Part 33 (2/2)

OXONIAN.--”Ah! I understand. The poor little girl is fond of the old man,--a relation, grandfather perhaps? and he has taken her from her home; and though not actually insane, he is still--”

MRS. CRANE.--”An unsafe guide for a female child, delicately reared.

I reared her; of good prospects, too. O sir, let us save the child!

Look--” She drew from a sidepocket in her stiff iron-gray ap.r.o.n a folded paper; she placed it in the Oxonian's hand; he glanced over and returned it.

”I see, ma'am. I cannot hesitate after this. It is a good many miles off where I met the persons whom I have no doubt that you seek; and two or three days ago my father received a letter from a very worthy, excellent man, with whom he is often brought into communication upon benevolent objects,--a Mr. Hartopp, the Mayor of Gatesboro', in which, among other matters, the Mayor mentioned briefly that the Literary Inst.i.tute of that town had been much delighted by the performance of a very remarkable man with one eye, about whom there seemed some mystery, with a little girl and a learned dog; and I can't help thinking that the man, the girl, and the dog, must be those whom I saw and you seek.”

MRS. CRANE.--”At Gatesboro'? is that far?”

OXONIAN.--”Some way; but you can get a cross train from this village. I hope that the old man will not be separated from the little girl; they seemed very fond of each other.”

MRS. CRANE.--”No doubt of it; very fond: it would be cruel to separate them. A comfortable home for both. I don't know, sir, if I dare offer to a gentleman of your evident rank the reward,--but for the poor of your parish.”

OXONIAN.--”Oh, ma'am, our poor want for nothing: my father is rich. But if you would oblige me by a line after you have found these interesting persons; I am going to a distant part of the country to-morrow,--to Montfort Court, in -------s.h.i.+re.”

MRS. CRANE.--”To Lord Montfort, the head of the n.o.ble family of Vipont?”

OXONIAN.--”Yes; do you know any of the family, ma'am? If you could refer me to one of them, I should feel more satisfied as to--”

MRS. CRANE (hastily).--”Indeed, sir, every one must know that great family by name and repute. I know no more. So you are going to Lord Montfort's! The Marchioness, they say, is very beautiful.”

OXONIAN.--”And good as beautiful. I have the honour to be connected both with her and Lord Montfort; they are cousins, and my grandfather was a Vipont. I should have told you my name,--Morley; George Vipont Morley.”

Mrs. Crane made a profound courtesy, and, with an unmistakable smile of satisfaction, said, as if half in soliloquy, ”So it is to one of that n.o.ble family--to a Vipont--that the dear child will owe her restoration to my embrace! Bless you, sir!”

”I hope I have done right,” said George Vipont Morley, as he mounted his horse. ”I must have done right, surely!” he said again, when he was on the high road. ”I fear I have not done right,” he said a third time, as the face of Mrs. Crane began to haunt him; and when at sunset he reached his home, tired out, horse and man, with an unusually long ride, and the green water-bank on which he had overheard poor Waife's simple grace and joyous babble came in sight, ”After all,” he said dolefully, ”it was no business of mine.”

”I meant well; but--” His little sister ran to the gate to greet him.

”Yes, I did quite right. How should I like my sister to be roving the country, and acting at Literary Inst.i.tutes 'with a poodle dog? Quite right; kiss me, Jane!”

CHAPTER XVIII.

Let a king and a beggar converse freely together, and it is the beggar's fault if he does not say something which makes the king lift his hat to him.

The scene s.h.i.+fts back to Gatesboro', the forenoon of the day succeeding the memorable exhibition at the Inst.i.tute of that learned town. Mr.

Hartopp was in the little parlour behind his country-house, his hours of business much broken into by those intruders who deem no time unseasonable for the indulgence of curiosity, the interchange of thought, or the interests of general humanity and of national enlightenment. The excitement produced on the previous evening by Mr.

Chapman, Sophy, and Sir Isaac was greatly on the increase. Persons who had seen them naturally called on the Mayor to talk over the exhibition.

Persons who had not seen them, still more naturally dropped in just to learn what was really Mr. Mayor's private opinion. The little parlour was thronged by a regular levee There was the proprietor of a dismal building, still called ”The Theatre,” which was seldom let except at election time, when it was hired by the popular candidate for the delivery of those harangues upon liberty and conscience, tyranny and oppression, which furnish the staple of declamation equally to the dramatist and the orator. There was also the landlord of the Royal Hotel, who had lately built to his house ”The City Concert-Room,”--a superb apartment, but a losing speculation. There, too, were three highly respectable persons, of a serious turn of mind, who came to suggest doubts whether an entertainment of so frivolous a nature was not injurious to the morality of Gatesboro'. Besides these notables, there were loungers and gossips, with no particular object except that of ascertaining who Mr. Chapman was by birth and parentage, and suggesting the expediency of a deputation, ostensibly for the purpose of asking him to repeat his performance, but charged with private instructions to cross-examine him as to his pedigree. The gentle Mayor kept his eyes fixed on a mighty ledger-book, pen in hand. The att.i.tude was a rebuke on intruders, and in ordinary times would have been so considered. But mildness, however majestic, is not always effective in periods of civic commotion. The room was animated by hubbub. You caught broken sentences here and there crossing each other, like the sounds that had been frozen in the air, and set free by a thaw, according to the veracious narrative of Baron Munchausen.

PLAYHOUSE PROPRIETOR.--”The theatre is the--”

SERIOUS GENTLEMAN.--”Plausible snare by which a population, at present grave and well-disposed, is decoyed into becoming--”

EXCITED ADMIRER.--”A French poodle, sir, that plays at dominos like a--”

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