The Eldest Son Part 46

d.i.c.k laughed. He could afford to let this feminine charge go by. "He wants me to talk business with him this evening, after dinner," he said. "But he wants to talk to you again first, in spite of the fact, that he's been talking to you nearly all day. Mind you keep calm, my girl. We're not going to throw up our job yet awhile. If he wants us here he'll have to wait for us."

Virginia went up with Mrs. Clinton to the big room, in the big bed of which the Squire was sitting propped up with pillows, in a camel's-hair dressing-gown, the seams of which had been slit up and tied again over his bound-down arm.

"Ah, here you are," he said in his usual hearty tone. "Nina, I want a word or two with Virginia. She'll call you when she goes."

Mrs. Clinton took her dismissal and Virginia her seat in a low chair by the bed, facing him.

"Look here," he said; "no good beating about the bush any longer.

We're very good friends now, and I hope we shall remain so all our lives. But there's no good disguising that we've been at cross-purposes, and I want all that put right now. Let's look facts in the face. It was more my fault than yours, I dare say, but there have been faults on both sides, and we shan't gain anything by pretending that we've all behaved as we ought to have done."

"You're quite right," said Virginia, smiling at him. "I'll listen to anything you have to say, and you might begin by telling me where my fault has been."

"Eh! what!" exclaimed the Squire. "Well, I suppose you won't deny that you came down here to steal a march on me?"

"I wanted to know you," said Virginia sweetly. "I knew I should love you if I did. And I was quite right. I do know you now, and I do love you, better than any other man, except d.i.c.k."

The Squire thought this a very pretty speech, and, as it came from a very pretty woman, its effect on him was beneficial. "Well, you have taken a liking to me," he said, "and I have taken a liking to you. So we're quits, and it's a pity both of us didn't do it before, for I tell you frankly I have made certain promises which I shouldn't have made if I had felt about you as I do now, and I don't quite see how I can get out of them."

"You mean about money?" said Virginia. "Dear Mr. Clinton, please don't worry any more about that. d.i.c.k and I have got over whatever disappointment we may have felt about it--_I_ never felt any at all except for his sake--long ago. He has been lucky in getting this job, and we shall be as comfortable as possible."

"This job!" repeated the Squire, with much distaste of the word. "d.i.c.k oughtn't to be wanting a job at all, and he won't be wanting one now.

He must give it up."

"I don't think he will do that at once," said Virginia. "He will consider himself bound, for a time at least, to Mr. Spence. However, that needn't worry you. We shall hope to be here a good deal, if you want us, and later on we may be able to be here, or hereabouts, altogether, if you still want us."

"Of course I want you," said the Squire. "I've wanted d.i.c.k all along, in the place to which he belongs; I've never felt comfortable about Humphrey taking his place, and as for my Lady Susan, I shall be very pleased to welcome her as a daughter-in-law, but, if you want the truth, my dear, you're worth six of her, and if _you_ can't live here, well, I won't have _her_, and that's flat. I'll keep the place empty."

"Oh, but surely!" exclaimed Virginia. "You've promised, haven't you?

Humphrey told me it was arranged that he should live in the dower-house when he was married."

"He did, did he? Seems to me Master Humphrey is counting his chickens before they are hatched. No, I never promised. I never promised him anything. At least, I believe I did promise him a certain allowance, which is to be increased from another quarter. But beyond that nothing was said definitely."

"No, but it was implied. Oh, Mr. Clinton, please don't make us the cause of disappointment to others. We don't want it. We shall be very well off as it is. We don't want any more, really we don't. d.i.c.k has a fine position, handsomely paid, and I have money of my own too, you know, and a good deal of it."

For the first time the Squire frowned. "I suppose you have," he said shortly. "But to tell you the plain truth, I don't like the quarter it comes from, and I very much doubt if d.i.c.k does either."

"I don't much, either," said Virginia, smiling to herself.

"I'm glad of that, at any rate. No, you're loyal enough to d.i.c.k.

You'll be able to forget the past; it hasn't soiled you. That's what I was afraid of, and I see I was wrong. Still, this money--it's stuck in my throat as much as anything."

"Well, then," said Virginia, "it need not stick in your throat any longer. I know what you think as to where it came from. d.i.c.k thought the same, and it stuck in his throat too, till I told him the truth.

Now I'll tell it to you. It's my own money, every cent of it, and it came to me after--after my husband died. I have nothing that comes from him. I wouldn't keep it if I had. I'm an heiress, Mr.

Clinton--not a very heavily gilded one, it's true, and the money my uncle left me was made out of pork-packing, which is a dreadful thing to talk about in this house. Still, you must forget that. Only the capital sum comes from pork, and it's all invested in nice clean things like railways."

The Squire stared at her during this recital as if fascinated. The moment was almost too solemn for words. "Well, my dear," he said after a short pause, "you lifted one weight from me yesterday, and now you've lifted another, and a bigger one. Go away, and leave me to think about it."

He thought about it for some time after she had left him, propped up on his pillows, his mind growing ever lighter. In the midst of all his perversities, his dislike of the thought of his son living, in part, on money that had come from "that blackguard" had been an honourable and unselfish feeling, and the removal of the fear swept away with it every other trace of his long-nurtured objections to Virginia as a wife for d.i.c.k. Now all he desired was that d.i.c.k should return to his honoured place at Kencote, and all should be as it had been before, with only the addition of Virginia's charming presence to complete the happiness of the tie. He did not think at all about Humphrey, nor of the new interests on which, a week or so before, he had been anxious to pin his antic.i.p.ations.

But Humphrey had to be thought of, all the same. Mrs. Clinton, coming into his room, said that Humphrey would like to come and see him and have a talk, and asked if he felt well enough to talk to him.

"Oh, well enough? Yes," he said. "Never felt better in my life. I've a good mind to get up for dinner. Nina, Virginia has just told me something that I wish I had known before. It has pleased me beyond measure."

He imparted to her Virginia's disclosure, and she expressed herself pleased too, wondering a little at the ways of men about money, that potent disturber of lives.

"That removes every difficulty," he said. "And I'm very glad of it, for d.i.c.k's sake. I don't know how much it is and I haven't asked her, but she must be pretty well off. d.i.c.k won't need it, but it's always useful."

"It will make it easier to do what you promised for Humphrey," said Mrs. Clinton.

"For Humphrey?" he echoed. "Oh yes. Fifteen hundred a year is a pretty big allowance for a younger son. He's a lucky fellow, Master Humphrey. Did you say he wanted to see me? Well, send him up."

Humphrey came in, and stood by his father's bedside.

"Well, my boy!" said the Squire pleasantly.

"Picking up all right, I hope?" said Humphrey. "Might have been a nasty business."

"Sit down," said the Squire. "I've just heard a thing that has pleased me amazingly. Funny how one gets an idea into one's head when there's no foundation for it!" Then he told Humphrey about Virginia's money.

Humphrey had not much to say in answer to the information, but sat thinking.

"Well, now," said the Squire, with the air of one turning from thoughts of pleasure to thoughts of business. "Of course, all this makes a difference. d.i.c.k and I have had a row--you may put it like that if you please--and we've made it up. He'll come back here, I hope, and settle down, and things will be as they were before. I don't think you're cut out for a country life altogether, and dare say you won't be sorry for the change. So it will suit us all pretty well, taking one thing with another, eh?"

Humphrey said nothing for a moment. Then he asked shortly, "Do you mean that I'm not to have the dower-house, after all?"

"Have the dower-house?" repeated the Squire, as if that were the last thing that had ever crossed his mind. "When did I ever say that you were to have the dower-house? It isn't mine to give you. It goes with the property--to d.i.c.k eventually; you know that perfectly well."

"Oh yes, I know that," said Humphrey, with some impatience. "I meant, have it to live in. That's what was arranged, and I told Susan so, and Lady Aldeburgh."

"Then I think you were in a bit of a hurry," said the Squire. "I told you I should settle nothing till d.i.c.k's marriage."

Humphrey found it difficult to keep his temper. "If you'll excuse my saying so," he said, with a slight tremor in his voice, "we've been talking of nothing else for weeks past, and as to what part I was to take in the management of the place. I'd every right to tell them that at Thatchover."

"Well, perhaps you had," a.s.sented the Squire tolerantly. "And I don't go so far as to say that you can't live there for a bit either. I want d.i.c.k and Virginia to live there, and I tell you so plainly, and I shall do all I can to persuade him to. But he may think he's bound to this fellow, Spence, for six months or so, and if you get married in time, and care to occupy the house for a bit and keep it warm for him, well, you'll be very welcome. But, on the whole, I think you'd be wiser to settle down where you're going to stay. With the very handsome allowance I'm going to make you, and what old Aunt Laura has promised to add to it, and whatever Susan brings you, though I dare say that won't be much, you'll be exceptionally well off, and can live pretty well where you like."

Humphrey choked down his anger. "What about Partisham?" he asked, but it was an unwise question, for whatever definite arrangement the Squire had had in his mind and allowed to be talked about, Partisham had not come into it, although it was true that he had let it be seen what was in his mind.

"Do you mean to say you want me to leave Partisham away from d.i.c.k, and give it to you?" he asked.

"I want you to keep to your promises," replied Humphrey doggedly.

"You've been feeding me up for the last month with all sorts of statements as to what you were going to do for me; then you suddenly make it up with d.i.c.k, and want to kick me out altogether, and expect me to take it all without a word, and consider myself lucky. I call it grossly unfair. I haven't only myself to think of. You even want to chuck the arrangement that you say I'd a perfect right, relying on what you said, to tell Susan about."

"I think you're most infernally ungrateful," said the Squire angrily.

"Point me out another younger son in England who is given two thousand a year to set up house on."

"That doesn't all come from you," said Humphrey, "and there are plenty of younger sons whose fathers are as rich as you who would get that.

Besides, that isn't the point. If that's all you'd said you'd do for me, I'd have said thank you and cut my coat according to my cloth. But you know quite well it isn't all. The dower-house was a definite understanding at any rate, and if you didn't mean that Partisham was to come to me eventually, and Checquers come either to me or go to Walter, then your words don't mean anything at all."

The accusation had too much truth in it even for the Squire to contradict it altogether. "Partisham is likely to be one of the best bits of the whole estate," he said. "In ten years' time half of it will be building land, and even with these wicked taxes, it will be a very valuable piece of property. It isn't likely, now d.i.c.k has come to reason, that I'm going to leave it away from him, and you oughtn't to expect it."