He was a tall and rather lean young man, who wore an eye-glass, and seemed to live upon books. It was irritating to Vansittart Crowther, who prided himself on his cellar and his cook, to note how little impression food and drink made upon Francis Colfox.
“He takes my Château Yquem as if it were Devonshire cider,” said the aggrieved parvenu, “and he hardly seems to know that this is the only house where he ever sees clear turtle. The man’s people must have lived in a very poor way.”
In spite of this contemptuous opinion, Mr. Crowther was always polite to Francis Colfox, and had even thought of him as a pis-aller for one of his daughters. There is hardly anything in this life which a self-made man respects so much as race, and Francis Colfox belonged to an old county family, had a cousin who was an earl, and another cousin who was talked of as a probable bishop. He was, therefore, allowed to make himself very much at home at Glenaveril, and to speak his mind in a somewhat audacious way to the whole family.
Captain Pentreath, an army man of uncertain age, a bachelor, and one of a territorial family of many brothers, came next; and then appeared the vicar and his wife and one daughter, who made up the party. The vicar was deaf, but amiable, and beamed benevolently upon a world about whose spoken opinions he knew so little that he might naturally have taken it for a much better world than it is. The vicar’s wife spent her existence in interpreting and explaining people’s speech to the vicar, and had no time to spare for opinions of her own. The daughter was characterized by a gentle nullity, tempered by a somewhat enthusiastic and evangelical piety. The chief desire of her life was to keep the Church as it had been in the days of her childhood, nearly thirty years before.
It was the first time the Disneys had dined together at Glenaveril, so it seemed only proper that Mr. Crowther should give his arm to Isola, which he did with an air of conferring an honour. The colonel had been ordered to take the vicar’s wife, and the doctor was given to Allegra; Captain Pentreath took Miss Trequite, the vicar’s daughter; Mr. Colfox followed with Mrs. Baynham, and the daughters of the house went modestly to the dining-room after the vicar and Mrs. Crowther.
The dinner-table was as pretty as roses and Venetian glass could make it. There was no pompous display of ponderous plate, as there might have been thirty years ago on a parvenu’s board. Everybody is enlightened nowadays. The great “culture” movement has been as widespread among the middle class as compulsory education among the proletariat, and everybody has “a taste.” Scarcely were they seated, when Mr. Crowther informed Mrs. Disney that he hated a display of silver, but at the same time took care to let her know that the Venetian glass she admired was rather more valuable than that precious metal. “And if it’s broken, there’s nothing left you for your outlay,” he said; “but it’s a fancy of my wife and girls. Those decanters are better than anything Salviati ever made for Royalty.”
The table was oval, lighted by one large lamp, under an umbrella-shaped amber shade, a lamp which diffused a faint golden glow through the dusky room; and through this dreamy dimness the footmen moved like ghosts, while the table and the faces of the diners shone and sparkled in the brilliant light. It was as picturesque a dining-room and table as one need care to see; and if the Gainsboroughs and Reynoldses, which here and there relieved the sombre russet of the Cordovan leather hangings, were not the portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Crowther’s ancestors, they were not the less lovely or interesting as works of art.
Isola sat by her host’s side, with a silent and somewhat embarrassed air, which her husband noted as he watched her from the other side of the table.
All the decorations were low, so that no pyramid of fruit or flowers intervened to prevent a man watching the face opposite to him. Disney saw that while Allegra, in her place between Mr. Baynham and Alicia Crowther, was full of talk and animation, Isola sat with downcast eyes, and replied with a troubled look to her host’s remarks. There was something in that gentleman’s manner which was particularly obnoxious to the colonel—a protecting air, a fatherly familiarity, which brought the bald, shining forehead almost in contact with Isola’s shoulder, as the man bent to whisper and to titter in the very ear of his neighbour.
The colonel got through a little duty talk with Mrs. Trequite, whose attention was frequently distracted by the necessity of explaining Mrs. Crowther’s polite murmurs to the vicar on the other side of the table; and this duty done he gave himself up to watching Isola and her host. Why did she blush so when the man talked to her? Was it the bold admiration of those fishy eyes which annoyed her, or the man’s manner altogether; or was it anything that he said? Disney strained his ears to hear their conversation, if that could be called conversation which was for the most part monologue.