Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/198

 6, 1864.]

was a sound of revelry in the Red Lion inn. A dinner of the townspeople was taking place there to celebrate some cause of national rejoicing. Filling the chair—as the newspapers had it the next day—was Lewis Carlton, Esquire; a great man now amidst his fellow townsmen. People are taken with show; people are taken with grandeur; and Mr. Carlton displayed both. He was successful as a medical man, he was rather liked as a social one; and his wife’s rank brought him always a certain consideration. The money he had inherited from his father, together with the proceeds of his own practice, enabled him to live in a style attempted by few in South Wennock. The town talked indeed of undue extravagance; whispers went round of consequent debt: but that was the affair of Mr. Carlton and Lady Laura alone, and was nothing to anybody. Certainly there was a wide contrast between the quiet style of living of John Grey and his partner Mr. Lycett, and the costly one of Mr. Carlton. The partners were prudent men, putting by for their children: Mr. Carlton was not a prudent man as regarded pecuniary matters, and he had no children to put by for. Carriages and horses and servants and entertainments -made his house somewhat unlike a medical man’s. But the public, I say, are led away by all this, and Mr. Carlton was just now the most popular resident in all South Wennock.

He had been selected by unanimous accord to take the chair at this very meeting, and had consented. Consented somewhat contrary to his usual line of conduct; for Mr. Carlton personally was of a retiring disposition, and wholly declined to be made much of, or to be brought prominently out. It was the first time he had consented to fill any public office whatever. He never would serve as poor-law guardian, or churchwarden, or parish overseer; coroner’s mandates could not draw him on a jury; the stewardship at races, at public balls, had alike been thrust upon him, or was sought to be, all in vain. Mr. Carlton, in spite of the show and pomp of his home (and that perhaps was owing to his wife, more than to him), was a retiring man, and would not be drawn out.

He could hardly have told why he had yielded now, and consented in this instance to take the chair at the dinner. Having done so, however, he did not shrink from its duties, and he was proving that incapacity was certainly not the cause of his repeated refusals, for never a better chairman graced a table.

He sat at the head of the board, making his after-dinner speeches, giving out his toasts. His manner was genial, his whole heart seemed to be in his task, his usually impassive face was lighted up to gaiety. A good-looking man thus, with his well-formed features, his gentle manly form. Some of the county people were at the table, nearly all the townsmen of note; one and all applauded him to the skies; and when the chairman’s health was proposed, shouts rent the sirair [sic], and were taken up by the mob flattening its noses against the curtained windows outside: “The health of Mr. Carlton! Health and happiness to Mr. Carlton!”

The clock was striking eleven when the chairman, flushed and heated, came forth. Perhaps none of those gentlemen had ever seen him flushed in their lives before; he was always to them a coldly impassive man, whom nothing could excite. It was not the wine that had done it now: Mr. Carlton, invariably abstemious in that respect, had taken as little as it was possible to take; but the unusual ovation paid to him had warmed his heart and flushed his brow. Several of the guests came out with him, but the greater portion were remaining longer; some of these had to ride home miles, the rest were hastening to their proximate homes. For the most part, they were slightly elated, for it had been a very convivial meeting; and they took a demonstrative leave of Mr. Carlton, nearly shaking his hands off, and vowing he was a rare good fellow and must be their chairman always. The crowd of eaves-droppers—ever swayed by the popular feeling of the hour, ever excitable—wound up with a cheer for Mr. Carlton by way of chorus.

He walked along the street towards his home, the cheer echoing in his ears. Such moments had not been frequent in Mr. Carlton’s life, and he was a little lifted out of his ordinary self. It was a warm night in that genial season hovering between summer and autumn, and Mr. Carlton raised his hat and bared his brow to the cool night air, as he glanced at the starry canopy of heaven. Whatever cares he might have had, whatever sources of trouble or anxiety—and whether he had any or not was best known to himself; but few of us are without some secret skeleton that