"Indeed!" said she, with a faint, very faint show of interest, as though quite unexpectedly aware of some favourable trait in his character. "Who would have thought it! It is a letter from my niece"s governess I have lost, and with it all clue to her address."
"I can, perhaps, supply that," said Mr. M"Kinlay; "at least, if it be the town she stopped at while the yacht is being repaired."
"Exactly so. What"s the name of it?"
"Here it is," said he, producing a small clasped note-book, from which, after a brief search, he read, "Mademoiselle Heinzleman"s address will meanwhile be, "Carrick"s Royal Hotel, Westport, Ireland.""
"What a blessing is red tapery after all!" said she, in a sort of soliloquy. "If there were not these routine people, what would become of us?"
"I am charmed that even my blemishes should have rendered you a service," said he, with a tingling cheek.
"I don"t think my sister knows you are here," said she, ignoring all his remarks.
"I suspect Rickards must have told her," said he, half stiffly.
"Just as likely not; he is getting so stupid--_so_ old."
This was a very cruel speech to be so emphasized, for Rickards was only one year Mr. M"Kinlay"s senior.
"He looks active, alert, and I"d not guess him above forty-six, or seven."
"I don"t care for the number of his years, but he is old enough to be fussy and officious, and he has that atrocious activity which displays itself with certain middle-aged people by a quick, short step, abrupt speech, and a grin when they don"t hear you. Oh, don"t you hate that deaf-man"s smile?"
Mr. M"Kinlay would fain have smiled too, but he feared the category it would sentence him to.
"I"m afraid you expected to find my brother here, but he"s away; he is cruising somewhere along the coast of Ireland."
"I was aware of that. Indeed, I am on my way to join him, and only diverged at Crewe to come over here, that I might bring him the latest advices from home."
"And are you going yachting?" said she, with a sort of surprise that sent the blood to M"Kinlay"s face and even his forehead.
"No, Miss Courtenay, I trust not, for I detest the sea; but Sir Gervais wants my advice about this Irish estate he is so full of."
"Oh! don"t let him buy anything in Ireland. I entreat of you, Mr.
M"Kinlay, not to sanction this. None of us would ever go there, not even to look at it."
"I imagine the mischief is done."
"What do you mean by being done?"
"That the purchase is already made, the agreement ratified, and everything completed but the actual payment."
"Well, then, don"t pay; compromise, contest, make difficulties. You legal people needn"t be told how to raise obstacles. At all events, do anything rather than have an Irish property."
"I wish I had one."
"Well, I wish you had--that is, if you are so bent upon it. But I must go and tell my sister this distressing news. I don"t know how she"ll bear it! By the way," added she, as she reached the door, "I shall find you here when I come back--you are not going away?"
"Certainly not without seeing Lady Vyner, if she will accord me that honour," said he, stiffly.
"Of course she"ll see you," cried she, and left the room.
Left alone with his reflections, Mr. M"Kinlay had not the pleasantest company. Had he mistaken all the relations between Miss Courtenay and himself, or was she changed to him--totally changed? Was it thus that they met last? He knew that she always had a certain flippant manner, and that she was eminently what the French call _inconsequent_; but she was more, far more, now. The allusion to Rickards"s age was a direct impertinence, and the question as to his yachting tastes was a palpable sneer at the habits of his daily life.
"The case does not look well--certainly not well," murmured he, as he walked the room with his hands behind his back. "Many would throw up the brief, and say, "Take a nonsuit." Yes, most men would; but I"ll do nothing rashly!" And with this wise resolve he took up a book and began to read; but still the hours rolled on, and no one came. By the clock over the mantelpiece it was now four. Could it possibly be that it was two hours and a half since--since she had left him?
CHAPTER VIII. AN OLD BACHELOR"S HOUSE
It is quite true Georgina forgot all about Mr. M"Kinlay. The gardener had met her on her way, and presented her with a bouquet of j.a.panese roses--the real purple roses it was supposed never could be reared out of a Tyc.o.o.n"s garden; and so she hastened up to her sister"s room, as totally oblivious of the man of law as though he had been hundreds of miles away. They talked pleasantly of flowers--flowers for the china vase, and flowers for the hair--they laughed at the incongruous blunders of the people who wore "wrong colours," and that "drab bonnet" they had seen last Sunday in church. They next discussed dress, and the impossibility of wearing anything "decent" on the dusty roads; and, lastly, they ordered the ponies and the phaeton, and drove out.
How charmingly pleasant are these lives of little cares and of little duties: where conscience has no burden that would be too weighty for the strength of childhood--where no torturing anxieties invade, no tormenting ambitions pursue--where the morning"s stroll through the garden is the very type of existence, a ramble amidst fragrance, and fruit, and flowers, with no other call upon exertion than to enjoy! And what a teachable faculty is that same one of enjoyment. How it develops itself under good training and favourable opportunities.
These sisters had a very pleasant life, and they knew it; that is, they no more overlooked the stones in their path than their neighbours; but they thoroughly understood that Fate had accorded them a very smooth road, and one right easy to travel. They chatted gaily as they drove along the side of a brightly eddying river, through a glen of some miles in extent. The day was one of those mellow ones of August, tempered with a slight breeze, that gently moved the cloud-shadows on the mountains, adding at each change some new effect of light and colour. "Let us go and call on Sir Within," said Lady Vyner; "it would be a glorious day to see the old castle, and the mountain behind it." Her sister agreed at once; for though the drive was full eight miles, the road was beautiful all the way, and at its end was a grand old keep, Dalradern Castle, with a charming old bachelor for its owner, than whom none better understood how to do the honours of his house. While the sisters push their smart ponies to a brisk trot, we shall take the opportunity to say a word of Sir Within Wardle. He was the last of a great Welsh family of large fortune and ancient name, but who had lived all his life away from England. He had been in diplomacy since his boyhood; he had joined an emba.s.sy in the Low Countries at the age of sixteen, and lived long enough to see the whole map of Europe new coloured.
It had been the dream of his existence to "come home"--to return to the temperate climate and genial air of England--to get back where the trees were really trees, and where gra.s.s was veritably green, and where people told the truth, and tradesmen were honest. Well, he did get back, but it was not to find everything as he had pictured it. The temperate climate rained a good deal. The genial air had a marked tendency to give bronchitis. The gra.s.s was unquestionably green, but so were they who walked in it, for wet feet were invariable. As to truthfulness in his own cla.s.s, he had nothing to complain of; but he thought servants were pretty much as elsewhere, and as to his tradespeople, there was little to choose between Fleet-street and the "Graben," and Piccadilly was not a whit above the Rue de la Paix!
In fact, there were many things as he had hoped, and not a few that disappointed him. People, generally, were what he deemed more narrow-minded; they sat more in judgment over their neighbours than he liked; they were more inquisitive and less charitable. In his world, where he had pa.s.sed fifty odd years, the charming people were admitted to be charming, though certain delinquencies chargeable to them might have disparaged their claims to character. It was not held to the disadvantage of Beauty that discretion should not have united itself to loveliness, and Wit was just as highly appreciated as though its possessor had not been more than lucky with the dice-box. Sir Within, be it remarked, wanted none of these immunities on his own behalf. He had never been what is called a man of gallantry, never gambled. His great pa.s.sion was a splendid house and grand receptions. He liked great people, crowned heads, and after them coroneted ones. He revered Grand-Dukes and Serene Highnesses; and it was not by any means improbable that in his homage to the great lay the secret of that tolerance on the score of morals that marked him; for, be it said with respect, Kings and Kaisers have a habit of showing the world that they soar in a sphere above common proprieties, and can afford to do in ethics what they can do with the Bourse--go in for a rise or fall, as the whim seizes them.
To "come back" with tastes like these was a mistake, but to attempt to justify them was infinitely worse. Sir Within began to lecture his country neighbours on their hard-heartedness and ungenerosity. He enumerated scores of people who had taken little scampers into vice, and come back to live more gorgeously on virtue. What anecdotes he had of ministers who had cheated at cards! Great men, excellent men in all other respects, unimpeachable in all their public acts, and pillars of the State they pertained to.. He told of a society whose very laxity saved all friction, and which went on smoothly--for it always went downwards. The consequence may be antic.i.p.ated. His neighbours--at least their wives--voted him an old monster of vice, corrupted by half a century of foreign iniquities. They refused his invitations, and neglected his advances. His presents of fruit--such fruit too!--were declined, and his society strictly avoided.
The Vyners, who only came to the neighbourhood for a few weeks in the year, scarcely knew anything of local feelings, and only heard that he never went out, and saw little company at home--facts which, when they came to be acquainted with him, struck them as strange, for he was eminently one made for society, and seemed to feel the raciest enjoyment in it. He had all that peculiar go and eagerness in him which pertains to men who talk well, and feel that they have this power.
Perhaps my reader may have met such a character--not that they exist as a cla.s.s--but if he has done so, he will acknowledge that it is a very charming form of selfishness, and gifted with marvellous powers of pleasing. At all events, Lady Vyner and her sister delighted in him--most ungrateful had they been if they had not--for never was courtesy more polished, never homage more devoted or more respectful.
Royalty could not have been received by him with a greater deference, and now, as they drove up to the ma.s.sive entrance of the castle, and the sharp clatter of the ponies" feet awoke the echoes of the solemn court-yard, Sir Within was promptly at his post to help them to descend; and as the wind blew his long white hair backwards, he stooped to kiss their hands with all the reverence of a courtier.
"Do you know, dear ladies," said he, "that I had a vision of this visit?
It was revealed to me--I cannot say how--that you would come over here to-day, and I told Bernais to prepare the orangery; for," said I, "Bernais, I will offer _ces dames_ no luncheon, but will insist on their taking an early dinner."
"What a tempting proposal!" said Lady Vyner, looking at Georgina, whose fiat was always needed to every project.
"I vote for being tempted," said Georgina, gaily; "but what do I see there--something new?"
"No, something old, but restored. Don"t you remember the last day you were here saying that the silence of this old court wanted the pleasant plash of a fountain? and so I got these disabled nymphs and hamadryads remounted, and set them to blow their conchs and spout the cataracts as of yore."
"How beautiful it all is!"
"Curious enough, the figures are really good. Some worthy ancestor of mine had purchased this group at Urbino from some ruined Italian mansion; and, as a work of art, it is almost equal to a Luca della Robb. The mistake is the era. It is not suited to this old dungeon.
Here we are in the tenth century, and this group is cinque cento. Let me send it to the cottage. It would be perfect in your garden."
"Not for worlds. I couldn"t think of it!"
"Don"t think of it, but say "Yes." Remember, that in villa ornamentation nothing comes amiss; there are no incongruities."
"It is impossible, Sir Within--quite impossible."