envelope across to Arthur Lygon, who of course saw, as he knew he should see, “Eatoncamp” upon it.
“So you didn’t write,” he said, with admirable coolness. “You thought a mother’s eagerness to have a letter could wait another post. Ha! ha! Mrs. Berry. However, it’s lucky, as I made that curious muddle of the name. I believe, however, that the letter would have found Mrs. Lygon, just as well.”
“So do I,” said Mrs. Berry, in a slow, low voice.
CHAPTER VI.
Archibald Vernon, the father of Mrs. Lygon, was pleasantly settled in Lipthwaite, when Arthur Lygon was introduced to the family in which he found his beautiful wife. Into the circumstances which induced Mr. Vernon to take up his abode in Lipthwaite, it is not necessary at the present time to enter with any minuteness; but in order to preclude any unnecessary suspicion of mystery, it should be explained that Archibald Vernon was one of those persons who conceive themselves to be entirely misunderstood and ill-treated by the world; but whom the world, on the contrary, insists on believing that it understands most thoroughly, and treats most naturally. Originally intended for the bar, young Mr. Vernon had made so many steps in the direction of the woolsack as are comprised in being duly entered for the Great Legal Handicap, and in having his name fairly painted on the door of one of the Gray’s Inn stalls in which some of the animals designed for that race undergo preliminary treatment. But he was very soon scratched. A cleverish lad, with a ready pen for endurable verse, and a still readier pencil for smart sketching, with a considerable amount of desultory reading, and a memory for the agreeable portions of such reading, with a fluent tongue, and much energy of manner, Vernon was held, among his kinsfolk, as a young fellow who would be sure to make his way. Nil tetigit quod non ornavit, was classically remarked, at the dinner on his twenty-first birthday, by an enthusiastic god-father who, to do him justice, had shown his faith in the youth’s powers by never contributing, otherwise than by the most gracefully expressed wishes, to his advancement in the world. Vernon’s own means were very limited, and this circumstance, fortunate indeed in so many thousand cases, might, by compelling him to avoid all the agreeable excursions from the direct road of life, and to pursue its safe and well-beaten track, have made him, in due time, the rising man whom he had been supposed to be. But, unluckily, just at the moment when various and harassing debts of no great amount, and a general sense of discomfort, discouragement, and want of purpose, were forcing the volatile Archibald Vernon into the conviction that he must buckle to honest work, and tramp away at the road in question, regardless of the fields and flowers right and left, that same godfather completed his career of neglected duties by an act of positive wrong to his god-son. The sponsor died, and left Vernon exactly enough, with the aid of his small patrimony, to live upon “like” a gentleman. This sum Vernon made the not uncommon financial error of supposing an amount that enabled him to live “as” a gentleman, and the fatal difference involved in the little words was not revealed unto him until too late. The Gray’s Inn stall was exchanged for handsome chambers, and by the time that these looked as delightfully as possible, that the pictures were finally and tastefully hung, that the pianoforte was in admirable tune, and that the oak and velvet furniture left nothing to be desired except the upholsterer’s receipt, the susceptible Archibald discovered that to live as a gentleman meant to live with a lady, who, being his wife, could not be expected to live in chambers. So the pictures, pianoforte, oak and velvet, and Mrs. Vernon, were established in a charming house, not much too large, at Craven Hill. All went delightfully, for Emmeline Vernon was an accomplished musician, and Archibald was just of the calibre of mind that dotes on music, and it was the pleasantest occupation in the world to sit with his pretty wife till two or three in the day, singing duets, or hearing that divine thing of Mozart’s, Vernon with his feet in slippers, elegantly worked by his bride, and in a velvet coat that gave the refined-looking man an appearance between that of an artist, and of an Italian nobleman, as beheld in ancient portraits. The children came with their usual celerity, and it was not until Emmeline grew rather cross and cold about playing Mozart after disagreeable interviews with traders, that Archibald Vernon once more began to think that he really must buckle to work.
But rough buckles are not readily fastened when one’s muscles have been neglected. It is not agreeable to dwell on this part of Mr. Vernon’s shifty history. Portions of it, prepared with a good deal of topographical exactness in regard to his various residences, are, I am sorry to say, still on record in the registry of an evilly odorous tribunal in the Rue Portugal. But who would willingly sketch the life of a family in the dispiriting and discreditable transition from comfort to need? Who cares to write or read of forestalled income, of unhonoured cheques, of humiliating obligations, of insincere promises extorted by pressing necessity, of harsh friends and callous creditors, of a wife compelled to make feminine appeals either for aid or for forbearance, and often to make both in vain, of children accustomed to see parents nervous at the knock or ring, to hear servants instructed in lying, and even, under sudden emergency, to utter the excusing or procrastinating falsehood at the bidding of parents, too eager to escape the momentary annoyance to remember the miserable lesson they were teaching? At times Vernon, heartily ashamed of his position, resolved to work himself into a worthier one, registered vows to do so, and walked out determined to do something in fulfilment; but what are a weak man’s vows? Any discouragement damped his resolve within an hour of its being made; any temptation drew him away from the feeble scheme he had planned, and he returned home somewhat and deservedly less respectable in his own eyes than he had gone forth. At the same time, it would have been, for a stronger man, a hard fight that could set him right with the world, and we will not judge the variously