Part 57 (1/2)
”The Attorney-General, with due submission, Sir, never saw the original doc.u.ment; he saw the draft, which was subsequently cancelled, and if there be any point upon which I will waive nothing--positively nothing--it is this.”
”When a man insists so positively on his right to make a settlement, it is no unfair presumption to infer that he means to marry.”
”The supposition might certainly be entertained,” said the old envoy, bowing with the courtesy he would have observed in a ministerial conference.
”For _that_”--and the banker laid a most marked and peculiar emphasis on the word--”for that, most a.s.suredly, I was not prepared.”
”Nor can I say,” continued the other, ”that I deemed it any part of my duty to submit such a possibility to your consideration.”
”Perhaps not, Sir Within; there was no absolute reason why you should.
You are, of course, the only judge of what concerns your own interests, or--or----”
”Or happiness?”
”I didn't say happiness, simply because I thought it was the very consideration that you were about to omit.”
Sir Within smiled very blandly; he arranged the frill of his s.h.i.+rt--he wore a frilled s.h.i.+rt--and, taking forth a splendidly jewelled box, he offered a pinch to his companion. It was the diplomatic mode of saying that a conference was closed; but Mr. Ladarelle did not understand this nicety.
”After all, Sir Within, neither you nor I are men who can affect to defy the world. What the world thinks and says of us, we cannot undervalue.”
”The world, at _my_ age, is the six, perhaps eight, people I could get to dine with me.”
”No, no, Sir, don't say that--you can't say that. The world is to you, as to all men who have taken a large part in public affairs, the wide circle of those who bring to their judgment on their fellow-men a vast acquaintance with motives, and interests, and reasons; and, besides all these, with conventionalities and decorums. They form the jury who decide on, not alone the good morals of their contemporaries, but on their good taste.”
”Perhaps it might be my fortune to offer them a most undeniable proof of mine,” said the old man, intentionally mistaking what the other had said.
”Take care, Sir Within! Take care. You might be like that case at Guildford t'other day, where the judge said, 'There is nothing so serious in the indictment against you as your own defence.'”
”I believe you said you never took snuff,” said the envoy, tapping the gorgeous box he still held in his fingers. ”That clump of oaks you see yonder,” continued he, pointing with his finger, ”shuts out one of the most beautiful bits of landscape I ever saw, and I have only waited for your presence here, to decide on cutting them down.”
”I will not consent to fell timber, Sir, for the sake of landscape. I am certain Adolphus would agree with me.”
They now walked on, side by side, in silence. How beautiful that wood alley was! How calmly sweet the leafy shade, how deliciously the blackbird carolled from its depths, and how soft the smooth turf beneath their feet, and yet how little they heeded or cared for it all! The banker spoke first: ”If you had been prepared to propose terms on which it was possible to treat, Sir Within, my son, I know--as for myself, the plan has no attractions for me--but my son, I know, would have felt disposed to meet you; but when you start on the basis that an interval of five years, or something akin to it, makes no inroad whatever on a man's life, and then, possibly aided by that theory, hint at the likelihood of having to charge the estate with settlement----”
”My dear Mr. Ladarelle, forgive my interrupting you. All this is very painful, and, what is worse, unprofitable. I remember a remark of the charming old Duke of Anhalt to his neighbouring sovereign, the Prince of Hohen Alttingen: 'My dear Prince,' said he, 'whatever our ministers can and ought to discuss together, will always prove a most unseemly topic for us;' so be a.s.sured, Sir, that what our lawyers can wrangle over, we will do much better if we leave to them.”
”You know best, I am certain, Sir. I feel it is your province to understand these cases; but I own it would never have occurred to me to take a stupid old German potentate as an authority on a matter of business. May I ask what is that edifice yonder, like a piece of confectionary?”
”It is my aviary, which I shall be proud to-show you.” ”Excuse me, I know nothing about birds.”
”I shall not insist, for it is the season when they lose their plumage.”
”By Jove! Sir, if this system of expense be carried on, I suspect that some of ourselves will be just as devoid of feathers. That gimcrack cost, I should say, seven or eight hundred pounds?”
”You have guessed too low! It will, when finished--for the frescos are not completed--amount to very close on two thousand.”
”For linnets and piping bullfinches!”
”Pardon me, Sir; for nothing of the kind. For the blue sparrows of Java, for the crimson owl of Ceylon, for the azure-winged mocking-bird, and the scarlet bustard.”
”Let us see what the Master will say to this fine catalogue, when it is presented to him as part of works of permanent value--that's the phrase, Sir, permanent and substantial improvements--which scarcely contemplated c.o.c.katoos and canaries. And what do I see yonder? Is that the Lord Mayor's state barge, that you have bought in at second hand?”