“In asking for the Cottage,” Grenfell had said, “I should like to have an introduction of some sort to your quondam neighbour, Wardle, who, though too profligate for his neighbours, will not, I apprehend, endanger my morals. Let me have, therefore, a few lines to accredit me, as one likely to suit his humour.” To this Vyner replied, not very clearly: “The intimacy they had used to have with Sir Within had ceased; they held no correspondence now. It was a long story, and would not be worth the telling, nor very intelligible, perhaps, when told; but it was enough to say, that even should they meet now personally, it was by no means sure if they would recognise or address each other. You will use this knowledge for your guidance in case you ever come to know him, and which I hope you may, for he is a very delightful acquaintance, and full of those attentions which render a neighbourhood pleasant. I do not say so that you may repeat it; but simply as an admission of what is due—that I deeply regret our estrangement, though I am not certain that it was avoidable.” This, which Grenfell deemed somewhat contradictory, served, at all events, to show that he could not make Sir Within’s acquaintance through this channel, and he was overjoyed when another and a more direct opening presented itself.
“The hen pheasant I thought would do it,” muttered Grenfell, as he read the note. “A punster would say, I had shot up into his acquaintance.”
CHAPTER XXXV. A WALK BEFORE DINNER
Poor Sir Within! What a change is all this for you! Instead of that pleasant little pottering about from terrace to garden, and from garden to gallery; now in ecstasy over some grand effect of light on a favourite picture, some rich promise of beauty in an opening flower, or, better than either, a chance peep at the fair “ward” as she flitted past, a vision of beauty she well knew how to exaggerate by infrequency—for it was her especial habit to be rarely, if ever, seen of a morning—now, he had to devote himself to his guest, the elder Ladarelle, and not even in the office of Cicerone or guide over the grounds and the woods, but as the apologist of this, and the explainer of that. It had been settled by law that a certain sum should be expended each year on the demesne at the wise discretion of the life tenant, and now came the moment in which this same wisdom was to be arraigned, and all its tasteful exercise brought to the cold and terrible test of what is called permanency. The rock-work grottos, the temples, the rustic bridges, and cane pagodas—all that Horace Walpoleism, in fact, by which the area of domesticity can be so enlarged as to embrace the field, the garden, and the shrubbery—all this, with its varied luxury, and elegance, and beauty, and bad taste, was so repugnant to the mind of the old banker, that he regarded the whole as a tawdry and tasteless extravagance. Structures in stone and iron he could understand. He wanted permanency; and though the old envoy, with a little faint jest, begged to insinuate that he asked more than was supposed to be accorded by the laws of nature, the stern intelligence of the other rejected the pleasantry, and vaguely hinted at a “bill in equity.”
“None of these, Sir, not one of them, would be ‘allowed,’” was the phrase he repeated again and again. “The discretionary power vested in you to-day, or in me, as it might be, to-morrow——”
“I ask pardon,” broke in the minister; “it is not my present intention to impose the burden upon you so soon. I hope still to live a little longer, with the kind permission of my friends and successors.”
“Humph!” muttered the other, and turned away his head.
“There was an arrangement, however, which I submitted to you four years ago. I am ready—not very willingly, perhaps—but still ready to return to it.”
“You mean, to commute the life-interest into a sum for immediate surrender of the estate? I remember, we did discuss it formerly. Your demand was, I think, sixty thousand pounds—equal to very close on six years’ income?”