My Lady Ludlow Read Online Free PDF Page A

I have wandered from Mr. Gray. Of course, we first saw him
in church when he read himself in. He was very red-faced, the kind of
redness which goes with light hair and a blushing complexion; he looked
slight and short, and his bright light frizzy hair had hardly a dash of
powder in it. I remember my lady making this observation, and sighing
over it; for, though since the famine in seventeen hundred and ninety-
nine and eighteen hundred there had been a tax on hair-powder, yet it was
reckoned very revolutionary and Jacobin not to wear a good deal of it. My
lady hardly liked the opinions of any man who wore his own hair; but this
she would say was rather a prejudice: only in her youth none but the mob
had gone wigless, and she could not get over the association of wigs with
birth and breeding; a man's own hair with that class of people who had
formed the rioters in seventeen hundred and eighty, when Lord George
Gordon had been one of the bugbears of my lady's life. Her husband and
his brothers, she told us, had been put into breeches, and had their
heads shaved on their seventh birthday, each of them; a handsome little
wig of the newest fashion forming the old Lady Ludlow's invariable
birthday present to her sons as they each arrived at that age; and
afterwards, to the day of their death, they never saw their own hair. To
be without powder, as some underbred people were talking of being now,
was in fact to insult the proprieties of life, by being undressed. It
was English sans-culottism. But Mr. Gray did wear a little powder,
enough to save him in my lady's good opinion; but not enough to make her
approve of him decidedly.
    The next time I saw him was in the great hall. Mary Mason and I were
going to drive out with my lady in her coach, and when we went down
stairs with our best hats and cloaks on, we found Mr. Gray awaiting my
lady's coming. I believe he had paid his respects to her before, but we
had never seen him; and he had declined her invitation to spend Sunday
evening at the Court (as Mr. Mountford used to do pretty regularly—and
play a game at picquet too—), which, Mrs. Medlicott told us, had caused
my lady to be not over well pleased with him.
    He blushed redder than ever at the sight of us, as we entered the hall
and dropped him our curtsies. He coughed two or three times, as if he
would have liked to speak to us, if he could but have found something to
say; and every time he coughed he became hotter-looking than ever. I am
ashamed to say, we were nearly laughing at him; half because we, too,
were so shy that we understood what his awkwardness meant.
    My lady came in, with her quick active step—she always walked quickly
when she did not bethink herself of her cane—as if she was sorry to have
us kept waiting—and, as she entered, she gave us all round one of those
graceful sweeping curtsies, of which I think the art must have died out
with her,—it implied so much courtesy;—this time it said, as well as
words could do, "I am sorry to have kept you all waiting,—forgive me."
    She went up to the mantelpiece, near which Mr. Gray had been standing
until her entrance, and curtseying afresh to him, and pretty deeply this
time, because of his cloth, and her being hostess, and he, a new guest.
She asked him if he would not prefer speaking to her in her own private
parlour, and looked as though she would have conducted him there. But he
burst out with his errand, of which he was full even to choking, and
which sent the glistening tears into his large blue eyes, which stood
farther and farther out with his excitement.
    "My lady, I want to speak to you, and to persuade you to exert your kind
interest with Mr. Lathom—Justice Lathom, of Hathaway Manor—"
    "Harry Lathom?" inquired my lady,—as Mr. Gray stopped to take the breath
he had lost in his hurry,—"I did not know he was in the commission."
    "He is only just appointed; he took the oaths not a month ago,—more's
the pity!"
    "I do not understand why you