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CHAPTER VIII. AN OLD BACHELOR’S HOUSE

It is quite true Georgina forgot all about Mr. M’Kinlay. The gardener had met her on her way, and presented her with a bouquet of Japanese roses – the real purple roses it was supposed never could be reared out of a Tycoon’s garden; and so she hastened up to her sister’s room, as totally oblivious of the man of law as though he had been hundreds of miles away. They talked pleasantly of flowers – flowers for the china vase, and flowers for the hair – they laughed at the incongruous blunders of the people who wore “wrong colours,” and that “drab bonnet” they had seen last Sunday in church. They next discussed dress, and the impossibility of wearing anything “decent” on the dusty roads; and, lastly, they ordered the ponies and the phaeton, and drove out.

How charmingly pleasant are these lives of little cares and of little duties: where conscience has no burden that would be too weighty for the strength of childhood – where no torturing anxieties invade, no tormenting ambitions pursue – where the morning’s stroll through the garden is the very type of existence, a ramble amidst fragrance, and fruit, and flowers, with no other call upon exertion than to enjoy! And what a teachable faculty is that same one of enjoyment. How it develops itself under good training and favourable opportunities.

These sisters had a very pleasant life, and they knew it; that is, they no more overlooked the stones in their path than their neighbours; but they thoroughly understood that Fate had accorded them a very smooth road, and one right easy to travel. They chatted gaily as they drove along the side of a brightly eddying river, through a glen of some miles in extent. The day was one of those mellow ones of August, tempered with a slight breeze, that gently moved the cloud-shadows on the mountains, adding at each change some new effect of light and colour. “Let us go and call on Sir Within,” said Lady Vyner; “it would be a glorious day to see the old castle, and the mountain behind it.” Her sister agreed at once; for though the drive was full eight miles, the road was beautiful all the way, and at its end was a grand old keep, Dalradern Castle, with a charming old bachelor for its owner, than whom none better understood how to do the honours of his house. While the sisters push their smart ponies to a brisk trot, we shall take the opportunity to say a word of Sir Within Wardle. He was the last of a great Welsh family of large fortune and ancient name, but who had lived all his life away from England. He had been in diplomacy since his boyhood; he had joined an embassy in the Low Countries at the age of sixteen, and lived long enough to see the whole map of Europe new coloured.

It had been the dream of his existence to “come home” – to return to the temperate climate and genial air of England – to get back where the trees were really trees, and where grass was veritably green, and where people told the truth, and tradesmen were honest. Well, he did get back, but it was not to find everything as he had pictured it. The temperate climate rained a good deal. The genial air had a marked tendency to give bronchitis. The grass was unquestionably green, but so were they who walked in it, for wet feet were invariable. As to truthfulness in his own class, he had nothing to complain of; but he thought servants were pretty much as elsewhere, and as to his tradespeople, there was little to choose between Fleet-street and the “Graben,” and Piccadilly was not a whit above the Rue de la Paix!

In fact, there were many things as he had hoped, and not a few that disappointed him. People, generally, were what he deemed more narrow-minded; they sat more in judgment over their neighbours than he liked; they were more inquisitive and less charitable. In his world, where he had passed fifty odd years, the charming people were admitted to be charming, though certain delinquencies chargeable to them might have disparaged their claims to character. It was not held to the disadvantage of Beauty that discretion should not have united itself to loveliness, and Wit was just as highly appreciated as though its possessor had not been more than lucky with the dice-box. Sir Within, be it remarked, wanted none of these immunities on his own behalf. He had never been what is called a man of gallantry, never gambled. His great passion was a splendid house and grand receptions. He liked great people, crowned heads, and after them coroneted ones. He revered Grand-Dukes and Serene Highnesses; and it was not by any means improbable that in his homage to the great lay the secret of that tolerance on the score of morals that marked him; for, be it said with respect, Kings and Kaisers have a habit of showing the world that they soar in a sphere above common proprieties, and can afford to do in ethics what they can do with the Bourse – go in for a rise or fall, as the whim seizes them.

To “come back” with tastes like these was a mistake, but to attempt to justify them was infinitely worse. Sir Within began to lecture his country neighbours on their hard-heartedness and ungenerosity. He enumerated scores of people who had taken little scampers into vice, and come back to live more gorgeously on virtue. What anecdotes he had of ministers who had cheated at cards! Great men, excellent men in all other respects, unimpeachable in all their public acts, and pillars of the State they pertained to.. He told of a society whose very laxity saved all friction, and which went on smoothly – for it always went downwards. The consequence may be anticipated. His neighbours – at least their wives – voted him an old monster of vice, corrupted by half a century of foreign iniquities. They refused his invitations, and neglected his advances. His presents of fruit – such fruit too! – were declined, and his society strictly avoided.

The Vyners, who only came to the neighbourhood for a few weeks in the year, scarcely knew anything of local feelings, and only heard that he never went out, and saw little company at home – facts which, when they came to be acquainted with him, struck them as strange, for he was eminently one made for society, and seemed to feel the raciest enjoyment in it. He had all that peculiar go and eagerness in him which pertains to men who talk well, and feel that they have this power.

Perhaps my reader may have met such a character – not that they exist as a class – but if he has done so, he will acknowledge that it is a very charming form of selfishness, and gifted with marvellous powers of pleasing. At all events, Lady Vyner and her sister delighted in him – most ungrateful had they been if they had not – for never was courtesy more polished, never homage more devoted or more respectful. Royalty could not have been received by him with a greater deference, and now, as they drove up to the massive entrance of the castle, and the sharp clatter of the ponies’ feet awoke the echoes of the solemn court-yard, Sir Within was promptly at his post to help them to descend; and as the wind blew his long white hair backwards, he stooped to kiss their hands with all the reverence of a courtier.

“Do you know, dear ladies,” said he, “that I had a vision of this visit? It was revealed to me – I cannot say how – that you would come over here to-day, and I told Bernais to prepare the orangery; for,” said I, “Bernais, I will offer ces dames no luncheon, but will insist on their taking an early dinner.”

“What a tempting proposal!” said Lady Vyner, looking at Georgina, whose fiat was always needed to every project.

“I vote for being tempted,” said Georgina, gaily; “but what do I see there – something new?”

“No, something old, but restored. Don’t you remember the last day you were here saying that the silence of this old court wanted the pleasant plash of a fountain? and so I got these disabled nymphs and hamadryads remounted, and set them to blow their conchs and spout the cataracts as of yore.”

“How beautiful it all is!”

“Curious enough, the figures are really good. Some worthy ancestor of mine had purchased this group at Urbino from some ruined Italian mansion; and, as a work of art, it is almost equal to a Luca della Robb. The mistake is the era. It is not suited to this old dungeon. Here we are in the tenth century, and this group is cinque cento. Let me send it to the cottage. It would be perfect in your garden.”

“Not for worlds. I couldn’t think of it!”

“Don’t think of it, but say ‘Yes.’ Remember, that in villa ornamentation nothing comes amiss; there are no incongruities.”

“It is impossible, Sir Within – quite impossible.”

“Don’t imagine we have come here as brigands,” said Miss Courtenay, smiling.

“When you carry away my heart, what matters what is left me?” said he, sighing.

Miss Courtenay looked down – it was a bashful look, but not a displeased one – and, somehow, more conscious than the compliment of so old a gentleman might seem to warrant.

“And so Sir Gervais likes Ireland?” said he, as he introduced them into the drawing-room.

“So much so, that I fear he has made a purchase of some property there.”

“That is only a mistake when one feels that he must live on the spot he owns. Some witty Frenchman says: ‘I used to fancy that I owned my furniture, but I found that it owned me. I was the bondsman of an old arm-chair, and the actual slave of a chest of drawers!’ You laugh, ladies, but just see whether this old house or I be the master here.”

“Well, it’s not a very severe bondage after all,” said Georgina, smiling.

“How pleasantly one discusses another’s captivity! By the way, when are you all to come and pay me this long-promised visit? Remember, the longer you defer payment, the larger grows the debt; your week is now a month.”

“When Sir Gervais comes home, we shall be delighted.”

“Why not be here when he arrives? How much pleasanter he’d find the house where your presence had imparted that charm that comes of female influence. You cannot guess how this old room, that I thought so dreary a while ago, looks positively beautiful now. Yes, Bernais, bring it in.” This was said to the servant, who, after appearing at the door, made a hasty retreat. “It is the menu of our dinner, ladies, and my cook, M. Piquard, wishes to acquit himself with distinction. See, here is a query. ‘Is the pheasant to be “aux huitres,” or aux pointes d’asperges?’ Decide.”

“I should say with the asparagus,” said Miss Courtenay.

“And your judgment is correct; the other is a mere compromise to a supposed English taste. A summer day’s dinner is to the full banquet of mid-winter what a light ‘aquarelle’ is to an oil picture. You want grace, delicacy; you require elegance, transparency, softness; not depth, nor force, nor strong effect.”

“What Sybarites you must deem us!” said Lady Vyner, laughing.

“I am repeating for you to-day a little dinner I once gave the Duchesse de Sagance. She was much admired at the time by the Archduke Charles of Austria; but forgive me if I am talking of forbidden themes.”

“Oh, go on, Sir Within! We must implicitly bow to your discretion.”

“Ah, if you do that, I am ruined. You silence me at once!”

“You surely wouldn’t have us say, ‘Be indiscreet?’”

“No; but I’d have you say, ‘Talk to us as if we were all at Vienna, at Milan, or at Naples.’”

“Neither my sister nor myself ‘pose’ for prudery, Sir Within; but the world says that you are – what shall I call it? – too – too – do help me to the word.”

“How can I, when it is to my own blame? Who ever called on a prisoner to fill up his own indictment?”

“What the world means is, perhaps,” broke in Georgina, “that Sir Within occasionally forgets his geography, and fancies at the foot of Snowdon that he is close to Vesuvius.”

“I apprehend you,” said he, smiling; “but confess, that dress is not more a question of climate than conversation; both one and the other are lighter in the south of Europe, and what is of more moment, with perfect safety, too; mark that, Mesdames, with perfect safety.”

“It may be all very well for you, who are acclimatised, to say so,” said Lady Vyner; “but bear in mind that we only passed one winter at Rome.”

“And did you not like it? What a furious cataract of all manner of sensations is a first winter at Rome! Grandeur and littleness, Sublimity and absurdity – the splendid St. Peter’s and the slipshod priesthood – and, more ridiculous than all, our cockney population wandering over the Coliseum and Quirinal, not fully certain that they are getting the real article for their money, or whether Nero and Tiberius are not dear at the price paid for them. I often wish it were right for an ex-Envoy to give his note-book, or some extracts from it, to the world. Impressions of the B. S. – the British Subject, I mean – by a late Foreign Minister.”

“Very amusing, doubtless; but very spiteful,” said Miss Courtenay.

“Here comes Bernais to announce dinner, and rescue you from my tartness;” and, giving an arm to each of the ladies, he led them forward.

Valued reader, is it amongst the number of your experiences to have “assisted” at a dinner – usually a Russian one – where, without having found anything pre-eminently good to eat, you are given to understand that all cost fabulous sums – that the fricassee you scarcely tasted was brought from the frontier of China, and the fish, that seemed flavourless, came by estafette from the Caspian? Such, in a certain way, was Sir Within’s conversation; it sparkled with great people – Kings glittered, and Queens bespangled it; it was evidently a dear article to have acquired, but, beyond that, it possessed little value. Yet, “for all that, and all that,” his guests liked it. To be sure, it was admirably aided; his “little dinner,” as he modestly styled it, was a banquet, not in ponderous detail or duration, but in the perfect selection and the exquisite delicacy of all that composed it.

And did he not relish the success he achieved – the double success of his cook and of himself! If there be a time when egotism is less odious than at others, it is when a host expatiates on the pains he has taken to feed you. The little selfish vaingloriousness of the moment is so readily pardoned, while the truffle is on your fork, or the ruby claret half way to your lips.

It was towards the close of the dinner that Sir Within, adroitly turning the topic from the meats to the guests, was discussing, with some knowledge of the subject, the people who made the pleasantest dinner company, and showing how an accomplished host makes the light talkers do duty at the first course, using them as mere skirmishers, who are to fall back and be ignored as the great engagement comes on. “I flatter myself,” said he, “that I can manage most classes of men, though I own there is one that totally defies me – that is to say, he is so obstinately self-willed, and so professionally trained to persistence, that he deems it a triumph. I mean your lawyer!”

“Oh, Laura! what have I done!” exclaimed Georgina, laying her hand on her sister’s arm, and staring half wildly at her.

“What is it? What is the matter?”

“Was there ever such a blunder – how shall we get over it?”

“What is it, then? tell it!” cried Lady Vyner, eagerly.

“I forgot all about him – utterly – completely forgot!”

“About whom?”

“Mr. M’Kinlay, the lawyer. He arrived this morning, came to the cottage very early, saying he was on his way to Ireland to meet Gervais, and only ran over from Crewe to see us; I left him to tell you that he was there. I had it in my head when I quitted the room, but what drove it out again, or what occurred to make me forget it, I cannot now imagine.”

In spite of all the annoyance of the incident, Lady Vyner laughed immoderately, and so did Sir Within, and so, at last, did Miss Courtenay, and the mirth was kept up by all sorts of fanciful conceits as to what the lawyer must have thought, said, or done.

“He has driven away in a towering passion; he’s hot-tempered at times, I know,” said Lady Vyner.

“No, no! you’ll find him very comfortably installed when you get back,” said Sir Within. “He’ll be vexed, he’ll be angry, doubtless; but as a minister plenipotentiary vents his ill-temper in a despatch, your man of law consigns all his indignation, more practically, to his bill of costs. What an avalanche of six-and-eightpences will fall on your forgetfulness.”

“We must hasten to repair the disaster. Sir Within, would you oblige me by ordering our ponies. I know you’ll forgive our abrupt leave-taking.”

“I shall never forgive the cause of it. Why not let me send a messenger over to ask him, saying I had insisted on detaining you?”

“Oh, on no account! Besides, he’s a touchy person, and my husband is most tenacious regarding him. I must hasten back and make my explanations in person.”

“I don’t know how I am to face him at all!” cried Georgina.

“I’d certainly not try,” said Sir Within.

Vague as the mere words were, they were uttered with a significance that plainly said, “You might stay where you are;” and Miss Courtenay evidently so read them, for her cheek reddened as she turned away.

Lady Vyner, however, went on: “I don’t think we shall have any difficulty about it – at least, I hope not – though what I’m to say, and how to say it, I cannot imagine.”

“Throw me into the breach,” said Sir Within; “say that, hearing of his arrival, I begged a visit from you – that I wanted some legal advice – I required a draft of – what shall I say? – I can scarcely be going to be married. Let it be a will, then.”

“Oh no, not a will, Sir Within!” said Georgina, with a very soft smile.

“It shall be whatever you decide for it,” said he, assisting her with her shawl as he spoke.

“Do you ever mean to come over to breakfast with us?” asked Lady Vyner. “The promise has been made and renewed, I think, a dozen times.”

“May I say next Sunday, then?”

“And you’ll promise to come to church with us afterwards?” cried Lady Vyner.

He muttered something with a smile to Miss Courtenay, and she turned away abruptly, but ere she drew down her veil her face betokened the reverse of displeasure.

Though, as they drove homeward, the unpleasant explanation that lay before them engaged much of their thoughts, taxing all their address how to encounter its difficulty, yet, from time to time, Georgina would return to talk of the house they had just quitted, and the host.

“It is easy enough to see why our straitlaced neighbours do not take to him,” said she; “he is too much a man of the world – too tolerant and forgiving for their notions.”

“A little too lax, also, for the proprieties of English life,” added Lady Vyner.

“For its hypocrisies, if you like, Laura. I’m certain people are pretty much the same everywhere, though the way they talk about themselves may be very different.”

“I suspect he has made a conquest, Georgy,” said her sister, laughing; “or rather, that his magnificent old castle, and his Vandykes, and his pineries, and his conservatory have – ”

“No! that I protest against. His ‘accessories,’ as the French would call them, are undeniable. It is a house absolutely princely in all its details; but I think he himself is the gem of the collection. He is so courteous and so pleasant, so anecdotic, and so full of all manner of apropos, and then so utterly unlike every one else that one knows.”

“I suppose there lies his chief attraction. We have to measure him with people all whose thoughts and ideas are so essentially homely, and who must of necessity be eternally talking of themselves – that is, of their own turnpike, their own turnips, and their own cock pheasants.”

“Is it not strange that he never married?” said Georgina, after a silence.

“I don’t think so. He’s not a man that would be likely to marry, and very far from being one that a woman would like to take as a husband.”

“Do you think so – do you really think so?”

“I’m certain of it. All those charming little schemes for our entertainment that captivated us a while ago, show a degree of care and attention bestowed on little things which would make life a perfect servitude. Cannot you imagine him spending his mornings giving audience to his cook, and listening to the report of his gardener? I fancy I see him in the midst of a levee of domestics, gravely listening to the narrative of the last twenty-four hours of his household.”

“So far from that,” said Georgina, warmly, “he told me Bernais did everything – engaged and discharged servants, changed furniture, rearranged rooms, and, in fact, managed little daily ‘surprises’ for him, that, as he said, compensated for much of the solitude in which he lived.”

“But why does he live in solitude? Why not go back to the life and the places that habit has endeared to him?”

“He told me to-day that he intended to do so; that he is only waiting for the visit of a certain relative, Mr. Ladarelle; after which he means to set out for Italy.”

“Ladarelle is the great banker, and, if I mistake not, his heir.” “Yes. Sir Within says that they scarcely know each other, and have all that dislike and distrust that usually separate the man in possession and the man in expectancy.”

“One can fancy how distasteful his heir must be to a man like Sir Within Wardle,” said Lady Vyner.

“To any man, sister,” broke in Georgina – “to any man who only knows the person as the inheritor of his fortune. I declare I think Sir Within spoke of the Ladarelles with much forbearance, aware, as he is, that they are coming down here to see in what state of repair the castle is, and whether the oaks are being thinned more actively than a mere regard for their welfare would exact.”

“Did Sir Within say that?” asked Lady Vyner, with a laugh. “No; but I guessed it!” “Well, he supplied the text for your theory?” “In a measure, perhaps. It was when you went with Groves to look at the large cactus he told me this, and mentioned that, by a singular provision, though the estate is strictly entailed, he could charge the property to any extent with jointure if he married; and perhaps, said he, my worthy relatives are anxious to satisfy themselves that this event has not, nor is very likely to occur.”

“Not now, certainly?” said Lady Vyner, with a saucy laugh. “I don’t know. There are many women well to do, and well off, would marry him.”

“That is to say, there are a considerable number of women who would sacrifice much for money.”

Miss Courtenay was silent; when she next spoke, it was about the evening – the air was growing fresh, and the twilight deepening. “I wonder in what mood we are to find Mr. M’Kinlay – if we are to find him at all.”

“I own it would be very awkward; but I am such a coward about meeting him, that I half wish he had gone away, and that we were left to make our lame excuses in a letter.”

“I have to confess that the matter sits very lightly on my conscience,” said Georgina, “though I am the real delinquent. I don’t like him, and I shall not be very unhappy if he knows it.”

“Possibly enough, but such a breach of all politeness – ”

“My dear Laura, he has met this incident, or something very like it, a hundred times. Earls and Viscounts have made appointments with him and forgotten him; he has been left standing on that terrace, or pacing moodily up that street, for hours long, and, as Sir Within said very smartly, consoled by the item that would record it in the bill of costs.”

“Yes, I remember the remark; it struck me as the only bit of vulgarity about him.”

“Vulgarity! Sir Within Wardle vulgar!”

“Well, I have no other word for it, Georgy. It was the observation that might readily have come from any ordinary and common-place person, and sounded unsuitably from the lips of a very polished gentleman.”

“Poor Sir Within! if in a gloomy moment you may be wondering to yourself what harsh or envious things your wealth, your splendour, and your taste may have provoked from us, I am certain that you never imagined that the imputation of being vulgar was one of them!”

Fortunately there was no time to continue a theme so threatening to be unpleasant, for already they were at the gate lodge, and a loud summons with the bell had announced their arrival.