THE CAPTAIN AND THE ATTORNEY CONVERSE AMONG THE TOMBS.
I cannot tell whether that slender, silken machinator, Captain Lake, loitered in the chapel for the purpose of talking to or avoiding Jos. Larkin, who was standing at the doorway, in sad but gracious converse with the vicar.
He was certainly observing him from among the tombs in his sly way. And the attorney, who had a way, like him, of noting things without appearing to see them, was conscious of it, and was perhaps decided by this trifle to accost the gallant captain.
So he glided up the short aisle with a sad religious smile, suited to the place, and inclined his lank back and his tall bald head toward the captain in ceremonious greeting as he approached.
'How d'ye do, Larkin? The fog makes one cough a little this evening.'
Larkin's answer, thanks, and enquiries, came gravely in return. And with the same sad smile he looked round on the figures, some marble, some painted stone, of departed Brandons and Wylders, with garrulous epitaphs, who surrounded them in various costumes, quite a family group, in which the attorney was gratified to mingle.
'Ancestry, Captain Lake—your ancestry—noble assemblage—monuments and timber. Timber like the Brandon oaks, and monuments like these—these are things which, whatever else he may acquire, the novus homo, Captain Brandon Lake—the parvenu—can never command.'
Mr. Jos. Larkin had a smattering of school Latin, and knew half-a-dozen
French words, which he took out on occasion.
'Certainly our good people do occupy some space here; more regular attendants in church, than, I fear, they formerly were; and their virtues more remarked, perhaps, than before the stone-cutter was instructed to publish them with his chisel,' answered Lake, with one of his quiet sneers.
'Beautiful chapel this, Captain Lake—beautiful chapel, Sir,' said the attorney, again looking round with a dreary smile of admiration. But though his accents were engaging and he smiled—of course, a Sabbath-day smile—yet Captain Lake perceived that it was not the dove's but the rat's eyes that were doing duty under that tall bald brow.