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What Will He Do With It, Book 6.

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> What Will He Do With It, Book 6.



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BOOK VI.


CHAPTER I.

Etchings of Hyde Park in the month of June, which, if this history
escapes those villains the trunk-makers, may be of inestimable value
to unborn antiquarians.--Characters, long absent, reappear and give
some account of themselves.

Five years have passed away since this history opened. It is the month
of June once more,--June, which clothes our London in all its glory,
fills its languid ballrooms with living flowers, and its stony causeways
with human butterflies. It is about the hour of six P.M. The lounge in
Hyde Park is crowded; along the road that skirts the Serpentine crawl the
carriages one after the other; congregate by the rails the lazy lookers-
on,--lazy in attitude, but with active eyes, and tongues sharpened on the
whetstone of scandal,--the Scaligers of club windows airing their
vocabulary in the Park. Slowly saunter on foot idlers of all degrees in
the hierarchy of London idlesse: dandies of established-fame; youthful
tyros in their first season. Yonder in the Ride, forms less inanimate
seem condemned to active exercise; young ladies doing penance in a
canter; old beaux at hard labour in a trot. Sometimes, by a more
thoughtful brow, a still brisker pace, you recognize a busy member of
the Imperial Parliament, who, advised by physicians to be as much on
horseback as possible, snatches an hour or so in the interval between the
close of his Committee and the interest of the Debate, and shirks the
opening speech of a well-known bore. Among such truant lawgivers (grief
it is to say it) may be seen that once model member, Sir Gregory
Stollhead. Grim dyspepsia seizing on him at last, "relaxation from his
duties" becomes the adequate punishment for all his sins. Solitary he
rides, and communing with himself, yawns at every second. Upon chairs
beneficently located under the trees towards the north side of the walk
are interspersed small knots and coteries in repose. There you might
see the Ladies Prymme, still the Ladies Prymme,--Janet and Wilhelmina;
Janet has grown fat, Wilhelmina thin. But thin or fat, they are no
less Prymmes. They do not lack male attendants; they are girls of high
fashion, with whom young inen think it a distinction to be seen talking;
of high principle, too, and high pretensions (unhappily for themselves,
they are co-heiresses), by whom young men under the rank of earls need
not fear to be artfully entrapped into "honourable intentions." They
coquet majestically, but they never flirt; they exact devotion, but they
do not ask in each victim a sacrifice on the horns of the altar; they
will never give their hands where they do not give their hearts; and
being ever afraid that they are courted for their money, they will
never give their hearts save to wooers who have much more money than
themselves. Many young men stop to do passing homage to the Ladies
Prymme: some linger to converse; safe young men,--they are all younger
sons. Farther on, Lady Frost and Mr. Crampe, the wit, sit amicably side
by side, pecking at each other with sarcastic beaks; occasionally
desisting, in order to fasten nip and claw upon that common enemy, the
passing friend! The Slowes, a numerous family, but taciturn, sit by
themselves; bowed to much, accosted rarely.

Note that man of good presence, somewhere about thirty, or a year or two
more, who, recognized by most of the loungers, seems not at home in the
lounge. He has passed by the various coteries just described, made his
obeisance to the Ladies Prymme, received an icy epigram from Lady Frost,
and a laconic sneer from Mr. Crampe, and exchanged silent bows with seven
silent Slowes. He has wandered on, looking high in the air, but still
looking for some one not in the air, and evidently disappointed in his
search, comes to a full stop at length, takes off his hat, wipes his
brow, utters a petulant "Prr--r--pshaw!" and seeing, a little in the
background, the chairless shade of a thin, emaciated, dusty tree, thither
he retires, and seats himself with as little care whether there to seat
himself be the right thing in the right place, as if in the honeysuckle
arbour of a village inn. "It serves me right," said he to himself: "a
precocious villain bursts in upon me, breaks my day, makes an appointment
to meet me here, in these very walks, ten minutes before six; decoys me
with the promise of a dinner at Putney,--room looking on the river and
fried flounders. I have the credulity to yield: I derange my habits;
I leave my cool studio; I put off my easy blouse; I imprison my freeborn
throat in a cravat invented by the Thugs; the dog-days are at hand, and I
walk rashly over scorching pavements in a black frock-coat and a brimless
hat; I annihilate 3s. 6d. in a pair of kid gloves; I arrive at this haunt
of spleen; I run the gauntlet of Frosts, Slowes, and Prymmes: and my
traitor fails me! Half-past six,--not a sign of him! and the dinner at
Putney,--fried flounders? Dreams! Patience, five minutes more; if then
he comes not, breach for life between him and me! Ah, voila! there he
comes, the laggard! But how those fine folks are catching at him! Has
he asked them also to dinner at Putney, and do they care for fried
flounders?"

The soliloquist's eye is on a young man, much younger than himself, who
is threading the motley crowd with a light quick step, but is compelled
to stop at each moment to interchange a word of welcome, a shake of the
hand. Evidently he has already a large acquaintance; evidently he is
popular, on good terms with the world and himself. What free grace in
his bearing! what gay good-humour in his smile! Powers above! Lady
Wilhelmina surely blushes as she returns his bow. He has passed Lady
Frost unblighted; the Slowes evince emotion, at least the female Slowes,
as he shoots by them with that sliding bow. He looks from side to side,
with the rapid glance of an eye in which light seems all dance and
sparkle: he sees the soliloquist under the meagre tree; the pace
quickens, the lips part half laughing.

"Don't scold, Vance. I am late, I know; but I did not make allowance for
interceptions."

"Body o' me, interceptions! For an absentee just arrived in London, you
seem to have no lack of friends."

"Friends made in Paris and found again here at every corner, like
pleasant surprises,--but no friend so welcome and dear as Frank Vance."

"Sensible of the honour, O Lionello the Magnificent. Verily you are /bon
prince!/ The Houses of Valois and of Medici were always kind to artists.
But whither would you lead me? Back into that treadmill? Thank you,
humbly; no."

"A crowd in fine clothes is of all mobs the dullest. I can look
undismayed on the many-headed monster, wild and rampant; but when the
many-headed monster buys its hats in Bond Street, and has an eyeglass at
each of its inquisitive eyes, I confess I take fright. Besides, it is
near seven o'clock; Putney not visible, and the flounders not fried!"

"My cab is waiting yonder; we must walk to it: we can keep on the turf,
and avoid the throng. But tell me honestly, Vance, do you really dislike
to mix in crowds; you, with your fame, dislike the eyes that turn back to
look again, and the lips that respectfully murmur, 'Vance the Painter'?
Ah, I always said you would be a great painter,--and in five short years
you have soared high."

"Pooh!" answered Vance, indifferently. "Nothing is pure and
unadulterated in London use; not cream, nor cayenne pepper; least of all
Fame,--mixed up with the most deleterious ingredients. Fame! did you
read the 'Times' critique on my pictures in the present Exhibition? Fame
indeed Change the subject. Nothing so good as flounders. Ho! is that
your cab? Superb! Car fit for the 'Grecian youth of talents rare,' in
Mr. Enfield's 'Speaker;' horse that seems conjured out of the Elgin
Marbles. Is he quiet?"

"Not very; but trust to my driving. You may well admire the horse,--
present from Darrell, chosen by Colonel Morley." When the young men had
settled themselves into the vehicle, Lionel dismissed his groom, and,
touching his horse, the animal trotted out briskly.

"Frank," said Lionel, shaking his dark curls with a petulant gravity,
"your cynical definitions are unworthy that masculine beard. You despise
fame! what sheer affectation!

"'Pulverem Olympicum
Collegisse juvat; metaque fervidis
Evitata rotis-----'"

"Take care," cried Vance; "we shall be over." For Lionel, growing
excited, teased the horse with his whip; and the horse bolting, took the
cab within an inch of a water-cart.

"Fame, fame!" cried Lionel, unheeding the interruption. "What would I
not give to have and to hold it for an hour?" "Hold an eel, less
slippery; a scorpion, less stinging! But--" added Vance, observing his
companion's heightened colour--"but," he added seriously, and with an
honest compunction, "I forgot, you are a soldier, you follow the career
of arms! Never heed what is said on the subject by a querulous painter!
The desire of fame may be folly in civilians: in soldiers it is wisdom.
Twin-born with the martial sense of honour, it cheers the march; it warms
the bivouac; it gives music to the whir of the bullet, the roar of the
ball; it plants hope in the thick of peril; knits rivals with the bond
of brothers; comforts the survivor when the brother falls; takes from war
its grim aspect of carnage; and from homicide itself extracts lessons
that strengthen the safeguards to humanity, and perpetuate life to
nations. Right: pant for fame; you are a soldier!"

This was one of those bursts of high sentiment from Vance, which, as they
were very rare with him, had the dramatic effect of surprise. Lionel
listened to him with a thrilling delight. He could not answer: he was
too moved. The artist resumed, as the cabriolet now cleared the Park,
and rolled safely and rapidly along the road. "I suppose, during the
five years you have spent abroad completing your general education, you
have made little study, or none, of what specially appertains to the
profession you have so recently chosen."

"You are mistaken there, my dear Vance. If a man's heart be set on a
thing, he is always studying it. The books I loved best, and most
pondered over, were such as, if they did not administer lessons,
suggested hints that might turn to lessons hereafter. In social
intercourse, I never was so pleased as when I could fasten myself to some
practical veteran,--question and cross-examine him. One picks up more
ideas in conversation than from books; at least I do. Besides, my idea
of a soldier who is to succeed some day is not that of a mere mechanician
-at-arms. See how accomplished most great captains have been. What
observers of mankind! what diplomatists! what reasoners! what men of
action, because men to whom reflection had been habitual before they
acted! How many stores of idea must have gone to the judgment which
hazards the sortie or decides on the retreat!"

"Gently, gently!" cried Vance. "We shall be into that omnibus! Give me
the whip,--do; there, a little more to the left,--so. Yes; I am glad to
see such enthusiasm in your profession: 't is half the battle. Hazlitt
said a capital thing, 'The 'prentice who does not consider the Lord Mayor
in his gilt coach the greatest man in the world will live to be hanged!'"

"Pish!" said Lionel, catching at the whip.

VANCE (holding it back).--"No. I apologize. I retract the Lord Mayor:
comparisons are odious. I agree with you, nothing like leather. I mean
nothing like a really great soldier,--Hannibal, and so forth. Cherish
that conviction, my friend: meanwhile, respect human life; there is
another omnibus!"

The danger past, the artist thought it prudent to divert the conversation
into some channel less exciting.

"Mr. Darrell, of course, consents to your choice of a profession?"

"Consents! approves, encourages. Wrote me such a beautiful letter!
what a comprehensive intelligence that man has!"

"Necessarily; since he agrees with you. Where is he now?"

"I have no notion: it is some months since I heard from him. He was then
at Malta, on his return from Asia Minor."

"So! you have never seen him since he bade you farewell at his old Manor-
house?"

"Never. He has not, I believe, been in England."

"Nor in Paris, where you seem to have chiefly resided."

"Nor in Paris. Ah, Vance, could I but be of some comfort to him. Now
that I am older, I think I understand in him much that perplexed me as a
boy when we parted. Darrell is one of those men who require a home.
Between the great world and solitude, he needs the intermediate filling-
up which the life domestic alone supplies: a wife to realize the sweet
word helpmate; children, with whose future he could knit his own toils
and his ancestral remembrances. That intermediate space annihilated,
the great world and the solitude are left, each frowning on the other."

"My dear Lionel, you must have lived with very clever people: you are
talking far above your years."

"Am I? True; I have lived, if not with very clever people, with people
far above my years. That is a secret I learned from Colonel Morley, to
whom I must present you,--the subtlest intellect under the quietest
manner. Once he said to me, 'Would you throughout life be up to the
height of your century,--always in the prime of man's reason, without
crudeness and without decline,--live habitually while young with persons
older, and when old with persons younger, than yourself.'"

"Shrewdly said indeed. I felicitate you on the evident result of the
maxim. And so Darrell has no home,--no wife and no children?"

"He has long been a widower; he lost his only son in boyhood, and his
daughter--did you never hear?"

"No, what?"

"Married so ill--a runaway match--and died many years since, without
issue."

"Poor man! It was these afflictions, then, that soured his life, and
made him the hermit or the wanderer?"

"There," said Lionel, "I am puzzled; for I find that, even after his
son's death and his daughter's unhappy marriage and estrangement from
him, he was still in Parliament and in full activity of career. But
certainly he did not long keep it up. It might have been an effort to
which, strong as he is, he felt himself unequal; or, might he have known
some fresh disappointment, some new sorrow, which the world never
guesses? What I have said as to his family afflictions the world knows.
But I think he will marry again. That idea seemed strong in his own mind
when we parted; he brought it out bluntly, roughly. Colonel Morley is
convinced that he will marry, if but for the sake of an heir."

VANCE.--"And if so, my poor Lionel, you are ousted of--"

LIONEL (quickly interrupting).--"Hush! Do not say, my dear Vance, do not
you say--you!--one of those low, mean things which, if said to me even by
men for whom I have no esteem, make my ears tingle and my cheek blush.
When I think of what Darrell has already done for me,--me who have no
claim on him,--it seems to me as if I must hate the man who insinuates,
'Fear lest your benefactor find a smile at his own hearth, a child of his
own blood; for you may be richer at his death in proportion as his life
is desolate.'"

VANCE.--"You are a fine young fellow, and I beg your pardon. Take care
of that milestone: thank you. But I suspect that at least two-thirds of
those friendly hands that detained you on the way to me were stretched
out less to Lionel Haughton, a subaltern in the Guards, than to Mr.
Darrell's heir presumptive."

LIONEL.--"That thought sometimes galls me, but it does me good; for it
goads on my desire to make myself some one whom the most worldly would
not disdain to know for his own sake. Oh for active service! Oh for a
sharp campaign! Oh for fair trial how far a man in earnest can grapple
Fortune to his breast with his own strong hands! You have done so,
Vance; you had but your genius and your painter's brush. I have no
genius; but I have a resolve, and resolve is perhaps as sure of its ends
as genius. Genius and Resolve have three grand elements in common,--
Patience, Hope, and Concentration."

Vance, more and more surprised, looked hard at Lionel without speaking.
Five years of that critical age, from seventeen to twenty-two, spent in
the great capital of Europe; kept from its more dangerous vices partly
by a proud sense of personal dignity, partly by a temperament which,
regarding love as an ideal for all tender and sublime emotion, recoiled
from low profligacy as being to love what the Yahoo of the mocking
satirist was to man; absorbed much by the brooding ambition that takes
youth out of the frivolous present into the serious future, and seeking
companionship, not with contemporary idlers, but with the highest and
maturest intellects that the free commonwealth of good society brought
within his reach: five years so spent had developed a boy, nursing noble
dreams, into a man fit for noble action,--retaining freshest youth in its
enthusiasm, its elevation of sentiment, its daring, its energy, and
divine credulity in its own unexhausted resources; but borrowing from
maturity compactness and solidity of idea,--the link between speculation
and practice, the power to impress on others a sense of the superiority
which has been self-elaborated by unconscious culture.

"So!" said Vance, after a prolonged pause, "I don't know whether I have
resolve or genius; but certainly if I have made my way to some small
reputation, patience, hope, and concentration of purpose must have the
credit of it; and prudence, too, which you have forgotten to name, and
certainly don't evince as a charioteer. I hope, my dear fellow, you are
not extravagant? No doubt, eh?--why do you laugh?"

"The question is so like you, Frank,--thrifty as ever."

"Do you think I could have painted with a calm mind if I knew that at my
door there was a dun whom I could not pay? Art needs serenity; and if an
artist begin his career with as few shirts to his back as I had, he must
place economy amongst the rules of perspective."

Lionel laughed again, and made some comments on economy which were
certainly, if smart, rather flippant, and tended not only to lower the
favourable estimate of his intellectuai improvement which Vance had just
formed, but seriously disquieted the kindly artist. Vance knew the
world,--knew the peculiar temptations to which a young man in Lionel's
position would be exposed,--knew that contempt for economy belongs to
that school of Peripatetics which reserves its last lessons for finished
disciples in the sacred walks of the Queen's Bench.

However, that was no auspicious moment for didactic warnings.

"Here we are!" cried Lionel,--"Putney Bridge."

They reached the little inn by the river-side, and while dinner was
getting ready they hired a boat. Vance took the oars.

VANCE.--"Not so pretty here as by those green quiet banks along which we
glided, at moonlight, five years ago."

LIONEL.--"Ah, no! And that innocent, charming child, whose portrait you
took,--you have never heard of her since?"

VANCE.--"Never! How should I? Have you?"

LIONEL.--"Only what Darrell repeated to me. His lawyer had ascertained
that she and her grandfather had gone to America. Darrell gently implied
that, from what he learned of them, they scarcely merited the interest I
felt in their fate. But we were not deceived, were we, Vance?"

VANCE--"No; the little girl--what was her name? Sukey? Sally? Sophy,
true--Sophy had something about her extremely prepossessing, besides her
pretty face; and, in spite of that horrid cotton print, I shall never
forget it."

LIONEL--"Her face! Nor I. I see it still before me!"

VANCE--"Her cotton print! I see it still before me! But I must not be
ungrateful. Would you believe it,--that little portrait, which cost me
three pounds, has made, I don't say my fortune, but my fashion?"

LIONEL--"How! You had the heart to sell it?"

VANCE.--"No; I kept it as a study for young female heads--'with
variations,' as they say in music. It was by my female heads that I
became the fashion; every order I have contains the condition, 'But be
sure, one of your sweet female heads, Mr. Vance.' My female heads are as
necessary to my canvas as a white horse to Wouvermans'. Well, that
child, who cost me three pounds, is the original of them all. Commencing
as a Titania, she has been in turns a 'Psyche,' a 'Beatrice-Cenci,'
a 'Minna,' 'A Portrait of a Nobleman's Daughter,' 'Burns's Mary in
Heaven,' 'The Young Gleaner,' and 'Sabrina Fair,' in Milton's 'Comus.'
I have led that child through all history, sacred and profane. I have
painted her in all costumes (her own cotton print excepted). My female
heads are my glory; even the 'Times' critic allows that! 'Mr. Vance,
there, is inimitable! a type of childlike grace peculiarly his own,' etc.
I'll lend you the article."

LIONEL.--"And shall we never again see the original darling Sophy? You
will laugh, Vance, but I have been heartproof against all young ladies.
If ever I marry, my wife must have Sophy's eyes! In America!"

VANCE.--"Let us hope by this time happily married to a Yankee! Yankees
marry girls in their teens, and don't ask for dowries. Married to a
Yankee! not a doubt of it! a Yankee who thaws, whittles, and keeps a
'store'!"

LIONEL.--"Monster! Hold your tongue. /A propos/ of marriage, why are you
still single?"

VANCE.--"Because I have no wish to be doubled up! Moreover, man is like
a napkin, the more neatly the housewife doubles him, the more carefully
she lays him on the shelf. Neither can a man once doubled know how often
he may be doubled. Not only his wife folds him in two, but every child
quarters him into a new double, till what was a wide and handsome
substance, large enough for anything in reason, dwindles into a pitiful
square that will not cover one platter,--all puckers and creases, smaller
and smaller with every double, with every double a new crease. Then, my
friend, comes the washing-bill! and, besides all the hurts one receives
in the mangle, consider the hourly wear and tear of the linen-press! In
short, Shakspeare vindicates the single life, and depicts the double in
the famous line, which is no doubt intended to be allegorical of
marriage,

"'Double, double, toil and trouble.'

Besides, no single man can be fairly called poor. What double man can
with certainty be called rich? A single man can lodge in a garret, and
dine on a herring: nobody knows; nobody cares. Let him marry, and he
invites the world to witness where he lodges, and how he dines. The
first necessary a wife demands is the most ruinous, the most indefinite
superfluity; it is Gentility according to what her neighbours call
genteel. Gentility commences with the honeymoon; it is its shadow, and
lengthens as the moon declines. When the honey is all gone, your bride
says, 'We can have our tea without sugar when quite alone, love; but, in
case Gentility drop in, here's a bill for silver sugar-tongs!' That's
why I'm single."

"Economy again, Vance."

"Prudence,--dignity," answered Vance, seriously; and sinking into a
revery that seemed gloomy, he shot back to shore.




CHAPTER II.

Mr. Vance explains how he came to grind colours and save half-pence.
--A sudden announcement.

The meal was over; the table had been spread by a window that looked upon
the river. The moon was up: the young men asked for no other lights;
conversation between them--often shifting, often pausing--had gradually
become grave, as it usually does with two companions in youth; while yet
long vistas in the Future stretch before them deep in shadow, and they
fall into confiding talk on what they wish,--what they fear; making
visionary maps in that limitless Obscure.

"There is so much power in faith," said Lionel, "even when faith is
applied but to things human and earthly, that let a man be but firmly
persuaded that he is born to do, some day, what at the moment seems
impossible, and it is fifty to one but what he does it before he dies.
Surely, when you were a child at school, you felt convinced that there
was something in your fate distinct from that of the other boys, whom the
master might call quite as clever,--felt that faith in yourself which
made you sure that you would be one day what you are."

"Well, I suppose so; but vague aspirations and self-conceits must be
bound together by some practical necessity--perhaps a very homely and a
very vulgar one--or they scatter and evaporate. One would think that
rich people in high life ought to do more than poor folks in humble life.
More pains are taken with their education; they have more leisure for
following the bent of their genius: yet it is the poor folks, often half
self-educated, and with pinched bellies, that do three-fourths of the
world's grand labour. Poverty is the keenest stimulant; and poverty made
me say, not 'I will do,' but 'I must.'"

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