Mr. Ferrars resolved that Endymion should go to London immediately, and the preparations for his departure were urgent. Myra did everything. If she had been the head of a family she could not have been more thoughtful or apparently more experienced. If she had a doubt, she stepped over to Mrs. Penruddock and consulted her. As for Mrs. Ferrars, she had become very unwell, and unable to attend to anything. Her occasional interference, fitful and feverish, and without adequate regard to circumstances, only embarrassed them. But, generally speaking, she kept to her own room, and was always weeping.
The last day came. No one pretended not to be serious and grave. Mrs. Ferrars did not appear, but saw Endymion alone. She did not speak, but locked him in her arms for many minutes, and then kissed him on the forehead, and, by a gentle motion, intimating that he should retire, she fell back on her sofa with closed eyes. He was alone for a short time with his father after dinner. Mr. Ferrars said to him: “I have treated you in this matter as a man, and I have entire confidence in you. Your business in life is to build up again a family which was once honoured.”
Myra was still copying inventories when he returned to the drawing-room. “These are for myself,” she said, “so I shall always know what you ought to have. Though you go so early, I shall make your breakfast to-morrow,” and, leaning back on the sofa, she took his hand. “Things are dark, and I fancy they will be darker; but brightness will come, somehow or other, to you, darling, for you are born for brightness. You will find friends in life, and they will be women.”
It was nearly three years since Endymion had travelled down to Hurstley by the same coach that was now carrying him to London. Though apparently so uneventful, the period had not been unimportant in the formation, doubtless yet partial, of his character. And all its influences had been beneficial to him. The crust of pride and selfishness with which large prosperity and illimitable indulgence had encased a kind, and far from presumptuous, disposition had been removed; the domestic sentiments in their sweetness and purity had been developed; he had acquired some skills in scholarship and no inconsiderable fund of sound information; and the routine of religious thought had been superseded in his instance by an amount of knowledge and feeling on matters theological, unusual at his time of life. Though apparently not gifted with any dangerous vivacity, or fatal facility of acquisition, his mind seemed clear and painstaking, and distinguished by common sense. He was brave and accurate.
Mr. Rodney was in waiting for him at the inn. He seemed a most distinguished gentleman. A hackney coach carried them to Warwick Street, where he was welcomed by Mrs. Rodney, who was exquisitely dressed. There was also her sister, a girl not older than Endymion, the very image of Mrs. Rodney, except that she was a brunette—a brilliant brunette. This sister bore the romantic name of Imogene, for which she was indebted to her father performing the part of the husband of the heroine in Maturin’s tragedy of the “Castle of St. Aldobrand,” and which, under the inspiration of Kean, had set the town in a blaze about the time of her birth. Tea was awaiting him, and there was a mixture in their several manners of not ungraceful hospitality and the remembrance of past dependence, which was genuine and not uninteresting, though Endymion was yet too inexperienced to observe all this.
Mrs. Rodney talked very much of Endymion’s mother; her wondrous beauty, her more wondrous dresses; the splendour of her fetes and equipages. As she dilated on the past, she seemed to share its lustre and its triumphs. “The first of the land were always in attendance on her,” and for Mrs. Rodney’s part, she never saw a real horsewoman since her dear lady. Her sister did not speak, but listened with rapt attention to the gorgeous details, occasionally stealing a glance at Endymion—a glance of deep interest, of admiration mingled as it were both with reverence and pity.
Mr. Rodney took up the conversation if his wife paused. He spoke of all the leading statesmen who had been the habitual companions of Mr. Ferrars, and threw out several anecdotes respecting them from personal experience. “I knew them all,” continued Mr. Rodney, “I might say intimately;” and then he told his great anecdote, how he had been so fortunate as perhaps even to save the Duke’s life during the Reform Bill riots. “His Grace has never forgotten it, and only the day before yesterday I met him in St. James’ Street walking with Mr. Arbuthnot, and he touched his hat to me.”
All this gossip and good nature, and the kind and lively scene, saved Endymion from the inevitable pang, or at least greatly softened it, which accompanies our first separation from home. In due season, Mrs. Rodney observed that she doubted not Mr. Endymion, for so they ever called him, must be wearied with his journey, and would like to retire to his room; and her husband, immediately lighting a candle, prepared to introduce their new lodger to his quarters.
It was a tall house, which had recently been renovated, with a story added to it, and on this story was Endymion’s chamber; not absolutely a garret, but a modern substitute for that sort of apartment. “It is rather high,” said Mr. Rodney, half apologising for the ascent, “but Mr. Ferrars himself chose the room. We took the liberty of lighting a fire to-night.”
And the cheerful blaze was welcome. It lit up a room clean and not uncomfortable. Feminine solicitude had fashioned a toilette-table for him, and there was a bunch of geraniums in a blue vase on its sparkling dimity garniture. “I suppose you have in your bag all that you want at present?” said Mr. Rodney. “To-morrow we will unpack your trunks and arrange your things in their drawers; and after breakfast, if you please, I will show you your way to Somerset House.”