Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/159

 way to his home from the railway station a few days after the conversation above recorded, and the clanging of his own great gates as they shut behind him echoed and re-echoed through the vast deserted space. The gorgeous porter and all the regiment of domestics were down at Westhope, the family place in Norfolk, so the carriage gates were opened by a middle-aged female with her head tied up for toothache, and Mrs. Mason, the housekeeper, with a female retinue, was waiting to receive his lordship on the steps. Always affable to old servants of the family, whose age, long service, and comfortable comely appearance do him credit, as he thinks, Lord Hetherington exchanges a few gracious words with Mrs. Mason, desires that Mr. Byrne shall be shown in to him so soon as he arrives, and makes his way across the great hall to the library. The shutters of his room have been opened, but there has been no time given for further preparations, and the big writing-table, the globes, and the bookcases are all enswathed in ghostly holland drapery. The bust of the ninth earl, Lord Hetherington's father, has slipped its head out of its covering, and looks astonished and as if it had been suddenly called up in its nightclothes. My lord looks dismayed, as well he may, at the dreary room, but finds no more cheerful outlook from the window into the little square garden, where a few melancholy leaves are rotting in the dirty corners into which they have drifted, and where Mrs. Mason's grandson, unconscious of observation, is throwing stones at a cab. My lord rattles the loose silver in his trousers' pockets, walks up to the fireplace and inspects his tongue in the looking-glass, whistles thoughtfully, sighs heavily, and is beginning to think he shall go mad, when Mrs. Mason opens the door and announces "Mr. Byrne."

"How do, Byrne?" says his lordship, much relieved. "Glad to see you! Come up on purpose! Want your help!"

Mr. Byrne returns his lordship's salutations, and quietly asks in what way he can be of use. His lordship is rather taken aback at being so suddenly brought to book, but says, with some hesitation,

"Well, not exactly in your own way, Byrne; I don't think I shall do any more what-d'ye-call-ums, birds, any more—for the present, I mean, for the present. Her ladyship thought those last screens so good that it would be useless to try to improve on them, and so she's given me—I mean I've got—another idea."

Mr. Byrne, with the faintest dawn of a cynical grin on his face, bows and waits.

"Fact is," pursues his lordship, "my place down at Westhope, full of most monstrously interesting records of our family from the time of—oh, the Crusaders and Guy Fawkes and the Pretender, and all that kind of thing; records, don't you know, old papers, and what they call documents, you know, and those kind of things. Well, I want to take all these things and make 'em into a sort of history of the family, you know, to write it and have it published, don't they call it? You know what I mean."

Mr. Byrne intimates that they do call it published, and that he apprehends his lordship's meaning completely.

"Well, then, Byrne," his lordship continues, "what I sent for you for is this. 'Tisn't in your line, I know, but I've found you clever and all that kind of thing, and above your station. Oh, I mean it, I do indeed, and I want you to find me some person, respectable and educated and all that, who will just go through these papers, you know, and select the right bits, you know, and write them down, you know, and, in point of fact, just doYou know what I mean!"

Mr. Byrne, with a radiant look which his face but seldom wore, averred that he not merely understood what was meant, but that he could recommend the very man whom his lordship required, a young man of excellent address, good education, and great industry.

"And he'll understand?" asked Lord Hetherington, hesitatingly, and with a curious look at Mr. Byrne.

"Everything!" replied the old man. "Your lordship's book will be the most successful thing you've done!"

"Then bring him to the Clarendon at twelve the day after to-morrow! As he's to live in the house, and that kind of thing, her ladyship must see him before he's engaged!"

"I suppose I may congratulate you, my boy!" said Byrne to Joyce; a day or two afterwards, as they walked away from the Clarendon Hotel after their interview, "though you don't look much pleased about it!"

"I'm an ungrateful brute," said Walter; "I ought to have thanked you the instant the door closed! For it is entirely owing to you and your kindness that I have obtained this splendid chance! But"