when she reached vale royal, which she did late that night, after a dreary and dangerous drive of fourteen miles, at a walking pace, over frozen roads, she told her parents of the detention of the train by the snow-drift, but she did not tell them of her meeting with lady kenilworth’s brother.
she was tired and chilled, and went at once to a hot bath and her bed, whither her mother brought her a cup of boiling milk with two spoonsful of cognac in it.
“it ought by rights to be milked on to the brandy,” said that good lady. “but that can’t be done here, though there are half a score of beautiful alderneys standing on the home farm only just to supply the house—and such a dairy, my dear! chiny the walls is, and marble the floors. only i don’t hold with their method of churning, and the wenches are much too fine. i showed ’em how to turn out butter one day, and i heard ’em say as i come away that my proper place was the kitchen! well, good-night, my dearie; sleep well.”
“good-night, dear mother,” said katherine with unusual tenderness, for she was not demonstrative, and her parents to her were almost strangers.
“it is not her fault,” she thought, “if we are upstarts and interlopers in this place which henry the second gave the roxhalls.”
then her great fatigue conquered her and, the brandied milk aiding, she fell sound asleep and slept dreamlessly until the chimes of the clock tower sounded eleven in the still, sunny, frosty, noonday air.
then she awoke with the sense of something odiously painful having happened, and, as she saw the withered bouquet of violets, which she had told her maid to leave, with her gloves and her muff on a table near, she remembered, and the words of hurstmanceaux came back on her mind with poignant mortification in their memories.
[161]“how right he was! oh, how right he was! but how merciless!” she thought, as she looked through the panes of the oriel window of her chamber out on to the white and silent park. she saw the huge old oaks, the grand old views, the distant mere frozen over, the deer crossing the snow in the distance to be fed. the bells of a church unseen were chiming musically. in the ivy beneath her windows two robins were singing in friendly rivalry. above-head was a pale soft sky of faintest blue. in the air there was frost. it was all charming, homelike, stately, simple; it would have delighted her if—if—if—there was so many “ifs” she felt sick and weary at the mere thought of them, and the innocent tranquillity of the scene jarred on all her nerves with pain.
it was late in the morning before she could summon strength to go downstairs, where she found her mother lunching alone in the tudor dining-hall; her father had gone away early in a sledge to attend political meetings in an adjacent county, and the large house-party invited was not due for two weeks.
“who are coming, mother?” she asked.
“oh, my dear, i never know; i scarce know who they are when i see ’em,” replied the present mistress of vale royal. “lady kenilworth has arranged it all. she brings her friends.”
katherine colored at the name.
“as she would go to the hotel de paris at monte carlo, or the sanatorium at hot springs!” she said bitterly.
“well, i don’t know about that. she’d have to pay for ’em in those places,” said mrs. massarene seriously, not intending any sarcasm.
“don’t you eat nothing, my dear?” asked her mother anxiously. “i can’t say as india have made you fat, kathleen.”
she smiled involuntarily.
“surely you do not wish me to be fat, mother?”
“well, no, not exactly. but i’d like to see you enjoy your food.”
“did she go through the form of showing you her list?”
“no, my dear, she didn’t. your father knows who is coming. i did say to her as how i wished she’d bring her[162] children—they are such little ducks—but she gave a little scoffing laugh and didn’t even reply.”
“how can you tolerate her! you should turn her out of the house!”
“oh, my dear kathleen,” said mrs. massarene in an awed tone. “we’ve owed everything to her. if it hadn’t been for her i believe we shouldn’t have known a soul worth speaking of to this day. that old khris (though he’s a real prince) is somehow down on his luck and can’t get anybody anywhere. you’ve made fine friends, to be sure, but they didn’t cotton to us; and your lady mary—whom you’ve just come from—they say, isn’t what she should be.”
“is lady kenilworth?”
“lord, she must be, my dear! why she comes on here from sandringham! she’s at the very tiptop of the tree. she stays at windsor and she sits next the queen at the braemar gathering. what more could you have? and though she does bite my nose off and treat me like dirt i can’t help being took by her; there’s something about her carries you off your feet like; i don’t know what to call it.”
“fascination.”
“well, yes; i suppose you’d say so. it’s a kind of power in her, and grace and beauty and cruelty all mixed up in her, as ’tis in a pretty young cat. your father’s that wrapped up in her he sits staring like an owl when she’s in the room, and i believe if she told him to hop on one leg round the houses of parliament he’d do it to please her.”
“does he not see how ridiculous she makes him?”
“my dear,” said mrs. massarene with solemnity, “a man never thinks he is ridiculous. he says to himself, ‘i’m a man,’ and he gets a queer sort of comfort out of that as a baby does out of sucking its thumb.”
katherine smiled absently.
“does lady kenilworth ever speak of her brother—her eldest brother, lord hurstmanceaux?” she said in an embarrassed tone, which her mother did not observe.
“yes; she says he’s a bear. she’s brought her brothers-in-law, and a good many of her relations, her ‘people,’ as she calls ’em, but her own brothers, none of ’em, ever.”
“this place belonged to her cousin.”
[163]“did it? i never knew anything about it. william came in one day and said: ‘i’ve bought a place in the shires. go down there this afternoon.’ that was all. i was struck all of a heap when i saw it. and the housekeeper, who had stayed on to go over the inventory, drew herself up when she met me, stiff as stiff, and said to me, ‘i shall be glad if you will release me of my charge, madam. i have always lived with gentlefolks.’ those were her very words, kathleen. a fine set-up, glum-looking woman she was, dressed in black watered silk, and she went off the next morning, though we had offered her double her price to remain under us. that’s just, you know, what gregson, the courier, said once; or rather, he said he wouldn’t live with gentlefolks because they was always out o’ pocket.”
katherine moved restlessly: words rose to her lips which she repressed.
“and when i go in the village,” continued her mother, “there’s nothing but black looks and shut doors, and the very geese on the little common screech at me. the rector’s civil, of course, because he’s an eye to the main chance, but he’s the only one; and i’m afeard it’s mostly because he wants your father to give him a peal of bells. they seem to think your father should pay the national debt!”
katherine sighed.
“poor mother! que de couleuvres on vous fait avaler!”
“don’t talk french, kathleen, i can’t abide it,” said mrs. massarene with unusual acerbity. “when we first set foot in kerosene city, a few planks on the mud as ’twas then, a little nasty frenchman had an eating shop next ours and he undersold me in everything, and made dishes out of nothing, and such pastry—light as love! my best was lead beside it.”
she continued to recall the culinary feats of her gallic rival, whose superiority had filled her with a gallophobia deathless and pitiless as that of francesco crispi; and her daughter’s thoughts wandered away from her to the low-lying white fields round greater thrope, and to the remembrance of the dark blue eyes which had met her own so frankly through the misty air.
[164]“would you mind very much, mother,” she said at length, “if i did not appear while these people are here? i could go to lady mary’s or to brighton.”
mrs. massarene was startled and alarmed.
“oh, my dearie, no! not on any account. your father would never forgive it. you have been so much away; it has angered him so. and as for your views and your reasons he’d never see them, my dear, no more than a blind man can see a church clock. pray don’t dream of it, child. people say it is so odd you went to india. they will think you have some skin-disease, or are light in your head, unless you are seen now at home.”
katherine sighed again.
“i think you do not understand,” she said in a low, grave voice. “i utterly disapprove, i utterly abhor, the course which my father takes. i think his objects contemptible and his means to attain them loathsome. if you only knew what they look to persons of breeding and honor! society laughs at him whilst it uses him and rules him. he is not a gentleman. he never will be one. a complacent premier may get him a knightage, a baronetage, a peerage; and a sovereign as complacent may let him kiss her hand. but nothing of that will make him a gentleman. he will never be one if he lived to be a hundred or if he live to entertain emperors. i cannot alter his actions. i cannot open his eyes. i have perhaps no right to speak thus of him. but i cannot help it. i despise the whole miserable ignominious farce. i cannot bear to be forced to remain a spectator of it. this place is lord roxhall’s. all the money in the world cannot make it ours. we are aliens and intruders. all the people whom lady kenilworth will bring here next week will go away to ridicule us, plebeians as we are masquerading in fine clothes and ancient houses.”
“my dear! my dear!” cried her mother in great trepidation. “you make me all in a cold tremble to hear you. all you say is gospel truth, and i’ve felt it many a time, or like to it, myself. but it is no manner of use to say it. your father thinks he’s a great man, and nobody’ll put him out of conceit of himself; it’s true that as he made his pile he’s the right to the spending of it.[165] don’t you talk of going away, kathleen. you are the only creature i have to look to, for i know full well that i’m only a stone in your father’s path and a thorn in his flesh. i can’t kill myself to pleasure him, for ’twould be fire everlasting, but i know i’m no use to him now. i was of use on the other side, and he knew it then, though i can’t call to mind one grateful word as ever he said to me; but he knew it, and wouldn’t have got along as fast as he did without me; and nobody kept ledgers better than me, nor scrubbed a kitchen table whiter. that’s neither here nor there now, however; and i’m in his way now with fine folks; and look like ’em i never shall. but you, my dear, you do look like ’em, and talk like ’em, and carry yourself like ’em. i would call you like an empress, only i saw an empress once, and she was a little old hodmedod of a woman in a shetland shawl, and she was cheapening shells on the beach at blankenberge; and you are grand and stately, and fine as a lily on its stalk. i want them to see what you look like, my dear; and they won’t laugh at you, that’s certain. as for the house, it’s been paid for, so i don’t see how you can say it’s lord roxhall’s still. he can’t eat his cake and have it.
“and my dear kathleen,” she continued, changing the subject with great agitation, “they say you mustn’t know lady mary; she, she, she isn’t respectable. there is something about her boy’s tutor and about a painter, a house painter, even, they say.”
katherine massarene colored. “dear mother, i know lady mary is not all she might be. she is light and foolish. but when you sent me to that brighton school, a little frightened, stupid, miserable child, who could not even speak grammatically, lady mary noticed me when she came to see enid and may (her own daughters), and told them to be kind to me, and asked me to spend the holidays with them; and they were kind, most kind, and never laughed at me, and took pains to tell me how to behave and how to speak; and i assure you, my dear mother, that lady mary might be the worst woman under the sun i should never admit it, and i should always be grateful to her for her goodness to me when i was friendless[166] and common and ridiculous—a little vulgar chit who called you ‘ma.’”
mrs. massarene was divided between wrath and emotion.
“i am sure you were a well-brought-up child from your cradle, and pretty-behaved if ever there were one,” she said with offence. “and i dare say she knew as how your father’d made his pile, and had an eye on it.”
“oh no, oh no,” said katherine with warmth and scorn. “lady mary is not like that, nor any of her people; they are generous and careless, and never calculate; they are not like your kenilworths and karsteins. she is a very thoroughbred woman, and to her novi homines are novi homines, however gilded may be their stucco pedestals.”
happily the phrase was incomprehensible to her hearer, who merely replied obstinately: “well, they tell me she’s ill spoke of, and i can’t have you mixed up with any as is; but if she was kind to you, my dear, and i mind me well you always wrote about her as being such, i’ll do anything to help her in reason. you know, my dear,” she added, lowering her voice, for the utterance was treasonable, “i have found out as how all them great folks are all hollow inside, as one may say. they live uncommon smart, and whisk about all the year round, but they’re all of ’em in queer street, living by their wits, as one may say; now i be bound your lady mary is so too, because she’s a duke’s daughter, and her husband came into the country with king canute, him as washed his feet in the sea—at least the book says so—and anything she’d like done in the way of money i’d be delighted to do, since she was good to you——”
“oh, my dear mother,” cried katherine, half amused and half incensed, “pray put that sort of thing out of your mind altogether. lady mary has everything she wants, and if she had not she would die sooner than say so. and indeed they are quite rich. not what my father would call so probably, but enough so for a county family which dates, as you rightly observe, from knutt.”
mrs. massarene sighed heavily; she was bewildered but she was obstinate.
[167]“di’monds then?” she said tentatively. “none of them ever have enough di’monds. one might send her a standup thing for her head in di’monds—tira i think they call it; and say as how we are most grateful all of us, but you can’t be intimate because virtue’s more than rank.”
katherine rose with strong effort controlling the deep anger and the irresistible laughter which moved her.
“we will talk of these things another time, dear,” she said after a moment. “lady mary will not be in london this season after whitsuntide. enid and may go out this year with their grandmother, lady chillingham.”
“that’s just what she said,” cried her mother in triumph. “she said lady mary couldn’t show her nose at court even to present her own girls!”
“who said so?”
“lady kenilworth.”
“lady kenilworth a purist! i fear she could give my poor lady mary a good many points——”
“what do you mean? lady kenilworth knows the world.”
“that no one doubts. and i dare say she would take the tiara, my dear mother.”
“i don’t understand you, and you have a very rude way of speaking.”
“forgive me, dear!” said her daughter with grace and penitence. “i do not like your guide, philosopher and friend, though she is one of the prettiest women i ever saw in my life.”
“well, you can’t say she doesn’t go to court,” cried mrs. massarene in triumph.
“i am quite sure she will go to court all her life,” replied katherine massarene—an answer on which her mother pondered darkly in silence. it must be meant for praise, it could not be meant for blame; and yet there was a tone in the speaker’s voice, a way of saying this apparently acquiescent and complimentary phrase, which troubled its hearer.
“her answer’s for all the world like a pail of fine milk spoilt by the cow having ate garlic,” thought mrs. massarene, her mind reverting to happy homely days in the[168] dairy and the pastures with blossom and bee and buttercup, where courts were realms unknown.
katherine was silent.
she felt the absolute impossibility of inducing her mother to make any stand against the way of life which to herself was so abhorrent; or even to make her comprehend the suffering it was to her finer and more sensitive nature. her mother disliked the life because it worried her and made her feel foolish and incapable, but she could not reach any conception of the torture and degradation which it appeared to katherine. if she had possessed any power, any influence, if she had been able to return in kind the insolence she winced under, and the patronage she so bitterly resented, things would have seemed different to her; but she could do nothing, she could only remain the passive though indignant spectator of what she abhorred.
to her the position was false, contemptible, infamous, everything which hurstmanceaux had called it; and she was compelled to appear a voluntary sharer in and accessory to it. the house, beautiful, ancient, interesting as it was, seemed to her only a hateful prison—a prison in which she was every day set in a pillory.
all the underlings of the gardens, the stables, the home farm, the preserves, showed the contempt which they felt for these unwelcome successors of the roxhall family.
“one would think one had not paid a single penny for the place,” said mrs. massarene, who, when she asked the head gardener at what rate he sold his fresias, was met by the curt reply, “we don’t sell no flowers here, mum. lord roxhall never allowed it.”
“but, my good man,” said his present mistress, “lord roxhall’s gone for ever and aye; he’s naught to do with the place any more, and to keep all these miles of glass without making a profit out of them is a thing i couldn’t hold with anyhow. nobody’s so much money that they can afford waste, mr. simpson; and what we don’t want ourselves must be sold.”
“that must be as you choose, mum,” said the head gardener doggedly. “you’ll suit yourself and i’ll suit[169] myself. i’ve lived with gentlefolk and i hain’t lived with traders.”
at the same moment mr. winter, who had of course brought down his household, was saying to the head keeper:
“yes, it does turn one’s stomach to stay with these shoeblacks. it’s the social democracy, that’s what it is. but the old families they’re all run to seed like your roxhall’s; they expect one to put up with double-bedded rooms and african sherrys. i am one as always stands up for the aristocracy, but their cellars aren’t what they were nor their tables neither. that’s why they’re always dining theirselves with the sweeps and the shoeblacks.”
in happy ignorance that his groom of the chambers was describing him as a sweep and a shoeblack, william massarene, with a marquis, a bishop, and a lord-lieutenant awaiting him, was driving to address a political meeting in the chief town of south woldshire.
when he got up on his dog-cart, correctly attired in the garb and the gaiters of a squire of high degree, and drove over to quarter sessions, he felt as if he had been a justice of the peace and the master of vale royal all his life. he really handled horses very well; his driving was somewhat too flashy and reckless for english taste, but the animal had never been foaled which he would not have been able to break in; he who had ridden bronchos barebacked, and raced blue grass trotters, and this power stood him in good stead in such a horsy county as woldshire.
the snow was gone and the weather was open. there was the prospect of political changes in the air, and, in the event of a general election, his chiefs of party desired that he should represent his county instead of continuing member for that unsound and uncertain metropolitan division, which he did actually represent. to feel the way and introduce him politically in the borough before there should be any question of his being put up for it, those who were interested in the matter had got up a gathering of county notabilities on a foreign question of the moment, which was supposed, as all foreign questions always are, to involve the entire existence of england.[170] he had been told what to say on these questions, and although it seemed to him “awful rot,” like everything inculcated by his leaders, he said it obediently, and refreshed himself afterwards by some personal statements. amongst men, on public matters he always showed to advantage. he was common, ignorant, absurd, very often; but he was a man, a man who could hold his own and had a head on his shoulders. that mastery of fate which had made him what he was gave meaning to his dull features, and light to his dull eyes. no one, as modern existence is constituted, could separate him altogether from the weight of his ruthless will, and the greatness of his accomplished purpose; he stood on a solid basis of acquired gold. before a fine lady he shook in his shoes, and before a prince he trembled; but at a mass-meeting he was still the terrible, the formidable, the indomitable, “bull-dozing boss” of kerosene city. his stout hands gripped the rail in front of him, while their veins stood out like cords, and his rough rasping voice made its way through the wintry air of england, as it had done through a blizzard on the plains of the west.
“i’ve been a workingman myself, gentlemen,” he said, amidst vociferous cheers, “and if i’m a rich man to-day it’s been by my own hand and my own head as i’ve become so. i’ve come home to die” (a voice in the crowd: “you’ll live a hundred years!”), “but before i die i want to do what good i can to my country and my fellow-countrymen.” (vociferous cheers.) “blood’s thicker than water, gentlemen——”
the applause here was so deafening that he was forced to pause; this phrase never fails to raise a tempest of admiration, probably because no one can ever possibly say what it is intended to mean.
“i know the institutions of my country, gentlemen,” he continued, “and i am proud to take my humble share in holding them steady through stormy weather. i have lived for over thirty years, gentlemen, in a land where the institutions are republican, and i wish to speak of that great republic with the sincere respect i feel. but a republican form of government would be wholly unfitted for great britain.”
[171]“why so?” asked a voice in the crowd.
mr. massarene did not feel called on to answer so indiscreet a question; he continued as though no one had spoken.
“the foundations of her greatness lie embedded in the past, and are inseparably allied with her institutions. the courage, honor and patriotism of her nobility” (the marquis with a gratified expression played with his watch-chain), “the devotion, purity, and self-sacrifice of her church” (the prelate patted the black silk band on his stomach and purred gently like a cat), “the examples of high virtue and wisdom which have adorned her throne” (the lord-lieutenant looked ecstatic and adoring, as a pilgrim of lourdes before the shrine)—“all these, gentlemen, have made her what she is, the idol of her sons, the terror of her foes, the bulwark at once of religious faith and of religious freedom. the great glory of our country, sirs, is that poor and rich are equal before the law” (“yah!” from a rude man below), “and that the roughest, most friendless lad may by probity and industry reach her highest honors. i myself left queenstown, gentlemen, a young fellow with three pounds in my pocket and a change of clothes in a bundle, and that i have the honor of addressing you here to-day is due to the fact that i toiled honestly from morning till night for more than thirty years in exile. it was the hope of coming back, sirs, and settling on my native soil, which kept the heart up in me through hunger and thirst, and heat and cold, and such toil as here you know nothing about. i was a poor working lad, gentlemen, with three pounds in my pocket, and yet here i stand to-day the equal of prince and peer” (the marquis frowned, the bishop fidgetted, the lord-lieutenant coughed, but mr. massarene was emballé, and heeded not these hints of disapprobation). “what do you want with republican institutions, my friends, when under a monarchy the doors of wealth and honor open wide to the laboring man who has had sense and self-denial enough to work his way upward?” (“they open to a golden key, damn your jaw!” cried a vulgar being in the mob below.) “who by honesty and economy, and incessant toil, has come to put his legs under the same mahogany[172] with the highest of the land. you talk of golden keys, sir—the only key to success is the key of character. before i give my hand, sir, whether to prince or pauper, i ask—what is his character?”
“dear me, dear me, this is very irrelevant,” murmured the lord-lieutenant, much distressed.
“damned inconvenient,” murmured the marquis with a chuckle. the bishop folded his hands and looked rapt and pious. but the mayor of the borough, with desperation, plucked at the orator’s coat-tails.
“order, order,” he murmured with a clever adaptation of parliamentary procedure; and mr. massarene, whose ear was quick, and who was proud of his knowledge of the by-words of the benches, understood that he was irrelevant and on ticklish grounds, and brought forward a racy american anecdote with ready presence of mind and extreme success; whilst the crowd below roared with loud and delighted laughter. the gentlemen at his elbow breathed again. there had been, in a ducal house of the countryside, a very grave scandal a few months earlier; a scandal which had become town-talk, and even been dragged into the law courts. it would never do to have the yokels told their “character” was a patrician or political sine qua non.
on the whole the speech was a very popular one; the new owner of vale royal was welcomed. too egotistic in places, and too unpolished in others, it was vigorous, strong, and appealed forcibly to the mob by its picture of a herdsman with three pounds in his pocket become a capitalist and a patron of princes.
to his own immediate and aristocratic supporters its effect was less inspiriting. he gave them distinctly to understand the quid pro quo which he gave and expected.
“if he don’t get what he wants from our side he’ll rat as sure as he lives,” thought the lord-lieutenant; and the mayor thought to himself that it would really have been better to have left the metropolitan division its member ungrudged.
“what a fearful person,” said the lord-lieutenant, a tall slender man with fair hair turning grey, and a patrician face, blank and dreary in expression, though many[173] years of conflict between a great name and a narrow income.
“his speech was quite radical. i really did not know how to sit still and hear it,” whispered the bishop in a tone of awe and horror.
the marquis lighted a cigar. “never mind that. it took with the yokels. he’ll vote straight for us. he wants a peerage.”
“gladstone would give him a peerage.”
“of course. but gladstone’s peerages are like gladstone claret—unpleasantly cheap. besides, our man loves smart folks—the liberals are dowdy; our man loves ‘proputty,’ like the northern farmer, and the liberals are always nibbling into it like mice into cheese. besides, mouse kenilworth’s godmother to this beast; she has put him in the way he should go.”
“i wish she would write his speeches for him,” said the bishop.
“took with the yokels, took with the yokels,” repeated the marquis. “ain’t that what speeches are made for? people who can read don’t want to be bawled at. man will do very well, and we shall have him in the lords; he’ll call himself lord vale royal, i suppose—ha! ha!—poor roxhall!”
the lord-lieutenant, who could not accept the social earthquake with the serenity of his friend, shivered, and went to his carriage.
“i shall go and ask our candidate for some money,” murmured the bishop, whose carriage was not quite ready.
the marquis grinned. “nothing like a cleric for thinking of the main chance!” he said to himself.
the bishop hesitated a few moments, looked up at the steps of the hotel, and hastened across the market-place as rapidly as his portly paunch and tight ecclesiastical shoes permitted. mr. massarene was standing on the top of the step with three of his supporters. the churchman took from his pocket a roll of thick vellum-like paper, evidently a memorial or a subscription-list.
“for the rood-screen,” he murmured. “a transcendent work of art. and the restoration of the chauntry. dear[174] mr. massarene, with your admirable principles, i am sure we may count on your support?”
william massarene, with his gold pencil case between his thick finger and thumb, added his name to the list on the vellum-like scroll.
the lord-lieutenant was on that list for twenty guineas; lord roxhall for ten guineas. william massarene wrote himself down for two hundred guineas.
“back the church for never forgetting to do business,” said the marquis with a chuckle to himself; and he too mounted the hotel steps as his ecclesiastical friend descended them, after warmly and blandly pressing the candidate’s hand and inviting him to dinner at the episcopal palace.
“booking a front seat in heaven, mr. massarene?” he cried out in his good-humored contemptuous voice. “well, come, do something for earth too. you haven’t subscribed to the thorpe valley hounds. got to do it, you know. hope you’re sound about pug.”
the marquis had been master of the pack for a dozen years.
“i’m no sportsman,” said his victim, who had no notion who or what pug was. “but if it’s the custom in the county——”
“of course it’s the custom of the county! roxhall, poor fellow, was a staunch friend to us. you mustn’t be otherwise. we’ll draw vale royal coverts for cubs next october. mind you’re sound about pug.”
“may i ask what lord roxhall subscribed?”
“fifty guineas,” said the m. f. h. truthfully.
mr. massarene planted his legs a little further apart and thrust out his stomach.
“i’ll give four fifties to the dogs,” he said with grandeur.
“the dogs!” ejaculated the marquis; but he restrained his emotions and grasped his new subscriber’s hand cordially.
“the kennels and the cathedral got the same measure,” he thought with amusement, as he nodded good-humoredly to the crowd below and entered the hotel to get a nip of something warm.
[175]“deuced clever of the bishop; i shouldn’t have thought of making the cad ‘part.’ what an eye the saints always have on the money-bags,” he thought as he drank some rum-punch.
but, being a cheery person who took the world as he found it, he said to his wife when he got home that day: “go and call at vale royal, anne; the man’s a very good fellow. no nonsense about his origin. told us all he began life with three pounds in his pocket. don’t like going to see ’em in roxhall’s place? oh, lord, my dear, that’s sentiment. if roxhall hadn’t sold the place they couldn’t have bought it, could they?”
“but why should we know them?” said the lady, who was unwilling to accord her countenance to new people.
“because he’s promised two hundred guineas to the ‘dogs,’” said the marquis with a chuckle, “and because he’s a pillar of the tory democracy, my dear!”
“tory democracy? a contradiction in terms!” said the lady. “you might as well say angelic anarchy!”
“we shall come to that, too,” said her spouse.
