Volume Ii Part 10 (2/2)
”No, no, no! It is simply this, that though I retain a pretty fair general impression of what I said myself, and what he said afterwards, I could no more pretend to recount it accurately than I could say off by heart a scene in 'Romeo and Juliet.'”
”Why don't you take the 'Comedy of Errors' for your ill.u.s.tration, Peter Barrington? I ask you, Mr. Withering, have you in all your experience met anything like this?”
”It would go hard with a man in the witness-box to make such a declaration, I must say.”
”What would a jury think of, what would a judge say to him?” said she, using the most formidable of all penalties to her brother's imagination.
”Wouldn't the court tell him that he would be compelled to speak out?”
”They'd have it out on the cross-examination, at all events, if not on the direct.”
”In the name of confusion, what do you want with me?” exclaimed Peter, in despair.
”We want everything,--everything that you heard about this man. Who he is, what he is; what by the father's side, what by the mother's; what are his means, and where; who knows him, who are his a.s.sociates. Bear in mind that to us, here, he has dropped out of the clouds.”
”And gone back there too,” added Withering.
”I wish to Heaven he had taken me with him!” sighed Peter, drearily.
”I think in this case, Miss Barrington,” said Withering, with a well-affected gravity, ”we had better withdraw a juror, and accept a nonsuit.”
”I have done with it altogether,” said she, gathering up her worsted and her needles, and preparing to leave the room.
”My dear Dinah,” said Barrington, entreatingly, ”imagine a man as wanting in tact as I am,--and as timid, too, about giving casual offence,--conducting such an inquiry as you committed to my hands. Fancy how, at every attempt to obtain information, his own boldness, I might call it rudeness, stared him in the face, till at last, rather than push his investigations, he grew puzzled how to apologize for his prying curiosity.”
”Brother, brother, this is too bad! It had been better to have thought more of your granddaughter's fate and less of your own feelings.” And with this she flounced out of the room, upsetting a spider-table, and a case of stuffed birds that stood on it, as she pa.s.sed.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 410]
”I don't doubt but she 's right, Tom,” said Peter, when the door closed.
”Did he not tell you who he was, and what his fortune? Did you really learn nothing from him?”
”He told me everything; and if I had not been so cruelly badgered, I could have repeated every word of it; but you never made a hound true to the scent by flogging him, Tom,--is n't that a fact, eh?” And consoled by an ill.u.s.tration that seemed so pat to his case, he took his hat and strolled out into the garden.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 410]
CHAPTER VIII. GENERAL CONYERS
In a snug little room of the Old s.h.i.+p Hotel, at Dover, a large, heavy man, with snow-white hair, and moustaches,--the latter less common in those days than the present,--sat at table with a younger one, so like him that no doubt could have existed as to their being father and son.
They had dined, and were sitting over their wine, talking occasionally, but oftener looking fondly and affectionately at each other; and once, by an instinct of sudden love, grasping each other's hand, and sitting thus several minutes without a word on either side.
”You did not expect me before to-morrow, Fred,” said the old man, at last.
”No, father,” replied young Conyers. ”I saw by the newspapers that you were to dine at the Tuileries on Tuesday, and I thought you would not quit Paris the same evening.”
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