Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/118

 "Hush!" said a stately angel,
 * Responsive to my thought,

"We're all that future times shall know
 * Of what your hand hath wrought;

Your gay green leaves, and flowers of song,
 * You've flung them forth, broad-cast;

But like the bloom of parted years,
 * They've gone into the past.

"But we, though no one knows us,
 * Shall echo back your tones

As long as England's speech shall run
 * The circuit of the zones.

Think not your fate unhappy!
 * To live to future time,

In noble thoughts and noble words,
 * Is destiny sublime."

"Angels of grace and beauty;"
 * I rubbed mine eyes and sighed—

A dream! a dream! a pleasant dream!
 * Of vanity and pride.

A sleeping thought! A waking doubt!
 * If only one—not seven—

Of all my rhymes be doomed to live,
 * Earth shall be part of Heaven.

fell out on a day in this last autumn that I had to go down from London to a place of sea-side resort, on an hour's business, accompanied by my esteemed friend Bullfinch. Let the place of sea-side resort be, for the nonce, called Namelesston.

I had been loitering about Paris in very hot weather, pleasantly breakfasting in the open air in the garden of the Palais Royal or the Tuileries, pleasantly dining in the open air in the Elysian Fields, pleasantly taking my cigar and lemonade in the open air on the Italian Boulevard towards the small hours after midnight. Bullfinch—an excellent man of business—had summoned me back across the channel, to transact this said hour's business at Namelesston, and thus it fell out that Bullfinch and I were in a railway carriage together on our way to Namelesston, each with his return ticket in his waistcoat pocket.

Says Bullfinch: "I have a proposal to make. Let us dine at the Temeraire."

I asked Bullfinch, Did he recommend the Temeraire? Inasmuch as I had not been rated on the books of the Temeraire for many years.

Bullfinch declined to accept the responsibility of recommending the Temeraire, but on the whole was rather sanguine about it. He "seemed to remember," Bullfinch said, that he had dined well there. A plain dinner but good. Certainly not like a Parisian dinner (here Bullfinch obviously became the prey of want of confidence), but of its kind very fair.

I appealed to Bullfinch's intimate knowledge of my wants and ways, to decide whether I was usually ready to be pleased with any dinner, or—for the matter of that—with anything, that was fair of its kind and really what it claimed to be. Bullfinch doing me the honour to respond in the affirmative, I agreed to ship myself as an Able Trencherman on board the Temeraire.

"Now, our plan shall be this," says Bullfinch, with his forefinger at his nose. "As soon as we get to Namelesston, we'll drive straight to the Temeraire, and order a little dinner in an hour. And as we shall not have more than enough time in which to dispose of it comfortably, what do you say to giving the house the best opportunities of serving it hot and quickly, by dining in the coffee-room?"

What I had to say was, Certainly. Bullfinch (who is by nature of a hopeful constitution) then began to babble of green geese. But I checked him in that Falstaffian vein, urging considerations of time and cookery.

In due sequence of events, we drove up to the Temeraire and alighted. A youth in livery received us on the doorstep. "Looks well," said Bullfinch, confidentially. And then aloud, "Coffee-room!"

The youth in livery (now perceived to be mouldy) conducted us to the desired haven, and was enjoined by Bullfinch to send the waiter at once, as we wished to order a little dinner in an hour. Then Bullfinch and I waited for the waiter until, the waiter continuing to wait in some unknown and invisible sphere of action, we rang for the waiter: which ring produced the waiter who announced himself as not the waiter who ought to wait upon us, and who didn't wait a moment longer.

So Bullfinch approached the coffee-room door, and melodiously pitching his voice into a bar where two young ladies were keeping the books of the Temeraire, apologetically explained that we wished to order a little dinner in an hour, and that we were debarred from the execution of our inoffensive purpose, by consignment to solitude.

Hereupon one of the young ladies rang a bell which reproduced—at the bar this time—the waiter who was not the waiter who ought to wait upon us; that extraordinary man, whose life seemed consumed in waiting upon people to say that he wouldn't wait upon them, repeated his former protest with great indignation, and retired.