Part 11 (1/2)
Wentworth trod upon the crocus and said he must be going home.
”We will walk back to the house with you,” said Magdalen, and she led the way with her father.
”I wish you would tell your Aunt Mary,” he said to Magdalen as they walked on, ”that I will not have her servants wandering in Lindley wood.
Jones tells me they were there again last Sunday with a dog, that accursed little yapping wool mat of Aunt Aggie's! I simply won't stand it. I would rather you told her. It would come better from you.”
”I will tell her.”
Colonel Bellairs was beginning late in life to lean on Magdalen. She was fond of him in a way, and never yielded to him. _On ne peut s'appuyer que contre ce qui resiste._ Though Colonel Bellairs did not know it, he was always wanting to _s'appuyer_. He had found in his daughter something solid to lean against, which he had never found in his wife, who had not resisted him.
”Oh! and look here, Magdalen. I had a letter from your Aunt Mary this morning, a long rigmarole. She says she is following her letter, and is coming to have a serious talk with me. Hang it all! Can't a man have a moment's peace?”
Colonel Bellairs tore out of an inner pocket a bulky letter in a bold, upright hand, marked _Private_, at the top.
”I wish to the devil she would mind her own business, and let me manage mine,” he said pettishly, thrusting the letter at Magdalen.
”I don't like to read it, as it is marked 'Private.'”
”Read it. Read it,” said Colonel Bellairs irritably.
Magdalen read the voluminous epistle tranquilly from beginning to end as she and her father walked slowly back to the house.
It was an able production, built up on a solid foundation. It dealt with Colonel Bellairs' ”obvious duty” with regard to the man to whom Magdalen had been momentarily engaged fifteen years before, and who, owing to two deaths in the Boer war, had unexpectedly succeeded to an earldom.
”Well! well!” said Colonel Bellairs at intervals, more interested than he wished to appear. ”What do you think of it? We noticed in the papers a week ago that he had succeeded his cousin.”
”Wait a minute, father. I have only come to my lacerated affections.”
”How slow you are! Your Aunt Mary does pound away. She has a touch as light as a coal-sack. The wonder to me is how she ever captured poor old Blore.”
”Perhaps she did it by letter. She writes uncommonly well. 'Magdalen's joyless homelife of incessant, unselfish service.' That is very well put, isn't it? And so is this: 'It is your duty now to inform him that you withdraw all opposition to the renewal of the engagement, and to invite him to Priesthope.' Really, Aunt Mary sticks at nothing. I warn you solemnly, father, this is only the thin end of the wedge. Unless you stand firm now, she'll want to choose our new stair carpet for us next.
Really, I think at her age she might take a little holiday, and leave the Almighty in charge.”
”Is that all you've got to say?” said Colonel Bellairs, somewhat surprised. ”Do you wish me to ask him to the house or do you not? I don't object to him. I never did, except as a son-in-law, when he had no visible means of subsistence.”
”And no intention of making any.”
”Just so. But I always rather liked him, and, and--time slips by”--(it had indeed), ”and I can't make much provision for you, in fact, almost none, and I may marry again; in fact, it is more than likely I shall shortly marry again.” Colonel Bellairs was for a moment plunged in introspection. ”So perhaps, on the whole, it would be more generous on my part to ignore the past and ask him to the house.”
”After forbidding him to come to it?”
Colonel Bellairs began to lose his temper.
”I shall ask whom I think fit if I choose to do so. I am master in this house. If he does not care to come, he can stay away.”
”Ask him, in that case.”
”You agree that on the whole that would be best.”