“Yes. With that in your pocket you will run no risk of finding yourself in a state of absolute destitution, which, I know, you will regard as a degradation – so should I, for that matter. The person to whom you will present it generally has two or three respectable places depending upon his recommendation.”
“That will just suit me,” said I.
“Well, and where’s your gratitude?” demanded Mr. Hunsden; “don’t you know how to say ‘Thank you?’”
“I’ve fifteen pounds and a watch, which my godmother, whom I never saw, gave me eighteen years ago,” was my rather irrelevant answer; and I further avowed myself a happy man, and professed that I did not envy any being in Christendom.
“But your gratitude?”
“I shall be off presently, Mr. Hunsden – to-morrow, if all be well: I’ll not stay a day longer in X– than I’m obliged.”
“Very good – but it will be decent to make due acknowledgment for the assistance you have received; be quick! It is just going to strike seven: I’m waiting to be thanked.”
“Just stand out of the way, will you, Mr. Hunsden: I want a key there is on the corner of the mantelpiece. I’ll pack my portmanteau before I go to bed “
The house clock struck seven.
“The lad is a heathen,” said Hunsden, and taking his hat from a sideboard, he left the room, laughing to himself. I had half an inclination to follow him: I really intended to leave X– the next morning, and should certainly not have another opportunity of bidding him good-bye. The front door banged to.
“Let him go,” said I, “we shall meet again some day.”
Reader, perhaps you were never in Belgium? Haply you don’t know the physiognomy of the country? You have not its lineaments defined upon your memory, as I have them on mine?
Three – nay four – pictures line the four-walled cell where are stored for me the records of the past. First, Eton. All in that picture is in far perspective, receding, diminutive; but freshly coloured, green, dewy, with a spring sky, piled with glittering yet showery clouds; for my childhood was not all sunshine – it had its overcast, its cold, its stormy hours. Second, X-, huge, dingy; the canvas cracked and smoked; a yellow sky, sooty clouds; no sun, no azure; the verdure of the suburbs blighted and sullied – a very dreary scene.
Third, Belgium; and I will pause before this landscape. As to the fourth, a curtain covers it, which I may hereafter withdraw, or may not, as suits my convenience and capacity. At any rate, for the present it must hang undisturbed. Belgium! name unromantic and unpoetic, yet name that whenever uttered has in my ear a sound, in my heart an echo, such as no other assemblage of syllables, however sweet or classic, can produce. Belgium! I repeat the word, now as I sit alone near midnight. It stirs my world of the past like a summons to resurrection; the graves unclose, the dead are raised; thoughts, feelings, memories that slept, are seen by me ascending from the clods – haloed most of them – but while I gaze on their vapoury forms, and strive to ascertain definitely their outline, the sound which wakened them dies, and they sink, each and all, like a light wreath of mist, absorbed in the mould, recalled to urns, resealed in monuments. Farewell, luminous phantoms!