“He saw the carman, sir; and asked for whom he was waiting.”
Another and not less energetic benediction was invoked on the rascally car-driver, whom he had enjoined to avoid venturing in front of the house.
“Say I'm coming; I'll be with him in an instant,” said be, as he hurriedly pitched some clothes into his portmanteau.
Now it is but fair to own that this demand upon his time came at an inconvenient moment; he had run up to town by an early train, and was bent on going back by the next departure. During his absence, no letter of any kind from his agent O'Reardon had reached him, and, growing uneasy and impatient at this silence, he had come up to learn the reason. At the office he heard that O'Reardon had not been there for the last few days. It was supposed he was ill, but there was no means of ascertaining the fact; none knew his address, as, they said, “he was seldom in the same place for more than a week or two.” Sewell had a profound distrust of his friend; indeed, the only reason for confiding in him at all was, that it was less O'Reardon's interest to be false than true. Since Fossbrooke's arrival, however, matters might have changed. They might have met and talked together. Had Sir Brook seduced the fellow to take service under him? Had he wormed out of him certain secrets of his (Sewell's) life, and thus shown how useful he might be in running him to earth? This was far from unlikely. It seemed the easiest and most natural way of explaining the fellow's absence. At the same time, if such were the case, would he not have taken care to write to him? Would not his letters, calling for some sort of reply, some answer to this or that query, have given him a better standing-ground with his new master, showing how far he possessed Sewell's confidence, and how able he was to make his treason to him effective? Harassed by these doubts, and fearing he knew not what of fresh troubles, he had passed a miserable week in the country. Debt and all its wretched consequences were familiar enough to him. His whole life had been one long struggle with narrow means, and with the expedients to meet expenses he should never have indulged in. He had acquired, together with a recklessness, a sort of self-reliance in these emergencies which positively seemed to afford him a species of pleasure, and made him a hero to himself by his successes; but there were graver troubles than these on his heart, and with the memory of these Fossbrooke was so interwoven that to recall them was to bring him up before him.
Besides these terrors, he had learned, during his short stay at the Nest, a most unwelcome piece of intelligence. The vicar, Mr. Mills, had shown him a letter from Dr. Lendrick, in which he said that the climate disagreed with him, and his isolation and loneliness preyed upon him so heavily that he had all but determined to resign his place and return home. He added that he had given no intimation of this to his children, lest by any change of plan he might inflict disappointment upon them; nor had he spoken of it to his father, in the fear that if the Chief Baron should offer any strenuous objection, he might be unable to carry out his project; while to his old friend the vicar he owned that his heart yearned after a home, and if it could only be that home where he had lived so contentedly, the Nest! “If I could promise myself to get back there again,” he wrote, “nothing would keep me here a month longer.” Now, as Sewell had advertised the place to be let, Mills at once showed him this letter, believing that the arrangement was such as would suit each of them.
It needed all Sewell's habitual self-command not to show the uneasiness these tidings occasioned him. Lendrick's return to Ireland might undo—it was almost certain to undo—all the influence he had obtained over the Chief Baron. The old Judge was never to be relied upon from one day to the next. Now it was some impulse of vindictive passion, now of benevolence. Who was to say when some parental paroxysm might not seize him, and he might begin to care for his son?
Here was a new peril,—one he had never so much as imagined might befall him. “I 'll have to consult my wife,” said he, hastily, in reply to Mills's question. “She is not at all pleased at the notion of giving up the place; the children were healthier here: in fact,” added he, in some confusion, “I suspect we shall be back here one of these days.”
“I told him I'd have to consult you,” said Sewell, with an insolent sneer, as he told his wife this piece of news. “I said you were so fond of the country, so domestic, and so devoted to your children, that I scarcely thought you 'd like to give up a place so suited to all your tastes;—wasn't I right?”
She continued to look steadily at the book she had been reading, and made no reply.
“I did n't say, though I might, that the spot was endeared to you by a softer, more tender reminiscence; because, being a parson, there 's no saying how he 'd have taken it.”