“Well, I should just like anybody to explain to me the meaning of that letter; for as to making out either what he has done, or what he is going to do, from that document, I’d defy Odipus himself to accomplish it. Now, let me see what is the first article in my little list of commissions: enlightening our mother and sister, I suppose; and a very hazy style of illumination I expect it will be, unless sister’s note. should happen to throw some brightness on the matter. ‘Poor Rose!’ He may well say poor! Why, she dotes on him—actually dotes on him. I’d give anything in the world to have her—that is, to have a sister love me as that girl loves him. I know she will be miserable; I’m certain of it;” and sticking the butter-knife behind his ear, a place in which he still retained the school-boy habit of putting his pen, Frere rose from his seat, and resuming his soliloquy, began to pace the room with hasty strides.
“What can have induced the boy to throw up his appointment in this insane fashion I can’t conceive. If it were any one else, I should fancy he had misconducted himself, and that the rhapsodical letter was merely an excuse for avoiding a plain statement of a disgraceful truth; but there’s something about Lewis Arundel which makes one certain he’d never commit a small sin or conceal a large one. If he had murdered that scamp Bellefield in a duel, he would have mentioned it directly. Perhaps old Grant has insulted his dignity; Arcades ambo, they’re a peppery pair; ‘high stomached are they both, and full of ire.’ The elder gentleman has a double claim, literal and metaphorical, to the quotation, if I remember his build rightly. Poor Lewis! I expect he is in a dreadful state of mind; I should feel very sorry for him if I were not so angry with him for bothering Rose in this way. Well, I must think about starting; no science shop for me to-day, or to-morrow either. By the bye, I must ring for Jemima, and enlighten her as to my movements, and she’ll be as cantankerous as a bilious crocodile, I expect. However, it must be done, so here goes;” and giving the bell a very modest pull, he dropped into his reading-chair awaiting the arrival of his acidulated domestic with a singularly mild, not to say timid expression of countenance.
“Oh, Jemima, I rang—that is to say, the bell rang—to tell you I am obliged to go out of town to-day, and shall not return till tomorrow evening at the earliest,” began Frere in an apologetic tone of voice, as his ancient duenna, puffing and blowing from the ascent of the staircase, entered.
As he spoke, the positively cross expression of her antique features advanced a degree, and became comparatively crosser as she replied with a toss of the head—
“Well, I’m sure! what next, I wonder!” Then addressing her master in a tone of withering contempt, she continued: “Do you know what it is you’re a sayin’ of, Master Richard?”
“Well, I believe I do,” returned Frere humbly.
“I believe you don’t,” was the unceremonious rejoinder. “I believe you go on reading them foreign books in heathen Greek till you don’t know what you’re a saying or a doing of; here you tell me one thing one day, and something diametrically contradictious of it the next, till old Nick his blessed self wouldn’t know how to act to please you!”
“Why, what have I said contradictious, as you call it?” inquired Frere.
“What have you said?” repeated Jemima in a tone of intense disgust; “why you’ve told me to get ready a dinner for six this here very day, and now you say you’re a going out of town, and won’t be back till to-morrow night. Do you call that behaving as a master of a house ought to do, let alone a sanatory Christian?”
“A true bill, by all that’s unlucky!” muttered Frere.