Part 51 (1/2)
_A._ (_Looking over his memoranda._)--It will do! (_Hopping and dancing about the room._) Hurrah! my tailor's bill will be paid after all!
PART II
[_Mr Arthur Ansard's Chambers as before. Mr Ansard, with his eyes fixed upon the wig block, gnawing the feather end of his pen. The table, covered with sundry sheets of foolscap, shows strong symptoms of the Novel progressing._]
_Ansard_ (_solus_).
Where is Barnstaple? If he do not come soon, I shall have finished my novel without a heroine. Well, I'm not the first person who has been foiled by a woman. (_Continues to gnaw his pen in a brown study._)
_Barnstaple enters unperceived, and slaps Ansard on the shoulder. The latter starts up._
_B._ So, friend Ansard, making your dinner off your pen: it is not every novel writer who can contrive to do that even in antic.i.p.ation. Have you profited by my instructions?
_A._ I wish I had. I a.s.sure you that this light diet has not contributed, as might be expected, to a.s.sist a heavy head; and one feather is not sufficient to enable my genius to take wing. If the public knew what dull work it is to write a novel, they would not be surprised at finding them dull reading. _Ex nihilo nihil fit._ Barnstaple, I am at the very bathos of stupidity.
_B._ You certainly were absorbed when I entered, for I introduced myself.
_A._ I wish you had introduced another personage with you--you would have been doubly welcome.
_B._ Who is that?
_A._ My heroine. I have followed your instructions to the letter. My hero is as listless as I fear my readers will be, and he is not yet in love. In fact, he is only captivated with himself. I have made him dismiss Coridon.
_B._ Hah! how did you manage that?
_A._ He was sent to ascertain the arms on the panel of a carriage. In his eagerness to execute his master's wishes, he came home with a considerable degree of perspiration on his brow, for which offence he was immediately put out of doors.
_B._ Bravo--it was unpardonable--but still----
_A._ O! I know what you mean--that is all arranged; he has an annuity of one hundred pounds per annum.
_B._ My dear Ansard, you have exceeded my expectations; but now for the heroine.
_A._ Yes, indeed; help me--for I have exhausted all my powers.
_B._ It certainly requires much tact to present your heroine to your readers. We are unfortunately denied what the ancients were so happy to possess--a whole _cortege_ of divinities that might be summoned to help any great personage in, or the author out of, a difficulty; but since we cannot command their a.s.sistance, like the man in the play who forgot his part, we will do without it. Now, have you thought of nothing new, for we must not plagiarise even from fas.h.i.+onable novels?
_A._ I have thought--and thought--and can find nothing new, unless we bring her in in a whirlwind: that has not yet been attempted.
_B._ A whirlwind! I don't know--that's hazardous. Nevertheless, if she were placed on a beetling cliff, overhanging the tempestuous ocean, las.h.i.+ng the rocks with its wild surge; of a sudden, after she has been permitted to finish her soliloquy, a white cloud rising rapidly and unnoticed--the sudden vacuum--the rush of mighty winds through the majestic and alpine scenery--the vortex gathering round her--first admiring the vast efforts of nature; then astonished; and, lastly, alarmed, as she finds herself compelled to perform involuntary gyrations, till at length she spins round like a well-whipped top, nearing the dangerous edge of the precipice. It is bold, and certainly quite novel--I think it will do. Portray her delicate little feet, peeping out, pointing downwards, the force of the elements raising her on her tip toes, now touching, now disdaining the earth. Her dress expanded wide like that of Herbele in her last and best pirouette--round, round she goes--her white arms are tossed frantically in the air. Corinne never threw herself into more graceful att.i.tudes.
Now is seen her diminis.h.i.+ng ankle--now the rounded symmetry--mustn't go too high up though--the wind increases--her distance from the edge of the precipice decreases--she has no breath left to shriek--no power to fall--threatened to be ravished by the wild and powerful G.o.d of the elements--she is discovered by the Honourable Augustus Bouverie, who has just finished his soliloquy upon another adjacent hill. He delights in her danger--before he rushes to her rescue, makes one pause for the purpose of admiration, and another for the purpose of adjusting his s.h.i.+rt collar.
_A._ The devil he does!
_B._ To be sure. The hero of a fas.h.i.+onable novel never loses caste.
Whether in a storm, a whirlwind, up to his neck in the foaming ocean, or tumbling down a precipice, he is still the elegant and correct Honourable Augustus Bouverie. To punish you for your interruption, I have a great mind to make him take a pinch of snuff before he starts.
Well--he flies to her a.s.sistance--is himself caught in the rus.h.i.+ng vortex, which prevents him from getting nearer to the lady, and, despite of himself, takes to whirling in the opposite direction. They approach--they recede--she shrieks without being heard--holds out her arms for help--she would drop them in despair, but cannot, for they are twisted over her head by the tremendous force of the element. One moment they are near to each other, and the next they are separated; at one instant they are close to the abyss, and the waters below roar in delight of their antic.i.p.ated victims, and in the next a favouring change of the vortex increases their distance from the danger--there they spin--and there you may leave them, and commence a new chapter.