“I took the liberty to order something directly, as soon as I saw Mr. Markham, my lady,” said Brown. There was a look of mingled benevolence and anxiety in this functionary’s face. He was glad to see his young master come back, but he did not conceal his concern at the company in which he was. “The greenroom, my lady?”
“The greenroom is quite a small room,” said Lady Markham, faltering. She looked at the stranger with a doubtful air. He was not a boy to be put into such a small place; but then, on the other hand——
“A small room is no matter to me,” said Spears. “I’m not used to anything different. In such a career as mine we’re glad to get shelter anywhere.” He laughed as he spoke of his career. What was his career? He looked as if he expected her to know. Lady Markham concealed her perplexity by a little bow, and turned to Brown, who was waiting her orders with a half-ludicrous sentimental air of sympathy with his mistress.
“Put Mr. Spears into the chintz-room in the east wing; it is a better room,” she said. Then she led the way into the brightness, on the verge of which they had been standing. “It is almost too warm for fires,” she said, “but you may like to come nearer to it after your journey. Where have you come from, Paul? Children, now that you have seen Paul, you had better go up stairs to bed.”
“I knew how it would be,” said Marie; “no one cares for us now Paul has come.”
“No one will so much as see mamma as long as he is here,” said Bell; while the boys, withdrawing reluctantly, stopping to whisper, and throw black looks back upon the stranger as they strolled away, wondered almost audibly what sort of fellow Paul had got with him. “A bailiff, I think,” said Roland; “just the sort of fellow that comes after the men in Harry Lorrequer.” “Or he’s done something, and it’s a turnkey,” said Harry. Elder brothers were in the way of getting into trouble in the works with which these young heroes were familiar. Thus at Paul’s appearance the pretty picture broke up and faded away like a phantasmagoria. Childhood and innocence disappeared, and care came back. The aspect of the very room changed where now there was the young man, peremptory and authoritative, and the two ladies tremulous with the happiness of his return, yet watching him with breathless anxiety, reading, or trying to read, every change in his face.
“Your last letter was from Yorkshire, Paul; what have you been doing? We tried to make out, but we could not. You are so unsatisfactory, you boys; you never will give details of anything. Did you go to see the Normantons? or were you——”
“I was nowhere—that you know of, at least,” said Paul. “I was with Spears, holding meetings. We went from one end of the county to another. I can’t tell you where we went; it would be harder to say where we didn’t go.”
Lady Markham looked at her son’s companion with a bewildered smile. “Mr. Spears, then, Paul—I suppose—knows a great many people in Yorkshire?” She had not a notion what was meant by holding meetings. He did not indeed look much like a man who would know many “people” in Yorkshire. “People” meant not the country folks, you may be sure, but the great county people, the Yorkshire gentry, the only class which to Lady Markham told in a county. This was no fault of hers, but only because the others were beyond her range of vision. No, he did not look like a man who would know many people in Yorkshire; but, short of that, what could Paul mean? Lady Markham did not know what significance there really was in what Paul said.
“We saw a great many Yorkshire people; but I go where I am called,” said the stranger, “not only where there are people I know.”