I suppose my uncle had expected from me some signs of acquiescence in his splendid estimate of his cub, and was nettled at my silence. After a short interval he said —
“I’ve seen something of the world in my day, and I can say without a misgiving of partiality, that Dudley is the material of a perfect English gentleman. I am not blind, of course — the training must be supplied; a year or two of good models, active self-criticism, and good society. I simply say that the material is there.”
Here was another interval of silence.
“And now tell me, child, what these recollections of Church — Church — what?”
“Church Scarsdale,” I replied.
“Yes, thank you — Church Scarsdale and Knowl — are?”
So I related my stories as well as I could.
“Well, dear Maud, the adventure of Church Scarsdale is hardly so terrific as I expected,” said Uncle Silas with a cold little laugh; “and I don’t see, if he had really been the hero of it, why he should shrink from avowing it. I know I should not. And I really can’t say that your pic-nic party in the grounds of Knowl has frightened me much more. A lady waiting in the carriage, and two or three tipsy young men. Her presence seems to me a guarantee that no mischief was meant; but champagne is the soul of frolic, and a row with the gamekeepers a natural consequence. I happened to me once — forty years ago, when I was a wild young buck — one of the worst rows I ever was in.”
And Uncle Silas poured some eau-de-cologne over the corner of his handkerchief and touched his temples with it.
“If my boy had been there, I do assure you — and I know him — he would say so at once. I fancy he would rather boast of it. I never knew him utter an untruth. When you know him a little you’ll say so.”
With these words Uncle Silas leaned back exhausted, and languidly poured some of his favourite eau-de-cologne over the palms of his hands, nodded a farewell, and, in a whisper, wished me good-night.
“Dudley’s come,” whispered Milly, taking me under the arm as I entered the lobby. “But I don’t care: he never gives me nout; and he gets money from Governor, as much as he likes, and I never a sixpence. It’s a shame!”
So there was not great love between the only son and only daughter of the younger line of the Ruthyns.
I was curious to learn all that Milly could tell me of this new inmate of Bartram–Haugh; and Milly was communicative without having a great deal to relate, and what I heard form her tended to confirm my own disagreeable impressions about him. She was afraid of him. He was a “woundy ugly customer in a wax, she could tell me.” He was the only one “she ever knowed as had pluck to jaw the Governor.” But he was “afeard on the Governor, too.”
His visits to Bartram–Haugh, I heard, were desultory; and this, to my relief, would probably not outlast a week or a fortnight. “He was such a fashionable cove:” he was always “a gadding about, mostly to Liverpool and Birmingham, and sometimes to Lunnun, itself.” He was “keeping company one time with Beauty, Governor thought, and he was awfully afraid he’d a married her; but that was all bosh and nonsense; and Beauty would have none of his chaff and wheedling, for she liked Tom Brice;” and Milly thought that Dudley never “cared a crack of a whip for her.” He used to go to the Windmill to have “a smoke with Pegtop;” and he was a member of the Feltram Club, that met at the “Plume o’ Feathers.” He was “a rare good shot,” she heard; and “he was before the justices for poaching, but they could make nothing of it.” And the Governor said “it was all through spite of him — for they hate us for being better blood than they.” And “all but the squires and those upstart folk loves Dudley, he is so handsome and gay — though he be a bit cross at home.” And, “Governor says, he’ll be a Parliament man yet, spite o’ them all.”
Next morning, when our breakfast was nearly ended, Dudley tapped at the window with the end of his clay pipe — a “church-warden” Milly called it — just such a long curved pipe as Joe Willet is made to hold between his lips in those charming illustrations of “Barnaby Rudge”— which we all know so well — and lifting his “wide-awake” with a burlesque salutation, which, I suppose would have charmed the “Plume o’ Feathers,” he dropped, kicked and caught his “wide-awake,” with an agility and gravity, as he replaced it, so inexpressibly humorous, that Milly went of in a loud fit to laughter, with the ejaculation —
“Did you ever?”
It was odd how repulsively my confidence in my original identification always revived on unexpectedly seeing Dudley after an interval.
I could perceive that this piece of comic by-play was meant to make a suitable impression on me. I received it, however, with a killing gravity; and after a word or two to Milly, he lounged away, having first broken his pipe, bit by bit, into pieces, which he balanced in turn on his nose and on his chin, from which features he jerked them into his mouth, with a precision which, along with his excellent pantomime of eating them, highly excited Milly’s mirth and admiration.
Chapter 41.
My Cousin Dudley
GREATLY TO MY satisfaction, this engaging person did not appear again that day. But next day Milly told me that my uncle had taken him to task for the neglect with which he was treating us.
“He did pitch into him, sharp and short, and not a word from him, only sulky like; and I so frightened, I durst not look up almost; and they said a lot I could not make head or tail of; and Governor ordered me out o’ the room, and glad I was to go; and so they had it out between them.”
Milly could throw no light whatsoever upon the adventures at Church Scarsdale and Knowl; and I was left still in doubt, which sometimes oscillated one way and sometimes another. But, on the whole, I could not shake off the misgivings which constantly recurred and pointed very obstinately to Dudley as the hero of those odious scenes.
Oddly enough, though, I now felt far less confident upon the point than I did at first sight. I had begun to distrust my memory, and to suspect my fancy; but of this there could be no question, that between the person so unpleasantly linked in my remembrance with those scenes, and Dudley Ruthyn, a striking, though possibly only a general resemblance did exist.
Milly was certainly right as to the gist of Uncle Silas’s injunction, for we saw more of Dudley henceforward.
He was shy; he was impudent; he was awkward; he was conceited; — altogether a most intolerable bumpkin. Though he sometimes flushed and stammered, and never for a moment was at his ease in my presence, yet, to my inexpressible disgust, there was a self-complacency in his manner, and a kind of triumph in his leer, which very plainly told me how satisfied he was as to the nature of the impression he was making upon me.
I would have given worlds to tell him how odious I thought him. Probably, however, he would not have believed me. Perhaps he fancied that “ladies” affected airs of indifference and repulsion to cover their real feelings. I never looked at or spoke to him when I could avoid either, and then it was as briefly as I could. To do him justice, however, he seemed to have no liking for our society, and certainly never seemed altogether comfortable in it.
I find it hard to write quite impartially even of Dudley Ruthyn’s personal appearance; but, with an effort, I confess that his features were good, and his figure not amiss, though a little fattish. He had light whiskers, light hair, and a pink complexion, and very good blue eyes. So far my uncle was right; and if he had been