Part 11 (2/2)

He still leaned there looking out. It was even more silent than the veldt. There were no little strange animal noises to break the silence.

Nothing but that drip, drip of the rain, and that soft distant sighing of the sea.

A curious sense of loneliness fell upon him, a loneliness altogether at variance with the loneliness of the veldt. He could not have defined wherein the difference lay, yet he was well aware that there was a difference. It was one of those subtle differences, exceedingly apparent to the inner consciousness, yet entirely impossible to translate into terms of speech. The nearest approach he could get to anything like a definition of it, was that it was less big, but more definitely poignant.

Beyond that he did not, or could not, go. For some five minutes or so he leant at the little cas.e.m.e.nt window, gazing at the gold of the b.u.t.tercups seen through a blurred mist of rain. Then he pulled the window to, and came down into the parlour.

The hands of the grandfather's clock pointed to ten minutes to five.

Antony, remembering the box of wood in the scullery, bethought himself of a cup of tea. His bag contained all the requirements. Long practice had taught him to provide himself with necessities, and also, on occasions, to subst.i.tute lemon for milk, as a complement to tea.

He was just about to go and fetch a handful of sticks, preparatory to lighting a fire, when he heard the click of his garden gate. Turning, and looking through the window, he saw a big man coming up the path.

CHAPTER XI

DOUBTS

Doctor Hilary was returning from his rounds. His state of mind was nearly as grey as the atmosphere.

It is one thing to agree to a mad-brained scheme in the first amused interest of its propounding, even to mould it further, and bring it into shape. It is quite another to be actually confronted with the finished scheme, to realize that, though you may not be its veritable parent, you have at all events foster-fathered it quite considerably, and that, moreover, you cannot now, in conscience, cast off responsibility in its behalf.

The fact that you had excellent reasons for adopting the scheme in the first place, will doubtless be of comfort to your soul, but that particular species of comfort and ordinary everyday common sense are not always as closely united as you might desire. In fact they are occasionally apt to pull in entirely opposite directions, a method of procedure which is far from consoling.

Doctor Hilary found it far from consoling.

Conscience told him quite plainly that his real and innermost reason for foster-fathering the scheme was simply and solely for the sake of s.n.a.t.c.hing at any mortal thing that would, or could, bring interest into an old man's life. Common sense demanded why on earth he had not suggested an alternative idea, something a trifle less mad. And it was mad. There did not now appear one single reasonable point in it, though very a.s.suredly there were quite a vast number of unreasonable ones.

In the first place, and it seemed to him nearly, if not quite, the most unreasonable point, Nicholas had known nothing whatever about the young man he had elected to make his heir,--nothing, that is, beyond the fact that he had known the young man's father, and had once seen Antony himself when Antony was a child. There had even been very considerable difficulty in obtaining knowledge of his whereabouts.

In the second place, it appeared quite absurd to appoint the young man to the position of under-gardener at the Hall. It was more than probable that he knew nothing whatever about gardening. It was true that, if he did not, he could learn. But then Golding, the head gardener, might not unreasonably find matter for amazement and comment in the fact that a young and ignorant man, who was paid a pound a week and allowed to rent a furnished cottage, should be thrust upon him, rather than an experienced man, or an ignorant boy who would have received at the most eight s.h.i.+llings a week, and have lived at his own home. Amazement and comment were to be avoided, that had been Nicholas's idea, and yet, to Doctor Hilary's mind they ran the risk of being courted from the outset. In the third place, how was it likely that a man of education--and it had been ascertained that Antony was a university man--could comport himself like a labourer in any position,--gardener, farm-hand, or chauffeur? The conditions had stated that he was to do so. But could he? There was the point.

The more Doctor Hilary thought about the conditions, the madder they appeared to him. Yet, having undertaken the job of carrying the mad scheme through, he could not possibly back out at the eleventh hour. He could only hope for the best, but it must be confessed that he was not exceedingly optimistic about that best. And further, he was not exceedingly optimistic about the young man. He could imagine himself, in a like situation, consigning Nick and his conditions to the nether regions; certainly not submitting meekly to a year's effacement of his personality for the sake of money. Such conditions would have enraged him.

No; he was not optimistic regarding the man. He pictured him as either a bit of a fawner, who would cringe through the year, or a keen-headed business man, who would go through it with a steel-trap mouth, and an eye to every weakness in his fellow-workers. Certainly neither type he pictured appealed to him. Yet he felt confident he would find one of the two, and had already conceived a strong prejudice against Antony Gray.

From which regrettable fact it will be seen that he was committing the sin of rash judgment.

It was not altogether surprising, therefore, that his mood was nearly as grey as the atmosphere.

He sighed heavily, and shook his head, somewhat after the fas.h.i.+on of a big dog. Reasons, partly mental, partly physical were responsible for the shake. In the first place it was an attempt to dispel mental depression; in the second place it was to free his eyebrows and eyelashes from the rain drops clinging to them, since the rain was descending in a grey misty veil.

With the shake, an idea struck him.

Why not confront the embodied scheme at once? Why not interview this preposterous young man without delay, and be done with it?

He gave a brief direction to his coachman.

Five minutes later saw him standing at the gate of Copse Cottage, his dog-cart driving away down the lane. It had been his own doing. He had said he would walk home. An idiotic idea! What on earth had suggested it to him?

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