Close behind Dr. Allenders, comes the dissipated head and the shirt collars, which just now made faces at Harry Muir. The owner of the head stumbles up the two steps which connect the lower level of the surgery with that of this more dignified apartment, and enters the room with a swagger. He has eyes like the doctor’s, and a long, sallow face, encircled by the luxuriant brushwood which repeats under his chin the shaggy forest of hair which is the crown and glory on his head. He wears a very short grey coat, a coloured shirt, and an immense neck-cloth; and there enters with him into the room an atmosphere of smoke, tinted with many harmonizing odours, which envelopes his whole person like a separate world.
Harry turned round with slightly nervous haste as the doctor made his appearance. The Doctor bowed, and held out his hand with a frankness half real, half assumed; but Harry’s hand fell as it advanced to meet that of Dr. Allenders, while Dr. Allenders’ son uttered a coarse exclamation of surprise and recognition. Poor Harry! his face became purple with very shame and anger—for this coarse prodigal had been one of his boon companions on the previous night.
“Met before?” said the doctor, inquiringly, as Harry stimulated by the rude laugh of young Allenders, and the serious wonder of Lindsay, made a strong effort to recover himself. “Seen my son in some other place, Mr. Muir? I am glad of that, for blood is thicker than water; and though we have lost an estate through your means, my young friend, I hope we’ll have grace given us not to be envious, but to rejoice in your exaltation as if it were our own; besides that, it would have been very inconvenient to me—extremely inconvenient for my professional duties—to have lived five miles out of town; and then the house is such an old tumble-down affair. So I wish you joy, most heartily, Mr. Muir. The income of Allenders’ estate would have been small compensation to me, and Gilbert here has not settled to the harness yet; so we’ve no reason to complain—not a shadow. Pray sit down—or will you come up-stairs and see my wife and my daughters? Oh, we’ll not disturb them; and being relations, they have heard of you, Mr. Muir—I told them myself yesterday—and would like to see the new heir.”
“I say Muir, my boy, I’m delighted it’s you,” said Mr. Gilbert Allenders, thrusting forward a great bony, tanned hand, ornamented with a large ring. “Pleasant night, last night, wasn’t it? Glad to see we’ve got another good fellow among us. Come along up-stairs and see the girls.”
Mr. Gilbert Allenders had a rough voice, with the coarsest of provincial accents; and to mend the matter, Mr. Gilbert put himself to quite extraordinary pains to speak English, omitting his r’s with painful distinctness, and now and then dropping a necessary h. It had been a matter of considerable study to him, and he was very complacent about his success.
Harry submitted with a bad grace to shake hands, and unconsciously drew nearer to Lindsay.
But Lindsay, who only smiled at the vulgar Mr. Gilbert, instinctively drew himself up, and turned his face from Harry. Harry Muir for himself was nothing to the young lawyer; but Lindsay felt personal offence mingle in the contempt with which he perceived how his client chose his company—leaving himself solitary in their inn, to go and seek out a party which could admit this Gilbert Allenders. Henceforth, Mr. Lindsay might be man of business to the new heir—friend he could never be.
“I must be in Edinburgh this afternoon,” said Lindsay coldly. “Do you accompany me Mr. Muir? for if you do not, I have accomplished all that is necessary here, I fancy, and may take my leave.”
Harry hesitated for a moment, his better feelings struggling with false shame and pride; but lifting his eyes suddenly, he encountered the derisive smile of Gilbert Allenders, and took in with one rapid glance all the characteristics of his new-found kinsman. These had more effect on his susceptibility than either reason or repentance. He did not decide on returning in the lawyer’s respectable society, because he feared for his own weakness, if he permitted himself to remain here alone. No, often though Harry’s weakness had been demonstrated even to his own conviction, it was not this; but what a knowledge of himself could not do, disgust with Gilbert Allenders did. He answered hastily that he too would return at once, and persuading Lindsay to remain and accompany him up-stairs to the drawing-room where Mrs. Allenders and her daughters sat in state expecting their visit, they at length left the house together, declining the preferred escort of Mr. Gilbert.
But Harry did not escape without a galling punishment for the previous night’s folly. Gilbert Allenders, seeing how he winced under it, plied him with allusion after allusion. “Last night, you recollect?” and with the most malicious perseverance recalled its speeches, its laughter, its jokes and its noise, assuming too an ostentation of familiarity and good-fellowship which Harry could scarcely restrain his fury at. The effect was good and bad; on the one hand, Harry vowed to himself fiercely that he never would put himself in the power of such a man again: on the other, he forgot how he himself had wasted the fair summer night begun with pleasant thoughts and blessings; how he had desecrated and polluted what should have been its pure and healthful close. He forgot his repentance. He felt himself an ill-used man.