's gardens. And Lord Wrotham's family coming to Mayfair, and Mr. Lambert having business which detained him in London, had to change his house, too, and engaged furnished apartments in Soho, not very far off from the dwelling of our young men; and it was, as we have said, with the Lamberts that Harry, night after night, took refuge.

George was with them often, too; and, as the acquaintance ripened, he frequented their house with increasing assiduity, finding their company more to his taste than that of Aunt Bernstein's polite circle of gamblers, than Sir Miles Warrington's port and mutton, or the daily noise and clatter of the coffee-houses. And as he and the Lambert ladies were alike strangers in London, they partook of its pleasures together, and, no doubt, went to Vauxhall and Ranelagh, to Marybone Gardens, and the play, and the Tower, and wherever else there was honest amusement to be had in those days. Martin Lambert loved that his children should have all the innocent pleasure which he could procure for them, and Mr. George, who was of a most generous, open-handed disposition, liked to treat his friends likewise, especially those who had been so admirably kind to his brother.

With all the passion of his heart Mr. Warrington loved a play. He had never enjoyed this amusement in Virginia, and only once or twice at Quebec, when he visited Canada; and when he came to London, where the two houses were in their full glory, I believe he thought he never could have enough of the delightful entertainment. Anything he liked himself, he naturally wished to share amongst his companions. No wonder that he was eager to take his friends to the theatre, and we may be sure our young countryfolks were not unwilling. Shall it be Drury Lane or Covent Garden, ladies? There was Garrick and Shakspeare at Drury Lane. Well, will it be believed, the ladies wanted to hear the famous new author whose piece was being played at Covent Garden?

At this time a star of genius had arisen, and was blazing with quite a dazzling brilliancy. The great Mr. John Home, of Scotland, had produced a tragedy, than which, since the days of the ancients, there had been nothing more classic and elegant. What had Mr. Garrick meant by refusing such a masterpiece for his theatre? Say what you will about Shakspeare; in the works of that undoubted great poet (who had begun to grow vastly more popular in England since Monsieur Voltaire attacked him) there were many barbarisms that could not but shock a polite auditory; whereas, Mr. Home, the modern author, knew how to be refined in the very midst of grief and passion; to represent death, not merely as awful, but graceful and pathetic; and never condescended to degrade the majesty of the Tragic Muse by the ludicrous apposition of buffoonery and familiar punning, such as the elder playwright certainly had resort to. Besides, Mr. Home's performance had been admired in quarters so high, and by personages whose taste was known to be as elevated as their rank, that all Britons could not but join in the plaudits for which august hands had given the signal. Such, it was said, was the opinion of the very best company, in the coffee-houses, and amongst the wits about town. Why, the famous Mr. Gray, of Cambridge, said there had not been for a hundred years any dramatic dialogue of such a true style; and as for the poet's native capital of Edinburgh, where the piece was first brought out, it was even said that the triumphant Scots called out from the pit (in their dialect), “Where's Wully Shakspeare noo?”

“I should like to see the man who could beat Willy Shakspeare?” says the General, laughing.

“Mere national prejudice,” says Mr. Warrington.

“Beat Shakspeare, indeed!” cries Mrs. Lambert.

“Pooh, pooh! you have cried more over Mr. Sam Richardson than ever you did over Mr. Shakspeare, Molly!” remarks the General. “I think few women love to read Shakspeare: they say they love it, but they don't.”

“Oh, papa!” cry three ladies, throwing up three pair of hands.

“Well, then, why do you all three prefer Douglas? And you, boys, who are such Tories, will you go see a play which is wrote by a Whig Scotchman, who was actually made prisoner at Falkirk?”

“Relicta non bene parmula,” says Mr. Jack the scholar.

“Nay; it was relicta bene parmula,” cried the General. “It was the Highlanders who flung their targes down, and made fierce work among us redcoats. If they had fought all their fields as well as that, and young Perkin had not turned back from Derby----”

“I know which side would be rebels, and who would be called the Young Pretender,” interposed George.

“Hush! you must please to remember my cloth, Mr. Warrington,” said the General, with some gravity; “and that the cockade I wear is a black, not a white one! Well, if you will not love Mr. Home for his politics, there is, I think, another reason, George, why you should like him.”

“I may have Tory fancies, Mr. Lambert, but I think I know how to love and honour a good Whig,” said George, with a bow to the General: “but why should I like this Mr. Home, sir?”

“Because, being a Presbyterian clergyman, he has committed the heinous crime of writing a play, and his brother-parsons have barked out an excommunication at him. They took the poor fellow's means of livelihood away from him for his performance; and he would have starved, but that the young Pretender on our side of the water has given him a pension.”

“If he has been persecuted by the parsons, there is hope for him,” said George, smiling. “And henceforth I declare myself ready to hear his sermons.”

“Mrs. Woffington is divine in it, though not generally famous in tragedy. Barry is drawing tears from all eyes; and Garrick is wild at having refused the piece. Girls, you must bring each half a dozen handkerchiefs! As for mamma, I cannot trust her; and she positively must be left at home.”

But mamma persisted she would go; and, if need were to weep, she would sit and cry her eyes out in a corner. They all went to Covent Garden, then; the most of the party duly prepared to see one of the masterpieces of the age and drama. Could they not all speak long pages of Congreve; had they not wept and kindled over Otway and Rowe? O ye past literary glories, that were to be eternal, how long have you been dead? Who knows much more now than where your graves are? Poor, neglected Muse of the bygone theatre! She pipes for us, and we will not dance; she tears her hair, and we will not weep. And the Immortals of our time, how soon shall they be dead and buried, think you? How many will survive? How long shall it be ere Nox et Domus Plutonia shall overtake them?

So away went the pleased party to Covent Garden to see the tragedy of the immortal John Home. The ladies and the General were conveyed in a glass coach, and found the young men in waiting to receive them at the theatre door. Hence they elbowed their way through a crowd of torch-boys, and a whole regiment of footmen. Little Hetty fell to Harry's arm in this expedition, and the blushing Miss Theo was handed to the box by Mr. George. Gumbo had kept the places until his masters arrived, when he retired, with many bows, to take his own seat in the footman's gallery. They had good places in a front box, and there was luckily a pillar behind which mamma could weep in comfort. And opposite them they had the honour to see the august hope of the empire, his Royal Highness George Prince of Wales, with the Princess Dowager his mother, whom the people greeted with loyal, but not very enthusiastic, plaudits. That handsome man standing behind his Royal Highness was my Lord Bute, the Prince's Groom of the Stole, the patron of the poet whose performance they had come to see, and over whose work the Royal party had already wept more than once.

How can we help it, if during the course of the performance, Mr. Lambert would make his jokes and mar the solemnity of the scene? At first, as the reader of the tragedy well knows, the characters are occupied in making a number of explanations. Lady Randolph explains how it is that she is so melancholy. Married to Lord Randolph somewhat late in life, she owns, and his lordship perceives, that a dead lover yet occupies all her heart; and her husband is fain to put up with this dismal, second-hand regard, which is all that my lady can bestow. Hence, an invasion of Scotland by the Danes is rather a cause of excitement than disgust to my lord, who rushes to meet the foe, and forgets the dreariness of his domestic circumstances. Welcome, Vikings and Norsemen! Blow, northern blasts, the invaders' keels to Scotland's shore! Randolph and other heroes will be on the beach to give the foemen a welcome! His lordship has no sooner disappeared behind the trees of the forest, but Lady Randolph begins to explain to her confidante the circumstances of her early life. The fact was, she had made a private marriage, and what would the confidante say, if, in early youth, she, Lady Randolph, had lost a husband? In the cold bosom of the earth was lodged the husband of her youth, and in some cavern of the ocean lies her child and his!

Up to this the General behaved with as great gravity as any of his young companions to the play; but when Lady Randolph proceeded to say, “Alas! Hereditary evil was the cause of my misfortunes,” he nudged George Warrington, and looked so droll, that the young man burst out laughing.

The magic of the scene was destroyed after that. These two gentlemen went on cracking jokes during the whole of the subsequent performance, to their own amusement, but the indignation of their company, and perhaps of the people in the adjacent boxes. Young Douglas, in those days, used to wear a white satin “shape” slashed at the legs and body, and when Mr. Barry appeared in this droll costume, the General vowed it was the exact dress of the Highlanders in the late war. The Chevalier's Guard, he declared, had all white satin slashed breeches, and red boots--“only they left them at home, my dear,” adds this wag. Not one pennyworth of sublimity would he or George allow henceforth to Mr. Home's performance. As for Harry, he sate in very deep meditation over the scene; and when Mrs. Lambert offered him a penny for his thoughts, he said, “That he thought, Young Norval, Douglas, What-d'ye-call-'em, the fellow in white satin--who looked as old as his mother--was very lucky to be able to distinguish himself so soon. I wish I could get a chance, Aunt Lambert,” says he, drumming on his hat; on which mamma sighed, and Theo, smiling, said, “We must wait, and perhaps the Danes will land.”

“How do you mean?” asks simple Harry.

“Oh, the Danes always land, pour qui scait attendre!” says kind Theo, who had hold of her sister's little hand, and, I dare say, felt its pressure.

She did not behave unkindly--that was not in Miss Theo's nature--but somewhat coldly to Mr. George, on whom she turned her back, addressing remarks, from time to time, to Harry. In spite of the gentlemen's scorn, the women chose to be affected. A mother and son, meeting in love and parting in tears, will always awaken emotion in female hearts.

“Look, papa! there is an answer to all your jokes!” says Theo, pointing towards the stage.

At a part of the dialogue between Lady Randolph and her son, one of the grenadiers on guard on each side of the stage, as the custom of those days was, could not restrain his tears, and was visibly weeping before the side-box.

“You are right, my dear,” says papa.

“Didn't I tell you she always is?” interposes Hetty.

“Yonder sentry is a better critic than we are, and a touch of nature masters us all.”

“Tamen usque recurrit!” cries the young student from college.

George felt abashed somehow, and interested too. He had been sneering, and Theo sympathising. Her kindness was better--nay, wiser--than his scepticism, perhaps. Nevertheless, when, at the beginning of the fifth act of the play, young Douglas, drawing his sword and looking up at the gallery, bawled out--

“Ye glorious stars! high heaven's resplendent host! To whom I oft have of my lot complained, Hear and record my soul's unaltered wish Living or dead, let me but be renowned! May Heaven inspire some fierce gigantic Dane To give a bold defiance to our host! Before he speaks it out, I will accept, Like Douglas conquer, or like Douglas die!”--

The gods, to whom Mr. Barry appealed, saluted this heroic wish with immense applause, and the General clapped his hands prodigiously. His daughter was rather disconcerted.

“This Douglas is not only brave, but he is modest!” says papa.

“I own I think he need not have asked for a gigantic Dane,” says Theo, smiling, as Lady Randolph entered in the midst of the gallery thunder.

When the applause had subsided, Lady Randolph is made to say--

“My son, I heard a voice!”

“I think she did hear a voice!” cries papa. “Why, the fellow was bellowing like a bull of Bashan.” And the General would scarcely behave himself from thenceforth to the end of the performance. He said he was heartily glad that the young gentleman was put to death behind the scenes. When Lady Randolph's friend described how her mistress had “flown like lightning up the hill, and plunged herself into the empty air,” Mr. Lambert said he was delighted to be rid of her. “And as for that story of her early marriage,” says he, “I have my very strongest doubts about it.”

“Nonsense, Martin! Look, children! their Royal Highnesses are moving.”

The tragedy over, the Princess Dowager and the Prince were, in fact, retiring; though, I dare say, the latter, who was always fond of a farce, would have been far better pleased with that which followed than he had been with Mr. Home's dreary tragic masterpiece.

LX. Which treats of Macbeth, a Supper, and a Pretty Kettle of Fish

When the performances were concluded, our friends took coach for Mr. Warrington's lodging, where the Virginians had provided an elegant supper. Mr. Warrington was eager to treat them in the handsomest manner, and the General and his wife accepted the invitation of the two bachelors, pleased to think that they could give their young friends pleasure. General and Mrs. Lambert, their son from college, their two blooming daughters, and Mr. Spencer of the Temple, a new friend whom George had met at the coffee-house, formed the party, and partook with cheerfulness of the landlady's fare. The order of their sitting I have not been able exactly to ascertain; but, somehow, Miss Theo had a place next to the chickens and Mr. George Warrington, whilst Miss Hetty and a ham divided the attentions of Mr. Harry. Mrs. Lambert must have been on George's right hand, so that we have but to settle the three places of the General, his son, and the Templar.

Mr. Spencer had been at the other theatre, where, on a former day, he had actually introduced George to the greenroom. The conversation about the play was resumed, and some of the party persisted in being delighted with it.

“As for what our gentlemen say, sir,” cries Mrs. Lambert to Mr. Spencer, “you must not believe a word of it. 'Tis a delightful piece, and my husband and Mr. George behaved as ill as possible.”

“We laughed in the wrong place, and when we ought to have cried,” the General owned, “that's the truth.”

“You caused all the people in the boxes about us to look round and cry 'Hush!' You made the pit folks say, 'Silence in the boxes, yonder!' Such behaviour I never knew, and quite blushed for you, Mr. Lambert!”

“Mamma thought it was a tragedy, and we thought it was a piece of fun,” says the General. “George and I behaved perfectly well, didn't we, Theo?”

“Not when I was looking your way, papa!” Theo replies. At which the General asks, “Was there ever such a saucy baggage seen?”

“You know, sir, I didn't speak till I was bid,” Theo continues, modestly. “I own I was very much moved by the play, and the beauty and acting of Mrs. Woffington. I was sorry that the poor mother should find her child, and lose him. I am sorry, too, papa, if I oughtn't to have been sorry!” adds the young lady, with a smile.

“Women are not so clever as men, you know, Theo,” cries Hetty from her end of the table, with a sly look at Harry. “The next time we go to the play, please, brother Jack, pinch us when we ought to cry, or give us a nudge when it is right to laugh.”

“I wish we could have had the fight,” said General Lambert, “the fight between little Norval and the gigantic Norwegian--that would have been rare sport: and you should write, Jack, and suggest it to Mr. Rich, the manager.”

“I have not seen that: but I saw Slack and Broughton at Marybone Gardens!” says Harry, gravely; and wondered if he had said something witty, as all the company laughed so? “It would require no giant,” he added, “to knock over yonder little fellow in the red boots. I, for one, could throw him over my shoulder.”

“Mr. Garrick is a little man. But there are times when he looks a giant,” says Mr. Spencer. “How grand he was in Macbeth, Mr. Warrington! How awful that dagger-scene was! You should have seen our host, ladies! I presented Mr. Warrington, in the greenroom, to Mr. Garrick and Mrs. Pritchard, and Lady Macbeth did him the honour to take a pinch out of his box.”

“Did the wife of the Thane of Cawdor sneeze?” asked the General, in an awful voice.

“She thanked Mr. Warrington, in tones so hollow and tragic, that he started back, and must have upset some of his rappee, for Macbeth sneezed thrice.”

“Macbeth, Macbeth, Macbeth!” cries the General.

“And the great philosopher who was standing by Mr. Johnson, says, 'You must mind, Davy, lest thy sneeze should awaken Duncan!' who, by the way, was talking with the three witches as they sat against the wall.”

“What! Have you been behind the scenes at the play? Oh, I would give worlds to go behind the scenes!” cries Theo.

“And see the ropes pulled, and smell the tallow-candles, and look at the pasteboard gold, and the tinsel jewels, and the painted old women, Theo? No. Do not look too close,” says the sceptical young host, demurely drinking a glass of hock. “You were angry with your papa and me.”

“Nay, George!” cries the girl.

“Nay? I say, yes! You were angry with us because we laughed when you were disposed to be crying. If I may speak for you, sir, as well as myself,” says George (with a bow to his guest, General Lambert), “I think we were not inclined to weep, like the ladies, because we stood behind the author's scenes of the play, as it were. Looking close up to the young hero, we saw how much of him was rant and tinsel; and as for the pale, tragical mother, that her pallor was white chalk, and her grief her pocket-handkerchief. Own now, Theo, you thought me very unfeeling?”

“If you find it out, sir, without my owning it,--what is the good of my confessing?” says Theo.

“Suppose I were to die?” goes on George, “and you saw Harry in grief, you would be seeing a genuine affliction, a real tragedy; you would grieve too. But you wouldn't be affected if you saw the undertaker in weepers and a black cloak!”

“Indeed, but I should, sir!” says Mrs. Lambert; “and so, I promise you, would any daughter of mine.”

“Perhaps we might find weepers of our own, Mr. Warrington,” says Theo, “in such a case.”

“Would you?” cries George, and his cheeks and Theo's simultaneously flushed up with red; I suppose because they both saw Hetty's bright young eyes watching them.

“The elder writers understood but little of the pathetic,” remarked Mr. Spencer, the Temple wit.

“What do you think of Sophocles and Antigone?” calls out Mr. John Lambert.

“Faith, our wits trouble themselves little about him, unless an Oxford gentleman comes to remind us of him! I did not mean to go back farther than Mr. Shakspeare, who, as you will all agree, does not understand the elegant and pathetic as well as the moderns. Has he ever approached Belvidera, or Monimia, or Jane Shore; or can you find in his comic female characters the elegance of Congreve?” and the Templar offered snuff to the right and left.

“I think Mr. Spencer himself must have tried his hand?” asks some one.

“Many gentlemen of leisure have. Mr. Garrick, I own, has had a piece of mine and returned it.”

“And I confess that I have four acts of a play in one of my boxes,” says George.

“I'll be bound to say it's as good as any of 'em,” whispers Harry to his neighbour.

“Is it a tragedy or a comedy?” asks Mrs. Lambert.

“Oh, a tragedy, and two or three dreadful murders at least!” George replies.

“Let us play it, and let the audience look to their eyes! Yet my chief humour is for a tyrant,” says the General.

“The tragedy, the tragedy! Go and fetch the tragedy this moment, Gumbo!” calls Mrs. Lambert to the black. Gumbo makes a low bow and says, “Tragedy? yes, madam.”

“In the great cowskin trunk, Gumbo,” George says, gravely.

Gumbo bows and says, “Yes, sir,” with still superior gravity.

“But my tragedy is at the bottom of I don't know how much linen, packages, books, and boots, Hetty.”

“Never mind, let us have it, and fling the linen out of window!” cries Miss Hetty.

“And the great cowskin trunk is at our agent's at Bristol: so Gumbo must get post-horses, and we can keep it up till he returns the day after to-morrow,” says George.

The ladies groaned a comical “Oh!” and papa, perhaps more seriously, said, “Let us be thankful for the escape. Let us be thinking of going home too. Our young gentlemen have treated us nobly, and we will all drink a parting bumper to Madam Esmond Warrington of Castlewood, in Virginia. Suppose, boys, you were to find a tall, handsome stepfather when you got home? Ladies as old as she have been known to marry before now.”

“To Madam Esmond Warrington, my old schoolfellow!” cries Mrs. Lambert. “I shall write and tell her what a pretty supper her sons have given us: and, Mr. George, I won't say how ill you behaved at the play!” And, with this last toast, the company took leave; the General's coach and servant, with a flambeau, being in waiting to carry his family home.

After such an entertainment as that which Mr. Warrington had given, what could be more natural or proper than a visit from him to his guests, to inquire how they had reached home and rested? Why, their coach might have taken the open country behind Montague House, in the direction of Oxford Road, and been waylaid by footpads in the fields. The ladies might have caught cold or slept ill after the excitement of the tragedy. In a word, there was no reason why he should make any excuse at all to himself or them for visiting his kind friends; and he shut his books early at the Sloane Museum, and perhaps thought, as he walked away thence, that he remembered very little about what he had been reading.

Pray what is the meaning of this eagerness, this hesitation, this pshaing and shilly-shallying, these doubts, this tremor as he knocks at the door of Mr. Lambert's lodgings in Dean Street, and survey the footman who comes to his summons? Does any young man read? does any old one remember? does any wearied, worn, disappointed pulseless heart recall the time of its full beat and early throbbing? It is ever so many hundred years since some of us were young; and we forget, but do not all forget. No, madam, we remember with advantages, as Shakspeare's Harry promised his soldiers they should do if they survived Agincourt and that day of St. Crispin. Worn old chargers turned out to grass, if the trumpet sounds over the hedge, may we not kick up our old heels, and gallop a minute or so about the paddock, till we are brought up roaring? I do not care for clown and pantaloon now, and think the fairy ugly, and her verses insufferable: but I like to see children at a pantomime. I do not dance, or eat supper any more; but I like to watch Eugenio and Flirtilla twirling round in a pretty waltz, or Lucinda and Ardentio pulling a cracker. Burn your little fingers, children! Blaze out little kindly flames from each other's eyes! And then draw close together and read the motto (that old namby-pamby motto, so stale and so new!)--I say, let her lips read it, and his construe it; and so divide the sweetmeat, young people, and crunch it between you. I have no teeth. Bitter almonds and sugar disagree with me, I tell you; but, for all that, shall not bonbons melt in the mouth?

We follow John upstairs to the General's apartments, and enter with Mr. George Esmond Warrington, who makes a prodigious fine bow. There is only one lady in the room, seated near a window: there is not often much sunshine in Dean Street: the young lady in the window is no especial beauty: but it is spring-time, and she is blooming vernally. A bunch of fresh roses is flushing in her honest cheek. I suppose her eyes are violets. If we lived a hundred years ago, and wrote in the Gentleman's or the London Magazine, we should tell Mr. Sylvanus Urban that her neck was the lily, and her shape the nymph's: we should write an acrostic about her, and celebrate our Lambertella in an elegant poem, still to be read between a neat new engraved plan of the city of Prague and the King of Prussia's camp, and a map of Maryland and the Delaware counties.

Here is Miss Theo blushing like a rose. What could mamma have meant an hour since by insisting that she was very pale and tired, and had best not come out to-day with the rest of the party? They were gone to pay their compliments to my Lord Wrotham's ladies, and thank them for the house in their absence; and papa was at the Horse Guards. He is in great spirits. I believe he expects some command, though mamma is in a sad tremor lest he should again be ordered abroad.

“Your brother and mine are gone to see our little brother at his school at the Chartreux. My brothers are both to be clergymen, I think,” Miss Theo continues. She is assiduously hemming at some article of boyish wearing apparel as she talks. A hundred years ago, young ladies were not afraid either to make shirts, or to name them. Mind, I don't say they were the worse or the better for that plain stitching or plain speaking: and have not the least desire, my dear young lady, that you should make puddings or I should black boots.

So Harry has been with them? “He often comes, almost every day,” Theo says, looking up in George's face. “Poor fellow! He likes us better than the fine folks, who don't care for him now--now he is no longer a fine folk himself,” adds the girl, smiling. “Why have you not set up for the fashion, and frequented the chocolate-houses and the racecourses, Mr. Warrington?”

“Has my brother got so much good out of his gay haunts or his grand friends, that I should imitate him?”

“You might at least go to Sir Miles Warrington; sure his arms are open to receive you. Her ladyship was here this morning in her chair, and to hear her praises of you! She declares you are in a certain way to preferment. She says his Royal Highness the Duke made much of you at court. When you are a great man will you forget us, Mr. Warrington?”

“Yes, when I am a great man I will, Miss Lambert.”

“Well! Mr. George, then----”

“--Mr. George!”

“When papa and mamma are here, I suppose there need be no mistering,” says Theo, looking out of the window, ever so little frightened. “And what have you been doing, sir? Reading books, or writing more of your tragedy? Is it going to be a tragedy to make us cry, as we like them, or only to frighten us, as you like them?”

“There is plenty of killing, but, I fear, not much crying. I have not met many women. I have not been very intimate with those. I daresay what I have written is only taken out of books or parodied from poems which I have read and imitated like other young men. Women do not speak to me, generally; I am said to have a sarcastic way which displeases them.”

“Perhaps you never cared to please them?” inquires Miss Theo, with a blush.

“I displeased you last night; you know I did?”

“Yes; only it can't be called displeasure, and afterwards thought I was wrong.”

“Did you think about me at all when I was away, Theo?”

“Yes, George--that is, Mr.--well, George! I thought you and papa were right about the play; and, as you said, that it was no real sorrow, only affectation, which was moving us. I wonder whether it is good or ill fortune to see so clearly? Hetty and I agreed that we would be very careful, for the future, how we allowed ourselves to enjoy a tragedy. So, be careful when yours comes! What is the name of it?”

“He is not christened. Will you be the godmother? The name of the chief character is----” But at this very moment mamma and Miss Hetty arrived from their walk; and mamma straightway began protesting that she never expected to see Mr. Warrington at all that day--that is, she thought he might come--that is, it was very good of him to come, and the play and the supper of yesterday were all charming, except that Theo had a little headache this morning.

“I dare say it is better now, mamma,” says Miss Hetty.

“Indeed, my dear, it never was of any consequence; and I told mamma so,” says Miss Theo, with a toss of her head.

Then they fell to talking about Harry. He was very low. He must have something to do. He was always going to the Military Coffee-House, and perpetually poring over the King of Prussia's campaigns. It was not fair upon him, to bid him remain in London, after his deposition, as it were. He said nothing, but you could see how he regretted his previous useless life, and felt his present dependence, by the manner in which he avoided his former haunts and associates. Passing by the guard at St. James's, with John Lambert, he had said to brother Jack, “Why mayn't I be a soldier too? I am as tall as yonder fellow, and can kill with a fowling-piece as well as any man I know. But I can't earn so much as sixpence a day. I have squandered my own bread, and now I am eating half my brother's. He is the best of brothers, but so much the more shame that I should live upon him. Don't tell my brother, Jack Lambert.” “And my boy promised he wouldn't tell,” says Mrs. Lambert. No doubt. The girls were both out of the room when their mother made this speech to George Warrington. He, for his part, said he had written home to his mother--that half his little patrimony, the other half likewise, if wanted, were at Harry's disposal, for purchasing a commission, or for any other project which might bring him occupation or advancement.

“He has got a good brother, that is sure. Let us hope for good times for him,” sighs the lady.

“The Danes always come pour qui scait attendre,” George said, in a low voice.

“What, you heard that? Ah, George! my Theo is an----Ah! never mind what she is, George Warrington,” cried the pleased mother, with brimful eyes. “Bah! I am going to make a gaby of myself, as I did at the tragedy.”

Now Mr. George had been revolving a fine private scheme, which he thought might turn to his brother's advantage. After George's presentation to his Royal Highness at Kensington, more persons than one, his friend General Lambert included, had told him that the Duke had inquired regarding him, and had asked why the young man did not come to his levee. Importunity so august could not but be satisfied. A day was appointed between Mr. Lambert and his young friend, and they went to pay their duty to his Royal Highness at his house in Pall Mall.

When it came to George's turn to make a bow, the Prince was especially gracious; he spoke to Mr. Warrington at some length about Braddock and the war, and was apparently pleased with the modesty and intelligence of the young gentleman's answers. George ascribed the failure of the expedition to the panic and surprise certainly, but more especially to the delays occasioned by the rapacity, selfishness, and unfair dealing of the people of the colonies towards the King's troops who were come to defend them. “Could we have moved, sir, a month sooner, the fort was certainly ours, and the little army had never been defeated,” Mr. Warrington said; in which observation his Royal Highness entirely concurred.

“I am told you saved yourself, sir, mainly by your knowledge of the French language,” the Royal Duke then affably observed. Mr. Warrington modestly mentioned how he had been in the French colonies in his youth, and had opportunities of acquiring that tongue.

The Prince (who had a great urbanity when well pleased, and the finest sense of humour) condescended to ask who had taught Mr. Warrington the language; and to express his opinion, that, for the pronunciation, the French ladies were by far the best teachers.

The young Virginian gentleman made a low bow, and said it was not for him to gainsay his Royal Highness; upon which the Duke was good enough to say (in a jocose manner) that Mr. Warrington was a sly dog.

Mr. W. remaining respectfully silent, the Prince continued, most kindly: “I take the field immediately against the French, who, as you know, are threatening his Majesty's Electoral dominions, If you have a mind to make the campaign with me, your skill in the language may be useful, and I hope we shall be more fortunate than poor Braddock!” Every eye was fixed on a young man to whom so great a Prince offered so signal a favour.

And now it was that Mr. George thought he would make his very cleverest speech. “Sir,” he said, “your Royal Highness's most kind proposal does me infinite honour, but----”

“But what, sir?” says the Prince, staring at him.

“But I have entered myself of the Temple, to study our laws, and to fit myself for my duties at home. If my having been wounded in the service of my country be any claim on your kindness, I would humbly ask that my brother, who knows the French language as well as myself, and has far more strength, courage, and military genius, might be allowed to serve your Royal Highness; in the place of----”

“Enough, enough, sir!” cried out the justly irritated son of the monarch. “What? I offer you a favour, and you hand it over to your brother? Wait, sir, till I offer you another!” And with this the Prince turned his back upon Mr. Warrington, just as abruptly as he turned it on the French a few months afterwards.

“Oh, George! oh, George! Here's a pretty kettle of fish!” groaned General Lambert, as he and his young friend walked home together.

LXI. In which the Prince marches up the Hill and down again

We understand the respectful indignation of all loyal Britons when they come to read of Mr. George Warrington's conduct towards a gallant and gracious Prince, the beloved son of the best of monarchs, and the Captain-General of the British army. What an inestimable favour has not the young man slighted! What a chance of promotion had he not thrown away! Will Esmond, whose language was always rich in blasphemies, employed his very strongest curses in speaking of his cousin's behaviour, and expressed his delight that the confounded young Mohock was cutting his own throat. Cousin Castlewood said that a savage gentleman had a right to scalp himself if he liked; or perhaps, he added charitably, our cousin Mr. Warrington heard enough of the war-whoop in Braddock's affair, and has no more stomach for fighting. Mr. Will rejoiced that the younger brother had gone to the deuce, and he rejoiced to think that the elder was following him. The first time he met the fellow, Will said, he should take care to let Mr. George know what he thought of him.

“If you intend to insult George, at least you had best take care that his brother Harry is out of hearing!” cried Lady Maria--on which we may fancy more curses uttered by Mr. Will, with regard to his twin kinsfolk.

“Ta, ta, ta!” says my lord. “No more of this squabbling! We can't be all warriors in the family!”

“I never heard your lordship laid claim to be one!” says Maria.

“Never, my dear; quite the contrary! Will is our champion, and one is quite enough in the house. So I dare say with the two Mohocks;--George is the student, and Harry is the fighting man. When you intended to quarrel, Will, what a pity it was you had not George, instead of t'other, to your hand!”

“Your lordship's hand is famous--at piquet,” says Will's mother.

“It is a pretty one,” says my lord, surveying his fingers, with a simper. “My Lord Hervey's glove and mine were of a size. Yes, my hand, as you say, is more fitted for cards than for war. Yours, my Lady Castlewood, is pretty dexterous, too. How I bless the day when you bestowed it on my lamented father!” In this play of sarcasm, as in some other games of skill, his lordship was not sorry to engage, having a cool head, and being able to beat his family all round.

Madame de Bernstein, when she heard of Mr. Warrington's bevue, was exceedingly angry, stormed, and scolded her immediate household; and would have scolded George but she was growing old, and had not the courage of her early days. Moreover, she was a little afraid of her nephew, and respectful in her behaviour to him. “You will never make your fortune at court, nephew!” she groaned, when, soon after his discomfiture, the young gentleman went to wait upon her.

“It was never my wish, madam,” said Mr. George, in a very stately manner.

“Your wish was to help Harry? You might hereafter have been of service to your brother, had you accepted the Duke's offer. Princes do not love to have their favours refused, and I don't wonder that his Royal Highness was offended.”

“General Lambert said the same thing,” George confessed, turning rather red; “and I see now that I was wrong. But you must please remember that I had never seen a court before, and I suppose I am scarce likely to shine in one.”

“I think possibly not, my good nephew,” says the aunt, taking snuff.

“And what then?” asked George. “I never had ambition for that kind of glory, and can make myself quite easy without it. When his Royal Highness spoke to me--most kindly, as I own--my thought was, I shall make a very bad soldier, and my brother would be a very good one. He has a hundred good qualities for the profession, in which I am deficient; and would have served a Commanding Officer far better than I ever could. Say the Duke is in battle, and his horse is shot, as my poor chief's was at home, would he not be better for a beast that had courage and strength to bear him anywhere, than with one that could not carry his weight?”

“Au fait. His Royal Highness's charger must be a strong one, my dear!” says the old lady.

“Expende Hannibalem,” mutters George, with a shrug. “Our Hannibal weighs no trifle.”

“I don't quite follow you, sir, and your Hannibal,” the Baroness remarks.

“When Mr. Wolfe and Mr. Lambert remonstrated with me as you have done, madam,” George rejoins, with a laugh, “I made this same defence which I am making to you. I said I offered to the Prince the best soldier in the family, and the two gentlemen allowed that my blunder at least had some excuse. Who knows but that they may set me right with his Royal Highness? The taste I have had of battles has shown me how little my genius inclines that way. We saw the Scotch play which everybody is talking about t'other night. And when the hero, young Norval, said how he longed to follow to the field some warlike lord, I thought to myself, 'how like my Harry is to him, except that he doth not brag.' Harry is pining now for a red coat, and if we don't mind, will take the shilling. He has the map of Germany for ever under his eyes, and follows the King of Prussia everywhere. He is not afraid of men or gods. As for me, I love my books and quiet best, and to read about battles in Homer or Lucan.”

“Then what made a soldier of you at all, my dear? And why did you not send Harry with Mr. Braddock, instead of going yourself?” asked Madame de Bernstein.

“My mother loved her younger son the best,” said George, darkly. “Besides, with the enemy invading our country, it was my duty, as the head of our family, to go on the campaign. Had I been a Scotchman twelve years ago, I should have been a----”

“Hush, sir! or I shall be more angry than ever!” said the old lady, with a perfectly pleased face.

George's explanation might thus appease Madame de Bernstein, an old woman whose principles we fear were but loose: but to the loyal heart of Sir Miles Warrington and his lady, the young man's conduct gave a severe blow indeed! “I should have thought,” her ladyship said, “from my sister Esmond Warrington's letter, that my brother's widow was a woman of good sense and judgment, and that she had educated her sons in a becoming manner. But what, Sir Miles, what, my dear Thomas Claypool, can we think of an education which has resulted so lamentably for both these young men?”

“The elder seems to know a power of Latin, though, and speaks the French and the German too. I heard him with the Hanover Envoy, at the Baroness's rout,” says Mr. Claypool. “The French he jabbered quite easy: and when he was at a loss for the High Dutch, he and the Envoy began in Latin, and talked away till all the room stared.”

“It is not language, but principles, Thomas Claypool!” exclaims the virtuous matron. “What must Mr. Warrington's principles be, when he could reject an offer made him by his Prince? Can he speak the High Dutch? So much the more ought he to have accepted his Royal Highness's condescension, and made himself useful in the campaign! Look at our son, look at Miles!”

“Hold up thy head, Miley, my boy!” says papa.

“I trust, Sir Miles, that, as a member of the House of Commons, as an English gentleman, you will attend his Royal Highness's levee to-morrow, and say, if such an offer had been made to us for that child, we would have taken it, though our boy is but ten years of age.”

“Faith, Miley, thou wouldst make a good little drummer or fifer!” says papa. “Shouldst like to be a little soldier, Miley?”

“Anything, sir, anything! a Warrington ought to be ready at any moment to have himself cut in pieces for his sovereign!” cries the matron, pointing to the boy; who, as soon as he comprehended his mother's proposal, protested against it by a loud roar, in the midst of which he was removed by Screwby. In obedience to the conjugal orders, Sir Miles went to his Royal Highness's levee the next day, and made a protest of his love and duty, which the Prince deigned to accept, saying:

“Nobody ever supposed that Sir Miles Warrington would ever refuse any place offered to him.”

A compliment gracious indeed, and repeated everywhere by Lady Warrington, as showing how implicitly the august family on the throne could rely on the loyalty of the Warringtons.

Accordingly, when this worthy couple saw George, they received him with a ghastly commiseration, such as our dear relatives or friends will sometimes extend to us when we have done something fatal or clumsy in life; when we have come badly out of our lawsuit; when we enter the room just as the company has been abusing us; when our banker has broke; or we for our sad part have had to figure in the commercial columns of the London Gazette;--when, in a word, we are guilty of some notorious fault, or blunder, or misfortune. Who does not know that face of pity? Whose dear relations have not so deplored him, not dead, but living? Not yours? Then, sir, if you have never been in scrapes; if you have never sowed a handful of wild oats or two; if you have always been fortunate, and good, and careful, and butter has never melted in your mouth, and an imprudent word has never come out of it; if you have never sinned and repented, and been a fool and been sorry--then, sir, you are a wiseacre who won't waste your time over an idle novel, and it is not de te that the fable is narrated at all.

Not that it was just on Sir Miles's part to turn upon George, and be angry with his nephew for refusing the offer of promotion made by his Royal Highness, for Sir Miles himself had agreed in George's view of pursuing quite other than a military career, and it was in respect to this plan of her son's that Madam Esmond had written from Virginia to Sir Miles Warrington. George had announced to her his intention of entering at the Temple, and qualifying himself for the magisterial and civil duties which, in the course of nature, he would be called to fulfil; nor could any one applaud his resolution more cordially than his uncle Sir Miles, who introduced George to a lawyer of reputation, under whose guidance we may fancy the young gentleman reading leisurely. Madam Esmond from home signified her approval of her son's course, fully agreeing with Sir Miles (to whom and his lady she begged to send her grateful remembrances) that the British Constitution was the envy of the world, and the proper object of every English gentleman's admiring study. The chief point to which George's mother objected was the notion that Mr. Warrington should have to sit down in the Temple dinner-ball, and cut at a shoulder of mutton, and drink small-beer out of tin pannikins, by the side of rough students who wore gowns like the parish-clerk. George's loyal younger brother shared too this repugnance. Anything was good enough for him, Harry said; he was a younger son, and prepared to rough it; but George, in a gown, and dining in a mess with three nobody's sons off dirty pewter platters! Harry never could relish this condescension on his brother's part, or fancy George in his proper place at any except the high table; and was sorry that a plan Madam Esmond hinted at in her letters was not feasible--viz., that an application should be made to the Master of the Temple, who should be informed that Mr. George Warrington was a gentleman of most noble birth, and of great property in America, and ought only to sit with the very best company in the Hall. Rather to Harry's discomfiture, when he communicated his own and his mother's ideas to the gentlemen's new coffee-house friend, Mr. Spencer, Mr. Spencer received the proposal with roars of laughter; and I cannot learn, from the Warrington papers, that any application was made to the Master of the Temple on this subject. Besides his literary and historical pursuits, which were those he most especially loved, Mr. Warrington studied the laws of his country, attended the courts at Westminster, where he heard a Henley, a Pratt, a Murray, and those other great famous schools of eloquence and patriotism, the two houses of parliament.

Gradually Mr. Warrington made acquaintance with some of the members of the House and the Bar; who, when they came to know him, spoke of him as a young gentleman of good parts and good breeding, and in terms so generally complimentary, that his good uncle's heart relented towards him, and Dora and Flora began once more to smile upon him. This reconciliation dated from the time when his Royal Highness the Duke, after having been defeated by the French, in the affair of Hastenbeck, concluded the famous capitulation with the French, which his Majesty George II. refused to ratify. His Royal Highness, as 'tis well known, flung up his commissions after this disgrace, laid down his commander's baton--which, it must be confessed, he had not wielded with much luck or dexterity--and never again appeared at the head of armies or in public life. The stout warrior would not allow a word of complaint against his father and sovereign to escape his lips; but, as he retired with his wounded honour, and as he would have no interest or authority more, nor any places to give, it may be supposed that Sir Miles Warrington's anger against his nephew diminished as his respect for his Royal Highness diminished.

As our two gentlemen were walking in St. James's Park, one day, with their friend Mr. Lambert, they met his Royal Highness in plain clothes and without a star, and made profound bows to the Prince, who was pleased to stop and speak to them.

He asked Mr. Lambert how he liked my Lord Ligonier, his new chief at the Horse Guards, and the new duties there in which he was engaged? And, recognising the young men, with that fidelity of memory for which his Royal race hath ever been remarkable, he said to Mr. Warrington:

“You did well, sir, not to come with me when I asked you in the spring.”

“I was sorry, then, sir,” Mr. Warrington said, making a very low reverence, “but I am more sorry now.”

On which the Prince said, “Thank you, sir,” and, touching his hat, walked away. And the circumstances of this interview, and the discourse which passed at it, being related to Mrs. Esmond Warrington in a letter from her younger son, created so deep an impression in that lady's mind, that she narrated the anecdote many hundreds of times until all her friends and acquaintances knew and, perhaps, were tired of it.

Our gentlemen went through the Park, and so towards the Strand, where they had business. And Mr. Lambert, pointing to the lion on the top of the Earl of Northumberland's house at Charing Cross, says:

“Harry Warrington! your brother is like yonder lion.”

“Because he is as brave as one,” says Harry.

“Because I respect virgins!” says George, laughing.

“Because you are a stupid lion. Because you turn your back on the East, and absolutely salute the setting sun. Why, child, what earthly good can you get by being civil to a man in hopeless dudgeon and disgrace? Your uncle will be more angry with you than ever--and so am I, sir.” But Mr. Lambert was always laughing in his waggish way, and, indeed, he did not look the least angry.

LXII. Arma Virumque

Indeed, if Harry Warrington had a passion for military pursuits and studies, there was enough of war stirring in Europe, and enough talk in all societies which he frequented in London, to excite and inflame him. Though our own gracious Prince of the house of Hanover had been beaten, the Protestant Hero, the King of Prussia, was filling the world with his glory, and winning those astonishing victories in which I deem it fortunate on my own account that my poor Harry took no part; for then his veracious biographer would have had to narrate battles the description whereof has been undertaken by another pen. I am glad, I say, that Harry Warrington was not at Rossbach on that famous Gunpowder Fete-day, on the 5th of November, in the year 1757; nor at that tremendous slaughtering-match of Leuthen, which the Prussian king played a month afterwards; for these prodigious actions will presently be narrated in other volumes, which I and all the world are eager to behold. Would you have this history compete with yonder book? Could my jaunty, yellow park-phaeton run counter to that grim chariot of thundering war? Could my meek little jog-trot Pegasus meet the shock of yon steed of foaming bit and flaming nostril? Dear, kind reader (with whom I love to talk from time to time, stepping down from the stage where our figures are performing, attired in the habits and using the parlance of past ages),--my kind, patient reader! it is a mercy for both of us that Harry Warrington did not follow the King of the Borussians, as he was minded to do, for then I should have had to describe battles which Carlyle is going to paint; and I don't wish you should make odious comparisons between me and that master.

Harry Warrington not only did not join the King of the Borussians, but he pined and chafed at not going. He led a sulky useless life, that is the fact. He dangled about the military coffee-houses. He did not care for reading anything save a newspaper. His turn was not literary. He even thought novels were stupid; and, as for the ladies crying their eyes out over Mr. Richardson, he could not imagine how they could be moved by any such nonsense. He used to laugh in a very hearty jolly way, but a little late, and some time after the joke was over. Pray, why should all gentlemen have a literary turn? And do we like some of our friends the worse because they never turned a couplet in their lives? Ruined, perforce idle, dependent on his brother for supplies, if he read a book falling asleep over it, with no fitting work for his great strong hands to do--how lucky it is that he did not get into more trouble! Why, in the case of Achilles himself, when he was sent by his mamma to the court of King What-d'ye-call-'em in order to be put out of harm's reach, what happened to him amongst a parcel of women with whom he was made to idle his life away? And how did Pyrrhus come into the world? A powerful mettlesome young Achilles ought not to be leading-stringed by women too much; is out of his place dawdling by distaffs or handing coffee-cups; and when he is not fighting, depend on it, is likely to fall into much worse mischief.

Those soft-hearted women, the two elder ladies of the Lambert family, with whom he mainly consorted, had an untiring pity and kindness for Harry, such as women only--and only a few of those--can give. If a man is in grief, who cheers him; in trouble, who consoles him; in wrath, who soothes him; in joy, who makes him doubly happy; in prosperity, who rejoices; in disgrace, who backs him against the world, and dresses with gentle unguents and warm poultices the rankling wounds made by the slings and arrows of outrageous Fortune? Who but woman, if you please? You who are ill and sore from the buffets of Fate, have you one or two of these sweet physicians? Return thanks to the gods that they have left you so much of consolation. What gentleman is not more or less a Prometheus? Who has not his rock (ai, ai), his chain (ea, ea), and his liver in a deuce of a condition? But the sea-nymphs come--the gentle, the sympathising; they kiss our writhing feet; they moisten our parched lips with their tears; they do their blessed best to console us Titans; they don't turn their backs upon us after our overthrow.

Now Theo and her mother were full of pity for Harry; but Hetty's heart was rather hard and seemingly savage towards him. She chafed that his position was not more glorious; she was angry that he was still dependent and idle. The whole world was in arms, and could he not carry a musket? It was harvest-time, and hundreds of thousands of reapers were out with their flashing sickles; could he not use his, and cut down his sheaf or two of glory?

“Why, how savage the little thing is with him!” says papa, after a scene in which, according to her wont, Miss Hetty had been firing little shots into that quivering target which came and set itself up in Mrs. Lambert's drawing-room every day.

“Her conduct is perfectly abominable!” cries mamma; “she deserves to be whipped, and sent to bed.”

“Perhaps, mother, it is because she likes him better than any of us do,” says Theo, “and it is for his sake that Hetty is angry. If I were fond of--of some one, I should like to be able to admire and respect him always--to think everything he did right--and my gentleman better than all the gentlemen in the world.”

“The truth is, my dear,” answers Mrs. Lambert, “that your father is so much better than all the world, he has spoiled us. Did you ever see any one to compare with him?”

“Very few, indeed,” owns Theo, with a blush.

“Very few. Who is so good-tempered?”

“I think nobody, mamma,” Theo acknowledges.

“Or so brave?”

“Why, I dare say Mr. Wolfe, or Harry, or Mr. George, are very brave.”

“Or so learned and witty?”

“I am sure Mr. George seems very learned, and witty too, in his way,” says Theo; “and his manners are very fine--you own they are. Madame de Bernstein says they are, and she hath seen the world. Indeed, Mr. George has a lofty way with him, which I don't see in other people; and, in reading books, I find he chooses the fine noble things always, and loves them in spite of all his satire. He certainly is of a satirical turn, but then he is only bitter against mean things and people. No gentleman hath a more tender heart I am sure; and but yesterday, after he had been talking so bitterly as you said, I happened to look out of window, and saw him stop and treat a whole crowd of little children to apples at the stall at the corner. And the day before yesterday, when he was coming and brought me the Moliere, he stopped and gave money to a beggar, and how charmingly, sure, he reads the French! I agree with him though about Tartuffe, though 'tis so wonderfully clever and lively, that a mere villain and hypocrite is a figure too mean to be made the chief of a great piece. Iago, Mr. George said, is near as great a villain; but then he is not the first character of the tragedy, which is Othello, with his noble weakness. But what fine ladies and gentlemen Moliere represents--so Mr. George thinks--and--but oh, I don't dare to repeat the verses after him.”

“But you know them by heart, my dear?” asks Mrs. Lambert.

And Theo replies, “Oh yes, mamma! I know them by... Nonsense!”

I here fancy osculations, palpitations, and exit Miss Theo, blushing like a rose. Why had she stopped in her sentence? Because mamma was looking at her so oddly. And why was mamma looking at her so oddly? And why had she looked after Mr. George when he was going away, and looked for him when he was coming? Ah, and why do cheeks blush, and why do roses bloom? Old Time is still a-flying. Old spring and bud time; old summer and bloom time; old autumn and seed time; old winter time, when the cracking, shivering old tree-tops are bald or covered with snow.

A few minutes after George arrived, Theo would come downstairs with a fluttering heart, may be, and a sweet nosegay in her cheeks, just culled, as it were, fresh in his honour; and I suppose she must have been constantly at that window which commanded the street, and whence she could espy his generosity to the sweep, or his purchases from the apple-woman. But if it was Harry who knocked, she remained in her own apartment with her work or her books, sending her sister to receive the young gentleman, or her brothers when the elder was at home from college, or Doctor Crusius from the Chartreux gave the younger leave to go home. And what good eyes Theo must have had--and often in the evening, too--to note the difference between Harry's yellow hair and George's dark locks--and between their figures, though they were so like that people continually were mistaking one for the other brother. Now it is certain that Theo never mistook one or t'other; and that Hetty, for her part, was not in the least excited, or rude, or pert, when she found the black-haired gentleman in her mother's drawing-room.

Our friends could come when they liked to Mr. Lambert's house, and stay as long as they chose; and, one day, he of the golden locks was sitting on a couch there, in an attitude of more than ordinary idleness and despondency, when who should come down to him but Miss Hetty? I say it was a most curious thing (though the girls would have gone to the rack rather than own any collusion), that when Harry called, Hetty appeared; when George arrived, Theo somehow came; and so, according to the usual dispensation, it was Miss Lambert, junior, who now arrived to entertain the younger Virginian.

After usual ceremonies and compliments we may imagine that the lady says to the gentleman:

“And pray, sir, what makes your honour look so glum this morning?”

“Ah, Hetty!” says he, “I have nothing else to do but to look glum. I remember when we were boys--and I a rare idle one, you may be sure--I would always be asking my tutor for a holiday, which I would pass very likely swinging on a gate, or making ducks and drakes over the pond, and those do-nothing days were always the most melancholy. What have I got to do now from morning till night?”

“Breakfast, walk--dinner, walk--tea, supper, I suppose; and a pipe of your Virginia,” says Miss Hetty, tossing her head.

“I tell you what, when I went back with Charley to the Chartreux, t'other night, I had a mind to say to the master, 'Teach me, sir. Here's a boy knows a deal more Latin and Greek, at thirteen, than I do, who am ten years older. I have nothing to do from morning till night, and I might as well go to my books again, and see if I can repair my idleness as a boy.' Why do you laugh, Hetty?”

“I laugh to fancy you at the head of a class, and called up by the master!” cries Hetty.

“I shouldn't be at the head of the class,” Harry says, humbly. “George might be at the head of any class, but I am not a bookman, you see; and when I was young neglected myself, and was very idle. We would not let our tutors cane us much at home, but, if we had, it might have done me good.”

Hetty drubbed with her little foot, and looked at the young man sitting before her--strong, idle, melancholy.

“Upon my word, it might do you good now!” she was minded to say. “What does Tom say about the caning at school? Does his account of it set you longing for it, pray?” she asked.

“His account of his school,” Harry answered simply, “makes me see that I have been idle when I ought to have worked, and that I have not a genius for books, and for what am I good? Only to spend my patrimony when I come abroad, or to lounge at coffee-houses or racecourses, or to gallop behind dogs when I am at home. I am good for nothing, I am.”

“What, such a great, brave, strong fellow as you good for nothing?” cries Het. “I would not confess as much to any woman, if I were twice as good for nothing!”

“What am I to do? I ask for leave to go into the army, and Madam Esmond does not answer me. 'Tis the only thing I am fit for. I have no money to buy. Having spent all my own, and so much of my brother's, I cannot and won't ask for more. If my mother would but send me to the army, you know I would jump to go.”

“Eh! A gentleman of spirit does not want a woman to buckle his sword on for him or to clean his firelock! What was that our papa told us of the young gentleman at court yesterday?--Sir John Armytage----”

“Sir John Armytage? I used to know him when I frequented White's and the club-houses--a fine, noble young gentleman, of a great estate in the North.”

“And engaged to be married to a famous beauty, too--Miss Howe, my Lord Howe's sister--but that, I suppose, is not an obstacle to gentlemen?”

“An obstacle to what?” asks the gentleman.

“An obstacle to glory!” says Miss Hetty. “I think no woman of spirit would say 'Stay!' though she adored her lover ever so much, when his country said 'Go!' Sir John had volunteered for the expedition which is preparing, and being at court yesterday his Majesty asked him when he would be ready to go? 'Tomorrow, please your Majesty,' replies Sir John, and the king said, that was a soldier's answer. My father himself is longing to go, though he has mamma and all us brats at home. Oh dear, oh dear! Why wasn't I a man myself? Both my brothers are for the Church; but, as for me, I know I should have made a famous little soldier!” And, so speaking, this young person strode about the room, wearing a most courageous military aspect, and looking as bold as Joan of Arc.

Harry beheld her with a tender admiration. “I think,” says he, “I would hardly like to see a musket on that little shoulder, nor a wound on that pretty face, Hetty.”

“Wounds! who fears wounds?” cries the little maid. “Muskets? If I could carry one, I would use it. You men fancy that we women are good for nothing but to make puddings or stitch samplers. Why wasn't I a man, I say? George was reading to us yesterday out of Tasso--look, here it is, and I thought the verses applied to me. See! Here is the book, with the mark in it where we left off.”

“With the mark in it?” says Harry dutifully.

“Yes! it is about a woman who is disappointed because--because her brother does not go to war, and she says of herself--

“'Alas! why did not Heaven these members frail With lively force and vigour strengthen, so That I this silken gown...'”

“Silken gown?” says downright Harry, with a look of inquiry.

“Well, sir, I know 'tis but Calimanco;--but so it is in the book--

“'... this silken gown and slender veil Might for a breastplate and a helm forgo; Then should not heat, nor cold, nor rain, nor hail, Nor storms that fall, nor blust'ring winds that blow, Withhold me; but I would, both day and night, In pitched field or private combat, fight--'

“Fight? Yes, that I would! Why are both my brothers to be parsons, I say? One of my papa's children ought to be a soldier!”

Harry laughed, a very gentle, kind laugh, as he looked at her. He felt that he would not like much to hit such a tender little warrior as that.

“Why,” says he, holding a finger out, “I think here is a finger nigh as big as your arm. How would you stand up before a great, strong man? I should like to see a man try and injure you, though; I should just like to see him! You little, delicate, tender creature! Do you suppose any scoundrel would dare to do anything unkind to you?” And, excited by this flight of his imagination, Harry fell to walking up and down the room, too, chafing at the idea of any rogue of a Frenchman daring to be rude to Miss Hester Lambert.

It was a belief in this silent courage of his which subjugated Hetty, and this quality which she supposed him to possess, which caused her specially to admire him. Miss Hetty was no more bold, in reality, than Madam Erminia, whose speech she had been reading out of the book, and about whom Mr. Harry Warrington never heard one single word. He may have been in the room when brother George was reading his poetry out to the ladies, but his thoughts were busy with his own affairs, and he was entirely bewildered with your Clotildas and Erminias, and giants, and enchanters, and nonsense. No, Miss Hetty, I say and believe, had nothing of the virago in her composition; else, no doubt, she would have taken a fancy to a soft young fellow with a literary turn, or a genius for playing the flute, according to the laws of contrast and nature provided in those cases; and who has not heard how great, strong men have an affinity for frail, tender little women; how tender little women are attracted by great, honest, strong men; and how your burly heroes and champions of war are constantly henpecked? If Mr. Harry Warrington falls in love with a woman who is like Miss Lambert in disposition, and if he marries her--without being conjurers, I think we may all see what the end will be.

So, whilst Hetty was firing her little sarcasms into Harry, he for a while scarcely felt that they were stinging him, and let her shoot on without so much as taking the trouble to shake the little arrows out of his hide. Did she mean by her sneers and innuendoes to rouse him into action? He was too magnanimous to understand such small hints. Did she mean to shame him by saying that she, a weak woman, would don the casque and breastplate? The simple fellow either melted at the idea of her being in danger, or at the notion of her fighting fell a-laughing.

“Pray what is the use of having a strong hand if you only use it to hold a skein of silk for my mother?” cries Miss Hester; “and what is the good of being ever so strong in a drawing-room? Nobody wants you to throw anybody out of window, Harry! A strong man, indeed! I suppose there's a stronger at Bartholomew Fair. James Wolfe is not a strong man. He seems quite weakly and ill. When he was here last he was coughing the whole time, and as pale as if he had seen a ghost.”

“I never could understand why a man should be frightened at a ghost,” says Harry.

“Pray, have you seen one, sir?” asks the pert young lady.

“No. I thought I did once at home--when we were boys; but it was only Nathan in his night-shirt; but I wasn't frightened when I thought he was a ghost. I believe there's no such things. Our nurses tell a pack of lies about 'em,” says Harry, gravely. “George was a little frightened; but then he's----” Here he paused.

“Then George is what?” asked Hetty.

“George is different from me, that's all. Our mother's a bold woman as ever you saw, but she screams at seeing a mouse--always does--can't help it. It's her nature. So, you see, perhaps my brother can't bear ghosts. I don't mind 'em.”

“George always says you would have made a better soldier than he.”

“So I think I should, if I had been allowed to try. But he can do a thousand things better than me, or anybody else in the world. Why didn't he let me volunteer on Braddock's expedition? I might have got knocked on the head, and then I should have been pretty much as useful as I am now, and then I shouldn't have ruined myself, and brought people to point at me and say that I had disgraced the name of Warrington. Why mayn't I go on this expedition, and volunteer like Sir John Armytage? Oh, Hetty! I'm a miserable fellow--that's what I am,” and the miserable fellow paced the room at double quick time. “I wish I had never come to Europe,” he groaned out.

“What a compliment to us! Thank you, Harry!” But presently, on an appealing look from the gentleman, she added, “Are you--are you thinking of going home?”

“And have all Virginia jeering at me! There's not a gentleman there that wouldn't, except one, and him my mother doesn't like. I should be ashamed to go home now, I think. You don't know my mother, Hetty. I ain't afraid of most things; but, somehow, I am of her. What shall I say to her, when she says, 'Harry, where's your patrimony?' 'Spent, mother,' I shall have to say. 'What have you done with it?' 'Wasted it, mother, and went to prison after.' 'Who took you out of prison?' 'Brother George, ma'am, he took me out of prison; and now I'm come back, having done no good for myself, with no profession, no prospects, no nothing--only to look after negroes, and be scolded at home; or to go to sleep at sermons; or to play at cards, and drink, and fight cocks at the taverns about.' How can I look the gentlemen of the country in the face? I'm ashamed to go home in this way, I say. I must and will do something! What shall I do, Hetty? Ah! what shall I do?”

“Do? What did Mr. Wolfe do at Louisbourg? Ill as he was, and in love as we knew him to be, he didn't stop to be nursed by his mother, Harry, or to dawdle with his sweetheart. He went on the King's service, and hath come back covered with honour. If there is to be another great campaign in America, papa says he is sure of a great command.”

“I wish he would take me with him, and that a ball would knock me on the head and finish me,” groaned Harry. “You speak to me, Hetty, as though it were my fault that I am not in the army, when you know I would give--give, forsooth, what have I to give?--yes! my life to go on service!”

“Life indeed!” says Miss Hetty, with a shrug of her shoulders.

“You don't seem to think that of much value, Hetty,” remarked Harry, sadly. “No more it is--to anybody. I'm a poor useless fellow. I'm not even free to throw it away as I would like, being under orders here and at home.”

“Orders indeed! Why under orders?” cries Miss Hetty. “Aren't you tall enough, and old enough, to act for yourself, and must you have George for a master here, and your mother for a schoolmistress at home? If I were a man, I would do something famous before I was two-and-twenty years old, that I would! I would have the world speak of me. I wouldn't dawdle at apron-strings. I wouldn't curse my fortune--I'd make it. I vow and declare I would!”

Now, for the first time, Harry began to wince at the words of his young lecturer.

“No negro on our estate is more a slave than I am, Hetty,” he said, turning very red as he addressed her; “but then, Miss Lambert, we don't reproach the poor fellow for not being free. That isn't generous. At least, that isn't the way I understand honour. Perhaps with women it's different, or I may be wrong, and have no right to be hurt at a young girl telling me what my faults are. Perhaps my faults are not my faults--only my cursed luck. You have been talking ever so long about this gentleman volunteering, and that man winning glory, and cracking up their courage as if I had none of my own. I suppose, for the matter of that, I'm as well provided as other gentlemen. I don't brag but I'm not afraid of Mr. Wolfe, nor of Sir John Armytage, nor of anybody else that ever I saw. How can I buy a commission when I've spent my last shilling, or ask my brother for more who has already halved with me? A gentleman of my rank can't go a common soldier--else, by Jupiter, I would! And if a ball finished me, I suppose Miss Hetty Lambert wouldn't be very sorry. It isn't kind, Hetty--I didn't think it of you.”

“What is it I have said?” asks the young lady. “I have only said Sir John Armytage has volunteered, and Mr. Wolfe has covered himself with honour, and you begin to scold me! How can I help it if Mr. Wolfe is brave and famous? Is that any reason you should be angry, pray?”

“I didn't say angry,” said Harry, gravely. “I said I was hurt.”

“Oh, indeed! I thought such a little creature as I am couldn't hurt anybody! I'm sure 'tis mighty complimentary to me to say that a young lady whose arm is no bigger than your little finger can hurt such a great strong man as you!”

“I scarce thought you would try, Hetty,” the young man said. You see, I'm not used to this kind of welcome in this house.”

“What is it, my poor boy?” asks kind Mrs. Lambert, looking in at the door at this juncture, and finding the youth with a very woeworn countenance.

“Oh, we have heard the story before, mamma!” says Hetty, hurriedly. “Harry is making his old complaint of having nothing to do. And he is quite unhappy; and he is telling us so over and over again, that's all.”

“So are you hungry over and over again, my dear! Is that a reason why your papa and I should leave off giving you dinner?” cries mamma, with some emotion. “Will you stay and have ours, Harry? 'Tis just three o'clock!” Harry agreed to stay, after a few faint negations. “My husband dines abroad. We are but three women, so you will have a dull dinner,” remarks Mrs. Lambert.

“We shall have a gentleman to enliven us, mamma, I dare say!” says Madam Pert, and then looked in mamma's face with that admirable gaze of blank innocence which Madam Pert knows how to assume when she has been specially and successfully wicked.

When the dinner appeared. Miss Hetty came downstairs, and was exceedingly chatty, lively, and entertaining. Theo did not know that any little difference had occurred (such, alas, my Christian friends, will happen in the most charming families), did not know, I say, that anything had happened until Hetty's uncommon sprightliness and gaiety roused her suspicions. Hetty would start a dozen subjects of conversation--the King of Prussia, and the news from America; the last masquerade, and the highwayman shot near Barnet; and when her sister, admiring this volubility, inquired the reason of it, with her eyes,--

“Oh, my dear, you need not nod and wink at me!” cries Hetty. “Mamma asked Harry on purpose to enliven us, and I am talking until he begins, just like the fiddles at the playhouse, you know, Theo! First the fiddles. Then the play. Pray begin, Harry!”

“Hester!” cries mamma.

“I merely asked Harry to entertain us. You said yourself, mother, that we were only three women, and the dinner would be dull for a gentleman; unless, indeed, he chose to be very lively.”

“I'm not that on most days--and, Heaven knows, on this day less than most,” says poor Harry.

“Why on this day less than another? Tuesday is as good a day to be lively as Wednesday. The only day when we mustn't be lively is Sunday. Well, you know it is, ma'am! We mustn't sing, nor dance, nor do anything on Sunday.”

And in this naughty way the young woman went on for the rest of the evening, and was complimented by her mother and sister when poor Harry took his leave. He was not ready of wit, and could not fling back the taunts which Hetty cast against him. Nay, had he been able to retort, he would have been silent. He was too generous to engage in that small war, and chose to take all Hester's sarcasms without an attempt to parry or evade them. Very likely the young lady watched and admired that magnanimity, while she tried it so cruelly. And after one of her fits of ill-behaviour, her parents and friends had not the least need to scold her, as she candidly told them, because she suffered a great deal more than they would ever have had her, and her conscience punished her a great deal more severely than her kind elders would have thought of doing. I suppose she lies awake all that night, and tosses and tumbles in her bed. I suppose she wets her pillow with tears, and should not mind about her sobbing: unless it kept her sister awake; unless she was unwell the next day, and the doctor had to be fetched; unless the whole family is to be put to discomfort; mother to choke over her dinner in flurry and indignation; father to eat his roast-beef in silence and with bitter sauce; everybody to look at the door each time it opens, with a vague hope that Harry is coming in. If Harry does not come, why at least does not George come? thinks Miss Theo.

Some time in the course of the evening comes a billet from George Warrington, with a large nosegay of lilacs, per Mr. Gumbo. “'I send my best duty and regards to Mrs. Lambert and the ladies,'” George says, “'and humbly beg to present to Miss Theo this nosegay of lilacs, which she says she loves in the early spring. You must not thank me for them, please, but the gardener of Bedford House, with whom I have made great friends by presenting him with some dried specimens of a Virginian plant which some ladies don't think as fragrant as lilacs.

“'I have been in the garden almost all the day. It is alive with sunshine and spring; and I have been composing two scenes of you know what, and polishing the verses which the Page sings in the fourth act, under Sybilla's window, which she cannot hear, poor thing, because she has just had her head off.'”

“Provoking! I wish he would not always sneer and laugh! The verses are beautiful,” says Theo.

“You really think so, my dear? How very odd!” remarks papa.

Little Het looks up from her dismal corner with a faint smile of humour. Theo's secret is a secret for nobody in the house, it seems. Can any young people guess what it is? Our young lady continues to read:

“'Spencer has asked the famous Mr. Johnson to breakfast to-morrow, who condescends to hear the play, and who won't, I hope, be too angry because my heroine undergoes the fate of his in Irene. I have heard he came up to London himself as a young man with only his tragedy in his wallet. Shall I ever be able to get mine played? Can you fancy the catcall music beginning, and the pit hissing at that perilous part of the fourth act, where my executioner comes out from the closet with his great sword, at the awful moment when he is called upon to amputate? They say Mr. Fielding, when the pit hissed at a part of one of his pieces, about which Mr. Garrick had warned him, said, 'Hang them, they have found it out, have they?' and finished his punch in tranquillity. I suppose his wife was not in the boxes. There are some women to whom I would be very unwilling to give pain, and there are some to whom I would give the best I have.'”

“Whom can he mean? The letter is to you, my dear. I protest he is making love to your mother before my face!” cries papa to Hetty, who only gives a little sigh, puts her hand in her father's hand, and then withdraws it.

“'To whom I would give the best I have. To-day it is only a bunch of lilacs. To-morrow it may be what?--a branch of rue--a sprig of bays, perhaps--anything, so it be my best and my all.

“'I have had a fine long day, and all to myself. What do you think of Harry playing truant?'” (Here we may imagine, what they call in France, or what they used to call, when men dared to speak or citizens to hear, sensation dans l'auditoire.)

“'I suppose Carpezan wearied the poor fellow's existence out. Certain it is he has been miserable for weeks past; and a change of air and scene may do him good. This morning, quite early, he came to my room, and told me he had taken a seat in the Portsmouth machine, and proposed to go to the Isle of Wight, to the army there.'”

The army! Hetty looks very pale at this announcement, and her mother continues:

“'And a little portion of it, namely, the thirty-second regiment, is commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Richmond Webb--the nephew of the famous old General under whom my grandfather Esmond served in the great wars of Marlborough. Mr. Webb met us at our uncle's, accosting us very politely, and giving us an invitation to visit him at his regiment. Let my poor brother go and listen to his darling music of fife and drum! He bade me tell the ladies that they should hear from him. I kiss their hands, and go to dress for dinner, at the Star and Garter, in Pall Mall. We are to have Mr. Soame Jenyns, Mr. Cambridge, Mr. Walpole, possibly, if he is not too fine to dine in a tavern; a young Irishman, a Mr. Bourke, who they say is a wonder of eloquence and learning--in fine, all the wits of Mr. Dodsley's shop. Quick, Gumbo, a coach, and my French grey suit! And if gentlemen ask me, 'Who gave you that sprig of lilac you wear on your heart-side?' I shall call a bumper, and give Lilac for a toast.'”

I fear there is no more rest for Hetty on this night than on the previous one, when she had behaved so mutinously to poor Harry Warrington. Some secret resolution must have inspired that gentleman, for, after leaving Mr. Lambert's table, he paced the streets for a while, and appeared at a late hour in the evening at Madame de Bernstein's house in Clarges Street. Her ladyship's health had been somewhat ailing of late, so that even her favourite routs were denied her, and she was sitting over a quiet game of ecarte, with a divine of whom our last news were from a lock-up house hard by that in which Harry Warrington had been himself confined. George, at Harry's request, had paid the little debt under which Mr. Sampson had suffered temporarily. He had been at his living for a year. He may have paid and contracted ever so many debts, have been in and out of jail many times since we saw him. For some time past he had been back in London stout and hearty as usual, and ready for any invitation to cards or claret. Madame de Bernstein did not care to have her game interrupted by her nephew, whose conversation had little interest now for the fickle old woman. Next to the very young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish. Alas, the heart hardens as the blood ceases to run. The cold snow strikes down from the head, and checks the glow of feeling. Who wants to survive into old age after abdicating all his faculties one by one, and be sans teeth, sans eyes, sans memory, sans hope, sans sympathy? How fared it with those patriarchs of old who lived for their nine centuries, and when were life's conditions so changed that, after threescore years and ten, it became but a vexation and a burden?

Getting no reply but Yes and No to his brief speeches, poor Harry sat a while on a couch opposite his aunt, who shrugged her shoulders, had her back to her nephew, and continued her game with the chaplain. Sampson sat opposite Mr. Warrington, and could see that something disturbed him. His face was very pale, and his countenance disturbed and full of gloom. “Something has happened to him, ma'am,” he whispered to the Baroness.

“Bah!” She shrugged her shoulders again, and continued to deal her cards. “What is the matter with you, sir,” she at last said, at a pause in the game, “that you have such a dismal countenance? Chaplain, that last game makes us even, I think!”

Harry got up from his place. “I am going on a journey: I am come to bid you good-bye, aunt,” he said, in a very tragical voice.

“On a journey! Are you going home to America? I mark the king, Chaplain, and play him.”

No, Harry said: he was not going to America yet going to the Isle of Wight for the present.

“Indeed!--a lovely spot!” says the Baroness. “Bon jour, mon ami, et bon voyage!” And she kissed a hand to her nephew.

“I mayn't come back for some time, aunt,” he groaned out.

“Indeed! We shall be inconsolable without you! Unless you have a spade, Mr. Sampson, the game is mine. Good-bye, my child! No more about your journey at present: tell us about it when you come back!” And she gaily bade him farewell. He looked for a moment piteously at her, and was gone.

“Something grave has happened, madam,” says the chaplain.

“Oh! The boy is always getting into scrapes! I suppose he has been falling in love with one of those country girls--what are their names, Lamberts?--with whom he is ever dawdling about. He has been doing no good here for some time. I am disappointed in him, really quite grieved about him--I will take two cards, if you please--again?--quite grieved. What do you think they say of his cousin--the Miss Warrington who made eyes at him when she thought he was a prize--they say the King has remarked her, and the Yarmouth is creving with rage. He, be!--those methodistical Warringtons! They are not a bit less worldly than their neighbours; and, old as he is, if the Grand Seignior throws his pocket-handkerchief, they will jump to catch it!”

“Ah, madam; how your ladyship knows the world!” sighs the chaplain. “I propose, if you please!”

“I have lived long enough in it, Mr. Sampson, to know something of it. 'Tis sadly selfish, my dear sir, sadly selfish; and everybody is struggling to pass his neighbour! No, I can't give you any more cards. You haven't the king? I play queen, knave, and a ten,--a sadly selfish world, indeed. And here comes my chocolate!”

The more immediate interest of the cards entirely absorbs the old woman. The door shuts out her nephew and his cares. Under his hat, he bears them into the street, and paces the dark town for a while.

“Good God!” he thinks, “what a miserable fellow I am, and what a spendthrift of my life I have been! I sit silent with George and his friends. I am not clever and witty as he is. I am only a burthen to him; and, if I would help him ever so much, don't know how. My dear Aunt Lambert's kindness never tires, but I begin to be ashamed of trying it. Why, even Hetty can't help turning on me; and when she tells me I am idle and should be doing something, ought I to be angry? The rest have left me. There's my cousins and uncle and my lady my aunt, they have shown me the cold shoulder this long time. They didn't even ask me to Norfolk when they went down to the country, and offer me so much as a day's partridge-shooting. I can't go to Castlewood--after what has happened; I should break that scoundrel William's bones; and, faith, am well out of the place altogether.”

He laughs a fierce laugh as he recalls his adventures since he has been in Europe. Money, friends, pleasure, all have passed away, and he feels the past like a dream. He strolls into White's Chocolate-House, where the waiters have scarce seen him for a year. The parliament is up. Gentlemen are away; there is not even any play going on:--not that he would join it, if there were.

He has but a few pieces in his pocket; George's drawer is open, and he may take what money he likes thence; but very, very sparingly will he avail himself of his brother's repeated invitation. He sits and drinks his glass in moody silence. Two or three officers of the Guards enter from St. James's. He knew them in former days, and the young men, who have been already dining and drinking on guard, insist on more drink at the club. The other battalion of their regiment is at Winchester: it is going on this great expedition, no one knows whither, which everybody is talking about. Cursed fate that they do not belong to the other battalion; and must stay and do duty in London and at Kensington! There is Webb, who was of their regiment: he did well to exchange his company in the Coldstreams for the lieutenant-colonelcy of the thirty-second. He will be of the expedition. Why, everybody is going; and the young gentlemen mention a score of names of men of the first birth and fashion who have volunteered. “It ain't Hanoverians this time, commanded by the big Prince,” says one young gentleman (whose relatives may have been Tories forty years ago)--“it's Englishmen, with the Guards at the head of 'em, and a Marlborough for a leader! Will the Frenchmen ever stand against them? No, by George, they are irresistible.” And a fresh bowl is called, and loud toasts are drunk to the success of the expedition.

Mr. Warrington, who is a cup too low, the young Guardsmen say, walks away when they are not steady enough to be able to follow him, thinks over the matter on his way to his lodgings, and lies thinking of it all through the night.

“What is it, my boy?” asks George Warrington of his brother, when the latter enters his chamber very early on a blushing May morning.

“I want a little money out of the drawer,” says Harry, looking at his brother. “I am sick and tired of London.”

“Good heavens! Can anybody be tired of London?” George asks, who has reasons for thinking it the most delightful place in the world.

“I am for one. I am sick and ill,” says Harry.

“You and Hetty have been quarrelling?”

“She don't care a penny-piece about me, nor I for her neither,” says Harry, nodding his head. “But I am ill, and a little country air will do me good,” and he mentions how he thinks of going to visit Mr. Webb in the Isle of Wight, and how a Portsmouth coach starts from Holborn.

“There's the till, Harry,” says George, pointing from his bed. “Put your hand in, and take what you will. What a lovely morning, and how fresh the Bedford House garden looks!”

“God bless you, brother!” Harry says.

“Have a good time, Harry!” and down goes George's head on the pillow again, and he takes his pencil and notebook from under his bolster, and falls to polishing his verses, as Harry, with his cloak over his shoulder and a little valise in his hand, walks to the inn in Holborn whence the Portsmouth machine starts.