“I may say confidentially, because it was at dinner we talked it over, and we were only the household,—no guests but Byam Herries and Barrington.”
“And you all agreed?”
“Yes, there was not a dissentient voice but Jocelyn's, who said, if he were in your place, he'd insist on having all the papers and letters given up to him. His view is this: 'What security have I that the same charges are not to be renewed again and again? I submit now, but am I always to submit? Are my Indian'—(what shall I call them? I forget what he called them; I believe it was escapades)—'my Indian escapades to declare me unfit to hold anything under the Crown?' He said a good deal in that strain, but we did not see it. It was hard, to be sure, but we did not see it. As Halkett said, 'Sewell has had his innings already in India. If, with a pretty wife and a neat turn for billiards, he did not lay by enough to make his declining years comfortable, I must say that he was not provident.' Doyle, however, remarked that after that affair with Loftus up at Agra—wasn't it Agra?”—Sewell nodded—“it was n't so easy for you to get along as many might think, and that you were a devilish clever fellow to do what you had done. Doyle likes you, I think.” Sewell nodded again, and, after a slight pause, Balfour proceeded: “And it was Doyle, too, said, 'Why not try for something in the colonies? There are lots of places a man can go and nothing be ever heard of him. If I was Sewell, I 'd say, Make me a barrackmaster in the Sandwich Islands, or a consul in the Caraccas.'
“They all concurred in one thing, that you never did so weak a thing in your whole life as to have any dealings with Trafford. It was his mother went to the Duke—ay, into the private office at the Horse Guards—and got Clifford's appointment cancelled, just for a miserable five hundred pounds Jack won off the elder brother,—that fellow who died last year at Madeira. She's the most dangerous woman in Europe. She does not care what she says, nor to whom she says it. She 'd go up to the Queen at a drawing-room and make a complaint as soon as she 'd speak to you or me. As it is, she told their Excellencies here all that went on in your house, and I suppose scores of things that did not go on either, and said, 'And are you going to permit this man to be'—she did not remember what, but she said—'a high official under the Crown? and are you going to receive his wife amongst your intimates?' What a woman she is! To hear her you 'd think her 'dear child,' instead of being a strapping fellow of six feet two, was a brat in knickerbockers, with a hat and feather. The fellow himself must be a consummate muff to be bullied by her; but then the estate is not entailed, they say, and there's a younger brother may come into it all. His chances look well just now, for Lionel has got a relapse, and the doctors think very ill of him.”
“I had not heard that,” said Sewell, calmly.
“Oh, he was getting on most favorably,—was able to sit up at the window, and move a little about the room,—when, one morning Lady Trafford had driven over to the Lodge to luncheon, he stepped downstairs in his dressing-gown as he was, got into a cab, and drove off into the country. All the cabman could tell was that he ordered him to take the road to Rathfarnham, and said, 'I 'll tell you by and by where to;' and at last he said, 'Where does Sir William Lendrick live?' and though the man knew the Priory, he had taken a wrong turn and got down to ask the road. Just at this moment a carriage drove by with two grays and a postilion—A young lady was inside with an elderly gentleman, and the moment Trafford saw her he cried out, 'There she is,—that is she!' As hard as they could they hastened after; but they smashed a trace, and lost several minutes in repairing it, and as many more in finding out which way the carriage had taken. It was to Kingstown, and, as the cabman suspected, to catch the packet for Holyhead; for just as they drove up, the steamer edged away from the pier, and the carriage with the grays drove off with only the old man, Trafford fell back in a faint, and appeared to have continued so, for when they took him out of the cab at Bilton's he was insensible.
“Beattie says he'll come through it, but Maclin thinks he 'll never be the same man again; he 'll have a hardening or a softening—which is it?—of the brain, and that he'll be fit for nothing.”
“Except a place in the viceregal household, perhaps. I don't imagine you want gold-medallists for your gentlemen-in-waiting?”
“We have some monstrous clever fellows, let me tell you. Halkett made a famous examination at Sandhurst, and Jocelyn wrote that article in 'Bell's Life,' 'The Badger Drawn at Last.'”
“To come back to where we were, how are you to square matters with the Chief Baron? Are you going to law with him about this appointment, or are you about to say that I am the objection? Let me have a definite answer to this question.”