The Athelings

This was so sudden, startling, and decisive, that the audience were electrified. Mr Atheling looked blankly in his son’s face; the young gentleman had completely cut the ground from under the feet of his papa. After all, let any one advise or reason, or argue the point at his pleasure, this was the only practical conclusion to come at. Charlie stopped the full-tide of the family argument; they might have gone on till midnight discussing and wondering; but the big boy made it up into a parcel, and finished it on the spot. After that they all commenced a most ignorant and innocent discussion concerning “the trade;” these good people knew nothing whatever of that much contemned and long-suffering race who publish books. Two ideal types of them were present to the minds of the present speculators. One was that most fatal and fictitious savage, the Giant Despair of an oppressed literature, who sits in his den for ever grinding the bones of those dismal unforgettable hacks of Grub Street, whose memory clings unchangeably to their profession; the other was that bland and genial imagination, equally fictitious, the author’s friend—he who brings the neglected genius into the full sunshine of fame and prosperity, seeking only the immortality of such a connection with the immortal. If one could only know which of these names in the newspapers belonged to this last wonder of nature! This discussion concerning people of whom absolutely nothing but the names were known to the disputants, was a very comical argument; and it was not concluded when eleven o’clock struck loudly on the kitchen clock, and Susan, very slumbrous, and somewhat resentful, appeared at the door to see if anything was wanted. Everybody rose immediately, as Susan intended they should, with guilt and confusion: eleven o’clock! the innocent family were ashamed of themselves.

And this little room up-stairs, as you do not need to be told, is the bower of Agnes and of Marian. There are two small white beds in it, white and fair and simple, draped with the purest dimity, and covered with the whitest coverlids. If Agnes, by chance or in haste—and Agnes is very often “in a great hurry”—should leave her share of the apartment in a less orderly condition than became a young lady’s room, Marian never yielded to such a temptation. Marian was the completest woman in all her simple likings; their little mirror, their dressing-table, everything which would bear such fresh and inexpensive decoration, was draped with pretty muslin, the work of these pretty fingers. And there hung their little shelf of books over Agnes’s head, and here upon the table was their Bible. Yet in spite of the quiet night settling towards midnight—in spite of the unbroken stillness of Bellevue, where every candle was extinguished, and all the world at rest, the girls could not subdue all at once their eager anticipations, hopes, and wondering. Marian let down all her beautiful hair over her shoulders, and pretended to brush it, looking all the time out of the shining veil, and throwing the half-curled locks from her face, when something occurred to her bearing upon the subject. Agnes, with both her hands supporting her forehead, leaned over the table with downcast eyes—seeing nothing, thinking nothing, with a faint glow on her soft cheek, and a vague excitement at her heart. Happy hearts! it was so easy to stir them to this sweet tumult of hope and fancy; and so small a reason was sufficient to wake these pure imaginations to all-indefinite glory and delight.

CHAPTER VIII.

CHARLIE’S ENTERPRISE

It was made into a parcel, duly packed and tied up; not in a delicate wrapper, or with pretty ribbons, as perhaps the affectionate regard of Agnes might have suggested, but in the commonest and most matter-of-fact parcel imaginable. But by that time it began to be debated whether Charlie, after all, was a sufficiently dignified messenger. He was only a boy—that was not to be disputed; and Mrs Atheling did not think him at all remarkable for his “manners,” and Papa doubted whether he was able to manage a matter of business. But, then, who could go?—not the girls certainly, and not their mother, who was somewhat timid out of her own house. Mr Atheling could not leave his office; and really, after all their objections, there was nobody but Charlie, unless it was Mr Foggo, whom Agnes would by no means consent to employ. So they brushed their big boy, as carefully as Moses Primrose was brushed before he went to the fair, and gave him strict injunctions to look as grave, as sensible, and as old as possible. All these commands Charlie received with perfect coolness, hoisting his parcel under his arm, and remaining entirely unmoved by the excitement around him. “I know well enough—don’t be afraid,” said Charlie; and he strode off like a young ogre, carrying Agnes’s fortune under his arm. They all went to the window to look after him with some alarm and some hope; but though they were troubled for his youth, his abruptness, and his want of “manners,” there was exhilaration in the steady ring of Charlie’s manful foot, and his own entire and undoubting confidence. On he went, a boyish giant, to throw down that slender gage and challenge of the young genius to all the world. Meanwhile they returned to their private occupations, this little group of women, excited, doubtful, much expecting, marvelling over and over again what Mr Burlington would say. Such an eminence of lofty criticism and censorship these good people recognised in the position of Mr Burlington! He seemed to hold in his hands the universal key which opened everything: fame, honour, and reward, at that moment, appeared to these simple minds to be mere vassals of his pleasure; and all the balance of the future, as Agnes fancied, lay in the doubtful chance whether he was propitious or unpropitious. Simple imaginations! Mr Burlington, at that moment taking off his top-coat, and placing his easy-chair where no draught could reach it, was about as innocent of literature as Charlie Atheling himself.

But Charlie, who had to go to “the office” after he fulfilled his mission, could not come home till the evening; so they had to be patient in spite of themselves. The ordinary occupations of the day in Bellevue were not very novel, nor very interesting. Mrs Atheling had ambition, and aimed at gentility; so, of course, they had a piano. The girls had learned a very little music; and Marian and Agnes, when they were out of humour, or disinclined for serious occupation, or melancholy (for they were melancholy sometimes in the “prodigal excess” of their youth and happiness), were wont to bethink themselves of the much-neglected “practising,” and spend a stray hour upon it with most inconsistent and variable zeal. This day there was a great deal of “practising”—indeed, these wayward girls divided their whole time between the piano and the garden, which was another recognised safety-valve. Mamma had not the heart to chide them; instead of that, her face brightened to hear the musical young voices, the low sweet laughter, the echo of their flying feet through the house and on the garden paths. As she sat at her work in her snug sitting-room, with Bell and Beau playing at her feet, and Agnes and Marian playing too, as truly, and with as pure and spontaneous delight, Mrs Atheling was very happy. She did not say a word that any one could hear—but God knew the atmosphere of unspoken and unspeakable gratitude, which was the very breath of this good woman’s heart.

When their messenger came home, though he came earlier than Papa, and there was full opportunity to interrogate him—Charlie, we are grieved to say, was not very satisfactory in his communications. “Yes,” said Charlie, “I saw him: I don’t know if it was the head-man: of course, I asked for Mr Burlington—and he took the parcel—that’s all.”

“That’s all?—you little savage!” cried Marian, who was not half as big as Charlie. “Did he say he would be glad to have it? Did he ask who had written it? What did he say?”

“Are you sure it was Mr Burlington?” said Agnes. “Did he look pleased? What do you think he thought? What did you say to him? Charlie, boy, tell us what you said?”

“I won’t tell you a word, if you press upon me like that,” said the big boy. “Sit down and be quiet. Mother, make them sit down. I don’t know if it was Mr Burlington; I don’t think it was: it was a washy man, that never could have been head of that place. He took the papers, and made a face at me, and said, ‘Are they your own?’ I said ‘No’ plain enough; and then he looked at the first page, and said they must be left. So I left them. Well, what was a man to do? Of course, that is all.”

“What do you mean by making a face at you, boy?” said the watchful mother. “I do trust, Charlie, my dear, you were careful how to behave, and did not make any of your faces at him.”

“Oh, it was only a smile,” said Charlie, with again a grotesque imitation. “‘Are they your own?’—meaning I was just a boy to be laughed at, you know—I should think so! As if I could not make an end of half-a-dozen like him.”

“Don’t brag, Charlie,” said Marian, “and don’t be angry about the gentleman, you silly boy; he always must have something on his mind different from a lad like you.”

Charlie laughed with grim satisfaction. “He hasn’t a great deal on his mind, that chap,” said the big boy; “but I wouldn’t be him, set up there for no end but reading rubbish—not for—five hundred a-year.”

Now, we beg to explain that five hundred a-year was a perfectly magnificent income to the imagination of Bellevue. Charlie could not think at the moment of any greater inducement.

“Reading rubbish! And he has Agnes’s book to read!” cried Marian. That was indeed an overpowering anti-climax.

“Yes, but how did he look? Do you think he was pleased? And will it be sure to come to Mr Burlington safe?” said Agnes. Agnes could not help having a secret impression that there might be some plot against this book of hers, and that everybody knew how important it was.

“Why, he looked—as other people look who have nothing to say,” said Charlie; “and I had nothing to say—so we got on together. And he said it looked original—much he could tell from the first page! And so, of course, I came away—they’re to write when they’ve read it over. I tell you, that’s all. I don’t believe it was Mr Burlington; but it was the man that does that sort of thing, and so it was all the same.”

This was the substance of Charlie’s report. He could not be prevailed upon to describe how this important critic looked, or if he was pleased, or anything about him. He was a washy man, Charlie said; but the obstinate boy would not even explain what washy meant, so they had to leave the question in the hands of time to bring elucidation to it. They were by no means patient; many and oft-repeated were the attacks upon Charlie—many the wonderings over the omnipotent personage who had the power of this decision in his keeping; but in the mean time, and for sundry days and weeks following, these hasty girls had to wait, and to be content.

CHAPTER IX.

A DECISION

“I’ve been thinking,” said Charlie Atheling slowly. Having made this preface, the big boy paused: it was his manner of opening an important subject, to which the greater part of his cogitations were directed. His sisters came close to him immediately, half-embracing this great fellow in their united arms, and waiting for his communication. It was the twilight of an April evening, soft and calm. There were no stars in the sky—no sky even, except an occasional break of clear deep heavenly blue through the shadowy misty shapes of clouds, crowding upon each other over the whole arch of heaven. The long boughs of the lilac-bushes rustled in the night wind with all their young soft leaves—the prim outline of the poplar was ruffled with brown buds, and low on the dark soil at its feet was a faint golden lustre of primroses. Everything was as still—not as death, for its deadly calm never exists in nature; but as life, breathing, hushing, sleeping in that sweet season, when the grass is growing and the bud unfolding, all the night and all the day. Even here, in this suburban garden, with the great Babel muffling its voices faintly in the far distance, you could hear, if you listened, that secret rustle of growth and renewing which belongs to the sweet spring. Even here, in this colourless soft light, you could see the earth opening her unwearied bosom, with a passive grateful sweetness, to the inspiring touch of heaven. The brown soil was moist with April showers, and the young leaves glistened faintly with blobs of dew. Very different from the noonday hope was this hope of twilight; but not less hopeful in its silent operations, its sweet sighs, its soft tears, and the heart that stirred within it, in the dark, like a startled bird.

These three young figures, closely grouped together, which you could see only in outline against the faint horizon and the misty sky, were as good a human rendering as could be made of the unexpressed sentiment of the season and the night—they too were growing, with a sweet involuntary progression, up to their life, and to their fate. They stood upon the threshold of the world innocent adventurers, fearing no evil; and it was hard to believe that these hopeful neophytes could ever be made into toil-worn, care-hardened people of the world by any sum of hardships or of years.

“I’ve been thinking;”—all this time Charlie Atheling had added nothing to his first remarkable statement, and we are compelled to admit that the conclusion which he now gave forth did not seem to justify the solemnity of the delivery—“yes, I’ve made up my mind; I’ll go to old Foggo and the law.”

“And why, Charlie, why?”

Charlie was not much given to rendering a reason.

“Never mind the why,” he said, abruptly; “that’s best. There’s old Foggo himself, now; nobody can reckon his income, or make a balance just what he is and what he has, and all about him, as people could do with us. We are plain nobodies, and people know it at a glance. My father has five children and two hundred a-year—whereas old Foggo, you see—”

“I don’t see—I do not believe it!” cried Marian, impatiently. “Do you mean to say, you bad boy, that Mr Foggo is better than papa—my father? Why, he has mamma, and Bell and Beau, and all of us: if anything ailed him, we should break our hearts. Mr Foggo has only Miss Willsie: he is an old man, and snuffs, and does not care for anybody: do you call that better than papa?”

But Charlie only laughed. Certain it was that this lad had not the remotest intention of setting up Mr Foggo as his model of happiness. Indeed, nobody quite knew what Charlie’s ideal was; but the boy, spite of his practical nature, had a true boyish liking for that margin of uncertainty which made it possible to surmise some unknown power or greatness even in the person of this ancient lawyer’s clerk. Few lads, we believe, among the range of those who have to make their own fortune, are satisfied at their outset to decide upon being “no better than papa.”

“Well,” said Agnes, with consideration, “I should not like Charlie to be just like papa. Papa can do nothing but keep us all—so many children—and he never can be anything more than he is now. But Charlie—Charlie is quite a different person. I wish he could be something great.”

“Agnes—don’t! it is such nonsense!” cried Marian. “Is there anything great in old Mr Foggo’s office? He is a poor old man, I think, living all by himself with Miss Willsie. I had rather be Susan in our house, than be mistress in Mr Foggo’s: and how could he make Charlie anything great?”

“Stuff!” said Charlie; “nobody wants to be made; that’s a man’s own business. Now, you just be quiet with your romancing, you girls. I’ll tell you what, though, there’s one man I think I’d like to be—and I suppose you call him great—I’d like to be Rajah Brooke.”

“Oh, Charlie! and hang people!” cried Marian.

“Not people—only pirates,” said the big boy: “wouldn’t I string them up too! Yes, if that would please you, Agnes, I’d like to be Rajah Brooke.”

“Then why, Charlie,” exclaimed Agnes—“why do you go to Mr Foggo’s office? A merchant may have a chance for such a thing—but a lawyer! Charlie, boy, what do you mean?”

“Never mind,” said Charlie; “your Brookes and your Layards and such people don’t begin by being merchants’ clerks. I know better: they have birth and education, and all that, and get the start of everybody, and then they make a row about it. I don’t see, for my part,” said the young gentleman meditatively, “what it is but chance. A man may succeed, or a man may fail, and it’s neither much to his credit nor his blame. It is a very odd thing, and I can’t understand it—a man may work all his life, and never be the better for it. It’s chance, and nothing more, so far as I can see.”

“Hush, Charlie—say Providence,” said Agnes, anxiously.

“Well, I don’t know—it’s very odd,” answered the big boy.

Whereupon there began two brief but earnest lectures for the good of Charlie’s mind, and the improvement of his sentiments. The girls were much disturbed by their brother’s heterodoxy; they assaulted him vehemently with the enthusiastic eagerness of the young faith which had never been tried, and would not comprehend any questioning. Chance! when the very sparrows could not fall to the ground—The bright face of Agnes Atheling flushed almost into positive beauty; she asked indignantly, with a trembling voice and tears in her eyes, how Mamma could have endured to live if it had not been God who did it? Charlie, rough as he was, could not withstand an appeal like this: he muttered something hastily under his breath about success in business being a very different thing from that, and was indisputably overawed and vanquished. This allusion made them all very silent for a time, and the young bright eyes involuntarily glanced upward where the pure faint stars were gleaming out one by one among the vapoury hosts of cloud. Strangely touching was the solemnity of this link, not to be broken, which connected the family far down upon the homely bosom of the toilsome earth with yonder blessed children in the skies. Marian, saying nothing, wiped some tears silently from the beautiful eyes which turned such a wistful, wondering, longing look to the uncommunicating heaven. Charlie, though you could scarcely see him in the darkness, worked those heavy furrows of his brow, and frowned fiercely upon himself. The long branches came sweeping towards them, swayed by the night wind; up in the east rose the pale spring moon, pensive, with a misty halo like a saint. The aspect of the night was changed; instead of the soft brown gloaming, there was broad silvery light and heavy masses of shadow over sky and soil—an instant change all brought about by the rising of the moon. As swift an alteration had passed upon the mood of these young speculators. They went in silently, full of thought—not so sad but that they could brighten to the fireside brightness, yet more meditative than was their wont; even Charlie—for there was a warm heart within the clumsy form of this big boy!

CHAPTER X.

MR FOGGO

They went in very sedately out of the darkness, their eyes dazzled with the sudden light. Bell and Beau were safely disposed of for the night, and on the side-table, beside Charlie’s two grammars and Agnes’s blotting-book, now nearly empty, lay the newspaper of Papa; for the usual visitor was installed in the usual place at the fireside, opposite Mr Atheling. Good companion, it is time you should see the friend of the family: there he was.

And there also, it must be confessed, was a certain faint yet expressive fragrance, which delicately intimated to one sense at least, before he made his appearance, the coming of Mr Foggo. We will not affirm that it was lundyfoot—our own private impression, indeed, is strongly in favour of black rappee—but the thing was indisputable, whatever might be the species. He was a large brown man, full of folds and wrinkles; folds in his brown waistcoat, where secret little sprinklings of snuff, scarcely perceptible, lay undisturbed and secure; wrinkles, long and forcible, about his mouth; folds under his eyelids, deep lines upon his brow. There was not a morsel of smooth surface visible anywhere even in his hands, which were traced all over with perceptible veins and sinews, like a geographical exercise. Mr Foggo wore a wig, which could not by any means be complimented with the same title as Mr Pendennis’s “’ead of ’air.” He was between fifty and sixty, a genuine old bachelor, perfectly satisfied with his own dry and unlovely existence. Yet we may suppose it was something in Mr Foggo’s favour, the frequency of his visits here. He sat by the fireside with the home-air of one who knows that this chair is called his, and that he belongs to the household circle, and turned to look at the young people, as they entered, with a familiar yet critical eye. He was friendly enough, now and then, to deliver little rebukes and remonstrances, and was never complimentary, even to Marian; which may be explained, perhaps, when we say that he was a Scotsman—a north-country Scotsman—with “peculiarities” in his pronunciation, and very distinct opinions of his own. How he came to win his way into the very heart of this family, we are not able to explain; but there he was, and there Mr Foggo had been, summer and winter, for nearly half-a-score of years.

He was now an institution, recognised and respected. No one dreamt of investigating his claims—possession was the whole law in his case, his charter and legal standing-ground; and the young commonwealth recognised as undoubtingly the place of Mr Foggo as they did the natural throne and pre-eminence of Papa and Mamma.

“For my part,” said Mr Foggo, who, it seemed, was in the midst of what Mrs Atheling called a “sensible conversation,”—and Mr Foggo spoke slowly, and with a certain methodical dignity,—“for my part, I see little in the art of politics, but just withholding as long as ye can, and giving as little as ye may; for a statesman, ye perceive, be he Radical or Tory, must ever consent to be a stout Conservative when he gets the upper hand. It’s in the nature of things—it’s like father and son—it’s the primitive principle of government, if ye take my opinion. So I am never sanguine myself about a new ministry keeping its word. How should it keep its word? Making measures and opposing them are two as different things as can be. There’s father and son, a standing example: the young man is the people and the old man is the government,—the lad spurs on and presses, the greybeard holds in and restrains.”

“Ah, Foggo! all very well to talk,” said Mr Atheling; “but men should keep their word, government or no government—that’s what I say. Do you mean to tell me that a father would cheat his son with promises? No! no! no! Your excuses won’t do for me.”

“And as for speaking of the father and son, as if it was natural they should be opposed to each other, I am surprised at you, Mr Foggo,” said Mrs Atheling, with emphatic disapproval. “There’s my Charlie, now, a wilful boy; but do you think he would set his face against anything his papa or I might say?”

“Charlie,” said Mr Foggo, with a twinkle of the grey-brown eye which shone clear and keen under folds of eyelid and thickets of eyebrow, “is an uncommon boy. I’m speaking of the general principle, not of exceptional cases. No! men and measures are well enough to make a noise or an election about; but to go against the first grand rule is not in the nature of man.”

“Yes, yes!” said Mr Atheling, impatiently; “but I tell you he’s broken his word—that’s what I say—told a lie, neither more nor less. Do you mean to tell me that any general principle will excuse a man for breaking his promises? I challenge your philosophy for that.”

“When ye accept promises that it’s not in the nature of things a man can keep, ye must even be content with the alternative,” said Mr Foggo.