“Well done!” cries my uncle, past containing his pride in the Chesterfieldian achievement. “Sir Harry hisself couldn’t beat it!”
The young man laughed pleasantly.
X
IMPORTED DIRECT
I laughed, too, unable to help it, and my uncle guffawed, in his large way; and then we all laughed like tried friends together: so that ’twas plain, being thus at once set upon agreeable terms, with no shyness or threat of antipathy to give ill ease, that we three strange folk were well-met in the wide world. ’Twas cosey in the best room: a lively blaze in the fireplace, the room bright with lamplight, warm with the color of carpet and tapestried mahogany, spotless and grand, as I thought, in every part; ay, cosey enough, with good company well-met within, the risen wind clamoring through the night, the rain lashing the black panes, the sea rumbling upon the rocks below, and, withal, a savory smell abroad in goodly promise. My uncle, grown fat as a gnome in these days, grotesquely fashioned, miscellaneously clothed as ever, stood with legs wide upon the black wolf’s-skin, his back to the fire, his great hands clasped over his paunch, lying as upon a shelf; regarding the direct importation and myself, the rise of my admiration, the room, the whole world, indeed, visible and invisible, with delight so boyish 105 that ’twas good to watch the play of satisfaction upon his fantastic countenance, which now rippled and twinkled from his black cravat to his topmost scars and bristles. Well-met were we three folk; ay, no doubt: I was in a glow of content with this new fortune.
’Tis strange how the affections fall....
My tutor, John Cather, as his name turned out to be, was older than I, after all––my elder by five years, I fancied, with age-wise ways and a proud glance to overawe my youth, were need of it to come: a slight, dark-skinned man, clean-featured, lean-cheeked, full-lipped, with restless dark eyes, thin, olive-tinted hands, black hair, worn overlong, parted in the manner of a maid and falling upon his brow in glossy waves, which he would ruffle into disorder, with the air of knowing what he was about. He was clad all in black, for the reason, he said, that he aspired to holy orders: well-kept black, edged with linen of the whitest, and not ill cut, according to my uncle’s fashion-plates, but sadly worn at the seams and everywhere brushed near threadbare. Now sprawled, hands pocketed, in a great-chair under the lamp, indolent with accomplished grace (it seemed), one long leg thrown languidly over the other, the slender foot never at rest, he was postured with that perfection of ease and gentility into which my uncle, watchful observer of the manners of the world he walked in, had many a time endeavored to command me, but with the most indifferent success. I listened 106 to my tutor’s airy, rambling chit-chat of the day’s adventures, captivated by the readiness and wit and genial outlook; the manner of it being new to my experience, the accompaniment of easy laughter a grateful enlightenment in a land where folk went soberly. And then and there––I remember, as ’twere an hour gone, the gale and the lamplight and the laughter of that time––I conceived for him an enduring admiration.