“For you, Mrs. Mowbray?” he said, “think what you are saying. You would like me to betray my old friend, and balk his intentions, and to disturb a number of families and snatch from them what they have been accustomed to consider as a free gift, and probably in no circumstances expected to refund—for you. For you, for what? that your son, having a great deal already, should have a little more,” (here she attempted to interrupt him to say, “No, no, not having had a great deal, never having had much!” which his stronger voice bore down and penetrated through), “that you should add some luxuries to your wealthy estate. No, Mrs. Mowbray, no. I am astonished that you should ask it of me. If I could do it, I should despise myself.”
What high ground he took! and he felt himself justified in taking it. He was buoyed up over all personal motives of his own by a lofty realisation of the general question. There were many others concerned as well as he. What right would he have to betray the fact that poor Horsburgh, for instance, had received a loan from Mr. Anderson to establish him in business? If Mr. Anderson’s heirs proceeded against Horsburgh, who was still painfully keeping his head above water, the result would be ruin—all to put another hundred pounds, perhaps, in Frank Mowbray’s pocket, an idle lad who already had plenty, and never did a hand’s turn. And she thought to come over him and make him do that by the glamour of a pair of middle-aged eyes, and the flatteries of an antiquated smile? The man was angry with the woman’s folly and revolted by her pretensions. No, he would not betray poor Horsburgh. Was not this the meaning after all, and a nobler meaning than he had ever thought of, of the proceedings of the unjust steward? Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fourscore. Thy bill; not mine, did not that make all the difference in the world? Not for me, but for poor Horsburgh. The woman was mad to think that for her, a woman who wanted nothing, he would sacrifice a struggling family: not to say that, even now, poor Horsburgh was, as it were, looking ruin in the face.
CHAPTER XIV.
ANOTHER AGENT.
Mrs. Mowbray had put off all sign of agitation when in the evening she sat down with her son Frank, at the hour of seven, which, in those days, was a pretentiously late, even dissipated hour for dinner, at all events in St. Rule’s, where most people dined early or at least at varying hours in the afternoon, such as four o’clock, five o’clock, the very height of discomfort, but supposed by some reasoning I am unable to account for, to be virtuous and respectable hours, while anything later than six was extravagant and almost wicked. Mrs. Mowbray dined at seven by way of waving a flag of superiority over the benighted town. It was reported commonly, that in London people were beginning to dine at eight, an hour when honest folk were thinking of getting ready for bed, or, at all events, were taking their supper as honest folk ought. I am not able to explain why one hour should be considered more innocent than another; but so it was. Frank Mowbray, half-influenced by his mother, and half-drawn away into different modes of thinking by the young society of St. Rule’s, which thought every way ridiculous that was not its own way, was half-proud of the fashionable peculiarities of his mother’s economy, and half-abashed to find himself held to habits which were so different to those of the others. As the nights began to lengthen he was impatient of being kept in at what the others thought the most agreeable time of the evening, when all the young fellows were clustering about the club, making up their matches for the next day. But he had not yet reached the moment of revolt.
Mrs. Mowbray had put off, so far as she could, all appearance of agitation. She was very nicely dressed according to the fashion of the times. Her ringlets were flowing, her smiles freely dispensed, though only her son was present to admire her. But she thought it was part of her duty to make herself as agreeable to Frank as to any other member of society. She listened quite patiently to all his talk about his young men. She was indeed interested in this talk and pleased to hear about everybody, who and what they were, and even whether they were first-class or second-class players: and their special deeds of prowess at the heathery hole or any other of the long list which Frank had at his finger-ends. She liked to hear all the details with which Frank could furnish her of their families as well as their golf. But that was less interesting to him, and helped her but little in her researches.
“You see a great deal of the Buchanans, don’t you, Frank?” she said, in the course of the conversation, not meaning much more by the question than by many others.
But here Mrs. Mowbray instantly perceived a difference in her son’s manner, which betrayed something quite new and unexpected.
Frank made a pause, which, though only for a moment, was noted by her fine and vigilant spirit of observation, looked at her furtively, coloured, and said: “Oh, the Buchanans! Yes, I see them now and then,” in a tone quite different from that in which he had been discoursing about the Seatons and the Beatons, and all the rest of the tribe.
“You see them now and then? Yes, that is all I expected: they are not precisely of our monde,” his mother said.
“Why not of our monde?” cried Frank, “they are the best people in St. Rule’s, and that is their monde; and it is our monde, I suppose, as long as we stay here.”