CHAPTER XIV. A GRAND DINNER AT THE PRIORY
The examination was still proceeding when Sewell returned at five o'clock; and although he waited above an hour in the hope of its being concluded, the case was still under consideration; and as the Chief Baron had a large dinner-party on that day, from which the Colonel could not absent himself, he was obliged to hasten back in all speed to dress.
“His Lordship has sent three times to know if you had come in, sir,” said his servant, as he entered his room.
And while he was yet speaking came another messenger to say that the Chief Baron wanted to see the Colonel immediately. With a gesture of impatience Sewell put on again the coat he had just thrown off, and followed the man to the Chief's dressing-room.
“I have been expecting you since three o'clock, sir,” said the old man, after motioning to his valet to leave the room.
“I feared I was late, my Lord, and was going to dress when I got your message.”
“But you have been away seven hours, sir.”
The tone and manner of this speech, and the words themselves, calling him to account in a way a servant would scarcely have brooked, so overcame Sewell that only by an immense effort of self-control could he restrain his temper, and avoid bursting forth with the long-pent-up passion that was consuming him.
“I was detained, my Lord,—unavoidably detained,” said he, with a voice thick and husky with anger. What added to his passion was the confusion he felt; for he had not determined, when he entered the room, whether to avow that the prisoner was Fossbrooke or not, resolving to be guided by the Chief's manner and temper as to the line he should take. Now this outburst completely routed his judgment, and left him uncertain and vacillating.
“And now, sir, for your report,” said the old man, seating himself and folding his arms on his chest.
“I have little to report, my Lord. They affect a degree of mystery about this person, both at the Head Office and at the jail, which is perfectly absurd; and will neither give his name nor his belongings. The pretence is, of course, to enable them to ensnare others with whom he is in correspondence. I believe, however, the truth to be, he is a very vulgar criminal,—a gauger, it is said, from Loughrea, and no such prize as the Castle people fancied. His passion for notoriety, it seems, has involved him in scores of things of this kind; and his ambition is always to be his own lawyer and defend himself.”
“Enough, sir; a gauger and self-confident prating rascal combine the two things which I most heartily detest. Pem-berton may take his will of him for me; he may make him illustrate every blunder of his bad law, and I 'll not say him nay. You will take Lady Ecclesfield in to dinner to-day, and place her opposite me at table. Your wife speaks French well,—let her sit next Count de Lanoy, but give her arm to the Bishop of Down. Let us have no politics over our wine; I cannot trust myself with the law-officers before me, and at my own table they must not be sacrificed.”
“Is Pemberton coming, my Lord?”
“He is, sir,—he is coming on a tour of inspection,—he wants to see from my dietary how soon he may calculate on my demise; and the Attorney-General will be here on the like errand. My hearse, sir, it is, that stops the way, and I have not ordered it up yet. Can you tell me is Lady Lendrick coming to dinner, for she has not favored me with a reply to my invitation?”
“I am unable to say, my Lord; I have not seen her; she has, however, been slightly indisposed of late.”
“I am distressed to hear it. At all events, I have kept her place for her, as well as one for Mr. Balfour, who is expected from England to-day. If Lady Lendrick should come, Lord Kilgobbin will take her in.”
“I think I hear an arrival. I 'd better finish my dressing. I scarcely thought it was so late.”
“Take care that the topic of India be avoided, or we shall have Colonel Kimberley and his tiger stories.”
“I'll look to it,” said Sewell, moving towards the door.
“You have given orders about decanting the champagne?”
“About everything, my Lord. There comes another carriage, I must make haste;” and so saying, he fled from the room before the Chief could add another question.
Sewell had but little time to think over the step he had just taken, but in that little time he satisfied himself that he had acted wisely. It was a rare thing for the Chief to return to any theme he had once dismissed. Indeed, it would have implied a doubt of his former judgment, which was the very last thing that could occur to him. “My decisions are not reversed,” was his favorite expression; so that nothing was less probable than that he would again revert to the prisoner or his case. As for Fossbrooke himself and how to deal with him, that was a weightier question, and demanded more thought than he could now give it.
As he descended to the drawing-room, the last of the company had just entered, and dinner was announced. Lady Lendrick and Mr. Balfour were both absent. It was a grand dinner on that day, in the fullest sense of that formidable expression. It was very tedious, very splendid, very costly, and intolerably wearisome and stupid. The guests were overlaid by the endless round of dishes and the variety of wines, and such as had not sunk into a drowsy repletion occupied themselves in criticising the taste of a banquet, which was, after all, a travesty of a foreign dinner without that perfection of cookery and graceful lightness in the detail which gives all the elegance and charm to such entertainments. The more fastidious part of the company saw all the defects; the homelier ones regretted the absence of meats that they knew, and wines they were accustomed to. None were pleased,—none at their ease but the host himself. As for him, seated in the centre of the table, overshadowed almost by a towering epergne, he felt like a king on his throne. All around him breathed that air of newness that smacked of youth; and the table spread with flowers, and an ornamental dessert, seemed to emblematize that modern civilization which had enabled himself to throw off the old man and come out into the world crimped, curled, and carmined, be-wigged and be-waistcoated.
“Eighty-seven! my father and he were contemporaries,” said Lord Kilgobbin, as they assembled in the drawing-room; “a wonderful man,—a really wonderful man for his age.”
The Bishop muttered something in concurrence, only adding “Providence” to the clause; while Pemberton whispered the Attorney-General that it was the most painful attack of acute youth he had ever witnessed. As for Colonel Kimberley, he thought nothing of the Chiefs age, for he had shot a brown bear up at Rhumnuggher, “the natives knew to be upwards of two hundred years old, some said three hundred.”
As they took their coffee in groups or knots, Sewell drew his arm within Pemberton's and led him through the open sash-door into the garden. “I know you want a cigar,” said he, “and so do I. Let us take a turn here and enjoy ourselves. What a bore is a big dinner! I 'd as soon assemble all my duns as I 'd get together all the dreary people of my acquaintance. It's a great mistake,—don't you think so?” said Sewell, who, for the first time in his life, accosted Pemberton in this tone of easy familiarity.
“I fancy, however, the Chief likes it,” said the other, cautiously; “he was particularly lively and witty to-day.”
“These displays cost him dearly. You should see him after the thing was over. With the paint washed off, palpitating on a sofa steeped with sulphuric ether, and stimulated with ammonia, one wouldn't say he'd get through the night.”
“What a constitution he must have!”
“It's not that; at least, that's not the way I read him. My theory is, it is his temper—that violent, irascible, fervid temper—burning like a red-hot coal within him, sustains the heat that gives life and vigor to his nature. If he has a good-humored day,—it's not a very frequent occurrence, but it happens now and then,—he grows ten years older. I made that discovery lately. It seems as though if he could n't spite the world, he 'd have no objection to taking leave of it.”
“That sounds rather severe,” said Pemberton, cautiously; for though he liked the tone of the other's conversation, he was not exactly sure it was quite safe to show his concurrence.
“It's the fact, however, severe or not. There's nothing in our relations to each other that should prevent my speaking my mind about him. My mother had the bad luck to marry him, and being gifted with a temper not very unlike his own, they discovered the singular fact that two people who resemble each other can become perfectly incompatible. I used to think that she could n't be matched. I recant, however, and acknowledge candidly he could 'give her a distance.'”
Pemberton gave a little laugh, as it were of encouragement to go on, and the other proceeded.
“My wife understands him best of all. She gives way in everything; all he says is right, all he opines is wisdom, and it's astonishing how this yielding, compliant, submissive spirit breaks him down; he pines under it, just as a man accustomed to sharp exercise would waste and decay by a life of confinement. I declare there was one week here we had got him to a degree of gentleness that was quite edifying, but my mother came and paid a visit when we were out, and when we returned there he was! violent, flaring, and vigorous as ever, wild with vanity, and mad to match himself with the first men of the day.”
While Sewell talked in this open and indiscreet way of the old Judge, his meaning was to show with what perfect confidence he treated his companion, and at the same time how fair and natural it would be to expect frankness in return. The crafty lawyer, however, trained in the school where all these feints and false parries are the commonest tricks of fence, never ventured beyond an expression of well-got-up astonishment, or a laugh of enjoyment at some of Sewell's smartnesses.
“You want a light?” said Sewell, seeing that the other held his cigar still unlit in his fingers.
“Thanks. I was forgetting it. The fact is, you kept me so much amused, I never thought of smoking; nor am I much of a smoker at any time.”
“It 's the vice of the idle man, and you are not in that category. By the way, what a busy time you must have of it now, with all these commitments?”
“Not so much as one might think. The cases are numerous, but they are all the same. Indeed, the informations are identical in nearly every instance. Tim Branegan had two numbers of the 'Green Flag' newspaper, some loose powder in his waistcoat-pocket, and an American drill-book in the crown of his hat.”
“And is that treason-felony?”
“With a little filling-up it becomes so. In the rank of life these men belong to, it's as easy to find a rebel as it would be in Africa to discover a man with a woolly head.”
“And this present movement is entirely limited to that class?” said Sewell, carelessly.
“So we thought till a couple of days ago, but we have now arrested one whose condition is that of a gentleman.”
“With anything like strong evidence against him?”
“I have not seen the informations myself, but Burrowes, who has read them, calls them highly important; not alone as regards the prisoner, but a number of people whose loyalty was never so much as suspected. Now the Viceroy is away, the Chief Secretary on the Continent, and even Balfour, who can always find out what the Cabinet wishes,—Balfour absent, we are actually puzzled whether the publicity attending the prosecution of such a man would not serve rather than damage the rebel cause, displaying, as it would, that there is a sympathy for this movement in a quarter far removed from the peasant.”
“Is n't it strange that the Chief Baron should have, the other evening, in the course of talk, hit upon such a possibility as this, and said, 'I wonder would the Castle lawyers be crafty enough to see that such a case should not be brought to trial? One man of education, and whose motives might be ascribed to an exalted, however misdirected, patriotism,' said he, 'would lift this rabble out of the slough of their vulgar movement, and give it the character of a national rising.'”
“But what would he do? Did he say how he would act?”
“He said something about 'bail,' and he used a word I wasn't familiar with—like estreating: is there such a word?”
“Yes, yes, there is; but I don't see how it's to be done. Would it be possible to have a talk with him on the matter—informally, of course?” “That would betray me, and he would never forgive my having told you his opinion already,” said Sewell. “No, that is out of the question; but if you would confide to me the points you want his judgment on, I 'd manage to obtain it.”
Pemberton seemed to reflect over this, and walked along some paces in silence.
“He mentioned a curious thing,” said Sewell, laughingly; “he said that in Emmett's affair there were three or four men compromised, whom the Government were very unwilling to bring to trial, and that they actually provided the bail for them,—secretly, of course,—and indemnified the men for their losses on the forfeiture.”
“It couldn't be done now,” said Pemberton.
“That's what the Chief said. They could n't do it now, for they have not got M'Nally,—whoever M'Nally was.”
Pemberton colored crimson, for M'Nally was the name of the Solicitor-General of that day, and he knew well that the sarcasm was in the comparison between that clever lawyer and himself.
“What I meant was, that Crown lawyers have a very different public to account to in the present day from what they had in those lawless times,” said Pemberton, with irritation. “I 'm afraid the Chief Baron, with all his learning and all his wit, likes to go back to that period for every one of his illustrations. You heard how he capped the Archbishop's allusion to the Prodigal Son to-day?—I don't think his Grace liked it—that it requires more tact to provide an escape for a criminal than to prosecute a guilty man to conviction.”
“That's so like him!” said Sewell, with a bitter laugh. “Perhaps the great charm that attaches him to public life is to be able to utter his flippant impertinences ex cathedra. If you could hit upon some position from which he could fulminate his bolts of sarcasm with effect, I fancy he 'd not object to resign the Bench. I heard him once say, 'I cannot go to church without a transgression, for I envy the preacher, who has the congregation at his mercy for an hour.'”
“Ah, he 'll not resign,” sighed Pemberton, deeply.
“I don't know that.”
“At least he 'll not do so on any terms they 'll make with him.”
“Nor am I so sure of that,” repeated the other, gravely. Sewell waited for some rejoinder to this speech, of which he hoped his companion would ask the explanation; but the cautious lawyer said not a word.
“No man with a sensitive, irascible, and vain disposition is to be turned from his course, whatever it be, by menace or bully,” said Sewell. “The weak side of these people is their vanity, and to approach them by that you ought to know and to cultivate those who are about them. Now, I have no hesitation in saying there were moments—ay, there were hours—in which, if it had been any interest to me, I could have got him to resign. He is eminently a man of his word, and, once pledged, nothing would make him retire from his promise.”
“I declare, after all,” said Pemberton, “if he feels equal to the hard work of the Court, and likes it, I don't see why all this pressure should be put upon him. Do you?”
“I am the last man probably to see it,” said Sewell, with an easy laugh. “His abdication would, of course, not suit me, I suppose we had better stroll back into the house,—they 'll miss us.” There was an evident coldness in the way these last words were spoken, and Sewell meant that the lawyer should see his irritation.
“Have you ever said anything to Balfour about what we have been talking of?” said Pemberton, as they moved towards the house.
“I may or I may not. I talk pretty freely on all sorts of things—and, unfortunately, with an incaution, too, that is not always profitable.”
“Because if you were to show him as clearly as awhile ago you showed me, the mode in which this matter might be negotiated, I have little doubt—that is, I have reason to suppose—or I might go farther and say that I know—”
“I 'll tell you what I know, Mr. Solicitor, that I would n't give that end of a cigar,” and he pitched it from him as he spoke, “to decide the question either way.” And with this they passed on and mingled with the company in the drawing-room. “I have hooked you at last, my shrewd friend; and if I know anything of mankind, I 'll see you, or hear from you, before twelve hours are over.”
“Where have you been, Colonel, with my friend the Solicitor-General?” said the Chief Baron.
“Cabinet-making, my Lord,” said Sewell, laughingly.
“Take care, sir,” said the Chief, sternly,—“take care of that pastime. It has led more than one man to become a Joiner and a Turner!” And a buzz went through the room as men repeated this mot, and people asked each other, “Is this the man we are calling on to retire as worn-out, effete, and exhausted?”