He threw a horrible tremour into his accent of pity.
My aunt expressed her view mildly, that I was sent
for to help cure the young lady of her delusion.
‘And take her himself!’ cried the squire.
’Harry, you wouldn’t go and do that?
Why, the law, man, the law—the whole country
’d be up about it. You’ll be stuck
in a coloured caricature!’
He was really alarmed lest this should be one of the
consequences of my going, and described some of the
scourging caricatures of his day with an intense appreciation
of their awfulness as engines of the moral sense of
the public. I went nevertheless.
A PROMENADE IN BATH
I found my father at his hotel, sitting with his friend
Jorian DeWitt, whom I had met once before, and thought
clever. He was an ex-captain of dragoons, a martyr
to gout, and addicted to Burgundy, which necessitated
his resorting to the waters, causing him, as he said,
between his appetites and the penance he paid for
them, to lead the life of a pendulum. My father
was in a tempered gay mood, examining a couple of the
county newspapers. One abused him virulently;
he was supported by the other. After embracing
me, he desired me to listen while he read out opposing
sentences from the columns of these eminent journals:
’The person calling himself “Roy,”
whose monstrously absurd pretensions are supposed
to be embodied in this self-dubbed surname . . .’
’—The celebrated and courtly Mr.
Richmond Roy, known no less by the fascination of
his manners than by his romantic history . . .’
’—has very soon succeeded in making
himself the talk of the town . . ’
‘—has latterly become the theme of
our tea-tables . . .’
‘—which is always the adventurer’s
privilege . . .’
’—through no fault of his own . .
’
’—That we may throw light on the
blushing aspirations of a crow-sconced Cupid, it will
be as well to recall the antecedents of this (if no
worse) preposterous imitation buck of the old school
. . .’
’—Suffice it, without seeking to
draw the veil from those affecting chapters of his
earlier career which kindled for him the enthusiastic
sympathy of all classes of his countrymen, that he
is not yet free from a tender form of persecution
. . .’
’—We think we are justified in entitling
him the Perkin Warbeck of society . . .’
‘—Reference might be made to mythological
heroes . . .’
Hereat I cried out mercy.
Captain DeWitt (stretched nursing a leg) removed his
silk handkerchief from his face to murmur,
‘The bass stedfastly drowns the treble, if this
is meant for harmony.’
My father rang up the landlord, and said to him,
’The choicest of your cellar at dinner to-day,
Mr. Lumley; and, mind you, I am your guest, and I
exercise my right of compelling you to sit down with
us and assist in consuming a doubtful quality of wine.
We dine four. Lay for five, if your conscience
is bad, and I excuse you.’
