Kate Vernon: A Tale. Vol. 2 (of 3), Mrs. Alexander [best sci fi novels of all time txt] 📗
- Author: Mrs. Alexander
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The talkers frequently begun, but were as frequently hushed by the indignant "chut, chut" of the connoisseurs; and when she quietly rose from the piano, the emphatic "good, very good!" "she can play!" "a remarkable composition!" testified the satisfaction of Langley's professional friends; while[206] they left the task of noisy plaudits to the indiscriminating multitude.
Kate now in her turn, the centre of a little group, had to answer many questions as to the author of the music she had played, and, with her usual eagerness to exalt a friend, she pronounced a glowing eulogium on the organist as a man, and a musician.
"He has genius, undoubtedly," said Galliard, "but can genius be satisfied with the obscurity of a little provincial town?"
"He is happy there," said Kate.
"Happy!" Galliard repeated, with a cynical accent.
"A man must be very happy when he allows it," replied Miss Vernon.
"E vero," cried Galliard, laughing.
"Or so very proud that he will not admit the contrary," suggested Langley.
"If you knew Mr. Gilpin," began Kate, when their hostess advancing, interrupted her,[207] and begged for a song, to which request Kate at once acceded.
Then the hostess proposed a quadrille, and introduced a young gentleman, redolent of eau de mille feurs, with an elaborately worked shirt front, lined with pink, and a white pastry face, to Kate, whispering, in a jocose manner, "is quite a catch, junior partner in the great firm of Jones, Brown and Tuckett;" and, with a knowing nod, she walked away, leaving Kate half amused at the extraordinary confidences of her communicative hostess; but feeling through all that, had she still been heiress of Dungar, and any strange chance had thrown Mrs. Storey in her way, the acquaintanceship would have been conducted on very different terms.
She stood up very good-humouredly, however, and replied to all her partner's vapid remarks, very readily; yet, somehow, Tuckett, junior, though he was "the glass of fashion and the mould of form," to Hammond-court,[208] Mincing-lane, did not feel at his ease with her; and she, in the innocence of her heart, believing that all firms dwelt in the city, and never dreaming that a man could be so silly as to blush because he was a worker instead of an idler, put him to torture by her unconscious questions.
"I am anxious to explore the city," she said, while the side couples were dancing La Poule. "I suppose you know all its charming nooks by heart."
"Aw, no, indeed, it's a place I have too great a distaste for, to stay in, except when obliged."
"For shame," said Kate, "A citizen of 'famous London Town,' ought to know, and prize the various interesting 'locales' in the mighty capital."
"Shall I get you an ice?" said her partner, sullenly.
"No, no, thank you," replied Kate, shaking her head rather mournfully, as she remembered[209] the last time a similar question had been put to her; and taking her seat near the Colonel, who was standing with Langley and Galliard; she dismissed Tuckett, junior, with a gracious inclination of the head.
Soon after, the Colonel complaining of fatigue, and Kate, glad to escape her good-humoured host's frequently expressed wish that she would 'polkar,' took her leave of the soir�e. Langley and Galliard attended them to the carriage, which awaited them.
"Mr. Langley tells me he saw our friend Egerton's name, in some paper, promoted to a majority," said the Colonel.
"Did he! oh, where?" cried Kate.
"It was in the Gazette, I took it up while waiting for Lord H— —, whose portrait I am painting."
"What did it say?" asked Kate, folding her shawl round her.
"Oh,—'The Honourable Frederic Egerton to be Major in the Lancers, without purchase,[210] vice,' some one, I forget the name, 'deceased.'"
"I dare say it cost him some hard cash, though it is there stated 'without purchase;' I understand all that. Come, Kate. Good night, Mr. Langley. Bon soir, monsieur, au plaisir de vous voir," said the Colonel.
The Frenchman bowed profoundly, and they drove away.
The Colonel was not animated after this piece of gaiety, as he used to be in former days; it seemed to have depressed him, and he complained of slight cold. Mrs. O'Toole was woefully disappointed to find that there was "ne'er a lord, nor even an honourable, good or bad, at the party."
"To think iv yer playin' an' singin' for the likes iv thim!" she exclaimed, indignantly.
"What have I said to make you think so contemptuously of the very respectable people, amongst whom we have spent (I confess) 'a[211] rather slow evening,' as my eloquent partner would term it?"
"Och no matther, sure it's thim that's the only quolity goin' now; well, niver mind, Miss Kate, we'll lave thim all yet."
"I hope so," sighed Kate.
[212]
LETTERS.
The next morning, just as Kate was preparing to write a long letter to the Winters, one from the kind-hearted little artist was put into her hand. It was sealed with black wax, and announced the death of poor Gilpin. He had suffered a good deal; but, towards the last, fell into a calm, sweet sleep, out of which he suddenly awoke with a look of bright happiness, such as they had never seen on his face before, as if had heard a summons inaudible to their ears.
"I come," he said, and, feebly laying his[213] hand on Winter's, passed to "where his treasure was," without a sigh.
There was little in the letter besides the account of the good man's death; he had left a memorandum of the persons amongst whom his books and music were to be distributed. He had desired, kindly messages, to one or two friends, and the last name he uttered was that of Kate Vernon.
She read the letter aloud, calmly, but the intonation of her voice indicated deep emotion; at its conclusion there was a pause, which neither the Colonel nor his granddaughter were inclined to break; both were hushed and awed by this description of their friend's passage to the World of Spirits.
The large, round, pearly tears weighed down Kate's long lashes, and slowly rolled over her cheeks, without any effort on her part to restrain them. She was unconscious that she wept.
At last the old man broke the silence, saying,
[214]
"Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his!"
"Amen," replied his granddaughter. "Oh, dearest grandpapa," she continued at length, "he has entered into his rest, and though it is an awful thought to us, that he still exists, but where no mortal eye can see him; what an exchange from the many woes and struggles of his warfare here, to the boundless bliss of heaven! He had many sorrows, and yet surely the coming shadow of a great deliverance rested on his spirit, long before he was freed! How sensitive he was—about his appearance I mean—how keenly alive to every glance, and yet how resolutely he used to brace up his soul to love, and to endure!"
"I suppose we shall soon hear from Winter again," said the Colonel, after another pause.
"I suppose so," returned Kate, dreamily. "Ah, nurse," she exclaimed, a few moments after, as Mrs. O'Toole entered, about some[215] household matter, "he is gone—he is happy—our kind, gentle friend, Mr. Gilpin."
"The heavens be his bed," said Mrs. O'Toole, crossing herself. "Och, whin was he taken, Miss Kate?"
"Two days ago."
"Athin 'twas he was fit to go! faith, he was worth a score iv clargy to the poor; an', at the first goin' to A—, I used to think it beneath ye, to be talkin' an' walkin, wid a poor crathure iv an organist; but I was proud to spake to him aftherwards meself; for he always looked as if he'd a taste iv heaven inside iv him, so he did. Sure, it's no wondher, this is such a miserable place to be in, wid sich min as Misther Gilpin an' the masther, whipt off like—like a pooff, or robbed iv their own; an' sich chaps as Taaffe an' Moore, or thim in their coaches, an' desavin' the world! faith, it's beyant me entirely, so it is."
"And beyond many a wiser head than either[216] yours or mine, Nelly," said the Colonel, kindly. "We must leave all that to God."
"Thrue for ye, sir." And she retired, murmuring—"Och, blessed Jasus! resave yer soul, mee poor Gilpin! It's a saint on airth ye wur!"
So Kate's letter was written, in a very different strain from what she had intended; and then she strolled with her grandfather in Kensington Gardens. The old man seemed feeble and depressed; he took Kate's arm, as he often did of late, and spoke much of his own advancing years, and his anxiety, in the event of his death, for her in a tone that thrilled her heart with fear and anguish. She strove to turn the conversation—but it would not do.
"I have no doubt, that you alone would find a happy home under Georgina's roof; but I wish I might see you happily married, and in a house of your own, before I am called away. I fear from Moore's intelligence, brief[217] and scanty as it is, there is no chance of our gaining this fatal lawsuit, so that you will be totally unprovided for;" and he sighed deeply. "Our relations are so few, and—"
"Oh, hush, hush, dearest and best!" cried Kate; "you cannot dream what pain you inflict on me, by such words; do not fear for me; I never know dread on my own account, for the future; you do not know the strong courage of my heart—I did not know it myself till of late; we cannot provide against future ills; why then darken the present by anticipating them. Let us leave it all to God, as you told nurse this morning; believe me, I fear nothing, except hearing you speak in this manner."
The old man was silent for a while, and then resumed—
"We little thought, the day Fred Egerton rushed back so gallantly to rescue our poor friend, how soon that pleasant little party would be scattered."
[218]
"Little indeed," echoed Kate; "next week it will be a year since the ball at Carrington, where I first met him."
The Colonel smiled, and sighed.
"He will be sorry to hear of poor Gilpin's death. I wonder he has not written."
"Good morning, Miss Vernon," said Langley, coming up behind them. "I hope you caught no cold last night? How do you do, Colonel Vernon?"
The Colonel informed him of Gilpin's death; and he seemed rather interested, as the compositions of the organist, which Kate had played the night before, had pleased him greatly. Then they talked of great musicians, and Mozart's Requiem, and the strange circumstances under which it is said to have been composed.
"How much I love those wild, mysterious German stories, they have an indescribable charm for me," said Kate.
[219]
"Why?" asked Langley, in his blunt manner.
"That is exactly what I cannot answer."
"I never like what I do not understand."
"How is it you are a painter then?" asked Kate, in her turn.
"I do not see what that has to do with the subject on which we were speaking," he returned, startled at this attack.
"How is it that you can give expression to a face with your pencil, which you could not convey in words? Even a landscape may speak the painter's soul, far more than the most eloquent description; so it is that glimpses of what is far beyond our nature to comprehend, faint though they be, give us an idea of space and might far more than any even perfectly comprehended explanation, as mist-wreaths hide but magnify the depths seen from a mountain."
"A very poetical definition, Miss Vernon."
[220]
"I speak but my thoughts," said Kate, steadily, though she blushed, and felt uneasy; as enthusiasts always do, when the quick current of their imagination is checked by some son of earth, who dignifies his dulness by the name of strong common sense.
"Well, Miss Vernon, I must think of what you say about painting."
"Ah, you must have enthusiasm and imagination to be a painter, though you are too English not to be ashamed of your better self."
"That is what Galliard says."
"Who is this Monsieur Galliard?" asked the Colonel.
"Oh, a very curious medley—his father was French, his mother English—and his life has been divided between France, Italy, and England—he is half a musician, half a painter, but wholly a writer for newspapers and reviews, foreign and domestic; he is well thought of, however, notwithstanding some vulnerable[221] points—knows lots of people, and is a very likely person to push you on well, Miss Vernon."
The Colonel winced at this conclusion.
"You are very kind," said Kate; "I quite begin to think you a real friend, now I am more accustomed to you."
Langley stared, astonished! Old enough to be Miss Vernon's father, it was extraordinary the influence this fair, bright, noble creature, whose every word and thought were so at variance with the maxims of his work-a-day world, was gaining over him.
Meanwhile, they had reached the Vernon's lodgings before he had recovered the fit of musing into which Kate's words had thrown him.
"I am glad
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