TEMPLE BAR. JANUARY 1874. Uncle John. By G. J. WHYTE-MELVILLE, AUTHOR OF 'KATE COVENTRY,' CHAPTER VIII. THE LION'S DEN. IF every Englishman's house is his castle, he certainly selects its donjon keep to live in himself. The squire's justice-room, my lord's library, the duke's sanctum, is invariably the gloomiest apartment architectural science can devise; and whether a man's position obliges him to inhabit a shooting-box or a palace, he seems constrained to move his blotting-book, cigars, bootjack, and other comforts into some dismal hole, whence there is small temptation for any supernumerary guest to turn him out. Mr. Dennison was no exception to the rule. He read, wrote, smoked, slumbered, and indeed spent the greater part of his life in an apartment from which the builder's design had excluded light and air with surprising ingenuity. It was a low, ill-constructed room, that seemed to be all corners, with a heavy ceiling and two narrow windows facing a dead wall. Furnished in unpretending style, with a knee-hole table, a worn leather sofa, a gun-rack, whip-stand, and weighing-machine, it was ornamented by a portrait of Daniel Lambert, a stuffed spaniel in a glass case, an ordnance map of the county, and a half-effaced print representing the meet of a pack of fox-hounds in the year 1750. A few shelves intended for books were laden with disused powder-horns, shot-pouches, and fishing-tackle, all out of repair; while the literary element, consisting of a 'Directory,' a work on färriery, and an odd volume of a sporting novel, lay on the writing-table. One article, however, most desirable in itself, and of daily use, I have omitted to mention. It was a deep, easy, and sleeppromoting arm-chair. Mr. Dennison, after a cold ride, to inspect VOL. XL. L hospital accounts, or preside at poor-law boards, loved to lose himself in its embraces, and court those unacknowledged snatches of daylight slumber that always seem more enjoyable than the authorized oblivion. of night. From these he was so often disturbed by Aunt Emily, who had no scruple in waking people up to their duty, that he compared himself to Baron Trenck-when, in the persecutions of a Prussian prison, that martyr learned to answer the sentries in his sleep. The old face seems very worn and weary, though calm and still, in its repose; the thin hair is very white against the black leather covering of the chair; but waking or sleeping, lips and brow wear the placid expression that is stamped by a good heart; and Uncle John, lying dead in his coffin, will look very much as he does now, at rest in his arm-chair. It disturbs him but little that the door should be flung open, letting in a rush of cold air, answered like clock-werk by a puff of smoke down the chimney, and succeeded by the entrance of his wife, who, flouncing noisily into the room, sweeps sundry papers off the writingtable with the swing of her skirts. He is used to such abrupt arrivals and departures, so he raises his sleepy eyes, and murmurs, “Well, my dear, is there anything I can do for you?" "It is surprising to me," says Aunt Emily in her harshest tones, "how you can snore there like a pig, Mr. Dennison, when you were in bed last night before twelve o'clock, and didn't get up this morning till a quarter to nine. It can't be good for you. It's just the way poor Uncle Edward went off, and I suppose if anybody else told you it was unhealthy, you'd make an effort and discontinue the practice. But I may talk till I'm hoarse." "Don't do that, dear," he answers; "I'm wide awake now. Is there anything amiss? Anything you want me to put right?" "Fifty things," is the ungracious reply. "However, that is not the question. I've a piece of news—I dare say you won't believe it— I think Laura has made a conquest. I think Algernon Lexley would propose to her if he had the chance." Really!" says he, trying to look more surprised than he feels. Uncle John, though long since impervious to the universal malady, has not forgotten its symptoms, but to admit that he suspected anything of the kind would be to lay himself open to reproach for not imparting so exciting a surmise. He contents himself, therefore, with another, "Really!!" yet more suggestive of wonder than the first. "Mind, I only say I think it," continues Mrs. Dennison, looking exceedingly sagacious. "I can see as far as my neighbours, and I am confident he admires her. They are out walking together now, and I shouldn't wonder the least if he proposed before they come home. She will consult me, of course. I don't quite know what to say. It would be a good thing for Laura, if it can be a good thing for a woman to be married." "And a bad thing for Lexley," says Uncle John; "if it can be a bad thing for a man to be married." "Oh! I know what you think," continues his wife, irritably. "But I am considering my friend's welfare, here and hereafter. What's his living worth ?" Mr. Dennison pondered. "Perpetual curacy, my dear," he answered, "not a living, more's the pity. It may bring him in three hundred a year at the outside. He has some private fortune, I know; but still he is hardly what you ladies call a good match. Hadn't they better put it off, and see what turns up?" "You always say that, when people are going to be married," replied his wife, in high scorn. "You never seem to think it can answer, though I'm sure in your own case it has been the saving of you. If it hadn't been for me-managing, scheming, toiling like a slave-you'd have been ruined years ago; and in your grave too, I firmly believe. But it's no use looking for gratitude from a man!" "My dear, I'm sure you've done admirably," answered placable Uncle John; "but as Lexley, who is a well-principled fellow, does not think of proposing to you, it seems that we are travelling out of the record what our friend Foster would call, getting off the line. Bythe-by, Emily, have you ordered a room for young Maxwell ?" "Of course I have. Didn't you tell me he was coming? It would be a good thing for Laura, no doubt," continued Mrs. Dennison, reverting to the engrossing topic. "She has no friends, no expectations, not a farthing of her own; and her good looks are fading every day. I really believe she couldn't do better. And as for him "As for him," repeated Uncle John, "it's not quite so clear a case. She's a wonderful musician, no doubt; has a handsome face, a fine figure, and is always beautifully dressed; but do you consider she's the sort of person to make a good clergyman's wife ?" Now Mrs. Dennison was a shrewd woman enough, and this was exactly the point she had been debating in her own mind ever since the idea entered her head that it would be a capital thing for Laura if she could effect a match with the tall young parson. She was not without scruples, and although dissatisfied, as most women are, with the number she had drawn in the matrimonial lottery, entertained, in common with her sex, an exaggerated idea of the happiness enjoyed, through that institution, by those who were more fortunate than herself. She felt, and indeed proclaimed, that it was a great responsibility to bring people together with a view to coupling them for life; always declaring she was the last person in the world to interfere in such matters, and had made it a rule, since she was a girl, to "wash her hands," as she expressed it, "of the whole concern." Whatever doubts she entertained as to its wisdom were at once dispelled by her husband's apparent disinclination to her plan. It only required a little opposition to decide Aunt Emily on persevering in any line of conduct she had once commenced, and Uncle John was neither irritated nor surprised when, after a minute's silence, she walked to the grate, stirred the fire with considerable vehemence, and thus delivered her verdict: "I think it would be for the happiness of both. If my opinion is asked, I shall say so openly. It's my firm belief marriages are made in heaven. You needn't laugh, Mr. Dennison, though I dare say you consider the whole thing is a trial, rather than a blessing!" My dear, I never said so!" protested Uncle John, wondering at the sagacity that had thus fathomed his sentiments and the eloquence that could express them in so concise a form of speech. "Very well, then, that's settled;" continued Mrs. Dennison. "Now, about the upper housemaid. I've paid her wages to the 8ththat's her month you know-with her fare, third class, back to London. And do you choose to have the furniture cleaned in the pink dressing-room? It's like a pigsty at this moment." "My dear, you manage these things," replied her husband, who was getting sleepy again. "I don't think I ever saw the upper housemaid thank goodness none of them come in here- and I haven't set foot in the pink dressing-room for thirty years; whatever you settle I am sure to think right." "Yes, but you ought to know," she replied; "I can't imagine how you spend your time down here. You never look into the tradesmen's bills, nor the house accounts, nor anything but that plan for enlarging Middleton Hospital, and those rubbishing letters from your agent. Well, I suppose, as the song says, 'Women must work.'" "And men must sleep," he added, good-humouredly, though the accusation of idleness was somewhat hard on Uncle John, than whom nobody could toil more indefatigably at county business nor take more trouble to promote the welfare of his labourers, tenantry, and neighbours. "Hush!" exclaimed Aunt Emily, setting down the poker with a vigour that brought tongs and fire-shovel clanging into the fender. "That's Mr. Lexley's foot in the passage. I've a deal more to say. It will do another time. Mind, I think it an excellent plan," and out she sailed with a gracious smile, somewhat thrown away on the visitor, whose preoccupation was very apparent as he came in. "I walked over again to-day," he began, "to see you about that road-rate; something has happened since to put it all out of my head. Mr. Dennison, I want to speak to you on a very serious matter-of course in the strictest confidence." "My dear fellow," replied Uncle John, "nothing can be of a very serious matter when a man is under thirty. But let us do one thing at a time. You will find the estimate for your road-rate on that writing-table, unless Mrs. Dennison has swept it into the fire with her dress. Put it in your pocket, and take it home. I copied it out on purpose. Now, is this a long story you have to tell ?" Mr. Dennison had the knack of putting people at their ease. He entered into their feelings from sheer kindness of disposition, and was a living instance of Count d'Orsay's famous maxim that "A good heart is good manners ready made." "There is much to explain," said Lexley, brightening. will make it as short as I can." "But I "All right," answered his host, proceeding to light a cigar with great deliberation. "I always listen best when I smoke. Now, fire away!" Then Lexley, with less circumlocution than might have been expected from the style of his sermons, informed his host how, since he had met a certain lady at the Priors, he had formed for himself an ideal of domestic happiness that never entered his head before; how he had considered the subject in all its bearings as a man and a clergyman; how he had come to the decision that Miss Blair was the only woman on earth who could make him happy; and how, not half an hour ago, he had taken the fatal plunge and asked her to be his wife. "It was an anxious moment," he concluded, "and I own I trembled for her answer." "I never did it but once," said Uncle John, "and if I remember right, I was in a horrible funk too." "She is an angel," exclaimed the clergyman. "She-she accepted me under certain conditions. But first she told me the sad history of her life. She's a widow, Mr. Dennison. She has been married before." "That's rather an advantage," observed the other, between the whiffs of his cigar. "She won't expect you to be much better than the rest of mankind, and will be less disappointed than a girl.” "She has gone through a deal of trouble," continued the lover, and I only pray that I may be able to make up to her for the hardships of her past life. Do you know what her husband was?" "I know a great many things," answered his host, "that I say nothing about. Her husband was a good-looking scamp named Delancy, who began life as a clerk in an insurance office, turned billiard-marker, blackleg, sharper all round, and so set up for a gentleman. In this last capacity he robbed Percy Mortimer of seven hundred pounds at a sitting at Rio Janeiro. Percy took a great fancy to him, and says he is the cleverest scoundrel he ever knew. What has become of him?" |