ALL THE YEAR ROUND. A WEEKLY JOURNAL. CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED HOUSEHOLD WORD S. No. 276.] SATURDAY, AUGUST 6, 1864. QUITE ALONE. BOOK THE SECOND: WOMANHOOD. CHAPTER XLII. LILY IS SEIZED. LILY was in haste now to leave those Elysian Fields, which had exercised so strange a fascination over her. She was haunted by the eyes of that painted woman. She wandered about for full an hour she knew not whither; dazed by the coloured lamps, the crowds, the shouts, the braying of bands; the hoarse rhetoric of the mountebanks, the roaring of the cannon, which were to usher in the fireworks. She sought vainly for an outlet from the saturnalia; but the crowd compassed her about, and hemmed her in, and on its remotest borders there seemed to be more shows and more crowds. She was almost in despair when, thinking to gain the Place de la Concorde, and in view, even, of the great obelisk, which from base to apex was one blaze of light, she found herself wedged in a mass of sight-seers who were gathered round the carriage of a quack doctor. Lily had never seen the Elisir d'Amore, but there, as large as life was Doctor Dulcamara. He had deviated a little from the costume on which the late admirable Lablache conferred well-merited fame, inasmuch as over his wellpowdered periwig he wore a Roman helmet of brass, with a tremendous plume of crimson horsehair; but the scarlet coat, the frills, the ruffles, the top-boots, the buckskin, the watch and pendulous seals, the snuff-box, the signetring, and the gold-headed cane, all belonged to the opera. He was an impudent vagabond, at best; but had the flow of flashy verbiage common to his tribe, and scores of hands were speedily extended from the crowd beneath him, holding francs and half francs to be exchanged for the worthless nostrums he extolled so highly. His calèche, and the white horse that drew it, to boot, were quite a bower of Chinese lanterns; and in the rumble sat his servant, who was attired as a drum-major in the Imperial Guard, whose business it was to be the butt of his master's jokes, and grind the barrel-organ when Dulcamara was out of breath. The under quack was a fellow of cadaverous traits and discontented mien, and appeared heartily ashamed of his position. He had reason to be. He was [PRICE 2d. the real doctor. His diploma and license to practise were duly certified by the Faculty of Paris, and without them Dulcamara would have been hauled to prison as a swindler: but the genuine physician being poor and idle, and dissolute and drunken, the quack was content to pay him so much a year to use his diploma; and he filled up his leisure time by grinding the barrel-organ. "On demande un médecin pour voyager." Have you never seen that advertisement in Les Petites Affiches? It means that Dulcamara the quack is in want of an organgrinder with a diploma. رو Approach, my children," the mountebank was bawling. Approach, lose no time. I have but a few moments to bestow upon you. I am wanted elsewhere. Kings and princesses sigh for my presence. Spanish hidalgos, who have eaten too much olla podrida-English milords, agonised by the spleen-refuse to be comforted without me. Grand Biribi-(this to the melancholy man with the diploma)-strike up the chanson à boire from Robert le Diable. After that we shall have something to say about the Imperial Soporific and Atomic Tincture of Honolulu." An hour ago, in her recklessness, Lily might have been for a moment detained by the loquacity of this bombastic humbug. But it was too late now. The awful consciousness of her miserable position had come upon her; and some inward voice kept thundering in her ears that she was in danger-from she knew not, what; and that she must fly-she knew not where. Exerting more strength than she had imagined she possessed, she contrived, at last, to disengage herself from the throng, and to reach a space which was less encumbered. She leant up against a tree, sick and faint. Her poor eyes were blinded with tears. Her strength had broken down. Her enterprise seemed to her, now, impossible of accomplishment. That dreadful fever was racking her head again. Heaven be merciful to her-what had she done, and what was she to do? "Pretty little demoiselle, you seem ill," a voice behind her said. She had heard the voice before. It was that of the man who had declared that all weapons and umbrellas must be left a the door. She turned her head, trembling, and saw the Italian waxwork showman. VOL. XI. 276 "Aha! you recognise me, then ?" conti- in a resplendent bouquet, in which Liberty was nued Signor Ventimillioni. "Do you know that I have been looking for you this halfhour?" "I do not know you," faltered Lily. "Good night!" "Not so fast, picciolina mia. We are not to part in such a hurry." And the Italian laid his hand on Lily's arm. "Let me go! let me go!" cried the terrified girl. "Let me go home." "Precisely, that is where I am going to take you. There is a lady at home who is expecting you most anxiously. You have kept her waiting a very long time. Whole years. Home indeed. Aha! you little runaway!" He tightened his grasp. He passed the other hand round her waist. Lily tried to scream, when, suddenly some loose garment was thrown over her head, and another pair of hands were clasped over her mouth. to have her annual apotheosis, and the twenty. seventh, twenty-eighth, and twenty-ninth of July to be made glorious for ever. They were now walking by the water-side. That it was the Seine Lily knew, for she could see the lamps on the Pont Louis Seize, and the Chamber of Deputies flaring with lampions. They stopped before a mean wooden building, having seemingly but one window, through whose dirty panes a light feebly glimmered. The Italian pushed at the door, which gave way, and they passed in. There was a narrow passage, and by the light of a swinging cresset Lily could see a woman who was rushing towards her-a woman huddled in an old plaid shawl, whose hair was dishevelled, and whose face was painted. It was the Wild Woman of the Elysian Fields. CHAPTER XLIII. THE SULTAN IN LONDON. "Enough of this trifling," grumbled very hoarsely a man who had been lurking a few WHAT is a year? Psha! what are ten? paces behind the Italian during his parley with When you are young, a year seems a very long Lily. 'Come, my Phidias of the painting-time. That last month before you are twentyroom, bring the young toad along, or some sergent de ville will be passing by." 66 "Don't smother her, Demosthène," remonstrated the Italian. "Take the cloak off her head, and your hands off her mouth, and let us try to make her listen to reason. Des convenances, mon garçon; n'oublions jamais les conve nances." The second man did, sulkily, as he was bid, but he planted his great hands on Lily's shoulders, and kept them there. The girl was too terrified to speak; but palpitated in the grasp of the two ruffians like a captured bird. "Listen to me, ma mie," went on the Italian, putting his face so close to Lily that she could feel his heard upon her cheek; "you are coming home with us. You are our prisoner, if you like that tournure de phrase better. Come quietly, and no harm will be done you; but dare to call for assistance, and I will put this pretty little bodkin into you.” He drew, as quick as lightning, a long knife that glittered in the lamplight. Lily saw that she was lost. She could hear the distant hum of the crowd, and the clanging of the music; but the spot was solitary, and she was beyond all human help. Will you be quiet, then ?" the Italian asked, half caressingly, half threateningly. Lily murmured a faint affirmative. "That's right. Now, Demosthène, let us take her between us. Don't forget that little bright bodkin of mine, little one." The two strong men hooked their arms in those of the girl, and led her rapidly away. They plunged into an alley between the trees, and which seemed entirely deserted. But as though in mockery at her utter wretchedness and state of bondage, she saw gleaming from behind the tufted trees the first sparkle of the fireworks, those fireworks which were to culminate one, or before you leave school, or get your commission, or pass your examination for the civil service, the month it takes for your moustaches to grow, how it lags, how it loiters, how every moment seems to have its feet clogged by leaden weights! Do our best as we may to squander the days in recklessness and prodigality, what a weary time elapses before we are thirty years of age, and fogies cease to tell us that, as young men, we should defer to the opinion of our elders. Never was there, perhaps, a sane woman of twenty-nine who passed herself off as thirty-one; but how often does a young middle-aged man slily add on a year or two? But hey! when the mezzo cammen is reached, how swiftly the years fly! We lose count. Sixty-two melts into sixty-three, and that into sixty-four, without our special notice. Things pass as in a dream. The day before yesterday, why, it was eighteen months ago. Our newlyformed acquaintance, why we have known him these eight years. The far-off goal of grey hairs, and toothlessness, and the tomb, why we are close upon it. It was a tedious pull to Tattenham Corner; it is a lightning rush to the judge's stand, even if we come in with the ruck. { A year had passed since the events previ- ! ously narrated. Madame de Kergolay was dead. She passed away very peacefully, leaving the bulk of that which she possessed to her beloved grand-nephew, Edgar Greyfaunt. It was not much, but it was a capital to be turned into ready money, and that was all the young man wanted. It is due to the memory of the good old lady in Paris to state that she freely forgave poor little Lily before her death. Her ire, indeed, against the girl had lasted but a very short time. She had been shocked and paincu by her disappearance, and had made every effort to gain tidings of her, but in vain. By degrees the vengeful pride which had led her to crushi Lily with cruel words, because she had dared to Edgar Greyfaunt, after passing a decent love the sultan, her grand-nephew, gave way to period in retirement at Aix-les-Bains-his greather natural kindness and softness of heart. She aunt had died towards the close of the summer wept and bewailed the fugitive. She would-where his exceedingly fashionable mourning, have sacrificed much to recover her. She acknowledged that Lily's love had been blameless. But she was gone, and would return no more. The abbé, as in duty bound, informed Mademoiselle Marcassin of Lily's flight, and of the unavailing steps that had been taken to discover her hiding place. The Marcassin did not take the intelligence much to heart. .. "I expected it," she remarked, coldly. "I, who am the greatest sufferer by the absconding of this vaurienne, would not spend three francs ten sous in an advertisement in the Petites Affiches to get her back. There are cats and cockatoos whom one is glad to lose, Monsieur l'Abbé. You and your Madame de Kergolay were entichés de cette petite friponne. Now she has robbed you as she robbed me, and has doubtless fled to join the swindler, her mother, with whom for years she has probably been in secret correspondence. Ah, ces Anglaises, ces Anglaises! c'est de la perfidie à en croire à la fin du monde. You had inuch better, instead of petting and spoiling her, have put her into a Maison de Discipline, where she would have been fed on bread and water, and whipped twice a week. The Sœurs Grises have an excellent institution at Auteuil. You say that she did not take her clothes with her. Has your noble duenna counted her spoons since the flight of her darling?" his jet studs and wrist-buttons, and the coal-black steed he rode, were deservedly admired, came back to Paris, settled accounts with Madame de Kergolay's notary-whom he accused, at many stages of their business transactions, of robbing him, and who did him the honour to remark, as he handed him the last packet of thousand-franc notes accruing from the dead lady's succession, that with a more heartless young man he had never come in contact-and called in an upholsterer from the Rue St. Louis, to whom, after a parley of ten minutes, he sold en bloc the entire furniture and fittings of his relative's apartments in the Marais: tapestry, china, pictures and all. "I do not want this rococo stuff," he said, candidly. "I was in England not many months since, and am returning there; and if I require brics-à-bracs I can get as many as I need in Wardour-street at cheaper rates than here." The upholsterer handed three thousand franes to the Sultan Grey faunt, and sent a couple of vans to carry away all the poor old lady's penates, which were worth six thousand at least. Big men in blouses dragged the faded Cupids, and shepherdesses, and bewigged gentlemen with the cross of St. Louis, down stairs. Gentil Bernard lay for a time in the gutter, and Babet la Bouquetière was calmly contemplated by a chiffonnier. A part of the furniture went very soon to decorate the rooms of a lorette, in the Rue Taitbout. When she had quarrelled with the English milord, through her over-weening partiality for the Brazilian coffee-planter, who turned out to be a swindler from Hamburg, she had a lavage, or sale of her knick-knacks, and some "Bah!" sneered the inflexible Marcassin. of Madame de Kergolay's penates were sold to "You take the whole world to be inhabited by the Jews, and some were bought by painters to candidates for the Prize of Virtue. Une fameuse increase the "properties" of their studios withal. Rosière elle ferait celle-là! The trumpery little Then in process of time they got burnt, or thing was innately and incorrigibly bad. Mau- broken up, or pawned and sold and pawned vaise herbe, I tell you, Monsieur l'Abbé mau-again, or exported to America or Australia. Which is the way of the world, and not at all uncommon. "I don't think the poor little child is dishonest," the abbé urged, în mild deprecation. He was a good man, after all, and much troubled in his mind about Lily. vaise herbe." And Madame de Kergolay died. To her two faithful servants she left a small but adequate But the first van-load of goods had scarcely provision, much to the distaste of Edgar; but left the house of the deceased before Edgar of the rest he was sole legatee. Vieux Sablons Greyfaunt was snugly ensconced in the coupé and Prudence faded away almost as quietly as of the diligence on his way to Calais. He began their mistress from the stage. The old man to think his mourning very hot and shabby lookdid not survive madame many months. He ex-ing. He must have an entirely new wardrobe pressed, before he died, his wish to be buried in Père la Chaise, in the same grave with his beloved mistress, but crosswise, at her feet, as became an ancient and faithful but humble servitor. The abbé did his best to have his wish fulfilled; but there were difficulties in the way: the administration was not propitious, and Vieux Sablons had to be buried as many millions of his forerunners had been buried before him. It did not so much matter, perhaps. He was bound, let us hope, to a country where there is but One Master, in whose eyes superiors and servitors are alike. when he reached London. Those French tailors did not know how to fit an English gentleman. Willis or Nugee should be honoured with his patronage. He was about to assume his proper position in society. He was destined to shine here, that was certain. He had an ancient name, a handsome presence, and a fortune. Yes, quite a fortune. In a letter of credit on a London banking firm he was entitled to draw for no less a sum than five thousand pounds sterling. That was his entire capital-a hundred and twenty-five thousand francs. It sounded magnificent. Reduced to English sterling, it never had not quite so sonorous a ring, but still with foreigner to be welcomed in Great Grand-street. a great deal of spending in it. In his whole As a rule, Pomeroy (represented by a sharp life the sultan had never grasped so much Swiss named Jean Baptiste Constant, the money. His treasure seemed to him inexhaus- successor to the original proprietor; he having tible. He would live largely, luxuriously he retired on a fortune) only took in princes; and, thought, but then he would be adding to his equally as a rule, princes, when they came to capital. Was there not the turf; might not he, town, were taken by their couriers to Pomea young gentleman of fashion and fortune, make roy's. Mr. J. B. Constant (he was a figure there, and win thousands by betting? called Monsieur now, and was supposed to be How much would it cost to have a stud of race- a naturalised British subject, and a staunch horses? And play! there was play. Hitherto, Protestant, the which did not prevent his certainly, he had but rarely had a run of luck; entertaining the Sheikh of the Soudan, who was a but Fortune favours the bold, and he would have Mussulman, and the Abbeokuta Envoy, who was no need to distress himself about the loss of a black and a pagan, and was with difficulty few paltry hundreds of francs. And, if the persuaded from celebrating his "grand custom" worst came to the worst, was he not an artist? over a footbath full of blood in the back drawHad he not a commanding genius? Most com- ing-room; besides any stray Romanist or manding. Certainly, at no very distant date Russo-Greek grandees who came that way)—Mr. the portals of the English Royal Academy must J. B. Constant owed much of the success which he open for his admission. But there would be had hitherto enjoyed to his extended connexion plenty of time to take up with painting again. among the useful class of travelling servants It was the last resource. To tell truth, he felt known as couriers, who, when out of an engageslightly ashamed of the easel and maulstick, now ment, or off duty, were always sure of a hearty that he was an independent gentleman, with his reception, a good cigar, and a glass of curaçao, pocket full of money. After all, it was but a or other comforting stimulant in Pomeroy's base mechanical employment this painting. How still-room. The recommendations of an exvillanously the turpentine and megelp smelt. perienced member of the courier profession, one How difficult it was to find subjects; what a Franz Stimm had been especially useful to Mr. bore it was to have to make sketches. And Constant, and he was grateful to him accordthose troublesome models-they cost ever so ingly. much money, and the colour merchant was Mr. Edgar Greyfaunt de Kergolay was therealways dunning for his bill. Those envious ill-fore, as was only due to so high and mighty a conditioned fellows the critics, too, who made impertinent observations in print for which, if they got their deserts, they should be caned, and who drew no distinction between a picture painted by the son of a cobbler and one that was the work of a descendant of the barons of old. Of course Edgar put up at the Ship when he landed at Dover-the Lord Warden not being then built-and although he had the largest suite of apartments next to a Russian grandduke who had crossed with him, the Ship was several sizes too small for the Sultan Greyfaunt. He would have posted to London had not the railway just been opened. He could never have endured a vulgar stage-coach. He had plenty of friends, and some few distant connexions in London. It was known that he was Madame de Kergolay's heir. Nobody knew much about the old lady's circumstances, nor did the sultan feel called upon to enlighten society with any particularity. It was noised abroad that he had inherited a large fortune; nor did he take any special pains to contradict the rumour. If people chose to deceive themselves, why should they not be deceived? A convenient train of reasoning, which has been pursued in all countries, these five thousand years about. So where, when the sultan arrived in the British metropolis, should his highness alight but at Pomeroy's Hotel in Great Grand-street, Grosvenor-square? He drove there straight from the terminus, and was received with much distinction. One had need be a distinguished prince, made much of at this patrician hostelry. On his cards he called himself Greyfaunt de Kergolay; and his name was surmounted by a neatly engraved and prettily spiked coronet. During the lifetime of his great-aunt, and in Paris, he had affected a disdain for his foreign lineage, and would own no blue blood but that of the Greyfaunts of Lancashire; but now that she was dead, and he had got her money, he thought there was no harm in hinting that he was the representative of a noble house from beyond the sea. Perhaps he found the Greyfaunts of Lancashire, like many other country families as noble, somewhat at a discount in London society, which, following the usual fashion, interested itself with what was passing on the extreme horizon in preference to that which was going on beneath its very nose. At all events, the lofty Edgar, when he was addressed as Viscount, did not resent the error with any great acrimony. His old companions called him Greyfaunt; but many newly-found ones in cosmopolitan and diplomatic circles, spoke to him and asked him to dinner as De Kergolay. Under that title he was entered in Mr. J. B. Constant's books; and as De Kergolay he was inscribed, much more legibly, and, indeed, indelibly, in Mr. J. B. Constant's mind. Thus, and in despite of his English face and tongue, being accounted that which imperfectly educated persons are apt to term a "foreign swell," Edgar-you may call him, and I will call him by either of his surnames indifferently -was naturally introduced to the Pilgrims Club in Park-lane, at which, as everybody knows, or ought to know, the ambassadors, the that the wild Wangdoodlums do not eat human flesh when roast hippopotamus is procurable; and that they do knock out their front teeth to be the better able to whistle their native airsif the savants and the illustrious strangers who were made free of the P., and nearly threw the waiters into fits by spitting on the carpet of the morning-room, were sometimes of mean extraction, and occasionally of coarse manners, and now and then humbugs, the great principle of exclusiveness was at least outwardly vindicated. Once a Pilgrim always a Pilgrim; and the gown and scrip and sandalled shoon covered a multitude of sins. : Yes the Sultan Greyfaunt had found his proper groove in life, and became it admirably. The groove was anointed with the most delicately scented unguent: pommade divine, at least. It was a groove beginning very high up indeed in the social scale, and you slid down it, as down that famous One Tree Hill of antiquity: Avernus. There are always a good many candidates up at the Pilgrims' Club-where gentlemen's names are put down when they are infants in arms, with a view to their entering the club at their grand climacteric;-but as failures in one of the three grand and essential requisites are sometimes unavoidable, the rejection of candidates at the Pilgrims' Club (which is, I think, near the Piccadilly end of Park-lane) is not by any means of rare occurrence. Indeed, they say there is more blackballing at the P. (the After a time, Edgar left Pomeroy's Hotel. affectionate diminutive of Pilgrim) than at any He did not complain of the costliness of its other club in London: always excepting the accommodation-(I think a mutton-chop costs Ostrich in Sandys-street, Deseret-square. There, a guinea there, and a bottle of soda-water threeyou know, they pilled Sir Eurasius Quihi for and-sixpence, and I know a one-horse brougham his loose notions on the subject of suttee, and is two pounds ten an hour); but, intending to all but ostracised brave old Admiral Sindbad, reside permanently in London, it was, of course, because he was known to maintain that curry idle to remain in an hotel. So Mr. Constant, was better without chutnee than with it. For whom the sultan deigned to patronise in the distinctions must be made, it is plain, to keep most benignant manner, found for his illussociety select which would otherwise degene-trious guest a handsome suite of chambers in rate into a mere anarchical Odd Fellows' gather- St. James's-place; supplied him with a perfect ing of the most ungenteel description: and it is a good and holy thing to be exclusive. Thus, as you see, the Pilgrims had secured the very cream of the cream in their English memberhood. pearl of a washerwoman, who enamelled shirts, iced white waistcoats, frosted pocket-handkerchiefs, and turned cravats into snow-flakes in the most beautiful manner; and, in addition, recommended him a body-servant-a very jewel of a body-servant-a young man by the name of Hummelhausen, said to be a distant relation of the proprietor of Pomeroy's, who shaved, dressed hair, varnished boots, compounded curious restoratives on the mornings after heavy dinners, found out the addresses of people whom he had seen but once in his life, and then only on the Serpentine's banks, played on the guitar, and was worth his weight in gold generally. Well, and the foreigners. One must make allowances for foreigners, of course. If Baron Burstoff, Minister Plenipotentiary from Crim Tartary, had formerly been simply a Hebrew money-changer at Frankfort-on-the-Maine (the letters we used to have from him about the Imperial High Dutch lottery, and urging us forthwith to invest in that swindle, and win a castle on the Rhine, the title of Count, and the entire library of the late lamented Puffendorff!); if old Professor Stradivarius from Jena, the Could there be a more fortunate youth distinguished philologist and translator of the than the Sultan Greyfaunt, with his health, his poems of Saadi into the Zummerzetzhire dialect, figure, his genius, his ready money, his pearl of and the Post-Office London Directory of eighteen a laundress, his jewel of a body-servant, and his hundred and forty-two into Syro-Chaldaic, was coronet upon his card? His name was down at the son of a tripe-dealer at Magdeburg, and the P. He often dined there. His election had, in early life followed the humble trade of a was considered certain, owing to the influence tailor; and if that famous traveller, Marcus of Sir Timotheus O'Boy, that great collector of Rolopolus, Ph.D., R.G.S., &c. &c., had been musical instruments, who is said to have nine assistant-keeper of a wild beast show (travel- of Father Schmidt's organs down at his place ling, and occasionally varied by the beefeater in Devonshire, and the original anvil beaten by business outside), a dealer in stuffed birds in the Harmonious Blacksmith in his smokingthe vicinity of Goodman's-fields, and the pro-room in Curzon-street. Some of the best prietor of a sailors' boarding-house at Gibraltar, houses in London were open to Edgar. Some before he discovered the site of the lost city of of the prettiest faces in London smiled at him Alesia, brought back the original pleadings of from carriage windows. "Oh king! live for the Abderites in the great lawsuit of the ass's ever!" cries the Eastern adulator. The Sultan shadow, and made it manifest to the entire world | Greyfaunt would have been but very slightly |