"Why, Tom, _you_ don't wear such gentlemanly trousers--you haven't got
half such fine long legs," said Jonah to his nephew, winking at the
same time, to imply that there was something more in these statements
than their undeniableness. Tom looked at his legs, but left it
uncertain whether he preferred his moral advantages to a more vicious
length of limb and reprehensible gentility of trouser.
In the large wainscoted parlor too there were constantly pairs of eyes
on the watch, and own relatives eager to be "sitters-up." Many came,
lunched, and departed, but Brother Solomon and the lady who had been
Jane Featherstone for twenty-five years before she was Mrs. Waule found
it good to be there every day for hours, without other calculable
occupation than that of observing the cunning Mary Garth (who was so
deep that she could be found out in nothing) and giving occasional dry
wrinkly indications of crying--as if capable of torrents in a wetter
season--at the thought that they were not allowed to go into Mr.
Featherstone's room. For the old man's dislike of his own family
seemed to get stronger as he got less able to amuse himself by saying
biting things to them. Too languid to sting, he had the more venom
refluent in his blood.
Not fully believing the message sent through Mary Garth, they had
presented themselves together within the door of the bedroom, both in
black--Mrs. Waule having a white handkerchief partially unfolded in her
hand--and both with faces in a sort of half-mourning purple; while Mrs.
Vincy with her pink cheeks and pink ribbons flying was actually
administering a cordial to their own brother, and the
light-complexioned Fred, his short hair curling as might be expected in
a gambler's, was lolling at his ease in a large chair.
Old Featherstone no sooner caught sight of these funereal figures
appearing in spite of his orders than rage came to strengthen him more
successfully than the cordial. He was propped up on a bed-rest, and
always had his gold-headed stick lying by him. He seized it now and
swept it backwards and forwards in as large an area as he could,
apparently to ban these ugly spectres, crying in a hoarse sort of
screech--
"Back, back, Mrs. Waule! Back, Solomon!"
"Oh, Brother. Peter," Mrs. Waule began--but Solomon put his hand
before her repressingly. He was a large-cheeked man, nearly seventy,
with small furtive eyes, and was not only of much blander temper but
thought himself much deeper than his brother Peter; indeed not likely
to be deceived in any of his fellow-men, inasmuch as they could not
well be more greedy and deceitful than he suspected them of being.
Even the invisible powers, he thought, were likely to be soothed by a
bland parenthesis here and there--coming from a man of property, who
might have been as impious as others.