Sidney did not take heed of his father's change of opinion—the world had been full of changes, and here was nothing to astonish him. He was prepared for anything remarkable now, he thought—he could believe in any transformations.
Father and son reached their relative's mansion exactly as the clock in the turret roof of the stable-house was striking five—there were carriages winding their way down the avenue before them, the hired flys with their hungry occupants were bringing up the rear. Sid looked from the carriage window, and almost repented that he had brought his father to the festivities. But Mr. Hinchford was cool and self-possessed; it was a return to the old life, and he seemed brighter and better for the change.
Maurice Hinchford received them in the hall; the first face in the large ante-room was that of Uncle Geoffry. There was no doubt of the genuineness of their reception—it was an honest and a hearty welcome.
Sidney had mixed but little in society—few young men at his age had seen less of men and manners, yet few men, old or young, could have been more composed and stately. He was not anxious to look his best, or fearful of betraying his want of knowledge; he had graver thoughts at his heart, and being indifferent as to the effect he produced, was cool and unmoved by the crowd of guests into which he had been suddenly thrust. He had accepted that invitation to oblige his cousin, not himself; and there he was, by his father's side, for Maurice's guests to think the best or worst of him—which they pleased, he cared not.
Poor Sid at this time was inclined to be misanthropical; he looked at all things through a distorting medium, and he had lost his natural lightness of heart. His lip curled at the stateliness and frigidity of his uncle's guests, and he was disposed to see a stand-offishness in some of them which did not exist, and was only the natural ante-dinner iciness that pervades a conglomeration of diners-out, unknown to each other. Still it steeled Sidney somewhat; he was the poor relation, he fancied, and some of these starchy beings scented his poverty by instinct! Maurice introduced him to his mother and sisters—people with whom we shall have little to do, and therefore need not dilate upon. The greeting was a little stiff from the maternal quarter—Sidney remembered on the instant his father's previous verdicts on the brother's wife—cordial and cousinly enough from the sisters, two pretty girls, the junior of Maurice, and three buxom ladies, the senior of their brother—two married, with Maurices of their own.
Sidney endeavoured to act his best; he had not come there to look disagreeable, though he felt so, in the first early moments of meeting; when the signal was given to pass into the dining-room, he offered his arm to his youngest cousin, at Maurice's suggestion, and thawed a little at her frankness, and at the brightness of her happy looking face.
There might have been one little pang at the evidence of wealth and position which that dining-room afforded him—for he was a Hinchford also, and his father had been a rich man in past days—but the feeling was evanescent, if it existed, and after one glance at his father, as cool and collected as himself, he devoted himself to the cousin, whom he had met for the first time in his life.
A grand dinner-party, given in grand style, as befitted a man well to do in the world. No gardeners and stablemen turned into waiters for the nonce, and still unmistakably gardeners and stablemen for all their limp white neckcloths—no hired waiters from remote quarters of the world, and looking more like undertaker's men than lacqueys—no flustered maid-servants and nurserymaids, pressed into the service, and suffering from nervous trepidation—this array of footmen at the back, the staff always on hand in that palatial residence, which a lucky turn of the wheel had reared for Geoffry Hinchford.
Sidney's cousin sang the praises of her brother all dinner-time; what a good-tempered, good-hearted fellow he was, and how universally liked by all with whom he came in contact. She was anxious to know what Sidney thought of him, and whether he had been impressed by Maurice's demeanour; and Sidney sang in a minor key to the praises of his cousin also, not forgetting in his peculiar pride to regret that difference of position which set Maurice apart from him.
Miss Hinchford did not see that, and was sure that Maurice would scoff at the idea—she was sure, also, that everyone would be glad to see Sidney at their house as often as he liked to call there. Sidney thawed more and more; a naturally good-tempered man, with a pleasant companion at his side, it was not in his power to preserve a gloomy aspect; he became conversational and agreeable; he had only one care, and that was concerning his father, to whom he glanced now and then, and whom he always found looking the high-bred gentleman, perfectly at his ease—and very different to the old man, whose mental infirmities had kept him anxious lately. Mr. James Hinchford had gone back to a past in which he had been ever at home; his pliant memory had abjured all the long interim of poverty, lodgings in Great Suffolk Street, and a post at a builder's desk; he remembered nothing of them that night, and was the old Hinchford that his brother had known. To the amazement of his son, he rose after dinner to propose the toast of the evening—somewhat out of place, being a relation and yet a stranger almost—and spoke at length, and with a fluency and volubility which Sidney had not remarked before. He assumed his right to propose the toast as the oldest friend of the family, and he did it well and gracefully enough, utterly confounding the family physician, who had been two days compiling a long and elaborate speech which "that white-headed gentleman opposite" had taken completely out of his mouth.