"A poor flower! You don"t know what a prize this is to me!" Percival placed the rose reverently in his bosom, and the two moved back slowly, as if reluctant both, through the old palace-court into the street.
"Is that lady related to you?" asked Percival, looking another way, and dreading the reply,--"not your mother, surely!"
"Oh, no! I have no mother!"
"Forgive me!" said Percival; for the tone of Helen"s voice told him that he had touched the spring of a household sorrow. "And," he added, with a jealousy that he could scarcely restrain from making itself evident in his accent, "that gentleman who spoke to you under the Colonnade,--I have seen him before, but where I cannot remember. In fact, you have put everything but yourself out of my head. Is he related to you?"
"He is my cousin."
"Cousin!" repeated Percival, pouting a little; and again there was silence.
"I don"t know how it is," said Percival at last, and very gravely, as if much perplexed by some abstruse thought, "but I feel as if I had known you all my life. I never felt this for any one before."
There was something so irresistibly innocent in the boy"s serious, wondering tone as he said these words that a smile, in spite of herself, broke out amongst the thousand dimples round Helen"s charming lips.
Perhaps the little witch felt a touch of coquetry for the first time.
Percival, who was looking sidelong into her face, saw the smile, and said, drawing up his head, and shaking back his jetty curls: "I dare say you are laughing at me as a mere boy; but I am older than I look. I am sure I am much older than you are. Let me see, you are seventeen, I suppose?"
Helen, getting more and more at her ease, nodded playful a.s.sent.
"And I am not far from twenty-one. Ah, you may well look surprised, but so it is. An hour ago I felt a mere boy; now I shall never feel a boy again!"
Once more there was a long pause, and before it was broken, they had gained the very spot in which Helen had lost her friend.
"Why, bless us and save us!" exclaimed a voice "loud as a trumpet," but not "with a silver sound," "there you are, after all;" and Mrs. Mivers (husband and umbrella both regained) planted herself full before them.
"Oh, a pretty fright I have been in! And now to see you coming along as cool as if nothing had happened; as if the humbrella had not lost its hivory "andle,--it"s quite purvoking. Dear, dear, what we have gone through! And who is this young gentleman, pray?"
Helen whispered some hesitating explanation, which Mrs. Mivers did not seem to receive as graciously as Percival, poor fellow, had a right to expect. She stared him full in the face, and shook her head suspiciously when she saw him a little confused by the survey. Then, tucking Helen tightly under her arm, she walked back towards the Haymarket, merely saying to Percival,--
"Much obligated, and good-night. I have a long journey to take to set down this here young lady; and the best thing we can all do is to get home as fast as we can, and have a refres.h.i.+ng cup of tea--that"s my mind, sir. Excuse me!"
Thus abruptly dismissed, poor Percival gazed wistfully on his Helen as she was borne along, and was somewhat comforted at seeing her look back with (as he thought) a touch of regret in her parting smile. Then suddenly it flashed across him how sadly he had wasted his time. Novice that he was, he had not even learned the name and address of his new acquaintance. At that thought he hurried on through the crowd, but only reached the object of his pursuit just in time to see her placed in a coach, and to catch a full view of the luxuriant proportions of Mrs.
Mivers as she followed her into the vehicle.
As the lumbering conveyance (the only coach on the stand) heaved itself into motion, Percival"s eye fell on the sweeper, who was still leaning on his broom, and who, in grateful recognition of the unwonted generosity that had repaid his service, touched his ragged hat, and smiled drowsily on his young customer. Love sharpens the wit and animates the timid; a thought worthy of the most experienced inspired Percival St. John; he hurried to the sweeper, laid his hand on his patchwork coat, and said breathlessly,--
"You see that coach turning into the square? Follow it,--find out where it sets down. There"s a sovereign for you; another if you succeed. Call and tell me your success. Number ---- Curzon Street! Off, like a shot!"
The sweeper nodded and grinned; it was possibly not his first commission of a similar kind. He darted down the street; and Percival, following him with equal speed, had the satisfaction to see him, as the coach traversed St. James"s Square, comfortably seated on the footboard.
Beck, dull clod, knew nothing, cared nothing, felt nothing as to the motives or purpose of his employer. Honest love or selfish vice, it was the same to him. He saw only the one sovereign which, with astounded eyes, he still gazed at on his palm, and the vision of the sovereign that was yet to come.
"Scandit aeratas vitiosa naves Cura; nee turmas equitum relinquit."
It was the Selfishness of London, calm and stolid, whether on the track of innocence or at the command of guile.
At half-past ten o"clock Percival St. John was seated in his room, and the sweeper stood at the threshold. Wealth and penury seemed brought into visible contact in the persons of the visitor and the host. The dwelling is held by some to give an index to the character of the owner; if so, Percival"s apartments differed much from those generally favoured by young men of rank and fortune. On the one hand, it had none of that affectation of superior taste evinced in marqueterie and gilding, or the more picturesque discomfort of high-backed chairs and mediaeval curiosities which prevails in the daintier abodes of fastidious bachelors; nor, on the other hand, had it the sporting character which individualizes the ruder juveniles qui gaudent equis, betrayed by engravings of racers and celebrated fox-hunts, relieved, perhaps, if the Nimrod condescend to a cross of the Lovelace, with portraits of figurantes, and ideals of French sentiment ent.i.tled, "Le Soir," or "La Reveillee," "L"Espoir," or "L"Abandon." But the rooms had a physiognomy of their own, from their exquisite neatness and cheerful simplicity.
The chintz draperies were lively with gay flowers; books filled up the niches; here and there were small pictures, chiefly sea-pieces,--well chosen, well placed.
There might, indeed, have been something almost effeminate in a certain inexpressible purity of taste, and a cleanliness of detail that seemed actually brilliant, had not the folding-doors allowed a glimpse of a plainer apartment, with fencing-foils and boxing-gloves ranged on the wall, and a cricket-bat resting carelessly in the corner. These gave a redeeming air of manliness to the rooms; but it was the manliness of a boy,--half-girl, if you please, in the purity of thought that pervaded one room, all boy in the playful pursuits that were made manifest in the other. Simple, however, as this abode really was, poor Beck had never been admitted to the sight of anything half so fine. He stood at the door for a moment, and stared about him, bewildered and dazzled. But his natural torpor to things that concerned him not soon brought to him the same stoicism that philosophy gives the strong; and after the first surprise, his eye quietly settled on his employer. St. John rose eagerly from the sofa, on which he had been contemplating the starlit treetops of Chesterfield Gardens,--
"Well, well?" said Percival.
"Hold Brompton," said Beck, with a brevity of word and clearness of perception worthy a Spartan.
"Old Brompton?" repeated Percival, thinking the reply the most natural in the world.
"In a big "ous by hisself," continued Beck, "with a "igh vall in front."
"You would know it again?"
"In course; he"s so wery peculiar."
"He,--who?"
"Vy, the "ous. The young lady got out, and the hold folks driv back. I did not go arter them!" and Beck looked sly.
"So! I must find out the name."
"I axed at the public," said Beck, proud of his diplomacy. "They keeps a sarvant vot takes half a pint at her meals. The young lady"s mabe a foriner."
"A foreigner! Then she lives there with her mother?"
"So they s"pose at the public."
"And the name?"
Beck shook his head. ""T is a French "un, your honour; but the sarvant"s is Martha."
"You must meet me at Brompton, near the turnpike, tomorrow, and show me the house."
"Vy, I"s in bizness all day, please your honour."
"In business?""
"I"s the place of the crossing," said Beck, with much dignity; "but arter eight I goes vere I likes."
"To-morrow evening, then, at half-past eight, by the turnpike."
Beck pulled his forelock a.s.sentingly.
"There"s the sovereign I promised you, my poor fellow; much good may it do you. Perhaps you have some father or mother whose heart it will glad."
"I never had no such thing," replied Beck, turning the coin in his hand.
"Well, don"t spend it in drink."
"I never drinks nothing but svipes."