The next afternoon Lord Welter and Charles rode up to the door at Ranford. The servants looked surprised; they were not expected. His lordship was out shooting; her ladyship was in the poultry-yard; Mr. Pool was in the billiard-room with Lord Saltire.
“The deuce!” said Lord Welter; “that’s lucky. I’ll get him to break it to the governor.”
The venerable nobleman was very much amused by the misfortunes of these ingenuous youths, and undertook the commission with great good nature. But, when he heard the cause of the mishap, he altered his tone considerably, and took on himself to give the young men what was for him a severe lecture. He was sorry this had come out of a drunken riot; he wished it ——— which, though bad enough, did not carry the disgrace with it that the other did. Let them take the advice of an old fellow who had lived in the world, ay, and moved with the world, for above eighty years, and take care not to be marked, even among their own set, as drinking men. In his day, he allowed, drinking was entirely de rigueur; and indeed nothing could be more proper and correct than the whole tiling they had just described to him, if it had happened fifty years ago. But now a drunken row was an anachronism. Nobody drank now. He had made a point of watching the best young fellows, and none of them drank. He made; a point of taking the time from the rising young fellows, as every one ought to, who wished to go with the world. In his day, for instance, it was the custom to talk with considerable freedom on sacred subjects, and he himself had been somewhat notorious for that sort of thing; but look at him now: he conformed with the times, and went to church. Every one went to church now. Let him call their attention to the fact that a great improvement had taken place in public morals of late years.
So the good-natured old heathen gave them what, I daresay, he thought was the best of advice. He is gone now to see what his system of morality is worth. I am very shy of judging him, or the men of his time. It gives me great pain to hear the men of the revolutionary era spoken of flippantly. The time was so exceptional. The men of that time were a race of giants. One wonders how the world got through that time at all. Six hundred millions of treasure spent by Britain alone! How mam millions of lives lost none may guess. What wonder if there were hellfire clubs and all kinds of monstrosities. Would any of the present generation have attended the fete of the goddess of reason, if they had lived at that time, I wonder? Of course they wouldn’t.
Charles went alone to the poultry-yard; but no one was there except the head keeper, who was administering medicine to a cock, whose appearance was indictable — that is to say, if the laws against cock-fighting were enforced. Lady Ascot had gone in; so Charles went in too, and went upstairs to his aunt’s room.
One of the old lady’s last fancies was sitting in the dark, or in a gloom so profound as to approach to darkness. So Charles, passing out of a light corridor, and shutting the door behind him, found himself unable to see his hand before him. Confident, however, of his knowledge of localities, he advanced with such success that he immediately fell crashing headlong over an ottoman; and in his descent, imagining that he was falling into a pit or gulf of unknown depth, uttered a wild cry of alarm. Whereupon the voice of Lady Ascot from close by answered, “Come in,” as if she thought she’d heard somebody knock.
“Come up, would be more appropriate, aunt,” said Charles. “Why do you sit in the dark? I’ve killed myself, I believe.”
“Is that you, Charles?” said she. “What brings you over? My dear, I am delighted. Open a bit of the window, Charles, and let me see you.”
Charles did as he was desired; and, as the strong light from without fell upon him, the old lady gave a deep sigh.
“Ah, dear, so like poor dear Petre about the eyes. There never was a handsome Ravenshoe since him, and here never will be another. You were quite tolerable as a boy, my dear; but you’ve got very coarse, very coarse and plain indeed. Poor Petre!”
“You’re more unlucky in the light than you were in the darkness, Charles,” said a brisk, clear, well-modulated voice from behind the old lady. “Grandma seems in one of her knock-me-down moods today. She had just told me that I was an insignificant chit, when you made your graceful and noiseless entrance, and saved me anything further.”
If Adelaide had been looking at Charles when she spoke, instead of at her work, she would have seen the start which he gave when he heard her voice. As it was, she saw nothing of it; and Charles, instantly recovering himself, said in the most nonchalant voice possible:
“Hallo, are you here? How do you contrive to work in the dark?”
“It is not dark to any one with eyes,” was the curt reply. “I can see to read.”
Here Lady Ascot said that, if she had called Adelaide a chit, it was because she had set up her opinion against that of such a man as Dr. Going; that Adelaide was a good and dutiful girl to her; that she was a very old woman, and perhaps shouldn’t live to see the finish of next year; and that her opinion still was that Charles was very plain and coarse, and she was sorry she couldn’t alter it.
Adelaide came rapidly up and kissed her, and then went and stood in the light beside Charles.
She had grown into a superb blonde beauty. From her rich brown crepe hair to her exquisite little foot, she was a model of grace. The nose was delicately aquiline, and the mouth receded slightly, while the chin was as slightly prominent; the eyes were brilliant, and were concentrated on their object in a moment; and the eyebrows surmounted them in a delicately but distinctly marked curve. A beauty she was, such as one seldom sees; and Charles, looking on her, felt that he loved her more madly than ever, and that he would die sooner than let her know it.
“Well, Charles,” she said, “you don’t seem overjoyed to see me.”
“A man can’t look joyous with broken shins, my dear Adelaide. Aunt, I’ve got some bad news for you. I am in trouble.”
“Oh dear,” said the old lady, “and what is the matter now? Something about a woman, I suppose. You Ravenshoes are always — ”
“No, no, aunt, Nothing of the kind. Adelaide, don’t go, pray; you will lose such a capital laugh. I’ve got rusticated, aunt.”
“That is very comical, I dare say,” said Adelaide, in a low voice; “but I don’t see the joke.”
“I thought you would have had a laugh at me, perhaps,” said Charles; “it is rather a favourite amusement of yours.”
“What, in the name of goodness, makes you so disagreeable and cross, today. Charles? You were never so before, when anything happened. I am sure I am very sorry for your misfortune, though I really don’t know its extent. Is it a very serious thing?”
“Serious, very. I don’t much like going home. Welter is in the same scrape; who is to tell her?”
“This is the way,” said Adelaide, “I’ll show you how to manage her.”
All this was carried on in a low tone, and very rapidly. The old lady had just begun in a loud, querulous, scolding voice to Charles, when Adelaide interrupted her with —
“I say, grandma, Welter is rusticated too.”
Adelaide good-naturedly said this to lead the old lady’s wrath from Charles, and throw it partly on to her grandson; but, however good her intentions, the execution of them was unsuccessful. The old lady fell to scolding Charles; accusing him of being the cause of the whole mishap, of ............