Oh, that curious question, which has puzzled the wisest from the beginning of the world, and will puzzle them still, till the last day solves it for ever! What is to happen next?
It had scarcely passed, through Burrel's brain, when the door opened, and Sir Sidney Delaware was announced. He entered the room slowly, as was his custom; but, as he did enter, Burrel at once perceived that a certain air of coldness--which, like the mithridate of the ancients, defied all analysis from the multitude of ingredients that composed it--was altogether gone, and in its room there was a frank bland smile, as he greeted him, which unloaded the baronet's brow of the wrinkles of full ten years.
"I have come to visit you, Mr. Burrel," said Sir Sidney Delaware, "at an unusual hour, solely because I wished to see you; and, if you will give me leave, I will take my coffee with you," Burrel rang the bell, and the necessary additions to his breakfast-table were soon completed, while he expressed politely, but neither coldly nor cordially, his pleasure at the visit of Sir Sidney Delaware.
"My first task, Mr. Burrel," said the baronet mildly and kindly, "is to express my gratitude for the salvation of my dear child; and allow me to say, that no one who does not love her as I do, can feel what that gratitude is."
When a poor man and a proud man condescends to pour forth his feelings to his equal in mind and station, and his superior in more worldly wealth, it is a compliment which deserves instant return, and Burrel--though he had been unwilling to risk for a moment a fresh advance, to be again repulsed--felt, from the whole tone and manner of his companion, that the barrier was broken down between them. To have held back would have been an insult, and he instantly replied, not in the set form which means no more than a copy-line to a schoolboy, but in those words and accents that conveyed fully to Sir Sidney Delaware, that he had felt a real and personal pleasure in serving his daughter in the manner that he had done. He spoke frankly, though guardedly, of the charms and graces of Miss Delaware's conversation and demeanour--he spoke more boldly and feelingly of the impression that the blending of sailor-like candour with, gentlemanly feeling, in Captain Delaware, had produced upon his mind--and although Burrel alluded to these things in the tone of a man of the world, who had found out a treasure in pure nature that he had never before discovered, he did so without the slightest assumption of superiority; and both his words and his manner expressed alone unfeigned pleasure in the acquaintance he had made, and the service he had rendered.
"Enough, enough!" cried Sir Sidney Delaware, interrupting him as he was going on in his encomiums. "I came here to thank you for what you have done for one of my children, not to hear praises of both, that might perhaps make my old eyes overflow. But, as you speak of my son, I must not only confess that I owe you thanks, but an apology which I have promised him to make you, for not calling on you before. In that voluminous catalogue of lies, which, like hackney-coaches on a stand, are ready at the beck of every one, I might find a hundred excuses ready made to my hand, which you would be bound to receive as current; but my principles do not admit of my making use of them, and when I apologize at all, it must be by telling the truth. Unfortunate circumstances, Mr. Burrel," he added in a grave and somewhat sad tone, "have placed a painful disparity between the fortune and the station of my family. For myself, I do not covet wealth, neither do my children; but we have never sought, or even admitted, the society of any one who was likely to differ from us in our estimation of our own situation."
"Although such an apology is far more than I either deserve, or could expect," replied Burrel; "yet I own I am glad to find that you did not at all hate me for my own sake. As to my feelings and principles--if, as I hope, this acquaintance stops not here--you will soon find, my dear sir, that I am far too aristocratic in my own nature to dream that wealth can make any addition to rank--far too liberal in my own sentiments to dream that either wealth or rank can make any addition to gentlemanly manners and a gentlemanly mind. Do not mistake me, Sir Sidney Delaware," he added, seeing a slight shade come over the baronet's countenance; "I have every reverence for the institutions of society, and for those grades, which society can never be deprived of, without sinking gradually into barbarism of manners, if not barbarism of mind. All I mean to say, is, when I pay reverence to rank, it is a tribute I render to society--when I pay reverence to the individual, it is a tribute I offer to virtue, and that tribute will be offered to either, under all circumstances, and at all times; but I have no idea of bowing low to the purse in a man's pocket, or fawning upon the bottle of Lafitte that graces his sideboard."
Sir Sidney Delaware smiled. "I am afraid, then," he replied, "you are unlike the majority of our young men at present. The worst kind of aristocracy--because it must always be too new a garment to sit easily--the aristocracy of wealth, is springing up each day as the idol for worship; and I am afraid every one who may be said to have a golden calf in their house, will find plenty of our Israelites willing to commit idolatry, though to the worship of wealth in others may be applied the memorable words with which Sallust stigmatizes avarice itself--'Ea quasi veninis malis imbuta, corpus animumque virilem effæminat, semper infinita insatiabilis est; neque copiâ, neque inopiâ minuitur.' My own race have been too little followers of the blind god--I mean Plutus, not Cupid--and the effects you will see, if you do me the favour of dining in my poor house to-morrow."
"If I see yourself and family there, Sir Sidney Delaware, I shall certainly see nothing amiss, and probably nothing else; though," he added, feeling that the subject was one which had better be led into some other, as soon as possible, "though the house appears to be a very perfect and beautiful specimen of the peculiar kind of architecture to which it belongs."
"It is, indeed," replied the baronet, instantly mounting the hobby that Burrel set before him; "it is, indeed, perhaps the most perfect specimen of the architecture of the early part of Henry VIII. now in existence. It shows the first step from the pure Gothic to the pure Vandal, if I may so call it, which succeeded."