Mr. Stamford, on inquiring of the club porter, found that his friend
was at home, so to speak, and had not been more than ten minutes in
an apartment very unostentatiously furnished, which was devoted to
the reception of strangers, when Mr. Grandison entered.
“Are you club magnates afraid that strangers may run away with a
chair or two, or a spare sofa, that you are so confoundedly
parsimonious in the furniture line?” inquired Stamford. “I have more
than once considered the question when I have been kicking my heels
here and at the Junior Pioneers, and that is the conclusion I have
arrived at. It must be so. Surely there must be a legend of a
dried-out squatter being driven to spout an arm-chair or a
table-cover. Isn’t that it?”
“You’re in famous spirits, Harold, old man,” said the capitalist,
who was by no means over-joyous of demeanour. “It’s the rain that’s
done it, I suppose. ’Pon my soul, you’re right about this room. It
isn’t fit for a gentleman to be put into. I must bring it before the
committee. How are Mrs. Stamford and the girls? Brought them down?”
“Yes, we’re at Batty’s. I took Laura to Chatsworth this morning; I’m
going out now to call for her. I saw Mrs. Grandison; she was kind
enough to ask us to dine on Thursday.”
“That’s all right. Now I’ll tell you what I’ll do. The mail-phaeton
will be here in five minutes, and we’ll go out home together. I want
to have a talk with you. Things are not going altogether right in
the family, and I want another good yarn with you. You know what I
told you about Carlo? Well, he’s done worse since then, pretty near
broke my heart and his mother’s.” And here Mr. Grandison looked so
worried and hopeless that his friend felt himself to be grossly
selfish in that he found himself in such good spirits.
“I’m very sorry to hear it, Bob, my dear fellow,” said he with real
concern. “But worse! how can he have done worse?”
“He _has_ done worse, much worse. He has married, and married badly
too, by Jingo!” and here Mr. Grandison could no longer contain
himself.
“I hate to talk about it,” said he, after a pause, “but it’s one of
those things that must be faced. And of course you and I are too old
friends to mind telling each other the whole truth. But the fact is,
the confounded young fool has gone and married a barmaid.”
“You don’t say so!” said Mr. Stamford, starting back as from a blow,
but gradually bringing his mind to bear on the question, and
wondering how the consequences and complication of such an
inconceivable step in the case of an eldest son would end. “Carlo a
married man! And to a barmaid too! Surely there must be some
mistake. How in the world did it happen—how could it happen?” he
asked.
“I suppose it could happen, because it did,” answered his friend
gloomily. “Unfortunately, it’s only too true. The fact is, that
while he was living in Tasmania—you know he had just gone there when
you were in Sydney last, after that card-scrape he got into here—he
was living an idle, aimless life. He did that here, for that matter,
so that there was no need for him to complain about it so bitterly.
I sent him a very fair allowance, and thought he was well out of
harm’s way. He used to write his mother long letters; I thought he
was on the way to be reformed.” Here Mr. Grandison lit a cigar.
“What happened then?”
“After that he wanted me to give him an allowance, and let him go to
Europe. I wish to heaven I had done so now!”
“But why didn’t you?”
“Because I couldn’t trust him. I knew if I let him go on that
understanding, he would overdraw his allowance—gamble on a large
scale at some of those foreign places—Baden Baden or Homburg. Blow
his brains out then, perhaps.”
“I should have let him go, but I can understand your very natural
reluctance.”
“Yes, he’s a bad boy, Stamford, there’s no denying. But he’s my
eldest son, my first child. My God! how I remember all the love and
fondness poor Mary and I lavished on him—how we fretted ourselves to
death when he had any childish complaint—the agony we were in when
he was away from home one night, we thought he was lost. And to
think he should have repaid us for all our care and love, perhaps
foolish indulgence, like this—like this! It’s very bitter; it’s hard
to bear. Dashed if I didn’t envy our gardener last week, whose son
was apprenticed to a blacksmith! I did, by Jove! What’s all the
money to us now?”
“It is hard, my dear fellow,” said Stamford, touched by his friend’s
evident distress and hopeless air. “I pity you from my heart. But
are things so very bad? Can nothing be done?”
“Well they might be worse. The girl’s character is good, I believe;
she is a dairyman’s daughter, with no education, and that’s all the
harm I know of her. She has a pretty face. Carlo met her at a
roadside inn near where he was lodging. He writes over and says he
was so confoundedly dull and miserable that he’d made up his mind
he’d either marry the girl if she’d have him, or shoot himself. She
did have him. So this is the end of all our slaving and striving for
his benefit and to give him a chance of keeping in the first flight
of the best society the colony could show. He goes and throws
himself away like this. And we have a daughter-in-law that doesn’t
know an aitch when she sees it, I suppose, and if ever she comes
here, which isn’t likely, perhaps, can’t tell a finger-glass from a
flower-pot.” At this dreadful picture evoked from his inner
consciousness, Mr. Grandison groaned again, and made as if he could
tear his hair, were such gestures of grief permissible in a member
of a fashionable club.
Mr. Stamford did not really know for the moment what to say to
console the unhappy father, who, unless his son had died, could
hardly have been in a position of more hopeless sorrow. No doubt
some fathers would have been sufficiently Spartan to have preferred
an honourable death to an undesirable marriage. But, except in
business matters, he was not a hard man. Stamford knew that such
Lacedæmonian severity was alien to his nature. He set himself to
suggest consolatory ideas as the London built phaeton drew up to the
club steps.
“It’s a bad enough affair, doubtless. I won’t say I don’t think so.
I should have felt all you do, in my own case.” Here Mr. Stamford
inwardly scoffed at the possibility of Hubert’s acting in this
manner under any possible circumstances. “But it’s no use taking too
sombre a view. The girl is good looking, and honest, which is much.
She will, doubtless improve with opportunities. If she has any
strength of character, she will probably keep Carlo straight for the
future. We have known such things happen before. It’s a desperate
remedy, but occasionally efficacious.”
“Desperate! You may say so,” replied Mr. Grandison, testily. “Take
the other side of the question. Suppose she turns out a flirt or a
scold—or both; runs away from him, or he from her, leaving three or
four half-bred brats to worry me in my old age. What then?”
With the expression of these gloomy apprehensions as to the probable
matrimonial fate of the heir apparent of Chatsworth and many a fair
acre of plain and woodland, the phaeton entered the massive and
ornate portals of Chatsworth House, and crunched the immaculate
gravel, while the lord of all sat with folded arms and darkened
brow, indifferent as a captive to outer grandeur.
“Here we are! Come in Harold, old man,” he said, as the wheels
almost grazed the portico. “By George, I could find it in my heart
to sit down and cry on our own doorstep, but we have to live and see
it out, I suppose. Didn’t you say you were going to take Laura back?
Better stay and dine. Keep me company, there’s a good fellow. I’m
low enough, God knows!”
Harold Stamford would have agreed to this proposal at once, so
touched was he by his old friend’s woebegone appearance and
desponding words, but he recalled his own engagement. This he
pleaded successfully, adding, “You’ll have the whole family here on
Thursday.”
“All right, if you can’t, you can’t. Here, Bateman,” he called out
to the coachman who was driving away from the front, “don’t go away
yet. I want you to take Mr. Stamford and his daughter home. You may
as well go back to Batty’s in comfort, and this pair doesn’t get
half work enough. They’ll be making a bolt of it one of these days
like Carlo, if I don’t look out. Ha, ha!”
Mr. Grandison’s laugh was not pleasant to hear. His friend followed
him into the drawing-room in silence. Here sat the three ladies, who
were apparently not in bad spirits. Mrs. Grandison had chased from
her brow the marks of care which were so apparent at an earlier
period of the day, and was joining, apparently without effort, in
the vivacious discourse of the two young ladies. Miss Josie had
contrived to arise and apparel herself after the fashion of the
period, and though showing some of the pallor produced by a round of
gaiety in a semi-tropical climate, was on the whole sufficiently
attractive.
“So this is Laura,” said Mr. Grandison, as he advanced and warmly
greeted the young lady in question. “Why, what a woman you’ve grown,
and a handsome one, too, or I mistake much. Why, Josie, we must send
you up to the banks of the Warra Warra, or wherever Windāhgil is.
Near Mooramah, isn’t it, Stamford? ’Pon my soul! I forget where my
own stations are sometimes.”
“You won’t catch me going into the bush, father!” said Miss Josie,
in a rather sharp tone of voice. “That is, not farther than North
Shore. It certainly agrees with some people, and Laura here might
play the part of Patience without dressing. But Sydney is my home,
and I don’t mean to stir from it.”
“It’s the worst day’s work I ever did in my life when I brought you
all to live here,” said her father. “I wish to heaven we had
continued to live at the old bush cottage you were born in, my
lady.”
“I don’t see what difference that would have made, Robert,” said his
wife.
“But I do,” said the master of the house. “You and your children
would never have learned the habits of fashionable folly and
reckless extravagance in which your lives are spent. We might have
been satisfied with a more natural existence—aye, and, a happier
life.”
“If you only come home early to say disagreeable things, my dear
Robert, I must say that I like the old way best,” said Mrs.
Grandison with dignity.
“I would say a great many more things of the same sort,” replied he,
“if I could persuade myself that they would do any good. But it is
too late now. We have sown the wind and must reap the whirlwind.”
This form of discussion tended to render things generally rather
uncomfortable. It would have been difficult to direct the
conversation into a more conventional channel had not Mr. Grandison
abruptly left the room.
“I can’t think what has put Robert out so this afternoon,” said his
wife, “of course he keeps worrying himself about that dreadful
affair of Carlo’s—wicked boy! He told you about that, Mr. Stamford,
I know. I’ve cried my eyes out, and I shall never be the same woman
again, I know. But what is the use of making your life one long
misery for the sake of a selfish, disobedient son? He never
considered us, I firmly believe, since he was a boy at school. Then
why, as Josie says, should we consider him? I am not going to grieve
over him any longer. He has chosen his path.”
“He’s a selfish, stupid, unprincipled fellow,” said Josie, with an
air of cold decision. “He has done everything he could to disgrace
himself and us. I am not going to spoil my life on his account, and
I shall never mention his name, or that of the servant-girl he has
chosen to bring into the family.”
“I think you are too hard; I do indeed, Josie!” said her mother,
“though he deserves very little at our hands. You are not his
mother, my dear, and you don’t know how it feels. But I can’t think
we should deny ourselves anything in society for his sake. Just at
the beginning of the gay season in Sydney, too!”
Laura, who had looked extremely grave throughout the discussion, now
felt inclined to smile at Mrs. Grandison’s distressful _finale_. She
rose, and looked at her father to explain the absolute necessity for
their departure.
“We shall see you all here at dinner on Thursday, then, mind that!”
said their hostess. “And, Laura, put on your best bib and tucker.
I’ll have some of our show young men to meet you.”
“I’m sure I don’t know where you’ll find them, mother,” said Josie,
disdainfully. “Since the Lorenzo went to Fiji, there hasn’t been a
man in Sydney fit to look at.”
The coachman’s temper was not improved by the length of time during
which he had been kept waiting. One of the highly-conditioned,
irregularly-exercised horses had indeed revenged himself by pawing
and scraping, the result of which was a hole in the gravel, which
caused the head gardener to use a much stronger expression when he
saw it than, still mindful of kirk and minister, he was in the habit
of employing.
As they went spinning down the incline to Double Bay, in the easy,
well-hung carriage, her father said, “Wouldn’t you like to have a
drag like this, my dear, to put your husband down at his office in
if you were married and lived in Sydney?”
“That means if I were somebody else altogether,” replied Laura, with
a slight blush. “I can’t say how I might act then. But if you ask me
whether I would change places with the poor people in the splendid
house we have just left, I say, with the country mouse, ‘Give me my
hollow tree and liberty,’ or rather our love and affection for each
other. I don’t think anything could happen to alter that; do you,
father?”
Mr. Stamford answered by a quick, decided movement rather than by
words. It is to be hoped no one in that fashionable suburb observed
the action; but even if so, the faultlessly aristocratic appearance
of the equipage in which the offenders sat would have sufficed to
condone the offence.
A comparatively short time saw them at Hyde Park—too short, indeed,
it seemed to Laura, eager to enjoy the varied beauty of the scene.
The splendours of the dying day, the roll of the surge upon the
outer shore, the rising ocean breeze, all these seemed to the keen
and cultured sense of the enthusiastic maiden but portions of a
wondrous panorama, of which each hour furnished a fresh presentment.
Linda, from the balcony, beheld them arrive in state, and waved her
handkerchief in token of welcome and approval. “Oh! Laura, I was
beginning to think you were never coming. What kept you so late? You
will hardly have time to dress for dinner, and I do so want you to
look well.”
“Why should you want me to look well? I fancied I was looking rather
nice—that is, for a country cousin, as Josie says.”
“What!” almost shouted Linda; “hasn’t father told you? I see he
hasn’t—isn’t it just like him? If the Duke of Edinburgh and Lord
Wolseley were coming to dinner he’d forget all about it. And yet he
thinks he’s a good father.”
“So he is,” said Laura, “and I won’t have him run down. What is the
dreadful secret? Has the aide-de-camp come to ask us to dinner at
Government House?”
“No! But without joking, Laura, it is a matter of importance. That
is—we should have thought so at Windāhgil. Mr. Barrington Hope is
coming to dine.”
“Is he?” said Laura, coolly. Linda afterwards said it was “unnatural
calmness.” “Then suppose you ask the maid to turn on the gas
directly. We must put on our best bibs and tuckers, as Mrs.
Grandison says.”
Mr. Barrington Hope arrived in due time, accurately apparelled and
looking—as most men do—to great advantage in evening costume. Though
much above the ordinary height, his breadth of shoulder and justness
of proportion prevented any appearance of incongruity. Evidently one
of those persons who wisely dismiss the problems of the day with
their ordinary garb, his features wore an entirely different
expression, so closely allied to careless ease that Mr. Stamford
could hardly believe he saw before him the anxious brain-worker of
the morning.
As the two men stood together on the balcony overlooking the bay
with its evening crowd of water-wayfarers and pleasure seekers, the
elder said—
“How wonderful an image of rest and peace a calm sea presents,
especially at this hour! There are hard work and deep thoughts
frequently upon blue water, but I confess I can never connect them
together.”
“My own feeling, quite,” said Hope. “I am passionately fond of the
sea, but few people have less time for indulging such a taste. I
always feel it to be the true home of the lotus-eater. ‘In calm or
storm, by rock or bay,’ there is rest for the soul when on the deep.
If I were safely embarked for Europe and clear of the Heads, I
should almost expire of joy, I really believe.”
“But why do you not take a holiday—a run to Fiji, San Francisco,
Galle, anywhere? All places strange and foreign are equally good for
change.”
“Or to the moon,” laughed the young man. “Nearly as much chance of
getting to one as the other. However, I will think it over and
arrange.”
“Depend upon it, you should not delay. I am something of a
physiognomist, and I see reasons for a foreign tour. Why not make an
application? Urgent private affairs. They could not be more
truthfully described. But here come my young people.”
Mrs. Stamford and her daughters now appeared. With her usual prompt
kindness she advanced, upon hearing her husband commence a formal
introduction, and held out her hand to the young man.
“You are well known to us by name, Mr. Hope! I have great pleasure,
believe me, in making your acquaintance. I trust some day that we
may be able to see you at Windāhgil. You will be indeed welcome to
our country home.”
Mr. Hope bowed with an air as if disclaiming all title to unusual
indulgence, but his eyes strayed from the kind face of the speaker
to that of Laura Stamford, to whom, with Linda, he was now
presented.
Both these young ladies, in spite of an air of calm repose, were
inwardly somewhat agitated at beholding a personage in whose favour
they had heard so much. Prone, like most damsels of the romantic
age, to invest the probable hero with striking attributes, they had
yet fallen short of a correct estimate of Barrington Hope’s
appearance. Connecting him in more or less degree with his
mercantile profession, they had expected perhaps a look of greater
age, a more concentrated regard, or care-encumbered countenance.
When therefore they were confronted by one of the best-looking,
best-dressed men in the metropolis, separated as to air and manner
apparently from any commonplace pecuniary labours, they could hardly
believe their eyes.
Linda was inwardly gnashing her teeth, and reproaching the author of
her being in that he was such an inefficient hand at description.
“Would not any one have imagined, Laura,” she said afterwards, “that
Mr. Hope was a hard-headed sort of person, clever at figures and all
that, and good to us? And now, quite suddenly we are brought face to
face with a magnificent man—the finest man I ever saw in my life.
Isn’t it a shame—a crying shame, Laura?”
“Isn’t what a crying shame? That Mr. Hope is asked to dine, or that
we couldn’t write and request his photograph before the original
burst upon us in all his glory? Do you think you would have liked to
behave differently?”
“I am sure I can’t tell. But it was such a surprise. I might have
fainted and disgraced myself. But you are such a cold-blooded
creature, Laura; I sometimes think you have no heart.”
“H’m,” said Laura, “that is a matter of opinion. I do not profess to
wear my heart upon my sleeve, but there is an article of the kind
somewhere deep down, I daresay. What do I think about Mr. Hope? I
think him very nice. He is well-informed, though he did not parade
his knowledge. Understands the science of music, and plays with
taste. I don’t know that I can say more about him at present.”
“What a prosaic list of qualities; it might have been read out of a
book! But didn’t you like him a great deal?”
“How could I like any one a great deal the first day I met him? Do
you think I resemble Miss Morton’s heroines, who meet a perfectly
unknown young man, and in an hour have told him all their family
affairs and inmost thoughts? That kind of transparent simplicity is
not in my line.”
“But you do like him, Laura. Say you do really.”
“Of course I like a handsome, agreeable man who has been of the
greatest use and benefit to the family, as I like any pleasant
acquaintance. Further than that I decline to commit myself. And now
let me go to sleep.”
“How you can go to sleep entirely astonishes me. Oh! wasn’t it a
delightful dinner? I felt so nice. I am sure I looked the essence of
propriety and countrified inexperience. Do you think he could
discover that we had seen very little society, Laura?”
“If he was not a very unobservant man he might easily have made out
so much, I should say; that is if he troubled himself to study us so
deeply. What can it matter?”
It was not only on that memorable evening that Barrington Hope
produced a favourable impression upon the youthful portion of the
Stamford family. Mrs. Stamford was charmed with him. His manner was
so easy, yet so deferential and so respectful to her and her
daughters. Well-informed as to the European politics of the day, he
inferentially, in an argument with Mr. Stamford, showed himself to
be widely read. He was familiar with the latest songs, the very last
waltz; he sang a duet with Laura, and even played an accompaniment
which showed more than theoretical knowledge of the science of
music.
When he made his adieux somewhat early in the evening, every voice
was musical in his praise.
“He’s a delightful creature,” said Linda, “all my fancy painted him,
and more. How different he is from most of the men one meets. So
free from conceit, and yet he knows so much, doesn’t he? And what a
good touch he has on the piano! But men always play better than we
do when they play at all. When are we going to see him again?”
“He is to send us tickets for the Bachelors’ Ball,” said Laura. “We
shall meet him there, of course. What a grand affair it is to be!”
“I shall catch a fever and die before the day arrives,” said Linda,
plaintively. “The happiness will be too great to be realised. Oh!
oh, dear! Oh! dear! how shall we pass the intervening days? Luckily
our dresses will take up a good deal of our thoughts and spare time.
Do you think he dances well, Laura?”
“Mr. Hope appears to do many things well. I don’t suppose he showed
us all his good qualities in one evening. He is a man of the world,
and doesn’t have all his goods in the shop window at once.”
“What a horrid idea, Laura. You haven’t half as much sentiment as I
have. I hope he hasn’t many more accomplishments; I don’t care for a
man being perfect. Perhaps he has a bad temper underneath. Men with
soft voices often have.”
“I didn’t notice any uncommon softness of voice. I thought he spoke
naturally, which is the great thing after all, with men or women
either. But after we go to the ball you will most likely discover
that there are other men in the world.”
“I don’t care. I am quite certain there are very few nicer ones, if
any. I think you must admire him yourself, Laura; you are so guarded
about him, and I am sure he has taken a fancy to you.”
“Nonsense, Linda! Really you are old enough to talk more sensibly.
How can any one form any liking or otherwise in a single evening?”
“What, not love at first sight?” exclaimed Linda, jumping up in an
excited manner. “Do you disbelieve wholly in that? What does
Disraeli say in that lovely _Venetia_ of his? ‘There is no love but
love at first sight,’ or first love, I forget which.”
“They are different things,” answered Laura; “but Disraeli ought to
have more sense than to write in a way to turn silly girls’ heads. I
think your novel-reading will have to be restricted, Linda, before
long; I must really speak to mother.”
“It’s too late now, Laura. I’ve read all sorts of things, but they
don’t do girls any harm. Bad companions do, if you like. They are
destructive; but we never had any friends that we were ashamed of.
And so you don’t like Mr. Hope.”
“I didn’t say that,” answered Laura; “but really you’re as
persistent as an interviewer, Linda,” and she quitted the room.
In spite of Linda’s repeated assertions that the week preceding the
ball never would come to an end, the despised days passed
away—perhaps too quickly indeed for some people. A picnic in the
harbour, the detail of which was arranged by Mr. Hope, and which
every one enjoyed ecstatically, as Linda avowed, perhaps aided the
flight of time. A visit to the theatre, where the London Comedy
Company was performing, also tended to prevent undue concentration
of thought. And, oh! wonder of wonders, and joy of joys, was not the
Intercolonial Exhibition, that Aladdin’s Palace of Art and Industry,
daily open, daily enjoyed to the very acme of novel excitement?
How delicious was it to stroll around the fountain in the afternoon
of each day, while the music of the Austrian Band rose to the lofty
roof or floated dreamlike amid the aisles and courts; to sit
silently absorbing delicious sounds amid the strange beauty and
variety of the scene; to wander amid the heaped up riches of the
curiosities of every land under the sun, encountering well-known
friends unexpectedly, or exchanging the pleasantries of the hour
with gay acquaintances. Such were the resources thrown open to the
erstwhile dwellers at Windāhgil. Small surprise need therefore be
aroused by Linda’s next declaration, that the ball would be upon
them all too swiftly, and find them unprepared. Strangely sweet
sorrows and sighs of youth! joys in disguise are they for the most
part.