Part 8 (2/2)
”Old Bates hasn't forgotten his mixture,” he observed drily, ”though it's nearly thirty years since I tasted it. Thirty years! Well!
you'll have heard the story, Mike, and I suppose have long since written me down as a black-hearted devil who's no fit company for honest men.”
He pa.s.sed his hand wearily over his brow as he spoke.
Michael flushed. Though he had expected his father's return eventually, the shock of this unlooked-for home-coming had thrown him off his balance.
”I was with my mother and grandfather on their death-beds,” said he, shortly.
His father sighed.
”Yes,” he said. ”I don't wonder you refused my hand, lad; yet there's more excuse than you know of. I can't tell you all now, but I will--one day.”
Michael was twisting the stems of a little bunch of primroses between nervous fingers.
”Ralph Conyers is dead also,” he replied unsteadily.
Stephen Berrington looked up sharply.
”I know,” he answered. ”Ah yes! Of course _that_ story has been drummed well into you. A moment's weakness, and a man's whole lifetime to be cursed for it.”
”It cost his friends more.”
”Oh, aye; I know. But what of it? If I had not spoken we should have all been strung up in a row. I could not have saved Pryor and Farquhar. No, nor Conyers either, for that matter. As it was I saved my own skin, and never really hurt theirs. What blame?”
”Need a gentleman ask that question?”
”Tra, la, la! Sir Henry always was a good schoolmaster there. A trifle out of date, though, my son, as you will find. Why, even Morry himself took my word for it and shook hands afterwards.”
”Morry?”
”Morice Conyers--poor old Ralph's son. A buck worth having for a son, too. Why! we're the best of friends.”
”Morice Conyers your friend?”
”You look unbelieving, my Bayard, but it is true that I drove down here on friend Morry's coach, and, had it not been for my ardent longing to embrace you and see again these ancestral halls, I should now be toasting the prettiest eyes in the kingdom, and drinking to the august health of our liege lord Prince Florizel, who is at present between the sheets in his royal residence at Carlton House, suffering from an attack of indigestion.”
Then, suddenly dropping his lighter tone of badinage, the speaker leant forward.
”Look here, Michael,” he said,--and there lacked not a certain wistful pleading in his tones,--”others have agreed to let the past be forgotten; can't my own son join them there? It's true my crop of wild oats was plentiful enough. As for that Jacobite affair, I--well--I've often wished that I'd been in Pryor's place, and written finis on a jumble of mistakes and a life which was not then quite such a wretched failure.”
”If it had been only----”
”Roast me, sir! Are you my Lord High Inquisitor to ask what else I've been doing through these years, and call me blackguard for everything not explained?”
”You forget my mother.”
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