A Dark Nights Work | Page 4

always looked
forward to going to Christ Church along with his fellows, the sons of
the squires, his father's employers. It was a severe mortification to him
to find that his destiny was changed, and that he had to return to
Hamley to be articled to his father, and to assume the hereditary
subservient position to lads whom he had licked in the play-ground,
and beaten at learning.
His father tried to compensate him for the disappointment by every
indulgence which money could purchase. Edward's horses were even
finer than those of his father; his literary tastes were kept up and
fostered, by his father's permission to form an extensive library, for
which purpose a noble room was added to Mr. Wilkins's already
extensive house in the suburbs of Hamley. And after his year of legal
study in London his father sent him to make the grand tour, with
something very like carte blanche as to expenditure, to judge from the
packages which were sent home from various parts of the Continent.
At last he came home--came back to settle as his father's partner at
Hamley. He was a son to be proud of, and right down proud was old
Mr. Wilkins of his handsome, accomplished, gentlemanly lad. For
Edward was not one to be spoilt by the course of indulgence he had
passed through; at least, if it had done him an injury, the effects were at
present hidden from view. He had no vulgar vices; he was, indeed,
rather too refined for the society he was likely to be thrown into, even

supposing that society to consist of the highest of his father's employers.
He was well read, and an artist of no mean pretensions. Above all, "his
heart was in the right place," as his father used to observe. Nothing
could exceed the deference he always showed to him. His mother had
long been dead.
I do not know whether it was Edward's own ambition or his proud
father's wishes that had led him to attend the Hamley assemblies. I
should conjecture the latter, for Edward had of himself too much good
taste to wish to intrude into any society. In the opinion of all the shire,
no society had more reason to consider itself select than that which met
at every full moon in the Hamley assembly-room, an excrescence built
on to the principal inn in the town by the joint subscription of all the
county families. Into those choice and mysterious precincts no towns
person was ever allowed to enter; no professional man might set his
foot therein; no infantry officer saw the interior of that ball, or that
card-room. The old original subscribers would fain have had a man
prove his sixteen quarterings before he might make his bow to the
queen of the night; but the old original founders of the Hamley
assemblies were dropping off; minuets had vanished with them,
country dances had died away; quadrilles were in high vogue--nay, one
or two of the high magnates of --shire were trying to introduce waltzing,
as they had seen it in London, where it had come in with the visit of the
allied sovereigns, when Edward Wilkins made his debut on these
boards. He had been at many splendid assemblies abroad, but still the
little old ballroom attached to the George Inn in his native town was to
him a place grander and more awful than the most magnificent saloons
he had seen in Paris or Rome. He laughed at himself for this
unreasonable feeling of awe; but there it was notwithstanding. He had
been dining at the house of one of the lesser gentry, who was under
considerable obligations to his father, and who was the parent of eight
"muckle-mou'ed" daughters, so hardly likely to oppose much
aristocratic resistance to the elder Mr. Wilkins's clearly implied wish
that Edward should be presented at the Hamley assembly-rooms. But
many a squire glowered and looked black at the introduction of Wilkins
the attorney's son into the sacred precincts; and perhaps there would
have been much more mortification than pleasure in this assembly to

the young man, had it not been for an incident that occurred pretty late
in the evening. The lord- lieutenant of the county usually came with a
large party to the Hamley assemblies once in a season; and this night he
was expected, and with him a fashionable duchess and her daughters.
But time wore on, and they did not make their appearance. At last there
was a rustling and a bustling, and in sailed the superb party. For a few
minutes dancing was stopped; the earl led the duchess to a sofa; some
of their acquaintances came up to speak to them; and then the
quadrilles were finished in rather a flat