Volume One—Chapter Fourteen.
Mr Saxby Comes Down on Business.
The next day and next, Sir James Scarlett seemed to be better. He was pale and suffering from the shock, speaking gravely to all about him, but evidently trying to make the visitors feel at their ease. He pressed them to stay; but the doctor had to get back to town; so had Prayle, though the latter acknowledged the fact with great reluctance; and it was arranged that they were to be driven over to the station together.
That morning at breakfast, however, a visitor was announced in the person of Mr Frederick Saxby.
“Saxby? What does he want?” said Scarlett. “Why, he must have come down from town this morning. Here, I’ll fetch him in.” He rose and left the room, and the doctor noted that his manner was a good deal changed.
“Unpleasant business, perhaps,” he thought: and then, as his eyes met Lady Scarlett’s: “She’s thinking the same.”
Just then Scarlett returned, ushering in a good-looking rather florid man of about thirty-five, over-dressed, and giving the impression, from his glossy coat to his dapper patent-leather boots, that he was something in the City.
“Saxby has come down on purpose to see you, aunt,” said Scarlett. “Trusted to our giving him some breakfast, so let’s go on, and you people can afterwards discuss news.”
Mr Saxby was extremely polite to all before he took his place, bowing deferentially to the ladies, most reverentially to Naomi, and apologetically to the gentlemen; though, as soon as the constraint caused by his coming in as he did had passed, he proved that he really was something in the City, displaying all the sharp dogmatic way of business men, the laying-down-the-law style of speech, and general belief that all the world’s inhabitants are fools—mere children in everything connected with business—always excepting the speaker, who seemed to assume a kind of hidden knowledge concerning all matters connected with sterling coin. He chatted a good deal upon subject that he assumed to be likely to interest his audience—how Egyptians were down, Turkish were up, and Hudson’s Bays were slashing, an expression likely to confuse an unversed personage, who might have taken Hudson’s Bays for some celebrated regiment of horse. He several times over tried to meet Aunt Sophia’s eyes; but that lady rigidly kept them upon her coffee-cup; and not only looked very stern and uncompromising, but gave vent to an occasional sniff, that made Mr Saxby start, as though he looked upon it as a kind of challenge to the fight to come.
Despite the disturbing influences of Aunt Sophia’s sniffs and the proximate presence of Naomi, by whom he was seated, and to whom, in spite of his assumption, he found himself utterly unable to say a dozen sensible words, Mr Frederick Saxby, of the Stock Exchange, managed to partake of a most excellent breakfast—such a meal, in fact, as made Dr Scales glance inquiringly at him, and ask himself questions respecting digestion and the state of his general health.