I saw her hold Earl Percy at the point
With lustier maintenance than I did look for
Of such an ungrown warrior.
—King Henry IV
As soon as Violet could leave her little boy without anxiety, the two sisters deposited Charles Layton at the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, with hopes that a few years’ training there would enable him to become Miss Martindale’s little page, the grand object of his desires.
Their next and merriest excursion was to Percy’s lodgings, where he had various Greek curiosities which he wished to show them; and Theodora consented to come with her brother and sister in a simple straightforward way that Violet admired.
His rooms were over a toy-shop in Piccadilly, in such a roar of sounds that the ladies exclaimed, and Arthur asked him how much he paid for noise.
‘It is worth having,’ said Percy; ‘it is cheerful.’
‘Do you think so?’ exclaimed Violet. ‘I think carriages, especially late at night, make a most dismal dreary sound.’
‘They remind me of an essay of Miss Talbot’s where she speaks of her companions hastening home from the feast of empty shells,’ said Theodora.
‘Ay! those are your West-end carriages,’ said Percy; ‘I will allow them a dreary dissatisfied sound. Now mine are honest, business-like market-waggons, or hearty tradesfolk coming home in cabs from treating their children to the play. There is sense in those! I go to sleep thinking what drops of various natures make up the roar of that great human cataract, and wake up dreaming of the Rhine falls.
“Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide,
And a river flows down the vale of Cheapside.”
Eh, Mrs. Martindale?’
Violet, who always received a quotation of Wordsworth as a compliment to the north, smiled and answered, ‘I am afraid with me it would end in,
“The stream will not flow, the hill will not rise.”’
‘Pish, Violet,’ said her husband, ‘how can you expect to feel like poets and lovers? And halloo! he is coming it strong! “Poems by A.”; “The White Hind and other Poems”; “Gwyneth: a tale in verse”; “Farewell to Pausilippo”, by the Earl of St. Erme. Well done, Percy! Are you collecting original serenades for Theodora? I’ll never betray where they came from.’
‘It is all in the way of trade,’ said Percy.
‘Reviewing?’ said Theodora.
‘Yes; there has been such an absurd amount of flattery bestowed on them that it must provoke any reasonable being. It really is time to put forth a little common sense, since the magazines will have it that earls write better than other people.’
‘Some of the verses in Lord St. Erme’s last volume seem to me very pretty,’ said Violet.
‘There, she is taking up the cudgels for her countryman,’ said Arthur, always pleased when she put herself forward.
‘Which do you mean?’ said Percy, turning on her incredulously.
‘I like those about the Bay of Naples,’ she answered.
‘You do not mean these?’ and he read them in so good-humoured a tone that no one could be vexed, but marking every inconsistent simile and word tortured out of its meaning, and throwing in notes and comments on the unfaithfulness of the description.
‘There! it would do as well for the Bay of Naples as for the farm-yard at Martindale—all water and smoke.’
Arthur and Theodora laughed, but Violet stood her ground, blushingly but resolutely.
‘Anything so read would sound ill,’ she said. ‘I dare say it is all right about the faults, but some parts seem to me very pretty. This stanza, about the fishermen’s boats at night, like sparks upon the water, is one I like, because it is what John once described to me.’
‘You are right, Mrs. Martindale,’ said Percy, reading a second time the lines to which she alluded. ‘They do recall the evening scene; Mount Vesuvius and its brooding cloud, and the trails of phosphoric light upon the sea. I mark these for approval. But have you anything to say for this Address to the Mediterranean?’
He did not this time mar the poem in the reading, and it was not needed, the compound words and twisted epithets were so extravagant that no one gainsaid Arthur’s sentence, ‘Stilts and bladders!’
‘And all that abuse of the savage north is unpardonable,’ said Theodora. ‘Sluggish torpid minds, indeed, frozen by skies bound in mist belts! If he would stay at home and mind his own business, he would not have time to talk such nonsense.’
‘Now,’ said the still undaunted Violet, when the torrent of unsparing jest had expended itself, ‘now it is my turn. Let me show you one short piece. This—“To L.”’
It was an address evidently to his orphan sister, very beautiful and simple; and speaking so touchingly of their loneliness together and dependence on each other, that Mr. Fotheringham was overcome, and fairly broke down in the reading—to the dismay of Violet, who had little thought his feelings so easily excited.
‘Think of the man going and publishing it,’ said Theodora. ‘If I was Lady Lucy, I should not care a rush for it now.’
‘That is what you get by belonging to a poet,’ said Arthur. ‘He wears his heart outside.’
‘This came straight from the heart, at least,’ said Percy. ‘It is good, very good. I am glad you showed it to me. It would never do not to be candid. I will turn him over again.’
‘Well done, councillor,’ cried Arthur. ‘She has gained a verdict for him.’
‘Modified the sentence, and given me some re-writing to do,’ said Percy. ‘I cannot let him off; the more good there is in him, the more it is incumbent on some one to slash him. Authors are like spaniels, et cetera.’
‘Hear, hear, Theodora!’ cried Arthur. ‘See there, he has the stick ready, I declare.’
For in truth Arthur would hardly have been so patient of hearing so much poetry, if it had not been for the delight he always took in seeing his wife’s opinion sought by a clever man, and he was glad to turn for amusement to Percy’s curiosities. Over the mantel-piece there was a sort of trophy in imitation of the title-page to Robinson Crusoe, a thick hooked stick set up saltire-wise with the green umbrella, and between them a yataghan, supporting a scarlet blue-tasselled Greek cap. Percy took down the stick, and gave it into Theodora’s hand, saying, ‘It has been my companion over half Europe and Asia; I cut it at—’
‘By the well of St. Keyne?’ suggested the malicious brother.
‘No, at the source of the Scamander,’ said Percy. It served us in good stead when we got into the desert of Engaddi.’
‘Oh! was that when the robbers broke into John’s tent?’ exclaimed Violet. ‘Surely you had some better weapon?’
‘Not I; the poor rogues were not worth wasting good powder on, and a good English drubbing was a much newer and more effective experiment. I was thenceforth known by the name of Grandfather of Clubs, and Brown always manoeuvred me into sleeping across the entrance of the tent. I do believe we should have left him entombed in the desert sands, if John’s dressing-case had been lost!’
‘What a capital likeness of John,’ said Theodora. ‘Mamma would be quite jealous of it.’
‘It belonged to my sister,’ said Percy. ‘He got it done by an Italian, who has made him rather theatrically melancholy; but it is a good picture, and like John when he looked more young-mannish and sentimental than he does now.’
A hiss and cluck made Violet start. In a dark corner, shrouded by the curtain, sat Pallas Athene, the owl of the Parthenon, winking at the light, and testifying great disapproval of Arthur, though when her master took her on his finger, she drew herself up and elevated her pretty little feathery horns with satisfaction, and did not even object to his holding her to a great tabby cat belonging to the landlady, but which was most at home on the hearth-rug of the good-natured lodger.
‘I always read my compositions to them,’ said Percy. ‘Pallas acts sapient judge to admiration, and Puss never commits herself, applauding only her own music—like other critics. We reserve our hisses for others.’
‘How do you feed the owl, Percy?’
‘A small boy provides her with sparrows and mice for sixpence a dozen. I doubted whether it was cruelty to animals, but decided that it was diverting the spirit of the chase to objects more legitimate than pocket-handkerchiefs.’
‘Ho! so there you seek your proteges!’
‘He sought me. I seized him fishing in my pocket. I found he had no belongings, and that his most commodious lodging-house was one of the huge worn-out boilers near Nine-Elms—an illustration for Watts’s Hymns, Theodora.’
‘Poor little creature!’ said Violet, horrified. ‘What will become of him?’
‘He is doing justice to the patronage of the goddess of wisdom,’ said Percy. ‘He is as sharp as a needle, and gets on in the world—has discarded “conveying,” and promoted himself to selling lucifers.’
‘A happy family theirs will be,’ said Arthur. ‘Cat, owl, and two rival pages!’
So, having duly admired all, curious books, potteries, red and black, tiles and lachrymatories, coins, scraps of ancient armour, a stuffed bee-eater, and the bottled remains of a green lizard that had been a pet at Constantinople—and having been instructed in the difference between various Eastern modes of writing—the merry visit closed; and as the two sisters went home they planned a suit of clothes for the owl’s provider, Theodora stipulating for all the hard and unusual needlework.
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