Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/71

12, 1862.] the police. He is free, but he is ours. A pretty criminal is the dear child; but we will leave him on the tree, not gather him too soon; he will be more worth our trouble by-and-by. Shun immature fruit—it tries too much the teeth and the stomach. Meanwhile leave him—idle, corrupt, wicked—alone in London, with the sleepless eyes of a paternal government watching over him. He is quite safe, the handcuffs are already made for him, and—laugh, my friend!—he loves the ''maigre Blondette! Délassement suprème!'' Say, then! do you still believe no more in the justice poetic?”

By way of more last words we are permitted to add the following. The date is as of the 21st December, 185—, three years later, it should be stated, than any of the events previously chronicled.

“Temple, London.

“This morning I received a letter from my old friend Wilford, reminding me of my promise to spend Christmas at Grilling Abbots. I had not forgotten it; though I do believe that I am coward enough to avoid this visit if it were possible. But it is not; I must go. He accuses me of neglect; says that upon a shameful pretext I evaded joining their happy party last year; that we never meet now, and that it is my fault. Perhaps he has reason for these reproaches.

“We do seldom meet; and for correspondence it is not, I think, in the nature of men to write letters—conversational, friendly letters. They can’t do it; only grim, brief, hard notes, which satisfy neither writer nor reader. And we are parted by circumstances. Time has brought him peace and happiness and success, I am happy to know. What need has he to linger in this dreadful, depressing, heartless London? He is in the country; the tenant of the beautiful old Manor House Farm on the Hadfield estate. I believe Stephen had his way in that matter, at last, and the farm is to be settled on little Wilford. There was a great fight about it, but the ladies were all on Stephen’s side, and Wilford was overwhelmed at last by numbers. It is a noble old place, with high gable-ends, stone coigns and window-cases, and with Prince Rupert’s name scratched on one of the panes—he was there one night only during the Civil War. The grand old hall, with its carved oak panels and mantelpiece and ceilings, would be the very place of all others in which to spend Christmas—and yet—and yet—

“Does she know my secret? I feel she does. She knows it, and yet will not know it. It is better so, for it is folly, madness, this secret! I feel that she has read me through on the subject, and gently, tenderly, has given me her pity and her sympathy—as, indeed, she would bestow them upon any one who suffered; and I know, at least I think I do, the good soul’s dream, her plan for my happiness. Is it not to bring me to Madge’s feet?

Dear Madge! she is very charming; and so good and true—we are great friends. Can she care for me ever so little? Sometimes I think this may be so; at other times it seems fairly impossible. I never feel so old as when I am basking in the radiance of Madge’s youth and beauty; it is always in the strong sunlight that one’s wrinkles become the most visible. There is certainly great happiness in going down with worn nerves, jaded and gloomy from the over-work of my life here, to the peace and calm of the Manor House; to hear in the evening the lovely voice of Violet giving new beauty to those old true melodies of Mozart; to talk with Wilford over a pipe in the snug porch; to romp with little Wilford on the lawn; or to sing absurd songs and give endless rides upon my knee to the tiny second child, just two years old, little Gertrude Violet, my god-daughter, for whom, by the way, I must take down all sorts of presents at Christmas. How dreadful to have children thinking one shabby! It’s hard if one can’t even be a hero to them. And I have omitted Madge from my list. Is it no pleasure to gaze into the lustrous depths of her superb blue eyes? Yes, indeed it is.

“This is all great happiness. Yet the coming back here again is so dreadful! My life seems to be so utterly lonely and wretched; indeed, solitude begins to grow very detestable. It is because for one reason, these notions torture me so when I return to town that I am always vowing that I will never leave it again. Yet I have promised to spend Christmas at Grilling Abbots!

“And I am to meet old Phillimore there, am I? The good old boy. He has taken, Wilford writes, Mrs. Gardiner’s cottage and settled just outside Grilling Abbots. He boasts of his collection of landscapes by Gainsborough, and is always arranging what he calls ‘nice bits of still life’ in his garden. They say he was quite shocked to find there had been an addition to the family in the shape of little Gertrude. He declares it is quite unparalleled in art to introduce the figure of a female child into a riposa. He never heard of such a thing, and wonders what St. Joseph,Joseph [sic] means by it. The faithful Sally, the Rembrandt, is still in his service. He busies himself with arranging and cleaning and rearranging the pictures in the gallery at the Grange, and in teaching drawing and a love of art to Stephen’s children and to little Wilford. He has publicly announced that the boy is to be his heir—‘he has developed into such a beautiful Vandyke.’ The child seems to be really quite attached to the old gentleman, and I know that Wilford and Violet have a great regard for him—he is associated in their minds with a very remarkable period of their married life. It was rather a shame of Wilford—putting the old picture-dealer into his last novel. However, the old gentleman read the book, and pronounced his opinion upon it without having remarked his own portrait, and so no great harm was done. Indeed I think Mr. Phillimore somehow had rather the best of it, though Wilford pretended not to be vexed that his picture had not been recognised, and said the likeness was unimpeached notwithstanding.

“How strangely one hears of things! That queer fellow, C, was here to-day. He has just returned from Paris—full of a wonderful dancer at the Grand Opera—a Madame Lenoir-Boisfleury. She is making a large fortune and turning the