One Of Them. Lever Charles James
at many things which did not astonish them; they were often referred to histories which they had forgotten, if they ever knew them, and to names of whose celebrity they were ignorant; and it was with a most honest sense of relief they saw themselves reach the last room of the suite, where a few cabinet pictures and some rare carvings in ivory alone claimed their attention.
“A ‘Virgin and Child,’ by Murillo,” said the guide.
“The ninth ‘Virgin and Child,’ by all that’s holy!” said Mr. O’Shea. “The ninth we have seen to-day!”
“The blue drapery, ladies and gentlemen,” continued the inexorable describer, “is particularly noticed. It is ‘glazed’ in a manner only known to Murillo.”
“I ‘m glad of it, and I hope the secret died with him,” cried Mr. Morgan. “It looks for all the world like a bathing-dress.”
“The child squints. Don’t he squint?” exclaimed Mosely.
“Oh, for shame!” cried Mrs. Morris. “Mr. Layton is quite shocked with your profane criticism.”
“I did not hear it, I assure you,” said that gentleman, as he arose from a long and close contemplation of a “St. John,” by Salvator.
“‘St. John preaching in the Wilderness!’” said Quackinboss; “too tame for my taste. He don’t seem to roll up his sleeves to the work, – does he?”
“It’s not stump-oratory, surely?” said Layton, with a quiet smile.
“Ain’t it, though! Well, stranger, I’m in a considerable unmixed error if it is not! You’d like to maintain that because a man does n’t rise up from a velvet cushion and lay his hand upon a grand railing, all carved with grotesque intricacies, all his sentiments must needs be commonplace and vulgar; but I ‘m here to tell you, sir, that you ‘d hear grander things, nobler things, and greater things from a moss-covered old tree-stump in a western pine-forest, by the mouth of a plain, hardy son of hard toil, than you’ve often listened to in what you call your place in Parliament Now, that’s a fact!”
There was that amount of energy in the way these words were uttered that seemed to say, if carried further, the discussion might become contentious.
Mr. Layton did not show any disposition to accept the gage of battle, but turned to seek for his pupil.
“You ‘re looking for the Marquis, Mr. Layton,” asked Mrs. Morris, “ain’t you? I think you’ll find him in the shrubberies, for he said all this only bored him, and he ‘d go and look for a cool spot to smoke his cigar.”
“That’s what it all comes to,” said Morgan, as soon as Layton had left the room; “that’s the whole of it! You pay a fellow – a ‘double first’ something or other from Oxford or Cambridge – five hundred a year to go abroad with your son, and all he teaches him is to choose a cheroot.”
“And smoke it, Tom,” chimed in Mrs. Morgan.
“There ain’t no harm in a weed, sir, I hope?” said Quackinboss. “The thinkers of this earth are most of ‘em smoking men. What do you say, sir, to Humboldt, Niebuhr, your own Bulwer, and all our people, from John C. Colhoun to Daniel Webster? When a man puts a cigar between his lips, he as good as says, ‘I ‘m a-reflecting, – I ‘m not in no ways to be broke in upon.’ It’s his own fault, sir, if he does n’t think, for he has in a manner shut the door to keep out intruders.”
“Filthy custom!” muttered Mr. Morgan, with a garbled sentence, in which the word “America” was half audible.
“What’s this he’s saying about eating, – this Italian fellow?” said Mr. Mosely, as a servant addressed him in a foreign language.
“It is a polite invitation to a luncheon,” said Mrs. Morris, modestly turning to her fellow-travellers for their decision.
“Do any of us know our host?” asked Mr. OShea. “He is a Sir William Heathcote.”
“There was a director of the Central Trunk line of that name, who failed for half a million sterling,” whispered Morgan; “should n’t wonder if it were he.”
“All the more certain to give us a jolly feed, if he be!” chuckled Mosely. “I vote we accept.”
“That of course,” said Mrs. Morris.
“Well, I know him, I reckon,” drawled out Quackinboss; “and I rayther suspect you owe this here politeness to my company. Yes, sir!” said he, half fiercely, to O’Shea, upon whose face a sort of incredulous smile was breaking, – “yes, sir!”
“Being our own countryman, sir, – an Englishman, – I suspect,” said Mr. Morgan, with warmth, “that the hospitality has been extended to us on wider grounds.”
“But why should we dispute about the matter at all?” mildly remarked Mrs. Morris. “Let us say yes, and be grateful.”
“There’s good sense in that,” chimed in Mosely, “and I second it.”
“Carried with unanimity,” said O’Shea, as, turning to the servant, he muttered something in broken French.
“Well, I’m sure, I never!” mumbled Quackinboss to himself; but what he meant, or to what new circumstance in his life’s experience he alluded, there is unhappily no explanation in this history; but he followed the rest with a drooping head and an air of half-melancholy resignation that was not by any means unusual with him.
CHAPTER V. ACCIDENTS AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES
When the young Marquis had made his escape from sightseeing, and all its attendant inflictions, he was mainly bent on what he would himself have called being “very jolly,” – that is to say, going his own way unmolested, strolling the road he fancied, and following out his own thoughts. Not that these same thoughts absolutely needed for their exercise or development any extraordinary advantages of solitude and retirement. He was no deep-minded sage, revolving worlds to come, – no poet, in search of the inspiring influence of nature, – no subtle politician, balancing the good and evil of some nice legislation. He was simply one of those many thousand England yearly turns out from her public schools of fine, dashing, free-hearted, careless boys, whose most marked feature in character is a wholesome horror of all that is mean or shabby. Less than a year before, he had been a midshipman in her Majesty’s gun-boat “Mosquito;” the death of an elder brother had made him a Marquis, with the future prospect of several thousands a year.
He had scarcely seen or known his brother, so he grieved very little for his loss, but he sorrowed sincerely over the change of fortune that called him from his sea life and companions to an “on-shore” existence, and instead of the gun-room and its gay guests, gave him the proprieties of station and the requirements of high rank. One of his guardians thought he ought to go into the Guards; another advised a university; both agreed upon a tutor, and Mr. Layton was found, a young man of small fortune, whose health, injured by over-reading for honors, required change of scene and rest. They had been companions for a very short time, but had, as the young Lord would have said, “hit it off” admirably together; that is to say, partly from a just appreciation of his pupil, and partly out of a natural indolence of disposition, Layton interfered very little with him, gave him no troublesome tasks, imposed no actual studies, but contented himself with a careful watch over the boy’s disposition, a gentle, scarce perceptible correction of his faults, and an honest zeal to develop any generous trait in his nature, little mindful of the disappointments his trustfulness must incur. Layton’s theory was that we all become wise too early in life, and that the world’s lessons should not be too soon implanted in a fresh unsuspecting nature. His system was not destined to be sorely tested in the present case. Harry Montserrat, Marquis of Agincourt, was a fortunate subject to illustrate it by. There never was a less suspectful nature; he was frank, generous, and brave; his faults were those of a hot, fiery temper, and a disposition to resent, too early and too far, what with a little patience he might have tolerated or even forgiven.
The fault, however, which Layton was more particularly guardful against, was a certain over-consciousness of his station and its power,