Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 71, No. 436, February 1852

"There will be another before this year, or half of it, or perhaps a quarter of it, is out."

"What makes you think so?"

"Leslie, let there be confidence between us; we can help each other. Shall we be friends?"

"With all my heart. But, though you may help me, how can I help you?"

"You have helped me already to Frank Hazeldean – and the Casino estate. All clever men can help me. Come, then, we are friends; and what I say is secret. You ask me why I think there will be a general election so soon? I will answer you frankly. Of all the public men I ever met with, there is no one who has so clear a vision of things immediately before him as Audley Egerton."

"He has that character. Not far-seeing, but clear-sighted to a certain limit."

"Exactly so. No one better, therefore, knows public opinion, and its immediate ebb and flow."

"Granted."

"Egerton, then, counts on a general election within three months; and I have lent him the money for it."

"Lent him the money! Egerton borrow money of you – the rich Audley Egerton!"

"Rich!" repeated Levy in a tone impossible to describe, and accompanying the word with that movement of the middle finger and thumb, commonly called a "snap," which indicates profound contempt.

He said no more. Randal sate stupified. At length the latter muttered, "But if Egerton is really not rich – if he lose office, and without the hope of return to it – "

"If so, he is ruined!" said Levy coldly; "and therefore, from regard to you, and feeling interest in your future fate, I say – Rest no hopes of fortune or career upon Audley Egerton. Keep your place for the present, but be prepared at the next election to stand upon popular principles. Avenel shall return you to parliament; and the rest is with luck and energy. And now, I'll not detain you longer," said Levy, rising and ringing the bell. The servant entered.

"Is my carriage here?"

"Yes, Baron."

"Can I set you down anywhere?"

"No, thank you; I prefer walking."

"Adieu, then. And mind you remember the soirée dansante at Mrs Avenel's." Randal mechanically shook the hand extended to him, and went down the stairs.

The fresh frosty air roused his intellectual faculties, which Levy's ominous words had almost paralysed.

And the first thing the clever schemer said to himself was this —

"But what can be the man's motive in what he said to me?"

The next was —

"Egerton ruined! What am I, then?"

And the third was —

"And that fair remnant of the old Leslie property! £20,000 down – how to get the sum? Why should Levy have spoken to me of this?"

And lastly, the soliloquy rounded back – "The man's motives! His motives?"

Meanwhile, the Baron threw himself into his chariot – the most comfortable easy chariot you can possibly conceive – single man's chariot – perfect taste – no married man ever has such a chariot; and in a few minutes he was at – 's hotel, and in the presence of Giulio Franzini, Count di Peschiera.

"Mon chèr," said the Baron in very good French, and in a tone of the most familiar equality with the descendant of the princes and heroes of grand mediæval Italy – "Mon chèr, give me one of your excellent cigars. I think I have put all matters in train."

"You have found out – "

"No; not so fast yet," said the Baron, lighting the cigar extended to him. "But you said that you should be perfectly contented if it only cost you £20,000 to marry off your sister, (to whom that sum is legally due,) and to marry yourself to the heiress."

"I did, indeed."

Then I have no doubt I shall manage both objects for that sum, if Randal Leslie really knows where the young lady is, and can assist you. Most promising able man is Randal Leslie – but innocent as a babe just born."

"Ha, ha! Innocent? Que diable!"

"Innocent as this cigar, mon chèr– strong, certainly, but smoked very easily. Soyez tranquille!"

CHAPTER XV

Who has not seen – who not admired, that noble picture by Daniel Maclise, which refreshes the immortal name of my ancestor Caxton! For myself, while with national pride I heard the admiring murmurs of the foreigners who grouped around it, (nothing, indeed, of which our nation may be more proud had they seen in the Crystal Palace,) – heard, with no less a pride in the generous nature of fellow-artists, the warm applause of living and deathless masters, sanctioning the enthusiasm of the popular crowd; – what struck me more than the precision of drawing, for which the artist has been always renowned, and the just though gorgeous affluence of colour which he has more recently acquired, was the profound depth of conception, out of which this great work had so elaborately arisen. That monk, with his scowl towards the printer and his back on the Bible, over which his form casts a shadow– the whole transition between the mediæval Christianity of cell and cloister, and the modern Christianity that rejoices in the daylight, is depicted there, in the shadow that obscures the Book – in the scowl that is fixed upon the Book-diffuser; – that sombre musing face of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, with the beauty of Napoleon, darkened to the expression of a Fiend, looking far and anxiously into futurity, as if foreseeing there what antagonism was about to be created to the schemes of secret crime and unrelenting force; – the chivalrous head of the accomplished Rivers, seen but in profile, under his helmet, as if the age when Chivalry must defend its noble attributes, in steel, was already half passed away: and, not least grand of all, the rude thews and sinews of the artisan forced into service on the type, and the ray of intellect, fierce, and menacing revolutions yet to be, struggling through his rugged features, and across his low knitted brow; – all this, which showed how deeply the idea of the discovery in its good and its evil, its saving light and its perilous storms, had sunk into the artist's soul, charmed me as effecting the exact union between sentiment and execution, which is the true and rare consummation of the Ideal in Art. But observe, while in these personages of the group are depicted the deeper and graver agencies implicated in the bright but terrible invention – observe how little the light epicures of the hour heed the scowl of the monk, or the restless gesture of Richard, or the troubled gleam in the eyes of the artizan – King Edward, handsome Poco curante, delighted, in the surprise of a child, with a new toy; and Clarence, with his curious yet careless glance – all the while Caxton himself, calm, serene, untroubled, intent solely upon the manifestation of his discovery, and no doubt supremely indifferent whether the first proofs of it shall be dedicated to a Rivers or an Edward, a Richard or a Henry, Plantagenet or Tudor – 'tis all the same to that comely, gentle-looking man. So is it ever with your Abstract Science! – not a jot cares its passionless logic for the woe or weal of a generation or two. The stream, once emerged from its source, passes on into the Great Intellectual Sea, smiling over the wretch that it drowns, or under the keel of the ship which it serves as a slave.

Now, when about to commence the present chapter on the Varieties of Life, this masterpiece of thoughtful art forced itself on my recollection, and illustrated what I designed to say. In the surface of every age, it is often that which but amuses, for the moment, the ordinary children of pleasant existence, the Edwards and the Clarences, (be they kings and dukes, or simplest of simple subjects,) which afterwards towers out as the great serious epoch of the time. When we look back upon human records, how the eye settles upon Writers as the main landmarks of the past! We talk of the age of Augustus, of Elizabeth, of Louis XIV., of Anne, as the notable eras of the world. Why? Because it is their writers who have made them so. Intervals between one age of authors and another lie unnoticed, as the flats and common lands of uncultured history. And yet, strange to say, when these authors are living amongst us, they occupy a very small portion of our thoughts, and fill up but desultory interstices in the bitumen and tufo wherefrom we build up the Babylon of our lives! So it is, and perhaps so it should be, whether it pleases the conceit of penmen or not. Life is meant to be active; and books, though they give the action to future generations, administer but to the holiday of the present.

And so, with this long preface, I turn suddenly from the Randals and the Egertons, and the Levys, Avenels, and Peschieras – from the plots and passions of practical life, and drop the reader suddenly into one of those obscure retreats wherein Thought weaves, from unnoticed moments, a new link to the chain that unites the ages.

Within a small room, the single window of which opened on a fanciful and fairy-like garden, that has been before described, sate a young man alone. He had been writing: the ink was not dry on his manuscript, but his thoughts had been suddenly interrupted from his work, and his eyes, now lifted from the letter which had occasioned that interruption, sparkled with delight. "He will come," exclaimed the young man; "come here – to the home which I owe to him. I have not been unworthy of his friendship. And she" – his breast heaved, but the joy faded from his face. "Oh strange, strange, that I feel sad at the thought to see her again. See her– Ah no! – my own comforting Helen – my own Child-angel! Her I can never see again! The grown woman – that is not my Helen. And yet – and yet, (he resumed, after a pause,) if ever she read the pages, in which thought flowed and trembled under her distant starry light – if ever she see how her image has rested with me, and feel that, while others believe that I invent, I have but remembered – will she not, for a moment, be my own Helen again! Again, in heart and in fancy, stand by my side on the desolate bridge – hand in hand – orphans both, as we stood in the days so sorrowful, yet, as I recall them, so sweet. – Helen in England, it is a dream!"

He rose, half consciously, and went to the window. The fountain played merrily before his eyes, and the birds in the aviary carolled loud to his ear. "And in this house," he murmured, "I saw her last! And there, where the fountain now throws its stream on high – there her benefactor and mine told me that I was to lose her, and that I might win – fame. Alas!"

At this time a woman, whose dress was somewhat above her mien and air, which, though not without a certain respectability, were very homely, entered the room; and, seeing the young man standing thus thoughtful by the window, paused. She was used to his habits; and since his success in life, had learned to respect them. So she did not disturb his reverie, but began softly to arrange the room – dusting, with the corner of her apron, the various articles of furniture, putting a stray chair or two in its right place, but not touching a single paper. Virtuous woman, and rare as virtuous!

The young man turned at last, with a deep, yet not altogether painful sigh —

"My dear mother, good day to you. Ah, you do well to make the room look its best. Happy news! I expect a visitor!"

"Dear me, Leonard, will he want? lunch – or what?"

"Nay, I think not, mother. It is he to whom we owe all – 'Hæc otia fecit.' Pardon my Latin; it is Lord L'Estrange."

The face of Mrs Fairfield (the reader has long since divined the name) changed instantly, and betrayed a nervous twitch of all the muscles, which gave her a family likeness to old Mrs Avenel.

"Do not be alarmed, mother. He is the kindest – "

"Don't talk so; I can't bear it!" cried Mrs Fairfield.

"No wonder you are affected by the recollection of all his benefits. But when once you have seen him, you will find yourself ever after at your ease. And so, pray smile and look as good as you are; for I am proud of your open honest look when you are pleased, mother. And he must see your heart in your face as I do."

With this, Leonard put his arm round the widow's neck and kissed her. She clung to him fondly for a moment, and he felt her tremble from head to foot. Then she broke from his embrace, and hurried out of the room. Leonard thought perhaps she had gone to improve her dress, or to carry her housewife energies to the decoration of the other rooms; for "the house" was Mrs Fairfield's hobby and passion; and now that she worked no more, save for her amusement, it was her main occupation. The hours she contrived to spend daily in bustling about those little rooms, and leaving everything therein to all appearance precisely the same, were among the marvels in life which the genius of Leonard had never comprehended. But she was always so delighted when Mr Norreys or some rare visitor came; and said, (Mr Norreys never failed to do so,) "How neatly all is kept here. What could Leonard do without you, Mrs Fairfield?"