CHAPTER VIII
Mr. Stamford, on inquiring of the club porter, found that his friend was at home, so to speak, and had not been more than ten minutes in an apartment very unostentatiously furnished, which was devoted to the reception of strangers, when Mr. Grandison entered.
“Are you club magnates afraid that strangers may run away with a chair or two, or a spare sofa, that you are so confoundedly parsimonious in the furniture line?” inquired Stamford. “I have more than once considered the question when I have been kicking my heels here and at the Junior Pioneers, and that is the conclusion I have arrived at. It must be so. Surely there must be a legend of a dried-out squatter being driven to spout an arm-chair or a table-cover. Isn’t that it?”
“You’re in famous spirits, Harold, old man,” said the capitalist, who was by no means over-joyous of demeanour. “It’s the rain that’s done it, I suppose. ’Pon my soul, you’re right about this room. It isn’t fit for a gentleman to be put into. I must bring it before the committee. How are Mrs. Stamford and the girls? Brought them down?”
“Yes, we’re at Batty’s. I took Laura to Chatsworth this morning; I’m going out now to call for her. I saw Mrs. Grandison; she was kind enough to ask us to dine on Thursday.”
“That’s all right. Now I’ll tell you what I’ll do. The mail-phaeton will be here in five minutes, and we’ll go out home together. I want to have a talk with you. Things are not going altogether right in the family, and I want another good yarn with you. You know what I told you about Carlo? Well, he’s done worse since then, pretty near broke my heart and his mother’s.” And here Mr. Grandison looked so worried and hopeless that his friend felt himself to be grossly selfish in that he found himself in such good spirits.
“I’m very sorry to hear it, Bob, my dear fellow,” said he with real concern. “But worse! how can he have done worse?”
“He has done worse, much worse. He has married, and married badly too, by Jingo!” and here Mr. Grandison could no longer contain himself.
“I hate to talk about it,” said he, after a pause, “but it’s one of those things that must be faced. And of course you and I are too old friends to mind telling each other the whole truth. But the fact is, the confounded young fool has gone and married a barmaid.”
“You don’t say so!” said Mr. Stamford, starting back as from a blow, but gradually bringing his mind to bear on the question, and wondering how the consequences and complication of such an inconceivable step in the case of an eldest son would end. “Carlo a married man! And to a barmaid too! Surely there must be some mistake. How in the world did it happen – how could it happen?” he asked.
“I suppose it could happen, because it did,” answered his friend gloomily. “Unfortunately, it’s only too true. The fact is, that while he was living in Tasmania – you know he had just gone there when you were in Sydney last, after that card-scrape he got into here – he was living an idle, aimless life. He did that here, for that matter, so that there was no need for him to complain about it so bitterly. I sent him a very fair allowance, and thought he was well out of harm’s way. He used to write his mother long letters; I thought he was on the way to be reformed.” Here Mr. Grandison lit a cigar.
“What happened then?”
“After that he wanted me to give him an allowance, and let him go to Europe. I wish to heaven I had done so now!”
“But why didn’t you?”
“Because I couldn’t trust him. I knew if I let him go on that understanding, he would overdraw his allowance – gamble on a large scale at some of those foreign places – Baden Baden or Homburg. Blow his brains out then, perhaps.”
“I should have let him go, but I can understand your very natural reluctance.”
“Yes, he’s a bad boy, Stamford, there’s no denying. But he’s my eldest son, my first child. My God! how I remember all the love and fondness poor Mary and I lavished on him – how we fretted ourselves to death when he had any childish complaint – the agony we were in when he was away from home one night, we thought he was lost. And to think he should have repaid us for all our care and love, perhaps foolish indulgence, like this – like this! It’s very bitter; it’s hard to bear. Dashed if I didn’t envy our gardener last week, whose son was apprenticed to a blacksmith! I did, by Jove! What’s all the money to us now?”
“It is hard, my dear fellow,” said Stamford, touched by his friend’s evident distress and hopeless air. “I pity you from my heart. But are things so very bad? Can nothing be done?”
“Well they might be worse. The girl’s character is good, I believe; she is a dairyman’s daughter, with no education, and that’s all the harm I know of her. She has a pretty face. Carlo met her at a roadside inn near where he was lodging. He writes over and says he was so confoundedly dull and miserable that he’d made up his mind he’d either marry the girl if she’d have him, or shoot himself. She did have him. So this is the end of all our slaving and striving for his benefit and to give him a chance of keeping in the first flight of the best society the colony could show. He goes and throws himself away like this. And we have a daughter-in-law that doesn’t know an aitch when she sees it, I suppose, and if ever she comes here, which isn’t likely, perhaps, can’t tell a finger-glass from a flower-pot.” At this dreadful picture evoked from his inner consciousness, Mr. Grandison groaned again, and made as if he could tear his hair, were such gestures of grief permissible in a member of a fashionable club.
Mr. Stamford did not really know for the moment what to say to console the unhappy father, who, unless his son had died, could hardly have been in a position of more hopeless sorrow. No doubt some fathers would have been sufficiently Spartan to have preferred an honourable death to an undesirable marriage. But, except in business matters, he was not a hard man. Stamford knew that such Lacedæmonian severity was alien to his nature. He set himself to suggest consolatory ideas as the London built phaeton drew up to the club steps.
“It’s a bad enough affair, doubtless. I won’t say I don’t think so. I should have felt all you do, in my own case.” Here Mr. Stamford inwardly scoffed at the possibility of Hubert’s acting in this manner under any possible circumstances. “But it’s no use taking too sombre a view. The girl is good looking, and honest, which is much. She will, doubtless improve with opportunities. If she has any strength of character, she will probably keep Carlo straight for the future. We have known such things happen before. It’s a desperate remedy, but occasionally efficacious.”
“Desperate! You may say so,” replied Mr. Grandison, testily. “Take the other side of the question. Suppose she turns out a flirt or a scold – or both; runs away from him, or he from her, leaving three or four half-bred brats to worry me in my old age. What then?”
With the expression of these gloomy apprehensions as to the probable matrimonial fate of the heir apparent of Chatsworth and many a fair acre of plain and woodland, the phaeton entered the massive and ornate portals of Chatsworth House, and crunched the immaculate gravel, while the lord of all sat with folded arms and darkened brow, indifferent as a captive to outer grandeur.
“Here we are! Come in Harold, old man,” he said, as the wheels almost grazed the portico. “By George, I could find it in my heart to sit down and cry on our own doorstep, but we have to live and see it out, I suppose. Didn’t you say you were going to take Laura back? Better stay and dine. Keep me company, there’s a good fellow. I’m low enough, God knows!”
Harold Stamford would have agreed to this proposal at once, so touched was he by his old friend’s woebegone appearance and desponding words, but he recalled his own engagement. This he pleaded successfully, adding, “You’ll have the whole family here on Thursday.”
“All right, if you can’t, you can’t. Here, Bateman,” he called out to the coachman who was driving away from the front, “don’t go away yet. I want you to take Mr. Stamford and his daughter home. You may as well go back to Batty’s in comfort, and this pair doesn’t get half work enough. They’ll be making a bolt of it one of these days like Carlo, if I don’t look out. Ha, ha!”
Mr. Grandison’s laugh was not pleasant to hear. His friend followed him into the drawing-room in silence. Here sat the three ladies, who were apparently not in bad spirits. Mrs. Grandison had chased from her brow the marks of care which were so apparent at an earlier period of the day, and was joining, apparently without effort, in the vivacious discourse of the two young ladies. Miss Josie had contrived to arise and apparel herself after the fashion of the period, and though showing some of the pallor produced by a round of gaiety in a semi-tropical climate, was on the whole sufficiently attractive.
“So this is Laura,” said Mr. Grandison, as he advanced and warmly greeted the young lady in question. “Why, what a woman you’ve grown, and a handsome one, too, or I mistake much. Why, Josie, we must send you up to the banks of the Warra Warra, or wherever Windāhgil is. Near Mooramah, isn’t it, Stamford? ’Pon my soul! I forget where my own stations are sometimes.”
“You won’t catch me going into the bush, father!” said Miss Josie, in a rather sharp tone of voice. “That is, not farther than North Shore. It certainly agrees with some people, and Laura here might play the part of Patience without dressing. But Sydney is my home, and I don’t mean to stir from it.”
“It’s the worst day’s work I ever did in my life when I brought you all to live here,” said her father. “I wish to heaven we had continued to live at the old bush cottage you were born in, my lady.”
“I don’t see what difference that would have made, Robert,” said his wife.
“But I do,” said the master of the house. “You and your children would never have learned the habits of fashionable folly and reckless extravagance in which your lives are spent. We might have been satisfied with a more natural existence – aye, and, a happier life.”
“If you only come home early to say disagreeable things, my dear Robert, I must say that I like the old way best,” said Mrs. Grandison with dignity.
“I would say a great many more things of the same sort,” replied he, “if I could persuade myself that they would do any good. But it is too late now. We have sown the wind and must reap the whirlwind.”
This form of discussion tended to render things generally rather uncomfortable. It would have been difficult to direct the conversation into a more conventional channel had not Mr. Grandison abruptly left the room.
“I can’t think what has put Robert out so this afternoon,” said his wife, “of course he keeps worrying himself about that dreadful affair of Carlo’s – wicked boy! He told you about that, Mr. Stamford, I know. I’ve cried my eyes out, and I shall never be the same woman again, I know. But what is the use of making your life one long misery for the sake of a selfish, disobedient son? He never considered us, I firmly believe, since he was a boy at school. Then why, as Josie says, should we consider him? I am not going to grieve over him any longer. He has chosen his path.”
“He’s a selfish, stupid, unprincipled fellow,” said Josie, with an air of cold decision. “He has done everything he could to disgrace himself and us. I am not going to spoil my life on his account, and I shall never mention his name, or that of the servant-girl he has chosen to bring into the family.”
“I think you are too hard; I do indeed, Josie!” said her mother, “though he deserves very little at our hands. You are not his mother, my dear, and you don’t know how it feels. But I can’t think we should deny ourselves anything in society for his sake. Just at the beginning of the gay season in Sydney, too!”
Laura, who had looked extremely grave throughout the discussion, now felt inclined to smile at Mrs. Grandison’s distressful finale. She rose, and looked at her father to explain the absolute necessity for their departure.
“We shall see you all here at dinner on Thursday, then, mind that!” said their hostess. “And, Laura, put on your best bib and tucker. I’ll have some of our show young men to meet you.”
“I’m sure I don’t know where you’ll find them, mother,” said Josie, disdainfully. “Since the Lorenzo went to Fiji, there hasn’t been a man in Sydney fit to look at.”
The coachman’s temper was not improved by the length of time during which he had been kept waiting. One of the highly-conditioned, irregularly-exercised horses had indeed revenged himself by pawing and scraping, the result of which was a hole in the gravel, which caused the head gardener to use a much stronger expression when he saw it than, still mindful of kirk and minister, he was in the habit of employing.
As they went spinning down the incline to Double Bay, in the easy, well-hung carriage, her father said, “Wouldn’t you like to have a drag like this, my dear, to put your husband down at his office in if you were married and lived in Sydney?”
“That means if I were somebody else altogether,” replied Laura, with a slight blush. “I can’t say how I might act then. But if you ask me whether I would change places with the poor people in the splendid house we have just left, I say, with the country mouse, ‘Give me my hollow tree and liberty,’ or rather our love and affection for each other. I don’t think anything could happen to alter that; do you, father?”
Mr. Stamford answered by a quick, decided movement rather than by words. It is to be hoped no one in that fashionable suburb observed the action; but even if so, the faultlessly aristocratic appearance of the equipage in which the offenders sat would have sufficed to condone the offence.
A comparatively short time saw them at Hyde Park – too short, indeed, it seemed to Laura, eager to enjoy the varied beauty of the scene. The splendours of the dying day, the roll of the surge upon the outer shore, the rising ocean breeze, all these seemed to the keen and cultured sense of the enthusiastic maiden but portions of a wondrous panorama, of which each hour furnished a fresh presentment.
Linda, from the balcony, beheld them arrive in state, and waved her handkerchief in token of welcome and approval. “Oh! Laura, I was beginning to think you were never coming. What kept you so late? You will hardly have time to dress for dinner, and I do so want you to look well.”
“Why should you want me to look well? I fancied I was looking rather nice – that is, for a country cousin, as Josie says.”
“What!” almost shouted Linda; “hasn’t father told you? I see he hasn’t – isn’t it just like him? If the Duke of Edinburgh and Lord Wolseley were coming to dinner he’d forget all about it. And yet he thinks he’s a good father.”
“So he is,” said Laura, “and I won’t have him run down. What is the dreadful secret? Has the aide-de-camp come to ask us to dinner at Government House?”
“No! But without joking, Laura, it is a matter of importance. That is – we should have thought so at Windāhgil. Mr. Barrington Hope is coming to dine.”
“Is he?” said Laura, coolly. Linda afterwards said it was “unnatural calmness.” “Then suppose you ask the maid to turn on the gas directly. We must put on our best bibs and tuckers, as Mrs. Grandison says.”
Mr. Barrington Hope arrived in due time, accurately apparelled and looking – as most men do – to great advantage in evening costume. Though much above the ordinary height, his breadth of shoulder and justness of proportion prevented any appearance of incongruity. Evidently one of those persons who wisely dismiss the problems of the day with their ordinary garb, his features wore an entirely different expression, so closely allied to careless ease that Mr. Stamford could hardly believe he saw before him the anxious brain-worker of the morning.
As the two men stood together on the balcony overlooking the bay with its evening crowd of water-wayfarers and pleasure seekers, the elder said —
“How wonderful an image of rest and peace a calm sea presents, especially at this hour! There are hard work and deep thoughts frequently upon blue water, but I confess I can never connect them together.”
“My own feeling, quite,” said Hope. “I am passionately fond of the sea, but few people have less time for indulging such a taste. I always feel it to be the true home of the lotus-eater. ‘In calm or storm, by rock or bay,’ there is rest for the soul when on the deep. If I were safely embarked for Europe and clear of the Heads, I should almost expire of joy, I really believe.”
“But why do you not take a holiday – a run to Fiji, San Francisco, Galle, anywhere? All places strange and foreign are equally good for change.”
“Or to the moon,” laughed the young man. “Nearly as much chance of getting to one as the other. However, I will think it over and arrange.”
“Depend upon it, you should not delay. I am something of a physiognomist, and I see reasons for a foreign tour. Why not make an application? Urgent private affairs. They could not be more truthfully described. But here come my young people.”
Mrs. Stamford and her daughters now appeared. With her usual prompt kindness she advanced, upon hearing her husband commence a formal introduction, and held out her hand to the young man.
“You are well known to us by name, Mr. Hope! I have great pleasure, believe me, in making your acquaintance. I trust some day that we may be able to see you at Windāhgil. You will be indeed welcome to our country home.”
Mr. Hope bowed with an air as if disclaiming all title to unusual indulgence, but his eyes strayed from the kind face of the speaker to that of Laura Stamford, to whom, with Linda, he was now presented.
Both these young ladies, in spite of an air of calm repose, were inwardly somewhat agitated at beholding a personage in whose favour they had heard so much. Prone, like most damsels of the romantic age, to invest the probable hero with striking attributes, they had yet fallen short of a correct estimate of Barrington Hope’s appearance. Connecting him in more or less degree with his mercantile profession, they had expected perhaps a look of greater age, a more concentrated regard, or care-encumbered countenance. When therefore they were confronted by one of the best-looking, best-dressed men in the metropolis, separated as to air and manner apparently from any commonplace pecuniary labours, they could hardly believe their eyes.
Linda was inwardly gnashing her teeth, and reproaching the author of her being in that he was such an inefficient hand at description. “Would not any one have imagined, Laura,” she said afterwards, “that Mr. Hope was a hard-headed sort of person, clever at figures and all that, and good to us? And now, quite suddenly we are brought face to face with a magnificent man – the finest man I ever saw in my life. Isn’t it a shame – a crying shame, Laura?”
“Isn’t what a crying shame? That Mr. Hope is asked to dine, or that we couldn’t write and request his photograph before the original burst upon us in all his glory? Do you think you would have liked to behave differently?”
“I am sure I can’t tell. But it was such a surprise. I might have fainted and disgraced myself. But you are such a cold-blooded creature, Laura; I sometimes think you have no heart.”
“H’m,” said Laura, “that is a matter of opinion. I do not profess to wear my heart upon my sleeve, but there is an article of the kind somewhere deep down, I daresay. What do I think about Mr. Hope? I think him very nice. He is well-informed, though he did not parade his knowledge. Understands the science of music, and plays with taste. I don’t know that I can say more about him at present.”
“What a prosaic list of qualities; it might have been read out of a book! But didn’t you like him a great deal?”
“How could I like any one a great deal the first day I met him? Do you think I resemble Miss Morton’s heroines, who meet a perfectly unknown young man, and in an hour have told him all their family affairs and inmost thoughts? That kind of transparent simplicity is not in my line.”
“But you do like him, Laura. Say you do really.”
“Of course I like a handsome, agreeable man who has been of the greatest use and benefit to the family, as I like any pleasant acquaintance. Further than that I decline to commit myself. And now let me go to sleep.”
“How you can go to sleep entirely astonishes me. Oh! wasn’t it a delightful dinner? I felt so nice. I am sure I looked the essence of propriety and countrified inexperience. Do you think he could discover that we had seen very little society, Laura?”
“If he was not a very unobservant man he might easily have made out so much, I should say; that is if he troubled himself to study us so deeply. What can it matter?”
It was not only on that memorable evening that Barrington Hope produced a favourable impression upon the youthful portion of the Stamford family. Mrs. Stamford was charmed with him. His manner was so easy, yet so deferential and so respectful to her and her daughters. Well-informed as to the European politics of the day, he inferentially, in an argument with Mr. Stamford, showed himself to be widely read. He was familiar with the latest songs, the very last waltz; he sang a duet with Laura, and even played an accompaniment which showed more than theoretical knowledge of the science of music.
When he made his adieux somewhat early in the evening, every voice was musical in his praise.
“He’s a delightful creature,” said Linda, “all my fancy painted him, and more. How different he is from most of the men one meets. So free from conceit, and yet he knows so much, doesn’t he? And what a good touch he has on the piano! But men always play better than we do when they play at all. When are we going to see him again?”
“He is to send us tickets for the Bachelors’ Ball,” said Laura. “We shall meet him there, of course. What a grand affair it is to be!”
“I shall catch a fever and die before the day arrives,” said Linda, plaintively. “The happiness will be too great to be realised. Oh! oh, dear! Oh! dear! how shall we pass the intervening days? Luckily our dresses will take up a good deal of our thoughts and spare time. Do you think he dances well, Laura?”
“Mr. Hope appears to do many things well. I don’t suppose he showed us all his good qualities in one evening. He is a man of the world, and doesn’t have all his goods in the shop window at once.”
“What a horrid idea, Laura. You haven’t half as much sentiment as I have. I hope he hasn’t many more accomplishments; I don’t care for a man being perfect. Perhaps he has a bad temper underneath. Men with soft voices often have.”
“I didn’t notice any uncommon softness of voice. I thought he spoke naturally, which is the great thing after all, with men or women either. But after we go to the ball you will most likely discover that there are other men in the world.”
“I don’t care. I am quite certain there are very few nicer ones, if any. I think you must admire him yourself, Laura; you are so guarded about him, and I am sure he has taken a fancy to you.”
“Nonsense, Linda! Really you are old enough to talk more sensibly. How can any one form any liking or otherwise in a single evening?”
“What, not love at first sight?” exclaimed Linda, jumping up in an excited manner. “Do you disbelieve wholly in that? What does Disraeli say in that lovely Venetia of his? ‘There is no love but love at first sight,’ or first love, I forget which.”
“They are different things,” answered Laura; “but Disraeli ought to have more sense than to write in a way to turn silly girls’ heads. I think your novel-reading will have to be restricted, Linda, before long; I must really speak to mother.”
“It’s too late now, Laura. I’ve read all sorts of things, but they don’t do girls any harm. Bad companions do, if you like. They are destructive; but we never had any friends that we were ashamed of. And so you don’t like Mr. Hope.”
“I didn’t say that,” answered Laura; “but really you’re as persistent as an interviewer, Linda,” and she quitted the room.
In spite of Linda’s repeated assertions that the week preceding the ball never would come to an end, the despised days passed away – perhaps too quickly indeed for some people. A picnic in the harbour, the detail of which was arranged by Mr. Hope, and which every one enjoyed ecstatically, as Linda avowed, perhaps aided the flight of time. A visit to the theatre, where the London Comedy Company was performing, also tended to prevent undue concentration of thought. And, oh! wonder of wonders, and joy of joys, was not the Intercolonial Exhibition, that Aladdin’s Palace of Art and Industry, daily open, daily enjoyed to the very acme of novel excitement?
How delicious was it to stroll around the fountain in the afternoon of each day, while the music of the Austrian Band rose to the lofty roof or floated dreamlike amid the aisles and courts; to sit silently absorbing delicious sounds amid the strange beauty and variety of the scene; to wander amid the heaped up riches of the curiosities of every land under the sun, encountering well-known friends unexpectedly, or exchanging the pleasantries of the hour with gay acquaintances. Such were the resources thrown open to the erstwhile dwellers at Windāhgil. Small surprise need therefore be aroused by Linda’s next declaration, that the ball would be upon them all too swiftly, and find them unprepared. Strangely sweet sorrows and sighs of youth! joys in disguise are they for the most part.