BELGRAVIA

MARCH 1869

MY ENEMY'S DAUGHTER

BY JUSTIN M'CARTHY

AUTHOR OF "PAUL MASSIE," "THE WATERDALE NEIGHBOURS," ETC.

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CHAPTER XIV. AN ODD INTERVIEW AND AN UNEXPECTED MEETING.

RE there any poor people who never felt an impress of something like awe and timidity at their first direct contact with wealth? I have heard and read of noble, independent beings, serene in the unsurpassed and conscious dignity of mere manhood, who, in whatever poverty, never felt the faintest flutter of envy, awe, or humiliation when they stood for the first time in the presence of a great man's flunkeys, and asked to see the great man himself. Are there such persons? I don't say I disbelieve in their existence, but I should like to hear, on the authority of someone more skilled than I to penetrate the secrets of human consciousness, that there really are beings of that kind before I quite believe in them. My own impression is, that civilised man or woman of humble class hardly ever yet knocked for the first time at the door of a great West-end mansion without a beating of the heart, a mingling of awe and humiliation. It is very mean and shabby and unworthy, and so are most of our instinctive impulses, which at last we school down, or are schooled and mastered by. Deep, deep down in our civilised nature is rooted the abject homage to wealth. I almost think it begins with the wearing of clothes. I doubt whether the very next stage of civilisation after nakedness does not witness the internal growth of that servile sentiment. I think we keep singing our "A man's a man for a' that," and our "Vilain et très-vilain," in order to drown the feeling or exorcise it, as they play martial airs to keep up the manhood of the raw recruit. Of course we get over it sometimes; at least, thank Heaven, we do not all succumb to it wholly. I am not much of a sneak myself, and I never yet sought the patronage of a man of rank, or put myself in his way to get his nod, or bragged to my acquaintance that I

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had met him, and I know that I am no whit more independent than many of my neighbours,- but I have felt the poor man's sentiment of awe for wealth; I have done to wealth the involuntary homage of being afraid, and hearing my heart beat, as I stood in its august, unfamiliar presence. Many of my friends are people connected somehow with the world of art, and who have made their way up from nothing. Some of them have fine West-end houses now, of their own, and carriages, and awful footmen in livery; but I think if I were talking confidentially with each of them in turn over a cigar and a glass of brandy-and-water, he would frankly admit that one of the most trying moments of his life-one of the moments when he found it hardest to keep up his dignity of independent and equal manhood-was just the first time when, having knocked at some great man's door, he waited for the opening of it, and the presence of the flunkey.

Now I stood this Sunday morning at the door of Mr. Lyndon, M.P., and I realised these sensations. I had come to ask no favour— to seek no patronage-to bespeak no recognition-to pave the way for no acquaintanceship. If anything, I was coming out of my regular beat of life rather to confer a favour than to solicit one; and yet I did feel that ignoble, nervous tremor which the unaccustomed presence of wealth inspires in the poor man, and which is the base image, the false coin, the bastard brother of the soul's involuntary homage to beauty and greatness. I knocked at the door, and as I waited for its opening, I felt so nervous that I grew positively ashamed of myself, and took my courage in two hands, as the French phrase goes, and remembered about a man being a man for a' that.

Mr. Lyndon, M.P., lived in a fine house in Connaught-place, looking straight into Hyde-park. One had to go up high steps to get to the door, which lent additional majesty and dread to the business. It was, as I have said, a Sunday; and as I came hither I had passed crowds of people streaming out of the doors of fashionable churches, and seen splendidly-dressed women, all velvets and satins and feathers, assisted into their carriages by footmen who carried gilded prayerbooks; and I wondered whether Mr. Lyndon had been to church, and if so whether he would have come back from his worship by the time I reached his house, and whether it was a dreadful heathenish sort of thing, a kind of outrage upon Church and State, to ask to see such a man at all on Sunday. To go to church, too, seemed, in presence of the splendid crowds, so necessary and becoming a part of respectability, that I felt like a social outlaw because I had not been there, and was not much in the habit of going there. My sensations were not the pangs of an awakened conscience, but the kind of feeling which goes through a man who, unshaved and with muddy boots, unconsciously intrudes into the midst of a well-dressed and elegant company.

When I found out Mr. Lyndon's house, I wondered much why such a man, especially if he was in the habit of going to church, could not

do something kind and substantial for his niece and his brother's wife, whose chief crime, poor thing, appeared to have been her inconvenient virtue; and why he would not at least take them out of poverty and debt and the perpetual presence of temptation. This I was thinking when the door opened, and I stood in the presence of the great man's

servant.

Well, it was not so dreadful after all. I really don't think I minded it in the least after the first sound of my voice. Mr. Lyndon at home?

Yes, Mr. Lyndon is at home. The servant seemed to say by his look of cold inquiry, "What then, young man? Admitting that Mr. Lyndon is at home, which it can't be worth while concealing from you, how can the fact in any way concern you?"

I mildly asked if I could see him.

The man who was civil enough, by the way-merely asked if I had an appointment; Mr. Lyndon did not usually see people unless by appointment. The pampered menial of a bloated aristocracy clearly assumed at the first glance that I was not a visitor, a friend of the family.

"Will you take in my card, and say I wish to speak a few words to Mr. Lyndon very particularly? I think he will see me."

Presently the servant came back and told me that if I would wait a few minutes Mr. Lyndon would see me. I was shown into a large, cold, handsome room, with the blinds down, and a conservatory at one side. A group of marble figures, nearly life-size, stood in front of the conservatory. They were the familiar Graces, and they were covered over with a shroud of very thick muslin; so thick, indeed, that the covering seemed put on less as a protection against dust and discoloration than as a veil to hide the nakedness of the classic women during the severely proper hours of Sunday service. I did not give much attention, however, to these marble forms; for my eyes were caught by an exquisitely-framed photograph of large size, which stood, conspicuous, on the chimneypiece. It was the likeness of Christinaonce my Christina, when she was poor and obscure, and we were both happy.

"Please to walk this way, sir; Mr. Lyndon will see you."

I followed the servant across an echoing hall and into a library. At a desk in the centre, with letters and papers all about him, with Blue-books piled on the floor near his arm-chair, and on his other side a waste-paper basket overflowing with pamphlets, sat Mr. Lyndon, his eyes still fixed on some document he was reading.

He was a formal, rather handsome, close-shaven man, wearing the high stand-up collars which now are almost as rare as pigtails. His thick hair was iron-gray; his complexion was fast purpling; his eyes, when he favoured me by looking up, were much lighter than those of his brother or of Lilla-they were a cold, steely gray. I marked the rigid expression of his chin and jaw-it might have been cruelty, or it

might have been stern virtue, according as you pleased to construe it; even in history and in action it is not always easy to distinguish the one from the other. In Mr. Lyndon's case, I could not but think that the full, sensuous lips helped one a little to make the decision.

This, then, was Tommy Goodboy. I am bound to say that from the very first I took a dislike to Tommy Goodboy.

Mr. Lyndon left me for some seconds planté là without looking at me or speaking. I was, in fact, about to open the conversation, when he suddenly looked up with an air first of irritation, then of vacancy; then he looked down at my card, which was lying before him on his desk, and at last he spoke :

"O, Mr. Temple! Yes, I recollect now. My niece did speak to me about you, and I promised her that if I could do anything-but I am sure I don't know. Why did you not come sooner-some time in the season, Mr. Temple? This is no time; and everybody is out of town; and I am leaving town myself to-morrow; and, in fact, I am very busy to-day, and hardly counted on being disturbed. I don't usually see anybody on Sundays; but as you have come-and I certainly did promise my niece to see you—"

“Excuse me, Mr. Lyndon. I have not come to remind you of your promise, or to ask any favour of you; indeed, I would accept none even if it were offered, although I feel deeply obliged to Miss Lyndon." "To Miss Lyndon ?"

"To your niece. Yes."

"O, to be sure-Lilla Lyndon, my niece. Well ?”

"I don't mean to make any demand on your kindness, so far as I am concerned. I hope to be able to work my own way."

He merely bent his head, as a sort of formal acknowledgment. "I have not come on any business of my own."

"Sent by my niece, I suppose?"

"No, Mr. Lyndon. She does not know anything about my coming here."

He looked down at his papers, and glanced at his watch. The actions were significant; they said very plainly, "If you have anything to say, say it at once, and go."

"I daresay you consider my visit an intrusion."

"Not at all. At least, that quite depends-"

"I have come about a matter which concerns you, or, at least, which I thought might possibly concern you."

He looked at me with cold surprise.

"I met lately, more than once in Dover, and here in London, a person whom I believe to be a member of your family-your brother, in fact."

He did start a little and wince as I gave him this piece of news. "I was not aware that he had returned from abroad. Are you quite sure?"

"Quite sure; at least, he told me so. Indeed, I might have guessed the fact even without his telling me."

"Well, sir, if you formed any acquaintanceship with the person you speak of—and I gather from your manner that you did it would be superfluous to tell you that he is not a person whose return to England could give any pleasure to me or to any member of his family. That fact it would be idle for me to attempt to disguise. I did not know that he had returned to England, or expect his return, or desire to see him. You know, therefore, that you are the bearer of unwelcome news. The question I would ask is, why you have gratuitously taken on yourself the task of making the announcement. I suppose need hardly say that if you are the bearer of any message, or request, or anything of that sort from the person you speak of, you could not possibly present yourself with worse credentials."

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"I have no message or request, and I would not make myself the bearer of any. I assure you, Mr. Lyndon, I am no friend of your brother's. No member of his family-no, not his nearest relation— could feel less inclined for his society than I am. It is just because I think him so objectionable, and so offensive, and so reckless, that I have come here to-day."

"Well ?"

"Your brother told me over and over again, before I knew his name, that he had come to England resolved to expose, and disgrace, and extort money from someone. I afterwards learned-indeed, he told me—that you are the person against whom this is to be directed."

"He means to make some disgraceful exhibition of himself, to raise some scandal, in the hope of terrifying or shaming me into buy ing him off?"

"He does.”

"He is quite capable of that, or of anything else outrageous and— and, in fact, infamous."

"I have no doubt he is. He impressed me as being all but insane with hatred and recklessness."

"Ah! but he is not insane. It would be well for his family if he were. He is perfectly sane. Well, have you, then, come for the purpose of warning me?"

"No. Frankly, I tell you that I have not; at least, not on your own account."

"Listen to me, Mr. a-a-Temple. If you should see that person again, you may tell him that he can do his worst. I shall not buy him off -no, not by the outlay of a sixpence. It's very kind, no doubt, of you to take the trouble to come here, and all that; and of course you will understand me as expressing my sense of the obligation."

"Pray don't speak of that. I have not come out of any consideration for which you, Mr. Lyndon, personally have any reason to feel obliged. But-"