Mattie:-A Stray Volume II Part 31

There remained some twenty or twenty-five gentlemen to do honour to the wine which shone from the array of decanters on the table; Sidney drew his chair closer to his neighbour's, and looked round him again. His father, perfectly at home--happy and equable--sparing with the wine, too, as Sidney had wished, and yet had not thought filial to hint to his sire. His father almost faced him, and Sidney, whose powerful gla.s.ses brought him within range of vision, could return the smile bestowed in his direction now and then. The old man, who had forgotten his poverty, kept in remembrance the son who had shared that poverty with him.

There was more speech-making after the ladies had retired; deeper drinking, and a wider scope of subjects. One gentleman near his father, in a lackadaisical strain, rose to propose the health of the family physician, who had been balked of his speech early in the evening; and Sidney, startled somewhat by the tone of a voice that he fancied he had heard before, peered through his gla.s.ses, and tried to make the speaker out.

He had seen that man before, or heard that strange drawl--where or in what company he was at fault--the man's features were indistinct at that distance. He edged his chair nearer--even in his intense curiosity, for which he was scarcely able to account, changed his place, and went a few seats from the foot of the table, where Maurice was now sitting in his mother's vacated place.

Then Sidney recognized the man--suddenly and swiftly the truth darted upon him--he had met that man in the Borough; he had stood between him and his offensive persecution of Harriet Wesden; he was the "prowler" of old days--the man from whom he had extorted an apology in the public streets, and from whom a generous and unwashed public would accept no apology.

The old antagonism seemed to revive on the instant; he felt the man's presence there an insult to himself; his blood warmed, and his ears tingled; he wondered what reason had brought that man there, and whose friend he could possibly be?

"What man is that?" he asked almost imperiously of Maurice, who, taken aback by the question, stared at Sidney with amazement.

"A friend of mine," he answered at last; "do you know him?"

"N--no."

Sidney relapsed into silence and mastered his excitement. This was not a time or place to mention how he had met that man, or in what questionable pursuit; there was danger to Maurice, from so evil an acquaintance; and in his own honesty of purpose, Sid could not understand that the man had any right at that table, an honoured guest there. He knew but little of polite society; did not understand that polite society requires no reference as to the morals of its guests, and is quite satisfied if the name be good, and the status unquestionable.

Polite society cannot trouble itself about the morals of its male members.

Sidney sat and watched the prowler, and, in his confusion, drank more port wine than was perhaps good for him. He fancied that his cousin Maurice had implied a rebuke for his harsh interrogative; and he was considering _that_, too, in his mind, and wis.h.i.+ng, for the first time, that he had not presented himself at his cousin's dinner-table.

The toast was drunk and responded to by the family physician, who very ingeniously dove-tailed the remarks upon Maurice's natal day into his own expression of thanks for the honour accorded him. Sidney omitted to drink the stranger's health, and made no attempt to applaud the fine words by which it had been succeeded. He sat discomfited by the prowler's presence there--but for that man he might never have been engaged to Harriet Wesden, and, therefore, have never experienced the disappointment--the cruel reaction--which had followed the folly of that betrothal.

"Sid," called his father across the table at him, "aren't you well, lad?"

"Oh! very well," was the reply; "what is there to ail me in such pleasant company?"

"Perhaps the gentleman is sighing for lady's society; if he will move an adjournment, I'll second the motion," said the prowler, sauve and bland, totally forgetful of that dark face which had glowered at him once in London streets.

"I shall propose nothing," said Sid, curtly.

Those who heard the uncivil reply, looked towards the speaker somewhat curiously. When the wine's in, the wit's out--had Sidney Hinchford drowned his courtesy in his uncle's decanters? The prowler--he is a fugitive character, whose name we need not parade at this late stage to our readers--stared at our hero with the rest, but was not affected by it, or understood good breeding sufficiently well to disguise all evidence at his friend's table. He turned to Maurice with a laugh.

"Hinchford, old fellow, I leave the proposition in your hands. You who were always a lady's man."

"Not I."

"But I say you were--I say that you are. Do you think that I have forgotten all the _aventures amoureuses_ of Maurice Darcy--I, his sworn brother-in-arms--his pupil?"

"Steady, Frank, steady!" cried Maurice.

But the guests were noisy, and the subject was a pleasant one to gentlemen over their wine, with the door closed on skirts and flounces.

There were shouts of laughter at the prowler's charge--Maurice shook his head, blushed and laughed, but appeared rather to like the accusation than otherwise--Maurice's father, at home and at his ease, laughed with the rest. "A young dog--a young scapegrace!" he chuckled. Even Sidney's father laughed also--young men will be young men, he thought, and the prowler was pleasant company, and made the time fly. It is this after-dinner-talk, when the ladies have retired, and the bottle is not allowed to stand still, which pleases diners-out the most. This is the "fun of the fair," where the Merry-Andrew deals forth his jokes, and the wine-bibber appreciates the double-entendre all the more for the singing in his ears and the thick mist by which he is surrounded.

"Do you think that I have forgotten the stationer's daughter--by George!

that was a leaf from romance, and virtuous indignation in the ascendant.

Tell us the story, Maurice, we are all friends here; and though the joke's against you----"

"Gentlemen, I propose that we join the ladies," said Maurice, rising, with some confusion.

The guests laughed again noisily at this--it was so palpable an attempt to retreat, that the dining-room rang again with peals of laughter--Sidney Hinchford, sterner and grimmer than ever, alone sat unmoved, until Maurice had dropped into his seat in despair, and then he rose and looked across at his father.

"Are you ready?" he asked.

"Certainly--Sid--quite ready!"

"Oh! the ladies have a hundred topics to dwell upon over their coffee, Sidney," said his uncle; "we must have no rebellion this side of the house."

"I am going home, sir--you must excuse me--I cannot stay here any longer. Come, father!"

"Home!"

"I have business at home--I am pressed for time--I will _not_ stay!" he almost shouted.

Sidney's father, in mild bewilderment, rose and tottered after him. This was an unpleasant wind-up to a social evening, and Sid's strange demeanour perplexed him. But the boy's will was law, and he succ.u.mbed to it; the boy always knew what was best--his son, Sid, was never at fault--never!

The guests were too amazed to comprehend the movement; some of them were inclined to consider it a joke of Sid's--an excuse to retreat to the drawing-room; the mystery was too much for their wine-benumbed faculties just then.

Sidney and his father were in the broad marble-paved hall; the footmen lingering about there noted their presence--one made a skip towards the drawing-room facing them.

"Stop!" said Sid. His memory was good, and his organ of locality better.

He walked with a steady step towards a small room at the end of the hall--a withdrawing-room, where the hats and coats had been placed early in the evening. He returned in a few moments with his great-coat on, his father's coat across his arm, and two hats in his hands.

"Then--then we're really going, Sid?"

"I'm sick of this life; it is not fit for us. Why did we come?" he asked, angrily, as he a.s.sisted his perplexed father into his great-coat.

"I--I don't know, Sid," stammered the father. "I thought that we were spending quite a pleasant evening. Has anyone said anything?"

"Let us be off!"

Maurice Hinchford came from the dining-room towards them with a quick step. There was excitement, even an evidence of concern upon his handsome face.

"Sidney," he said, holding out his hand towards him, "I understand all this; I can explain all this at a more befitting time. Don't go now--it looks bad. It isn't quite fair to us or yourself."

"You are Maurice Darcy!" said Sid, sternly.

"It was a fool's trick, of which I have heartily repented. It----"

"You were the man who deliberately sought the ruin of an innocent girl to whom I was engaged--you sought my disgrace and hers, and you ask me to your house, and insult me through your friends thus shamelessly. You make a jest----"

"On my honour, no, sir!"

"No matter--I see to whom I have been indebted; perhaps the motive which led to past preferment--I am ashamed and mortified--I have done with you and yours for ever. I would curse the folly that led me hither to-night, were it not for the light in which it has placed my enemies!"

"You are rash, Sidney. To-morrow you will think better of me."

"When my cooler judgment steps in and shows me what I must sacrifice for my position--_my place_," he replied. "Sir, you are a Hinchford--you should know that we are a proud family by this time. I say that we have done with you--judge me at your worst, as I judge you!--if I fail to keep my word."