Orley Farm Part 114

"Then there shall be none. It is my intention to make an offer to her before I leave Noningsby. I can a.s.sure you for your satisfaction, that my hopes do not run very high."

"For my satisfaction, Felix! I don't know why you should suppose me to be anxious that you should fail." And as he so spoke he stopped his horse at the hall-door, and there was no time for further speech.

"Papa has been home a quarter of an hour," said Madeline, meeting them in the hall.

"Yes, he had the pull of us by having his carriage ready," said her brother. "We had to wait for the ostler."

"He says that if you are not ready in ten minutes he will go to dinner without you. Mamma and I are dressed." And as she spoke she turned round with a smile to Felix, making him feel that both she and her father were treating him as though he were one of the family.

"Ten minutes will be quite enough for me," said he.

"If the governor only would sit down," said Augustus, "it would be all right. But that's just what he won't do. Mad, do send somebody to help me to unpack." And then they all bustled away, so that the pair of judges might not be kept waiting for their food.

Felix Graham hurried up stairs, three steps at a time, as though all his future success at Noningsby depended on his being down in the drawing-room within the period of minutes stipulated by the judge.

As he dressed himself with the utmost rapidity, thinking perhaps not so much as he should have done of his appearance in the eyes of his lady-love, he endeavoured to come to some resolve as to the task which was before him. How was he to find an opportunity of speaking his mind to Madeline, if, during the short period of his sojourn at Noningsby, he left the house every morning directly after breakfast, and returned to it in the evening only just in time for dinner?

When he entered the drawing-room both the judges were there, as was also Lady Staveley and Madeline. Augustus alone was wanting. "Ring the bell, Graham," the judge said, as Felix took his place on the corner of the rug. "Augustus will be down about supper-time." And then the bell was rung and the dinner ordered.

"Papa ought to remember," said Madeline, "that he got his carriage first at Alston."

"I heard the wheels of the gig," said the judge. "They were just two minutes after us."

"I don't think Augustus takes longer than other young men," said Lady Staveley.

"Look at Graham there. He can't be supposed to have the use of all his limbs, for he broke half a dozen of them a month ago; and yet he's ready. Brother Maltby, give your arm to Lady Staveley. Graham, if you'll take Madeline, I'll follow alone." He did not call her Miss Staveley, as Felix specially remarked, and so remarking, pressed the little hand somewhat closer to his side. It was the first sign of love he had ever given her, and he feared that some mark of anger might follow it. There was no return to his pressure;--not the slightest answer was made with those sweet finger points; but there was no anger. "Is your arm quite strong again?" she asked him as they sat down, as soon as the judge's short grace had been uttered.

"Fifteen minutes to the second," said Augustus, bustling into the room, "and I think that an unfair advantage has been taken of me. But what can a juvenile barrister expect in the presence of two judges?"

And then the dinner went on, and a very pleasant little dinner-party it was.

Not a word was said, either then or during the evening, or on the following morning, on that subject which was engrossing so much of the mind of all of them. Not a word was spoken as to that trial which was now pending, nor was the name of Lady Mason mentioned. It was understood even by Madeline that no allusion could with propriety be made to it in the presence of the judge before whom the cause was now pending, and the ground was considered too sacred for feet to tread upon it. Were it not that this feeling is so general an English judge and English counsellors would almost be forced to subject themselves in such cases to the close custody which jurymen are called upon to endure. But, as a rule, good taste and good feeling are as potent as locks and walls.

"Do you know, Mr. Graham," said Madeline, in that sort of whisper which a dinner-table allows, "that Mrs. Baker says you have cut her since you got well."

"I! I cut one of my very best friends! How can she say anything so untrue? If I knew where she lived I'd go and pay her a visit after dinner."

"I don't think you need do that,--though she has a very snug little room of her own. You were in it on Christmas-day when we had the snapdragon,--when you and Marion carried away the dishes."

"I remember. And she is base enough to say that I have cut her? I did see her for a moment yesterday, and then I spoke to her."

"Ah, but you should have had a long chat with her. She expects you to go back over all the old ground, how you were brought in helpless, how the doctor came to you, and how you took all the messes she prepared for you like a good boy. I'm afraid, Mr. Graham, you don't understand old women."

"Nor young ones either," it was on his tongue to say, but he did not say it.

"When I was a young man," said the baron, carrying on some conversation which had been general at the table, "I never had an opportunity of breaking my ribs out hunting."

"Perhaps if you had," said Augustus, "you might have used it with more effect than my friend here, and have deprived the age of one of its brightest lights, and the bench of one of its most splendid ornaments."

"Hear, hear, hear!" said his father.

"Augustus is coming out in a new character," said his mother.

"I am heartily obliged to him," said the baron. "But, as I was saying before, these sort of things never came in my way. If I remember right, my father would have thought I was mad had I talked of going out hunting. Did you hunt, Staveley?"

When the ladies were gone the four lawyers talked about law, though they kept quite clear of that special trial which was going on at Alston. Judge Staveley, as we know, had been at the Birmingham congress; but not so his brother the baron. Baron Maltby, indeed, thought but little of the Birmingham doings, and was inclined to be a little hard upon his brother in that he had taken a part in it.

"I think that the matter is one open to discussion," said the host.

"Well, I hope so," said Graham. "At any rate I have heard no arguments which ought to make us feel that our mouths are closed."

"Arguments on such a matter are worth nothing at all," said the baron. "A man with what is called a logical turn of mind may prove anything or disprove anything; but he never convinces anybody. On any matter that is near to a man's heart, he is convinced by the tenour of his own thoughts as he goes on living, not by the arguments of a logician, or even by the eloquence of an orator. Talkers are apt to think that if their listener cannot answer them they are bound to give way; but non-talkers generally take a very different view of the subject."

"But does that go to show that a question should not be ventilated?"

asked Felix.

"I don't mean to be uncivil," said the baron, "but of all words in the language there is none which I dislike so much as that word ventilation. A man given to ventilating subjects is worse than a man who has a mission."

"Bores of that sort, however," said Graham, "will show themselves from time to time and are not easily put down. Some one will have a mission to reform our courts of law, and will do it too."

"I only hope it may not be in my time," said the baron.

"I can't go quite so far as that," said the other judge. "But no doubt we all have the same feeling more or less. I know pretty well what my friend Graham is driving at."

"And in your heart you agree with me," said Graham.

"If you would carry men's heads with you they would do you more good than their hearts," said the judge. And then as the wine bottles were stationary, the subject was cut short and they went into the drawing-room.

Graham had no opportunity that evening of telling his tale to Madeline Staveley. The party was too large for such tale-telling or else not large enough. And then the evening in the drawing-room was over before it had seemed to begin; and while he was yet hoping that there might be some turn in his favour, Lady Staveley wished him good-night, and Madeline of course did the same. As he again pressed her hand he could not but think how little he had said to her since he had been in the house, and yet it seemed to him as though that little had made him more intimate with her than he had ever found himself before. He had made an attempt to separate himself from the company by proposing to go and call on Mrs. Baker in her own quarters; but Madeline had declared it to be too late for such an expedition, explaining that when Mrs. Baker had no patient on hand she was accustomed to go early to her bed. In the present instance, however, she had been wrong, for when Felix reached the door of his own room, Mrs. Baker was coming out of it.

"I was just looking if everything was right," said she. "It seems natural to me to come and look after you, you know."

"And it is quite as natural to me to be looked after."

"Is it though? But the worst of you gentlemen when you get well is that one has done with you. You go away, and then there's no more about it. I always begrudge to see you get well for that reason."

"When you have a man in your power you like to keep him there."

"That's always the way with the women you know. I hope we shall see one of them tying you by the leg altogether before long."

"I don't know anything about that," said Felix, sheepishly.

"Don't you? Well, if you don't I suppose n.o.body don't. But nevertheless I did hear a little bird say--eh! Mr. Graham."

"Those little birds are the biggest liars in the world."

"Are they now? Well perhaps they are. And how do you think our Miss Madeline is looking? She wasn't just well for one short time after you went away."

"Has she been ill?"

"Well, not ill; not so that she came into my hands. She's looking herself again now, isn't she?"