This would have been simple indeed had it been all. All the Cavendishes, small and great, even the highest divinities of the name, would have stooped from their high estate to express their pleasure that Dick had found the “nice girl” who was to settle him and make him everything a Cavendish should be. Ah, had that been but all! Dick was no coxcomb; but he had read so much in Chatty’s modest eyes as warranted him in believing that he would not woo in vain. Though he could still laugh, being of that nature of man, his heart, in fact, was overwhelmed with a weight of trouble such as might have made the strongest cry out. But crying out was not in his constitution. He went about his occupations, his work, which, now that Chatty was gone, had few interruptions, chewing the cud of the bitterest fancy and the most painful thought. He walked about the streets, turning it over and over in his mind. He thought of it even when he made the patterns of the holes and laughed at them, tossing them into the fire. Underneath all his lightest as well as his most serious occupations ran this dark and stern current. The arrival of Mrs. Warrender’s note made it still darker and more urgent, carrying him away upon its tide. It was not the first letter he had received from her. He had insisted upon hearing whether their journey home had been a pleasant one, how they had liked their new house, and many other trivial things, and he had asked for that invitation from Saturday to Monday, which now was reversed and turned into an almost-week, from Monday to Saturday. He did not know whether he meant or not to go: but anyhow the invitation, the power of going if he pleased, was sweet to him. He kept it by him as an anticipation, a sweetmeat which took the bitter taste of life out of his mouth.
But this letter was more formal, more businesslike, than anything that had gone before. To go to see the woman whom you think of most in the world, that is a vague thing which other engagements may push aside; but an invitation to go for the partridges is business and has to be answered. Dick got it at his club, where he was lingering though it was September, making little runs into the country, but avoiding his home, where he knew many questions would be put to him about what he was going to do. It is a sad thing when there is nobody who cares what you are going to do—but this is not the view of the matter most apparent to young men. Dick very much disliked the question. It was not one to which he could give any reply. He was going to do—nothing, unless life and feeling should be too much for him and he should be driven into doing what would be a villainy—yes a villainy, though probably no harm would ever come of it; most probably, almost certainly, no harm would come of it—and yet it would be a villainy. These were the thoughts that were with him wherever he went or came. And after he got Mrs. Warrender’s letter they grew harder and harder, more and more urgent. It was this which took him one day to the rooms of an old gentleman who had not Dick’s reasons for staying in town, but others which were perhaps as weighty, which were that he was fond of his corner in the club, and not of much else. His corner in the club, his walk along the streets, his cosy rooms, and the few old fogies, like himself, sharp as so many needles, giving their old opinions upon the events of the time with a humour sharpened by many an experience of the past: who counted every day only half a day when it was spent out of town. This old gentleman was a lawyer of very high repute, though he had retired from all active practice. He was a man who was supposed to know every case that had ever been on the registers of justice. He had refused the Bench, and he might even have been, if he would, Attorney-General, but to all these responsibilities he preferred freedom and his corner at the club. To him Dick went with a countenance fresh and fair, which contrasted with the parchment of the old lawyer’s face, but a heart like a piece of lead lying in his breast, weighing down every impulse, which also contrasted strongly, though no one could see it, with the tough piece of mechanism screwed up to a very level pitch and now seldom out of order, which fulfilled the same organic functions under the old gentleman’s coat.
“What, Dick! what ill wind—it must be an ill wind—sends you here in September? You ought to be among the partridges, my boy.”
“It is an ill wind,” said Dick.
“No need to tell me that: but judging by your complexion nothing of a tremendous character. Money? or love?”
“Well, sir, it is not really my own business at all. As for my complexion, that don’t matter. I don’t show outside.”
“Some men don’t,” said the old lawyer laconically; “but if the trouble is not your own that is easy to understand.”
At this Dick gave a short laugh. He wanted it to be believed that the trouble was not his own, and yet he did not quite care to be supposed indifferent to it.
“It’s an old story,” he said. “It is something
