CHAPTER XIII.

"YOUNG PILLBOX."

One day, at a dinner at Sir Harry Yoxford's, among other people to whom Lord Loughton was introduced was a certain Mr. Wellclose, a lawyer, who had the charge of Sir Harry's legal business, together with that of various other great people of the neighborhood. Mr. Wellclose, a fussy, talkative, middle-aged man, who dearly loved a lord, contrived to seat himself next the earl in the smoking-room. He seemed to know everything about everybody and before the evening was over Lord Loughton had contrived to extract from him a considerable amount of information which might or might not be useful to him at some future time. "By-the-bye, Mr. Wellclose," said the earl, "are you at all acquainted with my next-door neighbor at Bourbon House?"

"I have had occasion to meet Mr. Orlando Larkins several times on business," said the attorney, "and a very pleasant young gentleman I have found him to be."

"I think I have heard somewhere that he doesn't get on very well with the county folk hereabouts? Probably his antecedents are against him."

"That's just it, my lord. His father was a celebrated pill-maker; and his name being rather an uncommon one, people can't forget the fact."

"What a pity it is that the world is not more good-natured! What on earth have a man's progenitors to do with the man himself?"

"My own sentiments exactly, if I may make so bold as to say so," said Mr. Wellclose, who always made a point of agreeing with his superiors. "I'm sure I've not the remotest idea who or what my great-grandfather was, and I shouldn't be a bit better man if I had. But as regards young Larkins, I was talking with him the other day, and he seems quite down-hearted. Of course, there are plenty of people about here--such as they are--who would only be too happy to visit him, or to see his feet under their mahogany, simply because he is rich; but the tip-top people, among whom it is the ambition of his life to mix, give him the cold shoulder, and no mistake. His name seems to cling to him wherever he goes. The poor fellow was telling me about his tour on the Continent a little while ago. Wherever he went people looked at him--or he fancied they did--and whispered to each other; and on one or two occasions some low cads at the _table d'hôte_ ranged half a dozen pill-boxes in front of their plates, and made believe to swallow a bolus or two between every course, and so drove the poor fellow away."

"He must be rather foolishly sensitive about such matters."

"Well, he is. I don't think he can be said to possess a very strong mind at the best of times; but for all that he is a very generous-hearted, good-natured fellow, and I'm sorry for him."

"I've been told that his father left him tolerably well off."

"So he did, my lord--and all out of pills; or, rather, pills laid the foundation of his fortune, and lucky speculations did the rest. The son's income is as near twelve thousand a year as makes no matter. Then there are the two young ladies, his sisters, who will have twenty thousand apiece on their wedding-day."

"Why didn't you and I go into the pill-trade, eh, Wellclose?"

"Just the question I often put to Mrs. W., my lord."

"The only way for Larkins to get out of his difficulty is for him to marry and change his name to that of his wife."

"A capital idea, my lord, which I won't fail to suggest to him the next time I see him. Talking about matrimony reminds me that Mr. Larkins has an unmarried aunt--a younger sister of his mother--who also has twenty thousand pounds settled on her. Thirty-six years of age and twenty thousand pounds!" As he said these words with much unction the keen-eyed lawyer glanced up sharply in the earl's face.

"I'm afraid the lady must be too fastidious or she would surely have been snapped up long ago," said the earl, as he knocked the ash off his cigar.

"Perhaps so--perhaps an early disappointment or something of that kind. But, by Jove! what a prize, eh, my lord? What a galleon to capture and tow safely into the harbor of Matrimony!" Again he glanced up keenly into the earl's face.

"I tell you what, Wellclose," said his lordship, presently, "I think I must get you to introduce me to young Larkins one of these days."

"I shall be only too happy, my lord."

It fell out, however, that Lord Loughton was enabled to make the acquaintance of Mr. Larkins without the assistance of Mr. Wellclose. Twice a week the earl took a return-ticket between Brimley and Shallowford. The two places were thirty miles apart. At the latter town the earl was quite unknown, and it was to the post-office there that he had requested Clem to write to him, if necessary, under his old name of Mr. Fildew. Twice a week he went over to see if any letters were waiting for him. As he was coming back one day, about a week after the dinner at Sir Harry's, he found a gentleman in the carriage into which he got at Shallowford. At the next station some one came up to the window and addressed the stranger as Mr. Larkins.

As soon as the train was under way again the earl spoke. "Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Larkins of Bourbon House?" he said.

Mr. Larkins blushed, and stammered out a reply to the effect that he was the individual in question.

"I am the Earl of Loughton, and I am very glad to be able to make the acquaintance of my next-door neighbor. One can afford to be isolated in town, but that rule hardly holds good in the country." Then he held out his hand and wrung the young man's fingers very cordially. "Why did you not call upon me, Mr. Larkins, or at the very least send in your card?"

"I--I was afraid of being considered an intruder. The difference in our social status and all that, my lord."

"Pooh, pooh, my dear sir, I trust the age we live in is too enlightened to retain many antiquated prejudices of that kind. A gentleman is a gentleman all the world over, whether he be a duke or a ploughman."

"I assure you, my lord, that I have been snubbed and slighted in a great many quarters, simply because my father was--well, simply because he made his money in business."

"Can it be possible! Thank Heaven, there is no nonsense of that kind about me. If I like a man, I like him, and I never stop to ask him who was his grandfather."

"Ah, my lord, if all the aristocracy were only like you!"

"Oh, I don't want to set myself up as a pattern, but those are my sentiments. I think that you and I, being such near neighbors, ought to be good friends. What do you say to dropping in to-morrow morning about eleven, and having a bit of breakfast with me? I don't give dinner-parties, because I'm too poor. But I like to have somebody to breakfast with me."

Mr. Larkins was overwhelmed by the earl's condescension. At last the golden portals were about to open to his touch. Would the Viponds and the Cossingtons dare to snub him in future when they found him hand-and-glove with an earl? Mr. Larkins's trap was waiting at the station. It was one of the happiest half-hours of that young man's life when he was seen by the good people of Brimley driving Lord Loughton home to Laurel Cottage.

Mr. Larkins did not fail to put in an appearance next morning at the earl's breakfast-table. On the following day his lordship dined _en famille_ at Bourbon House, on which occasion Orlando's sisters were introduced to him. They were two really pretty and well-mannered girls of seventeen and nineteen. There was a vein of simplicity and effusive good-nature running through the young Man's character that the earl was not slow to note, and appraise at its proper value. From that time forward the pill-maker's son and Lord Loughton were very frequently to be seen in each other's company. They drove out together, they rode together (in Orlando's carriages and on Orlando's horses), they played billiards together, they dined together, and they smoked together. Hardly a week passed without a hamper of wine or a box of cigars finding its way to Laurel Cottage. Fruit was sent nearly every day. A saddle-horse and a brougham were specially retained for the earl's own use. The quidnuncs of Brimley found much food for gossip anent these proceedings; but as the earl was notoriously poor and Mr. Larkins as notoriously rich, they rather admired the arrangement than otherwise. It was, of course, patent to everybody why the earl so persistently patronized the pill-maker's son, but none the less on that account were several doors now thrown open to Orlando which had heretofore been inexorably shut in his face. People began to discover virtues and good qualities in the young man the existence of which they had never suspected before. The Honorable Mrs. Templemore and Lady Wildman, neither of whom were rich and both of whom had several unmarried daughters, began to angle for him openly. When, a little later on, and at the earl's suggestion, he ventured to send out invitations for a garden-party, to be followed by a carpet-dance, nearly everybody who was asked came, and it was universally admitted to have been one of the most successful things of the season. From that time forward Mr. Larkins was accepted without question as "one of us."

All this suited well with the earl's grim and mordant humor. He laughed at Larkins and he laughed at those who, having at first tabooed him, were now willing to welcome him with open arms. He generally spent a solitary hour in his little smoking-room before going to bed, musing over the events of the day, and planning the morrow's campaign. At such times--his servants being all in bed, he indulged himself in a long clay pipe and a couple of glasses of hot brandy-and-water. The brandy and the pipe, together with a supply of the strong tobacco which he used to smoke during his evenings at the Brown Bear, were all kept under lock and key, in company with the worn and shabby pouch which had done him such good service in days gone by. It amused him at such times to think how people must talk about him, and he acknowledged to himself that he liked being talked about. His coming had caused quite a commotion among the stagnant circles of Brimley and its neighborhood. His sayings and doings, his habits and mode of life, supplied an unfailing topic of conversation at a hundred dinner-tables and twice as many tea-tables. He was already acquiring a reputation for eccentricity. It was a reputation that suited him, and he determined to cultivate it.

It was not till the lapse of two months after his arrival at Brimley that he went up to London to see his wife and son. He dressed himself for the occasion in a suit of sober tweed, and left behind him the gold watch and chain which a Brimley tradesman had only been too happy to press upon him, and the diamond ring that Larkins had made him a present of. From the moment he got out of the train at King's-Cross till the moment he got into it on his return he was to be plain John Fildew again. He quite enjoyed the masquerade, and chuckled to himself several times in the cab before he was set down at the corner of Oxford Street. Clem had apprised him of the change in Mrs. Fildew's lodgings. When he walked into his wife's sitting-room without knocking, that lady stared at him for a moment in utter surprise, and then said, "Have you not mistaken the room, sir?"

"Why, Kitty, dear, don't you know me?" he asked, and then he crossed the room and kissed his astonished wife.

"How was it likely I should know you, John? You are not a bit like your dear old self," and with that she began to cry.

Clement, when he came in, was almost as much surprised, but he showed it in a different way. The change in his father was so thorough and so striking that he could hardly believe him to be the same man who had left them only a few weeks previously and that evening he felt a degree of respect for him such as he had never experienced before. He had heard his mother insist a thousand times on the fact of his father being a gentleman bred and born, but for the first time in Clem's experience he looked the character. The earl dilated in a hazy but grandiloquent sort of way about his new prospects and his new mode of life. It was not to be expected that he should condescend to particulars; and as both his wife and son knew that he had a horror of being questioned, they listened to all he had to say, and troubled him with no inconvenient queries. Clement was well content that matters should remain as they were, but Mrs. Fildew, in addition to the grief she felt at her husband's absence, was somewhat fearful in her mind lest her "dear John" should have compromised his dignity by engaging in work that was derogatory to his status as a gentleman.

Mr. Fildew's stay in London was only from the dusk of one afternoon till the evening of the next. His avocations were of such a pressing and important nature, he said, that it was impossible for him to make a longer stay just then. In the state of his wife's health--a subject respecting which he was anxious for more reasons than one--there was little apparent change since he left London. She was certainly no better, but neither did there seem any perceptible alteration for the worse. He longed to go and spend an evening with his old cronies at the Brown Bear, but after mature consideration he deemed it better not to do so. He looked and felt so changed that his old friends would hardly welcome him as being any longer one of themselves. Besides, for anything he knew to the contrary, some of them might some day find themselves at Brimley and encounter him there but if they were not made acquainted with the alteration in his appearance, he flattered himself that, even so, they would hardly recognize him. It was decidedly to his interest to give the Brown Bear as wide a berth as possible.

Great, therefore, was the earl's surprise and chagrin when, as he was walking down the platform in search of a smoking-carriage on his return journey, he nearly stumbled over Mr. Cutts, the landlord of the Brown Bear. "I really beg your pardon," exclaimed the earl, before he had time to recognize the man. At the sound of the familiar voice Cutts stared, and then the earl saw that it was too late to retreat. Grasping the landlord by the hand, and making believe that he was delighted to see him, he hurried him off to the refreshment bar. In order to keep Cutts from questioning him, which might have been inconvenient, he kept on questioning Cutts. Everybody, it appeared, with one exception, was quite well, and going on much as usual. "Of course you remember Pilcher?" said Cutts. "Ah, well, he's come to grief, poor devil, and quite suddenly too. It seems that a scamp of a brother persuaded him to accept a bill for a big amount. The brother bolted, Pilcher couldn't meet the bill, some other creditors came down on him, and his stock was seized. Meanwhile his wife died, and the result of the blooming business was that poor Pilcher was turned adrift on the world without a penny to bless himself with, and with three young 'uns, all under eight, to call him father."

"Poor Pilcher, indeed! But, of course, you did something for him at the Brown Bear?"

"Yes--what we could. Couldn't do much, you know. Sent the hat round and got about six pounds--enough to bury his wife, I dare say. He shouldn't have been such a fool. I'd sooner trust a stranger than a relation any day."

"And where's Pilcher now?"

"Can't say. Somewhere about the old quarter, no doubt."

"Ah, well, I am sorry for him, poor devil. Goodnight. Shall see you again before long." And with that the earl made a rush for his carriage.

Next day he wrote to Clement, asking him to hunt up Pilcher's address. A week later "poor Pilcher" received by post a twenty-pound note simply endorsed, "From a friend."