General Lennox appears.
In the midst of this animation the butler whispered in the ear of the
Rev. Dives Marlowe, who, with a grave face, but hardly perceived, slid
away, and met the Doctor in the hall.
"Aw--_see_--this is a--rather nasty case, I am bound to tell you, Mr.
Marlowe; he's in a rather critical state. He'll see you, I dare say,
by-and-by, and I hope he'll get on satisfactorily. I hope he'll _do_;
but I must tell you, it's a--it's a--serious _case_, sir."
"Nothing since?" asked Dives, a good deal shocked.
"Nothing since, sir," answered the Doctor, with a nod, and his eyebrows
raised as he stood ruminating a little, with his fists in his pockets.
"But--but--you'll do _this_, sir, if you please--you'll call in some
physician, in whom you have confidence, for I'll tell you frankly, it's
not a case in which I'd like to be alone."
"It's very sudden, sir; whom do you advise?" said Dives, looking black
and pallid.
"Well, you know, it ought to be _soon_. I'd like him at once--you can't
send very far. There's Ponder, I would not desire better, if you
approve. Send a fellow riding, and don't spare horse-flesh, mind, to
Slowton. He'll find Ponder there if he's quick, and let him bring him
in a chaise and four, and pay the fellows well, and they'll not be long
coming. They'd better be quick, for there's something must be done, and
I can't undertake it alone."
Together they walked out to the stable-yard, Dives feeling stunned and
odd. The Doctor was reserved, and only waited to see things in train.
Almost while Dives pencilled his urgent note on the back of a letter,
the groom had saddled one of the hunters and got into his jacket, and
was mounted and away.
Dives returned to the house. From the steps he looked with a sinking
heart after the man cantering swiftly down the avenue, and saw him in
the distance like a dwindling figure in a dream, and somehow it was to
him an effort to remember what it was all about. He felt the cold air
stirring his dark locks, streaked with silver, and found he had forgot
his hat, and so came in.
"You have seen a great deal of art, Monsieur Varbarriere," said Drayton,
accosting that gentleman admiringly, in the outer hall, where they were
fitting themselves with their "wide-awakes" and "jerries." "It is so
pleasant to meet anyone who really understands it and has a feeling for
it. You seem to me to lean more to painting than to statuary."
"Painting is the more popular art, because the more literal. The
principles of statuary are abstruse. The one, you see, is a
repetition--the other a translation. Colour is more than outline, and
the painter commands it. The man with the chisel has only outline, and
must render nature into white stone, with the _natural_ condition of
being inspected from every point, and the _unnatural_ one, in solid
anatomy, of immobility. It is a greater triumph, but a less effect."
Varbarriere was lecturing this morning, according to his lights, more
copiously and _ex cathedrâ_ than usual. Perhaps his declamations and
antithesis represented the constraint which he placed on himself, like
those mental exercises which sleepless men prescribe to wrest their
minds from anxious and exciting preoccupations.
"Do you paint, sir?" asked Drayton, who was really interested.
"Bah! never. I can make just a little scratching with my pencil, enough
to remind. But paint--oh--ha, ha, ha!--no. 'Tis an art I can admire; but
should no more think to practise than the dance."
And the ponderous M. Varbarriere pointed his toe and made a mimic
pirouette, snapped his fingers, and shrugged his round shoulders.
"Alas! sir, the more I appreciate the dance, the more I despair of
figuring in the ballet, and so with painting. Perhaps, though, _you_
paint?"
"Well, I just draw a little--what you call scratching, and I have tried
a little tinting; but I'm sure it's very bad. I don't care about fools,
of course, but I should be afraid to show it to anyone who knew anything
about it--to you, for instance," said Drayton, who, though conceited,
had sense enough at times to be a little modest.
"What is it?" said Miss Blunket, skipping into the hall, with a pretty
little basket on her arm, and such a coquettish little hat on, looking
so naïve and girlish, and so remarkably tattooed with wrinkles. "Shall
I run away--is it a secret?"
"Oh, no; we have no secrets," said Drayton.
"No secrets," echoed Varbarriere.
"And won't you tell? I'm such a curious, foolish, wretched creature;"
and she dropped her eyes like a flower-girl in a play.
What lessons, if we only could take them, are read us every hour! What a
giant among liars is vanity! Here was this withered witch, with her
baptismal registry and her looking-glass, dressing herself like a
strawberry girl, and fancying herself charming!
"Only about my drawings--nothing."
"Ah, I know. Did Mr. Drayton show them to you?"
"No, Mademoiselle; I've not been so fortunate."
"He showed them to me, though. It's not any harm to tell, is it? and
they really _are_--Well, I won't say all I think of them."
"I was just telling Monsieur Varbarriere, it is not everyone I'd show
those drawings to. Was not I, Monsieur?" said Drayton, with a fine
irony.
"So he was, upon my honour," said Varbarriere, gravely.
"He did not mean it, though," simpered Miss Blunket, "if _you_
can't--_I_'ll try to induce him to show them to you; they are----Oh!
here is Beatrix."
"How is your papa now, Mademoiselle?" asked Varbarriere, anxious to
escape.
"Just as he was, I think, a little low, the Doctor says."
"Ah!" said Varbarriere, and still his dark eyes looked on hers with
grave inquiry.
"He always _is_ low for a day or two; but he says this will be nothing.
He almost hopes to be down this evening."
"Ah! Yes. That's very well," commented Varbarriere, with pauses between,
and his steady, clouded gaze unchanged.
"We are going to the garden; are you ready, darling?" said she to Miss
Blunket.
"Oh, quite," and she skipped to the door, smiling this way and that, as
she stood in the sun on the step. "Sweet day," and she looked back on
Beatrix and the invitation, glanced slightly on Drayton, who looked
loweringly after them unmoved, and thought--
"Why the plague does she spoil her walks with that frightful old humbug?
There's no escaping that creature."
We have only conjecture as to which of the young ladies, now running
down the steps, Mr. Drayton's pronouns referred to.
"You fish to-day?" asked Varbarriere, on whose hands time dragged
strangely.
"We were thinking of going down to that pretty place Gryston. Linnett
was there on Saturday morning. It was Linnett's trout you thought so
good at luncheon."
And with such agreeable conversation they loitered a little at the door,
and suddenly, with quick steps, there approached, and passed them by, an
apparition.
It was old General Lennox. He had been walking in the park--about the
grounds--he knew not where, since daybreak. Awfully stern he looked,
fatigued, draggled he well might be, gloveless, one hand in his pocket,
the other clenched on his thumb like a child's in a convulsion. His
thoughts were set on something remote, for he brushed by the gentlemen,
and not till he had passed did he seem to hear Drayton's cheery
salutation, and stopping and turning towards them suddenly, he said,
very grimly--
"Beg your pardon--"
"Nothing, General, only wishing you good-morning," answered Drayton.
"Yes, charming morning. I've been walking. I've been out--a--thank you,"
and that lead-coloured and white General vanished like a wicked ghost.
"'Gad, he looks as if he'd got a licking. Did you ever see a fellow look
so queer?"
"He's been overworking his mind--business, you know--wants rest, I
suspect," said Varbarriere, with a solemn nod.
"They say fellows make themselves mad that way. I wonder has he had any
breakfast; did you see his trowsers all over mud?"
"I half envy your walk to Gryston," said Varbarriere, glancing up
towards the fleecy clouds and blue sky, and down again to the breezy
landscape. "It's worth looking at, a very pretty bit, that steep bridge
and glen."
"No notion of coming; maybe you will?"
Varbarriere smiled and shook his head.
"No angler, sir, never was," he said.
"A bad day, rather, at all events," said Drayton; "a grey day is the
thing for us."
"Ah, yes, a grey day; so my nephew tells me; a pretty good angler, I
believe."
Varbarriere did not hear Drayton's answer, whatever it was; he was
thinking of quite other things, and more and more feverishly every
minute. The situation was for him all in darkness. But there remained on
his mind the impression that something worse even than a guilty
discovery had occurred last night, and the spectre that had just crossed
them in the hall was not a sight to dissipate those awful shadows.