Dick dropped into a chair.
CHAPTER XXXIII
In no house in Bath was Dick Sheridan’s conduct regarded in the same light as it was in the home of the Linleys. That was, of course, because only by the Linley family was his conduct regarded as a personal matter. His perfidy in professing a friendship for Tom, while all the time he was contriving to take poor Tom’s place in the affections of Mrs. Abington, was referred to with great bitterness by Tom’s mother, and by Polly and Maria in wrathful whispers. They referred to Tom daily as “poor Tom!”—sometimes “poor dear Tom!” All their sympathy went forth for Tom in these days, and every one in the household—not even excepting Mr. Linley and Betsy—felt that it was necessary to treat him with the greatest tenderness. He was the victim of an unhappy attachment to one who was unworthy of the inestimable treasure of his young affections; and, in addition, he had been the dupe of an unscrupulous man who had not hesitated to elbow him aside in order to take his place. Surely one would be quite heartless who failed to have the deepest sympathy with poor Tom, or to heap reprobation on the head of his perfidious friend!
To be sure, Tom’s attachment to Mrs. Abington had been a terror to the household. The father had stormed about it, and the mother had wept over it. The father had threatened in no undertone to turn Tom out of the house, and the mother—with the true instincts of a woman and the experience of a wife—had made her crispest pâtés to tempt him to stay at home. But Tom disregarded alike threats and tartlets, and his sisters had sat daily in terror of a catastrophe. But the remembrance of those awful days did not in the least tend to mitigate their abhorrence of the perfidy of Dick Sheridan. They could not contain their anger when one day they caught sight of him flaunting his success in the face of all the people of Bath while he took the air by the side of Mrs. Abington in her chariot.
Maria, with great tact, drew Tom away from the window on some pretext. Her heart was beating in the excitement of the moment. If Tom had chanced to see that sight it would, she felt, have been impossible to predict what might happen. Tom was a man of spirit—so much was certain—and he had brought home with him from Italy a stiletto with beautiful jewels and pieces of coral set in the haft....
Mr. Linley only smiled when he was alone, and repeated in whispers those words, “God bless Dick Sheridan!” He felt truly grateful to Dick, but not quite so grateful as to make the attempt to force him upon the family as their benefactor; and as for his flaunting it with Mrs. Abington—well, that was Dick’s own affair. He was not in the least offended at his triumph. It was better for Dick Sheridan to make a fool of himself than for Tom Linley to be made a fool of. That was what Mr. Linley thought; and he helped Tom to mend his violin. Tom was ready to begin the work just two days after his breaking of the instrument, and when the glue had properly dried—before the touch of varnish that he gave to the fractured part had ceased to perfume the room, he was improvising that “Elegy to a Dead Love” which, later on, caused some of his audience (women) at a concert to be moved to bitter tears. Love was dead, and a musical elegy had been played over its grave, because Tom Linley had been jilted by Mrs. Abington! And when Mr. Linley declared that nothing more classical than that composition had been produced by an English musician, Tom began to recover from the effects of his wound as speedily as his violin had done. Only once did his sister Maria hear him murmur, while he breathed hard and his eyes were alight with the true fire of genius:
“A jig—an Irish jig! O heavens! an Irish jig!”
The expression on his face was one of bitterness—bitterness tempered by the thought that he had produced an immortal work: the mortality of his love had given him immortality.