If the Dodo were only a gregarious bird – if it had only some confused idea of making a comfortable nest – I could hope to get through the hours between this and bed-time, without being consumed by devouring melancholy. But the Dodo's habits are all wrong. It provides me with a trackless desert of sitting-room, with a chair for every day in the year, a table for every month, and a waste of sideboard where a lonely China vase pines in a corner for its mate long departed, and will never make a match with the candlestick in the opposite corner if it live till doomsday. The Dodo has nothing in the larder. Even now, I behold the Boots returning with my sole in a piece of paper; and with that portion of my dinner, the Boots, perceiving me at the blank bow-window, slaps his leg as he comes across the road, pretending it is something else. The Dodo excludes the outer air. When I mount up to my bed-room, a smell of closeness and flue gets lazily up my nose like sleepy snuff. The loose little bits of carpet writhe under my tread, and take wormy shapes. I don't know the ridiculous man in the looking-glass, beyond having met him once or twice in a dish-cover – and I can never shave him to-morrow morning! The Dodo is narrow-minded as to towels; expects me to wash on a freemason's apron without the trimming; when I ask for soap, gives me a stony-hearted something white, with no more lather in it than the Elgin marbles. The Dodo has seen better days, and possesses interminable stables at the back – silent, grass-grown, broken-windowed, horseless.
This mournful bird can fry a sole, however, which is much. Can cook a steak, too, which is more. I wonder where it gets its Sherry! If I were to send my pint of wine to some famous chemist to be analyzed, what would it turn out to be made of? It tastes of pepper, sugar, bitter almonds, vinegar, warm knives, any flat drink, and a little brandy. Would it unman a Spanish exile by reminding him of his native land at all? I think not. If there really be any townspeople out of the church-yards, and if a caravan of them ever do dine, with a bottle of wine per man, in this desert of the Dodo, it must make good for the doctor next day!
Where was the waiter born? How did he come here? Has he any hope of getting away from here? Does he ever receive a letter, or take a ride upon the railway, or see any thing but the Dodo? Perhaps he has seen the Berlin Wool. He appears to have a silent sorrow on him, and it may be that. He clears the table; draws the dingy curtains of the great bow-window, which so unwillingly consent to meet, that they must be pinned together; leaves me by the fire with my pint decanter, and a little thin funnel-shaped wine-glass, and a plate of pale biscuits – in themselves engendering desperation.
No book, no newspapers! I left the Arabian Nights in the railway carriage, and have nothing to read but Bradshaw, and "that way madness lies." Remembering what prisoners and shipwrecked mariners have done to exercise their minds in solitude, I repeat the multiplication table, the pence table, and the shilling table: which are all the tables I happen to know. What if I write something? The Dodo keeps no pens but steel pens; and those I always stick through the paper, and can turn to no other account.
What am I to do? Even if I could have the bandy-legged baby knocked up and brought here, I could offer him nothing but sherry, and that would be the death of him. He would never hold up his head again, if he touched it. I can't go to bed, because I have conceived a mortal hatred for my bedroom; and I can't go away because there is no train for my place of destination until morning. To burn the biscuits will be but a fleeting joy; still it is a temporary relief, and here they go on the fire!
MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE. 2
CHAPTER X. – Continued
Randal walked home slowly. It was a cold moonlit night. Young idlers of his own years and rank passed him by, on their way from the haunts of social pleasure. They were yet in the first fair holiday of life. Life's holiday had gone from him forever. Graver men, in the various callings of masculine labor – professions, trade, the state – passed him also. Their steps might be sober, and their faces careworn; but no step had the furtive stealth of his – no face the same contracted, sinister, suspicious gloom. Only once, in a lonely thoroughfare, and on the opposite side of the way, fell a foot-fall, and glanced an eye, that seemed to betray a soul in sympathy with Randal Leslie's.
And Randal, who had heeded none of the other passengers by the way, as if instinctively, took note of this one. His nerves crisped at the noiseless slide of that form, as it stalked on from lamp to lamp, keeping pace with his own. He felt a sort of awe, as if he had beheld the wraith of himself; and ever, as he glanced suspiciously at the arranger, the stranger glanced at him. He was inexpressibly relieved when the figure turned down another street and vanished.
That man was a felon, as yet undetected. Between him and his kind there stood but a thought – a vail air-spun, but impassable, as the vail of the Image at Sais.
And thus moved and thus looked Randal Leslie, a thing of dark and secret mischief – within the pale of the law, but equally removed from man by the vague consciousness that at his heart lay that which the eyes of man would abhor and loathe. Solitary amidst the vast city, and on through the machinery of Civilization, went the still spirit of Intellectual Evil.
CHAPTER XI
Early the next morning Randal received two notes – one from Frank, written in great agitation, begging Randal to see and propitiate his father, whom he feared he had grievously offended; and then running off, rather incoherently, into protestations that his honor as well as his affections were engaged irrevocably to Beatrice, and that her, at least, he could never abandon.
And the second note was from the Squire himself – short, and far less cordial than usual – requesting Mr. Leslie to call on him.
Randal dressed in haste, and went at once to Limmer's hotel.
He found the Parson with Mr. Hazeldean, and endeavoring in vain to soothe him. The Squire had not slept all night, and his appearance was almost haggard.
"Oho! Mr. young Leslie," said he, throwing himself back in his chair as Randal entered – "I thought you were a friend – I thought you were Frank's adviser. Explain, sir; explain."
"Gently, my dear Mr. Hazeldean," said the Parson. "You do but surprise and alarm Mr. Leslie. Tell him more distinctly what he has to explain."
Squire. – "Did you or did you not tell me or Mrs. Hazeldean, that Frank was in love with Violante Rickeybockey?"
Randal (as in amaze). – "I! Never, sir! I feared, on the contrary, that he was somewhat enamored of a very different person. I hinted at that possibility. I could not do more, for I did not know how far Frank's affections were seriously engaged. And indeed, sir, Mrs. Hazeldean, though not encouraging the idea that your son could marry a foreigner and a Roman Catholic, did not appear to consider such objections insuperable, if Frank's happiness were really at stake."
Here the poor Squire gave way to a burst of passion, that involved, in one tempest, Frank, Randal, Harry herself, and the whole race of foreigners, Roman Catholics, and women. While the Squire himself was still incapable of hearing reason, the Parson, taking aside Randal, convinced himself that the whole affair, so far as Randal was concerned, had its origin in a very natural mistake; and that while that young gentleman had been hinting at Beatrice, Mrs. Hazeldean had been thinking of Violante. With considerable difficulty he succeeded in conveying this explanation to the Squire, and somewhat appeasing his wrath against Randal. And the Dissimulator, seizing his occasion, then expressed so much grief and astonishment at learning that matters had gone as far as the Parson informed him – that Frank had actually proposed to Beatrice, been accepted, and engaged himself, before even communicating with his father; he declared so earnestly, that he could never conjure such evil