Patronage . Maria Edgeworth
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hands he said he had put the business, and he knew and wished to hear nothing more about it. The attorney, Solicitor Sharpe, was impracticable—Alfred resolved to see the dean himself; and this, after much difficulty, he at length effected. He found the dean and his lady tête-à -tête. Their raised voices suddenly stopped short as he entered. The dean gave an angry look at his servant as Alfred came into the room.
“Your servants,” said Alfred, “told me that you were not at home, but I told them that I knew the dean would be at home to an old friend.”
“You are very good,—(said Buckhurst)—you do me a great deal of honour,” said the dean.
Two different manners appeared in the same person: one natural—belonging to his former, the other assumed, proper, as he thought, for his present self, or rather for his present situation.
“Won’t you be seated? I hope all our friends—” Mrs. Buckhurst, or, as she was called, Mrs. Dean Falconer, made divers motions, with a very ugly chin, and stood as if she thought there ought to be an introduction. The dean knew it, but being ashamed to introduce her, determined against it. Alfred stood in suspension, waiting their mutual pleasure.
“Won’t you sit down, sir?” repeated the dean.
Down plumped Mrs. Falconer directly, and taking out her spectacles, as if to shame her husband, by heightening the contrast of youth and age, deliberately put them on; then drawing her table nearer, settled herself to her work.
Alfred, who saw it to be necessary, determined to use his best address to conciliate the lady.
“Mr. Dean, you have never yet done me the honour to introduce me to Mrs. Falconer.”
“I thought—I thought we had met before—since—Mrs. Falconer, Mr. Alfred Percy.”
The lady took off her spectacles, smiled, and adjusted herself, evidently with an intention to be more agreeable. Alfred sat down by her work-table, directed his conversation to her, and soon talked, or rather induced her to talk herself into fine humour. Presently she retired to dress for dinner, and “hoped Mr. Alfred Percy had no intention of running away—she had a well-aired bed to offer him.”
The dean, though he cordially hated his lady, was glad, for his own sake, to be relieved from her fits of crossness; and was pleased by Alfred’s paying attention to her, as this was a sort of respect to himself, and what he seldom met with from those young men who had been his companions before his marriage—they usually treated his lady with a neglect or ridicule which reflected certainly upon her husband.
Alfred never yet had touched upon his business, and Buckhurst began to think this was merely a friendly visit. Upon Alfred’s observing some alteration which had been lately made in the room in which they were sitting, the dean took him to see other improvements in the house; in pointing out these, and all the conveniences and elegancies about the parsonage, Buckhurst totally forgot the dilapidation suit; and every thing he showed and said tended unawares to prove that the house was in the most perfect repair and best condition possible. Gradually, whatever solemnity and beneficed pomp there had at first appeared in the dean’s manner, wore off, or was laid aside; and, except his being somewhat more corpulent and rubicund than in early years, he appeared like the original Buckhurst. His gaiety of heart, indeed, was gone, but some sparkles of his former spirits remained.
“Here,” said he, showing Alfred into his study, “here, as our good friend Mr. Blank said, when he showed us his study, ‘Here is where I read all day long—quite snug—and nobody’s a bit the wiser for it.’”
The dean seated himself in his comfortable arm-chair. “Try that chair, Alfred, excellent for sleeping in at one’s ease.”
“To rest the cushion and soft dean invite.”
“Ah!” said Alfred, “often have I sat in this room with my excellent friend, Dr. Leicester!”
The new dean’s countenance suddenly changed: but endeavouring to pass it off with a jest, he said, “Ay, poor good old Leicester, he sleeps for ever,—that’s one comfort—to me—if not to you.” But perceiving that Alfred continued to look serious, the dean added some more proper reflections in a tone of ecclesiastical sentiment, and with a sigh of decorum—then rose, for he smelt that the dilapidation suit was coming.
“Would not you like, Mr. Percy, to wash your hands before dinner?”
“I thank you, Mr. Dean, I must detain you a moment to speak to you on business.”
Black as Erebus grew the face of the dean—he had no resource but to listen, for he knew it would come after dinner, if it did not come now; and it was as well to have it alone in the study, where nobody might be a bit the wiser.
When Alfred had stated the whole of what he had to say, which he did in as few and strong words as possible, appealing to the justice and feelings of Buckhurst—to the fears which the dean must have of being exposed, and ultimately defeated, in a court of justice—“Mrs. Leicester,” concluded he, “is determined to maintain the suit, and has employed me to carry it on for her.”
“I should very little have expected,” said the dean, “that Mr. Alfred Percy would have been employed in such a way against me.”
“Still less should I have expected that I could be called upon in such a way against you,” replied Alfred. “No one can feel it more than I do. The object of my present visit is to try whether some accommodation may not be made, which will relieve us both from the necessity of going to law, and may prevent me from being driven to the performance of this most painful professional duty.”
“Duty! professional duty!” repeated Buckhurst: “as if I did not understand all those cloak-words, and know how easy it is to put them on and off at pleasure!”
“To some it may be, but not to me,” said Alfred, calmly.
Anger started into Buckhurst’s countenance: but conscious how inefficacious it would be, and how completely he had laid himself open, the dean answered, “You are the best judge, sir. But I trust—though I don’t pretend to understand the honour of lawyers—I trust, as a gentleman, you will not take advantage against me in this suit, of any thing my openness has shown you about the parsonage.”
“You trust rightly, Mr. Dean,” replied Alfred, in his turn, with a look not of anger, but of proud indignation; “you trust rightly, Mr. Dean, and as I should have expected that one who has had opportunities of knowing me so well ought to trust.”
“That’s a clear answer,” said Buckhurst. “But how could I tell?—so much jockeying goes on in every profession—how could I tell that a lawyer would be more conscientious than another man? But now you assure me of it—I take it upon your word, and believe it in your case. About the accommodation—accommodation means money, does not it?—frankly, I have not a shilling. But Mrs. Falconer is all accommodation. Try what you can do with her—and by the way you began, I should hope you would do a great deal,” added he, laughing.
Alfred would not undertake to speak to his lady, unless the dean would, in the first instance, make some sacrifice. He represented that he was not asking for money, but for a relinquishment of a claim, which he apprehended not to be justly due: “And the only use I shall ever make of what you have shown me here, is to press upon your feelings, as I do at this moment, the conviction of the injustice of that claim, which I am persuaded your lawyers only instigated, and that you will abandon.”
Buckhurst begged him not to be persuaded of any such thing. The instigation of an attorney, he laughing said, was not in law counted the instigation of the devil—at law no man talked of feelings. In matters of property judges did not understand them, whatever figure they might make with a jury in criminal cases—with an eloquent advocate’s hand on his breast.
Alfred let Buckhurst go on with his vain wit and gay rhetoric till he had nothing more to say, knowing that he was hiding consciousness of unhandsome conduct. Sticking firmly to his point, Alfred showed that his client, though gentle, was