Bielby sat perfectly silent for a few minutes, and no one who saw him could doubt that his silence arose from a conscious want of words on a level with the situation.
“Has Miss—h’m, Spears—Shields? thank you; has she been an orphan long?” he asked, at length. He was clearly trying to hope that the most undesirable prospective father-in-law described by Maitland had long been removed from the opportunity of forming his daughter’s character.
“I only heard of his death yesterday,” said Maitland.
“Was it sudden?”
“Why, yes. The fact is, he was a man of rather irregular habits, and he was discovered dead in one of the carts belonging to the Vestry of St George’s, Hanover Square.”
“St. George’s, Hanover Square, indeed!” said the don, and once more he relapsed, after a long whistle, into a significant silence. “Maitland,” he said at last, “how did you come to be acquainted with these people? The father, as I understand, was a kind of artist; but you can’t, surely, have met them in society?”
“He came a good deal to ‘my public-house, the Hit or Miss. I think I told you about it, sir, and you rather seemed to approve of it. The tavern in Chelsea, if you remember, where I was trying to do something for the riverside population, and to mix with them for their good, you know.”
“Good-night!” growled Bielby, very abruptly, and with considerable determination in his tone. “I am rather busy this evening. I think you had better think no more about the young lady, and say nothing whatever about the matter to anyone. Good-night!”.
So speaking, the hermit lighted his pipe, which, in the astonishment caused by Maitland’s avowals, he had allowed to go out, and he applied himself to a large old silver tankard. He was a scholar of the Cambridge school, and drank beer. Maitland knew his friend and mentor too well to try to prolong the conversation, and withdrew to his bleak college room, where a timid fire was smoking and crackling among the wet faggots, with a feeling that he must steer his own course in this affair. It was clearly quite out of the path of Bielby’s experience.
“And yet,” thought Maitland, “if I had not taken his advice about trying to become more human, and taken that infernal public-house too, I never would have been in this hole.”