Volume I Part 23 (1/2)
”She almost had won the game, Haire,” said the Chief Baron, as, having handed the ladies to their carriage, he went in search of his own. ”But I have mated her. My sarcasm has never given me one victory with that woman,” said he, sternly. ”I have never conquered her except by courtesy.”
”Why did she come down to court at all?” blurted out Haire; ”it was positively indecent.”
”The Spanish women go to bull-fights, but I never heard that they stepped down into, the arena. She has great courage,--very great courage.”
”Who was the handsome woman with her?”
”Her daughter-in-law, Mrs. Sewell. Now, that is what I call beauty, Haire. There is the element which is denied to us men,--to subdue without effort, to conquer without conflict.”
”Your granddaughter is handsomer, to my thinking.”
”They are like each other,--strangely like. They have the same dimpling of the cheek before they smile, and her laugh has the same ring as Lucy's.”
Haire muttered something, not very intelligibly, indeed, but certainly not sounding like a.s.sent.
”Lady Lendrick had asked me to take these Sewells in at the Priory, and I refused her. Perhaps I 'd have been less peremptory had I seen this beauty. Yes, sir! There is a form of loveliness--this woman has it--as distinctly an influence as intellectual superiority, or great rank, or great riches. To deny its power you must live out of the world, and reject all the ordinances of society.”
”Coquettes, I suppose, have their followers; but I don't think you or I need be of the number.”
”You speak with your accustomed acuteness, Haire; but coquetry is the exercise of many gifts, beauty is the display of one. I can parry off the one; I cannot help feeling the burning rays of the other. Come, come, don't sulk; I am not going to undervalue your favorite Lucy. They have promised to dine with me on Sunday; you must meet them.”
”Dine with you!--dine with you, after what you said today in open court!”
”That I could invite them, and they accept my invitation, is the best reply to those who would, in their malevolence, misinterpret whatever may have fallen from me. The wound of a sharp arrow is never very painful till some inexpert bungler endeavors to withdraw the weapon. It is then that agony becomes excruciating, and peril imminent.”
”I suppose I am the bungler, then?”
”Heaven forbid I should say so! but as I have often warned you, Haire, your turn for sarcasm is too strong for even your good sense. When you have shotted your gun with a good joke, you will make a bull's eye of your best friend.”
”By George, then, I don't know myself, that's all; and I could as easily imagine myself a rich man as a witty one.”
”You are rich in gifts more precious than money; and you have the quintessence of all wit in that property that renders you suggestive; it is like what chemists call latent heat. But to return to Mrs. Sewell: she met my son at the Cape, and reports favorably of his health and prospects.”
”Poor fellow! what a banishment he must feel it!”
”I wonder, sir, how many of us go through life without sacrifices! She says that he goes much into the world, and is already very popular in the society of the place,--a great and happy change to a man who had suffered his indolence and self-indulgence to master him. Had he remained at home, I might have been able to provide for him. George Ogle's place is vacant, and I am determined to exercise my right of appointment.”
”First Registrar, was he not?”
”Yes; a snug berth for incapacity,--one thousand a year. Ogle made more of it by means we shall not inquire into, but which shall not be repeated.”
”You ought to give it to your grandson,” said Haire, bluntly.
”You ought to know better than to say so, sir,” said the Judge, with a stern severity. ”It is to men like myself the public look for example and direction, and it would be to falsify all the teaching of my life if I were to misuse my patronage. Come up early on Sat.u.r.day morning, and go over the lists with me. There are one hundred and twenty-three applicants, backed by peers, bishops, members of Parliament, and men in power.”
”I don't envy you your patronage.”
”Of course not, sir. The one hundred and twenty-two disappointed candidates would present more terror to a mind like yours than any consciousness of a duty fulfilled would compensate for; but I am fas.h.i.+oned of other stuff.”
”Well, I only hope it may be a worthy fellow gets it.”