"Why, Lord bless me, sir! you came down with his own son," answered the old lady, more and more surprised at her lodger's ignorance of village facts, and beginning greatly to undervalue his understanding. "Why, I saw the captain's head as plainly as possible when you got out of the coach."
"Indeed!" said Burrell, with gravity not to be shaken; "and is he an only child?"
"Oh, no, sir, no!" answered Mrs. Wilson. "Sir Sidney has a young lady, too. Himself, his son, and his daughter--that is all of them, poor people!"
"Poor people!" exclaimed Barrel; "I should think they were rich people, with such a fine estate as that!"
"Ah, sir, things that show best are not always as they look!" replied the good woman. "They are as poor as church mice, sir, and that's poor enough. I wish to God they were richer--much good would they do! But I have heard Lawyer Johnstone say, that, with all the fine estate, Sir Sidney, when all is paid, has not four hundred a year of his own; and gentility without ability is like a pudding without plums! Then there is the captain's half-pay you know; and if they could let the house and park, it might bring something more. They tried one year, and went and lived at a cottage down at Sidmouth--but it did not let, and the place was going to ruin--and so they came back; for, though there are not many of them, yet two or three in a house are better than none at all."
"That is very true," said Barrel; "very true, indeed; and now, my good lady, see if my man has taken up the hot water to the dressing-room."
The good woman took the hint, and retired; and here it may be as well to mention one or two circumstances which preceded the arrival of Henry Burrel, Esq., at the neat little village of Emberton. These circumstances were simply as follows:--Two days before that on which we have thought fit to begin our tale, arrived by the coach--together with four portmanteaus, four dogs, and a gun-case--the servant whom we have seen waiting the traveler at the door of Mrs. Wilson's house. After a few inquiries at the inn, all conceived in very laconic style, he proceeded at once to Mrs. Wilson's, and, in words inexpressibly brief, concluded a bargain for her apartments, as they were called, for one month from that period, in the name of his master, Henry Burrel, Esq. As soon as the important fact was generally known that a gentleman possessing four portmanteaus, four setters, a gun-case, and a man out of livery, was about to take up his residence for one month in the village of Emberton, the wise may imagine the commotion that was created. The object of his visit was evidently to shoot, otherwise what could he do with four setters and a gun-case; but there were various other matters to be ascertained by the young and old ladies of the village; first, and foremost, whether the shooter might not be shot by Cupid's shaft--next, whether he were rich--next, whether he were young or old--next, whether he were a bachelor or a widower--and next, whether he had ever been in India. All these points, with the various branches into which they spread, were matters of consideration to the three classes of ladies who inhabit a small country town; namely, those who will not or can not marry at all, or any more--those who will marry when it suits them--and those who, at any time, will marry any thing or any body. However, not to enter into disagreeable particulars, the surgeon and apothecary, well knowing the importance of the case, the immense increase of influence he might acquire by learning the whole facts, and all the concomitant advantages which might thence accrue, was the first to watch the servant out of the house, after the rumor had spread, and--accosting him in an easy and familial way--to propound to him what the law people call leading questions. But the servant was as taciturn and as guarded as a thrice-convicted old Bailey witness is, or the embassador's private secretary's valet-de-chambre _should_ be and nothing could the doctor make of him. The lawyer tried him next, and then the innkeeper, but all equally failed; and the consequence was, that at the hour the coach was expected to arrive on the two subsequent days, all Emberton was in a flutter. There were the Misses this and the Misses that, as fine as--but there is no word for it--all taking their afternoon walk along the line of road--and there was Mrs. the-other-thing, the fair young widow, in such becoming weeds--buying some gray silk at the mercer's opposite, which she found it necessary to examine by the broader light of the street-door--just as the wheels came rattling down the hill. The coach at length was seen to stop; and Burrel, who had noticed no one on the face of the earth, but his own servant at the door of Mrs. Wilson's, walked into the house as we have before described, while the fact spread like lightning through the place that the gentleman at Mrs. Wilson's was young, handsome, dark, tall, and exquisite, and undoubtedly unmarried--for, by a peculiar test, or sort of instinct, which heaven has bestowed upon womankind, among their many other excellences, the fair sex have an extraordinary gift of discovering whether any male thing be married or single, at the distance of a hundred yards.
There was but one subject of conversation throughout Emberton during the course of that evening. The old topic--the unhappy poverty of the people at the Park, and the absurd pride which prevented them from giving tea-parties, because they could not give dinners, with all the little malice and tittle-tattle thereunto attached--was forgotten for the time, and nothing was spoken of but Mrs. Wilson's lodger and his silent man-servant. Indeed, the latter, with his extraordinary and unaccountable taciturnity, divided with his master the anxious curiosity of the two tea-parties given that evening; and one lady even went so far as not to doubt that he was a foreigner, and could not speak English, in proof of which she adduced his heavy black brows and egregious whiskers--an argument which, combined with the man's reserve, left one half of her hearers nearly convinced.
In the mean while, however, Henry Burrel sat down to his dinner, which he concluded with an excellent appetite, and in perfect silence, totally unconscious of the restless moments he was giving to the tongues of Emberton. This state of meditation continued unbroken till the cloth disappeared, and the silent servant, placing the inviolate bottle of comet claret before him--a supply of which, by the way, had been sent down to the coach-office ten days before, arguing, the lawyers would infer, a predetermination to lodge at Emberton--was about to retire, when he was arrested by his master's voice.
"Have you yet," demanded Burrel, musing, "made the inquiries I directed you, Harding!"