Part 14 (2/2)
”Ah! have you heard from my mother?”
”I wadna say that exactly; but there's been a gran bailie body wi' me that calls himsel' your uncle, and a braw young callant, a bairn o' his, I'm thinking.”
”Ah! that's my cousin--George; and tell me--do tell me, what you said to them.”
”Ou--that'll be mair concern o' mine than o' yourn. But ye're no going back to your mither.”
My heart leapt up with--joy; there is no denying it--and then I burst into tears.
”And she won't see me? Has she really cast me off?”
”Why, that'll be verra much as ye prosper, I'm thinking. Ye're an unaccreedited hero, the noo, as Thomas Carlyle has it. 'But gin ye do weel by yoursel', saith the Psalmist, 'ye'll find a' men speak well o' ye'--if ye gang their gate. But ye're to gang to see your uncle at his shop o'
Monday next, at one o'clock. Now stint your greeting, and read awa'.”
On the next Monday I took a holiday, the first in which I had ever indulged myself; and having spent a good hour in scrubbing away at my best shoes and Sunday suit, started, in fear and trembling, for my uncle's ”establishment.”
I was agreeably surprised, on being shown into the little back office at the back of the shop, to meet with a tolerably gracious reception from the good-natured Mammonite. He did not shake hands with me, it is true;--was I not a poor relation? But he told me to sit down, commended me for the excellent character which he had of me both from my master and Mackaye, and then entered on the subject of my literary tastes. He heard I was a precious clever fellow. No wonder, I came of a clever stock; his poor dear brother had plenty of brains for everything but business. ”And you see, my boy” (with a glance at the big ledgers and busy shop without), ”I knew a thing or two in my time, or I should not have been here. But without capital, _I_ think brains a curse. Still we must make the best of a bad matter; and if you are inclined to help to raise the family name--not that I think much of book writers myself--poor starving devils, half of them--but still people do talk about them--and a man might get a snug thing as newspaper editor, with interest; or clerk to something or other--always some new company in the wind now--and I should have no objection, if you seemed likely to do us credit, to speak a word for you. I've none of your mother's confounded puritanical notions, I can tell you; and, what's more, I have, thank Heaven, as fine a city connexion as any man. But you must mind and make yourself a good accountant--learn double entry on the Italian method--that's a good practical study; and if that old Sawney is soft enough to teach you other things gratis, he may as well teach you that too. I'll bet he knows something about it--the old Scotch fox. There now--that'll do--there's five s.h.i.+llings for you--mind you don't lose them--and if I hear a good account of you, why, perhaps--but there's no use making promises.”
At this moment a tall handsome young man, whom I did not at first recognize as my cousin George, swung into the office, and shook me cordially by the hand.
”Hullo, Alton, how are you? Why, I hear you're coming out as a regular genius--breaking out in a new place, upon my honour! Have you done with him, governor?”
”Well, I think I have. I wish you'd have a talk with him, my boy. I'm sorry I can't see more of him, but I have to meet a party on business at the West-end at two, and Alderman Tumbril and family dine with us this evening, don't they? I think our small table will be full.”
”Of course it will. Come along with me, and we'll have a chat in some quiet out-of-the-way place. This city is really so noisy that you can't hear your own ears, as our dean says in lecture.”
So he carried me off, down back streets and alleys, a little puzzled at the extreme cordiality of his manner. Perhaps it sprung, as I learned afterward to suspect, from his consistent and perpetual habit of ingratiating himself with every one whom he approached. He never cut a chimney-sweep if he knew him. And he found it pay. The children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.
Perhaps it sprung also, as I began to suspect in the first hundred yards of our walk, from the desire of showing off before me the university clothes, manners, and gossip, which he had just brought back with him from Cambridge.
I had not seen him more than three or four times in my life before, and then he appeared to me merely a tall, handsome, conceited, slangy boy. But I now found him much improved--in all externals at least. He had made it his business, I knew, to perfect himself in all athletic pursuits which were open to a Londoner. As he told me that day--he found it pay, when one got among gentlemen. Thus he had gone up to Cambridge a capital skater, rower, pugilist--and billiard player. Whether or not that last accomplishment ought to be cla.s.sed in the list of athletic sports, he contrived, by his own account, to keep it in that of paying ones. In both these branches he seemed to have had plenty of opportunities of distinguis.h.i.+ng himself at college; and his tall, powerful figure showed the fruit of these exercises in a stately and confident, almost martial, carriage. Something jaunty, perhaps swaggering, remained still in his air and dress, which yet sat not ungracefully on him; but I could see that he had been mixing in society more polished and artificial than that to which we had either of us been accustomed, and in his smart Rochester, well-cut trousers, and delicate French boots, he excited, I will not deny it, my boyish admiration and envy.
”Well,” he said, as soon as we were out of the shop, ”which way? Got a holiday? And how did you intend to spend it?”
”I wanted very much,” I said, meekly, ”to see the pictures at the National Gallery.”
”Oh! ah! pictures don't pay; but, if you like--much better ones at Dulwich--that's the place to go to--you can see the others any day--and at Dulwich, you know, they've got--why let me see--” And he ran over half-a-dozen outlandish names of painters, which, as I have never again met with them, I am inclined on the whole to consider as somewhat extemporaneous creations. However, I agreed to go.
”Ah! capital--very nice quiet walk, and convenient for me--very little out of my way home. I'll walk there with you.”
”One word for your neighbour and two for yourself,” thought I; but on we walked. To see good pictures had been a long cherished hope of mine.
Everything beautiful in form or colour was beginning of late to have an intense fascination for me. I had, now that I was emanc.i.p.ated, gradually dared to feed my greedy eyes by pa.s.sing stares into the print-shop windows, and had learnt from them a thousand new notions, new emotions, new longings after beauties of Nature, which seemed destined never to be satisfied. But pictures, above all, foreign ones, had been in my mother's eyes, Anathema Maranatha, as vile Popish and Pagan vanities, the rags of the scarlet woman no less than the surplice itself--and now, when it came to the point, I hesitated at an act of such awful disobedience, even though unknown to her. My cousin, however, laughed down my scruples, told me I was out of leading-strings now, and, which was true enough, that it was ”a * * * *
deal better to amuse oneself in picture galleries without leave, than live a life of sneaking and lying under petticoat government, as all home-birds were sure to do in the long-run.” And so I went on, while my cousin kept up a running fire of chat the whole way, intermixing shrewd, bold observations upon every woman who pa.s.sed, with sneers at the fellows of the college to which we were going--their idleness and luxury--the large grammar-school which they were bound by their charter to keep up, and did not--and hints about private interest in high quarters, through which their wealthy uselessness had been politely overlooked, when all similar inst.i.tutions in the kingdom were subject to the searching examination of a government commission. Then there were stories of boat-races and gay n.o.blemen, breakfast parties, and lectures on Greek plays flavoured with a spice of Cambridge slang, all equally new to me--glimpses into a world of wonders, which made me feel, as I shambled along at his side, trying to keep step with his strides, more weakly and awkward and ignorant than ever.
We entered the gallery. I was in a fever of expectation.
<script>