Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/340

330[March 6, 1869] enormous telescopes, letters of apartments, keepers of circulating libraries, Ethiopian serenaders, German bandsmen, boot, saddle, to horse, and away to Herringtown-by-the-Sea; for a real live ex-duchess, Princess of Pinchengripzen, has arrived there, and all Cockneydom is hurrying thither. Away, snobs; fly, toadies, fly; for is there not a real duchess daily perambulating the Marine Parade at Herringtown-by-the-Sea? Rejoice, snobs and toadies; for you can now store at her, and elbow her, and no one can say you nay, and it is something to have been even within twenty yards of a real ex-duchess.

No one respects well-bred ladies of rank more than ourselves. When dignity is meekly and justly worn, we admire the forbearance and self-control of the wearers, and we regard them as not uncommendable rulers of mankind; but whose gorge would not rise at these respectable people at Herringtown-by-the-Sea, crowding round a quiet invalid lady and her children, gaping at her two gigantic and intensely sedate footmen, jostling her dowdy German governess, staring, pointing, whispering, and giggling? It is loathsome, it is vulgar, it is uncourteous, it is snobbish. There is no loyalty in it, for not one of the genteel mob would lay down a chignon or a whisker to serve the ex-Duchess of Pinchengripzen. It is merely a new form of the love of money; for power is only money grown rank, and these idiots run about after a duchess because she typifies wealth, success, and social importance. She might be a Poppœa, instead of a good amiable wife: she might be hideous as Sycorax, instead of being fair and comely as she is—the fools would still run, gape, crowd, intrude, and stare, and render the great lady's life a burden to her.

In spite of all this base development of the worst points of the English character, shown even by the clergy at Herringtown (toadies too), who actually strike up God Save the Queen when this poor quiet lady tries to steal softly as a mouse, unobserved, out of the church, Herringtown is a pretty and pleasant place. It is mighty pretty of an autumn morning before breakfast, with the surf creaming along the shore, the ocean of a delicious aquamarine colour, melting into sapphire; the fishing boats getting greyer as they recede towards the horizon; the ruins of the old Norman castle rising golden on the cloudy cliff; a German band clashing in some distant square, and mellowed into enchanted music; pretty nursemaids and their rosy charges, laughing and chasing; and, at the great weather-beaten capstan on the Parade, a gang of brown old sailors and sturdy sailor-boys working in a collier brig, that is going to discharge her cargo; while yonder, on the beach, a man tosses up spadefuls of wet silt, that in the morning sunlight flash like diamond dust.

I have a disagreeable suspicion, though, founded on some continental observation, that, spite of the innocence of this tranquil little place, the ex-Duchess of Pinchengripzen, amiable and confiding as she looks, has a mind not unclouded with the old Pinchengripzen fears. I am convinced that she has given orders to be strictly watched, although in an unobtrusive way. There they are; I know their steely eyes, hard mouths, and askance looks. They can't disguise themselves from me, for I have seen them all before in the Unter den Linden, on the Boulevards, in the Prater, in the Königsplatz, on the Boompjees. You see that well-dressed, portly city man on the Parade, just by the third seat—city man who has evidently travelled—Spy, revolver in his right-hand pocket! That young swell cross-legged, lavender gloves, bunch of violets in his button-bole, holding Maltese dog by a purple ribbon, while he carelessly swings a sword-stick—Spy. Remark that old feeble clergyman, with black worsted gloves, one hand on a Bath chair, which contains fat woman in black—Spy—revolver up the small of his back—Spy double distilled. Look at that jolly red-faced bourgeois on the seat by the great hotel, who draws you into conversation about Pinchengripzen politics (may they be accursed!)—Spy again, hot from Scotland Yard yesterday, and just off the Fenian business, came by last boat from Cork. He is better known as Sergeant M'Donald, and a very sharp hand; I see him smile when the idiotic crowd, not having a clear notion of what the ex-Duchess of Pinchengripzen is like, close round her children's German governess, or her butler's wife and two big footmen, and are just as happy as if the old dowdy hag were the real ex-Duchess herself. Innocent happy people that we are, the greater part of us do not know a spy when we see him.

It has been a tremendous night. When I got up this blessed morning, the gusts of rain were driving past the window at the rate of fifteen thousand miles an hour, and the wind was roaring like a wild beast round the corners of the Parade. The snobs will have a miserable day of it, for the ex-Duchess of Pinchengripzen will not show. The spies will have a glorious tune of it at pool, for there will be no one to watch but each other.

"Fine herrings—fresh and fine O—Herr-r-r-r-r-ings!" shouts a weather-beaten old fisherman, with one eye; he wears a yellow oilskin sou'-wester, and an orange-brown short smock, peculiar to Herringtown fishermen, colour not unbecoming, as toning down the superabundant bricky-brown of their hardy complexions. His trousers have been artfully framed out of stubborn cloth, and are of enormous width, as if the owner expected to grow more corpulent. The hardy Norseman answers my hail, and brings his tray to the door. Small silvery whiting, gently reposing side by side; silver-spangled herrings, with red inflamed eyes, as if they had been taking too much, and mouths wide open as if they had died screaming "murder;" a bland featureless plaice or two; a hideous John Dory. The hardy Norseman drips with excessive rain.

"Rough night? well, rayther that way. Hard life for them as toils all night; terrible