before your husband succeeded to the title and estates. I saw all the papers with the advertisements; but I was happy, was rich, and detested England for an old association, and I preferred to remain dead to all who had known me. When at last I did return to England, for my child’s sake – a widower – I came down here. The Sandleighs was for sale, and I bought it.”
There was something like a groan here, and the lady gazed wildly at her husband.
“Of course I thought of claiming the title; but I met you and your son, and I said to myself, ‘Why should I make his family wretched?’ Then, as you know, while I was in doubt, Love came and cleared away the difficulty and decided me. If I had claimed the title it would have been for Veronica’s sake. Well, Denis loves her; and in due time – a long time hence, if your husband will study his health and not cut his life short by passion and apoplexy – Denis will be My Lord, – my child My Lady. That is enough for me. I am contented to be the Doctor and go on as the naturalist still.”
“But – but – ” faltered the lady. “My husband – Mr Rolleston, if what you say is true – ”
“He knows it is true. But not Mr Rolleston, – Lord Pinemount still. Madam, I tell you I am very rich, and my wants are very few. The title is nothing to me. Yes, it is – it is my one secret. There, Pinemount, am I an impostor now?”
“I am stunned,” faltered the bearer of the title.
“Bah! that will soon go off. Lady Pinemount, our esteem, I am sure, is mutual, and I believe you like your son’s choice.”
“Indeed, indeed I do!” cried Lady Pinemount eagerly.
“You would not be a woman if you did not,” said the Doctor warmly. “There, Pinemount, you may take my word – the more easily that you see I want nothing from you but your cousinship. Still the family lawyers can see papers that would convince the greatest sceptic living. Let bygones be forgotten. Give me your hand.”
The said hand was raised doubtingly, but it was seized and warmly grasped.
“Now then,” said the Doctor, “I promised your son to bring you up to ask my child to be your son’s wife.”
“Is this some dream?” said Lord Pinemount, in a subdued voice.
“No, sir – the broad sunlight of fact. There, my dear cousin, Lady Pinemount, is eager to take my darling in her arms, and you are as eager to grasp the hand of as true and brave a young fellow as ever stepped. Will you order the carriage, Lady Pinemount?”
“But – but,” faltered Lord Pinemount, “do I understand that you will not ask me to give up the title – the estate?”
“Only when the great end comes, and your son reigns in your stead – and ours, sir. God bless him! for I love him as if he was my son. Lady Pinemount – cousin, sister – you will come on at once?”
She could not speak, but pressed the hand he gave her and held it to her lips.
“But what magic is this?” whispered Denis two hours later, when he had felt the warm grasp of his father’s hand, and seen him kiss and bless Veronica, who was now seated on a couch with Lady Pinemount’s arm round her waist “Doctor Salado’s magic, my dear boy. Some day I will give you the recipe. There – never mind now. You will represent the family tree, and its finest limb is not sawn off.”
Volume Two – Chapter One.
The Gilded Pill – A Homely Comedy.
Dove and Daws
“Richard Shingle, Shoemaker. Repairs neatly executed.”
This legend was written in yellow letters, shaded with blue, upon an oval red board. Red, blue, and yellow form a pleasing combination to some eyes; but when the yellow is drab, the blue dirty, and the scarlet of a brick-dusty tint, the harmony is not pleasing. Moreover, the literary artist could not be complimented upon his skill in writing in pigment with a camel-hair brush; for, not content to be staid and steadfast in Roman characters, he had indulged in wild flourishes, which gave the signboard the appearance of a battle-field, upon which certain ordinary letters were staggering about, while three or four tyrannical capitals were catching them with lassoes, which twined wildly, round their heads and legs.
For instance, the first “d” was in difficulties, the “g” was pulled out of place, the “h” and “o” tied tightly together, while just below, the “repairs” seemed to be neatly executed indeed, for the “r” had a yellow rope round its neck, having been hung by “Richard,” beneath which word it was suspended, with the rest of the letters kicking frantically because that initial was at its last gasp.
But this idea, probably, did not present itself to the inhabitants of Crowder’s Buildings, a pleasant cul de sac in the neighbourhood of the Angel at Islington. Crowder, once upon a time, bought two houses in a front street, between and under which there was an entrance like a tunnel, leading to the back gardens and back doors of the said houses; and Crowder – now dead and numbered with the just – being a man of frugal mind, gazed at the gardens of his freehold messuage and tenements, and saw that they were useful as cat walks, to make beds growing oyster and other shells, and vegetables of the most melancholy kind. He let the fact dawn upon his understanding that the vegetables grown might be bought better for sixpence per annum, and resolved that he would utilise the space.
To do this, he built up two rows of staring-eyed, four-roomed tenements, sixteen in all, separated by twelve feet of pavement, whitewashed them as they stood staring at one another, and turned the two garden deserts into a busy, thrifty hive, where some twenty or thirty families flourished and grew dirty.
The occupants of the two houses in the street complained, and left; but Crowder let the houses at a higher rent without the gardens – let the little tenements each at ten shillings a week, and turned out those who did not pay; and for the rest of his life collected his own dues, did his own painting and whitewashing – even plastered upon occasion; and at last, while repairing a chimney-stack and putting on a new pot, at the age of seventy-five, like a thrifty soul as he was, he slipped from the ladder, rolled off the roof of Number 10, fell into the open paved space, with his head in the centre gutter, where the soapsuds ran down, and his heels on a scraper – every house had a scraper, to make it complete – and was so much injured that Nature gave him notice to quit his earthly habitation, evicted him, and, save in name, the buildings knew him no more.
For they passed into the hands of Maximilian Shingle, “broker and setrer,” as his brother said – a most worthy member of society: a sticky-fingered man, who, through this last quality, was enabled to lay up honey in store. In fact, he was so well off that, when Crowder’s Buildings were brought to the hammer by Crowder’s heirs, executors, administrators and assigns, the hammer that knocked them down knocked them into Max Shingle’s possession, and they were paid for with Mrs Fraser’s money – a certain amount in thousands which she bestowed, with her two sons Fred and Tom – upon the man who re-won her heart six months after Fred Fraser senior’s death.
It was a retired spot after passing through the tunnel, and hence it became the popular playground of the children of the neighbourhood, who chalked the pavement, broke their knees and heads upon its harsher corners, and made it the scene of the festive dance when a dark-visaged organ-man came down to grind the last new airs of the day.
By a great act of benevolence, Maximilian Shingle, who was a lowly, good man, a shining light at his chapel, where he was deacon, had, though inundated with applications for Number 4 when it became empty, let it to his unlucky brother Richard, who flourished under the sign that heads this chapter,
