Part 68 (1/2)

It was a dark wintry afternoon, and the library was somewhat sombre: the fire had died down, owing to Mr. Mayne's drowsiness. In the dim light Sir Harry's big burly figure looked almost gigantic. Mr. Mayne, with his little lean shoulders and sharp face, looked beside him much as a small gray-hound would beside a mastiff.

”How do you do?” began Sir Harry, in his loud voice. ”I must apologize for my intrusion; but I think my name is well known to you, and needs no introduction. I have often heard of Mr. Mayne, I can a.s.sure you.”

”You do me too much honor,” returned that gentleman, stiffly; and he glanced at the card in his hand. There it was, ”Sir Henry Challoner.”

”But what the----” And here his favorite expletive rose to his lips.

”We can scarcely see each other's faces,” observed Sir Harry, cheerfully. ”Will you allow me to take the liberty, though I have not known you for seven years--and hardly for seven minutes!” And then he seized the poker, and broke up an obstinate piece of coal.

”Actually, in my own house, and before my own eyes,” as Mr. Mayne told his wife afterwards.

”There, now! I have made a glorious blaze. These are first-rate coals.

Now we can have our talk comfortably together. You do not know me personally; but I dare say you have heard of my father,--Sir Francis Challoner? Poor old fellow! I am afraid too many people heard of him in his time.”

”Yes, sir: but, as it is hardly becoming of me to say to his son, I have never heard much good of him. If I remember rightly, he did poor Challoner a bad turn once.”

”Hush, my good friend!” And Sir Harry's ruddy face looked a little disturbed. ”I thought no one but myself and Aunt Catherine knew that story. It is rather hard on a man to have this sort of things brought up. And the poor old governor is dead now: so, if you will permit me to observe, bygones had better be bygones on that subject.”

”Oh, by all means, Sir Harry; but you introduced the matter yourself.”

”Excuse me, Mr. Mayne,” rather haughtily, ”I introduced myself. I am the son of Sir Francis. Well, if you know so much, you will understand the sort of interest I take in my cousins and how I consider it my duty to make up to them for what they have lost.”

”Very proper, I am sure.”

”As to that, duty is a pleasure. They are such awfully jolly girls, and so uncommonly plucky, that I am as proud of them as though they were my own sisters. Nan is so confoundedly pretty, too. I don't wonder at your son's taste. He must be a lucky fellow who gets Nan.”

”Sir!” vociferated Mr. Mayne; and Sir Harry immediately changed his tactics:

”That is a tidy place opposite you,--Gilsbank, I mean. I have been over there settling about the purchase. I am afraid Crauford is rather a screw: he wanted to drive too close a bargain. But I said, 'No; you shall have your money down, right and tight, but not a farthing over.'

And I insisted on my right to change the name if I like. I have half a mind to call it 'Challoner Place.'”

Mr. Mayne was wide awake now; his astonishment knew no bounds.

”You are going to buy Gilsbank!”

”I have bought it,” was the cool response; ”and I am now in treaty for Glen Cottage. My aunt has a fancy for her old home; and, though it is not much of a place, it is big enough for her and the girls; and Ibbetson has done a good deal to improve it. You look surprised, Mr.

Mayne; but I suppose a man must live somewhere!”

”Of course it is none of my business; but I thought Sir Francis was as poor as a church mouse. Mrs. Challoner was my informant; and she always led me to suppose so.”

”She was perfectly right. The poor old man never could keep money in his pocket: it always seemed to slip through his fingers. But that is not my case. I have been a lucky fellow all my life. I roughed it a bit in the colonies at first; but it did me no harm. And then we made a splendid hit out in Sydney,--coined money, in fact. I would not like to tell you what I made in one year: it seems blowing one's trumpet, somehow. But I soon got sick of making it; and here I am, with a tidy fortune,--plenty for myself, and enough to set up my aunt and the girls comfortably without feeling the loss. And now, Mr. Mayne when they are back at Glen Cottage, I want to know what you will do about your son.”

To do Mr Mayne justice, he was far too perplexed to answer off-hand; in fact, he was almost rendered dumb by excessive astonishment. To borrow his own forcible expression, used to his wife afterwards, ”he hardly knew where he was, things were so topsy-turvy.”

In the old days, before d.i.c.k had produced that wonderful moustache that was so long in growing, Mr. Mayne had been very partial to his neighbors at Glen Cottage. It is always pleasant to a man to patronize and befriend a pretty woman; and Mrs. Challoner was an exceedingly pretty woman. It was quite an occupation to a busy man like the master of Longmead to superintend their garden and give his advice on all subjects that belong to a man's province.

But for the last year, since d.i.c.k had so greatly developed in mental culture, his father had been growing very weary even of the name of Challoner; it had become a habit with him to decry them on every possible occasion. ”What is in a name?” he would say, when some person would lament the dead-and-gone glories of Challoner Place. ”There is not a soul belonging to them, except that disreputable Sir Francis; and he is as good as a beggar.”

But since Glen Cottage had given way to the Friary, and the dressmaking scheme had been carried out, his opposition had become perfectly frantic: he could have sworn at d.i.c.k for his senselessness, his want of pride, his lamentable deficiency in ambition. ”Never, as long as my name is Richard Mayne, will I give in to that boy,” he had vowed inwardly.