"I suppose," said I, "that you will soon set off to Lord N——'s?"
"Nay, did I not tell you, that I have sent Summers express, with a note to Lady Ellinor, begging her to come here? I did not see, on reflection, how I could decorously accompany Miss Trevanion alone, without even a female servant, to a house full of gossiping guests. And even had your uncle been well enough to go with us, his presence would but have created an additional cause for wonder; so as soon as we arrived, and while you went up with the Captain, I wrote my letter and despatched my man. I expect Lady Ellinor will be here before nine o'clock. Meanwhile, I have already seen that infamous waiting-woman, and taken care to prevent any danger from her garrulity. And you will be pleased to hear that I have hit upon a mode of satisfying the curiosity of our friend Mrs Grundy—that is, 'The World'—without injury to any one. We must suppose that that footman of Trevanion's was out of his mind—it is but a charitable, and your good father would say, a philosophical supposition. All great knavery is madness! The world could not get on if truth and goodness were not the natural tendencies of sane minds. Do you understand?"
"Not quite."
"Why, the footman, being out of his mind, invented this mad story of Trevanion's illness, frightened Lady Ellinor and Miss Trevanion out of their wits with his own chimera, and hurried them both off, one after the other. I having heard from Trevanion, and knowing he could not have been ill when the servant left him, set off, as was natural in so old a friend of the family, saved her from the freaks of a maniac, who, getting more and more flighty, was beginning to play the Jack o' Lantern, and leading her, Heaven knows where! over the country;—and then wrote to Lady Ellinor to come to her. It is but a hearty laugh at our expense, and Mrs Grundy is content. If you don't want her to pity, or backbite, let her laugh. She is a she-Cerberus—she wants to eat you: well—stop her mouth with a cake."
"Yes," continued this better sort of Aristippus, so wise under all his seeming levities; "the cue thus given, everything favours it. If that rogue of a lackey quoted Shakspeare as much in the servant's hall as he did while I was binding him neck and heels in the kitchen, that's enough for all the household to declare he was moon-stricken; and if we find it necessary to do anything more, why, we must get him to go into Bedlam for a month or two. The disappearance of the waiting-woman is natural; either I or Lady Ellinor send her about her business for her folly in being so gulled by the lunatic. If that's unjust, why, injustice to servants is common enough—public and private. Neither minister nor lackey can be forgiven, if he help us into a scrape. One must vent one's passion on something. Witness my poor cane; though, indeed, a better illustration would be the cane that Louis XIV. broke on a footman, because his majesty was out of humour with a prince whose shoulders were too sacred for royal indignation.
"So you see," concluded Lord Castleton, lowering his voice, "that your uncle, amongst all his other causes of sorrow, may think at least that his name is spared in his son's. And the young man himself may find reform easier, when freed from that despair of the possibility of redemption, which Mrs Grundy inflicts upon those who—Courage, then; life is long!"
"My very words!" I cried; "and so repeated by you, Lord Castleton, they seem prophetic."
"Take my advice, and don't lose sight of your cousin, while his pride is yet humbled, and his heart perhaps softened. I don't say this only for his sake. No, it is your poor uncle I think of: noble old fellow. And now, I think it right to pay Lady Ellinor the respect of repairing, as well as I can, the havoc three sleepless nights have made on the exterior of a gentleman who is on the shady side of remorseless forty."
Lord Castleton here left me, and I wrote to my father, begging him to meet us at the next stage, (which was the nearest point from the high road to the Tower,) and I sent off the letter by a messenger on horseback. That task done, I leant my head upon my hand, and a profound sadness settled upon me, despite all my efforts to face the future, and think only of the duties of life—not its sorrows.