his enemy; and they mentioned that they had heard things; but declined to say what they had heard. This determined him upon going. As he was crossing the street opposite Brackenbury's door, he saw that gentleman standing with folded arms at the drawing-room window, regarding his approach attentively. Algar was for the moment deterred by the expression of his countenance, but would not be dismayed from fulfilling a resolution to which it had cost him some effort to bring himself. He knocked, and was shown into the parlour, where Mrs. Brackenbury, after a few minutes, joined him. She received him with cordiality, but with extreme embarrassment. She replied to his inquiries after Brackenbury by stating that he had long been very ill; that he was so nervous, irritable, and excited, that she sometimes feared she knew not what; and that she would not have him disturbed just now for the world. Algar explained what had brought him thither, and earnestly begged to be permitted to call again, that he might shake his old friend and master by the hand. She heard him in the greatest distress, and when he had concluded, burst into tears. At this moment the door opened, and Brackenbury entered. He made towards his wife as though about to speak to her, but stopped half-way, and regarding Algar sternly, pointed towards him, and said, "Why is this gentleman here?" My love! this is Mr. Algar." "Madam, my eyes are good enough to see that. I did not ask who is this gentleman; I inquired why is he here?" Algar knew not what to say. There was no wildness of look or manner in the other, or he should have supposed him mad; yet it was clearly hopeless to think of propitiating him at this moment. needful, however, to say something. "I called, sir It was "At the wrong house, sir; you called upon one who wishes not to see or know you. Your presence here is an intrusion. Begone!" Algar was moving to the door, when Mrs. Brackenbury laid a detaining hand upon his arm. "This must not be," she said. strange mystery be cleared up. "For mercy's sake, Leonard, let this Why should you hate him? What has he ever said? what has he ever done ?" "Nothing in the world, madam," returned Brackenbury, "to supply a reason for your making yourself ridiculous. See, madam, how your young friend, the great man-the great man, madam-smiles at your impertinent intercession." "You wrong me, sir, upon my soul you do," exclaimed Henry. "He wrongs me, dear madam." "Let him go, Catherine, he is a genius!" cried Brackenbury, and sat down, repeating the words in a tone that his wife could not hear, and with an expression of face she could not see. The But so frightful had been the mode of uttering these three words, that Mrs. Brackenbury at once released her hold of Algar's arm. secret was suddenly revealed, and she hastened to the door after Henry, and clasping her hands upon his shoulder, laid her head upon it and wept. "Dear Henry," she said at length, in a broken voice, "you were born to be a great painter. I thought so from the first. My best wishes go with you, and shall always attend you. But leave us-leave us, and never come near us more. And yet should the time ever come-but in mercy's name leave us now." It would be difficult to describe Algar's state of mind when he reached home. Never had his feelings been so touched. He was cut to the heart. He, too, could have wept, but like most men of deep feelings, tears were suppressed by agony. He took his picture to the light, and gazed at it long and earnestly. Whether he approved it as much as before, we know not: but he said with bitterness—" I would have had his praise,-why not? Why should not this be? The praise of one who knows what is good,-if this be so-the praise of the man who taught me how to paint well." He then returned it to the easel, and struck it with the back of his hand. He continued, "Why should men pursue art, or aught beside on this earth, if they are to reap hatred from those they best love? The neglect of the world-criticism, censure, stricture, however coarse, unjust, or malignant, these I could bear-they are easily borne; but this I cannot bear. I may live, and I may do greater things; but the bloom, the freshness, the fragrance of life has departed for ever." Whether Brackenbury had heard the parting words of his wife to Algar for she had left the parlour door open-and thence suspected her discovery of his feelings towards his former pupil, the name of which he would not even now have owned was envy, or that he was ashamed of such unworthy treatment of one who had never wronged him-so it was, that his malady, if such it were, from this day took a different form. He was now not captious or irritable, but ever sunk in the deepest dejection. He would take long solitary walks, and return home exhausted, and would discourage talk or reject offered attentions, but with touching gentleness. In matters that do not directly affect his conduct towards her, a wife can only pity; she cannot despise the moral weakness of her husband; but this pity is something most afflicting to bear, to a woman of understanding and sensibility. Catherine began to watch him with the most fearful solicitude. One day he seemed calmer than usual, and his wife coming into the room, he said softly, but with abruptness, "It seems to me, Kate, that I have been under a delusion these two years or more. Harry Algar never wronged me." His wife could not speak. He continued. "I met Lord Montacute yesterday, and he tells me Harry has a picture in the Exhibition, about the merits of which the best judges are at variance. He does not like it, he said, adding he was always proud to be of my opinion on subjects of art, and that I never spoke in favour of my pupil. But I never said a word against him." "But perhaps your known estrangement," observed Mrs. Brackenbury, "might have led his lordship to infer that you had no great opinion of Harry." "No, no. His lordship is a fool. I should not wonder if the picture is a fine one, and if it is, I shall tell Harry so." "How great that will be of you!" exclaimed Catherine, seizing his hand. She paused. "I mean how proud you will make Harry, and well may he be proud of your approbation." Brackenbury compressed his lips and gulped down his emotion. "I will see the "He is very ill-dangerously ill,—I hear," he said. picture this afternoon. No. You must not accompany me." He went. It was far advanced in the season, and late in the afternoon. There were few visitors in the room. He had leisure to study the picture. It was a work of exquisite genius in its conception, and in execution of the most consummate art. As he gazed upon it more and more, his eye entangled with admiration, his taste enchanted and elevated, all the baseness that had glided into his moral being, or that he had taken into it, was cast out; and the love of the beautiful and the true, the old love of majesty, purity, and grace in the noble profession which both had followed, once more took possession of his soul. The subject of the picture was the meeting of Esau and Jacob. There were the wives, and children, and handmaidens of the one, and the armed followers of the other, and there were the two contrasted in the centre. There was the adroit, the dexterous man of the world, who had cheated his brother out of his birthright and his blessing, bowing lowly before the wild hunter, the generous, the forgiving,-who was about to raise him to his embrace, and to bestow upon him the kiss of peace. Brackenbury knew not how this subject touched his own case; Esau being a type of genius, Jacob of talent. He retired from the room slowly, his eyes yet lingering on the picture; but once out of the building, a flutter seized his nerves, and his heart palpitated with irregular pulsations. He must hasten at once -at once-and pay his tribute, his homage to the painter, and entreat him to forgive and forget the past. He had no presentiment of evil when the woman opened the door, but she concluded from the expression of his countenance and from his excited manner that he knew what he had come to see. She led him up stairs, therefore, and took her formal station at the head of the coffin, in which lay the most dreadful of human sights-one whom we have loved, whom we have wronged, and who has died without a pronounced forgiveness. Brackenbury could not speak. For a time he knew not that he had life, or that he was with the dead. He motioned to the woman to retire, but she misconstrued the action, and drew aside the coffin lid. Algar lay at rest indeed; there could be no question; at peace with all the world, that could not be denied; but true rest and peace never wore the aspect of the dead. He looked as all who have gone before him-as all one day must look-as one into whose ear has been breathed the word that all must hear; as a depository of the eternal secret that will be kept. There was the brow, more sharply intellectual than in life, that had once conceived its visions of beauty; there was the accessary hand that had turned them into shape. Where is thy envy, or thy triumph now? Brackenbury never painted another picture. MY UNCLE'S WILL. WHAT an extremely useful class of the community are uncles! And here let me explain, that if any coarse-minded medical student or legal student, or newly-joined cornet of "heavies," or young gentleman fresh from Cambridge, or any other fast man of any other denomination, should imagine that by uncles I intend to designate those highly respectable tradesmen who advance money on the deposit of personal property, and stick three gold balls over their doors-such fast man is egregiously mistaken. I mean the genuine and veritable brothers of our fathers or mothers as the case may be. What would the writers of comedies and farces do without uncles? Where would they get their funny old gentlemen-rich, choleric, apoplectic, and given to "strange oaths?" Who could they find to "dthat young rascal," that interesting compound of good looks, white ducks, and tendencies to swindling-the gay young lover, and hero of the piece? Who would help him out of his scrapes by a cheque (not check) in time? Who would swear to cut him off with a shilling, and then give him a fortune just after the young gentleman has "done him" out of a fifty or a hundred? Fathers wouldn't do—a man can't decently swindle his own father, or call him a "close-fisted old villain," even in a comedy or a farce. But an uncle-c'est autre chose-an entirely different pair of boots altogether. Reader, I had an uncle ! And let me beg you to picture me at this moment raising my eyes to the ceiling, casting them down again to the floor, shaking my head very slowly, and letting off a sigh strong enough to blow out the four wicks of a Palmer's magnum- candle, as I reflect that I have no longer such a blessing left. However, it falls to the lot of few men to be blessed with more than one such uncle as mine. He was old, rich, and unmarried-which I take to be the essential ingredients of the true "avuncular essence," if the reader will pardon the term. As for one who is either poor, or young, or married-he may be your father's or your mother's brother, but he is no more an uncle," in my meaning of the term, than a penny Havannah can be strictly termed a cigar. My uncle had an extreme fondness for me, which I am disposed to think a very pardonable weakness on his part. It was through his means that I left that abominable academy of the Rev. Dionysius Slowcoach, with its scraggy mutton "stick-jaw" puddings, and fourteen hours' daily work, and was sent to Eton, where I was fagged in one sense, and took things easily in another, learnt nothing but the dead languages-as a gentleman should do—and was fed like a Christian. It was through him that I went to the University, took my degree without honours, and got into debt to the tune of two thousand pounds, which he discharged, with only a ten days' show of obduracy and denunciations. Lastly, it was through him that I was saved from the abominations of an attorney's office to which my father was about to consign me, and only condemned in place of it to eat bad dinners in the Temple, and qualify myself for a barrister's wig and gown. During the time that I was engaged in the last-named occupation, I, of course, formed many acquaintances among "Temple men." Perhaps I may favour the reader with a chapter on that remarkable class of individuals some day. But in the meantime I have only to refer to one of them-Bob Weasel-who became a great friend of mine, and introduced me to his family. This consisted of Papa and Mamma Weasel, Miss Julia Weasel, Miss Kate Weasel, and the aforesaid Bob. Old Weasel was a mahogany merchant or something of the kind. I am not very au fait at "commercials." Bob was his only son, and his eldest child-a decent fellow, but a bit of a spoon. Julia was the elder of the girls, and of a decidedly romantic turn. She kept an album, and made all her friends contribute. Bob had told her that I was "a devilish clever fellow" (which may be true, though I don't know how he found it out), and I was immediately bored to write some in the book-original, of course. I was rather savage; but I inscribed the following: As passing through the churchyard drear, You start to read a name once dear; HORATIO SPENSER TOMKINS. verses Julia pronounced them lovely, and so original; Bob thought them wonderful, and Miss Kate bit her lips and giggled sub rosa. Miss Kate, however, deserves a little bit of description all to herself. She was a pretty, dark-haired, blue-eyed girl, with pouting, laughing lips, a nose slightly retroussé, an easy, graceful figure, and a foot and a hand to make a sculptor rave. She was clever, quick and witty, almost saucy, without being pert or ill-bred. She was well, it is of very little use beating about the bush, for the reader sees through the matter already, I was desperately in love with Kate Weasel at about the second interview; indeed I won't swear that it was not the first. Nor was I long in doubt that I had, in turn, made a very decided impression. Mr. Weasel, sen., having been duly informed of my prospects by his son, had evidently made up his mind that I should not be a bad investment for his daughter; but, like a prudent man, he wanted to get rid of the elder one first. Miss Julia, however, with her "lint-white locks," pink cheeks and penchant for poetry, was by no means suited to my notions of a wife. Öld Weasel was eternally dunning her perfections into my ears in vain. I thought the pretty Kate worth a dozen of her sister, though she quizzed me to death, and showed my album verses before my face to every one who could detect the "swindle." However, we flirted away most determinedly. It was not such easy work to flirt with Kate as with most girls. She was so abominably anti-sentimental, that after a pleasant little scene of banter between us, just as the conversation seemed gliding into a tender mood, and a little touch of romance or poetry forced itself upon my mind, just as I was beginning a pretty sentence, which ought to have made her look bashful and conscious, she would interrupt me with, "Shall I fetch Julia's album and pen and ink, Mr. Tomkins?" Confound those verses! How I wished I had never written them! |