CHAPTER XVIII

WE PASS A DELIGHTFUL EVENING, AND I HAVE A MORNING VISION

In a long saloon ornamented with stags' horns and instruments of the

chase, tusks of boars, spear-staves, boarknives, and silver horns, my

father, I, and Temple sat down to a memorable breakfast, my father in his

true form, dressed in black silken jacket and knee-breeches,

purple-stockings and pumps; without a wig, I thanked heaven to see. How

blithely he flung out his limbs and heaved his chest released from

confinement! His face was stained brownish, but we drank old Rhine wine,

and had no eye for appearances.

'So you could bear it no longer, Richie?' My father interrupted the

narrative I doled out, anxious for his, and he began, and I interrupted

him.

'You did think of me often, papa, didn't you?'

His eyes brimmed with tenderness.

'Think of you!' he sighed.

I gave him the account of my latest adventures in a few panting breaths,

suppressing the Bench. He set my face to front him.

'We are two fools, Mr. Temple,' he said.

'No, sir,' said Temple.

'Now you speak, papa,' said I.

He smiled warmly.

'Richie begins to remember me.'

I gazed at him to show it was true.

'I do, papa--I'm not beginning to.'

At his request, I finished the tale of my life at school. 'Ah, well! that

was bad fortune; this is good!' he exclaimed. 'Tis your father, my son:

'tis day-light, though you look at it through a bed-curtain, and think

you are half-dreaming. Now then for me, Richie.'

My father went on in this wise excitedly:

'I was laying the foundation of your fortune here, my boy. Heavens! when

I was in that bronze shell I was astonished only at my continence in not

bursting. You have grown,--you have shot up and filled out. I register my

thanks to your grandfather Beltham; the same, in a minor degree, to

Captain Jasper Welsh. Between that man Rippenger and me there shall be

dealings. He flogged you: let that pass. He exposed you to the contempt

of your school-fellows because of a breach in my correspondence with a

base-born ferule-swinger. What are we coming to? Richie, my son, I was

building a future for you here. And Colonel Goodwin-Colonel Goodwin, you

encountered him too, and his marriageable daughter--I owe it to them that

I have you here! Well, in the event of my sitting out the period this

morning as the presentment of Prince Albrecht, I was to have won

something would have astonished that unimpressionable countryman of ours.

Goodness gracious, my boy! when I heard your English shout, it went to my

marrow. Could they expect me to look down on my own flesh and blood, on

my son--my son Richmond--after a separation of years, and continue a

statue? Nay, I followed my paternal impulse. Grant that the show was

spoilt, does the Markgrafin insist on my having a bronze heart to carry

on her pastime? Why, naturally, I deplore a failure, let the cause be

what it will. Whose regrets can eclipse those of the principal actor?

Quotha! as our old Plays have it. Regrets? Did I not for fifteen minutes

and more of mortal time sit in view of a multitude, motionless, I ask

you, like a chiselled block of stone,--and the compact was one quarter of

an hour, and no farther? That was my stipulation. I told her--I can hold

out one quarter of an hour: I pledged myself to it. Who, then, is to

blame? I was exposed to view twenty-three minutes, odd seconds. Is there

not some ancient story of a monstrous wretch baked in his own bull? My

situation was as bad. If I recollect aright, he could roar; no such

relief was allowed to me. And I give you my word, Richie, lads both, that

while that most infernal Count Fretzel was pouring forth his execrable

humdrum, I positively envied the privilege of an old palsied fellow,

chief boatman of the forest lake, for, thinks I, hang him! he can nod his

head and I can not. Let me assure you, twenty minutes of an ordeal like

that,--one posture, mind you, no raising of your eyelids, taking your

breath mechanically, and your heart beating--jumping like an enraged

balletdancer boxed in your bosom--a literal description, upon my honour;

and not only jumping, jumping every now and then, I may say, with a toe

in your throat: I was half-choked:--well, I say, twenty minutes,

twenty-seven minutes and a half of that, getting on, in fact, to

half-an-hour, it is superhuman!--by heavens, it is heroical!

And observe my reward: I have a son--my only one. I have been divided

from him for years; I am establishing his fortune; I know he is provided

with comforts: Richie, you remember the woman Waddy? A faithful soul! She

obtained my consent at last--previously I had objections; in fact, your

address was withheld from the woman--to call at your school. She saw

Rippenger, a girl of considerable attractions. She heard you were located

at Riversley: I say, I know the boy is comfortably provided for; but we

have been separated since he was a little creature with curls on his

forehead, scarce breeched.'

I protested:

'Papa, I have been in jacket and trousers I don't know how long.'

'Let me pursue,' said my father. 'And to show you, Richie, it is a golden

age ever when you and I are together, and ever shall be till we lose our

manly spirit, and we cling to that,--till we lose our princely spirit,

which we never will abandon--perish rather!--I drink to you, and

challenge you; and, mind you, old Hock wine has charms. If Burgundy is

the emperor of wines, Hock is the empress. For youngsters, perhaps, I

should except the Hock that gets what they would fancy a trifle pique,

turned with age, so as to lose in their opinion its empress flavour.'

Temple said modestly: 'I should call that the margravine of wines.'

My father beamed on him with great approving splendour. 'Join us, Mr.

Temple; you are a man of wit, and may possibly find this specimen worthy

of you. This wine has a history. You are drinking wine with blood in it.

Well, I was saying, the darling of my heart has been torn from me; I am

in a foreign land; foreign, that is, by birth, and on the whole foreign.

Yes!--I am the cynosure of eyes; I am in a singular posture, a singular

situation; I hear a cry in the tongue of my native land, and what I

presume is my boy's name: I look, I behold him, I follow a parent's

impulse. On my soul! none but a fish-father could have stood against it.

Well, for this my reward is--and I should have stepped from a cathedral

spire just the same, if I had been mounted on it--that I, I,--and the

woman knows all my secret--I have to submit to the foul tirade of a

vixen.

She drew language, I protest, from the slums. And I entreat you, Mr.

Temple, with your "margravine of wines"--which was very neatly said, to

be sure--note you this curious point for the confusion of Radicals in

your after life; her Highness's pleasure was to lend her tongue to the

language--or something like it--of a besotted fish-wife; so! very well,

and just as it is the case with that particular old Hock you youngsters

would disapprove of, and we cunning oldsters know to contain more virtues

in maturity than a nunnery of May-blooming virgins, just so the very

faults of a royal lady-royal by birth and in temper a termagant--impart a

perfume! a flavour! You must age; you must live in Courts, you must sound

the human bosom, rightly to appreciate it. She is a woman of the most

malicious fine wit imaginable.

She is a generous woman, a magnanimous woman; wear her chains and she

will not brain you with her club. She is the light, the centre of every

society where she appears, like what shall I say? like the moon in a bowl

of old Rhenish. And you will drain that bowl to the bottom to seize her,

as it were--catch a correct idea of her; ay, and your brains are drowned

in the attempt. Yes, Richie; I was aware of your residence at Riversley.

Were you reminded of your wandering dada on Valentine's day? Come, my

boy, we have each of us a thousand things to relate. I may be dull--I do

not understand what started you on your journey in search of me. An

impulse? An accident? Say, a directing angel! We rest our legs here till

evening, and then we sup. You will be astonished to hear that you have

dined. 'Tis the fashion with the Germans. I promise you good wine shall

make it up to you for the return to school-habits. We sup, and we pack

our scanty baggage, and we start tonight. Brook no insult at Courts if

you are of material value: if not, it is unreservedly a question whether

you like kickings.'

My father paused, yawned and stretched, to be rid of the remainder of his

aches and stiffness. Out of a great yawn he said:

'Dear lads, I have fallen into the custom of the country; I crave your

permission that I may smoke. Wander, if you choose, within hail of me, or

sit by me, if you can bear it, and talk of your school-life, and your

studies. Your aunt Dorothy, Richie? She is well? I know not her like. I

could bear to hear of any misfortune but that she suffered pain.

My father smoked his cigar peacefully. He had laid a guitar on his knees,

and flipped a string, or chafed over all the strings, and plucked and

thrummed them as his mood varied. We chatted, and watched the going down

of the sun, and amused ourselves idly, fermenting as we were. Anything

that gave pleasure to us two boys pleased and at once occupied my father.

It was without aid from Temple's growing admiration of him that I

recovered my active belief and vivid delight in his presence. My younger

days sprang up beside me like brothers. No one talked, looked, flashed,

frowned, beamed, as he did! had such prompt liveliness as he! such

tenderness! No one was ever so versatile in playfulness. He took the

colour of the spirits of the people about him. His vivacious or sedate

man-of-the-world tone shifted to playfellow's fun in a twinkling. I used

as a little fellow to think him larger than he really was, but he was of

good size, inclined to be stout; his eyes were grey, rather prominent,

and his forehead sloped from arched eyebrows. So conversational were his

eyes and brows that he could persuade you to imagine he was carrying on a

dialogue without opening his mouth. His voice was charmingly clear; his

laughter confident, fresh, catching, the outburst of his very self, as

laughter should be. Other sounds of laughter were like echoes.

Strange to say, I lost the links of my familiarity with him when he left

us on a short visit to his trunks and portmanteaux, and had to lean on

Temple, who tickled but rejoiced me by saying: 'Richie, your father is

just the one I should like to be secretary to.'

We thought it a pity to have to leave this nice foreign place

immediately. I liked the scenery, and the wine, and what I supposed to be

the habit of the gentlemen here to dress in silks. On my father's return

to us I asked him if we could not stay till morning.

'Till morning, then,' he said: 'and to England with the first lark.'

His complexion was ruddier; his valet had been at work to restore it; he

was getting the sanguine hue which coloured my recollection of him.

Wearing a black velvet cap and a Spanish furred cloak, he led us over the

villa. In Sarkeld he resided at the palace, and generally at the

lake-palace on the removal of the Court thither. The margravine had

placed the villa, which was her own property, at his disposal, the better

to work out their conspiracy.

'It would have been mine!' said my father, bending suddenly to my ear,

and humming his philosophical 'heigho,' as he stepped on in minuet

fashion. We went through apartments rich with gilded oak and pine

panellings: in one was a rough pattern of a wooden horse opposite a

mirror; by no means a figure of a horse, but apparently a number of

pieces contributed by a carpenter's workshop, having a rueful seat in the

middle. My father had practised the attitude of Prince Albrecht

Wohlgemuth on it. 'She timed me five and twenty minutes there only

yesterday,' he said; and he now supposed he had sat the bronze horse as a

statue in public view exactly thirty-seven minutes and a quarter. Tubs

full of colouring liquid to soak the garments of the prince, pots of

paint, and paint and plaster brushes, hinted the magnitude of the

preparations.

'Here,' said my father in another apartment, 'I was this morning

apparelled at seven o'clock: and I would have staked my right arm up to

the collar-bone on the success of the undertaking!'

'Weren't they sure to have found it out in the end, papa?' I inquired.

'I am not so certain of that,' he rejoined: 'I cannot quaff consolation

from that source. I should have been covered up after exhibition; I

should have been pronounced imperfect in my fitting-apparatus; the

sculptor would have claimed me, and I should have been enjoying the

fruits of a brave and harmless conspiracy to do honour to an illustrious

prince, while he would have been moulding and casting an indubitable

bronze statue in my image. A fig for rumours! We show ourself; we are

caught from sight; we are again on show. Now this being successfully

done, do you see, Royalty declines to listen to vulgar tattle.

Presumably, Richie, it was suspected by the Court that the margravine had

many months ago commanded the statue at her own cost, and had set her

mind on winning back the money. The wonder of it was my magnificent

resemblance to the defunct. I sat some three hours before the old

warrior's portraits in the dining-saloon of the lake-palace. Accord me

one good spell of meditation over a tolerable sketch, I warrant myself to

represent him to the life, provided that he was a personage: I incline to

stipulate for handsome as well. On my word of honour as a man and a

gentleman, I pity the margravine--my poor good Frau Feldmarschall! Now,

here, Richie,'--my father opened a side-door out of an elegant little

room into a spacious dark place, 'here is her cabinet-theatre, where we

act German and French comediettas in Spring and Autumn. I have

superintended it during the two or more years of my stay at the Court.

Humph! 'tis over.'

He abruptly closed the door. His dress belonged to the part of a Spanish

nobleman, personated by him in a Play called The Hidalgo Enraged, he

said, pointing a thumb over his shoulder at the melancholy door, behind

which gay scenes had sparkled.

'Papa!' said I sadly, for consolation.

'You're change for a sovereign to the amount of four hundred and

forty-nine thousand shillings every time you speak!' cried he, kissing my

forehead.

He sparkled in good earnest on hearing that I had made acquaintance with

the little Princess Ottilia. What I thought of her, how she looked at me,

what I said to her, what words she answered, how the acquaintance began,

who were observers of it,--I had to repair my omission to mention her by

furnishing a precise description of the circumstances, describing her

face and style, repeating her pretty English.

My father nodded: he thought I exaggerated that foreign English of hers;

but, as I said, I was new to it and noticed it. He admitted the greater

keenness of attention awakened by novelty.

'Only,' said he, 'I rather wonder--' and here he smiled at me

inquiringly. ''Tis true,' he added, 'a boy of fourteen or fifteen--ay,

Richie, have your fun out. A youngster saw the comic side of her. Do you

know, that child has a remarkable character? Her disposition is totally

unfathomable. You are a deep reader of English poetry, I hope; she

adores it, and the English Navy. She informed me that if she had been the

English people she would have made Nelson king. The Royal family of

England might see objections to that, I told her. Cries she: "Oh!

anything for a sea-hero." You will find these young princes and

princesses astonishingly revolutionary when they entertain brains. Now at

present, just at present, an English naval officer, and a poet, stand

higher in the esteem of that young Princess Ottilia than dukes, kings, or

emperors. So you have seen her!' my father ejaculated musingly, and

hummed, and said: 'By the way, we must be careful not to offend our

grandpapa Beltham, Richie. Good acres--good anchorage; good coffers--good

harbourage. Regarding poetry, my dear boy, you ought to be writing it,

for I do--the diversion of leisure hours, impromptus. In poetry, I would

scorn anything but impromptus. I was saying, Richie, that if tremendous

misfortune withholds from you your legitimate prestige, you must have the

substantial element. 'Tis your springboard to vault by, and cushions on

the other side if you make a miss and fall. 'Tis the essence if you have

not the odour.'

I followed my father's meaning as the shadow of a bird follows it in

sunlight; it made no stronger an impression than a flying shadow on the

grass; still I could verify subsequently that I had penetrated him--I had

caught the outline of his meaning--though I was little accustomed to his

manner of communicating his ideas: I had no notion of what he touched on

with the words, prestige, essence, and odour.

My efforts to gather the reason for his having left me neglected at

school were fruitless. 'Business, business! sad necessity! hurry,

worry-the-hounds!' was his nearest approach to an explicit answer; and

seeing I grieved his kind eyes, I abstained. Nor did I like to defend Mr.

Rippenger for expecting to be paid. We came to that point once or twice,

when so sharply wronged did he appear, and vehement and indignant, that I

banished thoughts which marred my luxurious contentment in hearing him

talk and sing, and behave in his old ways and new habits.

Plain velvet was his dress at dinner. We had a yellow Hock. Temple's

meditative face over it, to discover the margravine, or something, in its

flavour, was a picture. It was an evening of incessant talking; no

telling of events straightforwardly, but all by fits--all here and there.

My father talked of Turkey, so I learnt he had been in that country;

Temple of the routine of our life at Riversley; I of Kiomi, the gipsy

girl; then we two of Captain Jasper Welsh; my father of the Princess

Ottilia. When I alluded to the margravine, he had a word to say of Mrs.

Waddy; so I learnt she had been in continual correspondence with him, and

had cried heavily about me, poor soul. Temple laughed out a recollection

of Captain Bulsted's 'hic, haec, hoc'; I jumped Janet Ilchester up on the

table; my father expatiated on the comfort of a volume of Shakespeare to

an exiled Englishman. We drank to one another, and heartily to the

statue. My father related the history of the margravine's plot in

duck-and-drake skips, and backward to his first introduction to her at

some Austrian Baths among the mountains. She wanted amusement--he

provided it; she never let him quit her sight from that moment.

'And now,' he said, 'she has lost me!' He drew out of his pocket-book a

number of designs for the statue of Prince Albrecht, to which the

margravine's initials were appended, and shuffled them, and sighed, and

said:'Most complete arrangements! most complete! No body of men were ever

so well drilled as those fellows up at Bella Vista--could not have been!

And at the climax, in steps the darling boy for whom I laboured and

sweated, and down we topple incontinently! Nothing would have shaken me

but the apparition of my son! I was proof against everything but that! I

sat invincible for close upon an hour--call it an hour! Not a muscle of

me moved: I repeat, the heart in my bosom capered like an independent

organ; had it all its own way, leaving me mine, until Mr. Temple, take my

word for it, there is a guiding hand in some families; believe it, and be

serene in adversity. The change of life at a merry Court to life in a

London alley will exercise our faith. But the essential thing is that

Richie has been introduced here, and I intend him to play a part here.

The grandson and heir of one of the richest commoners in England--I am

not saying commoner as a term of reproach--possessed of a property that

turns itself over and doubles itself every ten years, may--mind you,

may--on such a solid foundation as that!--and as to birth, your Highness

has only to grant us a private interview.'

Temple was dazed by this mystifying address to him; nor could I

understand it.

'Why, papa, you always wished for me to go into Parliament,' said I.

'I do,' he replied, 'and I wish you to lead the London great world. Such

topics are for by-and-by. Adieu to them!' He kissed his wafting

finger-tips.

We fell upon our random talk again with a merry rattle.

I had to give him a specimen of my piano-playing and singing.

He shook his head. 'The cricketer and the scholar have been developed at

the expense of the musician; and music, Richie, music unlocks the chamber

of satinrose.'

Late at night we separated. Temple and I slept in companion-rooms. Deadly

drowsy, the dear little fellow sat on the edge of my bed chattering of

his wonder. My dreams led me wandering with a ship's diver under the sea,

where we walked in a light of pearls and exploded old wrecks. I was

assuring the glassy man that it was almost as clear beneath the waves as

above, when I awoke to see my father standing over me in daylight; and in

an ecstasy I burst into sobs.

'Here, Richie'--he pressed fresh violets on my nostrils--'you have had a

morning visitor. Quick out of bed, and you will see the little fairy

crossing the meadow.'

I leapt to the window in time to have in view the little Princess

Ottilia, followed by her faithful gaunt groom, before she was lost in the

shadow of the fir-trees.