A CAST IN THE WAGGON.

I.—DULCIE'S START IN THE WAGGON FOR HER COMPANY.

OLD and young were clamouring hoarsely and shrilly by daybreak one September morning round a little girl, one of a cloth-worker's numerous family. She had been rather a tender lass, and change of air was thought good for her full growth. Though she was still small, she was close on her one-and-twentieth year, and her friends held it was high time for her to see the world. It was seeing the world to go with a late mayor's daughter, an orphan and an heiress, who had been visiting the cloth-worker's family, and would have Dulcie to live with her for awhile in a neighbouring town as a friend and companion.

Mind those worthy warm-hearted relatives of Dulcie's had no idea of her returning to her parents' nest in a hurry, though the two towns, Fairfax and Redwater, were within a day's journey by waggon of each other. Dulcie would see the world, and stay in her new abode in the next country town, or lose her character for dignity and spirit; and girls were fain to be thought discreet and decided a hundred years ago or so. She might as lief marry as not, when she was away on her travels. Girls married then with far less trouble than they accomplished such a journey. They ran down to Richmond and married on a Sunday, to save a talk and a show; they walked out of the opera where Handel might be performing, and observant gentlemen took the cue, followed on their heels, and had the knot tied by a priest, waiting in the house opposite the first chair-stand. Indeed, they contracted alliances so unceremoniously, that they went to Queen Caroline's or the Princesses' drawing-room, without either themselves or the world appearing quite sure whether they were maids or wives. Dear! dear! what did come of these foolish impulsive matches? Did they fulfil the time out of mind adage, "Happy's the wooing that's not long a-doing"? or that other old proverb, "Marry in haste, and repent at leisure"? Which was the truth?

It is a pity that you should see Dulcie, for the first time, in tears. Dulcie, who only cried on great occasions, in great sorrow or great joy—not above half-a-dozen times in her life. Dulcie, whom the smallpox could not spoil, with her pretty forehead, cat's eyes, and fine chin. Does that description give you an idea of Dulcie—Dulcie Cowper, not yet Madam, but any day she liked Mistress Dulcie? It seems expressive. An under-sized, slight-made girl, with a little face clearly, very clearly cut, but round in all its lines as yet; an intelligent face, an enthusiastic face, a face that could be very shrewd and practical, and, at the same time, a face that could be lavishly generous. The chief merit of her figure lay in this particular, that she "bridled" well. Yes, it is true, we have almost forgotten the old accomplishment of "bridling"—the head up and the chin in, with the pliant knees bent in a low curtsey. Dulcie "bridled," as she prattled, to perfection. She had light brown hair, of the tint of a squirrel's fur, and the smoothness of a mouse's coat, though it was twisted and twirled into a kind of soft willowy curls when she was in high dress. Ah! no wonder that Kit Cowper, the cloth-worker, groaned to see that bright face pass from his ninepin alley; but it was the way of the world, or rather the will of Providence to the cloth-worker, that the child should fulfil her destiny. So Dulcie was launched on the sea of life, as far as Redwater, to push her fortune.

No wonder Dulcie was liked by Clarissa Gage. Clarissa was two years younger than Dulcie, but she was half-a-dozen years older in knowledge of the world, and therefore fell in love with Dulcie for the sake of variety. Clarissa had the bones of a noble woman under her pedantry and affectation; she was a peg above Dulcie in station, and a vast deal before her in the world's estimation. She was indeed "a fortune;" and you err egregiously if you suppose a fortune was not properly valued a hundred years ago. Men went mad for fair faces and glib tongues, but solidly and sensibly married fortunes, according to all the old news-prints. But Clarissa was also a beauty, far more of a regular beauty than Dulcie, with one of those inconceivably dazzling complexions that blush on like a June rose to old age, and a stately height and presence for her years. She had dark brown curls of the deep brown of mountain waters, with the ripple of the same, hanging down in a wreath of tendrils on the bend of the neck behind. With all her gifts, Mistress Clary had the crowning bounty which does not always accompany so many inferior endowments: she had sense under her airs, and she was good enough to like Dulcie instinctively, and to think how nice it would be to have Dulcie with her and Mistress Cambridge in their formal brick house, with the stone coping and balcony, at Redwater. Besides, (credit to her womanhood,) Clarissa did reflect what a fine thing it would be for Dulcie Cowper getting up in years, really getting up in years, however young in spirit, to have the variety, and the additional chance of establishing herself in life. Certainly, Redwater was a town of more consideration than Fairfax, and had its occasional assemblies and performances of strolling players; and Clarissa, in right of her father's family, visited the vicar and the squire, and could carry Dulcie along with her, since the child's manners were quite genteel, and her clothes perfectly presentable.

It was a harmonious arrangement, in which not only Clarissa but Mistress Cambridge agreed. Cambridge was one of those worthy, useful persons, whom nobody in those strangely plain but decidedly aristocratic days—not even Clarissa and Dulcie, though they sat with her, ate with her, hugged her when they wanted to coax her—ever thought or spoke of otherwise than "Cambridge, a good sort of woman in her own way." The only temporary drawback to the contentment of the party was the shower of tears which fell at Dulcie's forcible separation from her relatives. It was forcible in the end; all the blessings had been given in the house—don't sneer, they did her no harm, no harm, but a vast deal of good—and only the kisses and tears were finished off in the street.

After all this introduction, it is painful to describe how the company travelled. It was in a stage waggon! But they could not help it. We never stated that they were out-and-out quality; and not even all the quality could travel in four coaches and six, with twelve horsemen riding attendance, and an unpaid escort of butchers, bakers, and apothecaries, whipping and spurring part of the way for the custom. What could the poor Commons do? There were not stage coaches in every quarter of the great roads; and really if they pocketed their gentility, the huge brown waggons were of the two extinct conveyances the roomier, airier, and safer both from overturns and highwaymen. The seats were soft, the space was ample, and the three unprotected females were considered in a manner incognito, which was about as modest a style as they could travel in. Of course, they were not in their flowered silks, their lutestrings, their mantuas. We are assured every respectable woman travelled then in a habit and hat, and no more thought of hoops than of hair powder. The only peculiarity was that beneath their hats they wore mob-caps, tied soberly under the chin, and red or blue handkerchiefs knotted over the hat, which gave them the air of Welsh market-women, or marvellously clean and tidy gipsies. Clarissa was spelling out the words in Pharamond—a French classic; Dulcie was looking disconsolately straight before her through their sole outlet, the bow at the end of the waggon, which circumscribed as pretty and fresh a circle of common and cornfield, with crimson patches of wood and the blue sky above, as one might wish to see. Occasionally the crack of a sportsman's gun was heard to the right or left, followed by a pheasant or a string of partridges darting across the opening of the canvas car; but as yet no claimant had solicited the privilege and honour of sharing the waggon and the view with our fair travellers.

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II.—TWO LADS SEEK A CAST IN THE WAGGON.

"Hullo, Joe! we want a lift," cries a brisk voice, and the couple of great steeds—they might have been Flanders mares or Clydesdale horses, so powerful were they over the shoulders, so mighty in the flanks—almost swerved out of their direct line and their decorum. Two fellows suddenly started up from a couch where they had lain at length on a hay-stack, slid down the height, crashed over an intervening bit of waste land, and arrested the waggoner in his smock-frock and clouted shoes.

"Get in, Will, and take possession. Ha! hum! here are ladies: where will we stow our feet? I declare Will is on their skirts already, with more green slime than is carried on the breast of a pond. I believe he thinks them baggage—lay figures, as they've turned aside their heads. Gentlefolks for a wager! duchesses in disguise! I must make up to them, anyhow. Ladies, at your service; I humbly beg your pardon for having so much as thought of incommoding you, but indeed I was not aware of your presence. Come, Will, tumble out again instantly, and do not let us be so rude as to plague the ladies."

Poor Will! very stiff and tired, stared about him, disturbed and discomforted, and prepared to perform the behest of his more energetic companion.

Dulcie did a little of her "bridling," but said never a word; Clarissa lifted her large, rather languishing eyes, let them fall again on her mittens, and remained dumb. They speak before they were spoken to? not they, they knew better. At the same time, when Will stumbled as he alighted on his weary feet, they were guilty of an inclination to titter, though the accident was excusable, and the point of the joke small.

"You are very polite, sirs," protested Cambridge, making round eyes, and reddening and blowing at being constituted the mouthpiece of the party on any interest save that of victuals. "I vow it is very pretty behaviour; but as it is a public carriage, I don't think we are at liberty to deprive Joe of his money, and you, sirs, of your seats. What say you, Mistress Clary?"

"I decline to give an opinion," answered Clarissa with great dignity; in which she broke down a little by adding hastily, in half audible accents. "Be quiet, Dulcie!" for Dulcie's risible faculties had been excited in a lively degree. She had been crying so lately that there was a hysterical turn in her mirth, and having once given way to it she could not restrain herself, but was making all sorts of ridiculous faces and spasms in her throat without effect. You see, these were two ordinary, happy young girls; and the stiff starch of their manners and pretensions only brought out in a stronger light, and with a broader contrast, their youthful frolicsomeness.

"I think, sirs, you may come in—that is, if you keep your distance," Mistress Cambridge decided, with solemn reservation. With a multitude of apologies and thanks, the two young men, more considerate and courteous in their forward and backward fashion than many a fine gentleman of the time, clambered up, and coiled themselves into corners, leaving a respectful void between them and the original occupants of the waggon.

Tranquillity settled down on the travellers—a tranquillity only broken by the drowsy rumble of the waggon-wheels, and the perennial whistle of the stooping, grizzled waggoner. Dulcie was just thinking that they might have been Turks, they were so silent, when Mistress Cambridge stirred the still atmosphere by the inquiry—

"Pray, sirs, have you happened to fall in with any stubble chickens in your walk; I think you said you had been walking hereabouts?" affording Clarissa an opportunity of complaining afterwards, in the retirement of the little inn's private room, that these young fellows would judge them a set of gluttons or farmers' daughters abroad for a holiday, aping gentlewomen, instead of being duchesses in disguise.

Although the girls never lifted their eyes, yet, by a magic only known to such philosophers, they had taken as complete an inventory of the young men, beginning at their wardrobes, as if they had looked at them coolly from head to foot for a whole half-hour. They were aware that the fellows were in plain suits, though one of them was not without the air of being fine on occasions. Their coats were cloth, not brocade or velvet; their ruffles were cambric, not lace; their shoe-buckles were only silver; their hats were trimmed with braid, and neither with gold nor silver edging. They were not my lords; they were not in regimentals; they did not rap out oaths; they had not the university air; they showed no parson's bands; they were not plain country bumpkins—what were they?

After all, it was scarcely worth inquiry whether the newcomers belonged to law or physic; for the young women in their pride and petulance felt bound not to consider the investigation worth the trouble. The lad who was the leader, and who was unquestionably of gentle enough nurture, was a plain little fellow, sallow and homely-featured, although a good-natured person might suppose from his smiling sagacity that in animated conversation it would be quite possible to forget his face in his countenance. The other was ruddy, with a face as sharply cut as a girl's, and delicate features not fitting his long limbs—clearly he was no better than a nincompoop. Yes, the girls were perfectly justifiable in whispering as the waggon stopped to bait at the "Nine Miles House," and they got out to bait also—

"What a pair!"

"Such a fright, the little fellow, Clary!"

"Such a goose, the tall fellow, Dulcie!"

It is a sad truth that foolish young women will judge by the exterior, leap at conclusions, and be guilty of rude and cruel remarks.

What would come of it if the silly, sensitive hearts were in earnest, or if they did not reserve to themselves the indefeasible right of changing their opinions?

At the "Nine Miles House" the wayfarers rested, either in the sanded parlour, or the common kitchen of the ale-house. Mistress Clarissa and her party had the sanded parlour for themselves; the young men, with their cramped legs, stumbled into the flitch-hung kitchen, the more entertaining room of the two, and had plates of beans and bacon, a toast and a tankard; for the day was in September, and the wind was already bracing both to body and appetite. Mistress Clarissa carried her private stores, and Cambridge laid out her slices of roasts and broils, plates of buns and comforts, and cruets with white wines. But when did a heroine remain in a sanded parlour in an inn, when she could stroll over the country and lose her way, and get run at by wild cattle, and stared at by naughty gentlemen? Clary was not so mean-spirited, though she was physically lazier than Dulcie; she was eager to scamper across the stubble fields (where Cambridge expected chickens to roam in flocks), and to wander, book in hand, by yon brook with the bewitching pollards.

Dulcie could not accompany her. Dulcie being a practical woman, a needle in innocent sharpness, had peeped about the waggon to inspect their luggage, and had found to her horror that one of her boxes had burst its fastenings—that very box with her respected mother's watered tabby, and her one lace head on the place of honour on the top. So she and Cambridge had an earnest consultation on the accident, which resulted in their proceeding to tuck up their skirts, empty the receptacle with the greatest care and tenderness, and repack it with such skill that a rope would replace its rent hinges. Dulcie was not for walking.

Clarissa was thus forced to saunter alone, and after she had got to the brook and the pollards, she sat down, and leant her arms on the bars of an old farm gate. Soon tiring of looking about her, staring at the minnows and the late orange coltsfoot and white wild ranunculus, and the straw-coloured willow-leaves drooping into the water, she took out of her pocket that little brown French classic, Pharamond, and started again to accompany the French storyteller, advancing on the very tallest of stilts that storyteller ever mounted. It was a wonder truly that Clary on her mossy bank, and by a rustic stile, had not preferred the voices of the winds and the waters, the last boom of the beetle, the last screech of the martin, the last loud laugh of the field-workers borne over a hedge or two on the breeze, to the click and patter of these absurd Frenchmen's tongues.

At last Clarissa bethought her of the hour, sprang up, carefully put away her volume—volumes and verses were precious then—and began to pick her steps homewards. Ah! there had been a wretch of a man looking at her—actually drawing her in his portfolio—the ugly fellow in the waggon. Thank goodness, he could not have recognized her as his fellow-traveller; he had copied the old farm-gate from the other side, and he could only have got a glimpse of her figure through the bars with not so much as the crown of her hat above them. He had only put her in faithfully by a line or two, and three dots, and he did not observe her now as she passed behind him and scanned his performance ere she scampered off. But what a risk she had run of having her likeness taken without her knowledge or consent, and carried about the country by a walking gentleman!

It was quite an adventure; yet how could Clary think it so when an earthquake and a whole town burnt to ashes were nothing in her French novels! But, still true to the instinct of personality which causes us to think a molehill in reference to our dear selves a world more momentous and interesting than a mountain in reference to a princess of the blood-royal, stately Clarissa flew off like a lapwing to tell Dulcie that she had just had such an escape, and hit on such a discovery—she had found out all about the two fellows; they were a couple of painters. Marry! it was a marvel to see the one so hearty, and the other so rosy. Doubtless they did not have an odd penny in their purse between them.

Clarissa came too late; she encountered Dulcie running out to meet her, all alive with the same news, only gathered in a more orthodox manner. The fair, soft lad, whom they had reckoned a nincompoop, had shaken himself up in his companion's absence, and had offered his landlady a drawing for his share of the dinner, "if you will score the value off the bill." And the landlady had repeated the story to Cambridge and Dulcie when she showed the picture to them, and expressed her conviction that the lad was far gone in the spleen—he seemed always in a brown study; too quiet-like for a lad. She should have no peace in her mind about him if she were in any way related to him. Bless her heart! he would sell another for something much less than a crown.

Dulcie, all in a glow, had actually been chaffering with the painter for one of those wonderful groups of luscious peaches, mellow pears, July flowers, and striped balsamine, singing birds and fluttering insects, full of extravagant beauty. In the business, too, Dulcie had been by far the more overcome of the two. The painter, roused to a job, had not cheated her; on the contrary, he had been as usual a conscientious spendthrift of his powers. He had conducted the negotiation in the plainest, manliest spirit, looking the eager girl in the face with his blue eyes, and receiving her crown-piece in his hand, which was nobler than his face, inasmuch as it was seamed with the action of his paints and tools, without a notion of anything unbecoming or degrading.

The brother painter shook his head when he returned, and found what Will had been about in his absence.

"Man, man, didn't I bargain that I was to pay for your company, and haven't I put you in the worst bed, and allowed you the burnt meat and the sodden bread, and the valise to carry twice as often as I took it myself, to satisfy your plaguy scruples? And yet you could go and scurvily steal a march upon me the moment you were out of my sight! But," brightening immeasurably, and bowing low, "you have certainly contrived what I had not the face to attempt—an introduction to the ladies—although, no doubt, it was very simply done, and you are a very modest man, as I do not need to tell them. Ladies, I am Sam Winnington, son of the late gallant Captain Winnington, though I should not call him so; and this is Will Locke, the vagrant child of an excellent man, engaged, I believe, in the bookselling and stationery trade. We are painters, if it please you, on a tour in search of sketches and commissions. I beg to assure you, that I do portraits on a great scale as well as a small, and Will sometimes does lions in the jungle, as well as larks in a tuft of grass."

Cambridge was more posed than ever by the fresh advance included in this merry speech; but the girls were quite of another mind, and took the matter forthwith into their own hands, as is usual with the class, and bore down caution and experience, particularly when it proceeded from their housekeeper. They liked the young man's congenial sense and spirit, they secretly hankered after his vivacity; they were, with their dear woman's romance, all afire in three minutes about pictures, gods, and goddesses, historic scenes, and even scratches in Indian ink. A true woman and a painter are hand and glove at a moment's warning in any age. Cambridge could but drop naturally into the background, and regard the constant puzzle, "How girls can talk with fellows!"

The chance companions were once more packed into the waggon, pleasantly mixed together this time, and away they trundled yet many weary miles by the sunset and the light of the moon. The boughs in the horses' collars dangled brown, Cambridge and the waggoner nodded drowsily; but, divine privilege of youth! the spirits of the lads and lasses only freshened as the long day waned and they neared the goal. They were dramatis personæ on a moving stage, jesting like country folks going to a fair. Even Will Locke was roused and lively as he answered Dulcie's pertinacious, pertinent questions about the animal and vegetable life he loved so well; while Dulcie, furtively remembering the landlady's suggestion, wondered, kind heart! if she could use the freedom to mention to him that ground ivy was all but infallible in early stages of the spleen, and that turnip broth might be relied on to check every incipient cough. Clarissa was coquettish, Sam Winnington was gallant. With all the girls' mock heroism, and all their arrogance and precision, trust me, girls and lads formed a free and friendly company in the end.

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III.—REDWATER HOSPITALITY.

Clarissa and Dulcie did do the young men service in their calling. They said it would be a shame not to help two such likely fellows (you know they had undauntedly set the one down as a fright and the other as a goose in the morning); they were sure they were industrious and worthy, and they would give bail for their honesty. So they spoke right and left to the few influential families who were at Redwater of the two young painters, who by mere luck had come with them in the waggon, had put up at the "Rod and Fly," and were waiting for commissions. Had the Warrens or the Lorimers not heard of them? they would come bound they were a couple of geniuses, from their conversation.

The old world grinned, and said to the girls' faces that the lasses had better not be too zealous for the lads; they were generally fit to manage their own business, and something more into the bargain. Uncle Barnet would not care to have his niece Clary fling herself away with her tidy fortune on a walking gentleman, though he were a genius.

The result was that Dulcie "bridled" in a twitter of wounded faith and anger. Clarissa was superb and scornful. She ordered a full-length portrait, and fixed the hour for the sitting within the week. Dulcie set off alone with Master Will Locke—Dulcie, who knew no more of Redwater than he should have done, if his wits had not been woolgathering—to find the meadow which was beginning to purple over with the meadow saffron.

But for all the townspeople laughed at Mistress Clary's and Mistress Dulcie's flights, they never dreamt of them as unbecoming or containing a bit of harm. Fine girls like Clary and Dulcie, especially an accomplished girl like Clary, who could read French and do japan, besides working to a wish in cross-stitch and tent-sketch, were not persons to be slighted. The inhabitants saw for themselves that the painters had coats which were not out at elbows, and tongues, one of which was always wagging, and the other generally at rest, but which never said a word fairly out of joint. They needed no further introduction; the gentlemen called for the young men, the ladies curtsied to them in the bar of the "Rod and Fly," in the church-porch, in the common shop, and began conversations with them while they were chaffering at the same counter for the same red ribbons to tie up the men and the women's hair alike; and they felt that their manners were vastly polite and gracious, an opinion which was not far from the truth.

The Vicar lent the painters books. The Mayor invited them to supper. The nearest Justice, who was a family man, with a notable wife, had them to a domestic party, where they heard a little girl repeat a fable, and saw the little coach which the Justice had presented to his son and heir, then in long clothes, in which he was to be drawn along the smooth oak boarded passages of the paternal mansion as soon as he could sit upright.

Lastly, Clarissa Gage, under the sufficient guardianship of Cambridge, treated the strangers to a real piece of sport—a hop on the washing-green, under her mulberry-tree. It commenced at four o'clock in the afternoon, and ended with dusk and the bats, and a gipsy fire, and roasting groats and potatoes in the hot ashes, in imitation of the freakish oyster supper which Clary had attended in town.

Clary took care to have her six couples well assorted, and not to be severed till the merry-making was over; she did not mind uniting herself to Master Sam Winnington, and Dulcie to Master Will Locke—mind! the arrangement was a courteous compliment to the chief guests, and it gave continual point to the entertainment. The company took a hilarious pleasure in associating the four two-and-two, and commented openly on the distribution: "Mistress Clary is mighty condescending to this jackanapes." "Mistress Dulcie and t'other form a genteel pair."

To be sure the two young men heard the remarks, which they might have taken as broad hints, and the girls heard them too, uttered as they were without disguise; but so healthy were our ancestors, that nobody was put out—not even soft, mooning Will Locke. Nothing came of it that evening, unless a way Dulcie had of pressing her red lips together, throwing back her little brown head, shaking out the powder from her curls, and shaking down the curls themselves, with a gleeful laugh, which appeared to turn her own "bridling" into derision; and a high assertion of Clary's that she was determined never to wed a man beneath the rank of a county member or a peer. Now, really, after Clary had danced fifteen dances, and was about to dance other five, without stopping, with a portrait painter, of her own free will, this was drawing a longish and very unnecessary bow. But then Sam Winnington did not take it amiss or contradict her. He said she was right, and he had no doubt she would keep her word, and there was a quick, half-comic, half-serious gleam from the depths of his grey eyes which made Clarissa Gage look more bashful and lovelier than any man had ever yet beheld her. Pity the member or the peer could not have been that man!

Imagine the party after Mistress Cambridge had provided them with some of her favourite chickens, and more substantial Dutch beef, with wet fruit and dry, cold Rhenish and sugar, and mulled wine against the dew and damp feet, collecting merrily round the smoky fire, with little jets of flame shooting up and flashing out on the six couples! Sam Winnington in his silk stockings and points neatly trussed at the knee, was on all-fours poking the blue and red potatoes into the glowing holes. Another man with rough waggishness suddenly stirred the fire with an oak branch, and sent a shower of sparks like rockets into the dark blue sky, but so near that it caused the women to recoil, screaming and hiding their faces on convenient shoulders, and lodged half-a-dozen instruments of ignition and combustion in Sam Winnington's hair, singeing it and scorching his ears. Had Sam not been the best-natured and most politic fellow in the world, he would have dragged the aggressor by the collar or the cuff over the smoking crackling wood, and made the ladies shriek in greater earnest.

There was the strange ruddy light now on this face, now on that—on Will Locke's as he overturned a shovel of groats at Dulcie's feet, and on Dulcie's, so eager to cover his blunder, that she quite forgot the circumstances of the case, and never came to herself till she had burnt all the five tips of her rosy fingers catching the miller's pearls. Then Will Locke was so sorry, stroked the fingers so daintily, hung upon Cambridge so beseechingly, imploring her to prepare a cool mash for Mistress Dulcie's finger points, the moment they were all gone—that Dulcie could have cried for his tenderness of heart, and quickness and keenness of remorse.

Conjure up the whole fourteen—the Vicar and Cambridge of the number—when the fire had sunk white in ashes, when they could scarcely see each other's faces, and only guess each other's garments, having a round at "Puss in the corner," running here and rushing there, seizing this shoulder-knot, holding tight like a child by that skirt, drawing up, pulling back, whirling round all blowsy, all panting, all faint with fun and laughter, and the roguish familiarity which yet thought no evil. Very romping, was it not? very hoydenish? yes certainly. Very improper? by no means. It was practised by dignitaries of the Church, still more classic than the Vicar scuttling and ducking after Cambridge (you never saw the like), and by the pink and pride of English womanhood.

Redwater was hospitable to these painter lads, as we understand hospitality, unquestionably, ungrudgingly hospitable; but it was more than hospitable to them, it was profitable to them in a pecuniary sense, without which great test of its merits they could not long have tarried within its bounds. They were neither fools nor hypocrites to pretend to be clean indifferent to the main chance.

The Vicar fancied a likeness of himself in his surplice, which his parishioners might buy and engrave, if they had a mind to preserve his lineaments when he was no longer among them. The Justice took a notion to have his big girls and his little girls, his boy and nurse, his wife, and himself as the sheltering stem of the whole young growth, in one canvas.

But the great achievement was Sam Winnington's picture of Clarissa, "not as a crazy Kate this time," she told him saucily, "but myself in my hair and brocade, to show what a grand lady I can be." Thus Clarissa dressed herself out in one of those magnificent toilettes all in the autumn mornings, and sat there in state for hours, for the sole benefit of posterity, unless Sam Winnington was to reap a passing advantage by the process. Clarissa in her brocade, with the stiff body and the skirt standing on end, her neckerchief drawn through the straps of her bodice, her bouquet pinned, "French fashion," on her side; surely that picture was a masterpiece. So speaking was the copy of her deep brown hair, her soft, proud cheek, the wave of her ripe red lips, that a tame white pigeon, accustomed to sit on her shoulder, flew into the window right at the canvas, and, striking against the hard, flat surface, fell fluttering and cooing in consternation to the ground. If that was not an acknowledgment of the limner's fidelity, what could be?

Clary, in person, played my lady very well, reclining in her father's great chair. Her hall was roomy enough; it had its space for Sam Winnington's easel as well as Clary's harpsichord, and, what was more useful, her spinning-wheel, besides closets and cupboards without number. Sam Winnington entertained Clarissa; he was famous in years to come for keeping his sisters in good humour. He told her of the academy and the president's parties, of the public gardens and the wild beast shows; and how the Princesses had their trains borne as they crossed the park. He asked her what quality in herself she valued the most; and owned that he was hugely indebted to his coolness. When his colours were not drying fast enough, he read her a page or two of grand heroic reading from Pope's 'Homer' about Agamemnon and Achilles, Helen and Andromache; when she tired of that he was back again to the sparkling gossip of the town, for he was a brilliant fellow, with a clear intellect and a fine taste; and he had stored up and arranged elegantly on the shelves of his memory all the knowledge that was current, and a little more besides.

When he was gone, Clary would meditate what powers of conversation he had, and consider rather glumly how she would miss the portrait painter when he migrated to his native air, the town; how dull Redwater would be; how another face would soon supplant hers on the canvas! He had shown her others in his portfolio quite as blooming and dignified, though he had tumbled them carelessly over; and so he would treat hers when another's was fresh before him. Clary would be restless and cross at her own suppositions; for where is the use of being a beauty and a wit if one must submit to be either forgotten or beaten, even by a portrait painter?

In the meantime, the Vicar also wanted a facsimile of his hayfield, as it looked when the haymakers were among the tedded grass, or under the Redwater ash-trees, to present him with a pleasant spectacle within, now that the bleak autumn was coming on, and there would be nothing without but soaked or battered ground, dark skies, and muddy or snowy ways. The Mayor desired a pig-sty, with the most charming litter of little black and white pigs, as nice as guinea-pigs, and their considerably coarser grunting mamma, done to hand. He was a jolly, prosaic man, Master Mayor, very proud of his prosaicness, as you rarely see a real man of his poetry: he maintained, though Mrs. Mayor nearly swooned at the idea, that he would sooner have a pig-sty than a batch of heroes. Perhaps the heroes of Master Mayor's day had sometimes wallowed in the mire to suggest the comparison. And Clarissa Gage would have her bower done—her clematis bower before the leaves were brown and shrivelled and there only remained the loving spindle-shanked stems clinging faithfully to the half-rotten framework which they could no longer clothe with verdure.

What a bower Will Locke made of Clary's bower! as unique as Sam Winnington's portrait of Clary herself. It was not the literal bower; and it would not have suited Master Mayor or the Justice, though it might have had a charm for the Vicar. We will go with the Vicar; although he also had his bombast, and, when elevated by company and cheer, denominated Cambridge a goddess, and raised in the poor woman's breast expectations never to be realized. We don't altogether approve that wonderful bit of work, but we like it. There never were such deep damask roses as hung over the trellis, there never were such flaming sunflowers, or pure white lilies as looked in at the sides. Squirrels don't frequent garden bowers unless they are tamed and chained by the leg. Our robin redbreasts are in the fields in summer, and do not perch on boughs opposite speckled thrushes when they can get abundance of worms and flies among the barley. We have not little green lizards at large in England; the only one ever seen at Redwater was in the apothecary's bottle. Still what a bower that is! What a blushing, fluttering bower, trilling with song, glancing and glowing with the bronze mail of beetles and the softened glory of purple emperors! What a thing it was to examine; how you could look in and discover afresh, and dwell for five minutes at a time on that hollow petal of a flower steeped in honey, on that mote of a ladybird crawling to its couch of olive moss.

Dulcie was speechless with admiration before this vision of Clarissa's bower. Heigho! it was an enchanted bower to Dulcie as to Will Locke. It was veritably alive to him, and he could tell her the secrets of that life. What perfume the rose was shedding—he smelt it about his palette; what hour of the clock the half-closed sunflower was striking; whence the robin and the thrush had come, and what bean fields they had flown over, and what cottage doors they had passed; of what the lizard was dreaming in south or east as he turned over on his slimy side—all were plain to him.

Ostensibly Dulcie was taking lessons from Will Locke in flower-painting, for Dulcie had a delicate hand and a just eye for colours, and the sweetest, natural fondness for this simple, common, beautiful world. And Will Locke was a patient, indulgent teacher. He was the queerest mixture of gentleness and stubbornness, shyness and confidence, reserve and candour. He claimed little from other people, he exacted a great deal from himself. He was the most retiring lad in society, backward and out of place; he was free with Dulcie as a girl of her own stamp could be. He had the most unhesitating faith in his own ability, he relied on it as on an inspiration, he talked of it to Dulcie, he impressed it upon her until he infected her with his own credulity until she believed him to be one of the greatest painters under the sun. She credited his strangest imagination, and that quiet lad had the fancy of a prince of dreamers.

In the end Dulcie was humble and almost awed in Will Locke's presence. Now here comes the sign of Dulcie's innate beauty of character. Had Dulcie been a commonplace, coarse girl, she would have been wearied, aggrieved, fairly disgusted by Will Locke in three days. But Dulcie was brimfull of reverence, she was generous to the ends of her hair, she liked to feel her heart in her mouth with admiration.

The truth of the matter was, Dulcie would have been fain to lift up Will Locke's pencil as they pretend Cæsar served Titian, to clean his palette, gather flowers for him, busk them into a nosegay, preserve them in pure water, and never steal the meanest for her own use. Will Locke was her saint, Dulcie was quite ready to be absorbed in his beams. Well for her if they did not scorch her, poor little moth!

Oh! Dulcie, Dulcie, your friends could not have thought it of you—not even Clary, tolerably misled on her own account, would have believed you serious in your enamourment, though you had gone down on your knees and sworn it to them. It was nothing but the obliging humour of Mistress Dulcie and the single-heartedness of the youth; still even in this mild view of the case, if their friends had paid proper attention to them, they would have counselled Dulcie to abide more securely by her chair covers, and my simple man to stick more closely to his card or his ivory, his hedges or his hurdles.

Sometimes, late as the season was, Will Locke and Dulcie went out picking their steps in search of plants and animals, and it was fortunate for Dulcie that she could pull her mohair gown through her pocket-holes, and tuck her mob-cap under her chin beneath her hat, for occasionally the boisterous wind lifted that trifling appendage right into the air, and deposited it over a wall or a fence, and Will Locke was not half so quick as Dulcie in tracing the region of its flight, neither was he so active, however willing, in recovering the truant. Why, Dulcie found his own hat for him, and put it on his head to boot one day. He had deposited it on a stone, that he might the better look in the face a dripping rock, shaded with plumes of fern and tufts of grass, and formed into mosaic by tiny sprays of geranium faded into crimson and gold. It was a characteristic of Will that while he was so fanciful in his interpretation, the smallest, commonest text sufficed him. The strolls of these short autumn days were never barren of interest and advantage to him. The man carried his treasures within himself; he only needed the slightest touchstone from the outside world to draw them out. A fieldmouse's nest was nearly as good to him as an eagle's eyrie, an ox-eyed daisy as a white rose, a red hemp-nettle as a foxglove. He put down his hat and stood contemplating the bit of rock, until every morsel of leaf told him its tale, and then proceeded to fill his pockets and hands with what the poorest country boy would have deemed the veriest weeds; and at last he would have faced round, and marched home, unconscious that his fair hair, bleached like a child's, was undefended from a pitiless shower impending over his head. Dulcie lingered dutifully behind, picked up that three-cornered hat timidly, called his attention to his negligence, and while he stooped with the greatest ease in life, she, bashfully turning her eyes another way, finally clapped the covering on his crown, as a mother bonnets her child.

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IV.—OTHER CASTS FOLLOWING THE CAST IN THE WAGGON.

Clary and Dulcie were slightly censured for their officiousness in the affairs of these painter fellows: but it is in the nature of women not to take well with contradiction: it is in the nature of good women to fly furiously in the face of whatever crosses their generosity, or thwarts their magnanimity.

The crisis came about in this way: Will Locke had finished his work long before Sam; not that Will was more industrious, but he had not got half the commissions at only half the price, and that was about the usual division of labour between them. The two men were born to it. Sam's art took the lucrative shape of portrait-painting; Will's the side of flower and fruit and landscape painting, which was vilely unremunerative then, and allegorical painting, which no one will be at the pains to understand, or, what is more to the purpose, to buy, in this enlightened nineteenth century. Sam, who was thriving already, fell in love with Clarissa Gage, with her six thousand pounds fortune: there was no premeditation, or expediency, or cunning, in the matter; it was the luck of the man. But Will Locke could never have done it: he, who could never make a clear subsistence for himself, must attach himself to a penniless, cheery, quick little girl like Dulcie; and where he could not well maintain one, must provide for two at the lowest estimate. Will Locke was going, and there was no talk of his return; Dulcie was helping him to put up his sketches with her orderly, ready, and respectful hands.

"When we are parted for good, I shall miss you," he said, simply.

Her tender heart throbbed with gratitude, but she only answered, "Are we to be parted for good? Will you never come back to Redwater?"

"I cannot come back like Sam," he affirmed, sadly, not bitterly; "I am not a rising man, Dulcie, though I may paint for future ages."

A bright thought struck Dulcie, softening and warming her girlish face, till it was like one of those faces which look out of Fra Angelico's pictures, and express what we are fond of talking about—adoration and beneficence: "Could I paint for the potteries, Master Locke?" For, in his noble thriftless way, he had initiated her into some of the very secrets of his tinting, and Dulcie was made bold by the feats she had achieved.

"What should set you labouring on paltry porringers?—you are provided with your bit and sup, Mistress Dulcie."

"I thought it might be fine to help a great painter like you," confessed the gentle lass; very gently, with reluctance and pain, for it was wrung by compulsion from her maidenliness.

"Do you think so? I love you for thinking it," he said directly: but he would never have done so, brave as he was in his fantasies, without her drawing him on.

However, after that speech, there was no further talk of their parting for good: indeed, Dulcie would do her part; and slave at these "mugs and pigs" to any extent; and all for a look of his painting before he quitted the easel of nights; a walk, hanging upon his arm, up Primrose Hill; a seat by his side on the Sundays in the city church where he worshipped. Dulcie did not care to trouble her friends at home with the matter: instead, she had a proud vision of surprising them with the sight of—her husband. "They would be for waiting till they could spare money to buy more clothes, or perhaps a chest of drawers; they could not afford it; no more could Will find means to fly up and down the country. Father dear will be pleased to see him so temperate: he cannot drink more than a glass of orange-wine, or a sip of cherry-brandy; he says it makes his head ache: he prefers the clear, cold water, or at most a dish of chocolate. Mother may jeer at him as unmanly; she has a fine spirit, mother: and she may think I might have done better; but mother has grown a little mercenary, and forgotten that she was once young herself, and would have liked to have served a great genius with such a loving heart and such blue eyes as Will's. Ah! the girls will all envy me, when they get a glance from Will's blue eyes: and let them, for he is too good a fellow to look at anybody but his poor ordinary silly wife, and if he did, the odds are that he would not see them: could not see whether their hair were black or red. Ah me! I am not sure whether Will always sees me—poor me—and not one of his angels from paradise."

But Dulcie did mean to tell Clary, and to ask her what she would advise her to wear for her wedding-gown, and whether she and Sam Winnington would be best maid and best man. But Clary put her foot through the plan neatly. Clary was in one of her vapourish moods when she inquired one night, "Is Will Locke coming down again, Dulcie? Oh! what ever is he seeking here? What more can we do for him? Nobody wants any more sheep or goats (were they sheep or goats, Dulcie?), or strawberries and currants, unless as mutton, and kid, and preserves. And, Dulcie, you must not stand in your own light, and throw away any more notice upon him; it is wasting your time, and the word of him may keep away others. A match with him would be purely preposterous: even Sam Winnington, who is a great deal more of a scamp, my dear, treats him as a sublime simpleton."

What induced Clary to attempt to lock the stable after the steed was stolen? What drove her off all of a sudden on this dreadfully candid and prudent tack? She only knew. Possibly it was to ease her own troubled conscience: but with Sam Winnington constantly dangling about her skirts, and receiving sufficient encouragement, too, it was hard for Dulcie to bear. She was in a fine passion; she would not tell Clary, after that round of advice; no, not a word. How did she know what Clary would do next? Perhaps forbid Will the house, when he came back from London with the licence, lock her into a room, and write an evil report to her friends? No, Dulcie could keep her own counsel: she was sorry to live in Clary's house, and eat the bread of deceit, but she would not risk Will's happiness as well as her own.

Will Locke reappeared on the scene within a fortnight. The lad did not tell Dulcie, though, that he had walked the most of the way, and that he had rendered himself footsore, in order to be able to count out Dulcie's modest expenses up to town, and perhaps a month's housekeeping beforehand: for that was the extent of his outlook. Will Locke appointed the Vicar to meet him and a young woman in Redwater church, the very morning after his return: there was no use in delay, except to melt down the first money he had hoarded; and Will and Dulcie were like two children, eager to have the business over and done with, and not to do again by the same parties. The Vicar was quite accustomed to these sudden calls, and he submitted to them with a little groan. He did not know who the young woman might be, and he did not care; it might be Mistress Cambridge, it might be Mistress Clarissa herself, it might be the still-room maid, or the barmaid at the "Rod and Fly;" it was all one to him. As for the young painter fellow, the quiet lads were as likely to slip into these scrapes as the rattles; indeed, the chances were rather against them: the Vicar was inclined to cry, "Catch Mr. Sam Winnington in such a corner." But the Vicar was in no way responsible for a youth who was not even his own parishioner; he was not accountable for his not having worldly goods wherewith to endow the young woman whom he was to lead to the altar. Oddly enough, though worldly goods are undoubtedly introduced into the service, there are no accompanying awkward questions: such as, "What are your worldly goods, M.?" or, "Have you any worldly goods, M.?" The Vicar did not care at all, except for his incipient yawns, and his disordered appetite; he was a rebuke to gossips.

When the hour came, Dulcie was distressed: not about wrongdoing, for the girl had no more idea that she was doing wrong than you have when you write a letter on your own responsibility, and at your own dictation; not at the absence of friends, for in Dulcie's day friends were considered very much in the way on such occasions. Indeed, the best accredited and most popular couples would take a start away from their companions and acquaintances, and ride ten miles or so to be married privately, and so escape all ceremony. Dulcie was troubled by the want of a wedding-gown; yes, a wedding-gown, whether it is to wear well or not, is to a woman what a wig is to a barrister, what a uniform is to a soldier. Dulcia's had no existence, not even in a snip; no one could call a half-worn sacque a wedding-gown, and not even her mother's tabby could be brought out for fear of observation. Only think! a scoured silk: how could Dulcie "bridle" becomingly in a scoured silk? There would have been a certain inappropriateness in its shabbiness in the case of one who had done with the vanities of this world: but a scoured silk beside bridal blushes!—alas, poor Dulcie!

In every other respect, there appears something touching as well as humorous in that primitive marriage-party on the grey October morning, with the autumn sunbeams, silver not golden, faintly brightening the yellowing vine, over the sexton's house, and the orange and grey lichens, the only ornaments outside the solid old church, with its low, heavy Saxon arches. The Vicar bowed with ceremony, and with a dignified and deliberate air, as he recognised Mistress Dulcie; the old clerk and his wrinkled wife stumbled into an apprehension that it was Mistress Clarissa Gage's friend who was to have the knot tied all by herself so early: but it was nothing to them either—nothing in comparison with the Christmas dole. The lad and lass so trustful, so isolated, making such a tremendous venture, deserved to have the cheery sunshine on their lot, if only for their faith and firmness.

When it was over, Dulcie plucked Will's sleeve, to turn him into the vestry. One must be the guide if not the other, and "it's main often the woman," the old clerk would tell you, with a toothless grin.

Then Dulcie went with Will straight to the "Rod and Fly;" for such was the established rule. These occurrences were so frequent, that they had their etiquette cut out for them. From the "Rod and Fly" Will and Dulcie sent the coolest and most composed, the most perfectly reasonable and polite of messages, to say they had got married together that morning, and that Mistress Cambridge need not have the trouble of keeping breakfast for Mistress Dulcie. A separate apology was sent from Dulcie for not having procured the watercresses which she was to have sought for Cambridge. Further, Mr. and Mrs. Will Locke would expect all of their friends who approved of the step they had taken to come to the "Rod and Fly," and offer their congratulations and drink their healths that morning without fail; as the young couple had to start by the very waggon in which they had first set eyes on each other. "Think of that, Will!" Dulcie had exclaimed, breathlessly, as if she was calling his notice to a natural phenomenon. They had now to ask and receive Dulcie's parents' blessing before they began housekeeping in Will's lodgings in London, on the strength of a month's prices with future orders and outwork from the potteries. Oh! these old easy beginnings! What have we gained by complicating them?

Will Locke and Dulcie had cast the die, and, on the first brush of the affair, their friends at Redwater took it as ill as possible: Clarissa was hysterical, Sam Winnington was as sulky as a bear. If this treatment were to be regarded as a foreshadowing of what the behaviour of the authorities at Fairfax would prove, then the actors in the little drama might shake in their shoes. But Will Locke placidly stood the storm they had brewed, only remembering in years to come some words which Dulcie did not retain for a sun-down. Dulcie was now affronted and hurt, now steady as a stepping-stone and erect as a sweet-pea, when either of the two assailants dared to blame Will, or to imply that he should have refrained from this mischief. Why, what could Will have done? What could she have done without him? She was not ashamed to ask that, the moment they reflected upon Will Locke, though she had not borne his name an hour. Oh! child, child!

Notwithstanding, it was very trying to Dulcie when Clary protested that she never would have believed that Dulcie could have stolen such a march upon her; never. Dulcie to deceive her! Dulcie to betray her! Poor Clary! Whom could she turn to for affection and integrity, in the days that might remain to her in this wicked world? She had walked all along the street with its four or five windows in every gable turned to the thoroughfare, with her handkerchief at her eyes, while the whole town was up, and each window full. She was so spent now, with her exertions and her righteous indignation, that she sat fanning herself in the bar: for Will and Dulcie could not even afford a private room to receive their wedding company so summarily assembled. Never was such a business, in Clary's opinion; not that she had not often heard of its like—but to happen to a kind, silly, credulous pair, such as Dulcie and Will Locke! Clary sat fanning herself, and casting knots on her pocket-handkerchief, and glancing quickly at Sam Winnington's gloomy, dogged face, so different from the little man's wonted bland, animated countenance. What on earth could make Sam Winnington take the wilful deed so much to heart? Hear him rating Will, whom he had been used to patronize in a careless, gracious style, but upon whom he now turned in strong resentment. These reproaches were not unprovoked, but they were surely out of bounds; and their matter and manner rankled in the breasts of both these men many a day after they had crossed the Rubicon, and travelled far into the country on whose borders they were still pressing.

"You have disgraced yourself and me, sir! You have gone far to ruin the two of us! People will credit us of the same stock: a pair of needy and reckless adventurers!"

"Master Winnington, I was willing: I could do what I liked with myself without your leave; and I suppose Will Locke was equally independent," fired up Dulcie.

"We'll never be mistaken for the same grain, Sam Winnington," declared Will Locke, with something like disdain. "I always knew that we were clean different: and the real substance of the wood will come out more and more distinctly, now that the mere bark is rubbed off."

Clary was modified at last; she kissed and sobbed over Dulcie, wished her joy sincerely, half promised to visit her in town, and slipped a posy ring from her own hand to the bride's, on the very finger where Will Locke had the face to put the marriage-ring which wedded a comely, sprightly, affectionate young woman to struggles and disappointments, and a mad contest between spirit and matter. But Sam Winnington would not so much as shake hands with Will; though he did not bear any malice against Dulcie, and would have kissed her fingers if she would have allowed it: and the young men, erstwhile comrades, looked so glumly and grimly at each other, that it was a universal relief when the great waggon drew up at the inn door.

Dulcie, in another character now, and that even before the fall of the russet leaves—half ashamed but very proud, the little goose! of the quick transformation—stepped into the waggon; the same boxes were piled beside her; Will leapt in after her, and away they rolled. There was nothing more for Dulcie to do but to wave her hand to Clary and Cambridge, and the women of the inn (already fathoms deep in her interest), and to realize that she was now a married woman, and had young Will Locke the great painter, in his chrysalis state, to look after.

But why was Sam Winnington so irate? He had never looked sweet on Dulcie for half a second. Was it not rather that a blundering dreamer like Will Locke had anticipated him, marred his tactics, and fatally injured his scientific game? Sam came dropping down upon Redwater whenever he could find leisure, when the snow was on the ground, or when the peaches were plump and juicy, for the next two or three years. If he had not been coming on finely in his profession, heightening his charges five guineas at a time, and if Clary had not possessed that six thousand pounds' fortune, they would have done off the matter in a trice, like Will Locke and Dulcie Cowper. Poor Sam! poor Clary!—what an expenditure of hours and days and emotions, they contrived for themselves! They were often wretched! and they shook each other's faith: it is doubtful if they ever quite recovered it. They were so low occasionally that it must have been dreadfully difficult for them to get up again; they were so bitter that how they became altogether sweet once more, without any lingering remains of the acrid flavour in their mouths, is scarcely to be imagined. They were good and true in their inmost hearts; but it does appear that some of the tricks of which they were guilty left them less honest human creatures. There was a strong dash of satire in Sam's fun afterwards; there was a sharpness in Clary's temper, and a despotism in her dignity. To be sure, Clary always liked Sam's irony a thousand times better than another man's charity, and Sam ever thought Clary's impatient, imperious ways far before the cooing of any turtle-dove in the wood; but that was only an indication that the real metal was there, not that it was not smirched and corroded with rust.

The first effect of Will and Dulcie's exploit was extremely prejudicial to the second case on the books. Uncle Barnet, a flourishing London barrister, a man with strong lines about his mouth, a wart on his forehead, and great laced flaps at his coat pockets, and who was supposed to be vehemently irresistible in the courts, hurried down to Redwater on purpose to overhaul Clary. What sort of doings were those she presided over in her maiden house at Redwater? Not the runaway marriage of a companion; that occurred every day in the most polite circles; Clary could not fairly be called to account for such a trifle; besides, a girl without a penny might do as she chose. But there was something a vast deal more scandalous lurking in the background: there was word of another fellow of the same kidney buzzing about Clary—Clary with her six thousand pounds' fortune, her Uncle Barnet, her youth, her handsome person, her what not? Now, as sure as Uncle Barnet's name was Barnet, as he wore a wig, as there was justice in the country, he would have the law of the fellow. Don't tell him the man was advancing rapidly in his profession. What was a painter's profession?—or the son of a gallant Captain Winnington? If a gallant Captain Winnington could do nothing more than gallant, he did not deserve the name; it was a piece of fudge to cheat foolish women with. Yes; he would have the law of the fellow if he buzzed about his niece; he would have the law of Clary if she encouraged him.

What could Clary do? she had been taught to look up to Uncle Barnet; she had seen polite society under his wife's wing; she had obeyed him at once as her Mentor and her Mæcenas—as her father and prime-minister. She cried and kissed his hand, and promised not to forget her position, and to be a good girl; and as she was not engaged to Sam Winnington, and did not know for certain that he would return to Redwater for the grass-mowing or the hop-gathering, she thought she might be free to promise also that she would not see him again with her will. Of course, she meant to keep her word if she might; but there are two at a bargain-making: and observe, she said "with her will;" she made no reference to Sam Winnington's pleasure. And yet, arrogant as Clary could be on her worst side, she had found her own intentions and purposes knocked down by Sam Winnington's determinations before now.

When Sam Winnington did come down next, Clary had such honour and spirit, that she ordered the door to be shut in his face; but then she cried far more bitterly than she had done to Uncle Barnet, in the same hall where Sam had painted her and jested with her; and somehow her affliction reached Sam's ears, living in a little place like Redwater at the "Rod and Fly" for several days on end.

At last another spice entered into the dish; another puppet appeared on the boards, and increased the disorder of the former puppets. The county member did turn up. Clary was a prophet: he came on a visit to his cousin the Justice, and was struck with tall, red and white, and large-eyed Clary; he furbished up an introduction, and offered her the most marked attention.

Mistress Clarissa was in ecstasy, so her gossips declared, and so she almost persuaded herself, even after she had certain drawbacks to her pleasure, and certain cares intruding upon her exultation; after she was again harassed and pestered with the inconvenient resuscitation of that incorrigible little plain, vain portrait painter, Sam Winnington. He was plain—he had not the county member's Roman nose; and he was vain—Clary had already mimicked the fling of his cravat, and the wave of his white hands. Clever, smart fellows, like Sam Winnington, are generally coxcombs. Oh, Sam! where, in order to serve your own turn now, be your purple shadows, your creamy whites, your marvellous reading of people's characters, and writing of the same on their faces, their backs, their very hands and feet, which should leave the world your delighted debtor long after it had forgotten yon member's mighty services?

Clarissa had never danced so many dances with one evening's partner as with the smitten member, at the assembly given on the spur of the moment in his honour, whereat Sam Winnington, standing with his hat under his arm, and leaning against the carved door, was an observant spectator. He was not sullen as when Will Locke and Dulcie tumbled headlong into the pit of matrimony! he was smiling and civil; but his lips were white and his eyes sunken, as if the energetic young painter did not sleep of nights.

Clary was not sincere; she gave that infatuated, tolerably heavy, red-faced, fox-hunting member, own cousin to the Justice, every reason to suppose that she would lend him the most favourable ear, when he chose to pay her his addresses, and then afforded him the amplest provocation to cry, "Caprice—thy name is woman." She had just sung "Tantivy" to him after supper, when she sailed up to Sam Winnington, and addressed him demurely:—

"I have come to wish you good-night, sir."

"And I to wish you farewell, madam."

"Farewell is a hard word, Master Winnington," returned Clary, with a great tide of colour rushing into her face, and a gasp as for breath, and tracing figures nervously on the floor with her little shoe and its brave paste-buckle.

"It shall be said though, and that without further delay, unless three very different words be put in its place."

"Sir, you are tyrannous," protested Clary, in a tremulous voice.

"No, Mistress Clarissa, I have had too good cause to know who has been the tyrant in this business," declared Sam Winnington, speaking out roundly, as a woman loves to hear a man, though it be to her own condemnation, "You have used me cruelly, Clarissa Gage; you have abused my faith, wasted the best years of my life, and deceived my affections."

"What were the three words," asked Clary, faint and low.

"'Yours, Sam Winnington;' or else, 'Farewell, Clarissa Gage?'"

"Yours, Sam Winnington."

He caught her so sharp up by the arm at that sentence, that some persons said Mistress Clarissa had staggered and was about to swoon; others, that the vulgar fellow of a painter had behaved like a brute, pulled her to his side as she was marching past him, and accused her of perjury before the whole ball-room. Bold men were apt at that time to seize aggravating women (especially if they were the wives of their bosoms) by the hairs of their heads, so that a trifling rudeness was little thought of. The county member, however, pricked up his long ears, flushed, fiercely stamped to the particular corner, and had a constable in his eye to arrest the beggarly offender; but before he could get at the disputants, he had the mortification to see them retreat amicably into a side room, and the next thing announced to him was, that Mistress Clarissa had evanished home, before anybody could get rightly at the bottom of the mystery.

Very fortunately, the county member ascertained the following day, before he had compromised his pride another hair's-breadth, that the fickle damsel had accepted the painter's escort the previous evening, and had admitted the painter at an incredibly early hour the subsequent morning. After such indiscretion, the great man would have nothing more to say to Mistress Clarissa, but departed in great dudgeon, and would never so much as set his foot within Redwater again; not even at the following election.

Uncle Barnet was forced to come round and acknowledge, with a very bad grace, that legislation in heiresses' marriages—in any marriage—is out of the question. No man knew how a marriage would turn out; you might as well pledge yourself for the weather next morning; certainly there were signs for the wise; but were weather almanacs deceptive institutions or were they not? The innocent old theory of marriages being made in heaven was the best. Clary was not such a mighty catch after all: a six thousand pounds' fortune was not inexhaustible, and the county member might never have come the length of asking its owner's price. People did talk of a foolish engagement in his youth to one of his yeomen's daughters, and of a wealthy old aunt who ruled the roast; though her well-grown nephew, not being returned for a rotten borough, voted with dignity for so many thousands of his fellow-subjects in the Commons. Uncle Barnet, with a peculiarly wry face, did reluctantly what he did not often advise his clients to do, unless in desperate circumstances—he compromised.

Clary was made a wife in the height of summer, with all the rites and ceremonies of the Church, with all the damasks, and laces, and leadings by the tips of the fingers, and lavishings of larkspurs, lupins, and tiger-lilies proper for the occasion, which Dulcie had lost. Nay, the supper came off at the very "Rod and Fly," with the tap open to the roaring, jubilant public; a score of healths were drunk upstairs with all the honours, the bride and bridegroom being king and queen of the company: even Uncle Barnet owned that Sam Winnington was very complaisant—rather exceed in his complaisance, he supplemented scornfully; but surely Sam might mend that fault with others in the bright days to come. It is only the modern English who act Hamlet minus the Prince of Denmark; sitting at the bridal feast without bride or bridegroom. They say hearts are often caught on the rebound, and if all ill-treated suitors spoke out warmly yet sternly like Sam Winnington, and did not merely fence about and either sneer or whine, more young fools might be saved, even when at touch-and-go with their folly, after the merciful fate of Clary and to the benefit of themselves and of society.

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V.—DULCIE AND WILL, AT HOME IN ST. MARTIN'S LANE.

While Sam and Clarissa were fighting the battles of vanity and the affections down in the southern shire in quite a rural district, among mills and ash-trees, and houses with gardens and garden bowers, William and Dulcie were combating real flesh-and-blood woes—woes that would not so much set your teeth on edge, as soften and melt your tough, dry heart—among the bricks and mortar of London. These several years were not light sunshiny years to the young couple. It is of no use saying that a man may prosper if he will, and that he has only to cultivate potatoes and cabbages in place of jessamine and passion flowers; no use making examples of Sir Joshua and Vandyke, and telling triumphantly that they knew their business and did it simply—only pretending to get a livelihood and satisfy the public to the best of their ability, but ending in becoming great painters. One man's meat is another man's poison; one man's duty is not his neighbour's. When shall we apprehend or apply that little axiom? The Duchess of Portland killed three thousand snails in order that she might complete the shell-work for which she received so much credit; Dulcie would not have put her foot voluntarily on a single snail for a pension.

It was Will Locke's fate to vibrate between drudgery and dreaming; always tending more inevitably towards the latter, and lapsing into more distant, absorbing trances, till he became more and more fantastic and unearthly, with his thin light hair, his half-transparent cheek, and his strained eyes. To prophesy on cardboard and canvas, in flower and figure, with monster and star, crescent and triangle, in emerald green and ruby red and sea blue, in dyes that, like those of the Bassani, resembled the clear shining of a handful of jewels, to prophesy in high art, to be half pitied, half derided, and to starve: was that Will Locke's duty?

Will thought so, in the most artless, unblemished, unswerving style; and he was a devout fellow as well as a gifted one. He bowed to revelation, and read nature's secrets well before he forsook her for heaven, or rather Hades. He devoted himself to the sacrifice; he did not grudge his lust of the eye, his lust of the flesh, his pride of life. He devoted Dulcie, not without pangs; and he devoted his little sickly children pining and dying in St. Martin's Lane. He must follow his calling, he must fulfil his destiny.

Dulcie was not quite such an enthusiast; she did love, honour, and obey Will Locke, but she was sometimes almost mad to see him such a wreck. It had been a sent evil, and she had looked down into the gulf; but she had missed the depths. She had never seen its gloomy, dark, dreary nooks, poor lass! in her youthful boldness and lavishness; and our little feminine Curtius in the scoured silk, with the powdered brown curls, had not merely to penetrate them in one plunge, but had to descend, stumbling and groping her way, and starting back at the sense of confinement, the damp and the darkness. Who will blame her that she sometimes turned her head and looked back, and stretched up her arms from the desert to the flesh-pots of Egypt? She would have borne anything for her husband; and she did work marvels: she learned to engrave for him, coloured constantly with her light, pliant fingers, and drew and painted from old fresh memories those articles of stoneware for the potteries. She clothed herself in the cheapest and most lasting of printed linen sacques and mob caps, and hoods and aprons, fed herself and him and the children on morsels wellnigh miraculously. She even swallowed down the sight of Clary in her cut velvet and her own coach, whose panel Sam Winnington himself had not thought it beneath him to touch up for Clary's delectation and glory. If Will would only have tarried longer about his flowers and bees, and groves and rattlesnakes: if he had even stopped short at faces like those of Socrates, Cæsar, Cleopatra, Fair Rosamond—what people could understand with help—and not slid off faster and more fatally into that dim delirium of good and evil, angels and archangels, the devil of temptation and the goblin of the flesh, the red fiend of war, and the pale spirit of peace!

The difference which originated at Will and Dulcie's marriage had ended in alienation. Dulcie thought that Sam Winnington would have bridged it over at one time, if Will would have made any sign of meeting his overtures, or acknowledged Sam's talents and fortune: nay, even if Will had refrained from betraying his churlish doubts of Sam's perfect deserts.

But no, this Will would not deign to do. The gentle, patient painter, contented with his own estimation of his endowments, and resigned to be misjudged and neglected by the world, had his own indomitable doggedness. He would never flatter the world's low taste for commonplace, and its miserable short-sightedness; he would never pay homage to Sam Winnington which he did not deserve—a man very far from his equal—a mere clever portrait-painter, little better than a skilled stonemason. Thus Sam Winnington and Will Locke took to flushing when each other's names were mentioned—sitting bolt upright and declining to comment on each other's works, or else dismissing each other's efforts in a few supremely contemptuous words. Certainly the poor man rejected the rich not one whit less decidedly than the rich man rejected the poor, and the Mordecais have always the best of it. If we and our neighbours will pick out each other's eyes, commend us to the part of brave little Jack, rather than that of the belligerent Giant, even when they are only eyeing each other previous to sitting down to the ominous banquet.

But this was a difficulty to Dulcie, as it is to most women. No one thinks of men's never showing a malign influence in this world; it is only good women who are expected to prove angels outright here below. But it does seem that there is something more touching in their having to stifle lawful instincts, and in their being forced to oppose and overcome unlawful passions—covetousness, jealousy, wrath, "hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness."

Dulcie, with the sharpness of her little face, divested of all its counterbalancing roundness—a keen, worn little face since the day it had smiled so confusedly but generously out of the scurvy silk in the church at Redwater—was a sweet-looking woman under her care-laden air. Some women retain sweetness under nought but skin and bone; they will not pinch into meanness and spite; they have still faith and charity. One would not wonder though Dulcie afforded more vivid glimpses of il Beato's angels after the contour of her face was completely spoilt.

You can fancy the family room in St. Martin's Lane, some five or six years after Will Locke and Dulcie were wed, with its strange litter of acids and aquafortis, graving tools and steel plates. Will and Dulcie might have been some of the abounding false coiners, had it not been for the colours, the canvas, and the vessels from the potteries, all huddled together without attention to effect. Yet these were not without order, for they were too busy people to be able to afford to be purely disorderly. They could not have had the curtain less scant, for the daylight was precious to them; they had not space for more furniture than might have sufficed a poor tradesman or better sort of mechanic; only there were traces of gentle birth and breeding in the casts, the prints and portfolios, the Dutch clock, and the great hulk of a state-bed hung with the perpetual dusky yellow damask, which served as a nursery for the poor listless little children.

Presently Dulcie looked after the sops, and surreptitiously awarded Will the Benjamite's portion, and Will ate it absently with the only appetite there; though he, too, was a consumptive-looking man—a good deal more so than when he attracted the pity of the good wife at the "Nine Miles Inn." Then Dulcie crooned to the children of the milk-porridge she would give them next night, and sang to them as she lulled them to sleep, her old breezy, bountiful English songs, "Young Roger came tapping at Dolly's window," and "I met my lad at the garden gate," and brushed their faces into laughter with the primroses and hyacinths she had bought for Will in Covent Garden Market. Will asked to see them in the spring twilight, and described the banks where they grew, with some revival of his early lore, and added a tale of the fairies who made them their round tables and galleries, which caused the eldest child (the only one who walked with Dulcie in his little coat to the church where he was christened) to open his heavy eyes, and clap his hot hands, and cry, "More, father, more." Will and Dulcie looked gladly into each other's eyes at his animation, and boasted what a stamping, thundering man he would yet live to be—that midge, that sprite, with Dulcie's small skeleton bones, and Will's dry, lustreless, fair hair!

Anon while Dulcie was still rocking one of these weary children moaning in its sleep, Will must needs strike a light to resume his beloved labours; but first he directed his candle to his canvas, and called on Dulcie to contemplate and comprehend, while he murmured and raved to her of the group of fallen men and women crouching in the den—of the wind of horror raising their hair,—of the dawn of hope bursting in the eastern sky, and high above them the fiendish crew, and the captains of the Blessed still swaying to and fro in the burdened air, and striking deadly blows for supremacy. And Dulcie, open-eyed and open-mouthed as of old, looked at the captives, as if listening to the strife that was to come, and wellnigh heard the thunder of the captains and the shouting, while her eye was always eagerly pointed to that pearly streak which was to herald the one long, cool, calm, bright day of humanity. No wonder Dulcie was as demented as Will, and thought it would be a very little matter though the milk-porridge were sour on the morrow, or if the carrier did not come with the price in his pocket for these sweet pots, and bowls, and pipkins: she believed her poor babies were well at rest from the impending dust, and din, and danger; and smiled deep, quiet smiles at Clary—poor Clary, with her cut velvet, her coach, and her black boy. Verily Will and Dulcie could afford to refer not only pleasantly but mercifully, to Sam Winnington and Clary that night.

"It is contemptible to lose sight of the sublimity of life even to enjoy perfect ease and happiness." That is a very grand saying; but, oh dear! we are poor creatures; and though Dulcie is an infinitely nobler being now than then, the tears are fit to start into our eyes when we remember the little brown head which "bridled finely," the little feet which pranced lightly, and the little tongue which wagged, free from care, in the stage waggon on the country road yon clear September day.

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VI.—SAM AND CLARISSA IN COMPANY IN LEICESTER SQUARE.

Sam and Clarissa were worshipful people now. Uncle Barnet no longer invited them to his second-rate parties; Uncle Barnet was really proud to visit them in their own home. Sam Winnington was a discerning mortal; he had a faculty for discovering genius, especially that work-a-day genius which is in rising men; and he certainly had bird-lime wherewith he could fix their feet under his hospitable table. The best of the sages and wits of the day were to be met in Sam Winnington's house; the best of the sages and wits of the day thought Clary a fine woman, though a little lofty, and Sam a good fellow, an honest chum, a delightful companion, and at the same time the prince of portrait-painters. What an eye he had! what a touch! How much perception of individual character, and at the same time, what sober judgment and elegant taste to preserve his sitters, ladies and gentlemen, as well as men and women! Cavaliers would have it, the ladies and gentlemen, like Sam's condescension at his wedding-feast, overtopped the mark; but it was erring on the safe side. Who would not sink the man in the gentleman? After all, perhaps the sages and wits were not altogether disinterested: almost every one of them filled Sam Winnington's famous sitter's chair, and depended on Sam's tasteful pencil handing down their precious noses and chins to posterity.

Sam and Clary were going abroad, in that coach, which had made Dulcie Locke look longingly after it, and ponder what it would be for one of her frail children to have "a ride" on the box as far as Kensington. They were bound for the house of one of the lordly patrons of arts and letters. They were bound for my Lord Burlington's, or the Earl of Mulgrave's, or Sir William Beechey's—for a destination where they were a couple of mark and distinction, to be received with the utmost consideration. Sam reared smartly his round but not ill-proportioned person in his rich brocade coat, and Clary towered in the corner with her white throat, and her filmy ivory-coloured laces.

We won't see many more distinguished men and women than the members of the set who frequented the old London tea-parties; and Sam Winnington and Clary were in it and of it, while Will Locke and Dulcie were poverty-stricken and alone with their bantlings in the garret in St. Martin's Lane. What becomes of the doctrine of happiness being equally divided in this world, as so many comfortable persons love to opine? Possibly we don't stand up for it; or we may have our loophole, by which we may let ourselves out and drag it in. Was that illustrious voyage all plain sailing? Sam Winnington used to draw a long sigh, and lay back his head and close his eyes in his coach, after the rout was over. He was not conscious of acting; he was not acting, and one might dare another, if that other were not a cynic, to say that the motive was unworthy. He wanted to put his sitters on a good footing with themselves; he wanted to put the world on a good footing with itself; it was the man's nature. He did not go very far down; he was not without his piques, and like other good-natured men—like Will Locke, for that matter—when he was once offended he was apt to be vindictive; but he was buoyant, and that little man must have had a great fund of charity about him somewhere to be drawn upon at first sight. Still this popularity was no joke. There were other rubs. The keen love of approbation in the little man, which was at the bottom of his suavity, was galled by the least condemnation of his work and credit; he was too manly to enact the old man and the ass, but successful Sam Winnington was about as soon pricked as a man who wears a fold of silk on his breast instead of the old plate armour.

Clary had her own aggravations: with all her airs Clary was not a match for the indomitable, unhesitating, brazen (with a golden brazenness) women of fashion. Poor Clary had been the beauty at Redwater, the most modish, the best informed woman there; and here, in this world of London, to which Sam had got her an introduction, she was a nobody; scarcely to be detected among the host of ordinary fine women, except by Sam's reflected glory. This was a doubtful boon, an unsatisfactory rise in the social scale. Then Clary had nobody beyond Sam to look to, and hope and pray for: she had not even sickly children to nurse, like Dulcie. Sam would only live to future generations in his paintings. Ah, well! it was fortunate that Sam was a man of genius.

You may believe, for all the grand company, the coach, the cut velvet, the laces, and the black boy, that this world was but a mighty sorry, uneasy place to Sam and Clarissa as they rolled home over the pavement, while Will and Dulcie slept with little betwixt them and the stars.

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VII.—STRIPS SOME OF THE THORNS FROM THE HEDGE AND THE GARDEN ROSES.

Will Locke lay dying. One would have thought, from his tranquillity, confidence, and love of work, even along with spare diet, that he would have lived long. But dreamland cannot be a healthy region for a man in the body to inhabit. Will was going where his visions would be as nought to the realities. He was still one of the most peaceful, the happiest of fellows, as he had been all his life. He babbled of the pictures he would paint in another region, as if he were conscious that he had painted in a former state. It seemed, too, that the poor fellow's spiritual life, apart from his artist career, took sounder, cheerier substance and form, as the other life grew dimmer and wilder. Dulcie was almost reconciled to let Will go; for he would be more at home in the spirit-world than here, and she had seen sore trouble, which taught her to acquiesce, when there were a Father and a Friend seen glimmeringly but hopefully beyond the gulf. Dulcie moved about, with her child holding by her skirts, resigned and helpful in her sorrow.

The most clouded faces in the old room in St. Martin's Lane—with its old litter, so grievous to-day, of brushes, and colours, and graving tools, and wild pictures which the painter would never touch more—were those of Sam Winnington and Clary. Will had bidden Sam and Clary be sent for to his deathbed; and, offended as they had been, and widely severed as they were now, they rose and came trembling to obey the summons. Clary gave one look, put her handkerchief quickly to her eyes, and then turned and softly covered the tools, lifted the boiling pot to the side of the grate, and took Dulcie's fretful, wondering child in her lap. She was not a fine lady now, but a woman in distress. Sam stood immoveable and uncertain, with a man's awkwardness, but a face working with suppressed emotion.

Will felt no restraint; he sat up in his faded coat with his cravat open to give him air, and turning his wan face with its dark shadow towards Sam Winnington in his velvet coat, with a diamond ring sparkling on his splashed hand, and his colour, which had grown rosy of late years, heightened with emotion, addressed his old friend.

"I wanted to see you, Sam; I had something on my mind, and I could not depart with full satisfaction without saying it to you; I have done you wrong."

Sam raised his head, startled, and stared at the sick man: poor Will Locke; were his wits utterly gone? they had always been somewhat to seek: though he had been a wonderful fellow, too, in his own way—wonderful at flowers, and birds, and beasts, if he had but been content with them.

"I called you a mere portrait-painter, Sam," continued the dying man; "I refused to acknowledge your inspiration, and I knew better: I saw that to you was granted the discernment to read the human face and the soul behind it, as to me it was given to hold converse with nature and the subtle essence of good and evil. Most painters before you have painted masks; but yours are the clothings of immortals: and your flesh is wonderful, Sam—how you have perfected it! And it is not true what they tell you of your draperies: you are the only man alive who can render them picturesque and not absurd, refined and not stinted. You were a genteel fellow, too, from the beginning, and would no more do a dirty action when you had only silver coins to jingle in your pockets, than now when they are stuffed with gold moidores."

"Oh, Will, Will!" cried Sam, desperately bowing his head; "I have done little for you."

"Man!" cried Will, with a kingly incredulity, "what could you do for me? I wanted nothing. I was withdrawn somewhat from my proper field, to mould and colour for daily bread; but Dulcie saved me many a wasted hour, and I could occupy the period of a mechanical job in conceiving—no, in marshalling my visions. Mine was a different, an altogether higher line than yours, Sam; you will forgive me if I have told you too abruptly," and the poverty-stricken painter, at his last gasp, looked deprecatingly at his old honoured associate.

But he was too far gone for ceremony; he was too near release for pain. He had even shaken hands with the few family cares he was capable of experiencing, and had commended Dulcie to Sam Winnington without a single doubt. He felt, like Gainsborough, that they were all going to heaven, and Vandyke was in the company. Where was the room for misunderstanding now! Here was the end of strife, and the conclusion of the whole matter. Some other sentences Will spoke before his parting breath; and when his hearers heard him murmuring the word "garment," they fancied he still raved of his calling—on to the end. But his mind had turned and taken refuge in another calling, and it was in reference to it that he quoted the fragment of a verse, "And besought him that they might touch if it were but the border of his garment; and as many as touched him were made whole." "Sam, have you put forth your hand?"

Thus Will Locke departed rejoicing. Dulcie, a thin forlorn widow woman, talked with a lingering echo of his elevation, of her Will's being beyond lamentation, and of herself and her boy's being well off with their faith in the future. Dulcie had a proud, constant presentiment in the recesses of her woman's heart that the husband and father's good name and merited reputation would surely find his memory out in this world yet. She had no material possessions save a few of his gorgeous, gruesome, hieroglyphical pictures, and what she had borrowed or inherited of his lower cunning in tinting, a more marketable commodity in the present mind of society.

Dulcie disposed of Will's paintings, reluctantly, realizing an astonishing amount; astonishing, unless you take into account the fact that his companions and contemporaries were not sure that he was a mere madman now that he had gone from their ranks. They wished to atone for their dislike to his vagaries by preserving some relics of the curious handling, the grotesque imagination, the delicate taste, and the finely accurate knowledge of vegetable and animal forms which had passed away.