“And yet, I'd wager these people,” said he to himself, “are revelling in superfluities; at least, as compared to me! But, so it is, the rock that one man ties round his neck, another would make a stepping-stone of!” This satisfactory conclusion gave additional sweetness to the bland smile with which he took his teacup from Nelly's hand, while he pronounced the beverage the very best he had ever tasted out of Moscow. And so we must leave the party.
CHAPTER XV. CONTRASTS
“So you think, Grounsell, I may be able to leave this in a day or two?” said Sir Stafford, as, on the day following the events we have just related, he slowly walked up and down his dressing-room.
“By the end of the week, if the weather only continue fine, we may be on the road again.”
“I'm glad of it, heartily glad of it! Not that, as regarded myself, it mattered much where I was laid up in dock; but I find that this isolation, instead of drawing the members of my family more closely together, has but served to widen the breach between them. Lady Hester and Sydney rarely meet; George sees neither of them, and rarely comes near me, so that the sooner we go hence the better for all of us.”
Grounsell gave a dry nod of assent, without speaking.
“Sydney is very anxious to go and pass some time with her aunt Conway; but I foresee that, if I consent, the difference between Lady Hester and her will then become an irreconcilable quarrel. You don't agree with me, Grounsell?”
“I do not. I never knew the ends of a fractured bone unite by grating them eternally against each other.”
“And, as for George, the lounging habits of his service and cigars have steeped him in an indolence from which there is no emerging. I scarcely know what to do with him.”
“It's hard enough to decide upon,” rejoined Grounsell; “he has some pursuits, but not one ambition.”
“He has very fair abilities, certainly,” said Sir Stafford, half peevishly.
“Very fair!” nodded Grounsell.
“A good memory, a quick apprehension.”
“He has one immense deficiency, for which nothing can compensate,” said the doctor, solemnly.
“Application, industry?”
“No, with his opportunities a great deal is often acquired with comparatively light labor. I mean a greater and more important element.”
“He wants steadiness, you think?”
“No; I 'll tell you what he wants, he wants pluck!”
Sir Stafford's cheek became suddenly crimson, and his blue eyes grew almost black in the angry expression of the moment.
“Pluck, sir? My son deficient in courage?”
“Not as you understand it now,” resumed Grouusell, calmly. “He has enough, and more than enough, to shoot me or anybody else that would impugn it. The quality I mean is of a very different order. It is the daring to do a thing badly to-day in the certain confidence that you, will do it better to-morrow, and succeed perfectly in it this day twelvemonth. He has not pluck to encounter repeated failures, and yet return every morning to the attack; he has not pluck to be bullied by mediocrity in the sure and certain confidence that he will live to surpass it; in a word, he has not that pluck which resists the dictation of inferior minds, and inspires self-reliance through self-respect.”
“I confess I cannot see that in the station he is likely to occupy such qualities are at all essential,” said Sir Stafford, almost haughtily.
“Twenty thousand a year is a fine thing, and may dispense with a great many gifts in its possessor; and a man like myself, who never owned a twentieth of the amount, may be a precious bad judge of the requisites to spend it suitably; but I 'll tell you one thing, Onslow, that organ the phrenologists call 'Combativeness' is the best in the whole skull.”
“I think your Irish friend Dalton must have been imparting some of his native prejudices to you,” said Onslow, smiling; “and, by the way, when have you seen him?”
“I went to call there last night, but I found a tea-party, and did n't go in. Only think of these people, with beggary staring them on every side, sending out for 'Caravan' tea at I don't know how many florins a pound.”
“I heard of it; but then, once and away—”
“Once and away! Ay, but once is ruin.”
“Well, I hope Prichard has arranged everything by this time. He has gone over this morning to complete the business; so that I trust, when we leave Baden, these worthy people will be m the enjoyment of easier circumstances.”
“I see him crossing over the street now. I'll leave you together.”
“No, no, Grounsell; wait and hear his report; we may want your advice besides, for I 'm not quite clear that this large sum of arrears should be left at Dalton's untrammelled disposal, as Mr. Prichard intended it should be a test of that excellent gentleman's prudence.”
Mr. Prichard's knock was now heard at the door, and next moment he entered. His pale countenance was slightly flushed, and in the expression of his face it might be read that he had come from a scene of unusual excitement.
“I have failed, completely failed, Sir Stafford,” said he, with a sigh, as he seated himself, and threw a heavy roll of paper on the table before him.
As Sir Stafford did not break the pause that followed these words, Prichard resumed,
“I told you last night that Mr. Dalton, not being able clearly to understand my communication, which I own, to prevent any searching scrutiny on his part, I did my best to envelop in a covering of technicalities, referred me to his eldest daughter, in whose acuteness he reposes much confidence. If I was not impressed with the difficulty of engaging such an adversary from his description, still less was I on meeting with the young lady this morning. A very quietly mannered, unassuming person, with considerable good looks, which once upon a time must have been actual beauty, was seated alone in the drawing-room awaiting me. Her dress was studiously plain; and were it not for an air of great neatness throughout, I should perhaps call it even poor. I mention all these matters with a certain prolixity, because they bear upon what ensued.
“Without waiting for me to open my communication, she began by a slight apology for her presence there, occasioned, as she said, by her father's ill-health and consequent incapacity to transact business; after which she added a few words expressive of a hope that I would make my statement in the most simple and intelligible form, divested so far as might be of technical phraseology, and such as, to use her own words, a very unlettered person like herself might comprehend.
“This opening, I confess, somewhat startled me; I scarcely expected so much from her father's daughter; but I acquiesced and went on. As we concocted the whole plot together here, Sir Stafford, it is needless that I should weary you by a repetition of it. It is enough that I say I omitted nothing of plausibility, either in proof of the bequest, or in the description of the feeling that prompted its fulfilment. I descanted upon the happy event which, in the course of what seemed an accident, had brought the two families together, and prefaced their business intercourse by a friendship. I adverted to the good influence increased comforts would exercise upon her father's health. I spoke of her sister and her brother in the fuller enjoyment of all that became their name and birth. She heard me to the very end with deep attention, never once interrupting, nor even by a look or gesture expressing