Part 32 (1/2)

”_Very_ likely to be, if you don't first ascertain whether there's a journeyman painter up it with a paint pot--not otherwise.”

Then they both laughed--for Wagram the first laugh he had indulged in since the bolt had fallen. Well, he could still laugh; yet but now it had seemed to him that he never would laugh again.

”But--you'll admit there are people who can tell you strange--and even startling--things about yourself that they can't possibly have got at by any ordinary means.”

”I'll admit nothing of the kind. I know the old stock business--I have had it thrown at me too often. Some fool--usually some feminine fool-- goes to one of these impostors--not the hedge-side type of fraud but the fas.h.i.+onable ditto--and pays down her guineas to be told such and such.

She is told such and such, and it amazes her. Then, in retailing it, she invariably ends up with: 'But, how do you account for it?' I always answer I can't account for it, any more than I can account for how the clever card conjurer takes ace and king and queen out of the top of the head of the baldest man in the audience; but he does it, and n.o.body dreams of a.s.sociating the supernatural with the process. It's the same thing here. It's part of the system to find out things; and they do it.

If you were let into the secret you'd probably laugh at the simplicity with which it's done. No; really, I've no patience with that sort of absurdity; it's too childish.”

”Looked at in that light it is. You do put things straight, Mr Wagram.”

”Well, but--isn't it so? I have even heard people attribute that sort of quackery to satanic influence, which has almost struck me, if one may say so, as insulting to the intelligence of the devil. But it is getting rather dusk. You will want your lamp before you get home. Is it in good lighting order?”

If a momentary temptation beset Delia to pretend it was not, so as to afford a pretext for accompanying him to the house, which was not very far distant, she heroically stifled it; so between them they lighted the lamp.

”Good-bye, Mr Wagram. Thanks so much. I promise you I won't dabble in the black art again,” she said as they shook hands; and mounting she skimmed away down the now shadowy road, going over in her mind every word, every tone of the, in hard fact, utterly unmomentous interview.

And he, striking into a woodland path on the other side, continued his walk in the deepening gloom, to the accompaniment of the ghostly hooting of owls. It was strange that he should have fallen in with this girl just then, and in his then frame of mind it seemed to him that her glance and tone and demeanour were very sweet, very soothing, very sympathetic. And then--he ceased to give her another thought.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.

”REQUIEM AETERNAM...”

Though beloved by their tenantry and dependents the Wagrams were not exactly popular with the county--as spelt with a capital C. This saw reason, or thought it did, to regard them as exclusive and eccentric.

To begin with, they seldom entertained, and then not on anything like the scale it was reckoned they ought. A few shooting parties in the season, and those mostly men, though such of the latter as owned wives and daughters brought them; or an occasional gathering, such as we have seen, mainly of ecclesiastical interest. It was a crying shame, declared the county, that a splendid place like Hilversea Court should be thrown away on two solemn old widowers; and it was the duty of one of them--Wagram at any rate--to marry again. But Wagram showed not the slightest inclination to do anything of the kind.

Not through lack of opportunity--inducement. He was angled for, more or less deftly--not always with a mercenary motive; but, though courteous and considerate to the aspiring fair, by no art or wile could he be drawn any further--no, not even into the faintest shadow of a flirtation. It was exasperating, but there was no help for it, so he had been given up as hopeless. He might have recognised the duty but for the existence of his son. Hilversea would have its heir after him-- that was sufficient.

He was eccentric, estimated his acquaintances, in that he worked hard at matters that most people leave to an agent; but this was a duty, he held--a sacred trust--to look into things personally; the result we have referred to elsewhere. As for entertaining, well, neither he nor the old Squire cared much about it. On the other hand, they were careful that many a day's sport, with gun or rod--but mostly the latter--should come in the way of not a few who seldom had an opportunity of enjoying such.

But now of late there had befallen that which caused the county aforesaid to rub its eyes, and this was the manner in which the Wagrams seemed to have ”taken up” Delia Calmour. It was not surprised that a brazen, impudent baggage like that should have pushed herself upon them on the strength of the gnu incident, the marvel was that she should have succeeded--have succeeded in getting round not only Wagram but the old Squire as well, and the county resented it. Once when she was at Hilversea some callers, of course, of her own s.e.x, took an opportunity of testifying their disapproval by being markedly rude to the girl.

This Wagram had noticed, and had there and then paid her extra attention by way of protest. And Haldane too--he who thought the whole world was hardly good enough to have the honour of containing that girl of his, and yet he allowed her to a.s.sociate with a daughter of tippling, disreputable old Calmour! What next, and what next!

But if the Wagrams were eccentric they could afford to be, and that for a dual reason: in the first place, they were ”big” enough; in the next, they cared literally and absolutely not one straw for the opinion of the county. If a given line commended itself to their approbation they took it, completely regardless of what the county or anybody else might choose to say or think--and this held equally good of father and son-- which was as well, for, as time went by, on this matter it ”said”

plenty.

A wafting of it reached Wagram one day, at the mouth of Clytie's _quondam_ victim--”Vance's eldest fool,” as the old Squire had, with cynical apt.i.tude, defined that much plucked youth.

”Take a tip from me, Wagram,” remarked the latter one day. ”You're making a mistake having too much to do with that lot. They're dangerous, and you'll have to pay up smartly for your fun one of these days.”

The other did not retort that the speaker had reason to be an authority on the point, nor did he get angry; he only answered:

”I don't like that kind of remark, Vance. I suppose because I'm not in the habit of taking anybody's 'tips' I always take my own line. Sounds conceited, perhaps, but it's true.”

”Oh, I didn't mean anything, Wagram,” was the reply, given rather shamefacedly.

But the time had now come when this reputation for reticence, for eccentricity, stood Wagram in good stead. If he had become graver, more aloof than ever under the influence of this new and overwhelming blow, his surroundings hardly noticed it. In anybody else it would have been at once remarked on; in him it was a mere development of his former and normal demeanour. One or two opined that he contemplated entering a monastery, but the general run gave the matter no further thought; and, the very vaguest, faintest inkling of the real state of things struck n.o.body at all.