MRS. MASON’S HOT LUNCHEON

Though Mr. Dockwrath was somewhat elated by this invitation to lunch, he was also somewhat abashed by it.  He had been far from expecting that Mr. Mason of Groby Park would do him any such honour, and was made aware by it of the great hold which he must have made upon the attention of his host.  But nevertheless he immediately felt that his hands were to a certain degree tied.  He, having been invited to sit down at Mr. Mason’s table, with Mrs. M. and the family, ­having been treated as though he were a gentleman, and thus being for the time being put on a footing of equality with the county magistrate, could not repeat that last important question:  “How about my expenses down here?” nor could he immediately go on with the grand subject in any frame of mind which would tend to further his own interests.  Having been invited to lunch, he could not haggle with due persistency for his share of the business in crushing Lady Mason, nor stipulate that the whole concern should not be trusted to the management of Round and Crook.  As a source of pride this invitation to eat was pleasant to him, but he was forced to acknowledge to himself that it interfered with business.

Nor did Mr. Mason feel himself ready to go on with the conversation in the manner in which it had been hitherto conducted.  His mind was full of Orley Farm and his wrongs, and he could bring himself to think of nothing else; but he could no longer talk about it to the attorney sitting there in his study.  “Will you take a turn about the place while the lunch is getting ready?” he said.  So they took their hats and went out into the garden.

“It is dreadful to think of,” said Mr. Mason, after they had twice walked in silence the length of a broad gravel terrace.

“What; about her ladyship?” said the attorney.

“Quite dreadful!” and Mr. Mason shuddered.  “I don’t think I ever heard of anything so shocking in my life.  For twenty years, Mr. Dockwrath, think of that.  Twenty years!” and his face as he spoke became almost black with horror.

“It is very shocking,” said Mr. Dockwrath; “very shocking.  What on earth will be her fate if it be proved against her?  She has brought it on herself; that is all that one can say of her.”

“D ­ her! d ­ her!” exclaimed the other, gnashing his teeth with concentrated wrath.  “No punishment will be bad enough for her.  Hanging would not be bad enough.”

“They can’t hang her, Mr. Mason,” said Mr. Dockwrath, almost frightened by the violence of his companion.

“No; they have altered the laws, giving every encouragement to forgers, villains, and perjurers.  But they can give her penal servitude for life.  They must do it.”

“She is not convicted yet, you know.”

“D ­ her!” repeated the owner of Groby Park again, as he thought of his twenty years of loss.  Eight hundred a year for twenty years had been taken away from him; and he had been worsted before the world after a hard fight.  “D ­ her!” he continued to growl between his teeth.  Mr. Dockwrath when he had first heard his companion say how horrid and dreadful the affair was, had thought that Mr. Mason was alluding to the condition in which the lady had placed herself by her assumed guilt.  But it was of his own condition that he was speaking.  The idea which shocked him was the thought of the treatment which he himself had undergone.  The dreadful thing at which he shuddered was his own ill usage.  As for her; ­pity for her!  Did a man ever pity a rat that had eaten into his choicest dainties?

“The lunch is on the table, sir,” said the Groby Park footman in the Groby Park livery.  Under the present household arrangement of Groby Park all the servants lived on board wages.  Mrs. Mason did not like this system, though it had about it certain circumstances of economy which recommended it to her; it interfered greatly with the stringent aptitudes of her character and the warmest passion of her heart; it took away from her the delicious power of serving out the servants’ food, of locking up the scraps of meat, and of charging the maids with voracity.  But, to tell the truth, Mr. Mason had been driven by sheer necessity to take this step, as it had been found impossible to induce his wife to give out sufficient food to enable the servants to live and work.  She knew that in not doing so she injured herself; but she could not do it.  The knife in passing through the loaf would make the portion to be parted with less by one third than the portion to be retained.  Half a pound of salt butter would reduce itself to a quarter of a pound.  Portions of meat would become infinitesimal.  When standing with viands before her, she had not free will over her hands.  She could not bring herself to part with victuals, though she might ruin herself by retaining them.  Therefore, by the order of the master, were the servants placed on board wages.

Mr. Dockwrath soon found himself in the dining-room, where the three young ladies with their mamma were already seated at the table.  It was a handsome room, and the furniture was handsome; but nevertheless it was a heavy room, and the furniture was heavy.  The table was large enough for a party of twelve, and might have borne a noble banquet; as it was the promise was not bad, for there were three large plated covers concealing hot viands, and in some houses lunch means only bread and cheese.

Mr. Mason went through the form of introduction between Mr. Dockwrath and his daughters.  “That is Miss Mason, that Miss Creusa Mason, and this Miss Penelope.  John, remove the covers.”  And the covers were removed, John taking them from the table with a magnificent action of his arm which I am inclined to think was not innocent of irony.  On the dish before the master of the house, ­a large dish which must I fancy have been selected by the cook with some similar attempt at sarcasm, ­there reposed three scraps, as to the nature of which Mr. Dockwrath, though he looked hard at them, was unable to enlighten himself.  But Mr. Mason knew them well, as he now placed his eyes on them for the third time.  They were old enemies of his, and his brow again became black as he looked at them.  The scraps in fact consisted of two drumsticks of a fowl and some indescribable bone out of the back of the same.  The original bird had no doubt first revealed all its glories to human eyes, ­presuming the eyes of the cook to be inhuman ­in Mrs. Mason’s “boodoor.”  Then, on the dish before the lady, there were three other morsels, black-looking and very suspicious to the eye, which in the course of conversation were proclaimed to be ham, ­broiled ham.  Mrs. Mason would never allow a ham in its proper shape to come into the room, because it is an article upon which the guests are themselves supposed to operate with the carving-knife.  Lastly, on the dish before Miss Creusa there reposed three potatoes.

The face of Mr. Mason became very black as he looked at the banquet which was spread upon his board, and Mrs. Mason, eyeing him across the table, saw that it was so.  She was not a lady who despised such symptoms in her lord, or disregarded in her valour the violence of marital storms.  She had quailed more than once or twice under rebuke occasioned by her great domestic virtue, and knew that her husband, though he might put up with much as regarded his own comfort, and that of his children, could be very angry at injuries done to his household honour and character as a hospitable English country gentleman.

Consequently the lady smiled and tried to look self-satisfied as she invited her guest to eat.  “This is ham,” said she with a little simper, “broiled ham, Mr. Dockwrath; and there is chicken at the other end; I think they call it ­devilled.”

“Shall I assist the young ladies to anything first?” said the attorney, wishing to be polite.

“Nothing, thank you,” said Miss Penelope, with a very stiff bow.  She also knew that Mr. Dockwrath was an attorney from Hamworth, and considered herself by no means bound to hold any sort of conversation with him.

“My daughters only eat bread and butter in the middle of the day,” said the lady.  “Creusa, my dear, will you give Mr. Dockwrath a potato.  Mr. Mason, Mr. Dockwrath will probably take a bit of that chicken.”

“I would recommend him to follow the girls’ example, and confine himself to the bread and butter,” said the master of the house, pushing about the scraps with his knife and fork.  “There is nothing here for him to eat.”

“My dear!” exclaimed Mrs. Mason.

“There is nothing here for him to eat,” repeated Mr. Mason.  “And as far as I can see there is nothing there either.  What is it you pretend to have in that dish?”

“My dear!” again exclaimed Mrs. Mason.

“What is it?” repeated the lord of the house in an angry tone.

“Broiled ham, Mr. Mason.”

“Then let the ham be brought in,” said he.  “Diana, ring the bell.”

“But the ham is not cooked, Mr. Mason,” said the lady.  “Broiled ham is always better when it has not been first boiled.”

“Is there no cold meat in the house?” he asked.

“I am afraid not,” she replied, now trembling a little in anticipation of what might be coming after the stranger should have gone.  “You never like large joints yourself, Mr. Mason; and for ourselves we don’t eat meat at luncheon.”

“Nor anybody else either, here,” said Mr. Mason in his anger.

“Pray don’t mind me, Mr. Mason,” said the attorney, “pray don’t, Mr. Mason.  I am a very poor fist at lunch; I am indeed.”

“I am sure I am very sorry, very sorry, Mr. Mason,” continued the lady.  “If I had known that an early dinner was required, it should have been provided; ­although the notice given was so very short.”

“I never dine early,” said Mr. Dockwrath, thinking that some imputation of a low way of living was conveyed in this supposition that he required a dinner under the pseudonym of a lunch.  “I never do, upon my word ­we are quite regular at home at half-past five, and all I ever take in the middle of the day is a biscuit and a glass of sherry, ­or perhaps a bite of bread and cheese.  Don’t be uneasy about me, Mrs. Mason.”

The three young ladies, having now finished their repast, got up from the table and retired, following each other out of the room in a line.  Mrs. Mason remained for a minute or two longer, and then she also went.  “The carriage has been ordered at three, Mr. M.,” she said.  “Shall we have the pleasure of your company?” “No,” growled the husband.  And then the lady went, sweeping a low curtsy to Mr. Dockwrath as she passed out of the room.

There was again a silence between the host and his guest for some two or three minutes, during which Mr. Mason was endeavouring to get the lunch out of his head, and to redirect his whole mind to Lady Mason and his hopes of vengeance.  There is nothing perhaps so generally consoling to a man as a well-established grievance; a feeling of having been injured, on which his mind can brood from hour to hour, allowing him to plead his own cause in his own court, within his own heart, ­and always to plead it successfully.  At last Mr. Mason succeeded, and he could think of his enemy’s fraud and forget his wife’s meanness.  “I suppose I may as well order my gig now,” said Mr. Dockwrath, as soon as his host had arrived at this happy frame of mind.

“Your gig? ah, well.  Yes.  I do not know that I need detain you any longer.  I can assure you that I am much obliged to you, Mr. Dockwrath, and I shall hope to see you in London very shortly.”

“You are determined to go to Round and Crook, I suppose?”

“Oh, certainly.”

“You are wrong, sir.  They’ll throw you over again as sure as your name is Mason.”

“Mr. Dockwrath, you must if you please allow me to judge of that myself.”

“Oh, of course, sir, of course.  But I’m sure that a gentleman like you, Mr. Mason, will understand ­”

“I shall understand that I cannot expect your services, Mr. Dockwrath, ­your valuable time and services, ­without remunerating you for them.  That shall be fully explained to Messrs. Round and Crook.”

“Very well, sir; very well.  As long as I am paid for what I do, I am content.  A professional gentleman of course expects that.  How is he to get along else; particular with sixteen children?” And then Mr. Dockwrath got into the gig, and was driven back to the Bull at Leeds.