Sir Brook Fossbrooke Volume I Part 25

Nothing could be more perfect than the blending of courtesy and familiarity. The old Chief himself was in his best of humors, which means that, with the high polish of a past age, its deference, and its homage, he combined all the readiness and epigrammatic smartness of a later period. Lady Lendrick was bland, courteous, and attentive. Colonel Sewell took the part a.s.signed him by his host, alternate talker and listener; and Mrs. Sewell herself displayed, with true woman's wit, that she knew how to fall in with the Judge's humor, as though she had known him for years, and that, in each sally of his wit and each flash of his repartee he was but reviving memories of such displays in long-past years. As for Haire, no enchantment could be more complete; he found himself not only listened to but appealed to. The Chief asked him to correct him about some fact or other of recent history; he applied to him to relate some incident in a trial he had taken part in; and, greatest triumph of all, he was called on to decide some question about the dressing of Mrs. Sewell's hair, his award being accepted as the last judgment of connoisseurs.h.i.+p.

Lucy talked little, but seemed interested by all around her. It was a bit of high-life comedy, really amusing, and she had that mere suspicion--it was no more--of the honesty and loyalty of the talkers to give an added significance to all she saw and heard. This slight distrust, however, gave way, when Mrs. Sewell sat down beside her in the drawing-room, and talked to her of her father. Oh, how well she appeared to know him; how truly she read the guileless simplicity of his n.o.ble nature; how she distinguished--it was not all who did so--between his timid reserve and pride; how she saw that what savored of haughtiness was in reality an excess of humility shrouding itself from notice; how she dwelt on his love for children, and the instantaneous affection he inspired in them towards himself. Last of all, how she won the poor girl's heart as she said, "It will never do to leave him there, Lucy; we must have him here, at home with us. I think you may intrust it to me; I generally find my way in these sort of things."

Lucy could have fallen at her feet with grat.i.tude as she heard these words, and she pressed her hand to her lips and kissed it fervently.

"Why isn't your brother here? Is he not in Dublin?" asked Mrs. Sewell, suddenly.

"Yes, he is in town," stammered out Lucy, "but grandpapa scarcely knows him, and when they did meet, it was most unfortunate. I 'll tell you all about it another time."

"We have many confidences to make each other," said Mrs. Sewell, with a sigh so full of sorrow that Lucy instinctively pressed her hand with warmth, as though to imply her trustfulness would, not be ill deposited.

At last came the hour of leave-taking, and the Judge accompanied his guests to the door, and even bareheaded handed Lady Lendrick to her carriage. To each, as they said "Good-night," he had some little appropriate speech,--a word or two of gracious compliment, uttered with all his courtesy.

"I call this little dinner a success, Lucy," said he, as he stood to say "Good-night" on the stairs. "Lady Lendrick was unusually amiable, and her daughter-in-law is beyond praise."

"She is indeed charming," said Lucy, fervently.

"I found the Colonel also agreeable,--less dictatorial than men of his cla.s.s generally are. I suspect we shall get on well together with further acquaintance; but, as Haire said, I was myself to-night, and would have struck sparks out of the dullest rock, so that I must not impute to him what may only have been the reflex of myself. Ah, dear!

there was a time when these exertions were the healthful stimulants of my life; now they only weary and excite,--good-night, dear child, good-night."

As Lady Lendrick and her party drove homeward, not a word was uttered for some minutes after they had taken their seats. It was not till after they had pa.s.sed out of the grounds, and gained the high-road, that she herself broke silence. "Well, Dudley," said she at last, "is he like my description? Was my portrait too highly colored?"

"Quite the reverse. It was a faint weak sketch of the great original.

In all my life I never met such inordinate vanity and such overweening pretension. I give him the palm as the most conceited man and the greatest bore in Christendom."

"Do you wonder now if I could n't live with him?" asked she, half triumphantly.

"I 'll not go that far. I think I could live with him if I saw my way to any advantage by it."

"I'm certain you could not! The very things you now reprobate are the few endurable traits about him. It is in the resources of his intense conceit he finds whatever renders him pleasant and agreeable. I wish you saw his other humor."

"I can imagine it may not be all that one would desire; but still--"

"It comes well from you to talk of submitting and yielding," burst out Lady Lendrick. "I certainly have not yet detected these traits in your character; and I tell you frankly, you and Sir William could not live a week under the same roof together. Don't you agree with me, Lucy?"

"What should she know about it?" said he, fiercely; and before she could reply, "I don't suspect she knows a great deal about me,--she knows nothing at all about _him_."

"Well, would you like to live with him yourself, Lucy?" asked Lady Lendrick.

"I don't say I 'd _like_ it, but I think it might be done," said she, faintly, and scarcely raising her eyes as she spoke.

"Of course, then, my intractable temper is the cause of all our incompatibility; my only consolation is that I have a son and a daughter-in-law so charmingly endowed that their virtues are more than enough to outweigh my faults."

"What I say is this," said the Colonel, sternly,--"I think the man is a bore or a bully, but that he need n't be both if one does n't like it. Now I 'd consent to be bored, to escape being bullied, which is precisely the reverse of what you appear to have done."

"I am charmed with the perspicuity you display. I hope, Lucy, that it tends to the happiness of your married life to have a husband so well able to read character."

Apparently this was a double-headed shot, for neither spoke for several minutes.

"I declare I almost wish he would put you to the test," said Lady Lendrick. "I mean, I wish he'd ask you to the Priory."

"I fancy it is what he means to do," said Mrs. Sewell, in the same low tone,--"at least he came to me when I was standing in the small drawing-room, and said, 'How would you endure the quiet stillness and uniformity of such a life as I lead here? Would its dulness overpower you?'"

"Of course, you said it would be paradise," broke in her Ladys.h.i.+p; "you hinted all about your own resources, and such-like."

"She did no such thing; she took the pathetic line, put her handkerchief to her eyes, and implied how she would love it, as a refuge from the cruel treatment of a bad husband,--eh, am I right?" Harsh and insolent as the words were, the accents in which they were uttered were far more so. "Out with it, Madam! was it not something like that you said?"

"No," said she, gently. "I told Sir William I was supremely happy, blessed in every accident and every relation of my life, and that hitherto I had never seen the spot which could not suit the glad temper of my heart."

"You keep the glad temper confoundedly to yourself then," burst he out.

"I wish you were not such a n.i.g.g.ard of it."

"Dudley, Dudley, I say," cried Lady Lendrick, in a tone of reproof.

"I have learned not to mind these amenities," said Mrs. Sewell, in a quiet voice, "and I am only surprised that Colonel Sewell thinks it worth while to continue them."

"If it be your intention to become Sir William's guest, I must say such habits will require to be amended," said her Ladys.h.i.+p, gravely.

"So they shall, mother. Your accomplished and amiable husband, as you once called him in a letter to me, shall only see us in our turtle moods, and never be suffered to approach our cage save when we are billing and cooing."

The look of aversion he threw at his wife as he spoke was something that words cannot convey; and though she never raised eyes to meet it, a sickly pallor crept over her cheek as the blight fell on her.

"I am to call on him to-morrow, by appointment. I wish he had not said twelve. One has not had his coffee by twelve; but as he said, 'I hope that will not be too early for you,' I felt it better policy to reply, 'By no means;' and so I must start as if for a journey."

"What does he mean by asking you to come at that hour? Have you any notion what his business is?"

"Not the least. We were in the hall. I was putting on my coat, when he suddenly turned round and asked me if I could without inconvenience drop in about twelve."

"I wonder what it can be for."

"I'll tell you what I hope it may not be for! I hope it may not be to show me his conservatory, or his Horatian garden, as he pedantically called it, or his fish-ponds. If so, I think I 'll invite him some fine morning to turn over all my protested bills, and the various writs issued against me. Bore for Bore, I suspect we shall come out of the encounter pretty equal."

"He has some rare gems. I'd not wonder if it was to get you to select a present for Lucy."

"If I thought so, I'd take a jeweller with me, as though my friend, to give me a hint as to the value."

"He admires you greatly, Lucy; he told me so as he took me downstairs."

"She has immense success with men of that age: nothing over eighty seems able to resist her."

This time she raised her eyes, and they met his, not with their former expression, but full of defiance, and of an insolent meaning, so that after a moment he turned away his gaze, and with a seeming struggle looked abashed and ashamed. "The first change I will ask you to make in that house," said Lady Lendrick, who had noticed this by-play, "if ever you become its inmates, will be to dismiss that tiresome old hanger-on, Mr. Haire. I abhor him."

"My first reform will be in the sherry,--to get rid of that vile sugary compound of horrid nastiness he gives you After soup. The next will be the long-tailed black coach-horses. I don't think a man need celebrate his own funeral every time he goes out for a drive."

"Haire," resumed Lady Lendrick, in a tone of severity, meant, perhaps, to repress all banter on a serious subject,--"Haire not only supplies food to his vanity, but stimulates his conceit by little daily stories of what the world says of him. I wish he would listen to _me_ on that subject,--I wish he would take _my_ version of his place in popular estimation."

"I opine that the granddaughter should be got rid of," said the Colonel.

"She is a fool,--only a fool," said Lady Lendrick.