This time a faint “O—Oh” came from under the big moustache.
“A very rich girl. The father is an old curmudgeon, but he is made of money, and he adores his little girl. I believe he would buy a title for her high and think it cheap.”
“Oh, I say!” exclaimed Sir Charles, with a colour more pronounced upon his cheek.
“Yours is not anything very great in that way,” said the remorseless person on the bench, “but still it’s what he would call a title, you know; and I haven’t the least doubt he would come down very handsomely. Old Tredgold knows very well what he is about.”
“Unexpected,” said Sir Charles, “sort of serious jaw like this. Put it off, if you don’t mind, till another time.”
“No time like the present,” said Lady Jane. “Your father was a great friend of mine, Charlie Somers. He once proposed to me—very much left to himself on that occasion, you will say—but still it’s true. So I might have been your mother, don’t you see. I know your age, therefore, to a day. You are a good bit past thirty, and you have been up to nothing but mischief all your life.”
“Oh, I say now!” exclaimed Sir Charles again.
“Well, now here is a chance for you. Perhaps I began without thinking, but now I’m in great earnest. Here is really a chance for you. Stella’s not so nice as her sister, as Algy there (I did not expect it of him) has the sense to see: but she’s much more in your way. She is just your kind, a reckless little hot-headed—all for pleasure and never a thought of to-morrow. But that sort of thing is not so risky when you have a good fortune behind you, well tied down. Now, Charlie, listen to me. Here is a capital chance for you; a man at your age, if he is ever going to do anything, should stop playing the fool. These boys even will soon begin to think you an old fellow. Oh, you needn’t cry out! I know generations of them, and I understand their ways. A man should stop taking his fling before he gets to thirty-five. Why, Algy there would tell you that, if he had the spirit to speak up.”
“I’m out of it,” said Algy. “Say whatever you like, it has nothing to do with me.”
“You see,” said Lady Jane, with a little flourish of her hand, “the boy doesn’t contradict me; he daren’t contradict me, for it’s truth. Now, as I say, here’s a chance for you. Abundance of money, and a very pretty girl, whom you like.” She made a pause here to emphasise her words. “Whom—you—like. Oh, I know very well what I’m saying. I am going to ask her over to Steephill and you can come too if you please; and if you don’t take advantage of your opportunities, Sir Charles, why you have less sense than even I have given you credit for, and that is a great deal to say.”
“Rather public, don’t you think, for this sort of thing? Go in and win, before admiring audience. Don’t relish exhibition. Prefer own way.”
This Sir Charles said, standing at the window, gazing out, apparently insensible even of the raindrops, and turning his back upon his adviser.
“Well, take your own way. I don’t mind what way you take, so long as you take my advice, which is given in your very best interests, I can tell you. Isn’t the regiment ordered out to India, Algy?” she said, turning quickly upon the other. “And what do you mean to do?”
“Go, of course,” he said—“the very thing for me, they say. And I’m not going to shirk either; see some sport probably out there.”
“And Charlie?” said Lady Jane. There was no apparent connection between her previous argument and this question, yet the very distinct staccato manner in which she said these words called the attention.
Sir Charles, still standing by the window with his back to Lady Jane, once more muttered, “By Jove!” under his breath, or under his moustache, which came to the same thing.
“Oh, Charlie! He’ll exchange, I suppose, and get out of it; too great a swell for India, he is. And how could he live out of reach of Pall Mall?”
“Well, I hope you’ll soon be able to move, my dear boy; if the weather keeps mild and the rain goes off you had better come up to Steephill for a few days to get up your strength.”
“Thanks, awf’lly,” said Captain Scott. “I will with pleasure; and Cousin Jane, if that little prim one should be there–”
“She shan’t, not for you, my young man, you have other things to think of. As for Charlie, I shall say no more to him; he can come too if he likes, but not unless he likes. Send me a line to let me know.”
Sir Charles accompanied the visitor solemnly downstairs, but without saying anything until they reached the door, where to his surprise no carriage was waiting.
“Don’t mean to say you walked—day like this?” he cried.
“No; but the horses and the men are more used to take care of themselves; they are to meet me at the Rectory. I am going there about this ridiculous bazaar. You can walk with me, if you like,” she said.
He seized a cap from the stand and lounged out after her into the rain. “I say—don’t you know?” he said, but paused there and added no more.
“Get it out,” said Lady Jane.
After a while, as he walked along by her side, his hands deep in his pockets, the rain soaking pleasantly into his thick tweed coat, he resumed: “Unexpected serious sort of jaw that, before little beggar like Algy—laughs at everything.”
“There was no chance of speaking to you alone,” said Lady Jane almost apologetically.
“Suppose not. Don’t say see my way to it. Don’t deny, though—reason in it.”
“And inclination, eh? not much of one without the other, if I am any judge.”
“First-rate judge, by Jove!” Sir Charles said.
And he added no more. But when he took leave of Lady Jane at the Rectory he took a long walk by himself in the rain, skirting the gardens of the Cliff and getting out upon the downs beyond, where the steady downfall penetrated into him, soaking the tweed in a kind of affectionate natural way as of a material prepared for the purpose. He strolled along with his hands in his pockets and the cap over his eyes as if it had been a summer day, liking it all the better for the wetness and the big masses of the clouds and the leaden monotone of the sea. It was all so dismal that it gave him a certain pleasure; he seemed all the more free to think of his own concerns, to consider the new panorama opened before him, which perhaps, however, was not so new as Lady Jane supposed. She had forced open the door and made him look in, giving all the details; but he had been quite conscious that it had been there before, within his reach, awaiting his inspection. There were a great many inducements, no doubt, to make that fantastic prospect real if he could. He did not want to go to India, though indeed it would have been very good for him in view of his sadly reduced finances and considerably affected credit in both senses of that word. He had not much credit at headquarters, that he knew; he was not what people called a good officer. No doubt he would have been brave enough had there been fighting to do, and he was not disliked by his men; his character of a “careless beggar” being quite as much for good as for evil among those partial observers; but his credit in higher regions was not great. Credit in the other sense of the word was a little failing too, tradesmen having a wonderful flair as to a man’s resources and the rising and falling of his account at his bankers. It would do him much good to go to India and devote himself to his profession; but then he did not want to go. Was it last of all or first of all that another motive came in, little Stella herself to wit, though she broke down so much in her attempts to imitate Lottie Seton’s ways, and was not amusing at all in that point of view? Stella had perhaps behaved better on that impromptu yachting trip than she was herself aware. Certainly she was far more guilty in the beginning of it than she herself allowed. But when the night was dark and the storm high, she had—what had she done? Behaved very well and made the men admire her pluck, or behaved very badly and frightened them—I cannot tell; anyhow, she had been very natural, she had done and said only what it came into her head to say and to do, without