Old Scenes recalled.
At dinner the prelate, who sat beside Lady Alice, conversed in the same
condescending spirit, and with the same dignified humility, upon all
sorts of subjects--upon the new sect, the Huggletonians, whom, with
doubtful originality, but considerable emphasis, he likened to "lost
sheep."
"Who's lost his sheep, my lord?" inquired Sir Paul Blunket across the
table.
"I spoke metaphorically, Sir Paul. The Huggletonians, the sheep who
should have been led by the waters of comfort, have been suffered to
stray into the wilderness."
"Quite so--I see. Shocking name that--the Huggletonians. I should not
like to be a Huggletonian, egad!" said Sir Paul Blunket, and drank some
wine. "Lost sheep, to be sure--yes; but that thing of bringing sheep to
water--you see--it's a mistake. When a wether takes to drinking water,
it's a sign he's got the rot."
The Bishop gently declined his head, and patiently allowed this little
observation to blow over.
Sir Paul Blunket, having delivered it, merely added, after a decent
pause, as he ate his dinner--
"Dartbroke mutton this--five years old--eh?"
"Yes. I hope you like it," answered his host.
Sir Paul Blunket, having a bit in his mouth, grunted politely--
"Only for your own table, though?" he added, when he'd swallowed it.
"That's all," answered Sir Jekyl.
"Never pay at market, you know," said Sir Paul Blunket. "I consider any
sheep kept beyond two years as lost."
"A lost sheep, and sell him as a Huggletonian," rejoined Sir Jekyl.
"It is twenty years," murmured the Bishop in Lady Alice's ear, for he
preferred not hearing that kind of joke, "since I sate in this parlour."
"Ha!" sighed Lady Alice.
"Long _before_ that I used, in poor Sir Harry's time, to be here a good
deal--a hospitable, kind man, in the main."
"I never liked him," croaked Lady Alice, and wiped her mouth.
They sat so very close to Sir Jekyl that the Bishop merely uttered a
mild ejaculation, and bowed toward his plate.
"The arrangements of this room--the portraits--are just what I remember
them."
"Yes, and you were here--let me see--just thirty years since, when Sir
Harry died--weren't you?"
"So I was, my dear Lady Alice--very true," replied the Bishop in his
most subdued tones, and he threw his head back a little, and nearly
closed his eyes; and she fancied he meant, in a dignified way, to say,
"I should prefer not speaking of those particular recollections while we
sit so near our host." The old lady was much of the same mind, and said
to him quietly--
"I'll ask you a few questions by-and-by. You remember Donica Gwynn.
She's living with me now--the housekeeper, you know."
"Yes, perfectly, a very nice-looking quiet young woman--how is she?"
"A dried-up old woman now, but very well," said Lady Alice.
"Yes, to be sure; she must be elderly now," said he, hastily; and the
Bishop mentally made up one of those little sums in addition, the result
of which surprises us sometimes in our elderly days so oddly.
When the party transferred themselves to the drawing-room, Lady Alice
failed to secure the Bishop, who was seized by the Rev. Dives Marlowe
and carried into a recess--Sir Jekyl having given his clerical brother
the key of a cabinet in which were deposited more of the memoranda, and
a handsome collection of the official and legal correspondence of that
episcopal ancestor whose agreeable MSS. had interested the Bishop so
much before dinner.
Jekyl, indeed, was a good-natured brother. As a match-making mother will
get the proper persons under the same roof, he had managed this little
meeting at Marlowe. When the ladies went away to the drawing-room, he
had cried--
"Dives, I want you here for a moment," and so he placed him on the chair
which Lady Jane Lennox had occupied beside him, and what was more to the
purpose, beside the Bishop; and, as Dives was a good scholar, well made
up on controversies, with a very pretty notion of ecclesiastical law and
a turn for Latin verse, he and the prelate were soon in a state of very
happy and intimate confidence. This cabinet, too, was what the game of
chess is to the lovers--a great opportunity--a seclusion; and Dives
knowing all about the papers, was enabled really to interest the Bishop
very keenly.
So Lady Alice, who wanted to talk with him, was doomed to a jealous
isolation, until that friend, of whom she was gradually coming to think
very highly indeed, Monsieur Varbarriere, drew near, and they fell into
conversation, first on the recent railway collision, and then on the
fruit and flower show, and next upon the Bishop.
They both agreed what a charming and venerable person he was, and then
Lady Alice said--
"Sir Harry Marlowe, I told you--the father, you know, of Jekyl there,"
and she dropped her voice as she named him, "was in possession at the
time when the deed affecting my beloved son's rights was lost."
"Yes, madame."
"And it was the Bishop there who attended him on his death-bed."
"Ho!" exclaimed M. Varbarriere, looking more curiously for a moment at
that dapper little gentleman in the silk apron.
"They said he heard a great deal from poor wretched Sir Harry. I have
never had an opportunity of asking him in private about it, but I mean
to-morrow, please Heaven."
"It may be, madame, in the highest degree important," said Monsieur
Varbarriere, emphatically.
"How can it be? My son is dead."
"Your son is"----and M. Varbarriere, who was speaking sternly and with a
pallid face, like a man deeply excited, suddenly checked himself, and
said--
"Yes, very true, your son is dead. Yes, madame, he is dead."
Old Lady Alice looked at him with a bewildered and frightened gaze.
"In Heaven's name, sir, what do you mean?"
"Mean--mean--why, what have I said?" exclaimed Monsieur Varbarriere,
very tartly, and looking still more uncomfortable.
"I did not say you had said anything, but you do mean something."
"No, madame, I _forgot_ something; the tragedy to which you referred is
not to be supposed to be always as present to the mind of another as it
naturally is to your own. We forget in a moment of surprise many things
of which at another time we need not to be reminded, and so it happened
with me."
Monsieur Varbarriere stood up and fiddled with his gold double
eye-glasses, and seemed for a while disposed to add more on that theme,
but, after a pause, said--
"And so it was to the _Bishop_ that Sir Harry Marlowe communicated his
dying wish that the green chamber should be shut up?"
"Yes, to him; and I have heard that more passed than is suspected, but
of that I know nothing; only I mean to put the question to him directly,
when next I can see him alone."
Monsieur Varbarriere again looked with a curious scrutiny at the Bishop,
and then he inquired--
"He is a prelate, no doubt, who enjoys a high reputation for integrity?"
"This I know, that he would not for worlds utter an untruth," replied
Lady Alice.
"What a charming person is Lady Jane Lennox!" exclaimed Monsieur
Varbarriere, suddenly diverging.
"H'm! do you think so? Well, yes, she is very much admired."
"It is not often you see a pair so unequal in years so affectionately
attached," said Monsieur Varbarriere.
"I have never seen her husband, and I can't, therefore, say how they get
on together; but I'm glad to hear you say so. Jane has a temper, you
know, which _every_ one might not get on with; that is," she added,
fearing lest she had gone a little too far, "sometimes it is not quite
pleasant."
"No doubt she was much admired and much pursued," observed Varbarriere.
"Yes, I said she was admired," answered Lady Alice, drily.
"How charming she looks, reading her book at this moment!" exclaimed
Varbarriere.
She was leaning back on an ottoman, with a book in her hand; her rich
wavy hair, her jewels and splendid dress, her beautiful braceleted arms,
and exquisitely haughty features, and a certain negligence in her
_pose_, recalled some of those voluptuous portraits of the beauties of
the Court of Charles II.
Sir Jekyl was seated on the other side of the cushioned circle, leaning
a little across, and talking volubly, and, as it seemed, earnestly. It
is one of those groups in which, marking the silence of the lady and the
serious earnestness of her companion, and the flush of both
countenances, one concludes, if there be nothing to forbid, that the
talk is at least romantic.
Lady Alice was reserved, however; she merely said--
"Yes, Jane looks very well; she's always well got up."
Monsieur Varbarriere saw her glance with a shrewd little frown of
scrutiny at the Baronet and Lady Jane, and he knew what was passing in
her mind; she, too, suspected what was in his, for she glanced at him,
and their eyes met for a moment and were averted. Each knew what the
other was thinking; so Lady Alice said--
"For an old gentleman, Jekyl is the most romantic I know; when he has
had his wine, I think he'd flirt with any woman alive. I dare say he's
boring poor Jane to death, if we knew but all. She can't read her book.
I assure you I've seen him, when nobody better was to be had, making
love to old Susan Blunket--Miss Blunket there--after dinner, of course:
and by the time he has played his rubber of whist he's quite a sane man,
and continues so until he comes in after dinner next evening. We all
know Jekyl, and never mind him." Having thus spoken, she asked Monsieur
Varbarriere whether he intended a long stay in England, and a variety of
similar questions.