Part 43 (1/2)

”Ay!” he burst out again, ”the resources of our art are still unfathomed! Pictures are yet to be painted that shall refresh men's inner souls, and help their hearts against the artificial world; and charm the fiend away, like David's harp!! The world, after centuries of lies, will give nature and truth a trial. What a paradise art will be, when truths, instead of lies, shall be told on paper, on marble, on canvas, and on the boards!!!”

”Dinner's on the boarrd,” murmured Christie, alluding to Lord Ipsden's breakfast; ”and I hae the charge o' ye,” pulling his sleeve hard enough to destroy the equilibrium of a flea.

”Then don't let us waste our time here. Oh, Christie!”

”What est, my laddy?”

”I'm so preciously hungry!!!!”

”C-way* then!”

* Come away.

Off they ran, hand in hand, sparks of beauty, love and happiness flying all about them.

CHAPTER XVII.

”THERE is nothing but meeting and parting in this world!” and you may be sure the incongruous personages of our tale could not long be together.

Their separate paths had met for an instant in one focus, furnished then and there the matter of an eccentric story, and then diverged forever.

Our lives have a general current, and also an episode or two; and the episodes of a commonplace life are often rather startling; in like manner this tale is not a specimen, but an episode of Lord Ipsden and Lady Barbara, who soon after this married and lived like the rest of the _beau monde._ In so doing, they pa.s.sed out of my hands; such as wish to know how viscounts and viscountesses feed and sleep, and do the domestic (so called), and the social (so called), are referred to the fas.h.i.+onable novel. To Mr. Saunders, for instance, who has in the press one of those cerberus-leviathans of fiction, so common now; incredible as folio to future ages. Saunders will take you by the hand, and lead you over carpets two inches thick--under rosy curtains--to dinner-tables. He will _fete_ you, and opera you, and dazzle your young imagination with _e'p'ergnes,_ and salvers, and buhl and ormolu. No fishwives or painters shall intrude upon his polished scenes; all shall be as genteel as himself. Saunders is a good authority; he is more in the society, and far more in the confidence of the great, than most fas.h.i.+onable novelists. Mr. Saunders's work will be in three volumes; nine hundred and ninety pages!!!!!!

In other words, this single work of this ingenious writer will equal in bulk the aggregate of all the writings extant by Moses, David, Solomon, Isaiah, and St. Paul!!!

I shall not venture into compet.i.tion with this behemoth of the _salon;_ I will evaporate in thin generalities.

Lord Ipsden then lived very happily with Lady Barbara, whose hero he straightway became, and who n.o.bly and poetically dotes upon him. He has gone into political life to please her, and will remain there--to please himself. They were both very grateful to Newhaven; when they married they vowed to visit it twice a year, and mingle a fortnight's simple life with its simple scenes; but four years have pa.s.sed, and they have never been there again, and I dare say never will; but when Viscount Ipsden falls in with a brother aristocrat who is crushed by the fiend _ennui,_ he remembers Aberford, and condenses his famous recipe into a two-edged hexameter, which will make my learned reader laugh, for it is full of wisdom:

”Diluculo surgas! miseris succurrere discas!!”

Flucker Johnstone meditated during breakfast upon the five hundred pounds, and regretted he had not years ago adopted Mr. Gatty's profession; some days afterward he invited his sister to a conference.

Chairs being set, Mr. Flucker laid down this observation, that near relations should be deuced careful not to cast discredit upon one another; that now his sister was to be a lady, it was repugnant to his sense of right to be a fisherman and make her ladys.h.i.+p blush for him; on the contrary, he felt it his duty to rise to such high consideration that she should be proud of him.

Christie acquiesced at once in this position, but professed herself embarra.s.sed to know how such a ”ne'er-do-weel” was to be made a source of pride; then she kissed Flucker, and said, in a tone somewhat inconsistent with the above, ”Tell me, my laamb!”

Her lamb informed her that the sea has many paths; some of them disgraceful, such as line or net fis.h.i.+ng, and the periodical laying down, on rocky shoals, and taking up again, of lobster-creels; others, superior to anything the dry land can offer in importance and dignity and general estimation, such as the command of a merchant vessel trading to the East or West Indies. Her lamb then suggested that if she would be so good as to launch him in the merchant-service, with a good rig of clothes and money in his pocket, there was that in his head which would enable him to work to windward of most of his contemporaries. He bade her calculate upon the following results: In a year or two he would be second mate, and next year first mate, and in a few years more skipper!

Think of that, la.s.s! Skipper of a vessel, whose rig he generously left his sister free to determine; premising that two masts were, in his theory of navigation, indispensable, and that three were a great deal more like c.o.c.ker than two. This led to a general consultation; Flucker's ambition was discussed and praised. That modest young gentleman, in spite of many injunctions to the contrary, communicated his sister's plans for him to Lord Ipsden, and affected to doubt their prudence. The bait took; Lord Ipsden wrote to his man of business, and an unexpected blow fell upon the ingenious Flucker. He was sent to school; there to learn a little astronomy, a little navigation, a little seamans.h.i.+p, a little manners, etc.; in the mysteries of reading and writing his sister had already perfected him by dint of ”the taws.” This school was a blow; but Flucker was no fool; he saw there was no way of getting from school to sea without working. So he literally worked out to sea. His first voyage was distinguished by the following peculiarities: Attempts to put tricks upon this particular novice generally ended in the laugh turning against the experimenters; and instead of drinking his grog, which he hates, he secreted it, and sold it for various advantages. He has been now four voyages. When he comes ash.o.r.e, instead of going to haunts of folly and vice, he instantly bears up for his sister's house--Kensington Gravel-pits--which he makes in the following manner: He goes up the river--Heaven knows where all--this he calls running down the longitude; then he lands, and bears down upon the Gravel-pits; in particular knowledge of the names of streets he is deficient, but he knows the exact bearings of Christie's dwelling. He tacks and wears according as masonry compels him, and he arrives at the gate. He hails the house, in a voice that brings all the inhabitants of the row to their windows, including Christie; he is fallen upon and dragged into the house. The first thing is, he draws out from his boots, and his back, and other hiding-places, China c.r.a.pe and marvelous silk handkerchiefs for Christie; and she takes from his pocket a ma.s.s of Oriental sugar-plums, with which, but for this precaution, she knows by experience he would poison young Charley; and soon he is to be seen sitting with his hand in his sister's, and she lookng like a mother upon his handsome, weather-beaten face, and Gatty opposite, adoring him as a specimen of male beauty, and sometimes making furtive sketches of him. And then the tales he always brings with him; the house is never very dull, but it is livelier than ever when this inexhaustible sailor casts anchor in it.

The friends (chiefly artists) who used to leave at 9:30, stay till eleven; for an intelligent sailor is better company than two lawyers, two bishops, three soldiers, and four writers of plays and tales, all rolled together. And still he tells Christie he shall command a vessel some day, and leads her to the most cheering inferences from the fact of his prudence and his general width-awake; in particular he bids her contrast with him the general fate of sailors, eaten up by land-sharks, particularly of the female gender, whom he demonstrates to be the worst enemies poor Jack has; he calls these sunken rocks, fire-s.h.i.+ps and other metaphors. He concludes thus: ”You are all the la.s.s I mean to have till I'm a skipper, and then I'll bear up alongside some pretty, decent la.s.s, like yourself, Christie, and we'll sail in company all our lives, let the wind blow high or low.” Such is the gracious Flucker become in his twentieth year. Last voyage, with Christie's aid, he produced a s.e.xtant of his own, and ”made it twelve o'clock” (with the sun's consent, I hope), and the eyes of authority fell upon him. So, who knows? perhaps he may one day, sail a s.h.i.+p; and, if he does, he will be prouder and happier than if we made him monarch of the globe.

To return to our chiefs; Mrs. Gatty gave her formal consent to her son's marriage with Christie Johnstone.

There were examples. Aristocracy had ere now condescended to wealth; earls had married women rich by tallow-importing papas; and no doubt, had these same earls been consulted in Gatty's case, they would have decided that Christie Johnstone, with her real and funded property, was not a villainous match for a green grocer's son, without a rapp;* but Mrs. Gatty did not reason so, did not reason at all, luckily, her heart ran away with her judgment, and, her judgment ceasing to act, she became a wise woman.