Dora, melted, wooed him to come to her. Her adoration of him was almost on a level with David's. Sandy took a minute to think whether he should leave his father. Then he climbed her knee, and patronised her on the subject of buffaloes and giraffes—'I tan't 'splain everything to you, Auntie Dora; you'll now when you're older'—till Lucy and supper came together. And supper was brightened both by Lucy's secret content in the prospect of the Benet's Park visit and by the child's humours. When Dora said good night to her host, their manner to each other had its usual fraternal quality. Nevertheless, the woman carried away with her both resentment and distress.
About a fortnight later David and Lucy started one fine October afternoon for Benet's Park. The cab was crowded with Lucy's luggage, and David, in new clothes to please his wife, felt himself, as the cab door closed upon them, a trapped and miserable man.
What had possessed Lord Driffield to send that unlucky note? For Lord Driffield himself David had a grateful and real affection. Ever since that whimsical scholar had first taken kindly notice of the boy-tradesman, there had been a growing friendship between the two; and of late years Lord Driffield's interest in David's development and career had become particularly warm and cordial. He had himself largely contributed to the subtler sides of that development, had helped to refine the ambitions and raise the standards of the growing intellect; his advice, owing to his lifelong commerce with and large possession of books, had often been of great practical use to the young man; his library had for years been at David's service, both for reference and borrowing; and he had supplied his favourite with customers and introductions in a large percentage of the University towns both at home and abroad, a social milieu where Lord Driffield was more at home and better appreciated than in any other. The small delicately featured man, whose distinguished face, with its abundant waves of silky hair—once ruddy, now a goldenish white—presided so oddly over an incorrigible shabbiness of dress, had become a familiar figure in David's life. Their friendship, of course, was limited to a very definite region of thought and relation; but they corresponded freely, when they were apart, on matters of literature, bibliography, sometimes of politics; and no sooner was the Earl at Benet's Park than David had constant calls from him in his office at the back of the now spacious and important establishment in Prince's Street.
But Lord Driffield, as we know, had managed his mind better than his marriage, and his savoir vivre was no match for his learning. He bore his spouse and his country-gentleman life patiently enough in general; but every now and then he fell into exasperation. His wife flooded him too persistently, perhaps, with cousins and grandees of the duller sort, whose ideas seemed to him as raw as their rent-rolls were large—till he rebelled. Then he would have his friends; selecting them more or less at random from up and down the ranks of literature and science, till Lady Driffield raised her eyebrows, invited a certain number of her own set to keep her in countenance, and made up her mind to endure. At the end of the ordeal Lord Driffield generally made the rueful reflection that it had not gone off well. But he felt the better and digested the better for the self-assertion of it, and it was periodically renewed.
David and Lucy Grieve had been asked in some such moment of domestic annoyance. The Earl had seen 'Grieve's wife' twice, and hastily remembered that she seemed 'a presentable little person.' He was constitutionally indifferent to and contemptuous of women. But he imagined that it would please David to bring his wife; and he was perhaps tolerably certain, since no one, be he rake or savant, possesses an historical name and domain without knowing it, that it would please the bookseller's wife to be invited.
David suspected a good deal of this, for he knew his man pretty well. As he sat opposite to Lucy in the railway carriage— first-class, since she felt it incongruous to go in anything else—he recalled certain luncheons at Benet's Park, when he had been doing a bit of work in the library during the family sojourn. Certainly Lucy did not realise at all how formidable these aristocratic women could be!
And his pride—at bottom the workman's pride—was made uncomfortable by his wife's newness. New hat, new dress, new gloves! Himself too! It annoyed him that Lady Driffield should be so plainly informed that great pains had been taken for her. He felt irritable and out of gear. Being neither self-conscious nor awkward, he became both for the moment, out of sympathy with Lucy.
Yet Lucy was supremely happy as they sped along to Stalybridge. Suppose her father heard of it! She could no doubt insure his knowing; but it might set his back up still more, make him more mad than before with her and David. Eight years and more since he had spoken to her, and the other day, when he had seen her coming in Deansgate, he had crossed to the other side of the street!—Were those sleeves of her evening dress quite right? They were not caught down, she thought, quite in the right place. No doubt there would be time before dinner to put in a stitch. And she did hope that pleat from the neck would look all right. It was peculiar, but Miss Helby had assured her it was much worn. Would there be many titled people, she wondered, and would all the ladies wear diamonds? She thought disconsolately of the little black enamelled locket and the Roman pearls, which were all the adornments she possessed.
After a short journey they alighted at their station as the dusk was beginning.
'Are you for Benet's Park, m'm?' said the porter to Lucy. 'All right!—the carriage is just outside.'