“But indeed, sir, his honour’s opinion of that matter, too——”
“That’s enough, White,” the young gentleman repeated, rising from his seat. He was telling himself that he was not a dog to be kicked away and called to heel again. He would forgive, but he would not return. “I don’t wish to discuss the matter,” he added with an air of finality.
And White did not venture to say more.
He did wisely. For Vaughan, left to himself, had not reflected two minutes before he felt that he had played the churl. To make amends, he called at the house to inquire after the ladies at an hour next morning when they could not be stirring. Having performed that duty, and having learned that no inquiry into the riots would be opened for some days—and also that a proposal to give him a piece of gold plate was under debate at the Commercial Rooms, he fled, pride and love at odds in his breast.
It is possible that in Sir Robert’s heart, also, there was a battle going on. On the eve of the funeral he sat alone in the library at Stapylton, that room in which he had passed so many unhappy hours, and with which the later part of his life seemed bound up. Doubtless, as he sat, he gave solemn thought to the past and the future. The room was no longer dusty, the furniture was no longer shabby; there were fresh flowers on his table; and by his great leather chair, a smaller chair, filled within the last few minutes, had its place. Yet he could not forget what he had suffered there; how he had brooded there. And perhaps he thanked God, amid his more solemn thoughts, that he was not glad that she who had plagued him would plague him no more. All that her friend had urged in her behalf, all that was brightest and best in his memories of her, this generous whim, that quixotic act rose, it may be supposed, before him. And the picture of her fair young beauty, of her laughing face in the bridal veil or under the Leghorn, of her first words to him, of her first acts in her new home! And but that the tears of age flow hardly, it is possible that he would have wept.
Presently—perhaps he was not sorry for it—a knock came at the door and Isaac White entered. He came to take the last instructions for the morrow. A few words settled what remained to be settled, and then, after a little hesitation, “I promised to name it to you, sir,” White said. “I don’t know what you’ll say to it. Dyas wishes to walk with the others.”
Sir Robert winced. “Dyas?” he muttered.
“He says he’s anxious to show his respect for the family, in every way consistent with his opinions.”
“Opinions?” Sir Robert echoed. “Opinions? Good Lord! A butcher’s opinions! Who knows but some day he’ll have a butcher to represent him? Or a baker or a candlestick-maker! If ever they have the ballot, that’ll come with it, White.”
White waited, but as the other said no more, “You won’t forbid him, sir?” he said, a note of appeal in his voice.