He was lashing himself again into an impotent rage, painful to a son to witness; but just then the little grandchild of old Silas, who had held the squire’s horse during his visit to the sick man, came running up, breathless:
‘Please, sir, please, squire, mammy has sent me; grandfather has wakened up sudden, and mammy says he’s dying, and would you please come; she says he’d take it as a kind compliment, she’s sure.’
So they went to the cottage, the squire speaking never a word, but suddenly feeling as if lifted out of a whirlwind and set down in a still and awful place.
CHAPTER 31
A Passive Coquette
It is not to be supposed that such an encounter as Mr. Preston had just had with Roger Hamley sweetened the regards in which the two young men henceforward held each other. They had barely spoken to one another before, and but seldom met; for the land-agent’s employment had hitherto lain at Ashcombe, some sixteen or seventeen miles from Hamley He was older than Roger by several years; but during the time he had lived in the country Osborne and Roger had been at school and at college. Mr. Preston was prepared to dislike the Hamleys for many unreasonable reasons. Cynthia and Molly had both spoken of the brothers with familiar regard, implying considerable intimacy; their flowers had been preferred to his on the occasion of the ball; most people spoke well of them; and Mr. Preston had an animal’s instinctive jealousy and combativeness against all popular young men. Their ‘position’—poor as the Hamleys might be—was far higher than his own in the county; and, moreover, he was agent to the great Whig lord, whose political interests were diametrically opposed to those of the old Tory squire. Not that Lord Cumnor troubled himself much about his political interests. His family had obtained property and title from the Whigs at the time of the Hanoverian succession; and so, traditionally, he was a Whig, and had belonged in his youth to Whig clubs, where he had lost considerable sums of money to Whig gamblers. All this was satisfactory and consistent enough. And if Lord Hollingford had not been returned for the county on the Whig interest—as his father had been before him, until he had succeeded to the title—it is quite probable Lord Cumnor would have considered the British constitution in danger, and the patriotism of his ancestors ungratefully ignored. But, excepting at elections, he had no notion of making Whig and Tory a party cry. He had lived too much in London, and was of too sociable a nature, to exclude any man who jumped with his humour from the hospitality he was always ready to offer, be the agreeable acquaintance Whig, Tory, or Radical. But in the county of which he was lord-lieutenant, the old party distinction was still a shibboleth by which men were tested for their fitness for social intercourse, as well as on the hustings. If by any chance a Whig found himself at a Tory dinner-table—or vice versa—the food was hard of digestion, and wine and viands were criticized rather than enjoyed. A marriage between the young people of the separate parties was almost as unheard-of and prohibited an alliance as that of Romeo and Juliet’s. And of course Mr. Preston was not a man in whose breast such prejudices would die away. They were an excitement to him for one thing, and called out all his talent for intrigue on behalf of the party to which he was allied. Moreover, he considered it as loyalty to his employer to ‘scatter his enemies’ by any means in his power. He had always hated and despised the Tories in general; and after that interview on the marshy common in front of Silas’s cottage, he hated the Hamleys, and Roger especially, with a very choice and particular hatred. ‘That prig,’ as hereafter he always designated Roger—‘he shall pay for it yet,’ he said to himself by way of consolation, after the father and son had left him. ‘What a lout it is!‘—watching the receding figures. ‘The old chap has twice as much spunk,’ as the squire tugged at his bridle reins. ‘The old mare could make her way better without being led, my fine fellow. But I see through your dodge. You’re afraid of your old father turning back and getting into another rage. Position indeed! a beggarly squire—a man who did turn off his men just before winter, to rot or starve, for all he cared—it’s just like a venal old Tory.’ And, under the cover of sympathy with the dismissed labourers, Mr. Preston indulged his own private pique very pleasantly.
Mr. Preston had many causes for rejoicing: he might have forgotten this discomfiture, as he chose to feel it, in the remembrance of an increase of income, and in the popularity he enjoyed in his new abode. All Hollingford came forwards to do the earl’s new agent honour. Mr. Sheepshanks had been a crabbed, crusty old bachelor, frequenting inn-parlours on market days, not unwilling to give dinners to three or four chosen friends and familiars, with whom, in return, he dined from time to time, and with whom, also, he kept up an amicable rivalry in the matter of wines. But he ‘did not appreciate female society,’ as Miss Browning elegantly worded his unwillingness to accept the invitations of the Hollingford ladies. He was unrefined enough to speak of these invitations to his intimate friends aforesaid in the following manner: ‘Those old women’s worrying,’ but, of course, they never heard of this. Litde quarter-of-sheet notes, without any envelopes-that invention was unknown in those days—but sealed in the corners when folded up instead of gummed as they are fastened at present, occasionally passed between Mr. Sheepshanks and the Miss Brownings, Mrs. Goodenough, or others. From the first of these ladies the form ran as follows: —‘Miss Browning and her sister, Miss Phoebe Browning, present their respectful compliments to Mr. Sheepshanks, and beg to inform him that a few friends have kindly consented to favour them with their company at tea on Thursday next. Miss Browning and Miss Phoebe will take it very kindly if Mr. Sheepshanks will join their litde circle.’
Now for Mrs. Goodenough.
‘Mrs. Goodenough’s respects to Mr. Sheepshanks, and hopes he is in good health. She would be very glad if he would favour her with his company to tea on Monday. My daughter, in Combermere, has sent me a couple of guinea-fowls, and Mrs. Goodenough hopes Mr. Sheepshanks will stay and take a bit of supper.’
No need for the dates of the days of the month. The good ladies would have thought that the world was coming to an end if the invitation had been sent out a week before the party therein named. But not even guinea-fowls for supper could tempt Mr. Sheepshanks. He remembered the made-wines he had tasted in former days at Hollingford parties, and shuddered. Bread-and-cheese, with a glass of bitter-beer, or a little brandy-and-water, partaken of in his old clothes (which had worn into shapes of loose comfort, and smelt strongly of tobacco), he liked better than roast guinea-fowl and birch-wine, even without throwing into the balance the stiff uneasy coat, and the tight neck-cloth and tighter shoes. So the ex-agent had been seldom, if ever, seen at the Hollingford tea-parties. He might have had his form of refusal stereotyped, it was so invariably the same.
‘Mr. Sheepshanks’ duty to Miss Browning and her sister’ (to Mrs. Goodenough, or to others, as the case might be). ‘Business of importance prevents him from availing himself of their polite invitation; for which he begs to return his best thanks.’
But now that Mr. Preston had succeeded, and come to live in Hollingford, things were changed.
He accepted every civility right and left, and won golden opinions accordingly. Parties were made in his honour, ‘just as if he had been a bride,’ Miss Phoebe Browning said; and to all of them he went.