Part 28 (1/2)

”Booze,” Julia concluded for him. ”Johnny, you are always a wonder to me; how you have contrived to live so long and yet to keep your belief in man unspotted from the world beats me.”

Johnny looked uncomfortable and a little puzzled. ”Well, but your father--” he began.

”My father is a man,” Julia interrupted, ”and I would not undertake to say a man would not do anything--on occasions--or a woman either, for the matter of that. There is a beast in most men, and an archangel in lots, and a sn.o.b, and a prig, and a dormant hero, and an embryo poet.

There are great possibilities in men; you have to watch and see which is coming out top and back that, and then half the time you are wrong.

Of course, at father's age, possibilities are getting over; one or two things have come top and stay there.”

Mr. Gillat opened the cottage door and, not answering these distressing generalities, fell back on his one fact. ”Look,” he said, pointing to an empty peg, ”he must have gone after fir-cones; you see the basket has gone; he took it with him; I am sure he would not have taken it to the 'Dog.'”

”I believe their whisky is very bad,” Julia said, and seemed to think more of that than the argument of the basket. ”I'll give him another hour before I set out to look for him.”

She gave him the hour and then, in spite of Mr. Gillat's entreaties to be allowed to go in her place, set out for Halgrave. But she did not have to go all the way, for she met her father coming back. And she early discovered that, if he had not been to the ”Dog and Pheasant,”

he had been somewhere else where he could get whisky. They walked home together, and she made neither comments nor inquiries; she did not consider that evening a suitable time. The Captain was only a little muddled and, as has been before said, a very little alcohol was sufficient to do that; he was quite clear enough to be a good deal relieved by his daughter's behaviour, and even thought that she noticed nothing amiss. Indeed, by the morning, he had himself almost come to think there was nothing to notice.

But alas, for the Captain! He had never learnt to beware of those deceptive people who bide their time and bring into domestic life the diplomatic policy of speaking on suitable occasions only. He came down-stairs that morning very well pleased with himself; he felt that he had vindicated the rights of man yesterday; this conclusion was arrived at by a rather circuitous route, but it was gratifying; it was also gratifying to think that he had been able to enjoy himself without being found out. But Julia soon set him right on this last point; she did not reproach him or, as Mrs. Polkington would have done, point out the disgrace he would bring upon them; she only told him that it must not occur again. She also explained that, while he lived in her house, she had a right to dictate in these matters and, what was more, she was going to do so.

At this the Captain was really hurt; his feeling for dignity was very sensitive, though given to manifesting itself in unusual ways. ”Am I to be dependent for the rest of my days?” he asked.

Julia did not answer; she thought it highly probable.

”Am I to be dictated to at every turn?” he went on.

Julia did answer. ”No,” she said; ”I don't think there will be any need for that.”

Captain Polkington paid no attention to the answer; he was standing before the kitchen fire, apostrophising things in general rather than asking questions.

”Are my goings out and comings in to be limited by my daughter? Am I to ask her permission before I accept hospitality or make friends?”

”Friends?” said Julia. ”Then it was not 'The Dog and Pheasant' you went to, yesterday? I thought not.”

”Then you thought wrong,” her father retorted incautiously; ”I did go there.”

”To begin with,” Julia suggested; ”but you came across some one, and went on--is that it?”

The Captain denied it, but he had not his wife's and daughters' gifts; his lies were always of the cowardly and uninspired kind that seldom serve any purpose. Julia did not believe him, and set to work cross questioning him so that soon she knew what she wanted. It seemed that her surmise was correct; he had met some one at the ”Dog and Pheasant”; a veterinary surgeon who had come there to doctor a horse.

They had struck up an acquaintance--the Captain had the family gift for that--and the surgeon had asked him to come to his house on the other side of Halgrave.

When the information reached this point Julia said suavely, but with meaning: ”Perhaps you had better not go there again.”

”I shall certainly go when I choose,” Captain Polkington retorted; ”I should like to know what is to prevent me and why I should not?”

Julia remembered his dignity. ”Shall we say because it is too far?”

she suggested.

After that she dismissed the subject; she did not see any need to pursue it further; her father knew her wishes--commands, perhaps, he called them--all that was left for her to do was to see that he could not help fulfilling them, and that was not to be done by much talking any more than by little. So she made no further comments on his doings and, to change the subject, told him she had bought some whisky in the town yesterday and he had better open the bottle at dinner time.

The Captain stared for a moment, but quickly recovered from his astonishment, though not because he recognised that a little whisky at home was part of a judicious system. He merely thought that his daughter was going to treat him properly after all, and in spite of what had been lately said. This idea was a little modified when he found that, though he drank the whisky, Julia kept the bottle under lock and key.