Yet he was not a fool. In the discussion of graver
matters--politics, law, and history--that arose in the smoking-room,
he was not to be put down by more fluent tongues; demolished
sophistry by solid reasoning, impregnable assertions, and an array
of facts that might be prolix, but was always formidable--in short,
sustained fully the character ascribed to him by his brother-in-law,
of a "thoroughly sensible fellow."
"No genius, I allow!" Mr. Aylett would add, in speaking of his
wife's bantling among his compatriots, "but a man whose industry and
sound practical knowledge of every branch of his profession will
make for him the fortune and name genius rarely wins."
With the younger ladies, his society was, it is superfluous to
observe, at the lowest premium civility and native kindliness of
disposition would permit them to declare by the nameless and
innumerable methods in which the dear creatures are proficient. To
Rosa Tazewell he could not be anything better than a target for the
arrows of her satire, or the whetstone, upon the unyielding surface
of which she sharpened them. But she showed her prudential foresight
in never laughing at him when out of his sight, and in Mabel's. At
long ago as the night of Mr. Aylett's wedding-party at Ridgeley, her
sharp eyes had seen, or she fancied they did, that the hum-drum
groomsman was mightily captivated by the daughter of the house, and
she had divined that Mrs. Aylett's clever ruses for throwing the two
together were the outworks of her design for uniting, by a double
bond, the houses of Dorrance and Aylett. She knew, furthermore, that
Herbert Dorrance had travelled with the Ridgeley family for three
weeks in October, and that he had now been domesticated at the
homestead for ten days. Mrs. Aylett's show of fondness for him was
laughable, considering what an uninteresting specimen of masculinity
he was; but the handsome dame was too worldly-wise, too sage a judge
of quid pro quo, to entice him to waste so much of the time he was
addicted to announcing was money to him, for the sake of a good so
intangible as sisterly sentimentality.
Unless there were some substantial and remunerative ulterior object
to be gained by his tarrying in the neighborhood, cunning Rosa
believed that "dear Bertie" would have been packed off to Buffalo,
or whatever outlandish place he lived in, so soon as the bridal
festivities were over, and not showed his straw-colored whiskers
again in Virginia in three years, at least, instead of running down
to the plantation every three months.
"If such an ingredient as the compound, double-distilled essence of
flatness is to be infused into the wassail-cup, it is he who will
supply it!" thought the spicy damsel, with a bewitching shrug of the
plump shoulder nearest him, while engaged in a lively play of words
with a gentleman on her other hand. "What can possess Mabel to
encourage him systematically in her decorous style, passes my powers
of divination. Maybe she means to use him as a poultice for her
bruised heart. In that case, insipidity would be no objection."