“First Registrar, was he not?”
“Yes; a snug berth for incapacity, – one thousand a year. Ogle made more of it by means we shall not inquire into, but which shall not be repeated.”
“You ought to give it to your grandson,” said Haire, bluntly.
“You ought to know better than to say so, sir,” said the Judge, with a stern severity. “It is to men like myself the public look for example and direction, and it would be to falsify all the teaching of my life if I were to misuse my patronage. Come up early on Saturday morning, and go over the lists with me. There are one hundred and twenty-three applicants, backed by peers, bishops, members of Parliament, and men in power.”
“I don’t envy you your patronage.”
“Of course not, sir. The one hundred and twenty-two disappointed candidates would present more terror to a mind like yours than any consciousness of a duty fulfilled would compensate for; but I am fashioned of other stuff.”
“Well, I only hope it may be a worthy fellow gets it.”
“If you mean worthy in what regards a devotion to the public service, I may possibly be able to assure you on that head.”
“No, no; I mean a good fellow, – a true-hearted, honest fellow, to whom the salary will be a means of comfort and happiness.”
“Sir, you ask far too much. Men in my station investigate fitness and capacity; they cannot descend to inquire how far the domestic virtues influence those whom they advance to office.”
“You may drop me here: I am near home,” said Haire, who began to feel a little weary of being lectured.
“You will not dine with me?”
“Not to-day. I have some business this evening. I have a case to look over.”
“Come up on Saturday, then, – come to breakfast; bring me any newspapers that treat of the appointment, and let us see if we cannot oppose this spirit of dictation they are so prone to assume; for I am resolved I will never name a man to office who has the Press for his patron.”
“It may not be his fault.”
“It shall be his misfortune, then. Stop, Drab; Mr. Haire wishes to get down. To the Priory,” said he, as his friend went his way; and now, leaning back in his carriage, the old man continued to talk aloud, and, addressing an imaginary audience, declaim against the encroaching spirit of the newspapers, and inveigh against the perils to which their irresponsible counsels exposed the whole framework of society; and thus speaking, and passionately gesticulating, he reached his home.
CHAPTER XXI. A MORNING CALL
As Sir William waited breakfast for Haire on Saturday morning, a car drove up to the door, and the butler soon afterwards entered with a card and a letter. The card bore the name “Sir Brook Fossbrooke,” and the letter was sealed with the viceregal arms, and had the name “Wilmington” on the corner. Sir William broke it open, and read, —
“My dear Chief Baron, – This will come to your hand through Sir Brook Fossbrooke, one of my oldest and choicest friends. He tells me he desires to know you, and I am not aware of any more natural or legitimate ambition. It would be presumption in me to direct your attention to qualities you will be more quick to discover and more able to appreciate than myself. I would only add that your estimate will, I feel assured, be not less favorable that it will be formed of one of whose friendship I am proud. It may be that his visit to you will include a matter of business; if so, give it your courteous attention: and believe me ever, my dear Chief Baron, your faithful friend,
“Wilmington.”
“Show the gentleman in,” said the Judge; and he advanced towards the door as Sir Brook entered. “I am proud to make your acquaintance, Sir Brook,” said he, presenting his hand.
“I would not have presumed to call on you at such an hour, my Lord Chief Baron, save that my minutes are numbered. I must leave for England this evening; and I wished, if possible, to meet you before I started.”
“You will, I hope, join me at breakfast?”
“I breakfasted two hours ago, – if I dare to dignify by the name my meal of bread and milk. But, pray, let me not keep you from yours, – that is, if you will permit me to speak to you while so occupied.”
“I am at your orders, sir,” said the old Judge, as he seated himself and requested his visitor to sit beside him.
“His Excellency tells me, my Lord, that there is just now vacant a situation of which some doubt exists as to the patron, – a Registrarship, I think he called it, in your Court?”
“There is no doubt whatever, sir. The patronage is mine.”
“I merely quote the Viceroy, my Lord, – I assert nothing of myself.”
“It may not impossibly save time, sir, when I repeat that his Excellency has misinformed you. The office is in my gift.”
“May I finish the communication with which he charged me?”
“Sir, there is no case before the court,” said the Judge. “I can hear you, as a matter of courtesy; but it cannot be your object to be listened to on such terms?”
“I will accept even so little. If it should prove that the view taken by his Excellency is the correct one – pray, sir, let me proceed – ”
“I cannot; I have no temper for a baseless hypothesis. I will not, besides, abuse your time any more than my own forbearance; and I therefore say that if any portion of your interest in making my acquaintance concerns that question you have so promptly broached, the minutes employed in the discussion would be thrown away by us both.”
“Mr. Haire,” said the servant, at this moment; and the Chief Baron’s old friend entered, rather heated by his walk.
“You are late by half an hour, Haire; let me present you to Sir Brook Fossbrooke, whose acquaintance I am now honored in making. Sir Brook is under a delusive impression, Haire, which I told you a few days ago would demand some decisive step on my part; he thinks that the vacant registrarship is at the disposal of the Crown.”
“I ask pardon,” said Fossbrooke. “As I understood his Excellency, they only claim the alternate appointment.”
“And they shall not assert even that, sir.”
“Sir William’s case is strong, – it is irrefutable. I have gone over it myself,” broke in Haire.
“There, sir! listen to that. You have now wherewithal to go back and tell the Viceroy that the opinion of the leading man of the Irish Bar has decided against his claim. Tell him, sir, that accident timed your visit here at the same moment with my distinguished friend’s, and that you in this way obtained a spontaneous decision on the matter at issue. When you couple with that judgment the name of William Haire, you will have said enough.”
“I bow to this great authority,” said Sir Brook, with deep courtesy, “and accepting your Lordship’s statement to the fullest, I would only add, that as it was his Excellency’s desire to have named me to this office, might I so far presume, on the loss of the good fortune that I had looked for, to approach you with a request, only premising that it is not on my own behalf?”
“I own, sir, that I do not clearly appreciate the title to your claim. You are familiar with the turf, Sir Brook, and you know that it is only the second horse has a right to demand his entry.”
“I have not been beaten, my Lord. You have scratched my name and prevented my running.”
“Let us come back to fact, sir,” said the Chief Baron, not pleased with the retort. “How can you base any right to approach me with a request on the circumstance that his Excellency desired to give you what belonged to another?”
“Yes, that puts it forcibly – unanswerably – to my thinking,” said Haire.
“I may condole with disappointment, sir, but I am not bound to compensate defeat,” said the old Judge; and he arose and walked the room with that irritable look and manner which even the faintest opposition to him often evoked, and for which even the utterance of a flippant rebuke but partly compensated him.
“I take it, my Lord Chief Baron,” said Fossbrooke, calmly, “that I have neither asked for condolence nor compensation. I told you, I hoped distinctly that what I was about to urge was not on my own behalf.”
“Well, sir, and I think the plea is only the less sustainable. The Viceroy’s letter might give a pretext for the one; there is nothing in our acquaintance would warrant the other.”
“If you knew, sir, how determined I am not to take offence at words which certainly imperil patience, you would possibly spare me some of these asperities. I am in close relations of friendship with your grandson; he is at present living with me; I have pledged myself to his father to do my utmost in securing him some honorable livelihood, and it is in his behalf that I have presented myself before you to-day. Will you graciously accord me a hearing on this ground?”
There was a quiet dignity of manner in which he said this, a total forgetfulness of self, and a manly simplicity of purpose so palpable, that the old Judge felt he was in presence of one whose character called for all his respect; at the same time he was not one to be suddenly carried away by a sentiment, and in a very measured voice he replied, “If I ‘m flattered, sir, by the interest you take in a member of my family, I am still susceptible of a certain displeasure that it should be a stranger should stand before me to ask me for any favor to my own.”
“I am aware, my Lord Chief Baron, that my position is a false one, but so is your own.”
“Mine, sir! mine? What do you mean? Explain yourself.”
“If your Lordship’s interest had been exerted as it might have been, Dr. Lendrick’s son would never have needed so humble a friend as he has found in me.”
“And have you come here, sir, to lecture me on my duty to my family? Have you presented yourself under the formality of a viceregal letter of introduction to tell a perfect stranger to you how he should have demeaned himself to his own?”
“Probably I might retort, and ask by what right you lecture me on my manners and behavior? But I am willing to be taught by so consummate a master of everything; and though I was once a courtier, I believe that I have much to learn on the score of breeding. And now, my Lord, let us leave this unpromising theme, and come to one which has more interest for each of us. If this registrarship, this place, whatever it be, would be one to suit your grandson, will the withdrawal of my claim serve to induce your Lordship to support his? In one word, my Lord, will you let him have the appointment?”
“I distinctly refuse, sir,” said the Judge, waving his hand with an air of dignity. “Of the young gentleman for whom you intercede I know but little; but there are two disqualifications against him, more than enough, either of them, to outweigh your advocacy.”
“May I learn them?” asked Sir Brook, meekly.
“You shall, sir. He carries my name without its prestige; he inherits my temper, but not my intellect.” The blood rushed to his face as he spoke, and his chest swelled, and his whole bearing bespoke the fierce pride that animated him; when suddenly, as it were, recollecting himself, he added: “I am not wont to give way thus, sir. It is only in a moment of forgetfulness that I could have obtruded a personal consideration into a question of another kind. My friend here will tell you if it has been the habit of my life to pension my family on the public.”
“Having failed in one object of my coming, let me hope for better success in another. May I convey to your Lordship your grandson’s regret for having offended you? It has caused him sincere sorrow and much self-reproach. May I return with the good tidings of your forgiveness?”
“The habits of my order are opposed to rash judgments, and consequently to hasty reversions. I will consider the case, and let you hear my opinion upon it.”
“I think that is about as much as you will do with him,” muttered Haire in Sir Brook’s ear, and with a significant gesture towards the door.
“Before taking my leave, my Lord, would it be too great a liberty if I beg to present my personal respects to Miss Lendrick?”
“I will inform her of your wish, sir,” said the Judge, rising, and ringing the bell. After a pause of some minutes, in which a perfect silence was maintained by all, the servant returned to say, “Miss Lendrick would be happy to see Sir Brook.”
“I hope, sir,” said the Chief Baron, as he accompanied him to the door, “I have no need to request that no portion of what has passed here to-day be repeated to my granddaughter.”
A haughty bow of assent was all the reply.
“I make my advances to her heart,” said the Judge, with a tone of more feeling in his voice, “through many difficulties. Let these not be increased to me, – let her not think me unmindful of my own.”
“Give her no reason to think so, my Lord, and you may feel very indifferent to the chance words of a passing acquaintance.”
“For the third time to-day, sir, have you dared to sit in judgment over my behavior to my family. You cannot plead want of experience of life, or want of converse with men, to excuse this audacity. I must regard your intrusion, therefore, as a settled project to insult me. I accept no apologies, sir,” said the old man, with a haughty wave of his hand, while his eyes glittered with passion. “I only ask, and I hope I ask as a right, that I may not be outraged under my own roof. Take your next opportunity to offend me when I may not be hampered by the character of your host. Come down into the open arena, and see how proud you will feel at the issue of the encounter.” He rang the bell violently as he spoke, and continued to ring it till the servant came.
“Accompany this gentleman to the gate,” said he to the man.
Not a change came over Sir Brook’s face during the delivery of this speech; and as he bowed reverentially and withdrew, his manner was all that courtesy could desire.
“I see he’s not going to visit Lucy,” muttered Haire, as Sir Brook passed the window.
“I should think not, sir. There are few men would like to linger where they have been so ingloriously defeated.” He walked the room with a proud defiant look for some minutes, and then, sinking faintly into a chair, said, in a weak, tremulous tone, “Haire, these trials are too much for me. It is a cruel aggravation of the ills of old age to have a heart and a brain alive to the finest sense of injury.”
Haire muttered something like concurrence.
“What is it you say, sir? Speak out,” cried the Judge.
“I was saying,” muttered the other, “I wish they would not provoke – would not irritate you; that people ought to see the state your nerves are in, and should use a little discretion how they contradict and oppose you.” The bland smile of the Chief-Justice, and an assenting gesture of his hand, emboldened Haire to continue, and he went on: “I have always said, Keep away such as excite him; his condition is not one to be bettered by passionate outbreaks. Calm him, humor him.”
“What a pearl above price is a friend endowed with discretion! Leave me, Haire, to think over your nice words. I would like to ponder them alone and to myself. I ‘ll send for you by and by.”
CHAPTER XXII. COMING-HOME THOUGHTS
Had a mere stranger been a guest on that Sunday when the Chief Baron entertained at dinner Lady Lendrick, the Sewells, and his old schoolfellow Haire, he might have gone away under the impression that he had passed an evening in the midst of a happy and united family.
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 assigned 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 connoisseurship.
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 noble 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 gratitude 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 class 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 passed 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 Ladyship; “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 niggard 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 Ladyship, 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.
“I don’t think her a fool,” said Mrs. Sewell, slowly.
“I don’t exactly mean so much; but that she has no knowledge of life, and knows nothing whatever of the position she is placed in, nor how to profit by it.”
“I’d not even go that far,” said Mrs. Sewell, in the same quiet tone.
“Don’t pay too much attention to that,” said the Colonel to his mother. “It’s one of her ways always to see something in every one that nobody else has discovered.”
“I made that mistake once too often for my own welfare,” said she, in a voice only audible to his ear.
“She tells me, mother, that she made that same mistake once too often for her own welfare; which being interpreted, means in taking me for her husband, – a civil speech to make a man in presence of his mother.”
“I begin to think that politeness is not the quality any of us are eager about,” said Lady Lendrick; “and I must say I am not at all sorry that the drive is over.”
“If I had been permitted to smoke, you’d not have been distressed by any conversational excesses on my part,” said the Colonel.
“I shall know better another time, Dudley; and possibly-it would be as well to be suffocated with tobacco as half-choked with anger. Thank heaven we are at the door!”
“May I take your horses as far as the Club?” asked Sewell, as he handed her out.
“Yes, but not to wait. You kept them on Tuesday night till past four o’clock.”
“On second thought, I’ll walk,” said he, turning away. “Good-night;” and leaving his wife to be assisted down the steps by the footman, he lighted his cigar, and walked away.