A DINNER PARTY.
Meanwhile Sidney Hinchford had mapped his course out for the future; he
had been ever fond of planning out his paths in life, as though no
greater planner than he were near to thwart him. That they were turned
from their course or broken short, at times, taught no lesson; he gave
up his progress upon them, but he sketched at once the new course for
his adoption, and began afresh his journey.
He had parted with Harriet Wesden for ever; so be it--it belonged to the
irreparable, and he must look it sternly in the face and live it down as
best he might. It had been all a fallacy, and he the slave of a
delusion--if, in the waking, he had suffered much, was in his heart
still suffering, let him keep an unmoved front before the world, that
should never guess at the keenness and bitterness of this
disappointment. He had his duties to pursue; he had his father to
deceive by his demeanour--he must not let the shadow of his distress
darken the little light remaining for that old man, whom he loved so
well, and who looked upon him as the only one left to love, or was worth
living for.
He told his father that the engagement was at an end; that Harriet and
he had both, by mutual consent, released each other from the contract,
and considered it better to be friends--simply friends, who could esteem
each other, and wish each other well in life. There had been no
quarrelling, he was anxious to impress on Mr. Hinchford: he had himself
suggested the separation, feeling, in the first place, that Harriet
Wesden was scarcely suited to be his wife; and in the second, that he
had been selfish and unjust to bind her to an engagement extending over
a period of years, with all uncertainty beyond.
The old gentleman scarcely comprehended the details; he understood the
result, and as it did not appear to seriously affect his son, he could
imagine that Sid had acted honourably, and for the very best. _He_ did
not want Sid to marry, and perhaps live apart from him; he knew that
much of his own happiness would vanish away at the altar, where Sid
would take some one for better, for worse, and he could not regret in
his heart anything that retained his boy at his side. In that heart he
had often thought that Harriet Wesden was scarcely fit for his son's
wife, scarcely deserving of that dear boy--there was time enough for Sid
to marry a dozen years hence--he had married late in life himself, and
why should not his son follow his example!
Sidney Hinchford heard a little of this reasoning in his turn, but
whether he admired his father's remarks or not, did not appear from the
unmoved aspect of his countenance. He was always anxious to turn the
conversation into other channels; partial in those long evenings to
backgammon with his father--a game which absorbed Mr. Hinchford's
attention, and rendered him less loquacious. Still Sidney was a fair
companion, and disguised the evidence of his disappointment well; he had
set himself the task of making the latter days of that old gentleman
free from care if possible, and he played his part well, and would have
deceived keener eyes than his father's. That father was becoming weaker
in body and mind, Sid could see; he was more feeble than his elder
brother now--success in life had tested his nervous system
more--possibly worn him out before his time. Like his son, he had had
ever a habit of keeping his chief troubles to himself, and preserving a
fair front to society. He had had a nervous wife to study, afterwards a
son to encourage by his stanch demeanour. He had been an actor
throughout the days of his tribulation, and such acting is the wear and
tear of body and mind, and produces its natural fruit at a later season.
Sidney Hinchford saw the change in him, and knew that their parting must
come, sooner than the father dreamed of. Mr. Hinchford had a knowledge
of his own defects, but not of their extent. He was ignorant how weak he
had become, as he seldom stirred from home now; and his memory, which
played him traitor, also helped him to forget its defects! He pictured
Sidney and him together for many years yet--the Hinchfords were a
long-lived race, and he did not dream of himself being an exception to
the rule.
But Sidney noted every change, and became anxious. He noted also that
the powers of mind seemed waning faster than the body, and that there
were times when his father almost forgot their poor estate, and talked
more like the rich man he had been once. He brought a doctor to see him
once, sat him down by his father's side, in the light of an office
friend, and then waited anxiously for the verdict delivered an hour
afterwards, in the passage.
"Keep him from all excitement if you can--let him have his own way as
much as possible--and there is not a great deal to fear."
Sidney cautioned Ann Packet, who was partial to a way of her own, and
then went to office more contented in mind. Over the office books, he
was sterner and graver than he used to be, and more inclined than ever
to repel the advances of his cousin.
His salary had been raised by that time; he had distinguished himself as
a good and faithful servant, and he took the wages that were due to him,
with thanks for his promotion.
One day, his uncle sent for him into the inner chamber, to speak of
matters foreign to the business of a banking house.
"Sidney, I have troubled you more than once with advice concerning my
son Maurice."
"Yes."
"He is about to offer you and your father an invitation to dine with him
next week."
"I know what to answer, sir," said Sidney, somewhat stiffly. He objected
to this advice-gratis principle, and thought that Mr. Geoffry Hinchford
might have left him to his own judgment.
"No, you don't, and that's why I sent for you. Maurice will be
thirty-one next week--it's a little family affair, almost exclusively
confined to members of the family, and I hope that you will both come."
"Sir--I----"
"Bygones are bygones; we do not make a mere pretence of having forgotten
the past--_we_ Hinchfords," said his uncle. "Sidney, I will ask it as a
favour?"
"Very well, sir. But my father is not well, and I fear not able to bear
any extra fatigue."
"I am not afraid of old Jemmy's consent," said the banker. "There, go to
your desk, and don't waste valuable time in prolixity."
Late that day Maurice Hinchford addressed his cousin. Sidney was going
down the bank steps homewards, when his cousin followed him, and passed
his arm through his.
"Sidney--you'll find two letters of mine at home. They are for you and
your father. I shall call it deuced unkind to say No to their contents!"
"Suppose we say Yes, then!"
"Thank you. The governor and I want you and your governor down at our
place next week. No excuses. Even Mr. Geoffry Hinchford will not have
them this time; that stern paterfamilias, who thinks familiarity with me
will breed the usual contempt."
"For the business--not for you, Maurice!"
"He's very anxious to make a model clerk of you; and very much afraid
that I shall spoil you. As if I were so dangerous a friend, relative, or
acquaintance! Upon my honour, I can't make it out exactly. I've had an
idea that I should be just the friend for you. Perhaps the governor is
coming round to my way of thinking, at last."
Sidney repeated his past assertions that their positions did not, and
could never correspond. Maurice laughed at this as usual.
"Haven't I told you fifty times that I don't care a fig for position,
and that a Hinchford is always a Hinchford--_i.e._, a gentleman? Sidney,
you are an incomprehensibility; when you marry that lady to whose
attractions you have confessed yourself susceptible, perhaps I shall
make you out more clearly."
Sidney's countenance changed a little--he became grave, and his cousin
noticed the difference.
"Anything wrong?" was the quick question here.
Sidney was annoyed that he had betrayed himself--he who prided himself
upon mastering all emotion when the occasion was necessary.
"Oh! no; everything right, Maurice!" he said with a forced lightness of
demeanour; "the folly of an engagement that could end in nothing,
discovered in good time, and two romantic beings sobered for their
good!"
"Why could it end in nothing?--I don't see."
"Oh! it's a long story," replied Sidney, "and you would not feel
interested in it. I was selfish to seek to bind her to a long
engagement, and we both thought so, after mature deliberation. I turn
off here--Good night!"
"Good night!"
Sidney found the invitations awaiting him at home. Mr. Hinchford had
opened his own letter, and spent the greater part of the afternoon in
perusing and reperusing it.
"What--what do you think of this, Sid?"
"Tell me what _you_ think of it."
"Well--I think, just for once, we might as well go--show them that we
know how to behave ourselves, poor as we are, Sidney."
"Very well," said Sidney, somewhat wearily; "we'll go!"
"Let me see; what have I done with that dress coat of mine?" said the
father; "how long is it since I wore it, I wonder?"
Twenty-five years, or thereabouts, since Mr. Hinchford had worn a
dress-coat, consequently a little behind the fashion just then. Sidney
Hinchford thought with a sigh of the fresh expenses incurred by the
acceptance of his cousin's invitation; he who was saving money for the
rainy days ahead of him. How long ahead now, he thought, were the years
still to intervene and leave him in God's sunlight? He could not tell;
but there was a cruel doubt, which kept him restless. Give him his sight
whilst his father lived, at least, and spare the white head further care
in this life! Afterwards, when he was alone, he thought, a little
misanthropically, it did not matter. His own trouble he could bear, and
there would be no one else--no one in all the world!--to grieve about
_him_. A few expressions of commonplace condolence for his affliction,
and then--for ever alone!
Sidney Hinchford and his father went down by railway to Redhill. The
dinner-party was for five P.M.--an early hour, to admit of London
friends return by the eleven o'clock train. At the station, Mr. Geoffry
Hinchford's carriage waited for father and son, and whirled them away to
the family mansion, whilst the less favoured, who had arrived by the
same train, sought hired conveyances.
"He treats us well--just as we deserve to be treated--just as I would
have treated him, Sid. He was always a good sort--old Jef!"
Sidney did not take heed of his father's change of opinion--the world
had been full of changes, and here was nothing to astonish him. He was
prepared for anything remarkable now, he thought--he could believe in
any transformations.
Father and son reached their relative's mansion exactly as the clock in
the turret roof of the stable-house was striking five--there were
carriages winding their way down the avenue before them, the hired flys
with their hungry occupants were bringing up the rear. Sid looked from
the carriage window, and almost repented that he had brought his father
to the festivities. But Mr. Hinchford was cool and self-possessed; it
was a return to the old life, and he seemed brighter and better for the
change.
Maurice Hinchford received them in the hall; the first face in the large
ante-room was that of Uncle Geoffry. There was no doubt of the
genuineness of their reception--it was an honest and a hearty welcome.
Sidney had mixed but little in society--few young men at his age had
seen less of men and manners, yet few men, old or young, could have been
more composed and stately. He was not anxious to look his best, or
fearful of betraying his want of knowledge; he had graver thoughts at
his heart, and being indifferent as to the effect he produced, was cool
and unmoved by the crowd of guests into which he had been suddenly
thrust. He had accepted that invitation to oblige his cousin, not
himself; and there he was, by his father's side, for Maurice's guests to
think the best or worst of him--which they pleased, he cared not.
Poor Sid at this time was inclined to be misanthropical; he looked at
all things through a distorting medium, and he had lost his natural
lightness of heart. His lip curled at the stateliness and frigidity of
his uncle's guests, and he was disposed to see a stand-offishness in
some of them which did not exist, and was only the natural ante-dinner
iciness that pervades a conglomeration of diners-out, unknown to each
other. Still it steeled Sidney somewhat; he was the poor relation, he
fancied, and some of these starchy beings scented his poverty by
instinct! Maurice introduced him to his mother and sisters--people with
whom we shall have little to do, and therefore need not dilate upon. The
greeting was a little stiff from the maternal quarter--Sidney remembered
on the instant his father's previous verdicts on the brother's
wife--cordial and cousinly enough from the sisters, two pretty girls,
the junior of Maurice, and three buxom ladies, the senior of their
brother--two married, with Maurices of their own.
Sidney endeavoured to act his best; he had not come there to look
disagreeable, though he felt so, in the first early moments of meeting;
when the signal was given to pass into the dining-room, he offered his
arm to his youngest cousin, at Maurice's suggestion, and thawed a little
at her frankness, and at the brightness of her happy looking face.
There might have been one little pang at the evidence of wealth and
position which that dining-room afforded him--for he was a Hinchford
also, and his father had been a rich man in past days--but the feeling
was evanescent, if it existed, and after one glance at his father, as
cool and collected as himself, he devoted himself to the cousin, whom he
had met for the first time in his life.
A grand dinner-party, given in grand style, as befitted a man well to do
in the world. No gardeners and stablemen turned into waiters for the
nonce, and still unmistakably gardeners and stablemen for all their limp
white neckcloths--no hired waiters from remote quarters of the world,
and looking more like undertaker's men than lacqueys--no flustered
maid-servants and nurserymaids, pressed into the service, and suffering
from nervous trepidation--this array of footmen at the back, the staff
always on hand in that palatial residence, which a lucky turn of the
wheel had reared for Geoffry Hinchford.
Sidney's cousin sang the praises of her brother all dinner-time; what a
good-tempered, good-hearted fellow he was, and how universally liked by
all with whom he came in contact. She was anxious to know what Sidney
thought of him, and whether he had been impressed by Maurice's
demeanour; and Sidney sang in a minor key to the praises of his cousin
also, not forgetting in his peculiar pride to regret that difference of
position which set Maurice apart from him.
Miss Hinchford did not see that, and was sure that Maurice would scoff
at the idea--she was sure, also, that everyone would be glad to see
Sidney at their house as often as he liked to call there. Sidney thawed
more and more; a naturally good-tempered man, with a pleasant companion
at his side, it was not in his power to preserve a gloomy aspect; he
became conversational and agreeable; he had only one care, and that was
concerning his father, to whom he glanced now and then, and whom he
always found looking the high-bred gentleman, perfectly at his ease--and
very different to the old man, whose mental infirmities had kept him
anxious lately. Mr. James Hinchford had gone back to a past in which he
had been ever at home; his pliant memory had abjured all the long
interim of poverty, lodgings in Great Suffolk Street, and a post at a
builder's desk; he remembered nothing of them that night, and was the
old Hinchford that his brother had known. To the amazement of his son,
he rose after dinner to propose the toast of the evening--somewhat out
of place, being a relation and yet a stranger almost--and spoke at
length, and with a fluency and volubility which Sidney had not remarked
before. He assumed his right to propose the toast as the oldest friend
of the family, and he did it well and gracefully enough, utterly
confounding the family physician, who had been two days compiling a long
and elaborate speech which "that white-headed gentleman opposite" had
taken completely out of his mouth.
That white-headed gentleman sat down amidst hearty plaudits, and
Maurice's health was drunk with due honours; and then Maurice--"dear old
Morry!" as his sister impetuously exclaimed--responded to the toast.
A long speech in his turn, delivered with much energy and rapidity, his
flushed and good-looking face turning to right and left of that long
array of guests around him. Sidney's heart thrilled to hear one
expression of Maurice's--an allusion to the gentleman who had proposed
his health, "his dear uncle, whose presence there tended so much to the
pleasurable feelings of that night."
"Well--he is a good fellow," said Sidney, heartily; "I wish I had a
brother like him to stand by me in life."
His cousin looked her gratitude at him for the outburst, and no one
hammered the table more lustily than Sidney at the conclusion of his
cousin's speech.
There were a few more toasts before the ladies retired at the signal
given by the hostess; there was a rustle of silk and muslin through the
broad doorway, and then the gentlemen left to themselves, and many of
them breathing freer in consequence.
There remained some twenty or twenty-five gentlemen to do honour to the
wine which shone from the array of decanters on the table; Sidney drew
his chair closer to his neighbour's, and looked round him again. His
father, perfectly at home--happy and equable--sparing with the wine,
too, as Sidney had wished, and yet had not thought filial to hint to his
sire. His father almost faced him, and Sidney, whose powerful glasses
brought him within range of vision, could return the smile bestowed in
his direction now and then. The old man, who had forgotten his poverty,
kept in remembrance the son who had shared that poverty with him.
There was more speech-making after the ladies had retired; deeper
drinking, and a wider scope of subjects. One gentleman near his father,
in a lackadaisical strain, rose to propose the health of the family
physician, who had been balked of his speech early in the evening; and
Sidney, startled somewhat by the tone of a voice that he fancied he had
heard before, peered through his glasses, and tried to make the speaker
out.
He had seen that man before, or heard that strange drawl--where or in
what company he was at fault--the man's features were indistinct at that
distance. He edged his chair nearer--even in his intense curiosity, for
which he was scarcely able to account, changed his place, and went a few
seats from the foot of the table, where Maurice was now sitting in his
mother's vacated place.
Then Sidney recognized the man--suddenly and swiftly the truth darted
upon him--he had met that man in the Borough; he had stood between him
and his offensive persecution of Harriet Wesden; he was the "prowler" of
old days--the man from whom he had extorted an apology in the public
streets, and from whom a generous and unwashed public would accept no
apology.
The old antagonism seemed to revive on the instant; he felt the man's
presence there an insult to himself; his blood warmed, and his ears
tingled; he wondered what reason had brought that man there, and whose
friend he could possibly be?
"What man is that?" he asked almost imperiously of Maurice, who, taken
aback by the question, stared at Sidney with amazement.
"A friend of mine," he answered at last; "do you know him?"
"N--no."
Sidney relapsed into silence and mastered his excitement. This was not a
time or place to mention how he had met that man, or in what
questionable pursuit; there was danger to Maurice, from so evil an
acquaintance; and in his own honesty of purpose, Sid could not
understand that the man had any right at that table, an honoured guest
there. He knew but little of polite society; did not understand that
polite society requires no reference as to the morals of its guests, and
is quite satisfied if the name be good, and the status unquestionable.
Polite society cannot trouble itself about the morals of its male
members.
Sidney sat and watched the prowler, and, in his confusion, drank more
port wine than was perhaps good for him. He fancied that his cousin
Maurice had implied a rebuke for his harsh interrogative; and he was
considering _that_, too, in his mind, and wishing, for the first time,
that he had not presented himself at his cousin's dinner-table.
The toast was drunk and responded to by the family physician, who very
ingeniously dove-tailed the remarks upon Maurice's natal day into his
own expression of thanks for the honour accorded him. Sidney omitted to
drink the stranger's health, and made no attempt to applaud the fine
words by which it had been succeeded. He sat discomfited by the
prowler's presence there--but for that man he might never have been
engaged to Harriet Wesden, and, therefore, have never experienced the
disappointment--the cruel reaction--which had followed the folly of that
betrothal.
"Sid," called his father across the table at him, "aren't you well,
lad?"
"Oh! very well," was the reply; "what is there to ail me in such
pleasant company?"
"Perhaps the gentleman is sighing for lady's society; if he will move an
adjournment, I'll second the motion," said the prowler, sauve and bland,
totally forgetful of that dark face which had glowered at him once in
London streets.
"I shall propose nothing," said Sid, curtly.
Those who heard the uncivil reply, looked towards the speaker somewhat
curiously. When the wine's in, the wit's out--had Sidney Hinchford
drowned his courtesy in his uncle's decanters? The prowler--he is a
fugitive character, whose name we need not parade at this late stage to
our readers--stared at our hero with the rest, but was not affected by
it, or understood good breeding sufficiently well to disguise all
evidence at his friend's table. He turned to Maurice with a laugh.
"Hinchford, old fellow, I leave the proposition in your hands. You who
were always a lady's man."
"Not I."
"But I say you were--I say that you are. Do you think that I have
forgotten all the _aventures amoureuses_ of Maurice Darcy--I, his sworn
brother-in-arms--his pupil?"
"Steady, Frank, steady!" cried Maurice.
But the guests were noisy, and the subject was a pleasant one to
gentlemen over their wine, with the door closed on skirts and flounces.
There were shouts of laughter at the prowler's charge--Maurice shook his
head, blushed and laughed, but appeared rather to like the accusation
than otherwise--Maurice's father, at home and at his ease, laughed with
the rest. "A young dog--a young scapegrace!" he chuckled. Even Sidney's
father laughed also--young men will be young men, he thought, and the
prowler was pleasant company, and made the time fly. It is this
after-dinner-talk, when the ladies have retired, and the bottle is not
allowed to stand still, which pleases diners-out the most. This is the
"fun of the fair," where the Merry-Andrew deals forth his jokes, and the
wine-bibber appreciates the double-entendre all the more for the singing
in his ears and the thick mist by which he is surrounded.
"Do you think that I have forgotten the stationer's daughter--by George!
that was a leaf from romance, and virtuous indignation in the ascendant.
Tell us the story, Maurice, we are all friends here; and though the
joke's against you----"
"Gentlemen, I propose that we join the ladies," said Maurice, rising,
with some confusion.
The guests laughed again noisily at this--it was so palpable an attempt
to retreat, that the dining-room rang again with peals of
laughter--Sidney Hinchford, sterner and grimmer than ever, alone sat
unmoved, until Maurice had dropped into his seat in despair, and then he
rose and looked across at his father.
"Are you ready?" he asked.
"Certainly--Sid--quite ready!"
"Oh! the ladies have a hundred topics to dwell upon over their coffee,
Sidney," said his uncle; "we must have no rebellion this side of the
house."
"I am going home, sir--you must excuse me--I cannot stay here any
longer. Come, father!"
"Home!"
"I have business at home--I am pressed for time--I will _not_ stay!" he
almost shouted.
Sidney's father, in mild bewilderment, rose and tottered after him. This
was an unpleasant wind-up to a social evening, and Sid's strange
demeanour perplexed him. But the boy's will was law, and he succumbed to
it; the boy always knew what was best--his son, Sid, was never at
fault--never!
The guests were too amazed to comprehend the movement; some of them were
inclined to consider it a joke of Sid's--an excuse to retreat to the
drawing-room; the mystery was too much for their wine-benumbed faculties
just then.
Sidney and his father were in the broad marble-paved hall; the footmen
lingering about there noted their presence--one made a skip towards the
drawing-room facing them.
"Stop!" said Sid. His memory was good, and his organ of locality better.
He walked with a steady step towards a small room at the end of the
hall--a withdrawing-room, where the hats and coats had been placed early
in the evening. He returned in a few moments with his great-coat on, his
father's coat across his arm, and two hats in his hands.
"Then--then we're really going, Sid?"
"I'm sick of this life; it is not fit for us. Why did we come?" he
asked, angrily, as he assisted his perplexed father into his great-coat.
"I--I don't know, Sid," stammered the father. "I thought that we were
spending quite a pleasant evening. Has anyone said anything?"
"Let us be off!"
Maurice Hinchford came from the dining-room towards them with a quick
step. There was excitement, even an evidence of concern upon his
handsome face.
"Sidney," he said, holding out his hand towards him, "I understand all
this; I can explain all this at a more befitting time. Don't go now--it
looks bad. It isn't quite fair to us or yourself."
"You are Maurice Darcy!" said Sid, sternly.
"It was a fool's trick, of which I have heartily repented. It----"
"You were the man who deliberately sought the ruin of an innocent girl
to whom I was engaged--you sought my disgrace and hers, and you ask me
to your house, and insult me through your friends thus shamelessly. You
make a jest----"
"On my honour, no, sir!"
"No matter--I see to whom I have been indebted; perhaps the motive which
led to past preferment--I am ashamed and mortified--I have done with you
and yours for ever. I would curse the folly that led me hither to-night,
were it not for the light in which it has placed my enemies!"
"You are rash, Sidney. To-morrow you will think better of me."
"When my cooler judgment steps in and shows me what I must sacrifice for
my position--_my place_," he replied. "Sir, you are a Hinchford--you
should know that we are a proud family by this time. I say that we have
done with you--judge me at your worst, as I judge you!--if I fail to
keep my word."
He passed his arm through his father's and led the bewildered old man
down the steps into the night air; he had been insulted, he thought, and
thus, spurning appearances, he had resented it. He could not play longer
his part of guest in that house; his old straightforward habits led him
at once to show his resentment and retire. So he shook the dust of the
house from his feet, and turned his back upon his patrons.