After a few minutes spent in half-bitter, half-sorrowful rumination, Sir Gilbert said aloud: “I’ll go and have a talk with Louisa. She’s very clear-headed for one of her sex, and her opinions are nearly always worth listening to.”
He found Lady Pell in the morning-room, busy with her crewel work and alone. She had sent Ethel for that after-breakfast ramble which she believed to be so conducive to the girl’s health and good looks. Sir Gilbert sat down and proceeded to give her an account of his interview with Luigi. “What to do with him, I know not,” he ended by saying. “I am sadly afraid that he will never be a credit to the house of Clare. He seems to have contracted a number of low tastes and reprehensible habits before he and I had ever set eyes on each other, and whether I shall ever succeed in eradicating them seems more than doubtful. It is a sad thing to say, but there are times when I feel almost driven to wish that I had remained ignorant of his existence and he of mine.”
“My dear Gilbert, you really should not allow such notions to get into your head. Things are not yet come to that for the poor young man, and remembering that, you ought to regard his shortcomings with the utmost leniency.”
“That is what I try to do, Louisa. It is a bitter reflection, but one which often haunts me, that if I had treated this boy’s father less hardly, my old age might have been a very different one from what it is to-day.”
“You have translated Lewis to an altogether different kind of life from that which he has been used to, and allowances must be made for the fact. Patience and tact will often effect wonders. I would not be in too great a hurry, if I were you. Old habits and ways can’t be got rid of in a hurry. If you believe the young man himself is doing his best to second your efforts, why then——”
“But that is just where I’m in doubt.”
“Then give him the benefit of the doubt; it will only be generous on your part to do so. I think, if I were you, I would let him travel awhile. Nothing tends more to expand a person’s mind—providing,” she drily added, “that one has a mind capable of expansion, and in Lewis’s case the converse has yet to be proved.”
After luncheon he had a further talk with Lady Pell, one result of which was that he asked Luigi for the address of Captain Verinder, and having obtained it, he proceeded to write to that gentleman, asking him, if it would be convenient for him to do so, to call upon the writer between eleven and twelve o’clock on the day but one following. As has already been stated, Sir Gilbert had conceived a distaste for the Captain at their first interview, and he had afterwards been at the pains to snub him most unmercifully. Had he been questioned as to the cause of his dislike, he could only have replied, that it was one of those unreasoning and unreasonable antipathies which nobody cares to formulate in words, even if it were not next to impossible to do so. In point of fact, it was merely an instance the more of “I do not love thee, Doctor Fell.”
Now, however, that he had decided to carry out Lady Pell’s suggestion, and send Luigi abroad for a time, it seemed to him that the boy’s uncle, provided he were willing to undertake the charge, was the proper person into whose hands to entrust him while away from home. He knew nothing whatever to the Captain’s detriment, and he told himself that, as a man of sense, he ought not to allow a foolish prejudice to stand in the way of any project which was likely to prove in the slightest degree beneficial to his grandson. Hence his note to the Captain.
It was not without sundry misgivings and in a far from comfortable frame of mind, that next day Captain Verinder journeyed down to Mapleford. A cab conveyed him from the station to the Chase, where he discharged the vehicle, not knowing whether he might be detained half-an-hour, or half-a-day. In any case, a walk back to the station would do him no harm.