The Athelings
These three young figures, closely grouped together, which you could see only in outline against the faint horizon and the misty sky, were as good a human rendering as could be made of the unexpressed sentiment of the season and the night—they too were growing, with a sweet involuntary progression, up to their life, and to their fate. They stood upon the threshold of the world innocent adventurers, fearing no evil; and it was hard to believe that these hopeful neophytes could ever be made into toil-worn, care-hardened people of the world by any sum of hardships or of years.
“I’ve been thinking;”—all this time Charlie Atheling had added nothing to his first remarkable statement, and we are compelled to admit that the conclusion which he now gave forth did not seem to justify the solemnity of the delivery—“yes, I’ve made up my mind; I’ll go to old Foggo and the law.”
“And why, Charlie, why?”
Charlie was not much given to rendering a reason.
“Never mind the why,” he said, abruptly; “that’s best. There’s old Foggo himself, now; nobody can reckon his income, or make a balance just what he is and what he has, and all about him, as people could do with us. We are plain nobodies, and people know it at a glance. My father has five children and two hundred a-year—whereas old Foggo, you see—”
“I don’t see—I do not believe it!” cried Marian, impatiently. “Do you mean to say, you bad boy, that Mr Foggo is better than papa—my father? Why, he has mamma, and Bell and Beau, and all of us: if anything ailed him, we should break our hearts. Mr Foggo has only Miss Willsie: he is an old man, and snuffs, and does not care for anybody: do you call that better than papa?”
But Charlie only laughed. Certain it was that this lad had not the remotest intention of setting up Mr Foggo as his model of happiness. Indeed, nobody quite knew what Charlie’s ideal was; but the boy, spite of his practical nature, had a true boyish liking for that margin of uncertainty which made it possible to surmise some unknown power or greatness even in the person of this ancient lawyer’s clerk. Few lads, we believe, among the range of those who have to make their own fortune, are satisfied at their outset to decide upon being “no better than papa.”
“Well,” said Agnes, with consideration, “I should not like Charlie to be just like papa. Papa can do nothing but keep us all—so many children—and he never can be anything more than he is now. But Charlie—Charlie is quite a different person. I wish he could be something great.”
“Agnes—don’t! it is such nonsense!” cried Marian. “Is there anything great in old Mr Foggo’s office? He is a poor old man, I think, living all by himself with Miss Willsie. I had rather be Susan in our house, than be mistress in Mr Foggo’s: and how could he make Charlie anything great?”
“Stuff!” said Charlie; “nobody wants to be made; that’s a man’s own business. Now, you just be quiet with your romancing, you girls. I’ll tell you what, though, there’s one man I think I’d like to be—and I suppose you call him great—I’d like to be Rajah Brooke.”
“Oh, Charlie! and hang people!” cried Marian.
“Not people—only pirates,” said the big boy: “wouldn’t I string them up too! Yes, if that would please you, Agnes, I’d like to be Rajah Brooke.”
“Then why, Charlie,” exclaimed Agnes—“why do you go to Mr Foggo’s office? A merchant may have a chance for such a thing—but a lawyer! Charlie, boy, what do you mean?”
“Never mind,” said Charlie; “your Brookes and your Layards and such people don’t begin by being merchants’ clerks. I know better: they have birth and education, and all that, and get the start of everybody, and then they make a row about it. I don’t see, for my part,” said the young gentleman meditatively, “what it is but chance. A man may succeed, or a man may fail, and it’s neither much to his credit nor his blame. It is a very odd thing, and I can’t understand it—a man may work all his life, and never be the better for it. It’s chance, and nothing more, so far as I can see.”
“Hush, Charlie—say Providence,” said Agnes, anxiously.
“Well, I don’t know—it’s very odd,” answered the big boy.
Whereupon there began two brief but earnest lectures for the good of Charlie’s mind, and the improvement of his sentiments. The girls were much disturbed by their brother’s heterodoxy; they assaulted him vehemently with the enthusiastic eagerness of the young faith which had never been tried, and would not comprehend any questioning. Chance! when the very sparrows could not fall to the ground—The bright face of Agnes Atheling flushed almost into positive beauty; she asked indignantly, with a trembling voice and tears in her eyes, how Mamma could have endured to live if it had not been God who did it? Charlie, rough as he was, could not withstand an appeal like this: he muttered something hastily under his breath about success in business being a very different thing from that, and was indisputably overawed and vanquished. This allusion made them all very silent for a time, and the young bright eyes involuntarily glanced upward where the pure faint stars were gleaming out one by one among the vapoury hosts of cloud. Strangely touching was the solemnity of this link, not to be broken, which connected the family far down upon the homely bosom of the toilsome earth with yonder blessed children in the skies. Marian, saying nothing, wiped some tears silently from the beautiful eyes which turned such a wistful, wondering, longing look to the uncommunicating heaven. Charlie, though you could scarcely see him in the darkness, worked those heavy furrows of his brow, and frowned fiercely upon himself. The long branches came sweeping towards them, swayed by the night wind; up in the east rose the pale spring moon, pensive, with a misty halo like a saint. The aspect of the night was changed; instead of the soft brown gloaming, there was broad silvery light and heavy masses of shadow over sky and soil—an instant change all brought about by the rising of the moon. As swift an alteration had passed upon the mood of these young speculators. They went in silently, full of thought—not so sad but that they could brighten to the fireside brightness, yet more meditative than was their wont; even Charlie—for there was a warm heart within the clumsy form of this big boy!
CHAPTER X.
MR FOGGO
They went in very sedately out of the darkness, their eyes dazzled with the sudden light. Bell and Beau were safely disposed of for the night, and on the side-table, beside Charlie’s two grammars and Agnes’s blotting-book, now nearly empty, lay the newspaper of Papa; for the usual visitor was installed in the usual place at the fireside, opposite Mr Atheling. Good companion, it is time you should see the friend of the family: there he was.
And there also, it must be confessed, was a certain faint yet expressive fragrance, which delicately intimated to one sense at least, before he made his appearance, the coming of Mr Foggo. We will not affirm that it was lundyfoot—our own private impression, indeed, is strongly in favour of black rappee—but the thing was indisputable, whatever might be the species. He was a large brown man, full of folds and wrinkles; folds in his brown waistcoat, where secret little sprinklings of snuff, scarcely perceptible, lay undisturbed and secure; wrinkles, long and forcible, about his mouth; folds under his eyelids, deep lines upon his brow. There was not a morsel of smooth surface visible anywhere even in his hands, which were traced all over with perceptible veins and sinews, like a geographical exercise. Mr Foggo wore a wig, which could not by any means be complimented with the same title as Mr Pendennis’s “’ead of ’air.” He was between fifty and sixty, a genuine old bachelor, perfectly satisfied with his own dry and unlovely existence. Yet we may suppose it was something in Mr Foggo’s favour, the frequency of his visits here. He sat by the fireside with the home-air of one who knows that this chair is called his, and that he belongs to the household circle, and turned to look at the young people, as they entered, with a familiar yet critical eye. He was friendly enough, now and then, to deliver little rebukes and remonstrances, and was never complimentary, even to Marian; which may be explained, perhaps, when we say that he was a Scotsman—a north-country Scotsman—with “peculiarities” in his pronunciation, and very distinct opinions of his own. How he came to win his way into the very heart of this family, we are not able to explain; but there he was, and there Mr Foggo had been, summer and winter, for nearly half-a-score of years.
He was now an institution, recognised and respected. No one dreamt of investigating his claims—possession was the whole law in his case, his charter and legal standing-ground; and the young commonwealth recognised as undoubtingly the place of Mr Foggo as they did the natural throne and pre-eminence of Papa and Mamma.
“For my part,” said Mr Foggo, who, it seemed, was in the midst of what Mrs Atheling called a “sensible conversation,”—and Mr Foggo spoke slowly, and with a certain methodical dignity,—“for my part, I see little in the art of politics, but just withholding as long as ye can, and giving as little as ye may; for a statesman, ye perceive, be he Radical or Tory, must ever consent to be a stout Conservative when he gets the upper hand. It’s in the nature of things—it’s like father and son—it’s the primitive principle of government, if ye take my opinion. So I am never sanguine myself about a new ministry keeping its word. How should it keep its word? Making measures and opposing them are two as different things as can be. There’s father and son, a standing example: the young man is the people and the old man is the government,—the lad spurs on and presses, the greybeard holds in and restrains.”
“Ah, Foggo! all very well to talk,” said Mr Atheling; “but men should keep their word, government or no government—that’s what I say. Do you mean to tell me that a father would cheat his son with promises? No! no! no! Your excuses won’t do for me.”
“And as for speaking of the father and son, as if it was natural they should be opposed to each other, I am surprised at you, Mr Foggo,” said Mrs Atheling, with emphatic disapproval. “There’s my Charlie, now, a wilful boy; but do you think he would set his face against anything his papa or I might say?”
“Charlie,” said Mr Foggo, with a twinkle of the grey-brown eye which shone clear and keen under folds of eyelid and thickets of eyebrow, “is an uncommon boy. I’m speaking of the general principle, not of exceptional cases. No! men and measures are well enough to make a noise or an election about; but to go against the first grand rule is not in the nature of man.”
“Yes, yes!” said Mr Atheling, impatiently; “but I tell you he’s broken his word—that’s what I say—told a lie, neither more nor less. Do you mean to tell me that any general principle will excuse a man for breaking his promises? I challenge your philosophy for that.”
“When ye accept promises that it’s not in the nature of things a man can keep, ye must even be content with the alternative,” said Mr Foggo.
“Oh! away with your nature of things!” cried Papa, who was unusually excited and vehement,—“scarcely civil,” as Mrs Atheling assured him in her private reproof. “It’s the nature of the man, that’s what’s wrong. False in youth, false in age,—if I had known!”
“Crooked ways are ill to get clear of,” said Mr Foggo oracularly. “What’s that you’re about, Charlie, my boy? Take you my advice, lad, and never be a public man.”
“A public man! I wish public men had just as much sense,” said Mrs Atheling in an indignant under-tone. This good couple, like a great many other excellent people, were pleased to note how all the national businesses were mismanaged, and what miserable ’prentice-hands of pilots held the helm of State.
“I grant you it would not be overmuch for them,” said Mr Foggo; “and speaking of government, Mrs Atheling, Willsie is in trouble again.”
“I am very sorry,” exclaimed Mrs Atheling, with instant interest. “Dear me, I thought this was such a likely person. You remember what I said to you, Agnes, whenever I saw her. She looked so neat and handy, I thought her quite the thing for Miss Willsie. What has she done?”
“Something like the Secretary of State for the Home Department,” said Mr Foggo,—“made promises which could not be kept while she was on trial, and broke them when she took office. Shall I send the silly thing away?”
“Oh, Mr Foggo! Miss Willsie was so pleased with her last week—she could do so many things—she has so much good in her,” cried Marian; “and then you can’t tell—you have not tried her long enough—don’t send her away!”
“She is so pretty, Mr Foggo,” said Agnes.
Mr Foggo chuckled, thinking, not of Miss Willsie’s maid-servant, but of the Secretary of State. Papa looked at him across the fireplace wrathfully. What the reason was, nobody could tell; but Papa was visibly angry, and in a most unamiable state of mind: he said “Tush!” with an impatient gesture, in answer to the chuckle of his opponent. Mr Atheling was really not at all polite to his friend and guest.
But we presume Mr Foggo was not sensitive—he only chuckled the more, and took a pinch of snuff. The snuff-box was a ponderous silver one, with an inscription on the lid, and always revealed itself most distinctly, in shape at least, within the brown waistcoat-pocket of its owner. As he enjoyed this refreshment, the odour diffused itself more distinctly through the apartment, and a powdery thin shower fell from Mr Foggo’s huge brown fingers. Susan’s cat, if she comes early to the parlour, will undoubtedly be seized with many sneezes to-morrow.
But Marian, who was innocently unconscious of any double meaning, continued to plead earnestly for Miss Willsie’s maid. “Yes, Mr Foggo, she is so pretty,” said Marian, “and so neat, and smiles. I am sure Miss Willsie herself would be grieved after, if she sent her away. Let mamma speak to Miss Willsie, Mr Foggo. She smiles as if she could not help it. I am sure she is good. Do not let Miss Willsie send her away.”
“Willsie is like the public—she is never content with her servants,” said Mr Foggo. “Where’s all the poetry to-night? no ink upon Agnes’s finger! I don’t understand that.”
“I never write poetry, Mr Foggo,” said Agnes, with superb disdain. Agnes was extremely annoyed by Mr Foggo’s half-knowledge of her authorship. The old gentleman took her for one of the young ladies who write verses, she thought; and for this most amiable and numerous sisterhood, the young genius, in her present mood, had a considerable disdain.
“And ink on her finger! You never saw ink on Agnes’s finger—you know you never did!” cried the indignant Marian. “If she did write poetry, it is no harm; and I know very well you only mean to tease her: but it is wrong to say what never was true.”
Mr Foggo rose, diffusing on every side another puff of his peculiar element. “When I have quarrelled with everybody, I reckon it is about time to go home,” said Mr Foggo. “Charlie, step across with me, and get some nonsense-verses Willsie has been reading, for the girls. Keep in the same mind, Agnes, and never write poetry—it’s a mystery; no man should meddle with it till he’s forty—that’s my opinion—and then there would be as few poets as there are Secretaries of State.”
“Secretaries of State!” exclaimed Papa, restraining his vehemence, however, till Mr Foggo was fairly gone, and out of hearing—and then Mr Atheling made a pause. You could not suppose that his next observation had any reference to this indignant exclamation; it was so oddly out of connection that even the girls smiled to each other. “I tell you what, Mary, a man should not be led by fantastic notions—a man should never do anything that does not come directly in his way,” said Mr Atheling, and he pushed his grizzled hair back from his brow with heat and excitement. It was an ordinary saying enough, not much to be marvelled at. What did Papa mean?
“Then, papa, nothing generous would ever be done in the world,” said Marian, who, somewhat excited by Mr Foggo, was quite ready for an argument on any subject, or with any person.
“But things that have to be done always come in people’s way,” said Agnes; “is not that true? I am sure, when you read people’s lives, the thing they have to do seems to pursue them; and even if they do not want it, they cannot help themselves. Papa, is not that true?”
“Ay, ay—hush, children,” said Mr Atheling, vaguely; “I am busy—speak to your mother.”
They spoke to their mother, but not of this subject. They spoke of Miss Willsie’s new maid, and conspired together to hinder her going away; and then they marvelled somewhat over the book which Charlie was to bring home. Mr Foggo and his maiden sister lived in Bellevue, in one of the villas semi-detached, which Miss Willsie had named Killiecrankie Lodge, yet Charlie was some time absent. “He is talking to Mr Foggo, instead of bringing our book,” said Marian, pouting with her pretty lips. Papa and Mamma had each of them settled into a brown study—a very brown study, to judge from appearances. The fire was low—the lights looked dim. Neither of the girls were doing anything, save waiting on Charlie. They were half disposed to be peevish. “It is not too late; come and practise for half an hour, Agnes,” said Marian, suddenly. Mrs Atheling was too much occupied to suggest, as she usually did, that the music would wake Bell and Beau: they stole away from the family apartment unchidden and undetained, and, lighting another candle, entered the genteel and solemn darkness of the best room. You have not been in the best room; let us enter with due dignity this reserved and sacred apartment, which very few people ever enter, and listen to the music which nobody ever hears.
CHAPTER XI.
THE BEST ROOM
The music, we are grieved to say, was not at all worth listening to—it would not have disturbed Bell and Beau had the two little beds been on the top of the piano. Though Marian with a careless hand ran over three or four notes, the momentary sound did not disturb the brown study of Mrs Atheling, and scarcely roused Susan, nodding and dozing, as she mended stockings by the kitchen fire. We are afraid this same practising was often an excuse for half an hour’s idleness and dreaming. Sweet idleness! happy visions! for it certainly was so to-night.
The best room was of the same size exactly as the family sitting-room, but looked larger by means of looking prim, chill, and uninhabited—and it was by no means crowded with furniture. The piano in one corner and a large old-fashioned table in another, with a big leaf of black and bright mahogany folded down, were the only considerable articles in the room, and the wall looked very blank with its array of chairs. The sofa inclined towards the unlighted fire, and the round table stood before it; but you could not delude yourself into the idea that this at any time could be the family hearth. Mrs Atheling “kept no company;” so, like other good people in the same condition, she religiously preserved and kept in order the company-room; and it was a comfort to her heart to recollect that in this roomy house there was always an orderly place where strangers could be shown into, although the said strangers never came.
The one candle had been placed drearily among the little coloured glass vases on the mantel-shelf; but the moonlight shone broad and full into the window, and, pouring its rays over the whole visible scene without, made something grand and solemn even of this genteel and silent Bellevue. The tranquil whiteness on these humble roofs—the distinctness with which one branch here and there, detached and taken possession of by the light, marked out its half-developed buds against the sky—the strange magic which made that faint ascending streak of smoke the ethereal plaything of these moonbeams—and the intense blackness of the shadow, deep as though it fell from one of the pyramids, of these homely garden-walls—made a wonderful and striking picture of a scene which had not one remarkable feature of its own; and the solitary figure crossing the road, all enshrined and hallowed in this silvery glory, but itself so dark and undistinguishable, was like a figure in a vision—an emblematic and symbolical appearance, entering like a picture to the spectator’s memory. The two girls stood looking out, with their arms entwined, and their fair heads close together, as is the wont of such companions, watching the wayfarer, whose weary footstep was inaudible in the great hush and whisper of the night.
“I always fancy one might see ghosts in moonlight,” said Marian, under her breath. Certainly that solitary passenger, with all the silvered folds of his dress, and the gliding and noiseless motion of his progress, was not entirely unlike one.
“He looks like a man in a parable,” said Agnes, in the same tone. “One could think he was gliding away mysteriously to do something wrong. See, now, he has gone into the shadow. I cannot see him at all—he has quite disappeared—it is so black. Ah! I shall think he is always standing there, looking over at us, and plotting something. I wish Charlie would come home—how long he is!”
“Who would plot anything against us?” said innocent Marian, with her fearless smile. “People do not have enemies now as they used to have—at least not common people. I wish he would come out again, though, out of that darkness. I wonder what sort of man he could be.”
But Agnes was no longer following the man; her eye was wandering vaguely over the pale illumination of the sky. “I wonder what will happen to us all?” said Agnes, with a sigh—sweet sigh of girlish thought that knew no care! “I think we are all beginning now, Marian, every one of us. I wonder what will happen—Charlie and all?”
“Oh, I can tell you,” said Marian; “and you first of all, because you are the eldest. We shall all be famous, Agnes, every one of us; all because of you.”
“Oh, hush!” cried Agnes, a smile and a flush and a sudden brightness running over all her face; “but suppose it should be so, you know, Marian—only suppose it for our own pleasure—what a delight it would be! It might help Charlie on better than anything; and then what we could do for Bell and Beau! Of course it is nonsense,” said Agnes, with a low laugh and a sigh of excitement, “but how pleasant it would be!”
“It is not nonsense at all; I think it is quite certain,” said Marian; “but then people would seek you out, and you would have to go and visit them—great people—clever people. Would it not be odd to hear real ladies and gentlemen talking in company as they talk in books?”
“I wonder if they do,” said Agnes, doubtfully. “And then to meet people whom we have heard of all our lives—perhaps Bulwer even!—perhaps Tennyson! Oh, Marian!”
“And to know they were very glad to meet you,” exclaimed the sister dreamer, with another low laugh of absolute pleasure: that was very near the climax of all imaginable honours—and for very awe and delight the young visionaries held their breath.
“And I think now,” said Marian, after a little interval, “that perhaps it is better Charlie should be a lawyer, for he would have so little at first in papa’s office, and he never could get on, more than papa; and you would not like to leave all the rest of us behind you, Agnes? I know you would not. But I hope Charlie will never grow like Mr Foggo, so old and solitary; to be poor would be better than that.”
“Then I could be Miss Willsie,” said Agnes, “and we should live in a little square house, with two bits of lawn and two fir-trees; but I think we would not call it Killiecrankie Lodge.”
Over this felicitous prospect there was a great deal of very quiet laughing—laughing as sweet and as irrepressible as any other natural music, but certainly not evidencing any very serious purpose on the part of either of the young sisters to follow the example of Miss Willsie. They had so little thought, in their fair unconscious youth, of all the long array of years and changes which lay between their sweet estate and that of the restless kind old lady, the mistress of Mr Foggo’s little square house.
“And then, for me—what should I do?” said Marian. There were smiles hiding in every line of this young beautiful face, curving the pretty eyebrow, moving the soft lip, shining shy and bright in the sweet eyes. No anxiety—not the shadow of a shade—had ever crossed this young girl’s imagination touching her future lot. It was as rosy as the west and the south, and the cheeks of Maud in Mr Tennyson’s poem. She had no thought of investigating it too closely; it was all as bright as a summer day to Marian, and she was ready to spend all her smiles upon the prediction, whether it was ill or well.