he finds you too wide awake to swallow South African. "I turned 'em into Greek hexameters, I know, at Eton-at least, that young devil Brigham did for me. I don't know whose they are-Tennyson's, I fancy: no, that ain't it: Knowledge is humble Knowledge is proud ah! that's the ticket Knowledge is proud that she has learnt no more, That suits Trevelyan, don't it, Temple?" "Me ?" cried Trevelyan, laughing. "Thank you, old fellow, but I'm afraid I can't lay more claim to wisdom than a passée beauty to naïve simplicity. But, for mercy's sake, you young Goth, don't go giving the credit of those lines to Tennyson. He couldn't pen anything so sensible to save his life, though, while he smokes his darling tobacco, he can turn on love and bosh like Imperial gas, at so much per foot; and a very good trade he makes of it, too, half the world being spooneys, whom he saves the trouble of writing their love-letters, and the other half, fools, who always join in crowning Aristides or in ostracising him, whichever chance to be the fashion." "Who did write 'em, then ?" asked Pop. "A man who compressed more meaning and more wit into one of his polished periods than our poets run mad can get into quarto volumes of their maundering sentimentalities or meaningless satires. They talk of the Temple of the Ideal; I take it the Muses got better served in the grotto at Twickenham." "The Star and Garter, you mean," interrupted Pop, who was half listening and half absorbed in settling his pipe. "Of course, they wait on you well there, and prettily they make you pay for it, too; but that's at Richmond, not Twickenham. Come, old boy, I've caught you tripping What are you two fellows laughing at?" now. "Nothing," said I; "only you are the greatest goose, my boy, that ever wore a coronet." "Mais quelle latitude énorme !" quoted Trevelyan. "I'm wide awake enough in some things," protested Pop; "I should like to see the man who'd do me with a bit of horseflesh; and as for dogs, there's not a better judge of a young pup than I am." "Your own species, mon enfant," said Trevelyan. "Get out," growled Pop; "you always make game of a fellownever was such a hard hitter. However, I don't care; if I haven't brains, I shall have forty thousand a year, and people will make believe I'm a Solon." "A Solan goose, then," laughed Trevelyan. "Ah, there come those fellows. Lascelles looks seedy; he's soon done up." The two fellows alluded to were two acquaintances of Trevelyan's we had lighted on the day before; one of them, Oakes, a man with a thousand or so a year, which all went in supposititious early mastersvery early ones indeed, done out of all drawing, and admirably smoked VOL. XLVII. 2 F Lafitte, suppers in cabinets particuliers, &c. &c., are approved recipes for health, I cannot say. I fell in with these two, as I told you, at Duomo d'Ossoli, and delighted I was, for if I do love any man it is Royston, and we naturally went on together. He's a capital companion at home or abroad; at a tête-à-tête dinner with him in his own rooms, or at a table d'hôte at the Bads, I must say he's delightful; and though he is occasionally restless and dissatisfied, and given to the mood of that keensighted man Solomon the Preacher, he was enjoying himself just now, throwing himself into the physical exertion with no end of verve, and enjoying the free, untrammelled, wandering life under the blue skies of the god of his idolatry-Nature. II. FLORESTINE LUARD. "THE hotel's on fire! the hotel's on fire!" Not pleasant words, ami lecteur, to startle you out of your slumbers, particularly when you are dead beat, and feel nothing in the world would make you get up short of the advent of a Venus Aphrodite out of the Arve. I sprang out of bed, confounding everything and everybody, to find Chamounix on fire, and our hotel too. I rushed into Trevelyan's room and found him up, with little Pop; the one looking cool and calm, the other curiously attired, and helplessly sleepy. "What the devil are you doing, Royston ?" said I. know the hotel's on fire? Packing butterflies, as I live! a rum idea, when everybody else is running for his life." "Don't you Well, that is "If everybody else is a fool, that's no reason why I should be one too," laughed Trevelyan, putting up his moths and butterflies carefully. "Look! we are all right; my windows open on the garden. Let's carry the trunks out there, and then we'll go and help the poor wretches." Badly enough the poor wretches wanted help, being utterly incapable themselves of any sane or rational action. 'Pon my life, when we got outside, and found ourselves in the midst of the row, our first impulse was to laugh. To an Englishman, it was so very queer to see those unlucky Swiss flinging themselves on their knees, and crying, and sobbing, instead of trying to put the fire out. Who that was at Chamounix that day forgets how the little nest under the shelter of Mont Blanc was licked up by piles of wood and shops, the flames that hissed down to the edge of the Arve, and leaped over the low roofs, how the peasants wrung their hands, and the curés moaned and sighed, and the English tourists worked the one little hand-engine, passed the water, cleared out the furniture, and did all the good that was to be done in that luckless little Alpine village? I wish you had all seen Trevelyan that day; 'pon my word he was grand! He was everywhere, stirring up the Swiss, setting the muleteers and guides to work, giving the priests a good shake, and passing the tubs and buckets, flinging the water with all his might, loading himself with everything he could happen upon, carrying chairs, tables, and crockery, swearing at the peasants, and laughing all the while, as he fused his own energy into all the others round him. "Mon Dieu! mon Dieu!" moaned Philippe, on his knees, " mourir !" nous va Trevelyan gave him a kick. who help themselves." "Get up, you fool! God helps those A curé was lifting his eyes to heaven, spilling the water on the ground in an ecstasy of prayer. Royston shook him by the arm. "Work-pass the water-don't sing psalms; that water's worth more than your words." On went the fire, and on he worked, the life and soul of us all, doing more in five minutes with his quick wit and unerring strength than all those poor devils did in an hour, crying and sobbing while their houses were burning down. Suddenly he swung round: "By Jove! where's that little girl Luard? I haven't seen her anywhere; have you ?" Nobody had seen either her or her father among the crowd, and Philippe threw himself on the ground, tearing his hair out in handfuls: "Mon Dieu! mon Dieu! je les ai oubliés. Scélérat! meurtrier ! Pourquoi vivez-vous ?" 66 Why, indeed, since you're no more use than a block of stone?" said Trevelyan, wrathfully. "Where do they sleep?" "Numéros 2 et 4," sobbed Philippe. Before we could stop him, Trevelyan had rushed up the smoking, creaking staircase, charred and rotten, and perilous to the last degree. Pop dashed after him, so did I; but he pushed us down. "Back, back, I say. Take care of that boy, Temple; his life's of value." Away he went again, to his own imminent peril; then we lost him in the smoke, and I give you my word, sir, my heart beat fast, like a woman's, and I'd have seen all Chamounix go to the inferno cheerfully rather than a hair of his head should have been injured, dear old fellow! The Swiss looked after him with open eyes and mouths. I believe the prevalent idea was that he was some heaven-sent St. Michael or other, and Pop grasped my arm in tremulous excitement. 66 By Jupiter! if anything happen to him I'll kill them, every man Jack of 'em, dirty goitred brutes! Bravo, here he comes! If he isn't a brick, nobody ever was!" Come he did back again down the smoking, splitting staircase, with a girl in his arms wrapped up in a blanket, and an old gentleman hastily enveloped in a voluptuous dressing-gown following them, looking decidedly astonished, and considerably peevish. A blanket is not an embellishing toilette, but nevertheless Trevelyan, I believe, liked the look of his charge, with her pale face, and her hair streaming over her shoulders, a good deal better than of many women he'd seen got up in tulle illusion and jewellery. She was clean gone in a faint; so Trevelyan carried her to the hotel across the Arve, bestowed some of his skill on her, waited till he saw the colour coming into her cheeks, and her eyelids trembling, and then, very self-denyingly, I thought, left her in the care of one of the lady tourists, with a brief "She'll do now," and set to work again with the fire brigade, and to such purpose that, as everybody knows, even if Albert Smith has not told him, the great fire of Chamounix was out and over by mid-day. All Chamounix blessed Trevelyan, not only for the help in getting the fire under, and the infusion of some degree of sanity among them, but for the preservation of their luckless chairs, and tables, and crockery, which the mountaineers couldn't have replaced in a hurry; and were ready to prostrate themselves at his feet and worship him as their tutelar saint. A questionable honour, since, as he remarked, those beatified gentlemen had not had the best reputation on earth, and had bought their canonisation cheaply, as saints have a knack of doing even to this day. I dare say the thanks that pleased him most were Florestine Luard's, who, catching sight of him when the fire was over, and she, having cast her blanket, had come out in something light blue, and very becoming, sprang towards him, seized hold of his hand, and thanked him for saving her life, with the most tremendous eloquence in her words, looks, and eyes. Trevelyan looked down on her with his smile, that is like sunshine when it comes. "Indeed, you have nothing to thank me for; any one of my friends would have been delighted to have done the same." "But I should have died without you!" He smiled again. "Well, you were rather near being scorched, perhaps; but I assure you there was nothing in my simply mounting a staircase to require your gratitude, though you more than repay me by it." "And it will not be less because you lay so little claim to it," said Florestine, very earnestly. "I see you do not like to be thanked, but you must let me say what I feel for papa and myself." At that juncture "papa" came up-a very gentlemanlike individual, who had evidently been a beau, and was now a philosopher-and who thanked Trevelyan as if he was thanking a man for a present of game, or an invitation to shoot over a manor, as they exchanged cards. "Very much obliged to you, indeed, Mr.-Mr. Trevelyan. It was very good of you to remember us, and I am deeply indebted to you for rescuing my daughter so promptly. Trevelyan! Are you any relation to the Tre velyans of Cornwall " "John Trevelyan of Chetwoode was my father's brother," said Royston. "Indeed! I know him intimately. I shot over Chetwoode last Oc tober. I am very glad to find a relative of his in our brave deliverer. I hope we shall see more of each other. Dine with me to-night, Mr. Trevelyan, and you too, Mr. Temple-at least, if one can get any dinner today in this miserable place. I always bring a few civilised edibles into these outer barbarian holes, or one would be quite famished. Florestine says she likes strawberries and goat's milk, but I must say I prefer ortolans and hock. By the way, how rarely one finds an ortolan that is not a lark! Au revoir, monsieur; you will find us migrated to the other side of the water. Your friend will come with you. What should we have done if all the hotels had been burnt?" Away went Mr. Luard, as young at seventy as if he had been forty; and Lascelles (who, being domiciled in the aforesaid hotel on the safe side of the water, had contented himself with leaning out of his window with his pipe in his mouth, and looking on at the fire) lounged up to us. "I congratulate you, Trevelyan. You've played an interesting rôle, and made a pleasant acquaintance. Uncommon lucky, 'pon my life!" "I say, Trevelyan," interrupted little Pop, who had singed off a quarter of his red whiskers, and looked, being unwashed, more like a bit of charred wood than an Englishman-"I say, ain't it jolly? I do like that girl immensely!" "I wish Millais had seen her before he'd painted The Rescue,'" said Oakes. "I don't," said Royston. "He'd have given her carroty hair and a large mouth to a certainty. He can't help himself-he's no idea of a pretty woman." "I don't admire her much," sneered Lascelles; "she's so shockingly demonstrative-so much effusion. No well-bred lady—' "Well-bred fiddlestick!" interrupted Pop, contemptuously. "When you've saved a girl's life, the least she can do is to thank you warmly. Hang it! I hate a woman who'd give you a bow, and wait to speak to you till etiquette allowed her." "Lascelles would excuse himself from saving a drowning man on the Frenchman's plea, Never been introduced,' " laughed Trevelyan. "Why was she gone so white?" asked Pop, still intent on one subject. "The smoke was on her chest. In another minute or two she'd have been suffocated." "Didn't she look charming asleep?" "My dear boy, I can't go in for all your ecstasies. I never get the steam up so strong-it wastes coals for nothing. With you, I like the look of her, but she owes much more to expression than feature. Lascelles here would adore her father. When I woke him up, he only said, 'A fire? How annoying! If you would wake Miss Luard, I will rise and dress. I am sorry to give you so much trouble.' He's a very courteous old fellow, but decidedly of Lascelles's quiescent school, wrapping his dressinggown round him, and letting others go to the devil as they please. Well, I think I'll go and wash my hands. May I use your room, Oakes? Won't you come, Pop? You look uncommonly like an energetic chimneysweep done in sepia. Temple should take us all just as we are now, Lascelles representing the only clean and philosophic man among us, who refused to scorch his fingers at other people's fires." Trevelyan and I washed and redressed ourselves, and went to dine with Mr. Luard, the only man probably who thought of a dinner-party at Chamounix that day. We found them in one of the long, low rooms, with such delicacies as Luard's gourmet foresight had induced him to bring to Chamounix, and Miss Florestine standing in the window, very daintily got up for a young lady out touring. She was not beautiful, or anything of that, but she had a thorough-bred look about her, and something brilliant and séduisant in her manners and appearance; there was a radiance in her eyes, a smile on her mignonne mouth, and an intellectuality in her face that made her very attractive, after the three classes of bread-and-butter misses, artificial coquettes, and domestic drudges, into which women seem divided. She was the youngest of the family; her sisters were married, and her father, who had not much money, and spent what he had on himself, lived here and there-six months in Rome, nine in Paris, three in Baden, and so on-as the fancy took him. He was kind to his daughter, but cared no more for her than the chamois on the hills, being an agreeable laissez-aller, profoundly selfish old gentleman, with his affections centred on Steinberg, écarté, and himself. "Will you have a game, Mr. Temple ?" said he, after our impromptu dinner. "I always bring a couple of packs with me into these out-of-theworld places, so that if I meet with any rational man, we can have a little quiet play." |