DIVERSE VIEWS.
When the managers entered, James presently said, “Here’s Mr. Windham coming to speak to you.” And he broke from the procession, as it was descending to its cell, to give me that pleasure.
His inquiries about my health were not, as he said, merely common inquiries, but, without any other answer to them than a bow, I interrupted their course by quickly saying, “You have been excursioning and travelling all the world o’er since I saw you last.”
He paid me in my own coin with only a bow, hastily going back to myself: “But your tour,” he cried, “to the west, after all that-”
I saw what was following, and, again abruptly stopping him, “But here you are returned,” I cried, “to all your old labours and toils again.”
“No, no,” cried he, half laughing, “not labours and toils always; they are growing into pleasures now.”
“That’s being very good, very liberal, indeed,” quoth I, supposing him to mean hearing the defence made the pleasure but he stared at me with so little concurrence, that, soon understanding he only meant bringing their charges home to the confusion of the culprit, I stared again a little while, and then said, “You sometimes accuse me of being ambiguous; I think you seem so yourself, now!”
“To nobody but you,” cried he, with a rather reproachful accent. “O, now,” cried I, “you are not ambiguous, and I am all the less pleased.”
“People,” cried James, bonnement, “don’t like to be convinced.”
“Mr. Hastings,” said Mr. Windham, “does not convince, he does not bring conviction home.”
“Not to you,” quoth I, returning his accent pretty fully,
“Why, true,” answered he very candidly; “there may be something in that.”
“How is it all to be?” cried James. “Is the defence to go on long, and are they to have any evidence; or how?”
“We don’t know this part of the business,” said Mr. Windham, smiling a little at such an upright downright question “it is Mr. Hastings’s affair now to settle it: however, I understand he means to answer charge after charge as they were brought against him, first by speeches, then by evidence: however, this is all conjecture.”