LORD WINTERBOURNE.
Lord Winterbourne, all his life, had been a man of guile; he was so long
experienced in it, that dissimulation became easy enough to him, when he
was not startled or thrown suddenly off his guard. Already every one
around him supposed he had quite forgiven and forgotten the wild
escapade of Louis. He had no confidant whatever, not even a valet or a
steward, and his most intimate associate knew nothing of his dark and
secret counsels. When any one mentioned the ungovernable youth who had
fled from the Hall, Lord Winterbourne said, “Pooh, pooh--he will soon
discover his mistake,” and smiled his pale and sinister smile. Such a
face as his could not well look benign; but people were accustomed to
his face, and thought it his misfortune--and everybody set him down as,
in this instance at least, of a very forgiving and indulgent spirit,
willing that the lad should find out his weakness by experiment, but
not at all disposed to inflict any punishment upon his unruly son.
The fact was, however, that Lord Winterbourne was considerably excited
and uneasy. He spent hours in a little private library among his
papers--carefully went over them, collating and arranging again and
again--destroyed some, and filled the private drawers of his cabinet
with others. He sent orders to his agent to prosecute with all the
energy possible his suit against the Athelings. He had his letters
brought to him in his own room, where he was alone, and looked over them
with eager haste and something like apprehension. Servants, always
sufficiently quick-witted under such circumstances, concluded that my
lord expected something, and the expectation descended accordingly
through all the grades of the great house; but this did not by any means
diminish the number of his guests, or the splendour of his hospitality.
New arrivals came constantly to the Hall--and very great people indeed,
on their way to Scotland and the moors, looked in upon the disappointed
statesman by way of solace. He had made an unspeakable failure in his
attempt at statesmanship; but still he had a certain amount of
influence, and merited a certain degree of consideration. The quiet
country brightened under the shower of noble sportsmen and fair ladies.
All Banburyshire crowded to pay its homage. Mrs Edgerley brought her
own private menagerie, the newest lion who could be heard of; and
herself fell into the wildest fever of architecturalism--fitted up an
oratory under the directions of a Fellow of Merton--set up an
Ecclesiological Society in the darkest of her drawing-rooms--made
drawings of “severe saints,” and purchased casts of the finest
“examples”--began to embroider an altar-cloth from the designs of one of
the most renowned connoisseurs in the ecclesiological city, and talked
of nothing but Early English, and Middle Pointed. Politics, literature,
and the fine arts, sport, flirtation, and festivity, kept in unusual
excitement the whole spectator county of Banbury, and the busy occupants
of Winterbourne Hall.
In the midst of all this, the Lord of Winterbourne spent solitary hours
in his library among his papers, took solitary rides towards Abingford,
moodily courted a meeting with Miss Anastasia, even addressed her when
they met, and did all that one unassisted man could do to gain
information of her proceedings. He was in a state of restless
expectation, not easy to account for. He knew that Louis was in London,
but not who had given him the means to go there; and he could find no
pretence for bringing back the youth, or asserting authority over him.
He waited in well-concealed but frightfully-felt excitement for
_something_, watching with a stealthy but perpetual observation the
humble house of the Athelings and the Priory at Abingford. He did not
say to himself what it was he apprehended, nor indeed that he
apprehended anything; but with that strange certainty which criminals
always seem to retain, that fate must come some time, waited in the
midst of his gay, busy, frivolous guests, sharing all the occupations
round him, like a man in a dream,--waited as the world waits in a pause
of deadly silence for the thunderclap. It would rouse him when it came.
It came, but not as he looked for it. Oh blind, vain, guilty soul, with
but one honest thought among all its crafts and falsehoods! It came not
like the rousing tumult of the thunder, but like an avalanche from the
hills; he fell under it with a groan of mortal agony; there was nothing
in heaven or earth to defend him from the misery of this sudden blow.
All his schemes, all his endeavours, what were they good for now?