Colin's interview with Squire Lupton, and what it led to—A bait to catch the Doctor.
ON reaching the hotel, according to appointment, Colin found Mr. Lupton seated in a private room up-stairs, with a table neatly spread for two beside him, but as yet containing nothing beyond the requisite materials for handling that dinner, which was brought up at the Squire's summons very shortly after his arrival. During their repast the young man could not avoid being continually reminded with what kind familiarity he was treated by his wealthy entertainer,—a degree of familiarity which seemed the more unaccountable to him, perhaps, simply because all his previous ideas of the manners of the higher classes of society had been derived almost solely from casual observation of that high bearing and seeming austerity of feeling, which sometimes exists in their common intercourse with the rustic inhabitants of a country district.
To be sure, he had once rendered the Squire an essential service, by saving him from severe personal injury, if not possibly from a premature death; but that service he thought might be equally well rewarded without all this personal association with, and condescension to, one who possessed no qualifications save those which nature had given him, for admission into a kind of society of which, up to this time, he could not possibly know anything. But Mr. Lupton seemed to take pains even to render him easy in his new situation,—to make him at home, as it were, and cause him to feel himself as essentially upon a level in all things with himself.
Though Colin could not account exactly for all this, it had its due effect upon him. By the time their meal was over, and at the Squire's most pressing solicitations he had imbibed various glasses of sherry during the repast, he found himself as much at liberty, both in limb and tongue, as though he had been seated in Miss Sowersoffs kitchen, with no higher company than herself and Palethorpe.
As Mr. Lupton evinced considerable anxiety to know what had brought him to London, and Colin himself on his part felt no less desirous to explain every circumstance connected not only with himself, but also those bearing upon the infamous conduct of Doctor Rowel, touching the affair of Lawyer Skinwell and James Woodruff, two long after-dinner hours scarcely sufficed for the detail of a narrative which, in all its particulars, caused in the mind of Mr. Lupton the utmost astonishment.
The freedom with which Colin expressed his own sentiments respecting the death of the lawyer, and the hand which he firmly believed Doctor Rowel had had in that event, somewhat raised the Squire's doubts of the young man's prudence, though at the same time it went far to convince him of the propriety, if not the absolute necessity, of placing the Doctor himself in some place of security, until a more full and searching investigation could be gone into. That he was open to a serious charge was evident; and, supported as that charge was by the corresponding conduct he had pursued with respect to James Woodruff, the Squire could come to no other conclusion than that it was his clear duty, both as a man and a magistrate, to have the Doctor apprehended as soon as possible.
While Colin related in quiet and unassuming language his own scarcely less than heroic attempt to set Woodruff at liberty, together with the disasters which had pursued him afterwards in consequence thereof, Mr. Lu ton's countenance grew now grave, now expressive of admiration, and anon slightly and apparently involuntarily convulsed with emotions which he would not express, though he could not conceal. His lips quivered, and his eyes were occasionally forcibly closed, as though to force back the generous tears which were welling up from his bosom. In truth, the father's heart was touched. He felt where another man would not, and admired as the height of nobleness and magnanimity what other men might barely have commended merely as a good action, which anybody else would have done if placed in similar circumstances.
All this time, too, he kept supping his wine and cracking his walnuts, picking his almonds, and demolishing his dried fruit with a degree of unconscious industry, that could not but have proved highly interesting and edifying to any observing spectator.
When Colin had concluded, the Squire looked earnestly in his face during a few moments; he cast them to the ground again, and said nothing; he filled his glass, and Colin's too, but with an effort, for his hand slightly trembled as he did it; again he looked at him, and again his eyes were earthwards.
“My dear boy!” said he, but the words faltered on his lips,—“my dear boy! I am proud of you; but your presence makes me ashamed. I bitterly regret it—deeply and bitterly—and yet I ought not, when it has given me such a noble mind as this!”