Mrs. Roden lived at No. 11, and Mrs. Demijohn lived at No. 10, the house opposite. There had already been some discussion in Holloway about Lord Hampstead, but nothing had as yet been discovered. He might have been at the house on various previous occasions, but had come in so unpretending a manner as hardly to have done more than to cause himself to be regarded as a stranger in Holloway. He was known to be George"s friend, because he had been first seen coming with George on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon. He had also called on a Sunday and walked away, down the Row, with George. Mrs. Demijohn concluded that he was a brother clerk in the Post Office, and had expressed an opinion that "it did not signify," meaning thereby to imply that Holloway need not interest itself about the stranger. A young Government clerk would naturally have another young Government clerk for his friend. Twice Lord Hampstead had come down in an omnibus from Islington; on which occasion it was remarked that as he did not come on Sat.u.r.day there must be something wrong. A clerk, with Sat.u.r.day half-holidays, ought not to be away from his work on Mondays and Tuesdays. Mrs. Duffer, who was regarded in Paradise Row as being very inferior to Mrs. Demijohn, suggested that the young man might, perhaps, not be a Post Office clerk. This, however, was ridiculed.
Where should a Post Office clerk find his friends except among Post Office clerks? "Perhaps he is coming after the widow," suggested Mrs. Duffer. But this also was received with dissent. Mrs. Demijohn declared that Post Office clerks knew better than to marry widows with no more than two or three hundred a year, and old enough to be their mothers. "But why does he come on a Tuesday?" asked Mrs.
Duffer; "and why does he come alone?" "Oh you dear old Mrs. Duffer!"
said Clara Demijohn, the old lady"s niece, naturally thinking that it might not be unnatural that handsome young men should come to Paradise Row.
All this, however, had been as nothing to what occurred in the Row on the occasion which is now about to be described.
"Aunt Jemima," exclaimed Clara Demijohn, looking out of the window, "there"s that young man come again to Number Eleven, riding on horseback, with a groom behind to hold him!"
"Groom to hold him!" exclaimed Mrs. Demijohn, jumping, with all her rheumatism, quickly from her seat, and trotting to the window.
"You look if there aint,--with boots and breeches."
"It must be another," said Mrs. Demijohn, after a pause, during which she had been looking intently at the empty saddle of the horse which the groom was leading slowly up and down the Row.
"It"s the same that came with young Roden that Sat.u.r.day," said Clara; "only he hadn"t been walking, and he looked nicer than ever."
"You can hire them all, horses and groom," said Mrs. Demijohn; "but he"d never make his money last till the end of the month if he went on in that way."
"They aint hired. They"re his own," said Clara.
"How do you know, Miss?"
"By the colour of his boots, and the way he touched his hat, and because his gloves are clean. He aint a Post Office clerk at all, Aunt Jemima."
"I wonder whether he can be coming after the widow," said Mrs.
Demijohn. After this Clara escaped out of the room, leaving her aunt fixed at the window. Such a sight as that groom and those two horses moving up and down together had never been seen in the Row before.
Clara put on her hat and ran across hurriedly to Mrs. Duffer, who lived at No. 15, next door but one to Mrs. Roden. But she was altogether too late to communicate the news as news.
"I knew he wasn"t a Post Office clerk," said Mrs. Duffer, who had seen Lord Hampstead ride up the street; "but who he is, or why, or wherefore, it is beyond me to conjecture. But I never will give up my opinion again, talking to your aunt. I suppose she holds out still that he"s a Post Office clerk."
"She thinks he might have hired them."
"Oh my! Hired them!"
"But did you ever see anything so n.o.ble as the way he got off his horse? As for hire, that"s nonsense. He"s been getting off that horse every day of his life." Thus it was that Paradise Row was awe-stricken by this last coming of George Roden"s friend.
It was an odd thing to do,--this riding down to Holloway. No one else would have done it, either lord or Post Office clerk;--with a hired horse or with private property. There was a hot July sunshine, and the roads across from Hendon Hall consisted chiefly of paved streets.
But Lord Hampstead always did things as others would not do them. It was too far to walk in the midday sun, and therefore he rode. There would be no servant at Mrs. Roden"s house to hold his horse, and therefore he brought one of his own. He did not see why a man on horseback should attract more attention at Holloway than at Hyde Park Corner. Had he guessed the effect which he and his horse would have had in Paradise Row he would have come by some other means.
Mrs. Roden at first received him with considerable embarra.s.sment,--which he probably observed, but in speaking to her seemed not to observe. "Very hot, indeed," he said;--"too hot for riding, as I found soon after I started. I suppose George has given up walking for the present."
"He still walks home, I think."
"If he had declared his purpose of doing so, he"d go on though he had sunstroke every afternoon."
"I hope he is not so obstinate as that, my lord."
"The most obstinate fellow I ever knew in my life! Though the world were to come to an end, he"d let it come rather than change his purpose. It"s all very well for a man to keep his purpose, but he may overdo it."
"Has he been very determined lately in anything?"
"No;--nothing particular. I haven"t seen him for the last week. I want him to come over and dine with me at Hendon one of these days.
I"m all alone there." From this Mrs. Roden learnt that Lord Hampstead at any rate did not intend to quarrel with her son, and she learnt also that Lady Frances was no longer staying at the Hall. "I can send him home," continued the lord, "if he can manage to come down by the railway or the omnibus."
"I will give him your message, my lord."
"Tell him I start on the 21st. My yacht is at Cowes, and I shall go down there on that morning. I shall be away Heaven knows how long;--probably for a month. Vivian will be with me, and we mean to bask away our time in the Norway and Iceland seas, till he goes, like an idiot that he is, to his grouse-shooting. I should like to see George before I start. I said that I was all alone; but Vivian will be with me. George has met him before, and as they didn"t cut each other"s throats then I suppose they won"t now."
"I will tell him all that," said Mrs. Roden.
Then there was a pause for a moment, after which Lord Hampstead went on in an altered voice. "Has he said anything to you since he was at Hendon;--as to my family, I mean?"
"He has told me something."
"I was sure he had. I should not have asked unless I had been quite sure. I know that he would tell you anything of that kind. Well?"
"What am I to say, Lord Hampstead?"
"What has he told you, Mrs. Roden?"
"He has spoken to me of your sister."
"But what has he said?"
"That he loves her."
"And that she loves him?"
"That he hopes so."
"He has said more than that, I take it. They have engaged themselves to each other."
"So I understand."
"What do you think of it, Mrs. Roden?"
"What can I think of it, Lord Hampstead? I hardly dare to think of it at all."
"Was it wise?"
"I suppose where love is concerned wisdom is not much considered."
"But people have to consider it. I hardly know how to think of it. To my idea it was not wise. And yet there is no one living whom I esteem so much as your son."
"You are very good, my lord."
"There is no goodness in it,--any more than in his liking for me. But I can indulge my fancy without doing harm to others. Lady Kingsbury thinks that I am an idiot because I do not live exclusively with counts and countesses; but in declining to take her advice I do not injure her much. She can talk about me and my infatuations among her friends with a smile. She will not be tortured by any feeling of disgrace. So with my father. He has an idea that I am out-Heroding Herod, he having been Herod;--but there is nothing bitter in it to him. Those fine young gentlemen, my brothers, who are the dearest little chicks in the world, five and six and seven years old, will be able to laugh pleasantly at their elder brother when they grow up, as they will do, among the other idle young swells of the nation. That their brother and George Roden should be always together will not even vex them. They may probably receive some benefit themselves, may achieve some diminution of the folly natural to their position, by their advantage in knowing him. In looking at it all round, as far as that goes, there is not only satisfaction to me, but a certain pride. I am doing no more than I have a right to do. Whatever counter-influence I may introduce among my own people, will be good and wholesome. Do you understand me, Mrs. Roden?"
"I think so;--very clearly. I should be dull, if I did not."