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.