THEY CONVERSE
“We were discussing a knotty point, Mr. Herbert, when you arrived,” said
Mrs. Kincton Knox. “I say that nothing can warrant an agitating
intrusion upon a sick bed. Mr. Trevor here was mentioning a case—a
patient in a most critical state—who had an unhappy quarrel with his
son. The old gentleman, a baronet, is now in a most precarious state.”
Miss Clara stole a glance at William, who was bearing it like a brick.
“A paralytic stroke; and they talked of sending for his son! Was ever
such madness heard of? If they want to kill the old man outright they
could not go more direct to their object. I happen to know something of
that awful complaint. My darling Clara’s grandfather, my beloved father,
was taken in that way—a severe paralytic attack, from which he was
slowly recovering, and a servant stupidly dropped a china cup containing
my dear father’s gruel, and broke it—a kind of thing which always a
little excited him—and not being able to articulate distinctly, or in
any way adequately to express his irritation, he had, in about twenty
minutes after the occurrence, a second seizure, which quite prostrated
him, and in fact he never spoke intelligibly after, nor were we certain
that he recognised one of his immediate family. So trifling are the
ways, so mysterious—h—hem!—and apparently inadequate the causes, which
of course, under Divine regulation, in paralytic affections, invariably
overpower the patient. Now, what I say is this, don’t you think a son,
in such a case, instead of obtruding himself at the sick man’s bedside,
ought to wait quietly for a month or two—quietly, I would say, in
France, or wherever he is, and to allow his father just to rally?”
William had been looking rather dreamily on the carpet during this long
statement, and I am afraid he had hardly listened to it as closely as he
ought, and on being appealed to on the subject he did the best he could,
and answered—
“It’s an awful pity these quarrels.”
“He knows something of the case, too,” interposed Vane Trevor.
The ladies looked, one upon the flowers in the vase, and the other out
of the window, in painful expectation of an immediate _eclaircissement_.
But William only nodded a little frown at Trevor, to warn him off the
dangerous ground he was treading, and he went on.
“The blame is always thrown on the young fellows; it isn’t fair.”
William spoke a little warmly. “It’s the fault of the old ones a great
deal oftener, they are so dictatorial and unreasonable, and expect you
to have no will or conscience, or body or soul, except as they please.
They forget that they were young themselves once, and would not have
submitted to it; and then they talk of you as a rebel, by Jove! and a—a
_parricide_ almost, for presuming to have either a thought or a scruple,
or⸺” On a sudden William perceived that, fired with his subject, he was
declaiming a little more vehemently than was usual in drawing-rooms, and
his inspiration failed him.
“Hear, hear, hear!” cried Trevor, with a tiny clapping of his hands, and
a laugh.
Miss Clara looked all aglow with his eloquence, and her mamma said
grandly—
“There’s truth, I’m _sorry_ to say, in your remarks. Heaven knows _I’ve_
suffered enough from unreasonableness, if ever mortal has. Here we sit
in shadow of that great ugly, positively _ugly_ tree there, and _there_
it seems it must stand! _I_ daren’t remove it;” and Mrs. Kincton Knox
lifted her head and her chin, and looked round like a queen shorn of her
regalities, and inviting the indignant sympathy of the well affected.
“There _is_, no question of it, a vast deal of unreasonableness and
selfishness among the old. We all feel it,” and she happened to glance
upon Miss Clara, who was smiling a little cynically on the snowy
ringlets of her little white dog, Bijou. She continued fiercely, “And to
return to the subject. _I_ should think no son, who did not wish to kill
his father, and to have the world believe so, would _think_ of such a
thing.”
“Killing’s a serious business,” observed Trevor.
“A man killed,” observed Mrs. Kincton Knox, “is a man lost to society.
His place knows him no more. All his thoughts perish.”
“And they’re not often any great loss,” moralised Trevor.
“Very true!” acquiesced Mrs. Kincton Knox, with alacrity, recollecting
how little rational matter her spouse ever contributed to the council
board of Kincton. “Still, I maintain, a son would not like to be
supposed to have caused the death of his father. That is, unless my
views of human nature are much too favourable. What do _you_ think, Mr.
Herbert?” and the lady turned her prominent dark eyes with their whites
so curiously veined, encouragingly upon the young man.
“I think if _I_ were that fellow,” he replied, and Mrs. Kincton Knox
admired his diplomacy, “I should not run the risk.”
“Quite right!” approved the lady radiantly.
Trevor looked at his watch and stood up.
“Your trunk and things, gone up to your room, Vane?” inquired Mrs.
Kincton Knox.
“I’ve no trunk; ha, ha! and no things—he, he, he! no, upon my honour. I
can’t stay, really; I’m awfully sorry; but my plans were all upset, and
I’m going back to the station, and must walk at an awful pace too; only
half an hour—a very short visit; well, yes, but I could not deny
myself—short as it is—and I hope to look in upon you again soon.”
“It’s very ill-natured, I think,” said Miss Clara.
“Very,” said Mrs. Kincton Knox, yet both ladies were very well pleased
to be relieved of Vane Trevor’s agreeable society. He would have been in
the way—unutterably _de trop_. His eye upon their operations would have
been disconcerting; he would have been taking the—the tutor long walks,
or trying, perhaps, to flirt with Clara, as he did two years ago, and
never leaving her to herself. So the regrets and upbraidings with which
they followed Vane Trevor, who had unconsciously been helping to mystify
them, were mild and a little hypocritical.
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