Once when the idea of this danger of meeting another countess in a narrow, deep-rutted lane was very prominent in my mind I ventured to ask Mrs. Medlicott what would have to be done on such an occasion;and she told me that "de latest creation must back, for sure," which puzzled me a good deal at the time, although I understand it now. Ibegan to find out the use of the "Peerage," a book which had seemed to me rather dull before; but, as I was always a coward in a coach, Imade myself well acquainted with the dates of creation of our three Warwickshire earls, and was happy to find that Earl Ludlow ranked second, the oldest earl being a hunting widower, and not likely to drive out in a carriage.
All this time 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 ****** 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!"
