“It would have been most provoking to have been disfigured just at this time,” rejoined Lewis. “One could not very well go to propose oneself as a mentor for youth with a black eye obtained in something nearly akin to a street row.”
“No,” said Leicester; “the General would consider our last night’s exploit as dreadfully infra dig. He is quite one of the old school, and reckons Sir Charles Grandison a model for gentlemen. You must be careful to avoid the free-and-easy style of the present day with him; but I think you’ll suit him exactly; there’s naturally something of the preux chevalier, héros de roman cut about you that will go down with him amazingly.”
“In plain English, you consider me stiff and affected,” returned Lewis. “Do not scruple to tell me if it is so.”
“Stiff, yes; affected, no,” was the rejoinder. “Indeed, your manner is unusually simple and natural when you thaw a little, but at first you are—well, I hardly know how to describe it; but there is something about you unlike the men one usually meets. You have a sort of half-defiant way of looking at people, a sort of ‘you’d better not insult me, sir’ expression. I don’t know that I should have observed it towards myself, but it was your manner to Grandeville that particularly struck me. I have not annoyed you by my frankness?” he added interrogatively, finding that Lewis did not reply. Regardless of this question, Lewis remained silent for a minute or two, then suddenly turning to his companion, and speaking in a low, hurried voice, he said—
“Can you conceive no reason for such a manner? Is there not enough in my position to account for that, ay, and more? By birth I am any man’s equal. My father was of an old family, a captain in the Austrian service, and in the highest sense of the word a gentleman. I have received a gentleman’s education. Up to the present time I have associated with gentlemen on terms of equality, and now suddenly, through no fault of my own, I am in effect a beggar. The very errand we are upon proves it. Through the kindness of Frere and of yourself,—a stranger,—I am about to receive a favourable recommendation to some proud old man as a hired servant; for though in name it may not be so, in fact I shall be nought but a hireling! Is it strange then that I view men with suspicion? that I am watchful lest they attempt to refuse me the amount of courtesy due to those who, having never forfeited their own self-respect, are entitled to the respect of others?”
He paused, and removing his hat, allowed the cold breeze to blow freely around his heated brow. Leicester, who, despite his foppery, was thoroughly kind-hearted, being equally surprised and distressed at the burst of feeling his words had called forth, hastened to reply.
“My dear fellow, I really am—that is, ’pon my word, I had no idea you looked upon the affair in this light. I can assure you, I think you quite mistake the matter; a tutorship is considered a very gentlemanly occupation. If I had any work in me, I’m not at all sure I might not—that is, it would be a very sensible thing of me to look out for something of the kind myself. Stanhope Jones, who was up at Trinity with me, and about the fastest man of his year, ran through his fortune, got a tutorship in Lord Puzzletête’s family, went abroad with the eldest cub, and picked up a prize widow at Pisa, with tin enough to set the leaning tower straight again, if she’d had a fancy to do so.”
During this well-meant attempt at consolation Lewis had had time to come to the conclusion that he was in the position of that unwise individual who wore “his heart upon his sleeve for daws to peck at;” or, in plain English, that he had been betrayed into a display of feeling before a man incapable of appreciating or understanding it; and a less agreeable conviction at which to arrive we scarcely know. Nothing, however, remained but to make the best of it, which he accordingly did, by admitting the possibility that there might be much truth in Leicester’s view of the case, and changing the subject by saying, “Now I want you to give me a peep at the carte du pays of the unknown region I am about to explore. I think I pretty well comprehend the General from your description. Of what other members does the family consist?”
“Ah! yes, of course you must be curious to know. Well, the dramatis persono is somewhat limited. First and foremost, the General,—you comprehend him, you say?” Lewis made a sign in the affirmative, and Leicester continued: “Then we have an awful personage, who I expect will be a severe trial to you—Miss Livingstone; she is a relation, an aunt I think, of the General’s late wife, who lives with him and keeps his house, and was the terror of my boyhood whenever I was staying down at Broadhurst. She never was over young, I believe; at least I can’t imagine her anything but middle-aged, and she must now be sixty or thereabouts. For the rest, she looks as if she had swallowed a poker, and, by some mysterious process of assimilation, become imbued with its distinguishing characteristics; for she is very stiff, very cold, and as far as I know utterly impenetrable, but of a stirring disposition withal, which leads her to interfere with everybody and everything. Lastly, there is my cousin Annie, the General’s only daughter; she inherits her mother’s beauty, her father’s pride, her great-aunt’s determination to have her own way, and the devil’s own love of teasing. To set against all this, I believe her to be thoroughly good and amiable, and everything of that kind; at all events she is a most bewitching girl, and bids fair, under judicious management, to become a very charming woman! fancy her mission is to reform my brother Bellefield and render him a steady married man, and I wish her joy of it. She comes into her mother’s fortune when she is of age, and the respective governors have set their hearts upon the match.”
“And what says Lord Bellefield?” inquired Lewis listlessly.