led by an untoward blow across the knuckles, ignominiously
yielded himself prisoner, was tried by a court-martial, and sentenced to
be shot! To all this rubbish did Darrell incline his patient ear,--not
encouraging, not interrupting, but sometimes stifling a sigh at the
sound of Lionel's merry laugh, or the sight of his fair face, with
heightened glow on his cheeks, and his long silky hair, worthy the name
of lovelocks, blown by the wind from the open loyal features, which
might well have graced the portrait of some youthful Cavalier. On
bounded the Spanish jennet, on rattled the boy rider. He had left school
now, in his headlong talk; he was describing his first friendship with
Frank Vance, as a lodger at his mother's; how example fired him, and he
took to sketch-work and painting; how kindly Vance gave him lessons; how
at one time he wished to be a painter; how much the mere idea of such
a thing vexed his mother, and how little she was moved when he told her
that Titian was of a very ancient family, and that Francis I., archetype
of gentleman, visited Leonardo da Vinci's sick-bed; and that Henry VIII.
had said to a pert lord who had snubbed Holbein, "I can make a lord any
day, but I cannot make a Holbein!" how Mrs. Haughton still confounded
all painters in the general image of the painter and the plumber who had
cheated her so shamefully in the renewed window-sashes and redecorated
walls, which Time and the four children of an Irish family had made
necessary to the letting of the first floor. And these playful allusions
to the maternal ideas were still not irreverent, but contrived so as
rather to prepossess Darrell in Mrs. Haughton's favour by bringing out
traits of a simple natural mother, too proud, perhaps, of her only son,
not caring what she did, how she worked, so that he might not lose caste
as a born Haughton. Darrell understood, and nodded his head approvingly.
"Certainly," he said, speaking almost for the first time, "Fame confers
a rank above that of gentlemen and of kings; and as soon as she issues
her patent of nobility, it matters not a straw whether the recipient be
the son of a Bourbon or of a tallow-chandler. But if Fame withhold her
patent; if a well-born man paint aldermen, and be not famous (and I dare
say you would have been neither a Titian nor a Holbein),--why, he might
as well be a painter and plumber, and has a better chance even of bread
and cheese by standing to his post as gentleman. Mrs. Hau