They sat late over their wine, and telling the servants to go to bed,
Grenfell ordered that he should not be called before noon on the next
day.
According to custom, his serrant had left his letters by his bedside,
and then retired noiselessly, and without disturbing him. It was already
late in the afternoon when Grenfell awoke. The first note he opened was
a short one from Sir Within, begging to excuse himself from the expected
happiness of receiving Mr. Grenfell that day at dinner, as a sudden
attack of his old enemy the gout had just laid him up in bed. “If I have
only my usual fortune,” added he, “my seizure will be a brief one, and I
may soon again reckon on the pleasure of seeing you here.”
The tidings of the illness was corroborated by Grenfell’s valet, who saw
the doctor travelling to Dalradern with all the speed of post-horses.
The thought of a courtship that ushered in a fit of the gout was just
the sort of drollery that suited Grenfell’s taste, and as he lay he
laughed in derision of the old man and his schemes of future happiness.
He fancied himself telling the story at his club, and he dwelt on the
opportunity it would afford to talk of “Wardle” as his friend--one
whose eccentricities he had therefore a perfect right to dish-up for the
amusement of all others.
“Take this,” said he, giving the note to his servant, “to Mr.
Ladarelle’s room;” and, fancying to himself the varied moods with which
that young gentleman would con over the intelligence, he lay back again
in his bed.
There was no friendship--there was no reason for any--in the apparent
interest he had taken in Ladarelle. It was not of the slightest moment
to him which of the two, if either, should marry Kate O’Hara, save as to
with whom he should stand best, and be most likely to be well received
by in the future. Were she to marry Sir Within, the house would, in all
likelihood, be closed to him. The old minister was too well versed in
worldly matters not to cut off all the traditions of the past. He’s sure
either to introduce her into life under the auspices of some of his own
high connexions, or to live totally estranged from all society. “In
either case, they are lost to me. Should she be married to Ladarelle,
I--as the depositary of all that was secret in the transaction--I must
needs have my influence. The house will of necessity be open to me, and
I shall make of it what I please.” By this last reflection Grenfell
summed up what his experience of life had largely supplied him
with--that is, an inordinate liking for those establishments in which a
large fortune is allied with something which disqualifies the possessors
from taking their rightful position in society. In his estimation, there
were no such pleasant houses as those where there was a “screw loose,”
either in the conduct, the character, or the antecedents of the owners.
These houses were a sort of asylum for that large nomade population of
highly amusing qualities and no characters, the men who had not “done”
everything, but “done” everybody, and of women still more dubious. In
these houses the style of living was usually splendid. Wit has a sort of
natural affinity for good cookery, and Beauty knows all the value of the
“costly setting” which splendour confers. Last of all, there was that
perfect liberty--the freedom from all the discipline of correcter
establishments--which gave to every guest some prerogative of a
master. You came as you liked, went as you liked, and very often, too,
introduced whom you liked. What more could a man do if he were the
rightful owner? Now, Grenfell was free of many such houses, but in none
was he supreme. There was not one wherein his authority was dominant and
his word a law. This he ambitioned; he craved impatiently for the time
he could say to the men in his club, “I’ll take you down with me to
Ladarelle’s--_I_’ll show you some real cock shooting--I’ll give you a
day or two at Dalradern.” Would not that be fame--distinction--triumph?
Ladarelle, too, was a man made by nature for such a part--careless,
extravagant, sensual, fond of amusement, without caring in the least for
the characters of those who contributed towards it, and inherently
vain and open to the coarsest flattery. With him, therefore, Grenfell
anticipated little trouble; with her he was by no means so sure. She
puzzled him, and she seemed determined not to afford him any opportunity
of knowing more of her. Her avoidance of him was plain and unmistakable.
“Perhaps she fears, perhaps she distrusts me,” thought he. “I’ll take
the earliest moment to assure her she need do neither, but may make me
her friend implicitly.” He understood a good deal by that same word,
which in ordinary life is not imputed to friendship. In fact, by
friendship, he--as a great many others do--simply meant conspiracy.
Thinking and reflecting in this vein, he lay, when the door opened, and
young Ladarelle, in dressing-gown and slippers, entered.
“What’s the meaning of all this, Grenfell?” said he. “My fellow, Fisk,
who is just come over, says that Sir Within is perfectly well; he was in
the stable-yard this morning at seven o’clock, and that it is the ward,
Mademoiselle herself, is ill.”
“He won’t have us at dinner, that’s all I know,” said Grenfell, yawning
carelessly.
“He says nothing whatever about me; scarcely civil, I think, considering
I am supposed to be his guest.”
“I’ll give you a dinner. You’ll pay me with interest one of these days,
when you come to that estate.”
“That I will.”
“Do you know, as I lay here this last hour, I have been plotting out the
sort of life a man could cut out for himself in a place like this. You
are the sort of fellow to have the very pleasantest house in England.”
“I should like to try.”
“If you try, you’ll win. Shall I tell you, Master Dolly, the quality
which first attracted me towards you?”
“What was it?”
“It was this. You are one of the very few young fellows I ever met who
was not infected with a slavish worship of the titled classes. How,
being a Cambridge man, you escaped it, I don’t know; but you have
escaped it.”
“You’re right there,” said Dolly; but the colour that mounted so
suddenly to his cheek, seemed to imply a certain confusion in making the
assertion. “You know we had a peerage once in the family, and it is
a hobby of my governor’s to try and revive it. He offered the present
people to contest any two of the Opposition seats, and proposed to
myself to go into the House; but I told him flatly, I’d rather get into
Graham’s than into Parliament.”
“A much harder thing to do!”
“You’re in Graham’s, ain’t you?”
“Yes; and so shall you be next ballot, if you really wish for it!”
“What a trump you are! Do you know, Grenfell, I can’t make it out at all
that I never met you before?”
“I’m some twelve or fifteen years your senior,” said the other, and a
slight twitching of the mouth showed a certain irritation as he spoke;
“a few years separates men as essentially as a whole hemisphere.”
“I suppose so.”
“Town life, too, moves in such a routine, that when a man comes to
my age, he no more makes a new acquaintance than he acquires a new
sensation.”
“And, stranger still,” continued Dolly, with that persistence that
pertains to ill breeding, “I never so much as heard of you.”
“I feel ashamed of my obscurity!” said Grenfell, and his pale cheek
became mottled with red.
“No, it ain’t that. I meant only to say that I never heard of any
Grenfells but the Piccadilly fellows, Cox and Grenfells! ‘None genuine
but signed by us.’ Ha, ha, ha!” and Dolly laughed at his drollery, and
the other joined in the mirth quite sufficiently not to attract any
especial attention. “Not relatives, I presume?” added Dolly, still
laughing.
“Delighted if they were!” said Grenfell, with a sickly smile. “I don’t
think the dividends would smell of curry powder!”
“That’s what Cecil St. John says: ‘Let the greatest scoundrel in England
only leave me his money, and I’ll honour his memory.’ Do you know St.
John?”
“One of my most intimate friends.”
“I am dying to know him! Grog Davis says he’s the only man that ever
took the wind out of _his_ sails.”
“I’ll have him to dinner when I go up to town, and get you to meet him,”
said Grenfell. “It must be on a Sunday, though, for Cecil shuns all
others, which he calls dun-days, to distinguish from Sundays.”
“I’d like to wipe off every shilling he owes. I’d like to set a fellow
like that clear with the world.”
“I’ll tell him you said so. It will go a very long way towards acquiring
his esteem.”
“Well, I declare it’s a thing I’d do, if I had my property. I’ve heard
wonderful stories about him.”
“And he could tell you still more wonderful ones himself. He’s one
of those men”--here Grenfell’s voice became authoritative and
collected--“one of those men who, if he saw himself in such a position
as yours, would no more doubt as to what he would do, than he would
hesitate taking a fair fence in a fox-hunt.”
“And what would he do _in my_ place?”
“He’d reason out the thing, somewhat in this way: ‘If I suffer the old
cove to marry this girl, he’ll either hamper the estate with a heavy
settlement, or, mayhap, alienate it altogether. I’ll marry her myself,
or, if she’ll not consent, I’ll carry her off. Abduction looks very big
in the law-books, but it’s a light offence, except where the woman is
intractable.’”
“And, would you carry her off?”
“St. John would, I’ll take my oath on it!”
“And not marry her?”
“That’s as it might be, and if she insisted; for he has three other
wives still living.”
“But, is the thing possible?”
“Possible! Why, it’s done every week of the year in Ireland.”
“Ay, but we’re not in Ireland, unfortunately.”
“That’s true; neither are we in France; but it was a French cook dressed
that ‘supreme’ we ate yesterday.”
“I see what you mean,” said he, pondering slowly over the other’s words.
“You think one might get fellows who understand how this sort of thing
is to be done?”
“If I don’t mistake greatly, I know where to-go for the very man you
want. In an excursion I once made with Vyner in the west of Ireland,
we rambled into a wild district of Donegal, where in a lonely region we
chanced on a little inn. It is a flattery to call it an inn. It was a
small thatched cabin standing by itself in the midst of the mountains;
there was not another habitation, I’m certain, within ten miles of it.
The fellow who kept it was as rank a rebel as ever graced the gallows;
and made no secret of his treason either, but owned it boldly and
impudently. I had more than one discussion with him, and learned that
the rascal had all the shrewdness and low cunning that pertains to that
class of his countrymen. He had not, however, been well treated by his
party, and he was not at all indisposed to betray them if he could see
his way to secure his own advantage by it. At all events, it was clear
to me, that for a case which required craft, daring, and no interference
of scruples of any kind, this fellow was eminently suited; and I have
often thought, if I needed a man for an enterprise where the law must be
broken, and the penalty incurred a gaol and a long imprisonment, I’d go
and look up my friend in Donegal as the man for the occasion--not to
say that his house would be the very place to afford a refuge beyond all
risk of discovery.”
Ladarelle listened with deep attention throughout, and when Gren-fell
had finished, said: “What do you mean by a refuge beyond all discovery?”
“Simply, that for some short time, marry or not, you must be able to
baffle pursuit, and for such a purpose I’d back this spot in the wilds
of Donegal against the kingdom.”
“Suppose we were to fail?”
“We can’t fail; she goes willingly--or, if not, unwillingly; but failure
is out of the question. Your object is, that she should not be Lady
Wardle, is it not so?”
“Yes, undoubtedly.”
“And to secure this, it is worth while incurring some risk?”
“Certainly; but I should like to know the extent of that risk.”
“I’m no lawyer, and can’t tell you what class of misdemeanor the law
makes it; not to say that the offence is one which differs according to
the judge who tries it; but the question to which you will haye to look
is this: If the girl be satisfied that she is really married, however
grieved the old man may be, he will never disturb that fact. He’ll shut
himself up in his castle, and let his beard grow. A great shock at his
age lasts for the remainder of life, and he’ll nurse his grief till it
lays him in the grave.”
“Then there must be a marriage?”
“Some sort of marriage, Irish or Scotch, they have them of all sorts and
complexions; but English law smashes them, just to show these poor Celts
in what a barbarism they are living, and that even their most solemn
contracts are a farce, if not ratified by us here.”
“So that I could marry again if I wished it?”
“Of course you could. Why, scores of fellows about town have gone
through that sort of humbug. Don’t you know Lawson--Jim Lawson? Well,
he married his sister’s governess before he married Lady Lucy King; and
they wanted to make a fuss about it; but it was proved that it was only
a lark on his part, though _she_ was quite serious about it; and the
priest, too, was only in deacon’s orders, or it was after canonical
hours, and it was all irregular, even to the ring on her finger, which
Harry Bushe said was copper, and so the Lords smashed it, as they always
do these Irish things, and Jimmy married the other woman.”
“I wish there was to be no marriage at all.”
“Perhaps you do; perhaps you’d like it better if old Sir Within would
have the politeness to die off and give you no further trouble?”
“Ah, if he would!”
“But, as he won’t--as he is firmly bent not merely on living longer, but
actually taking measures to make himself an unpleasant memory when he
does go, I suspect you ought to look sharp to your own interests, Master
Dolly. But, after all, I find myself pressing like an advocate in a case
where the very utmost I ought to do should be to advise as a friend. You
know by this time all I think on this matter. It is for you to follow
the advice or reject it. Meanwhile, I mean to get up and have a walk
before dinner.”
“Just one thing more--as to this Irish fellow you speak of. Would he
take all the risks--the legal risks--if he were well paid for it?”
“I think it’s very likely he would. I don’t think he’ll bind himself
to go to the drop exactly; but I take it he’ll not boggle about a
reasonable term of imprisonment, and perhaps ‘hard labour.’”
“Will you write for him, then?”
“Not without you are fully determined to employ him. If you pledge me
your word to this, I will write.”
“If I pay him----”
“No, no, I’ll have none of that! These Irish fellows, even in their most
questionable dealings, have a point of honour-sense about them, that
makes them very dangerous men to deal with. Let them only suspect any
intention of a slight, and their old Spanish blood, I suppose it is,
takes fire at once.”
“Let me have a night to think it over.”
“Take a week, take a month, if Sir Within will give it to you. You are
your own master, and need not ask for time from any one.”
“I’d like to reflect well on it. It is too serious a thing to do without
good consideration.”
“Do so by all means, and begin at once, for I want to ring for my
servant and have my bath.”
“I wish you’d have a little more patience; one can’t decide on a thing
of this sort in five minutes.”
“Who asks you, my dear fellow--who presses you? I only beg to be allowed
to get up and dress myself, and a not very unreasonable request, seeing
that it is close on five o’clock, and you have been here since three.”
“Well, I’ll do it, come what may of it. I’ll do it.”
“Take the night to consider it.”
“No, I am resolved on it. I’ll do it.”
“Very well; we are too late for the post to-night, but I’ll write to
this man after dinner, and by that time you will have fully made up
your mind. Now go, or I’ll begin to regret the day and the hour I ever
thought of giving you counsel.”
“You are the most impatient fellow I ever met in my life,” said
Ladarelle, as he arose reluctantly, and with unwilling steps sauntered
out of the room.