COMMENCEMENT OF THE SPLENDOURS AND PERPLEXITIES OF MY FATHER'S GRAND
PARADE
Janet, in reply to our inquiries as to the condition of the squire's
temper, pointed out in the newspaper a notification of a grand public
Ball to be given by my father, the first of a series of three, and said
that the squire had seen it and shrugged. She thought there was no
positive cause for alarm, even though my father should fail of his
word; but expressed her view decidedly, that it was an unfortunate move
to bring him between the squire and me, and so she blamed Captain
Bulsted. This was partly for the reason that the captain and his wife,
charmed by my father, were for advocating his merits at the squire's
table: our ingenuity was ludicrously taxed to mystify him on the
subject of their extravagant eulogies. They told him they had been
invited, and were going to the great London Balls.
'Subscription Balls?' asked the squire.
'No, sir,' rejoined the captain.
'Tradesmen's Balls, d'ye call 'em, then?'
'No, sir; they are Balls given by a distinguished gentleman.'
'Take care it's not another name for tradesmen's Balls, William.'
'I do not attend tradesmen's Balls, sir.'
'Take care o' that, William.'
The captain was very angry. 'What,' said he, turning to us, 'what does
the squire mean by telling an officer of the Royal Navy that he is
conducting his wife to a tradesmen's Ball?'
Julia threatened malicious doings for the insult. She and the squire
had a controversy upon the explication of the word gentleman, she
describing my father's appearance and manners to the life. 'Now listen
to me, squire. A gentleman, I say, is one you'd say, if he wasn't born
a duke, he ought to have been, and more shame to the title! He turns
the key of a lady's heart with a twinkle of his eye. He's never
mean—what he has is yours. He's a true friend; and if he doesn't keep
his word, you know in a jiffy it's the fault of affairs; and stands
about five feet eleven: he's a full-blown man': and so forth.
The squire listened, and perspired at finding the object of his
abhorrence crowned thus in the unassailable realms of the abstract.
Julia might have done it more elegantly; but her husband was rapturous
over her skill in portraiture, and he added: 'That's a gentleman,
squire; and that's a man pretty sure to be abused by half the world.'
'Three-quarters, William,' said the squire; 'there's about the
computation for your gentleman's creditors, I suspect.'
'Ay, sir; well,' returned the captain, to whom this kind of fencing in
the dark was an affliction, 'we make it up in quality—in quality.'
'I'll be bound you do,' said the squire; 'and so you will so long as
you're only asked to dance to the other poor devils' fiddling.'
Captain Bulsted bowed. 'The last word to you, squire.'
The squire nodded. 'I'll hand it to your wife, William.'
Julia took it graciously. 'A perfect gentleman! perfect! confound his
enemies!'
'Why, ma'am, you might keep from swearing,' the squire bawled.
'La! squire,' said she, 'why, don't you know the National Anthem?'
'National Anthem, ma'am! and a fellow, a velvet-tongued—confound him,
if you like.'
'And where's my last word, if you please?' Julia jumped up, and dropped
a provoking curtsey.
'You silly old grandada!' said Janet, going round to him; 'don't you
see the cunning woman wants to dress you in our garments, and means to
boast of it to us while you're finishing your wine?'
The old man fondled her. I could have done the same, she bent over him
with such homely sweetness. 'One comfort, you won't go to these
gingerbread Balls,' he said.
'I'm not invited,' she moaned comically.
'No; nor shan't be, while I can keep you out of bad company.'
'But, grandada, I do like dancing.
'Dance away, my dear; I've no objection.'
'But where's the music?'
'Oh, you can always have music.'
'But where are my partners?'
The squire pointed at me.
'You don't want more than one at a time, eh?' He corrected his error:
'No, the fellow's engaged in another quadrille. Mind you, Miss Janet,
he shall dance to your tune yet. D'ye hear, sir?' The irritation
excited by Captain Bulsted and Julia broke out in fury. 'Who's that
fellow danced when Rome was burning?'
'The Emperor Nero,' said Janet. 'He killed Harry's friend Seneca in the
eighty-somethingth year of his age; an old man, and—hush, grandada!'
She could not check him.
'Hark you, Mr. Harry; dance your hardest up in town with your rips and
reps, and the lot of ye; all very fine while the burning goes on: you
won't see the fun of dancing on the ashes. A nice king of Rome Nero was
next morning! By the Lord, if I couldn't swear you'll be down on your
knees to an innocent fresh-hearted girl's worth five hundred of the
crew you're for partnering now while you've a penny for the piper.'
Janet shut his mouth, kissed him, and held his wine up. He drank, and
thumped the table. 'We's have parties here, too. The girl shall have
her choice of partners: she shan't be kept in the background by a young
donkey. Take any six of your own age, and six sensible men, to try you
by your chances. By George, the whole dozen 'd bring you in non-compos.
You've only got the women on your side because of a smart face and
figure.'
Janet exclaimed indignantly, 'Grandada, I'm offended with you'; and
walked out on a high step.
'Come, if he has the women on his side,' said Captain Bulsted, mildly.
'He'll be able to go partnering and gallopading as long as his banker
'll let him, William—like your gentleman! That's true. We shall soon
see.'
'I leave my character in your hands, sir,' said I, rising. 'If you
would scold me in private, I should prefer it, on behalf of your
guests; but I am bound to submit to your pleasure, and under any
circumstances I remember, what you appear to forget, that you are my
grandfather.'
So saying, I followed the ladies. It was not the wisest of speeches,
and happened, Captain Bulsted informed me, to be delivered in my
father's manner, for the squire pronounced emphatically that he saw
very little Beltham in me. The right course would have been for me to
ask him then and there whether I had his consent to start for Germany.
But I was the sport of resentments and apprehensions; and, indeed, I
should not have gone. I could not go without some title beyond that of
the heir of great riches.
Janet kept out of my sight. I found myself strangely anxious to console
her: less sympathetic, perhaps, than desirous to pour out my sympathy
in her ear, which was of a very pretty shape, with a soft unpierced
lobe. We danced together at the Riversley Ball, given by the squire on
the night of my father's Ball in London. Janet complimented me upon
having attained wisdom. 'Now we get on well,' she said. 'Grandada only
wants to see us friendly, and feel that I am not neglected.'
The old man, a martyr to what he considered due to his favourite,
endured the horror of the Ball until suppertime, and kept his eyes on
us two. He forgot, or pretended to forget, my foreign engagement
altogether, though the announcement in the newspapers was spoken of by
Sir Roderick and Lady Echester and others.
'How do you like that?' he remarked to me, seeing her twirled away by
one of the young Rubreys.
'She seems to like it, sir,' I replied.
'Like it!' said he. 'In my day you wouldn't have caught me letting the
bloom be taken off the girl I cared for by a parcel o' scampish young
dogs. Right in their arms! Look at her build. She's strong; she's
healthy; she goes round like a tower. If you want a girl to look like a
princess!'
His eulogies were not undeserved. But she danced as lightly and happily
with Mr. Fred Rubrey as with Harry Richmond. I congratulated myself on
her lack of sentiment. Later, when in London, where Mlle. Jenny
Chassediane challenged me to perilous sarabandes, I wished that Janet
had ever so small a grain of sentiment, for a preservative to me.
Ottilia glowed high and distant; she sent me no message; her image did
not step between me and disorder. The whole structure of my idea of my
superior nature seemed to be crumbling to fragments; and beginning to
feel in despair that I was wretchedly like other men, I lost by degrees
the sense of my hold on her. It struck me that my worst fears of the
effect produced on the princess's mind by that last scene in the
lake-palace must be true, and I abandoned hope. Temple thought she
tried me too cruelly. Under these circumstances I became less and less
resolutely disposed to renew the forlorn conflict with my father
concerning his prodigal way of living. 'Let it last as long as I have a
penny to support him!' I exclaimed. He said that Dettermain and Newson
were now urging on his case with the utmost despatch in order to keep
pace with him, but that the case relied for its life on his preserving
a great appearance. He handed me his division of our twin cheque-books,
telling me he preferred to depend on his son for supplies, and I was in
the mood to think this a partial security.
'But you can take what there is,' I said.
'On the contrary, I will accept nothing but minor sums—so to speak, the
fractional shillings; though I confess I am always bewildered by
silver,' said he.
I questioned him upon his means of carrying on his expenditure. His
answer was to refer to the pavement of the city of London. By paving
here and there he had, he informed me, made a concrete for the wheels
to roll on. He calculated that he now had credit for the space of three
new years—ample time for him to fight his fight and win his victory.
'My tradesmen are not like the tradesmen of other persons,' he broke
out with a curious neigh of supreme satisfaction in that retinue. 'They
believe in me. I have de facto harnessed them to my fortunes; and if
you doubt me on the point of success, I refer you to Dettermain and
Newson. All I stipulate for is to maintain my position in society to
throw a lustre on my Case. So much I must do. My failures hitherto have
been entirely owing to the fact that I had not my son to stand by me.'
'Then you must have money, sir.'
'Yes, money.'
'Then what can you mean by refusing mine?'
'I admit the necessity for it, my son. Say you hand me a cheque for a
temporary thousand. Your credit and mine in conjunction can replace it
before the expiration of the two months. Or,' he meditated, 'it might
be better to give a bond or so to a professional lender, and preserve
the account at your bankers intact. The truth is, I have, in my
interview with the squire, drawn in advance upon the material success I
have a perfect justification to anticipate, and I cannot allow the old
gentleman to suppose that I retrench for the purpose of giving a large
array of figures to your bankers' book. It would be sheer madness. I
cannot do it. I cannot afford to do it. When you are on a runaway
horse, I prefer to say a racehorse,—Richie, you must ride him. You dare
not throw up the reins. Only last night Wedderburn, appealing to
Loftus, a practical sailor, was approved when he offered—I forget the
subject-matter—the illustration of a ship on a lee-shore; you are lost
if you do not spread every inch of canvas to the gale. Retrenchment at
this particular moment is perdition. Count our gains, Richie. We have
won a princess...'
I called to him not to name her.
He persisted: 'Half a minute. She is won; she is ours. And let me, in
passing,—bear with me one second—counsel you to write to Prince Ernest
instanter, proposing formally for his daughter, and, in your
grandfather's name, state her dowry at fifty thousand per annum.'
'Oh, you forget!' I interjected.
'No, Richie, I do not forget that you are off a leeshore; you are
mounted on a skittish racehorse, with, if you like, a New Forest fly
operating within an inch of his belly-girths. Our situation is so far
ticklish, and prompts invention and audacity.'
'You must forget, sir, that in the present state of the squire's mind,
I should be simply lying in writing to the prince that he offers a
dowry.'
'No, for your grandfather has yielded consent.'
'By implication, you know he withdraws it.'
'But if I satisfy him that you have not been extravagant?'
'I must wait till he is satisfied.'
'The thing is done, Richie, done. I see it in advance—it is done!
Whatever befalls me, you, my dear boy, in the space of two months, may
grasp—your fortune. Besides, here is my hand. I swear by it, my son,
that I shall satisfy the squire. I go farther; I say I shall have the
means to refund to you—the means, the money. The marriage is announced
in our prints for the Summer—say early June. And I undertake that you,
the husband of the princess, shall be the first gentleman in
England—that is, Europe. Oh! not ruling a coterie: not dazzling the
world with entertainments.' He thought himself in earnest when he said,
'I attach no mighty importance to these things, though there is no harm
I can perceive in leading the fashion—none that I see in having a
consummate style. I know your taste, and hers, Richie, the noble
lady's. She shall govern the intellectual world—your poets, your
painters, your men of science. They reflect a beautiful sovereign
mistress more exquisitely than almost aristocracy does. But you head
our aristocracy also. You are a centre of the political world. So I
scheme it. Between you, I defy the Court to rival you. This I call
distinction. It is no mean aim, by heaven! I protest, it is an aim with
the mark in sight, and not out of range.'
He whipped himself up to one of his oratorical frenzies, of which a
cheque was the common fruit. The power of his persuasiveness in speech,
backed by the spectacle of his social accomplishments, continued to
subdue me, and I protested only inwardly even when I knew that he was
gambling with fortune. I wrote out many cheques, and still it appeared
to me that they were barely sufficient to meet the current expenses of
his household. Temple and I calculated that his Grand Parade would try
the income of a duke, and could but be a matter of months. Mention of
it reached Riversley from various quarters, from Lady Maria Higginson,
from Captain Bulsted and his wife, and from Sir Roderick Ilchester, who
said to me, with fine accentuation, 'I have met your father.' Sir
Roderick, an Englishman reputed of good breeding, informed the son that
he had actually met the father in lofty society, at Viscountess
Sedley's, at Lady Dolchester's, at Bramham DeWitt's, and heard of him
as a frequenter of the Prussian and Austrian Embassy entertainments;
and also that he was admitted to the exclusive dinner-parties of the
Countess de Strode, 'which are,' he observed, in the moderated tone of
an astonishment devoting itself to propagation, 'the cream of society.'
Indubitably, then, my father was an impostor: more Society proved it.
The squire listened like one pelted by a storm, sure of his day to come
at the close of the two months. I gained his commendation by shunning
the metropolitan Balls, nor did my father press me to appear at them.
It was tacitly understood between us that I should now and then support
him at his dinner-table, and pass bowing among the most select of his
great ladies. And this I did, and I felt at home with them, though I
had to bear with roughnesses from one or two of the more venerable
dames, which were not quite proper to good breeding. Old Lady Kane,
great-aunt of the Marquis of Edbury, was particularly my tormentor,
through her plain-spoken comments on my father's legal suit; for I had
to listen to her without wincing, and agree in her general contempt of
the Georges, and foil her queries coolly, when I should have liked to
perform Jorian DeWitt's expressed wish to 'squeeze the acid out of her
in one grip, and toss her to the Gods that collect exhausted lemons.'
She took extraordinary liberties with me.
'Why not marry an Englishwoman? Rich young men ought to choose wives
from their own people, out of their own sets. Foreign women never get
on well in this country, unless they join the hounds to hunt the
husband.'
She cited naturalized ladies famous for the pastime. Her world and its
outskirts she knew thoroughly, even to the fact of my grandfather's
desire that I should marry Janet Ilchester. She named a duke's
daughter, an earl's. Of course I should have to stop the scandal:
otherwise the choice I had was unrestricted. My father she evidently
disliked, but she just as much disliked an encounter with his
invincible bonhomie and dexterous tongue. She hinted at family reasons
for being shy of him, assuring me that I was not implicated in them.
'The Guelph pattern was never much to my taste,' she said, and it
consoled me with the thought that he was not ranked as an adventurer in
the houses he entered. I learned that he was supposed to depend chiefly
on my vast resources. Edbury acted the part of informant to the
inquisitive harridan: 'Her poor dear good-for-nothing Edbury! whose
only cure would be a nice, well-conducted girl, an heiress.' She had
cast her eye on Anna Penrhys, but considered her antecedents doubtful.
Spotless innocence was the sole receipt for Edbury's malady. My father,
in a fit of bold irony, proposed Lady Kane for President of his Tattle
and Scandal Club,—a club of ladies dotted with select gentlemen, the
idea of which Jorian DeWitt claimed the merit of starting, and my
father surrendered it to him, with the reservation, that Jorian
intended an association of backbiters pledged to reveal all they knew,
whereas the Club, in its present form, was an engine of morality and
decency, and a social safeguard, as well as an amusement. It comprised
a Committee of Investigation, and a Court of Appeal; its object was to
arraign slander. Lady Kane declined the honour. 'I am not a
washerwoman,' she said to me, and spoke of where dirty linen should be
washed, and was distressingly broad in her innuendoes concerning
Edbury's stepmother. This Club sat and became a terror for a month,
adding something to my father's reputation. His inexhaustible
conversational art and humour gave it such vitality as it had. Ladies
of any age might apply for admission when well seconded: gentlemen
under forty-five years were rigidly excluded, and the seniors must also
have passed through the marriage ceremony.
Outside tattle and scandal declared, that the Club was originated to
serve as a club for Lady Edbury, but I chose to have no opinion upon
what I knew nothing of.
These matters were all ephemeral, and freaks; they produced, however,
somewhat of the same effect on me as on my father, in persuading me
that he was born for the sphere he occupied, and rendering me rather
callous as to the sources of ways and means. I put my name to a bond
for several thousand pounds, in conjunction with Lord Edbury, thinking
my father right in wishing to keep my cheque-book unworried, lest the
squire should be seized with a spasm of curiosity before the two months
were over. 'I promise you I surprise him,' my father said repeatedly.
He did not say how: I had the suspicion that he did not know. His
confidence and my growing recklessness acted in unison.
Happily the newspapers were quiet. I hoped consequently to find peace
at Riversley; but there the rumours of the Grand Parade were fabulous,
thanks to Captain Bulsted and Julia, among others. These two again
provoked an outbreak of rage from the squire, and I, after hearing
them, was almost disposed to side with him; they suggested an
inexplicable magnificence, and created an image of a man portentously
endowed with the capacity to throw dust in the eyes. No description of
the Balls could have furnished me with such an insight of their
brilliancy as the consuming ardour they awakened in the captain and his
wife. He reviewed them: 'Princely entertainments! Arabian Nights!'
She built them up piecemeal: 'The company! the dresses! the band! the
supper!' The host was a personage supernatural. 'Aladdin's magician, if
you like,' said Julia, 'only-good! A perfect gentleman! and I'll say
again, confound his enemies.' She presumed, as she was aware she might
do, upon the squire's prepossession in her favour, without reckoning
that I was always the victim.
'Heard o' that new story 'bout a Dauphin?' he asked.
'A Dauphin?' quoth Captain Bulsted. 'I don't know the fish.'
'You've been in a pretty kettle of 'em lately, William. I heard of it
yesterday on the Bench. Lord Shale, our new Lord-Lieutenant, brought it
down. A trick they played the fellow 'bout a Dauphin. Serve him right.
You heard anything 'bout it, Harry?'
I had not.
'But I tell ye there is a Dauphin mixed up with him. A Dauphin and Mr.
Ik Dine!'
'Mr. Ik Dine!' exclaimed the captain, perplexed.
'Ay, that's German lingo, William, and you ought to know it if you're a
loyal sailor—means “I serve.”'
'Mr. Beltham,' said the captain, seriously, 'I give you my word of
honour as a man and a British officer, I don't understand one syllable
of what you're saying; but if it means any insinuation against the
gentleman who condescends to extend his hospitalities to my wife and
me, I must, with regret, quit the place where I have had the misfortune
to hear it.'
'You stop where you are, William,' the squire motioned to him. 'Gad, I
shall have to padlock my mouth, or I shan't have a friend left soon...
confounded fellow... I tell you they call him Mr. Ik Dine in town. Ik
Dine and a Dauphin! They made a regular clown and pantaloon o' the
pair, I'm told. Couple o' pretenders to Thrones invited to dine
together and talk over their chances and show their private marks. Oho!
by-and-by, William! You and I! Never a man made such a fool of in his
life!'
The ladies retired. The squire continued, in a furious whisper:
'They got the two together, William. Who are you? I'm a Dauphin; who
are you? I'm Ik Dine, bar sinister. Oh! says the other, then I take
precedence of you! Devil a bit, says the other; I've got more spots
than you. Proof, says one. You first, t' other. Count, one cries. T'
other sings out, Measles. Better than a dying Dauphin, roars t' other;
and swore both of 'm 'twas nothing but Port-wine stains and pimples.
Ha! ha! And, William, will you believe it?—the couple went round
begging the company to count spots—ha! ha! to prove their big birth!
Oh, Lord, I'd ha' paid a penny to be there! A Jack o' Bedlam Ik Dine
damned idiot!—makes name o' Richmond stink.' (Captain Bulsted shot a
wild stare round the room to make sure that the ladies had gone.) 'I
tell ye, William, I had it from Lord Shale himself only yesterday on
the Bench. He brought it to us hot from town—didn't know I knew the
fellow; says the fellow's charging and firing himself off all day and
all night too—can't make him out. Says London's mad about him: lots o'
women, the fools! Ha, ha! a Dauphin!'
'Ah, well, sir,' Captain Bulsted supplicated feverishly, rubbing his
brows and whiskers.
'It's true, William. Fellow ought to be taken up and committed as a
common vagabond, and would be anywhere but in London. I'd jail him
'fore you cocked your eye twice. Fellow came here and talked me over to
grant him a couple o' months to prove he hasn't swindled his son of
every scrap of his money. We shall soon see. Not many weeks to run! And
pretends—fellow swears to me—can get him into Parliament; swears he'll
get him in 'fore the two months are over! An infernal—'
'Please to recollect, sir; the old hereditary shall excuse you——'
'Gout, you mean, William? By——'
'You are speaking in the presence of his son, sir, and you are trying
the young gentleman's affection for you hard.'
'Eh? 'Cause I'm his friend? Harry,' my grandfather faced round on me,
'don't you know I'm the friend you can trust? Hal, did I ever borrow a
farthing of you? Didn't I, the day of your majority, hand you the whole
of your inheritance from your poor broken-hearted mother, with
interest, and treat you like a man? And never played spy, never made an
inquiry, till I heard the scamp had been fastening on you like a
blood-sucker, and singing hymns into the ears of that squeamish dolt of
a pipe-smoking parson, Peterborough—never thought of doing it! Am I the
man that dragged your grandmother's name through the streets and soiled
yours?'
I remarked that I was sensible of the debt of gratitude I owed to him,
but would rather submit to the scourge, or to destitution, than listen
to these attacks on my father.
'Cut yourself loose, Harry,' he cried, a trifle mollified. 'Don't
season his stew—d'ye hear? Stick to decent people. Why, you don't
expect he'll be locked up in the Tower for a finish, eh? It'll be
Newgate, or the Bench. He and his Dauphin—ha! ha! A rascal crow and a
Jack Dauphin!'
Captain Bulsted reached me his hand. 'You have a great deal to bear,
Harry. I commend you, my boy, for taking it manfully.'
'I say no more,' quoth the squire. 'But what I said was true. The
fellow gives his little dinners and suppers to his marchionesses,
countesses, duchesses, and plays clown and pantaloon among the men. He
thinks a parcel o' broidered petticoats 'll float him. So they may till
a tradesman sent stark mad pops a pin into him. Harry, I'd as lief hang
on to a fire-ship. Here's Ilchester tells me... and Ilchester speaks of
him under his breath now as if he were sitting in a pew funking the
parson. Confound the fellow! I say he's guilty of treason. Pooh! who
cares! He cuts out the dandies of his day, does he? He's past sixty, if
he's a month. It's all damned harlequinade. Let him twirl off one
columbine or another, or a dozen, and then—the last of him! Fellow
makes the world look like a farce. He's got about eight feet by five to
caper on, and all London gaping at him—geese! Are you a gentleman and a
man of sense, Harry Richmond, to let yourself be lugged about in
public—by the Lord! like a pair of street-tumblers in spangled
haunch-bags, father and boy, on a patch of carpet, and a drum banging,
and tossed and turned inside out, and my God! the ass of a fellow
strutting the ring with you on his shoulder! That's the spectacle. And
you, Harry, now I'll ask you, do you mean your wife—egad, it'd be a
pretty scene, with your princess in hip-up petticoats, stiff as
bottle-funnel top down'ards, airing a whole leg, and knuckling a
tambourine!'
'Not crying, my dear lad?' Captain Bulsted put his arm round me kindly,
and tried to catch a glimpse of my face. I let him see I was not going
through that process. 'Whew!' said he, 'and enough to make any
Christian sweat! You're in a bath, Harry. I wouldn't expect the man who
murdered his godmother for one shilling and fivepence three-farthings
the other day, to take such a slinging, and think he deserved it.'
My power of endurance had reached its limit.
'You tell me, sir, you had this brutal story from the Lord-Lieutenant
of the county?'
'Ay, from Lord Shale. But I won't have you going to him and betraying
our connection with a—'
'Halloo!' Captain Bulsted sang out to his wife on the lawn. 'And now,
squire, I have had my dose. And you will permit me to observe, that I
find it emphatically what we used to call at school black-jack.'
'And you were all the better for it afterwards, William.'
'We did not arrive at that opinion, sir. Harry, your arm. An hour with
the ladies will do us both good. The squire,' he murmured, wiping his
forehead as he went out, 'has a knack of bringing us into close
proximity with hell-fire when he pleases.'
Julia screamed on beholding us, 'Aren't you two men as pale as death!'
Janet came and looked. 'Merely a dose,' said the captain. 'We are
anxious to play battledore and shuttlecock madly.'
'So he shall, the dear!' Julia caressed him. 'We'll all have a
tournament in the wet-weather shed.'
Janet whispered to me, 'Was it—the Returning Thanks?'
'The what?' said I, with the dread at my heart of something worse than
I had heard.
She hailed Julia to run and fetch the battledores, and then told me she
had been obliged to confiscate the newspapers that morning and cast the
burden on post-office negligence. 'They reach grandada's hands by
afternoon post, Harry, and he finds objectionable passages blotted or
cut out; and as long as the scissors don't touch the business columns
and the debates, he never asks me what I have been doing. He thinks I
keep a scrap-book. I haven't often time in the morning to run an eye
all over the paper. This morning it was the first thing I saw.'
What had she seen? She led me out of view of the windows and showed me.
My father was accused of having stood up at a public dinner and
returned thanks on behalf of an Estate of the Realm: it read
monstrously. I ceased to think of the suffering inflicted on me by my
grandfather.
Janet and I, side by side with the captain and Julia, carried on the
game of battledore and shuttlecock, in a match to see whether the
unmarried could keep the shuttle flying as long as the married, with
varying fortunes. She gazed on me, to give me the comfort of her
sympathy, too much, and I was too intent on the vision of my father
either persecuted by lies or guilty of hideous follies, to allow the
match to be a fair one. So Julia could inform the squire that she and
William had given the unmarried pair a handsome beating, when he
appeared peeping round one of the shed-pillars.
'Of course you beat 'em,' said the squire. 'It's not my girl's fault.'
He said more, to the old tune, which drove Janet away.
I remembered, when back in the London vortex, the curious soft beauty
she won from casting up her eyes to watch the descending feathers, and
the brilliant direct beam of those thick-browed, firm, clear eyes, with
her frown, and her set lips and brave figure, when she was in the act
of striking to keep up a regular quick fusilade. I had need of calm
memories. The town was astir, and humming with one name.