Book: Lucretia, Volume 4.

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Lucretia, Volume 4.




In the mean while Beau had very leisurely approached the bilious-looking
terrier; and after walking three times round him, with a stare and a
small sniff of superb impertinence, halted with great composure, and
lifting his hind leg-- O Beau, Beau, Beau! your historian blushes for
your breeding, and, like Sterne's recording angel, drops a tear upon the
stain which washes it from the register--but not, alas, from the back of
the bilious terrier! The space around was wide, Beau; you had all the
world to choose: why select so specially for insult the single spot on
which reposed the wornout and unoffending? O dainty Beau! O dainty
world! Own the truth, both of ye. There is something irresistibly
provocative of insult in the back of a shabby-looking dog! The poor
terrier, used to affronts, raised its heavy eyelids, and shot the gleam
of just indignation from its dark eyes. But it neither stirred nor
growled, and Beau, extremely pleased with his achievement, wagged his
tail in triumph and returned to his master,--perhaps, in parliamentary
phrase, to "report proceedings and ask leave to sit again."

"I wonder," soliloquized Percival St. John, "what that poor fellow is
thinking of? Perhaps he is poor; indeed, no doubt of it, now I look
again. And I so rich! I should like to-- Hem! let's see what he's made
of."

Herewith Percival approached, and with all a boy's half-bashful, half-
saucy frankness, said: "A fine prospect, sir." The pedestrian started,
and threw a rapid glance over the brilliant figure that accosted him.
Percival St. John was not to be abashed by stern looks; but that glance
might have abashed many a more experienced man. The glance of a squire
upon a corn-law missionary, of a Crockford dandy upon a Regent Street
tiger, could not have been more disdainful.

"Tush!" said the pedestrian, rudely, and turned upon his heel.

Percival coloured, and--shall we own it?--was boy enough to double his
fist. Little would he have been deterred by the brawn of those great arms
and the girth of that Herculean chest, if he had been quite sure that it
was a proper thing to resent pugilistically so discourteous a
monosyllable. The "tush!" stuck greatly in his throat. But the man, now
removed to the farther verge of the hill, looked so tranquil and so lost
in thought that the short-lived anger died.

"And after all, if I were as poor as he looks, I dare say I should be
just as proud," muttered Percival. "However, it's his own fault if he
goes to London on foot, when I might at least have given him a lift.
Come, Beau, sir."

With his face still a little flushed, and his hat unconsciously cocked
fiercely on one side, Percival sauntered back to his britzska.

As in a whirl of dust the light carriage was borne by the four posters
down the hill, the pedestrian turned for an instant from the view before
to the cloud behind, and muttered: "Ay, a fine prospect for the rich,--a
noble field for the poor!" The tone in which those words were said told
volumes; there spoke the pride, the hope, the energy, the ambition which
make youth laborious, manhood prosperous, age renowned.

The stranger then threw himself on the sward, and continued his silent
and intent contemplation till the clouds grew red in the west. When,
then, he rose, his eye was bright, his mien erect, and a smile, playing
round his firm, full lips, stole the moody sternness from his hard face.
Throwing his knapsack once more on his back, John Ardworth went
resolutely on to the great vortex.




CHAPTER I.

THE CORONATION.

The 8th of September, 1831, was a holiday in London. William the Fourth
received the crown of his ancestors in that mighty church in which the
most impressive monitors to human pomp are the monuments of the dead.
The dust of conquerors and statesmen, of the wise heads and the bold
hands that had guarded the thrones of departed kings, slept around; and
the great men of the Modern time were assembled in homage to the monarch
to whom the prowess and the liberty of generations had bequeathed an
empire in which the sun never sets. In the Abbey--thinking little of the
past, caring little for the future--the immense audience gazed eagerly on
the pageant that occurs but once in that division of history,--the
lifetime of a king. The assemblage was brilliant and imposing. The
galleries sparkled with the gems of women who still upheld the celebrity
for form and feature which, from the remotest times, has been awarded to
the great English race. Below, in their robes and coronets, were men who
neither in the senate nor the field have shamed their fathers.
Conspicuous amongst all for grandeur of mien and stature towered the
brothers of the king; while, commanding yet more the universal gaze, were
seen, here the eagle features of the old hero of Waterloo, and there the
majestic brow of the haughty statesman who was leading the people (while
the last of the Bourbons, whom Waterloo had restored to the Tuileries,
had left the orb and purple to the kindred house so fatal to his name)
through a stormy and perilous transition to a bloodless revolution and a
new charter.

Tier upon tier, in the division set apart for them, the members of the
Lower House moved and murmured above the pageant; and the coronation of
the new sovereign was connected in their minds with the great measure
which, still undecided, made at that time a link between the People and
the King, and arrayed against both, if not, indeed, the real Aristocracy,
at least the Chamber recognized by the Constitution as its
representative. Without the space was one dense mass. Houses, from
balcony to balcony, window to window, were filled as some immense
theatre. Up, through the long thoroughfare to Whitehall, the eye saw
that audience,--A PEOPLE; and the gaze was bounded at the spot where
Charles the First had passed from the banquet-house to the scaffold.

The ceremony was over, the procession had swept slowly by, the last huzza
had died away; and after staring a while upon Orator Hunt, who had
clambered up the iron palisade near Westminster Hall, to exhibit his
goodly person in his court attire, the serried crowds, hurrying from the
shower which then unseasonably descended, broke into large masses or
lengthening columns.

In that part of London which may be said to form a boundary between its
old and its new world, by which, on the one hand, you pass to
Westminster, or through that gorge of the Strand which leads along
endless rows of shops that have grown up on the sites of the ancient
halls of the Salisburys and the Exeters, the Buckinghams and
Southamptons; to the heart of the City built around the primeval palace
of the "Tower;" while, on the other hand, you pass into the new city of
aristocracy and letters, of art and fashion, embracing the whilom chase
of Marylebone, and the once sedge-grown waters of Pimlico,--by this
ignoble boundary (the crossing from the Opera House, at the bottom of the
Haymarket, to the commencement of Charing Cross) stood a person whose
discontented countenance was in singular contrast with the general gayety
and animation of the day. This person, O gentle reader, this sour,
querulous, discontented person, was a king, too, in his own walk! None
might dispute it. He feared no rebel; he was harassed by no reform; he
ruled without ministers. Tools he had; but when worn out, he replaced
them without a pension or a sigh. He lived by taxes, but they were
voluntary; and his Civil List was supplied without demand for the redress
of grievances. This person, nevertheless, not deposed, was suspended
from his empire for the day. He was pushed aside; he was forgotten. He
was not distinct from the crowd. Like Titus, he had lost a day,--his
vocation was gone. This person was the Sweeper of the Crossing!

He was a character. He was young, in the fairest prime of youth; but it
was the face of an old man on young shoulders. His hair was long, thin,
and prematurely streaked with gray; his face was pale and deeply
furrowed; his eyes were hollow, and their stare gleamed, cold and stolid,
under his bent and shaggy brows. The figure was at once fragile and
ungainly, and the narrow shoulders curved in a perpetual stoop. It was a
person, once noticed, that you would easily remember, and associate with
some undefined, painful impression. The manner was humble, but not meek;
the voice was whining, but without pathos. There was a meagre,
passionless dulness about the aspect, though at times it quickened into a
kind of avid acuteness. No one knew by what human parentage this
personage came into the world. He had been reared by the charity of a
stranger, crept through childhood and misery and rags mysteriously; and
suddenly succeeded an old defunct negro in the profitable crossing
whereat he is now standing. All education was unknown to him, so was all
love. In those festive haunts at St. Giles's where he who would see
"life in London" may often discover the boy who has held his horse in the
morning dancing merrily with his chosen damsel at night, our sweeper's
character was austere as Charles the Twelfth's. And the poor creature
had his good qualities. He was sensitively alive to kindness,--little
enough had been shown him to make the luxury the more prized from its
rarity! Though fond of money, he would part with it (we do not say
cheerfully, but part with it still),--not to mere want, indeed (for he
had been too pinched and starved himself, and had grown too obtuse to
pinching and to starving for the sensitiveness that prompts to charity),
but to any of his companions who had done him a good service, or who had
even warmed his dull heart by a friendly smile. He was honest, too,--
honest to the backbone. You might have trusted him with gold untold.
Through the heavy clod which man's care had not moulded, nor books
enlightened, nor the priest's solemn lore informed, still natural rays
from the great parent source of Deity struggled, fitful and dim. He had
no lawful name; none knew if sponsors had ever stood security for his
sins at the sacred fount. But he had christened himself by the strange,
unchristian like name of "Beck." There he was, then, seemingly without
origin, parentage, or kindred tie,--a lonesome, squalid, bloodless thing,
which the great monster, London, seemed to have spawned forth of its own
self; one of its sickly, miserable, rickety offspring, whom it puts out
at nurse to Penury, at school to Starvation, and, finally, and literally,
gives them stones for bread, with the option of the gallows or the
dunghill when the desperate offspring calls on the giant mother for
return and home.

And this creature did love something,--loved, perhaps, some fellow-being;
of that hereafter, when we dive into the secrets of his privacy.
Meanwhile, openly and frankly, he loved his crossing; he was proud of his
crossing; he was grateful to his crossing. God help thee, son of the
street, why not? He had in it a double affection,--that of serving and
being served. He kept the crossing, if the crossing kept him. He smiled
at times to himself when he saw it lie fair and brilliant amidst the mire
around; it bestowed on him a sense of property! What a man may feel for
a fine estate in a ring fence, Beck felt for that isthmus of the kennel
which was subject to his broom. The coronation had made one rebellious
spirit when it swept the sweeper from his crossing.

He stood, then, half under the colonnade of the Opera House as the crowd
now rapidly grew thinner and more scattered: and when the last carriage
of a long string of vehicles had passed by, he muttered audibly,--

"It'll take a deal of pains to make she right agin!"

"So you be's 'ere to-day, Beck!" said a ragamuffin boy, who, pushing and
scrambling through his betters, now halted, and wiped his forehead as he
looked at the sweeper. "Vy, ve are all out pleasuring. Vy von't you
come with ve? Lots of fun!"

The sweeper scowled at the urchin, and made no answer, but began
sedulously to apply himself to the crossing.

"Vy, there isn't another sweep in the streets, Beck. His Majesty King
Bill's currynation makes all on us so 'appy!"

"It has made she unkimmon dirty!" returned Beck, pointing to the dingy
crossing, scarce distinguished from the rest of the road.

The ragamuffin laughed.

"But ve be's goin' to 'ave Reform now, Beck. The peopul's to have their
rights and libties, hand the luds is to be put down, hand beefsteaks is
to be a penny a pound, and--"

"What good will that do to she?"

"Vy, man, ve shall take turn about, and sum vun helse will sveep the
crossings, and ve shall ride in sum vun helse's coach and four, p'r'aps,-
-cos vy? ve shall hall be hequals!"

"Hequals! I tells you vot, if you keeps jawing there, atween me and she,
I shall vop you, Joe,--cos vy? I be's the biggest!" was the answer of
Beck the sweeper to Joe the ragamuffin.

The jovial Joe laughed aloud, snapped his fingers, threw up his ragged
cap with a shout for King Bill, and set off scampering and whooping to
join those festivities which Beck had so churlishly disdained.

Time crept on; evening began to close in, and Beck was still at his
crossing, when a young gentleman on horseback, who, after seeing the
procession, had stolen away for a quiet ride in the suburbs, reined in
close by the crossing, and looking round, as for some one to hold his
horse, could discover no loiterer worthy that honour except the solitary
Beck. So young was the rider that he seemed still a boy. On his smooth
countenance all that most prepossesses in early youth left its witching
stamp. A smile, at once gay and sweet, played on his lips. There was a
charm, even in a certain impatient petulance, in his quick eye and the
slight contraction of his delicate brows. Almaviva might well have been
jealous of such a page. He was the beau-ideal of Cherubino. He held up
his whip, with an arch sign, to the sweeper. "Follow, my man," he said,
in a tone the very command of which sounded gentle, so blithe was the
movement of the lips, and so silvery the easy accent; and without
waiting, he cantered carelessly down Pall Mall.

The sweeper cast a rueful glance at his melancholy domain. But he had
gained but little that day, and the offer was too tempting to be
rejected. He heaved a sigh, shouldered his broom, and murmuring to
himself that he would give her a last brush before he retired for the
night, he put his long limbs into that swinging, shambling trot which
characterizes the motion of those professional jackals who, having once
caught sight of a groomless rider, fairly hunt him down, and appear when
he least expects it, the instant he dismounts. The young rider lightly
swung himself from his sleek, high-bred gray at the door of one of the
clubs in St. James's Street, patted his horse's neck, chucked the rein to
the sweeper, and sauntered into the house, whistling musically,--if not
from want of thought, certainly from want of care.

As he entered the club, two or three men, young indeed, but much older,
to appearance at least, than himself, who were dining together at the
same table, nodded to him their friendly greeting.

"Ah, Perce," said one, "we have only just sat down; here is a seat for
you."

The boy blushed shyly as he accepted the proposal, and the young men made
room for him at the table, with a smiling alacrity which showed that his
shyness was no hindrance to his popularity.

"Who," said an elderly dandy, dining apart with one of his
contemporaries,--"who is that lad? One ought not to admit such mere boys
into the club."

"He is the only surviving son of an old friend of ours," answered the
other, dropping his eyeglass,--"young Percival St. John."

"St. John! What! Vernon St. John's son?"

"Yes."

"He has not his father's good air. These young fellows have a tone, a
something,--a want of self-possession, eh?"

"Very true. The fact is, that Percival was meant for the navy, and even
served as a mid for a year or so. He was a younger son, then,--third, I
think. The two elder ones died, and Master Percival walked into the
inheritance. I don't think he is quite of age yet."

"Of age! he does not look seventeen."

"Oh, he is more than that; I remember him in his jacket at Laughton. A
fine property!"

"Ay, I don't wonder those fellows are so civil to him. This claret is
corked! Everything is so bad at this d----d club,--no wonder, when a
troop of boys are let in! Enough to spoil any club; don't know Larose
from Lafitte! Waiter!"

Meanwhile, the talk round the table at which sat Percival St. John was
animated, lively, and various,--the talk common with young idlers; of
horses, and steeplechases, and opera-dancers, and reigning beauties, and
good-humoured jests at each other. In all this babble there was a
freshness about Percival St. John's conversation which showed that, as
yet, for him life had the zest of novelty. He was more at home about
horses and steeplechases than about opera-dancers and beauties and the
small scandals of town. Talk on these latter topics did not seem to
interest him, on the contrary, almost to pain. Shy and modest as a girl,
he coloured or looked aside when his more hardened friends boasted of
assignations and love-affairs. Spirited, gay, and manly enough in all
really manly points, the virgin bloom of innocence was yet visible in his
frank, charming manner; and often, out of respect for his delicacy, some
hearty son of pleasure stopped short in his narrative, or lost the point
of his anecdote. And yet so lovable was Percival in his good humour, his
naivete, his joyous entrance into innocent joy, that his companions were
scarcely conscious of the gene and restraint he imposed on them. Those
merry, dark eyes and that flashing smile were conviviality of themselves.
They brought with them a contagious cheerfulness which compensated for
the want of corruption.

Night had set in. St. John's companions had departed to their several
haunts, and Percival himself stood on the steps of the club, resolving
that he would join the crowds that swept through the streets to gaze on
the illuminations, when he perceived Beck (still at the rein of his
dozing horse), whom he had quite forgotten till that moment. Laughing at
his own want of memory, Percival put some silver into Beck's hand,--more
silver than Beck had ever before received for similar service,--and
said,--

"Well, my man, I suppose I can trust you to take my horse to his
stables,--No.----, the Mews, behind Curzon Street. Poor fellow, he wants
his supper,--and you, too, I suppose!"

Beck smiled a pale, hungry smile, and pulled his forelock politely.

"I can take the 'oss werry safely, your 'onor."

"Take him, then, and good evening; but don't get on, for your life."

"Oh, no, sir; I never gets on,--'t aint in my ways."

And Beck slowly led the horse through the crowd, till he vanished from
Percival's eyes.

Just then a man passing through the street paused as he saw the young
gentleman on the steps of the club, and said gayly, "Ah! how do you do?
Pretty faces in plenty out to-night. Which way are you going?"

"That is more than I can tell you, Mr. Varney. I was just thinking which
turn to take,--the right or the left."

"Then let me be your guide;" and Varney offered his arm.

Percival accepted the courtesy, and the two walked on towards Piccadilly.
Many a kind glance from the milliners--and maid-servants whom the
illuminations drew abroad, roved, somewhat impartially, towards St. John
and his companion; but they dwelt longer on the last, for there at least
they were sure of a return. Varney, if not in his first youth, was still
in the prime of life, and Time had dealt with him so leniently that he
retained all the personal advantages of youth itself. His complexion
still was clear; and as only his upper lip, decorated with a slight
silken and well-trimmed mustache, was unshaven, the contour of the face
added to the juvenility of his appearance by the rounded symmetry it
betrayed. His hair escaped from his hat in fair unchanged luxuriance.
And the nervous figure, agile as a panther's, though broad-shouldered and
deep-chested, denoted all the slightness and elasticity of twenty-five,
combined with the muscular power of forty. His dress was rather
fantastic,--too showy for the good taste which is habitual to the English
gentleman,--and there was a peculiarity in his gait, almost approaching
to a strut, which bespoke a desire of effect, a consciousness of personal
advantages, equally opposed to the mien and manner of Percival's usual
companions; yet withal, even the most fastidious would have hesitated to
apply to Gabriel Varney the epithet of "vulgar." Many turned to look
again, but it was not to remark the dress or the slight swagger; an
expression of reckless, sinister power in the countenance, something of
vigour and determination even in that very walk, foppish as it would have
been in most, made you sink all observation of the mere externals, in a
sentiment of curiosity towards the man himself. He seemed a somebody,--
not a somebody of conventional rank, but a somebody of personal
individuality; an artist, perhaps a poet, or a soldier in some foreign
service, but certainly a man whose name you would expect to have heard
of. Amongst the common mob of passengers he stood out in marked and
distinct relief.

"I feel at home in a crowd," said Varney. "Do you understand me?"

"I think so," answered Percival. "If ever I could become distinguished,
I, too, should feel at home in a crowd."

"You have ambition, then; you mean to become distinguished?" asked
Varney, with a sharp, searching look.

There was a deeper and steadier flash than usual from Percival's dark
eyes, and a manlier glow over his cheek, at Varney's question. But he
was slow in answering; and when he did so, his manner had all its wonted
mixture of graceful bashfulness and gay candour.

"Our rise does not always depend on ourselves. We are not all born
great, nor do we all have 'greatness thrust on us.'"

"One can be what one likes, with your fortune," said Varney; and there
was a growl of envy in his voice.

"What, be a painter like you! Ha, ha!"

"Faith," said Varney, "at least, if you could paint at all, you would
have what I have not,--praise and fame."

Percival pressed kindly on Varney's arm. "Courage! you will get justice
some day."

Varney shook his head. "Bah! there is no such thing as justice; all are
underrated or overrated. Can you name one man who you think is estimated
by the public at his precise value? As for present popularity, it
depends on two qualities, each singly, or both united,--cowardice and
charlatanism; that is, servile compliance with the taste and opinion of
the moment, or a quack's spasmodic efforts at originality. But why bore
you on such matters? There are things more attractive round us. A good
ankle that, eh? Why, pardon me, it is strange, but you don't seem to
care much for women?"

"Oh, yes, I do," said Percival, with a sly demureness. "I am very fond
of--my mother!"

"Very proper and filial," said Varney, laughing; "and does your love for
the sex stop there?"

"Well, and in truth I fancy so,--pretty nearly. You know my grandmother
is not alive! But that is something really worth looking at!" And
Percival pointed, almost with a child's delight, at an illumination more
brilliant than the rest.

"I suppose, when you come of age, you will have all the cedars at
Laughton hung with coloured lamps. Ah, you must ask me there some day; I
should so like to see the old place again."

"You never saw it, I think you say, in my poor father's time?"

"Never."

"Yet you knew him."

"But slightly."

"And you never saw my mother?"

"No; but she seems to have such influence over you that I am sure she
must be a very superior person,--rather proud, I suppose."

"Proud, no,--that is, not exactly proud, for she is very meek and very
affable. But yet--"

"'But yet--' You hesitate: she would not like you to be seen, perhaps,
walking in Piccadilly with Gabriel Varney, the natural son of old Sir
Miles's librarian,--Gabriel Varney the painter; Gabriel Varney the
adventurer!"

"As long as Gabriel Varney is a man without stain on his character and
honour, my mother would only be pleased that I should know an able and
accomplished person, whatever his origin or parentage. But my mother
would be sad if she knew me intimate with a Bourbon or a Raphael, the
first in rank or the first in genius, if either prince or artist had
lost, or even sullied, his scutcheon of gentleman. In a word, she is
most sensitive as to honour and conscience; all else she disregards."

"Hem!" Varney stooped down, as if examining the polish of his boot, while
he continued carelessly: "Impossible to walk the streets and keep one's
boots out of the mire. Well--and you agree with your mother?"

"It would be strange if I did not. When I was scarcely four years old,
my poor father used to lead me through the long picture-gallery at
Laughton and say: 'Walk through life as if those brave gentlemen looked
down on you.' And," added St. John, with his ingenuous smile, "my mother
would put in her word,--'And those unstained women too, my Percival.'"

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.