What Will He Do With It | Page 9

little inn,--an arbour, covered with honeysuckle, between the porch and the river,--a couple of pleasure-boats moored to the bank; and now all the waves rippling under the moonlight.
"Supper and lights in the arbour," cried Vance to the waiting-maid, "hey, presto, quick! while we turn in to wash our hands. And hark! a quart jug of that capital whiskey-toddy."
CHAPTER IV.
Being a chapter that links the past to the future by the gradual elucidation of antecedents.
O wayside inns and pedestrian rambles! O summer nights, under honeysuckle arbours, on the banks of starry waves! O Youth, Youth!
Vance ladled out the toddy and lighted his cigar; then, leaning his head on his hand and his elbow on the table, he looked with an artist's eye along the glancing river.
"After all," said he, "I am glad I am a painter; and I hope I may live to be a great one."
"No doubt, if you live, you will be a great one," cried Lionel, with cordial sincerity. "And if I, who can only just paint well enough to please myself, find that it gives a new charm to Nature--"
"Cut sentiment," quoth Vance, "and go on."
"What," continued Lionel, unchilled by the admonitory interruption, "must you feel who can fix a fading sunshine--a fleeting face--on a scrap of canvas, and say 'Sunshine and Beauty, live there forever!'"
VANCE.--"Forever! no! Colours perish, canvas rots. What remains to us of Zeuxis? Still it is prettily said on behalf of the poetic side of the profession; there is a prosaic one;--we'll blink it. Yes; I am glad to be a painter. But you must not catch the fever of my calling. Your poor mother would never forgive me if she thought I had made you a dauber by my example."
LIONEL (gloomily).--"No. I shall not be a painter! But what can I be? How shall I ever build on the earth one of the castles I have built in the air? Fame looks so far,--Fortune so impossible. But one thing I am bent upon" (speaking with knit brow and clenched teeth), "I will gain an independence somehow, and support my mother."
VANCE.--"Your mother is supported: she has the pension--"
LIONEL.--"Of a captain's widow; and" (he added with a flushed cheek) "a first floor that she lets to lodgers."
VANCE.--"No shame in that! Peers let houses; and on the Continent, princes let not only first floors, but fifth and sixth floors, to say nothing of attics and cellars. In beginning the world, friend Lionel, if you don't wish to get chafed at every turn, fold up your pride carefully, put it under lock and key, and only let it out to air upon grand occasions. Pride is a garment all stiff brocade outside, all grating sackcloth on the side next to the skin. Even kings don't wear the dalmaticum except at a coronation. Independence you desire; good. But are you dependent now? Your mother has given you an excellent education, and you have already put it to profit. My dear boy," added Vance, with unusual warmth, "I honour you; at your age, on leaving school, to have shut yourself up, translated Greek and Latin per sheet for a bookseller, at less than a valet's wages, and all for the purpose of buying comforts for your mother; and having a few pounds in your own pockets, to rove your little holiday with me and pay your share of the costs! Ah, there are energy and spirit and life in all that, Lionel, which will found upon rock some castle as fine as any you have built in air. Your hand, my boy."
This burst was so unlike the practical dryness, or even the more unctuous humour, of Frank Vance, that it took Lionel by surprise, and his voice faltered as he pressed the hand held out to him. He answered, "I don't deserve your praise, Vance, and I fear the pride you tell me to put under lock and key has the larger share of the merit you ascribe to better motives. Independent? No! I have never been so."
VANCE.--"Well, you depend on a parent: who, at seventeen does not?"
LIONEL.--"I did not mean my mother; of course, I could not be too proud to take benefits from her. But the truth is simply this--, my father had a relation, not very near, indeed,--a cousin, at about as distant a remove, I fancy, as a cousin well can be. To this gentleman my mother wrote when my poor father died; and he was generous, for it is he who paid for my schooling. I did not know this till very lately. I had a vague impression, indeed, that I had a powerful and wealthy kinsman who took an interest in me, but whom I had never seen."
VANCE.--"Never seen?"
LIONEL.--"No. And here comes the sting. On leaving school last Christmas, my mother, for