The Adventures of Philip
Page 14
forty. Her blood must have been a light pink. The heart that beat under that
pretty white chest, which she exposed so liberally, may have throbbed pretty
quickly once or twice with waltzing, but otherwise never rose or fell beyond its
natural gentle undulation. It may have had throbs of grief at a disappointment
occasioned by the milliner not bringing a dress home; or have felt some little
fluttering impulse of youthful passion when it was in short frock, and Master
Grimsby at the dancing-school showed some preference for another young pupil out
of the nursery. But feelings, and hopes, and blushes, and passions, now? Psha!
They pass away like nursery dreams. Now there are only proprieties. What is
love, young heart? It is two thousand a year, at the very lowest computation;
and with the present rise in wages and house-rent, that calculation can't last
very long. Love? Attachment? Look at Frank Maythorn, with his vernal blushes,
his leafy whiskers, his sunshiny, laughing face, and all the birds of spring
carolling in his jolly voice; and old General Pinwood hobbling in on his cork
leg, with his stars and orders, and leering round the room from under his
painted eyebrows. Will my modest nymph go to Maythorn, or to yonder leering
Satyr, who totters towards her in his white and rouge? Nonsense. She gives her
garland to the old man, to be sure. He is ten times as rich as the young one.
And so they went on in Arcadia itself, really. Not in that namby-pamby ballet
and idyll world, where they tripped up to each other in rhythm, and talked
hexameters; but in the real, downright no-mistake country��Arcadia��where
Tityrus, fluting to Amaryllis in the shade, had his pipe very soon put out when
Meliboeus (the great grazier) performed on his melodious, exquisite,
irresistible cow-horn; and where Daphne's mother dressed her up with ribbons and
drove her to market, and sold her, and swapped her, and bartered her like any
other lamb in the fair. This one has been trotted to the market so long now that
she knows the way herself. Her baa has been heard for��do not let us count how
many seasons. She has nibbled out of countless hands; frisked in many thousand
dances; come quite harmless away from goodness knows how many wolves. Ah! ye
lambs and raddled innocents of our Arcadia! Ah, old Ewe! Is it of your ladyship
this fable is narrated? I say it is as old as Cadmus, and man-and muttonkind.
So, when Philip comes to Beaunash Street, Agnes listens to him most kindly,
sweetly, gently, and affectionately. Her pulse goes up very nearly half a beat
when the echo of his horse's heels is heard in the quiet street. It undergoes a
corresponding depression when the daily grief of parting is encountered and
overcome. Blanche and Agnes don't love each other very passionately. If I may
say as much regarding those two lambkins, they butt at each other��they quarrel
with each other��but they have secret understandings. During Phil's visits the
girls remain together, you understand, or mamma is with the young people. Female
friends may come in to call on Mrs. Twysden, and the matrons whisper together,
and glance at the cousins, and look knowing. "Poor orphan boy!" mamma says to a
sister matron. "I am like a mother to him since my dear sister died. His own
home is so blank, and ours so merry, so affectionate! There may be intimacy,
tender regard, the utmost confidence between cousins��there may be future and
even closer ties between them��but you understand, dear Mrs. Matcham, no
engagement between them. He is eager, hot-headed, impetuous, and imprudent, as
we all know. She has not seen the world enough��is not sure of herself, poor
dear child. Therefore, every circumspection, every caution, is necessary. There
must be no engagement��no letters between them. My darling Agnes does not write
to ask him to dinner without showing the note to me or her father. My dearest
girls respect themselves."
"Of course, my dear Mrs. Twysden, they are admirable, both of them. Bless you,
darlings! Agnes, you look radiant! Ah, Rosa, my child, I wish you had dear
Blanche's complexion!"
"And isn't it monstrous keeping that poor boy hanging on until Mr. Woolcomb has
made up his mind about coming forward?" says dear Mrs. Matcham to her own
daughter, as her brougham-door closes on the pair. Here he comes! Here is his
cab. Maria Twysden is one of the smartest women in England�� that she is."
"How odd it is, mamma, that the beau cousin and Captain Woolcomb are always
calling, and never call together!" remarks the ing�nue.
"They might quarrel if they met. They say young Mr. Firmin is very quarrelsome
and impetuous!" says mamma.
"But how are they kept apart?"
"Chance, my dear! mere chance!" says mamma. And they agree to say it is
chance��and they agree to pretend to believe one another. And the girl and the
mother know everything about Woolcomb's property, everything about Philip's
property and expectations, everything about all the young men in London, and
those coming on. And Mrs. Matcham's girl fished for Captain Woolcomb last year
in Scotland, at Lochhookey; and stalked him to Paris; and they went down on
their knees to Lady Banbury when they heard of the theatricals at the Cross; and
pursued that man about until he is forced to say, "Confound me! hang me! it's
too bad of that woman and her daughter, it is now, I give you my honour it is!
And all the fellows chaff me! And she took a house in Regent's Park, opposite
our barracks, and asked for her daughter to learn to ride in our school��I'm
blest if she didn't, Mrs. Twysden! and I thought my black mare would have kicked
her off one day��I mean the daughter�� but she stuck on like grim death; and the
fellows call them Mrs. Grim Death and her daughter. Our surgeon called them so,
and a doocid rum fellow��and they chaff me about it, you know��ever so many of
the fellows do��and I'm not going to be had in that way by Mrs. Grim Death and
her daughter! No, not as I knows, if you please!"
"You are a dreadful man, and you gave her a dreadful name, Captain Woolcomb!"
says mamma.
"It wasn't me. It was the surgeon, you know, Miss Agnes: a doocid funny and
witty fellow, Nixon is�� and sent a thing once to Punch, Nixon did. I heard him
make the riddle in Albany Barracks, and it riled Foker so! You've no idea how it
riled Foker, for he's in it!"
"In it?" asks Agnes, with the gentle smile, the candid blue eyes��the same eyes,
expression, lips, that smile and sparkle at Philip.
"Here it is! Captain! Took it down. Wrote it into my pocket-book at once as
Nixon made it. 'All doctors like my first, that's clear!' Doctor Firmin does
that. Old Parr Street party! Don't you see, Miss Agnes? Fee! Don't you see?"
"Fee! Oh, you droll thing!" cries Agnes, smiling, radiant, very much puzzled.
"'My second,'" goes on the young officer��"'My second gives us Foker's beer!'"
"'My whole's the shortest month in all the year!' Don't you see, Mrs. Twysden?
Fee-Brewery, don't you see? February! A doocid good one, isn't it now? and I
wonder Punch never put it in. And upon my word, I used to spell it Febuary
way now, and all from that riddle which Nixon made."
The ladies declare he is a droll man, and full of fun. He rattles on, artlessly
telling his little stories of sport, drink, adventure, in which the dusky little
man himself is a prominent figure. Not honey-mouthed Plato would be listened to
more kindly by those three ladies. A bland, frank smile shines over Talbot
Twysden's noble face, as he comes in from his office, and finds the creole
prattling. "What! you here, Woolcomb? Hey! Glad to see you!" And the gallant
hand goes out and meets and grasps Woolcomb's tiny kid glove.
"He has been so amusing, papa! He has been making us die with laughing! Tell
papa that riddle you made, Captain Woolcomb?"
"That riddle I made? That riddle Nixon, our surgeon, made. 'All doctors like my
first, that's clear,'"
And da capo. And the family, as he expounds this admirable rebus, gather round
the young officer in a group, and the curtain drops.
As in a theatre booth at a fair there are two or three performances in a day, so
in Beaunash Street a little genteel comedy is played twice:��at four o'clock
with Mr. Firmin, at five o'clock with Mr. Woolcomb; and for both young gentlemen
same smiles, same eyes, same voice, same welcome. Ah, bravo! ah, encore!
CHAPTER X. IN WHICH WE VISIT THE "ADMIRAL BYNG."
From long residence in Bohemia, and fatal love of bachelor ease and habits,
Master Philip's pure tastes were so destroyed, and his manners so perverted,
that he was actually indifferent to the pleasures of the refined home we have
just been describing; and, when Agnes was away, sometimes even when she was at
home, was quite relieved to get out of Beaunash Street. He is hardly twenty
yards from the door, when out of his pocket there comes a case; out of the case
there jumps an aromatic cigar, which is scattering fragrance around as he is
marching briskly northwards to his next house of call. The pace is even more
lively now than when he is hastening on what you call the wings of love to
Beaunash Street. At the house whither he is now going, he and the cigar are
always welcome. There is no need of munching orange chips, or chewing scented
pills, or flinging your weed away half a mile before you reach Thornhaugh
Street��the low, vulgar place. I promise you Phil may smoke at Brandon's, and
find others doing the same. He may set the house on fire, if so minded, such a
favourite is he there; and the Little Sister, with her kind, beaming smile, will
be there to bid him welcome. How that woman loved Phil, and how he loved her, is
quite a curiosity; and both of them used to be twitted with this attachment by
their mutual friends, and blush as they acknowledged it. Ever since the little
nurse had saved his life as a schoolboy, it was � la vie � la mort between them.
Phil's father's chariot used to come to Thornhaugh Street sometimes��at rare
times��and the doctor descend thence and have colloquies with the Little Sister.
She attended a patient or two of his. She was certainly very much better off in
her money matters in these late years, since she had known Dr. Firmin. Do you
think she took money from him? As a novelist, who knows everything about his
people, I am constrained to say, Yes. She took enough to pay some little bills
of her weak-minded old father, and send the bailiff's hand from his old collar.
But no more. "I think you owe him as much as that," she said to the doctor. But
as for compliments between them��"Dr. Firmin, I would die rather than be
beholden to you for anything," she said, with her little limbs all in a tremor,
and her eyes flashing anger. "How dare you, sir, after old days, be a coward,
and pay compliments to me; I will tell your son of you, sir!" and the little
woman looked as if she could have stabbed the elderly libertine there as he
stood. And he shrugged his handsome shoulders: blushed a little too, perhaps:
gave her one of his darkling looks, and departed. She had believed him once. She
had married him as she fancied. He had tired of her; forsaken her: left
her��left her even without a name. She had not known his for long years after
her trust and his deceit. "No, sir, I wouldn't have your name now, not if it
were a lord's, I wouldn't, and a coronet on your carriage. You are beneath me
now, Mr. Brand Firmin!" she had said.
How came she to love the boy so? Years back, in her own horrible extremity of
misery, she could remember a week or two of a brief, strange, exquisite
happiness, which came to her in the midst of her degradation and desertion, and
for a few days a baby in her arms, with eyes like Philip's. It was taken from
her, after a few days��only sixteen days. Insanity came upon her, as her dead
infant was carried away:��insanity, and fever, and struggle��ah! who knows how
dreadful? She never does. There is a gap in her life which she never can recal
quite. But George Brand Firmin, Esq., M.D., knows how very frequent are such
cases of mania, and that women who don't speak about them often will cherish
them for years after they appear to have passed away. The Little Sister says,
quite gravely, sometimes, "They are allowed to come back. They do come back.
Else what's the good of little cherubs bein' born, and smilin', and happy, and
beautiful��say, for sixteen days, and then an end? I've talked about it to many
ladies in grief sim'lar to mine was, and it comforts them. And when I saw that
child on his sick bed, and he lifted his eyes, I knew him, I tell you, Mrs.
Ridley. I don't speak about it; but I knew him, ma'am; my angel came back again.
I know him by the eyes. Look at 'em. Did you ever see such eyes? They look as if
they had seen heaven. His father's don't." Mrs. Ridley believes this theory
solemnly, and I think I know a lady, nearly connected with myself, who can't be
got quite to disown it. And this secret opinion to women in grief and sorrow
over their new-born lost infants Mrs. Brandon persists in imparting. "I know a
case," the nurse murmurs, "of a poor mother who lost her child at sixteen days
old; and sixteen years after, on the very day, she saw him again."
Philip knows so far of the Little Sister's story, that he is the object of this
delusion, and, indeed, it very strangely and tenderly affects him. He remembers
fitfully the illness through which the Little Sister tended him, the wild
paroxysms of his fever, his head throbbing on her shoulders��cool tamarind
drinks which she applied to his lips��great gusty night shadows flickering
through the bare school dormitory ��the little figure of the nurse gliding in
and out of the dark. He must be aware of the recognition, which we know of, and
which took place at his bedside, though he has never mentioned it��not to his
father, not to Caroline. But he clings to the woman and shrinks from the man. Is
it instinctive love and antipathy? The special reason for his quarrel with his
father the junior Firmin has never explicitly told me then or since. I have
known sons much more confidential, and who, when their fathers tripped and
stumbled,
would bring their acquaintances to jeer at the patriarch in his fall.
One day, as Philip enters Thornhaugh Street, and the Sister's little parlour
there, fancy his astonishment on finding his father's dingy friend, the Rev.
Tufton Hunt, at his ease by the fireside.
"Surprised to see me here, eh?" says the dingy gentleman, with a sneer at
Philip's lordly face of wonder and disgust. "Mrs. Brandon and I turn out to be
very old friends."
"Yes, sir, old acquaintances," says the Little Sister, very gravely.
"The captain brought me home from the club at the Byngs. Jolly fellows the
Byngs. My service to you, Mr. Gann and Mrs. Brandon." And the two persons
addressed by the gentleman, who is "taking some refreshment," as the phrase is,
make a bow, in acknowledgment of this salutation.
"You should have been at Mr. Philip's call supper, Captain Gann," the divine
resumes. "That was a night! Tiptop swells��noblemen��first-rate claret. That
claret of your father's, Philip, is pretty nearly drunk down. And your song was
famous. Did you ever hear him sing, Mrs. Brandon?"
"Who do you mean by him?" says Philip, who always boiled with rage before this
man.
Caroline divines the antipathy. She lays a little hand on Philip's arm. "Mr.
Hunt has been having too much, I think," she says. "I did know him ever so long
ago, Philip!"
"What does he mean by Him?" again says Philip, snorting at Tufton Hunt.
"Him?��Dr. Luther's hymn! 'Wein, Weiber und Gesang,' to be sure!" cries the
clergyman, humming the tune. "I learned it in Germany myself��passed a good deal
of time in Germany, Captain Gann��six months in a specially shady place��Quod
Strasse, in Frankfort-on-the-Maine��being persecuted by some wicked Jews there.
And there was another poor English chap in the place, too, who used to chirp
that song behind the bars, and died there and disappointed the Philistines. I've
seen a deal of life, I have; and met with a precious deal of misfortune; and
borne it pretty stoutly, too, since your father and I were at college together,
Philip. You don't do anything in this way? Not so early, eh? It's good rum,
Gann, and no mistake." And again the chaplain drinks to the captain, who waves
the dingy hand of hospitality towards his dark guest.
For several months past Hunt had now been a resident in London, and a pretty
constant visitor to Dr. Firmin's house. He came and went at his will. He made
the place his house of call; and in the doctor's trim, silent, orderly mansion,
was perfectly free, talkative, dirty, and familiar. Philip's loathing for the
man increased till it reached a pitch of frantic hatred. Mr. Phil, theoretically
a Radical, and almost a Republican (in opposition, perhaps, to his father, who
of course held the highly-respectable line of politics)�� Mr. Sansculotte Phil
was personally one of the most aristocratic and overbearing of young gentlemen;
and had a contempt and hatred for mean people, for base people, for servile
people, and especially for too familiar people, which was not a little amusing
sometimes, which was provoking often, but which he never was at the least pains
of disguising. His uncle and cousin Twysden, for example, he treated not half so
civilly as their footmen. Little Talbot humbled himself before Phil, and felt
not always easy in his company. Young Twysden hated him, and did not disguise
his sentiments at the club, or to their mutual acquaintance behind Phil's broad
back. And Phil, for his part, adopted towards his cousin a kick-me-down-stairs
manner, which I own must have been provoking to that gentleman, who was Phil's
senior by three years, a clerk in a public office, a member of several good
clubs, and altogether a genteel member of society. Phil would often forget
Ringwood Twysden's presence, and pursue his own conversation entirely regardless
of Ringwood's observations. He was very rude, I own. We have all of us our