But the gentleman, now coming up the drive, was not in the proper frame of mind for groundling observation. Not that he failed to look about him, as if to expand or improve his mind; but the only result upon his nervous system was to make it work harder upon his own affairs. He was visited with a depressing sense of something hanging over him—of something that must direct, and shape, the whole course of his future life; and whether it might be for good or evil, he was hurrying to go through with it.
"I don't care; I don't care," he kept saying to himself; but that self was well aware that he did care very much; as much as for all the rest of the world put together. "I've a great mind to toss up about it," he said, as he felt a lucky sixpence in his pocket; but his sense of the fitness of things prevailed; so he put on a fine turn of speed, and rang the bell.
The old house looked so different, and everything around so changed, that our friend Fox had a weak impression, and perhaps a strong hope, that the bell would prove to be out of its duty, and refuse to wag. But alas, far otherwise; the bell replied with a clang that made him jump, and seek reassurance in the flavour of his black kid glove. He had plenty of time to dwell fully upon that, and even write a report upon the subject, ere ever door showed any loyalty to bell; and even then, there was stiffness about it. For one of the stiffest of mankind stood there, instead of the genial John, or Bob—Mr. Binstock himself, a tall man of three score, Major of the cellar, and commander of the household. He, in a new suit of black, and bearing a gold chain on his portly front, looked down upon the vainly upstanding Jemmy, as if in need of an introduction.
But Dr. Fox was not the man to cave in thus. The door was a large one, with broad aperture; and this allowed the visitor to march in, as if he had failed to see the great Binstock. Taking his stand upon a leopard's skin, in the centre of the entrance hall, he gazed around calmly, as if he were the stranger contemplated by the serving-man.
"You will have the goodness to take this card up. No thank you, my man, I will stay where I am."
The butler's face deepened from the tint of a radish to that of the richest beet-root; but he feared to reply, and took the card without a word. "My turn will come very soon," was in his eyes.
Acquainted as he was with the domestic signs and seasons, Fox had not a shadow of a doubt about his fate, so far as the lady of the house could pronounce it. But for all that he saw no reason to submit to rudeness; and all his tremors vanished now at this man's servile arrogance. How many a time had that fat palm borne the impress of a five-shilling piece, slipped into it by the sympathetic Jemmy! And now, to think that this humbug did not know him, and looked at him as a young man aiming at the maids, but come to the wrong door! If anything is wormwood to an Englishman,—that a low, supercilious, ungrateful lacquey—well, here he comes again! Now for it.
Binstock descended the old oak staircase, in a very majestic manner, with the light from a long quarled window playing soft hop-scotch, upon his large countenance. The young doctor, as in absent mood, felt interest in the history, value, and probable future, of the beings on the panels,—stags, otters, foxes, martens, polecats, white hares, badgers, and other noble members of West county suffrage; some entire, and too fat to live, some represented by a very little bit.
Binstock descended, in deep silence still. He felt that the crown had passed away. No other five-shilling piece would ever flutter—as a tip on the sly should have the wings to do—from the gentleman of phials, to the man of bottles.
The salver in his hand was three times as large as the one upon which he had received the card; but the little card was on it, very truly in the centre, squaring the circle of a coat of many arms.