CHAPTER XXXIII. SIR WITHIN AND HIS WARD
How time has slipped over since we were last here, in the midst of the Welsh mountains! It is more than a year, but still wonderfully little has gone on in that interval. The larch-trees at Dalradern have added some palms to their stature, but the venerable oaks and elms disdain to show by change the influence of so brief a period, and, in the same way, it is in Kate alone – that plant of rapid growth – that we have much alteration to mark.
What a change has been wrought in her! It is not merely that she has grown into a tall and graceful girl, but that one by one the little traits of her peasant origin have faded away, and she looks, and seems, and carries herself with all the air of a high-born beauty. In her lofty brow, her calm features, her manner, in which a quiet dignity blends with a girlish grace, and, above all, in her voice singularly sweet-toned as it was, might be read every sign of that station men distinctively call the “best.”
Masters and professors of every kind had surrounded her, but she had a sort of indolent activity in her disposition, which tended little to the work of learning, while her quickness enabled her to pick up smatterings of many things. But, as she said herself, Sir Within was her best teacher. The old minister’s tact, his social readiness, his instinctive seizure of the nice points of every situation, – these were the gifts that had a special attraction for her; and while she was envying him the charm of a manner that could captivate all, from the highest to the humblest, she had actually acquired the gift and made it her own.
To recognise in her the traits on which he most prided himself, to see in that lovely girl his pupil in the arts of society, to mark in her a copyist of himself in the little tricks of manner and effect, was the greatest of all flatteries; and he never wearied of watching her repeating himself before him in a form so captivating and so graceful.
Although he had lost – and it was a loss he deplored – the friendly intercourse with the Vyners, and although the neighbourhood more strictly than ever quarantined him now, no representations nor remonstrances could prevail upon him to send Kate to a school, or to place her under other protection than his own. Innumerable were the governesses who had come down to take charge of her; none, however, remained long. Some alleged it was the solitude that oppressed them; others averred that their pupil would submit to no discipline but such as she liked, and that not alone the studies she would pursue, but even the hours she would devote to them, should be at her own choosing.
And one or two took higher ground, and declared that the establishment which contained an old bachelor and a very beautiful ward, was not in a position to confront the criticisms of the world.
To such as have not known, or met with the class Sir Within pertained to, it will perhaps seem incredible that the old rake actually felt flattered by this attack on his reputation. All that he had ever known of life was passed amongst people of admirable manners and very lax morals. They were the best bred, the best informed, the best dressed, and the pleasantest in the universe. Nowhere was life so easy and agreeable as in their company; every one was kind, considerate, and obliging; not a hard word was ever dropped. Who could be uncharitable where all was tolerated? Who could be severe where everything was pardoned?
It was by a very easy induction that he was led to believe that a certain laxity on the score of morals was an essential element of good breeding, and that nothing was so low in tone as that “eternal scrutiny,” as he called it, into one’s neighbours’ habits, which would make of a gentleman very little other than a detective.
When he heard, therefore, that a certain Mademoiselle La Grange had taken her departure on these exceptional grounds, he actually chuckled with delighted vanity.
“So ‘Ma Mie’” – this was his pet name for Kate – “they tell me that Mademoiselle has gone off this morning,” said he, “no longer able to tolerate a house where there is no mistress.”
“The note she left behind her went fully into the matter,” said Kate. “It was not alone that you were unmarried, but that you were a very well-known monster of vice.”
“Vrai! vrai!” cried he, with ecstasy; “monstre épouvantable!”
“And, to confirm it, she added, that no one came here; that the neighbours avoided the house, as the abode of a plague; and even sight-seers would not gratify the craving of their curiosity at the cost of their propriety.”
“Did she say all that?”
“Yes; she said it very neatly, too; as prettily and as tersely as such impertinence can be put in nice French.”
“And this is the ninth departure, is it not, Ma Mie, on these high grounds of morality?”
“No, Sir; only the fifth. Two alleged loneliness, one accused the damp, and one protested against my temper!”
“What had you done, then?”
“Everything that was cross and ill natured. It was the unlucky week that Cid Hamet staked himself.”
“I remember; there were two days you would not come down to dinner on pretence of headache, and you told me afterwards it was all ill humour.”
“Because I always tell you everything,” said she, with a smile so captivatingly beautiful, that it lit up her fave as the sun lights up a landscape.
“I am sorry, too,” said he, after a short silence, “that Mademoiselle should have gone away at this moment, for I am expecting visitors.”
“Visitors, Sir?”
“Yes, child; two distant, very distant relatives of mine are coming to-day; less, indeed, to see me than the place I live in. They are my heirs, Ma Mie; and the world says, no sort of people are less palatable to the man in possession, and, I take it, the world is right in the matter. When one thinks how he dislikes the man who keeps the newspaper too long at the club, it may be imagined how he is hated who keeps another out of an estate; and the sense of being so hated engenders something that is not friendship!”
“I think I can understand that feeling!” said she, thoughtfully.
“Every one knows,” continued he, “that when he is gone, the objects which he has loved and cherished – I mean the material objects, for I am talking as an old bachelor – will survive to give pleasure to others; but somehow he fancies – at least, I fancy – that the new incumbent will not know the full luxury of the shade under that sycamore where we sat yesterday to watch the fish in the pond; that he’ll never appreciate that Claude as I do, when I let a fresh blaze of sunlight on the opposite wall, and see it in a soft reflected light; and as to the delight of riding through these old wooded alleys as I feel it, he’ll not have you for a companion – eh, ma belle et bonne?”
She turned away her head. Was it shame, or sorrow, or both? Who knows? “What are your friends like?” asked she, suddenly.
“They are very like each other, and not like anything or any one else I ever met. They are, first of all, descendants of an old Huguenot family of excellent blood. Their ancestors settled here, and, like most others, they prospered. One became a Peer, but died without an heir, and the title became extinct. The present head of the house is this person I expect here to-day, with his son. He is a banker, as his son is. They are very rich, and very eager to be richer. Report says that they are not very generous or free-handed. My own experience can neither refute nor confirm the rumour. Their London house was very handsome when I saw it, and when I dined there everything bespoke the habits of wealth; but they had a sort of air of business in their reception, a look of doing something that was to redound to the bank, that I didn’t like. The company, too, was of that mixed character that showed they were less familiars than clients.”
“How intensely acute to detect all this at once!”
“I am nothing, Ma Mie, positively nothing, if I am not ‘fin.’ It is the spirit of my old calling that survives in me. Nay, I even thought, in the distributions of the host’s attentions to his friends, I could name the men who stood with a goodly balance to their account, and point out those who were being, what is called, accommodated.”
“Oh, this is too much!” said she, laughing; but there was nothing in her tone or look that implied a shade of incredulity.
“Well, you are to see them both to-day; they will be here to dinner.” He said this with a half-suppressed sigh, for the visit promised him very little that was agreeable.
He was essentially a man of conventionalities, and there were some difficulties in the present case that embarrassed him. First, he should be unable to have any dinner company to meet his visitors. He had long ceased to have intercourse with his country neighbours, and, of course, none would think of “calling” on his friends. This was provoking enough, but a greater trouble remained behind it. Kate’s presence! How was he to account for that? Who was she? Why was she there? Who, and what, and where were her friends? Would not the Ladarelles at once connect the estrangement in which he lived from all society with the fact of this girl being beneath his roof? Would they not at once jump to the conclusion, It is this scandal has deterred all from visiting him? Now, it is just possible that something in this allegation against his morality might have tickled the morbid vanity of the old rake, who loved to think that youth and vice were convertible terms, and he even smirked as he imagined himself called on for his defence. Still, in his element of gentleman, there survived the shame of the part that would be assigned to Kate by such an imputation, and it is but justice to him to say that he felt this acutely. Had there been time for such an arrangement, he would have procured a governess, and sent her away to some sea-side spot. As it was, he thought of taking the Vyners’s Cottage, and placing her there under the charge of Mrs. Simcox. This would have been easy, as the Cottage had been advertised to let for some time back; but, as ill luck would, have, it, some one had just arrived there, whether as friend or tenant, none knew.
It was true, he might keep her unseen for, the few days the visit would last. The Castle was ample enough to secure a retreat which should be inviolable; but there were difficulties, too, about; this, not easily to be met.
He could not implicitly rely on the discretion of servants, especially of servants who found themselves in, the presence of the coming heir, of him who should be “king hereafter;” and again, he was not quite sure how she herself would meet a proposition that assigned her so equivocal a position. She was very proud, and on one or two occasions he had seen her display a spirit that no old gentleman of his stamp would possibly expose himself to from a young girl, if he could help it. There was, then, nothing left but to present her as his ward, a word so wide in acceptance, that he trusted it might defy scrutiny, and with this resolve, though not without misgivings, he went about giving his orders, and directing the arrangements to receive his guests.
Even this office had its shade of sadness, pleasant as it is at ordinary times to prepare for those who come to enliven solitude or break a monotony, which even of itself savours of gloom; the task is not so agreeable if undertaken for those who come to inspect what will be their own hereafter; what, even as they survey, they seem half inclined to grasp; what, while they look at, they speculate on the changes they will effect in, thinking of that day when he, who now does the honours, shall have left the stage, and they themselves become the actors.
Kate, however, accompanied him everywhere, aiding by her counsels and assisting by her suggestions, and serving in this way to dispel much of that depression which the task imposed. It was, as they both were returning from one of the gardens, that a keeper came forward with a dead pheasant in his hand.
“A hen! Michael, a hen!” cried Sir Within, with displeasure.
“Yes, Sir, and a very fine one. It was the gentleman who has just come to Dinasllyn shot her this morning. I met him coming up here to excuse himself to you, and say how sorry he was. He gave me this card, and hoped you’d not be displeased at it.”
“What’s the name? I have not got my glass, Kate.”
“Mr. George Grenfell, Sir, Dover-street.”
“Grenfell, Grenfell – never heard of any Grenfells but Cox and Grenfell, the Piccadilly people, eh?”
Kate gave no answer, but still held the card, with her eyes fixed upon it.
“Sad thing to shoot a hen – very sad thing – and a remarkably fine bird; quite young, quite young,” muttered Sir Within to himself. “Could scarcely be the game sauce Grenfell, I think, eh, Kate? This apology smacks of the gentleman. What was he like, Michael?”
“A fine-looking man, Sir, standing as tall as me; and about thirty-six or thirty-eight, perhaps. He had a nice spaniel with him, Sir, one of the Woburn breed; I know ‘em well.”
“I’m sorry he shot that hen. Ain’t you, Kate?”
But Kate was deep in thought, and did not hear him.
CHAPTER XXXIV. SIR WITHIN’S GUESTS
A short, somewhat plump, dark-eyed young man, with a low but wide forehead, and a well-formed but rather thick-lipped mouth, lay in his dressing-gown on the sofa smoking, and at intervals conversing with a smart-looking valet. These were Mr. Adolphus Ladarelle, and his man Fisk. The time – a little past midnight; the place – a bedroom in Dalradern Castle.
“The governor gone to bed yet, Fisk?”
“No, Sir; he’s still talking with the old gent. They seemed to have had high words of it awhile ago, but they’ve got quiet again.”
“The governor came down expressly for that! He likes a bit of a breeze, too, and I believe it does him good.”
“Well, indeed I think you’re right, Sir! I never seed him in such health as after that trial where Mr. Hythe, the cashier, was sentenced to fourteen years. It was just like putting so much to the master’s own life.”
Whether the prospect of such longevity was so agreeable to the young gentleman, I cannot say, but he winced a little under the remark, and said, half moodily: “This old cove here ought to be thinking of that same journey. It’s slow work waiting for the death of a man, after he passes seventy-four or five. The assurance offices know that much.”
“It’s to be all yours, Master Dolly, ain’t it?” asked the man, in a coaxing sort of tone.
“Every stone of it, and every stick that the old boy doesn’t manage to cut down in the mean while.”
“You’ll never live here, Master Dolly? You’d not stand this lonesome place a week!”
“I don’t think I should, Tom. I might come down for the shooting, and bring some fellows with me, or I might run down for a few weeks ‘on the sly.’ By the way, have you found out who she is?”
“No, Sir; they’re as close as wax. Mrs. Simcox, I see, knows all about it, but she won’t say a word beyond the ‘young lady as is my master’s ward.’”
“Is she French or English?”
“Can’t say, Sir; but I suspect she’s French.”
“Is she his daughter?”
“At times I do think she is; but she ain’t like him, Sir, not a bit!”
“But why can’t you find out where she came from when she came here, who and what her friends, if she has any?”
“It’s clear impossible, Sir. They has all got orders to know nothing, and it’s nothing they know.”
“Did you try them with a ‘tip,’ Tom?”
“No use, Sir. In a town-house you can always do that, but these savages – they are just savages – in the country, think they are bound to their masters, body and soul.”
“What a mistake, Tom,” said the other, with a twinkle of the eye.
“Well, Sir, it’s a mistake when a man does not love his master;” and Mr. Fisk turned away and drew his hand across his eyes.
The grin upon young Mr. Ladarelle’s face was not a very flattering commentary on this show of feeling, but he did not speak for some minutes. At last he said: “He presented her to my governor as Mademoiselle O’Hara, saying, ‘My ward;’ and she received us as calmly as if she owned the place. That’s what puzzles me, Tom – her cool self-possession.”
“It ain’t nat’ral, Sir; it ain’t, indeed!”
“It is the sort of manner a man’s wife might have, and not even that if she were very young. It was as good as a play to see how she treated the governor as if he had never been here before, and that everything was new to him!”
Mr. Fisk rubbed his hands and laughed heartily at this joke.
“And as for myself, she scarcely condescended to acknowledge me.”
“Warn’t that too imperent, Sir?”
“It was not gracious, at all events, but we’ll know more of each other before the week is over. You’ll see.”
“That’s pretty sartain, Sir.”
“Not but I’d rather you could have found out something like a clue to her first of all.”
“Well, indeed, Sir, there wasn’t no way of doin’ it. I even went down to the stable-yard and saw her own boxes. She has two as neat nags as ever you’d see in the Park, and I tried it on with her groom – Bill Richey they call him – and there was nothing to be done, Sir. He had just one answer for everything; and when I said, ‘Can she ride?’ ‘Ride! why wouldn’t she!’ ‘Has she these two for her own use?’ says I. ‘Why wouldn’t she!’ says the fellow again. ‘So I suppose,’ says I, ‘she’s got lots of tin?’ ‘Why wouldn’t she have lots of it?’ said he, in the same voice. I don’t know whether he was more rogue or fool, Sir, but it was no good saying any more to him.”
Young Ladarelle arose, and with his hands thrust low in his pockets, and his head slightly bent forward, walked the room in deep thought. “Cool as he is, he’d scarcely have presented her to the governor if there was a screw loose,” muttered he; “he’s too much a man of the world for that. And yet, what can it be?”
“There must be something in it, that’s certain, Sir; for none of the neighbours visit here, and Sir Within don’t go out anywhere.”
“How did you learn that?”
“From the gardener, Sir. He was saying what a cruel shame it was to see the fruit rotting under the trees; and that last September he gave a basketful of pine-apples to the pigs, for that none of the people round would take presents when Sir Within sent them. ‘That’s all on account of her,’ says I, with a wink, for I thought I had him landed. ‘I don’t well know,’ says he, ‘what it’s on account of, but here’s the master comin’ up, and maybe he’ll tell you!’ And I had just time to cut away before he seen me.”
“All that we know, then, is, that there’s a mystery in it. Well,” muttered he, “I couldn’t ask a prettier skein to unravel. She is very beautiful! Are they late or early here, Tom?” asked he, after a pause.
“They be just as they please, Sir. The housekeeper told me there’s breakfast from ten to one every morning, and dinner is served for six people every day, though only them two selves sits down to it; but the old gent says, perhaps some one might drop in. He says that every day of the year, Sir; but they never drop in. Maybe he knows why!”
“Call me at eleven or twelve. I don’t care if it be one; for the day will be long enough here, after that.”
“They tell me it’s a very pretty place, Sir, and plenty to see.”
“I know every inch of it. I used to be here after my Rugby half, and I don’t want to recal those days, I promise you.”
“They’ve got some nice saddle-horses, too, Sir.”
“So they may; and they may ride them, too.”
“And the lake is alive with carp, I hear.”
“I’ll not diminish their number; I’ll promise them so much. I must stay here as long as the governor does, which, fortunately for me, cannot be many days; but tobacco and patience will see me through it.”
“I always said it, Sir: ‘When Master Dolly comes to his fortune, it’s not an old gaol he’ll sit down to pass his life in!’”
“It’s one of the finest and oldest places in the kingdom,” said the young man, angrily, “though perhaps a London cad might prefer Charing Cross to it.”
“No other orders, Sir?” said Mr. Fisk, curtly.
“No; you may go. Call me at nine – d’ye hear – at nine; and I’ll breakfast at ten.” And now was Mr. Adolphus Ladarelle alone with his own thoughts.
Though he had rebuked so promptly and so sharply the flippant impertinence of his servant, the young gentleman was by no means persuaded that a sojourn at Dalradern was likely to prove lively or agreeable. He thought Sir Within a bore, and he felt – very unmistakably felt – that the old Baronet regarded himself as a snob. The very way in which the old diplomatist seasoned his talk for his guests, the mode in which he brought all things to the meridian of Piccadilly, showed clearly the estimation in which he held them; and though the elder Ladarelle, whose head carried weightier cares, had no room for such thoughts, the young man brooded over and disliked them.
“By what reprisals should he resent this covert impertinence?” was the question that very often recurred to him. Should he affect to undervalue the place, and all the art treasures? Should he throw out dark hints of how much these tasteful toys might realise at a sale? Should he speculate vaguely on what the Castle would become, if, instead of a show-house, it were to be made what he would call habitable? Or, last of all, what tone should he assume towards Mademoiselle – should he slight her, or make love to her? In these self-discussions he fell asleep at last.
Long before any of his guests were awake the next morning, Sir Within had called for his writing-desk. It was a passion of his to ask for his writing materials before he was up. It smacked of old times, when, remembering something that might very well have been forgotten, he would dash off a few smart lines to a minister or a secretary, “with reference to the brief conversation with which your Excellency honoured me yesterday.” He was an adept in little notes; he knew how to throw off those small evasive terms which pass for epigrams, and give a sort of glitter to a style that was about as real as a theatrical costume.
He had suddenly bethought him of a case for the exercise of his high gift. It was to address a few neat lines to his recently-arrived neighbour at the Cottage, and ask him that day to dinner. To convert that gentleman’s polite attention in sending up to the Castle the pheasant he had shot by mistake, into an excuse for the liberty of inviting him without a previous exchange of visits, constituted exactly the amount of difficulty he could surmount. It was a low-wall, and he could leap it splendidly. It must be owned that he succeeded. His note was courteous without familiarity. It was a faint foreshadowing of the pleasure the writer had promised himself in the acquaintance of one so thoroughly imbued with the nicest notions of good breeding.
“I hope,” he wrote in conclusion, “you will not, by refusing me this honour, rebuke the liberty by which I have presumed to aspire to it;” and with this he signed himself, with every sense of his most distinguished consideration, “Within Wildrington Wardle.”
The reply was prompt – a most cordial acceptance. Sir Within scanned the terms of the note, the handwriting, the paper, the signature, and the seal. He was satisfied with everything. The writer was unquestionably a man of the world, and, in the old envoy’s estimation, that meant all, or nearly all, that one could desire in friend or acquaintance; one, in short, who knew how to subordinate passions, feelings, emotions, all selfishness, and all personal objects to the laws of a well-regulated conventionality; and who neither did, nor attempted to do, anything but what Society had done already, and declared might be done again.
How far Mr. George Grenfell realised this high estimate, it is not our purpose to inquire; we turn rather to what we are far more sure of, the delight with which he read Sir Within’s invitation.
Grenfell was well known about town to members of two or three good clubs, where he had a certain amount of influence with very young men. He was an excellent whist-player, and very useful on a wine committee; an admirable judge of a horse, though not remarkable as a rider. He knew everybody, but, somehow, he went nowhere. There were people – very good people, too, as the world calls them – would gladly have had his society at their tables in town, or in their houses at Christmas; but Grenfell saw that, if once launched amongst these, he must abandon all ambition of everything higher; extrication would be impossible; and so, with a self-denial which only a high purpose ever inspires, he refused invitations, here, and rejected advances, there, waiting on for the time when the great world would awaken to the conviction of his merits, and say, This is the very man we wanted!
Now, the great world was not so prompt in making this discovery as it might have been, and Mr. Grenfell was getting on in years, and not fully as hopeful as when his hair had been thicker and his beard bushier. He had begun, not exactly to sulk, but what the French call to “bouder” – a sort of male pouting – and he thought of going abroad, or going into Parliament, or doing something or other which would give him a new start in life; and it was to ruminate over these plans he had written to his friend Vyner, to say, “Let me, or lend me – I don’t care which – your Welsh Cottage for a month or two;” and by return of post came the answer, saying, “It is yours as long as you like it;” and thus was he there.
Sir Within’s note pleased him much. The old envoy was, it is true, a bygone, and a thing of the past: still he was one of those Brahmins whose priesthood always is accredited, and Grenfell knew, that to walk into the Travellers’ arm in arm with him, would be a great step in advance; for there was no set or knot of men so unapproachable by the outsiders, as that small clique of religionists who scourge themselves with red tape, and worship the great god “F. O.!”
“In asking for the Cottage,” Grenfell had said, “I should like to have an introduction of some sort to your quondam neighbour, Wardle, who, though too profligate for his neighbours, will not, I apprehend, endanger my morals. Let me have, therefore, a few lines to accredit me, as one likely to suit his humour.” To this Vyner replied, not very clearly: “The intimacy they had used to have with Sir Within had ceased; they held no correspondence now. It was a long story, and would not be worth the telling, nor very intelligible, perhaps, when told; but it was enough to say, that even should they meet now personally, it was by no means sure if they would recognise or address each other. You will use this knowledge for your guidance in case you ever come to know him, and which I hope you may, for he is a very delightful acquaintance, and full of those attentions which render a neighbourhood pleasant. I do not say so that you may repeat it; but simply as an admission of what is due – that I deeply regret our estrangement, though I am not certain that it was avoidable.” This, which Grenfell deemed somewhat contradictory, served, at all events, to show that he could not make Sir Within’s acquaintance through this channel, and he was overjoyed when another and a more direct opening presented itself.
“The hen pheasant I thought would do it,” muttered Grenfell, as he read the note. “A punster would say, I had shot up into his acquaintance.”