Sewell was well received by the magistrate, and promised that he should
be admitted to see the prisoner on the next morning; having communicated
which tidings to the Chief Baron, he went off to dine with his mother in
Merrion Square.
“Isn't Lucy coming?” said Lady Lendrick, as he entered the drawing-room
alone.
“No. I told her I wanted a long confidential talk with you; I hinted
that she might find it awkward if one of the subjects discussed should
happen to be herself, and advised her to stay at home, and she concurred
with me.”
“You are a great fool, Dudley, to treat her in that fashion. I tell you
there never was a woman in the world who could forgive it.”
“I don't want her to forgive it, mother; there 's the mistake you are
always making. The way she baffles me is by non-resistance. If I could
once get her to resent something--anything--I could win the game.”
“Perhaps some one might resent for her,” said she, dryly.
“I ask nothing better. I have tried to bring it to that scores of times,
but men have grown very cautious latterly. In the old days of duelling
a fellow knew the cost of what he was doing; now that we have got juries
and damages, a man thinks twice about an entanglement, without he be a
very young fellow.”
“It is no wonder that she hates you,” said she, fiercely.
“Perhaps not,” said he, languidly; “but here comes dinner.”
For a while the duties of the table occupied them, and they chatted away
about indifferent matters; but when the servants left the room, Sewell
took up the theme where they had left it, and said: “It's no use to
either of us, mother, to get what is called judicial separation. It's
the chain still, only that the links are a little longer--and it's the
chain we _hate!_ We began to hate it before we were a month tied to each
other, and time, somehow, does not smooth down these asperities. As
to any other separation, the lawyers tell me it is hopeless. There's
a functionary called the 'Queen's' something or other, who always
intervenes in the interests of morality, and compels people who have
proved their incompatibility by years of dissension to go back and
quarrel more.”
“I think if it were only for the children's sake--”
“For the children's sake!” broke he in. “What can it possibly matter
whether they be brought up by their mother alone, or in a house where
their father and mother are always quarrelling? At all events, they form
no element in the question so far as I am concerned.”
“I think your best hold on the Chief Baron is his liking for the
children; he is very fond of Reginald.”
“What's the use of a hold on an old man who has more caprices than he
has years? He has made eight wills to my own knowledge since May last.
You may fancy how far afield he strays in his testamentary dispositions
when in one of them he makes _you_ residuary legatee.”
“Me! Me!”
“You; and what's more, calls you his faithful and devoted wife,
'who--for five-and-twenty years that we lived apart--contributed mainly
to the happiness of my life.'”
“The parenthesis, at least, is like him,” said she, smiling.
“To the children he has bequeathed I don't know what, sometimes with
Lucy as their guardian, sometimes myself. The Lendrick girl was
always handsomely provided for till lately, when he scratched her out
completely; and in the last document which I saw there were the words,
'To my immediate family I bequeath my forgiveness for their desertion
of me, and this free of all legacy duty and other charges.' I am sure,
mother, he's a little mad.”
“Nothing of the kind,--no more than you are.”
“I don't know that. I always suspect 'that the marvellous vigor' of old
age gets its prime stimulus from an overexcited brain. He sat up a whole
night last week--I know it to my cost, for I had to copy it out--writing
a letter to the 'Times' on the Land Tenure Bill, and he nearly went out
of his mind on seeing it in small type.”
“He is vain, if you like; but not mad certainly.”
“For a while I thought one of his fits of passion would do for him,--he
gets crimson, and then lividly pale, and then flushed again, and his
nails are driven into his palms, and he froths at the mouth; but somehow
the whole subsides at last, and his voice grows gentle, and his manner
courteous,--you 'd think him a lamb, if you had never seen him as a
tiger. In these moods he becomes actually humble, so that the other
night he sat down and wrote his resignation to the Home Office, stating,
amidst a good deal of bombast, that the increasing burden of years and
infirmity left him no other choice than that of descending from the
Bench he had occupied so long and so unworthily, and begging her Majesty
would graciously accord a retreat to one 'who had outlived everything
but his loyalty.'”
“What became of this?”
“He asked me about it next morning, but I said I had burned it by his
orders; but I have it this moment in my desk.”
“You have no right to keep it. I insist on your destroying it.”
“Pardon me, mother. I'd be a rich man to-day if I had n't given way to
that foolish habit of making away with papers supposed to be worthless.
The three lines of a man's writing, that the old Judge said he could
hang any man on, might, it strikes me, be often used to better purpose.”
“I wish you would keep your sharp practices for others and spare _him_,”
said she, severely.
“It's very generous of you to say so, mother, considering the way he
treats you and talks of you.”
“Sir William and I were ill-met and ill-matched, but that is not any
reason that I should like to see him treacherously dealt with.”
“There's no talk of treachery here. I was merely uttering an abstract
truth about the value of old papers, and regretting how late I came to
the knowledge. There's that bundle of letters of that fool Trafford, for
instance, to Lucy. I can't get a divorce on them, it's true; but I hope
to squeeze a thousand pounds out of him before he has them back again.”
“I hope in my heart that the world does not know you!” said she,
bitterly.
“Do you know, mother, I rather suspect it does? The world is aware
that a great many men, some of whom it could ill spare, live by what
is called their wits,--that is to say, that they play the game entitled
'Life' with what Yankees call 'the advantages;' and the world no more
resents _my_ living by the sharp practice long experience has taught
me, than it is angry with this man for being a lawyer, and that one for
being a doctor.”
“You know in your heart that Trafford never thought of stealing Lucy's
affections.”
“Perhaps I do; but I don't know what were Lucy's intentions towards
Trafford.”
“Oh, fie, fie!”
“Be shocked if you like. It's very proper, perhaps, that you should
be shocked; but nature has endowed me with strong nerves or coarse
feelings, whichever you like to call them, and consequently I can talk
of these things with as little intermixture of sentiment as I would
employ in discussing a protested bill. Lucy herself is not deficient
in this cool quality, and we have discussed the social contract styled
Marriage with a charming unanimity of opinion. Indeed, when I have
thought over the marvellous agreement of our sentiments, I have been
actually amazed why we could not live together without hating each
other.”
“I pity her--from the bottom of my heart I pity her.”
“So do I, mother. I pity her, because I pity myself. It was a stupid
bargain for each of us. I thought I was marrying an angel with sixty
thousand pounds. She fancied she was getting a hero, with a peerage
in the distance. Each made a 'bad book.' It is deuced hard, however,”
continued he, in a fiercer strain, “if one must go on backing the horse
that you know will lose, staking your money where you see you cannot
win. My wife and myself awoke from our illusions years ago; but to
please the world, to gratify that amiable thing called Society, we must
go on still, just as if we believed all that we know and have proved to
be rotten falsehoods. Now I ask you, mother, is not this rather hard?
Would n't it be hard for a good-tempered, easy-going fellow? And is it
not more than hard for a hasty, peevish, irritable dog like myself? We
know and see that we are bad company for each other, but you--I mean
the world--you insist that we should go on quarrelling to the end, as if
there was anything edifying in the spectacle of our mutual dislike.”
“Too much of this. I beseech you, drop the subject, and talk of
something else.”
“I declare, mother, if there was any one I could be frank and outspoken
with on this theme, I believed it to be yourself. You have had 'your
losses' too, and know what it is to be unhappily mated.”
“Whatever I may have suffered, I have not lost self-respect,” said she,
haughtily.
“Heigho!” cried he, wearily, “I always find that my opinions place me in
a minority, and so it must ever be while the world is the hypocritical
thing we see it. Oh dear, if people could only vote by ballot, I'd like
to see marriage put to the test.”
“What did Sir William say about my going to the picnic?” asked she,
suddenly.
“He said you were quite right to obtain as many attentions as you could
from the Castle, on the same principle that the vicar's wife stipulated
for the sheep in the picture,--'as many as the painter would put in for
nothing.'”
“So that he is firmly determined not to resign?”
“Most firmly; nor will he be warned by the example of the well-bred dog,
for he sees, or he might see, all the preparations on foot for kicking
him out.”
“You don't think they would compel him to resign?”
“No; but they'll compel him to go, which amounts to the same. Balfour
says they mean to move an address to the Queen, praying her Majesty to
superannuate him.”
“It would kill him,--he 'd not survive it.”
“So it is generally believed,--all the more because it is a course
he has ever declared to be impossible,--I mean constitutionally
impossible.”
“I hope he may be spared this insult.”
“He might escape it by dying first, mother; and really, under the
circumstances, it would be more dignified.”
“Your morals were not, at any time, to boast of, but your manners used
to be those of a gentleman,” said she, in a voice thick with passion.
“I am afraid, mother, that both morals and manners, like this hat of
mine, are a little the worse for wear; but, as in the case of the hat
too, use has made them pleasanter to me than spick-and-span new ones,
with all the gloss on. At all events, I never dreamed of offending when
I suggested the possibility of your being a widow. Indeed, I fancied it
was feminine for widower, which I imagined to be no such bad thing.”
“If the Chief Baron should be compelled to leave the Bench, will it
affect your tenure of the Registrarship?”
“That is what nobody seems to know. Some opine one way, some another;
and though all ask me what does the Chief himself say on the matter, I
have never had the courage to ask the question.”
“You are quite right It would be most indiscreet to do so.”
“Indeed, if I were rash enough to risk the step, it would redound to
nothing, since I am quite persuaded that he believes that whenever he
retires from public life or quits this world altogether, a general chaos
will ensue, and that all sorts of ignorant and incompetent people will
jostle the clever fellows out of the way, just because the one great
directing mind of the age has left the scene and departed.”
“All his favors to you have certainly not bought your gratitude,
Dudley.”
“I don't suspect it is a quality I ever laid up a large stock of,
mother,--not to say that I have always deemed it a somewhat unworthy
thing to swallow the bad qualities of a man simply because he was civil
to you personally.”
“His kindness might at least secure your silence.”
“Then it would be a very craven silence. But I 'll join issue with you
on the other counts. What is this great kindness for which I am not to
speak my mind about him? He has housed and fed me: very good things in
their way, but benefits which never cost him anything but his money.
Now, what have I repaid him with? My society, my time, my temper, I
might say my health, for he has worried me to that degree some days that
I have been actually on the verge of a fever. And if his overbearing
insolence was hard to endure, still harder was it to stand his
inordinate vanity without laughter. I ask you frankly, isn't he the
vainest man, not that you ever met, but that you ever heard of?”
“Vain he is, but not without some reason. He has had great triumphs,
great distinctions in life.”
“So he has told me. I have listened for hours long to descriptions of
the sensation he created in the House--it was always the Irish House,
by the way--by his speech on the Regency Bill, or some other obsolete
question; and how Flood had asked the House to adjourn and recover their
calm and composure, after the overwhelming power of the speech they had
just listened to; and how, at the Bar, Plunkett once said to a jury,
'Short of actual guilt, there is no such misfortune can befall a man
as to have Sergeant Lendrick against him.' I wish I was independent,--I
mean, rich enough, to tell him what I think of him; that I had just five
minutes--I 'd not ask more--to convey my impression of his great and
brilliant qualities! and to show him that, between the impulses of his
temper and his vanity together, he is, in matters of the world, little
better than a fool! What do you think he is going to do at this very
moment? I had not intended speaking of it, but you have pushed me to it.
In revenge for the Government having passed him over on the Commission,
he is going to supply some of these 'Celt' rascals with means to employ
counsel, and raise certain questions of legality, which he thinks will
puzzle Pemberton to meet. Of course, rash and indiscreet as he is,
this is not to be done openly. It is to be accomplished in secret, and
through _me!_ I am to go to-morrow morning at eleven o'clock to the
Richmond Jail. I have the order for my admission in my pocket. I am
there to visit Heaven knows whom; some scoundrel or other,--just as
likely a Government spy as a rebel, who will publish the whole scheme to
the world. At all events, I am to see and have speech of the fellow, and
ascertain on what evidence he was committed to prison, and what kind of
case he can make as to his innocence. He is said to be a gentleman,--the
very last reason, to my thinking, for taking him up; for whenever a
gentleman is found in any predicament beneath him, the presumption
is that he ought to be lower still. The wise judge, however, thinks
otherwise, and says, 'Here is the very opportunity I wanted.'”
“It is a most disagreeable mission, Dudley. I wish sincerely you could
have declined it.”
“Not at all. I stand to win, no matter how it comes off: if all goes
right, the Chief must make me some acknowledgment on my success; if it
be a failure, I 'll take care to be so compromised that I must get away
out of the country, and I leave to yourself to say what recompense will
be enough to repay a man for the loss of his home, and of his wife and
his children.”
The laugh with which he concluded this speech rang out with something so
devilish in its cadence that she turned away sickened and disgusted.
“If I thought you as base as your words bespeak you, I'd never see you
again,” said she, rising and moving towards the door.
“I'll have one cigar, mother, before I join you in the drawing-room,”
said he, taking it out as he spoke. “I'd not have indulged if you had
not left me. May I order a little more sherry?”
“Ring for whatever you want,” said she, coldly, and quitted the room.