"Has he grieved you, Mabel?" I asked softly.
"Oh, no, not he! he wouldn"t, he couldn"t; he talked right. Oh, go, go: for I haven"t a foot to move. And don"t speak so soft; I can"t bear kindness."
My father in admonishing her had done it tenderly, I was sure.
Tenderness was the weapon which had wounded her, and so she shrank from it; and if I had reproached and abused her she might, perhaps, have obeyed me by coming out, not to return. She was deaf. I kissed my hand to her regretfully; a condition of spirit gradually dissolved by the haunting phantom of her forehead and mouth crumpling up for fresh floods of tears. Had she concealed that vision with her handkerchief, I might have waited to see her before I saw my father. He soon changed the set of the current.
"Our little Mabel here," he said, "is an inflammable puss, I fear. By the way, talking of girls, I have a surprise for you. Remind me of it when we touch Ostend. We may want a yacht there to entertain high company. I have set inquiries afloat for the hire of a schooner. This child Mabel can read and write, I suppose? Best write no letters, boy.
Do not make old Dipwell a th.o.r.n.y bed. I have a portrait to show you, Richie. A portrait! I think you will say the original was worthy of more than to be taken up and thrown away like a weed. You see, Richie, girls have only one chance in the world, and good G.o.d! to ruin that--no, no.
You shall see this portrait. A pretty little cow-like Mabel, I grant you. But to have her on the conscience! What a coronet to wear! My young Lord Destrier--you will remember him as one of our guests here; I brought him to make your acquaintance; well, he would not be scrupulous, it is possible. Ay, but compare yourself with him, Richie! and you and I, let us love one another and have no nettles."
He flourished me away to London, into new spheres of fancy. He was irresistible.
In a London Club I was led up to the miniature of a youthful woman, singular for her endearing beauty Her cheeks were merry red, her lips lively with the spark of laughter, her eyes in good union with them, showing you the laughter was gentle; eyes of overflowing blue light.
"Who is she?" I asked.
The old-fashioned building of the powdered hair counselled me to add, "Who was she?"
Captain DeWitt, though a member of the Club, seemed unable to inform me. His glance consulted my father. He hummed and drawled, and said: "Mistress Anastasia Dewsbury; that was her name."
"She does not look a grandmother," said my father.
"She would be one by this time, I dare say," said I.
We gazed in silence.
"Yes!" he sighed. "She was a charming actress, and one of the best of women. A n.o.ble-minded young woman! A woman of cultivation and genius! Do you see a broken heart in that face? No? Very well. A walk will take us to her grave. She died early."
I was breathing "Who?" when he said, "She was my mother, my dear."
It was piteous.
We walked to an old worn flat stone in a London street, where under I had to imagine those features of beautiful humanity lying shut from us.
She had suffered in life miserably.
CHAPTER XXIV. I MEET THE PRINCESS
Hearing that I had not slept at the hotel, the Rev. Ambrose rushed down to Riversley with melancholy e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns, and was made to rebound by the squire"s contemptuous recommendation to him to learn to know something of the spirit of young bloods, seeing that he had the nominal charge of one, and to preach his sermon in secret, if he would be sermonizing out of church. The good gentleman had not exactly understood his duties, or how to conduct them. Far from objecting to find me in company with my father, as he would otherwise have done by transmitting information of that fact to Riversley, he now congratulated himself on it, and after the two had conversed apart, cordially agreed to our scheme of travelling together. The squire had sickened him. I believe that by comparison he saw in my father a better friend of youth.
"We shall not be the worse for a ghostly adviser at hand," my father said to me with his quaintest air of gravity and humour mixed, which was not insincerely grave, for the humour was unconscious. "An accredited casuist may frequently be a treasure. And I avow it, I like to travel with my private chaplain."
Mr. Peterborough"s temporary absence had allowed me time for getting ample funds placed at our disposal through the agency of my father"s solicitors, Messrs. Dettermain and Newson, whom I already knew from certain transactions with them on his behalf. They were profoundly courteous to me, and showed me his box, and alluded to his Case--a long one, and a lamentable, I was taught to apprehend, by their lugubriously professional tone about it. The question was naturally prompted in me, "Why do you not go on with it?"
"Want of funds."
"There"s no necessity to name that now," I insisted. But my father desired them to postpone any further exposition of the case, saying, "Pleasure first, business by-and-by. That, I take it, is in the order of our great mother Nature, gentlemen. I will not have him help shoulder his father"s pack until he has had his, fill of entertainment."
A smooth voyage brought us in view of the towers of Ostend at sunrise.
Standing with my father on deck, and gazing on this fringe of the grand romantic Continent, I remembered our old travels, and felt myself bound to him indissolubly, ashamed of my recent critical probings of his character. My boy"s love for him returned in full force. I was sufficiently cognizant of his history to know that he kept his head erect, lighted by the fire of his robust heart in the thick of overhanging natal clouds. As the way is with men when they are too happy to be sentimental, I chattered of anything but my feelings.
"What a capital idea that was of yours to bring down old Alphonse to Dipwell! You should have heard old John Thresher and Mark Sweetwinter and the others grumbling at the interference of "French frogs;" with their beef, though Alphonse vowed he only ordered the ox to be turned faster, and he dressed their potatoes in six different ways. I doubt if Dipwell has composed itself yet. You know I sat for president in their tent while the beef went its first round; and Alphonse was in an awful hurry to drag me into what he called the royal tent. By the way, you should have hauled the standard down at sunset."
"Not when the son had not come down among us," said my father, smiling.
"Well, I forgot to tell you about Alphonse. By the way, we"ll have him in our service. There was he plucking at me: "Monsieur Henri-Richie, Monsieur Henri-Richie! mille complimens... et les potages, Monsieur!--a la Camerani, a la tortue, aux pet.i.ts pois... c"est en vrai artiste que j"ai su tout r.e.t.a.r.der jusqu"au dernier moment.... Monsieur! cher Monsieur Henri-Richie, je vous en supplie, laissez-la, ces planteurs de choux." And John Thresher, as spokesman for the rest: "Master Harry, we beg to say, in my name, we can"t masticate comfortably while we"ve got a notion Mr. Frenchman he "s present here to play his Frenchified tricks with our plain wholesome dishes. Our opinion is, he don"t know beef from hedgehog; and let him trim "em, and egg "em," and bread-crumb "em, and pound the mess all his might, and then tak" and roll "em into b.a.l.l.s, we say we wun"t, for we can"t make English muscle out o" that."--And Alphonse, quite indifferent to the vulgar: "He! mais pensez donc au Papa, Monsieur Henri-Richie, sans doute il a une sante de fer: mais encore faut-il lui menager le suc gastrique, pancreatique....""
"Ay, ay!" laughed my father; "what sets you thinking of Alphonse?"
"I suppose because I shall have to be speaking French in an hour."
"German, Richie, German."
"But these Belgians speak French."
"Such French as it is. You will, however, be engaged in a German conversation first, I suspect."
"Very well, I"ll stumble on. I don"t much like it."
"In six hours from this second of time, Richie, boy, I undertake to warrant you fonder of the German tongue than of any other spoken language."
I looked at him. He gave me a broad pleasant smile, without sign of a jest lurking in one corner.
The scene attracted me. Laughing fishwife faces radiant with sea-bloom in among the weedy pier-piles, and sombre blue-cheeked officers of the douane, with their double row of b.u.t.tons extending the breadth of their shoulders. My father won Mr. Peterborough"s approval by declaring cigars which he might easily have pa.s.sed.
"And now, sir,"--he used the commanding unction of a lady"s doctor,--"you to bed, and a short repose. We will, if it pleases you, breakfast at eight. I have a surprise for Mr. Richie. We are about to beat the drum in the market-place, and sing out for echoes."
"Indeed, sir?" said the simple man.
"I promise you we shall not disturb you, Mr. Peterborough. You have reached that middle age, have you not, when sleep is, so to put it, your capital? And your activity is the interest you draw from it to live on. You have three good hours. So, then, till we meet at the breakfast-table."
My father"s first proceeding at the hotel was to examine the list of visitors. He questioned one of the waiters aside, took information from him, and seized my arm rather tremulously, saying,
"They are here. "Tis as I expected. And she is taking the morning breath of sea-air on the dunes. Come, Richie, come."
"Who"s the "she"?" I asked incuriously.
"Well, she is young, she is of high birth, she is charming. We have a crowned head or two here. I observe in you, Richie, an extraordinary deficiency of memory. She has had an illness; Neptune speed her recovery! Now for a turn at our German. Die Stra.s.sen ruhen; die Stadt schlaft; aber dort, siehst Du, dort liegt das blaue Meer, das nimmer-schlafende! She is gazing on it, and breathing it, Richie.
Ach! ihr jauchzende Seejungfern. On my soul, I expect to see the very loveliest of her s.e.x!
You must not be dismayed at pale cheeks-bla.s.se w.a.n.gen. Her illness has been alarming. Why, this air is the top of life; it will, and it shall, revive her. How will she address him?--"Freund," in my presence, perchance: she has her invalid"s privilege. "Theure Prinzessin" you might venture on. No ice! Ay, there she is!"
Solitary, on the long level of the sand-bank, I perceived a group that became discernible as three persons attached to an invalid"s chair, moving leisurely toward us. I was in the state of mind between divination and doubt when the riddle is not impossible to read, would but the heart cease its hurry an instant; a tumbled sky where the break is coming. It came. The dear old days of my wanderings with Temple framed her face. I knew her without need of pause or retrospect. The crocus raising its cup pointed as when it pierced the earth, and the crocus stretched out on earth, wounded by frost, is the same flower.
The face was the same, though the features were changed. Unaltered in expression, but wan, and the kind blue eyes large upon lean brows, her aspect was that of one who had been half caught away and still shook faintly in the relaxing invisible grasp.