XVI
Upon leaving Somerset House, Mr. Beaumaris got into a hackney, and drove to the Red Lion Inn. What he learned at that hostelry threw abundant light on to Arabella’s conduct. Since he had his own reasons for believing Arabella’s heart to have been won long since, he was not in the least wounded by the discovery that she proposed to marry him as a means of rescuing her brother from debt, but, on the contrary, considerably amused. Having paid Bertram’s bill at the inn, and received his watch back from the landlord, he returned to his own house in yet another hackney.
The same delight in the ridiculous which had made him wear a dandelion in his button-hole for three consecutive days for no better purpose than to enjoy the discomfiture of his misguided friends and copyists made him deeply appreciative of the situation in which he now found himself; and he beguiled the tedium of the drive to Mount Street in wondering when it would cross his absurd love’s mind that the disclosure, following hard upon the wedding-ceremony, that she required a large sum of money from him without a moment’s loss of time, might be productive of a little awkwardness. He could not resist picturing the scene, and was still laughing softly when he reached his house, a circumstance which considerably surprised his butler.
“Send round to the stables for my tilbury, will you, Brough?” he said. “And desire Painswick—oh, you’re there, are you?” he added, as his valet descended the stairs. “I want to hear no more about missing shirts, on which excessively boring subject I can see from your expression you are prepared to discourse at length, but you may tell me this! Where is the letter I gave into your hands to be delivered at the Red Lion, to a Mr. Anstey, and why did you not tell me that it had not been so delivered?”
“You may perhaps recall, sir,” said Painswick reproachfully, “that I mentioned to you while you sat at breakfast that there was a matter which I deemed it my duty to bring to your notice. Upon which, sir, you said, Not now.”
“Did I? I had no idea you could be so easily silenced. Where is the letter?”
“I placed it, sir, on the bottom of the pile that was awaiting you on the table here,” replied Painswick, tacitly disclaiming further responsibility.
“In that case it is in the library. Thank you: that is all.”
Ulysses, who had been lying stretched out in the library, enjoying the sleep of the replete, awoke at Mr. Beaumaris’s entrance, yawned, got up, shook himself, sneezed several times, stretched, and indicated by his cocked ears and wagging tail that he was now ready for any adventure.
“I am glad to see you restored to your usual self,” said Mr. Beaumaris, running through the mass of his neglected correspondence, and picking up his own letter to Bertram. “You know, you should not have dissuaded me from going out again that evening! Just look what has come of it! And yet I don’t know. I would not have missed this morning’s interview for a thousand pounds! I suppose you think that I am behaving very badly? I am, of course, but do me the justice to own that she deserves it for being such an adorable little fool!”