Not that for the most part they knew the strange gentleman. But there is a habit of authority which once gained becomes a part of the man. And Anthony Clyne had this. He retained wherever he went some shadow of the quarter-deck manner. He had served under Nelson, and under Exmouth; but he had resisted, as a glance at his neat, trim figure proved, that coarsening influence which spoiled for Pall Mall too many of the sea-dogs of the great war. Like his famous leader, he had left an arm in the cockpit; and the empty sleeve which he wore pinned to the lappel of his coat added, if possible, to the dignity of the upright carriage and the lean, shaven face. The death of his elder brother had given him the family place, a seat in the House, a chair at White’s, and an income handsome for his day. And he looked all this and more; so that such a company as now eyed him with respect judged him a very perfect gentleman, if a little distant.
But from Clyne Old Hall, where he lived, he could see on the horizon the smoke of toiling cities; and in those cities there were hundreds who hated his cold proud face, and thousands who cursed his name. Not that he was a bad man or a tyrant, or himself ground the faces of the poor. But discipline was his watchword, and reform his bugbear. To palter with reform, to listen to a word about the rights of the masses, was to his mind to parley with anarchy. That governors and governed could be the same appeared to his mind as absurd as that His Majesty’s ships could be commanded from the forecastle. All for the people and nothing by the people was his political maxim, and one amply meeting, as he believed, all eventualities. Lately he had had it carved on a mantel-piece, and the prattle of his only child, as the club-footed boy spelled it out syllable by syllable, was music to his ears.
Whoever wavered, therefore, whoever gave to the violence of those times, he stood firm. And he made others stand. It was his honest belief that a little timely severity—in other words, a whiff of grape-shot—would have nipped the French Revolution in the bud; and while he owned that the lower orders were suffering and times were bad, that bread was dear and work wanting, he was for quelling the least disorder with the utmost rigour of the law.
Such was the man who accepted with a curt nod Tom Gilson’s apology. Then “Have you a room ready?” he asked.
“The fire is still burning in Mr. Rogers’s room,” Mrs. Gilson answered, smoothing at once her apron and her brow. “And it’ll not be used again to-night. But I thought that you had gone on, sir, to Whitehaven.”
“I shall go on to-morrow,” he answered, frowning slightly.
“I’ll show your honour the way,” Tom Gilson said.
“Very good,” he answered. “And dinner, ma’am, as soon as possible.”
“To be sure, sir.” And “This way, your honour.” And taking two candles Gilson went out before Captain Clyne, and with greater ceremony than would be used in these days, lighted him along the passage and up the stairs to Mr. Rogers’s room in the south wing.
The fire had sunk somewhat low, but the room which had witnessed so many emotions in the last twenty-four hours made no sign. The table had been cleared. The glass fronts of the cupboards shone dully; only a chair or two stood here or there out of place. That was all. But had Henrietta, when she descended to breakfast that morning, foreseen who would fill her chair before night, who would dine at her table and brood with stern unseeing eyes on the black-framed prints, for whom the pale-faced clock would tick off depressing seconds, what—what would she have thought? And how would she have faced her future?