"What awfully jolly people they are!" he exclaimed, thinking, plainly, of the ladies of the family; for the adjective was not appropriate to Lord Swarleigh himself.
Sir Christopher nodded, smiling in amusement at Arthur's enthusiasm, but very well pleased with it, and more pleased with the hostess's whispered word of praise for his young friend as she bade him good night.
"I got a piece of news to-night which I'm ashamed to say I find myself considering bad," he said. "I thought I wouldn't tell you before dinner, for fear that you'd think it bad too, and so have your evening spoilt to some extent. Horace Derwent writes that he's quite well again and would like to join me for the rest of the circuit. And I can't very well refuse to have him; he's been with me so often; and, what's more, this'll be the last time. I'm going to retire at Christmas."
"Retire! Why, you're not feeling out of sorts, are you, sir? You seem wonderfully fit."
"I am. Wonderfully fit—to retire! I'm turned seventy and I'm tired. And I'm not as quick as I was. When I sit in the Divisional Court with a quick fellow—like Naresby, for instance, a lad of forty-nine or so—I find it hard to keep up. He's got hold of the point while I'm still putting on my spectacles! It isn't always the point really, but that's neither here nor there. So I'm going. They'll give me my Right Honourable, I suppose, and I shall vanish becomingly."
"I'm awfully sorry. I wanted to have a case before you some day! Now I shan't. But, I say, they ought to make you a peer. You're about the—well, the best-known judge on the Bench."
Sir Christopher shook his head. "That's my rings, not me," he said, smiling. "No, what's the use of a peerage to me, even if it was offered? I'm not fit to sit in the Lords—not enough of a lawyer—and I've no son. If you were my son in the flesh, my dear boy, as I've rather come to think of you in the spirit, these last weeks, I might ask for one for your sake! But I've got only one thing left to do now—and that's a thing a peerage can't help about."
Arthur was deeply touched, but found nothing to say.
"It's a funny thing to come to the end of it all," the old man mused. "And to look back to the time when I was where you are, and to remember what I expected—though, by the way, that's hard to remember exactly! A lot of work, a lot of nonsense! And to see what's become of the other fellows too—who's sunk, and who's swum! Some of the favourites have won, but a lot of outsiders! I was an outsider myself; they used to tell me I should marry a rich wife and chuck it. But I've never married a wife at all, and I stuck to it. And the women too!"
Arthur knew that gossip, floating down the years, credited Sir Christopher with adventures of the heart. But the old man now shook his head gently and smiled rather ruefully. "Very hard to get that back! It all seems somehow faded—the colour gone out."