Man and Wife, Wilkie Collins [best ebook reader android .TXT] 📗

Dryden,” added the gallant old gentleman:

“Old as I am, for ladies’ love unfit,
The power of beauty I remember yet.”

Lady Lundie looked unaffectedly shocked. Mr. Delamayn went a step farther. He interfered on the spot⁠—with the air of a man who feels himself imperatively called upon to perform a public duty.

“Dryden never said that,” he remarked, “I’ll answer for it.”

Sir Patrick wheeled round with the help of his ivory cane, and looked Mr. Delamayn hard in the face.

“Do you know Dryden, Sir, better than I do?” he asked.

The Honorable Geoffrey answered, modestly, “I should say I did. I have rowed three races with him, and we trained together.”

Sir Patrick looked round him with a sour smile of triumph.

“Then let me tell you, Sir,” he said, “that you trained with a man who died nearly two hundred years ago.”

Mr. Delamayn appealed, in genuine bewilderment, to the company generally:

“What does this old gentleman mean?” he asked. “I am speaking of Tom Dryden, of Corpus. Everybody in the University knows him.”

“I am speaking,” echoed Sir Patrick, “of John Dryden the Poet. Apparently, everybody in the University does not know him!”

Mr. Delamayn answered, with a cordial earnestness very pleasant to see:

“Give you my word of honor, I never heard of him before in my life! Don’t be angry, Sir. I’m not offended with you.” He smiled, and took out his brierwood pipe. “Got a light?” he asked, in the friendliest possible manner.

Sir Patrick answered, with a total absence of cordiality:

“I don’t smoke, Sir.”

Mr. Delamayn looked at him, without taking the slightest offense:

“You don’t smoke!” he repeated. “I wonder how you get through your spare time?”

Sir Patrick closed the conversation:

“Sir,” he said, with a low bow, “you may wonder.”

While this little skirmish was proceeding Lady Lundie and her stepdaughter had organized the game; and the company, players and spectators, were beginning to move toward the lawn. Sir Patrick stopped his niece on her way out, with the dark young man in close attendance on her.

“Leave Mr. Brinkworth with me,” he said. “I want to speak to him.”

Blanche issued her orders immediately. Mr. Brinkworth was sentenced to stay with Sir Patrick until she wanted him for the game. Mr. Brinkworth wondered, and obeyed.

During the exercise of this act of authority a circumstance occurred at the other end of the summerhouse. Taking advantage of the confusion caused by the general movement to the lawn, Miss Silvester suddenly placed herself close to Mr. Delamayn.

“In ten minutes,” she whispered, “the summerhouse will be empty. Meet me here.”

The Honorable Geoffrey started, and looked furtively at the visitors about him.

“Do you think it’s safe?” he whispered back.

The governess’s sensitive lips trembled, with fear or with anger, it was hard to say which.

“I insist on it!” she answered, and left him.

Mr. Delamayn knitted his handsome eyebrows as he looked after her, and then left the summerhouse in his turn. The rose-garden at the back of the building was solitary for the moment. He took out his pipe and hid himself among the roses. The smoke came from his mouth in hot and hasty puffs. He was usually the gentlest of masters⁠—to his pipe. When he hurried that confidential servant, it was a sure sign of disturbance in the inner man.

III The Discoveries

But two persons were now left in the summerhouse⁠—Arnold Brinkworth and Sir Patrick Lundie.

“Mr. Brinkworth,” said the old gentleman, “I have had no opportunity of speaking to you before this; and (as I hear that you are to leave us, today) I may find no opportunity at a later time. I want to introduce myself. Your father was one of my dearest friends⁠—let me make a friend of your father’s son.”

He held out his hands, and mentioned his name.

Arnold recognized it directly. “Oh, Sir Patrick!” he said, warmly, “if my poor father had only taken your advice⁠—”

“He would have thought twice before he gambled away his fortune on the turf; and he might have been alive here among us, instead of dying an exile in a foreign land,” said Sir Patrick, finishing the sentence which the other had begun. “No more of that! Let’s talk of something else. Lady Lundie wrote to me about you the other day. She told me your aunt was dead, and had left you heir to her property in Scotland. Is that true?⁠—It is?⁠—I congratulate you with all my heart. Why are you visiting here, instead of looking after your house and lands? Oh! it’s only three-and-twenty miles from this; and you’re going to look after it today, by the next train? Quite right. And⁠—what? what?⁠—coming back again the day after tomorrow? Why should you come back? Some special attraction here, I suppose? I hope it’s the right sort of attraction. You’re very young⁠—you’re exposed to all sorts of temptations. Have you got a solid foundation of good sense at the bottom of you? It is not inherited from your poor father, if you have. You must have been a mere boy when he ruined his children’s prospects. How have you lived from that time to this? What were you doing when your aunt’s will made an idle man of you for life?”

The question was a searching one. Arnold answered it, without the slightest hesitation; speaking with an unaffected modesty and simplicity which at once won Sir Patrick’s heart.

“I was a boy at Eton, Sir,” he said, “when my father’s losses ruined him. I had to leave school, and get my own living; and I have got it, in a roughish way, from that time to this. In plain English, I have followed the sea⁠—in the merchant-service.”

“In plainer English still, you met adversity like a brave lad, and you have fairly earned the good luck that has fallen to you,” rejoined Sir Patrick. “Give me your hand⁠—I have taken a liking to you. You’re not like the other young fellows of the present time. I shall call you ‘Arnold.’ You mustn’t return the compliment and call me ‘Patrick,’ mind⁠—I’m too old to be treated in that way. Well, and how do you get