The Boat Club were his guests another evening, and a large gold loving-cup was brought in and carried about with a rich compound of dark wines and stimulating spices, and out of this all were to drink. When all had tasted and toasted in the common cup the object of their common solicitude, the last man after drinking called out that there was something which rattled and jingled and slid about in the bottom of the cup. The master of the house seemed more inquisitive than any of the others, bade the finder spill out the contents of the cup on a salver, and, behold, one hundred and five new sovereigns fresh from the Mint! Upon this discovery the host rose and said that love was the rarest of alchemy, and that the touch of a score of loyal lips, all having the one interest at heart, had changed the liquor into gold for the good of the club, and that the gold and the cup must go together to the club.
When he had the organisers and directors of the Poor's Christmas Coal Fund to dinner, each member found, folded up in his napkin, twenty orders, each order for five shillings' worth of coal.
Such generous and kindly deeds, and such cordial hospitality, could not but endear him to the people of Daneford; and by reason of his knowing so many men intimately, and each one of these men being more or less proud of the acquaintance, they all called him "Wat," to show how very intimate they were with him, and to show that in the best commercial set in Daneford there was no one else known by the name of Wat. They called him Wat in preference to Henry or Harry, because there is not perhaps among all the Christian names one which admits of such an intimately familiar contraction as Walter.
But all the banqueting and largess did not disenchant the ominous mansion.
Those who had been at the prodigal house-warming always remembered the exterior aspect of the house when the revels were at their height as even worse than the ordinary appearance; for the small red windows in the thick dark walls looked at night like the eyes of a desperate man who had drank deeply to keep up his courage in some supreme ordeal. And by day ever afterwards, to those who had been in the house at the festival, it seemed as though the house looked more aghast than ever, like the face of one who, having slept off the artificial courage, had awaked to reduced resources and increased dangers.
CHAPTER IV.
AN UNSELFISH MOTHER.
All the parties given by Mr. Grey at the Manor House were men's parties. Mrs. Grey rarely or never was to be found in the drawing-room after dinner; and, indeed, the drawing-room was seldom lighted up.
Mrs. Grey was a pretty, low-sized, dark-eyed, nervous woman, a few years the junior of her husband. He had met her first in London, in a house where she was staying on a visit with friends. She was alone in the world, had a small fortune, which, while it made her no object of pursuit in the circle she frequented, kept her independent.