Part 62 (2/2)
everything, but ”done” everybody, and of women still more dubious. In these houses the style of living was usually splendid. Wit has a sort of natural affinity for good cookery, and Beauty knows all the value of the ”costly setting” which splendour confers. Last of all, there was that perfect liberty--the freedom from all the discipline of correcter establishments--which gave to every guest some prerogative of a master. You came as you liked, went as you liked, and very often, too, introduced whom you liked. What more could a man do if he were the rightful owner? Now, Grenfell was free of many such houses, but in none was he supreme. There was not one wherein his authority was dominant and his word a law. This he ambitioned; he craved impatiently for the time he could say to the men in his club, ”I'll take you down with me to Ladarelle's--_I_'ll show you some real c.o.c.k shooting--I'll give you a day or two at Dalradern.” Would not that be fame--distinction--triumph?
Ladarelle, too, was a man made by nature for such a part--careless, extravagant, sensual, fond of amus.e.m.e.nt, without caring in the least for the characters of those who contributed towards it, and inherently vain and open to the coa.r.s.est flattery. With him, therefore, Grenfell antic.i.p.ated little trouble; with her he was by no means so sure. She puzzled him, and she seemed determined not to afford him any opportunity of knowing more of her. Her avoidance of him was plain and unmistakable.
”Perhaps she fears, perhaps she distrusts me,” thought he. ”I'll take the earliest moment to a.s.sure her she need do neither, but may make me her friend implicitly.” He understood a good deal by that same word, which in ordinary life is not imputed to friends.h.i.+p. In fact, by friends.h.i.+p, he--as a great many others do--simply meant conspiracy.
Thinking and reflecting in this vein, he lay, when the door opened, and young Ladarelle, in dressing-gown and slippers, entered.
”What's the meaning of all this, Grenfell?” said he. ”My fellow, Fisk, who is just come over, says that Sir Within is perfectly well; he was in the stable-yard this morning at seven o'clock, and that it is the ward, Mademoiselle herself, is ill.”
”He won't have us at dinner, that's all I know,” said Grenfell, yawning carelessly.
”He says nothing whatever about me; scarcely civil, I think, considering I am supposed to be his guest.”
”I'll give you a dinner. You'll pay me with interest one of these days, when you come to that estate.”
”That I will.”
”Do you know, as I lay here this last hour, I have been plotting out the sort of life a man could cut out for himself in a place like this. You are the sort of fellow to have the very pleasantest house in England.”
”I should like to try.”
”If you try, you'll win. Shall I tell you, Master Dolly, the quality which first attracted me towards you?”
”What was it?”
”It was this. You are one of the very few young fellows I ever met who was not infected with a slavish wors.h.i.+p of the t.i.tled cla.s.ses. How, being a Cambridge man, you escaped it, I don't know; but you have escaped it.”
”You're right there,” said Dolly; but the colour that mounted so suddenly to his cheek, seemed to imply a certain confusion in making the a.s.sertion. ”You know we had a peerage once in the family, and it is a hobby of my governor's to try and revive it. He offered the present people to contest any two of the Opposition seats, and proposed to myself to go into the House; but I told him flatly, I'd rather get into Graham's than into Parliament.”
”A much harder thing to do!”
”You're in Graham's, ain't you?”
”Yes; and so shall you be next ballot, if you really wish for it!”
”What a trump you are! Do you know, Grenfell, I can't make it out at all that I never met you before?”
”I'm some twelve or fifteen years your senior,” said the other, and a slight twitching of the mouth showed a certain irritation as he spoke; ”a few years separates men as essentially as a whole hemisphere.”
”I suppose so.”
”Town life, too, moves in such a routine, that when a man comes to my age, he no more makes a new acquaintance than he acquires a new sensation.”
”And, stranger still,” continued Dolly, with that persistence that pertains to ill breeding, ”I never so much as heard of you.”
”I feel ashamed of my obscurity!” said Grenfell, and his pale cheek became mottled with red.
”No, it ain't that. I meant only to say that I never heard of any Grenfells but the Piccadilly fellows, c.o.x and Grenfells! 'None genuine but signed by us.' Ha, ha, ha!” and Dolly laughed at his drollery, and the other joined in the mirth quite sufficiently not to attract any especial attention. ”Not relatives, I presume?” added Dolly, still laughing.
”Delighted if they were!” said Grenfell, with a sickly smile. ”I don't think the dividends would smell of curry powder!”
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