Wrecked in Port: A Novel

by Edmund Yates

He was thinking of this, and had in his mind a picture, confused indeed, but full of small details which had a strange interest for him, and a vivid sadness too, of the contrast between the scene of which he formed at this moment a part, and those familiar to himself and to Marian. He was thinking of the homely simple life of the village, of the dear dead friend, so much a better man, so much a truer gentleman than any of these people, who were of so much importance in a world where he had been of so little; of the old house, the familiar routine of life, not wearisome with all its sameness, the sweetness of his first love. He was thinking of the splendour, the enervating bewildering luxury of his present surroundings, among which he sat so strange, so solitary, save for the subtle reassuring influence, the strange, unaccountable support and something like companionship in the tones of that fair and gracious lady's voice, in the light of her swift flitting smile, in which he thought he read an admission that the company was little more to her taste than to his, had as little in common with her intellectual calibre as with his. He could not have told how she conveyed this impression to him, if he had tried to explain his feelings to any third person; he could not explain it to himself, when he thought over the events of the evening, alone in his room, which was a dingy apartment when compared with the rest of the house, but far better than any which had ever called him master; but there it was, strong and strangely attractive, mingling with the sights and sounds around him, and with the dull dead pain at his heart which had been caused by Marian's letter, and which he had never quite succeeded in conquering. There were unshed but not unseen tears in his eyes, and a slight tremulous motion in his lips, which one pair of eyes at the table, quick with all their languor, keen with all their disdainful slowness, did not fail to see. The owner of those beautiful eyes did not quite understand, could not "fathom" the meaning of the sudden glitter in his--"idle tears," indeed, on such an occasion, and in such company!--but, with the fine unfailing instinct of a coquette, she discerned, more clearly than Walter Joyce himself had felt it, that she counted for something in the origin and meaning of those unshed tears and of that nervous twitching.

Lady Caroline had just removed her eyes with well-feigned carelessness from Walter's face, after a covert glance, apparently casual, but in reality searching, in order to effect which she had leaned forward and plucked some geranium-leaves from a bouquet near her on the table; and Walter was removing himself still farther from the scene around, into the land of reverie, when a name spoken by Mr. Gould, and making an odd accidental harmony with his thoughts, fixed his wandering attention.

"What sort of weather had you in Hampshire?" asked Lord Hetherington, in one of those irksome pauses usually selected by some individual who is at once commonplace and good-natured enough to distinguish himself by uttering an inane sentiment, or asking an awkward question.

"Awful, I should fancy," said Lady Hetherington, in the most languid of her languid tones. "Awful, if it has been like the weather here. Were you really obliged to travel, Mr. Gould? I can't fancy any one going anywhere in such weather."

"As it happened," said Mr. Gould, with a rather impatient glance towards her ladyship--for he could not always smile complacently when she manifested her normal unconsciousness that anybody could have anything to do not entirely dependent on his or her own pleasure and convenience--"as it happened, I had not to go. A few days after I told his lordship the particulars of the sale of land, I had a letter informing me that the matter was all off for the present."

"Indeed!" said Lord Hetherington; "a domed bore for Langley, isn't it? He has been wanting to pick up something in that neighbourhood for a long time. But the sale will ultimately come off, I suppose, unless some one buys the land over Langley's head by private contract."

"There's no fear of that, I think," said Mr. Gould; "but I took precautions. I should not like Sir John to lose the slice off Woolgreaves he wants. The place is in a famous hunting country, and the plans are settled upon--like Sir John, isn't it?--for his hunting-box."

"I don't know that part of Hampshire at all," said Lord Hetherington, delighted at finding a subject on which he could induce one of his guests to talk without his being particularly bound to listen. "Very rich and rural, isn't it? Why didn't the--ah, the person sell the land Langley wanted there?"

"For rather a melancholy reason," replied Mr. Gould, while Lady Hetherington and the others looked bored by anticipation. Rather inconsiderate and bad taste of Mr. Gould to talk about "melancholy reasons" in a society which only his presence and that of the secretary rendered at all "mixed." But Mr. Gould, who was rather full of the subject, and who had the characteristic--so excellent in a man of business in business hours, but a little tiresome in social moments--of believing that nothing could equal in interest his clients' affairs, or in importance his clients themselves, went on, quite regardless of the strong apathy in the face of the countess. "The letter which prevented my going down to Woolgreaves on the appointed day was written by a lady residing in the house, to inform me that the owner of the property, a Mr. Creswell, very well known in those parts, had lost his only son, and was totally unfit to attend to any business. The boy was killed, I understand, by a fall from his pony."

"Tom Creswell killed!" exclaimed Walter Joyce, in a tone which directed the attention of every one at the table to the "secretary."