The Caxtons: A Family Picture Part 53

Pisistratus.--"And pray, what business had you with that young woman, whom I take to be Miss Trevanion's maid? And why should she come from Oxton to see you?"

I had expected that these questions would confound Mr. Peac.o.c.k; but if there were really anything in them to cause embarra.s.sment, the ci-devant actor was too practised in his profession to exhibit it. He merely smiled, and smoothing jauntily a very tumbled s.h.i.+rt front, he said, "Oh, sir, fie!

"'Of this matter Is little Cupid's crafty arrow made.'

"If you must know my love affairs, that young woman is, as the vulgar say, my sweetheart."

"Your sweetheart!" I exclaimed, greatly relieved, and acknowledging at once the probability of the statement. "Yet," I added suspiciously,--"yet, if so, why should she expect Mr. Gower to write to her?"

"You're quick of hearing, sir; but though--

"'All adoration, duty, and observance; All humbleness and patience and impatience,'

the young woman won't marry a livery servant,--proud creature!--very proud! and Mr. Gower, you see, knowing how it was, felt for me, and told her, if I may take such liberty with the Swan, that she should--

"'Never lie by Johnson's side With an unquiet soul,'

for that he would get me a place in the Stamps! The silly girl said she would have it in black and white,--as if Mr. Gower would write to her!

"And now, sir," continued Mr. Peac.o.c.k, with a simpler gravity, "you are at liberty, of course, to say what you please to my lady; but I hope you'll not try to take the bread out of my mouth because I wear a livery and am fool enough to be in love with a waiting-woman,--I, sir, who could have married ladies who have played the first parts in life--on the metropolitan stage."

I had nothing to say to these representations, they seemed plausible; and though at first I had suspected that the man had only resorted to the buffoonery of his quotations in order to gain time for invention or to divert my notice from any flaw in his narrative, yet at the close, as the narrative seemed probable, so I was willing to believe the buffoonery was merely characteristic. I contented myself, therefore, with asking, "Where do you come from now?"

"From Mr. Trevanion, in the country, with letters to Lady Ellinor."

"Oh! and so the young woman knew you were coming to town?"

"Yes, sir; Mr. Trevanion told me, some days ago, the day I should have to start."

"And what do you and the young woman propose doing to-morrow if there is no change of plan?"

Here I certainly thought there was a slight, scarce perceptible, alteration in Mr. Peac.o.c.k's countenance; but he answered readily, "To-morrow, a little a.s.signation, if we can both get out,--

"'Woo me, now I am in a holiday humor, And like enough to consent'

"Swan again, sir."

"Humph! so then Mr. Gower and Mr. Vivian are the same person?"

Peac.o.c.k hesitated. "That's not my secret, sir; 'I am combined by a sacred vow.' You are too much the gentleman to peep through the blanket of the dark and to ask me, who wear the whips and stripes--I mean the plush small-clothes and shoulder-knots--the secrets of another gent to whom 'my services are bound.'"

How a man past thirty foils a man scarcely twenty! What superiority the mere fact of living-on gives to the dullest dog! I bit my lip and was silent.

"And," pursued Mr. Peac.o.c.k, "if you knew how the Mr. Vivian you inquired after loves you! When I told him, incidentally, how a young gentleman had come behind the scenes to inquire after him, he made me describe you, and then said, quite mournfully, 'If ever I sin what I hope to become, how happy I shall be to shake that kind hand once more,'--very words, sir, honor bright!

"'I think there's ne'er a man in Christendom Can lesser hide his hate or love than he.'"

And if Mr. Vivian has some reason to keep himself concealed still; if his fortune or ruin depend on your not divulging his secret for a while,--I can't think you are the man he need fear. 'Pon my life,--

"'I wish I was as sure of a good dinner,'

as the Swan touchingly exclaims. I dare swear that was a wish often on the Swan's lips in the privacy of his domestic life!"

My heart was softened, not by the pathos of the much profaned and desecrated Swan, but by Mr. Peac.o.c.k's unadorned repet.i.tion of Vivian's words. I turned my face from the sharp eyes of my companion; the cab now stopped at the foot of London Bridge.

I had no more to ask, yet still there was some uneasy curiosity in my mind, which I could hardly define to myself, was it not jealousy? Vivian so handsome and so daring,--he at least might see the great heiress; Lady Ellinor perhaps thought of no danger there. But--I--I was a lover still, and--nay, such thoughts were folly indeed!

"My man," said I to the ex-comedian, "I neither wish to harm Mr. Vivian (if I am so to call him), nor you who imitate him in the variety of your names. But I tell you fairly that I do not like your being in Mr.

Trevanion's employment, and I advise you to get out of it as soon as possible. I say nothing more as yet, for I shall take time to consider well what you have told me."

With that I hastened away, and Mr. Peac.o.c.k continued his solitary journey over London Bridge.

CHAPTER VII.

Amidst all that lacerated my heart or tormented my thoughts that eventful day, I felt at least one joyous emotion when, on entering our little drawing-room, I found my uncle seated there.

The Captain had placed before him on the table a large Bible, borrowed from the landlady. He never travelled, to be sure, without his own Bible; but the print of that was small, and the Captain's eyes began to fail him at night. So this was a Bible with large type, and a candle was placed on either side of it; and the Captain leaned his elbows on the table, and both his hands were tightly clasped upon his forehead,--tightly, as if to shut out the tempter, and force his whole soul upon the page.

He sat the image of iron courage; in every line of that rigid form there was resolution: "I will not listen to my heart; I will read the Book, and learn to suffer as becomes a Christian man."

There was such a pathos in the stern sufferer's att.i.tude that it spoke those words as plainly as if his lips had said them. Old soldier, thou hast done a soldier's part in many a b.l.o.o.d.y field; but if I could make visible to the world thy brave soldier's soul, I would paint thee as I saw thee then!--Out on this tyro's hand!

At the movement I made, the Captain looked up, and the strife he had gone through was written upon his face.

"It has done me good," said he simply, and he closed the book.

I drew my chair near to him and hung my arm over his shoulder.

"No cheering news, then?" asked I in a whisper.

Roland shook his head, and gently laid his finger on his lips.

CHAPTER VIII.

It was impossible for me to intrude upon Roland's thoughts, whatever their nature, with a detail of those circ.u.mstances which had roused in me a keen and anxious interest in things apart from his sorrow.

Yet as "restless I rolled around my weary bed," and revolved the renewal of Vivian's connection with a man of character so equivocal as Peac.o.c.k; the establishment of an able and unscrupulous tool of his own in the service of Trevanion; the care with which he had concealed from me his change of name, and his intimacy at the very house to which I had frankly offered to present him; the familiarity which his creature had contrived to effect with Miss Trevanion's maid; the words that had pa.s.sed between them,--plausibly accounted for, it is true, yet still suspicious; and, above all, my painful recollections of Vivian's reckless ambition and unprincipled sentiments,--nay, the effect that a few random words upon f.a.n.n.y's fortune, and the luck of winning an heiress, had sufficed to produce upon his heated fancy and audacious temper,--when all these thoughts came upon me, strong and vivid, in the darkness of night, I longed for some confidant, more experienced in the world than myself, to advise me as to the course I ought to pursue.

Should I warn Lady Ellinor? But of what? The character of the servant, or the designs of the fict.i.tious Gower? Against the first I could say, if nothing very positive, still enough to make it prudent to dismiss him. But of Gower or Vivian, what could I say without--not indeed betraying his confidence, for that he had never given me--but without belying the professions of friends.h.i.+p that I myself had lavishly made to him? Perhaps, after all, he might have disclosed whatever were his real secrets to Trevanion; and, if not, I might indeed ruin his prospects by revealing the aliases he a.s.sumed. But wherefore reveal, and wherefore warn? Because of suspicions that I could not myself a.n.a.lyze,--suspicions founded on circ.u.mstances most of which had already been seemingly explained away. Still, when morning came, I was irresolute what to do; and after watching Roland's countenance, and seeing on his brow so great a weight of care that I had no option but to postpone the confidence I pined to place in Iris strong understanding and unerring sense of honor, I wandered out, hoping that in the fresh air I might re-collect my thoughts and solve the problem that perplexed me. I had enough to do in sundry small orders for my voyage, and commissions for Bolding, to occupy me some hours. And, this business done, I found myself moving westward; mechanically, as it were, I had come to a kind of half-and-half resolution to call upon Lady Ellinor and question her, carelessly and incidentally, both about Gower and the new servant admitted to the household.

Thus I found myself in Regent Street, when a carriage, borne by post-horses, whirled rapidly over the pavement, scattering to the right and left all humbler equipages, and hurried, as if on an errand of life and death, up the broad thoroughfare leading into Portland Place. But rapidly as the wheels dashed by, I had seen distinctly the face of f.a.n.n.y Trevanion in the carriage; and that face wore a strange expression, which seemed to me to speak of anxiety and grief; and by her side--Was not that the woman I had seen with Peac.o.c.k? I did not see the face of the woman, but I thought I recognized the cloak, the bonnet, and peculiar turn of the head. If I could be mistaken there, I was not mistaken at least as to the servant on the seat behind. Looking back at a butcher's boy who had just escaped being run over, and was revenging himself by all the imprecations the Dirae of London slang could suggest, the face of Mr. Peac.o.c.k was exposed in full to my gaze.

My first impulse, on recovering my surprise, was to spring after the carriage; in the haste of that impulse, I cried "Stop!" But the carriage was out of sight in a moment, and my word was lost in air. Full of presentiments of some evil,--I knew not what,--I then altered my course, and stopped not till I found myself, panting and out of breath, in St. James's Square--at the door of Trevanion's house--in the hall. The porter had a newspaper in his hand as he admitted me.