“It is a providential thing, dear,” whispered the knitting female, “that there were no horrid documents drawn up about that money. Maurice cannot impose upon us in that way.”
“He is doing worse,” answered her husband. “He is imposing upon us on the strength of a disgusting sort of sickly sentiment. He has had all his money back and more; and he knows he has. But he wants to go on living on my money while he abuses me on every occasion. Do you know, he even preaches in that confounded social meeting? I shall have that affair put a stop to, one of these days. It is only an excuse for spreading dissatisfaction in the village. Lickwit has complained to me about it more than once. He says that Socialistic scoundrel Wone is simply using the meeting to canvass for his election. You know he is going to stand, in place of Sir Herbert Ratcliffe? What the Liberal Party is doing I cannot conceive—pandering to these slimy windbags! And your blessed relation backs him up. The thing is monstrous, outrageous! Here am I, allowing this fellow a hundred a year to live in idleness; and he is plotting against me at my very doorstep.”
“Perhaps he does not know that the Conservative member is going to retire in your favour,” insinuated the lady.
“Know? Of course he knows! All the village knows. All the country knows. You can never hide things of that kind. He knows, and he is deliberately working against me.”
“It would be nice if he could get a place as a clerk,” suggested Mr. Quincunx’s relative, pensively. “It certainly does not seem fair that you, who work so hard for the money you make, should support him in complete idleness.”
Mr. Romer looked at her thoughtfully, knocking the ashes from his cigar. “I believe you have hit it there, my dear,” he said. Then he smiled in a manner peculiarly malignant. “Yes, it would be very nice if he could get a place as a clerk—a place where he would have plenty of simple office work—a place where he would be kept to his desk, and not allowed to roam the country corrupting honest workmen. Yes, you are quite right, Susan; a clerk’s place is what this Quincunx wants. And, by Heaven, what he shall have! I’ll bring the affair to a head at once. I’ll put it to him that your aunt’s money is at an end, and that I have already paid him back in full all that he lent me. I’ll put it to him that he is now in my debt. In fact, that he is now entirely dependent on me to the tune of a hundred a year. And I’ll explain to him that he must either go out into the world and shift for himself, as better men than he have had to do, or enter Lickwit’s office, either in Yeoborough or on the Hill.”
“He will enter the office, Mortimer,” murmured the lady; “he will enter the office. Maurice is not the man to emigrate, or do anything of that kind. Besides he has a reason”—here her voice became so extremely mellifluous that it might almost be said to have liquefied—“to stay in Nevilton.”
“What’s this?” cried Romer, getting up and throwing his cigar out of the window. “You don’t mean to tell me—eh?—that this scarecrow is in love with Gladys?”
The lady purred softly and replaced her spectacles. “Oh dear no! What an idea! Oh certainly, certainly not! But Gladys, you know, is not the only girl in Nevilton.”
“Who the devil is it then? Not Vennie Seldom, surely?”
“Look nearer, Mortimer, look nearer”; murmured the lady with sibilant sweetness.
“Not Lacrima! You don’t mean to say—”
“Why, dear, you needn’t be so surprised. You look more angry than if it had been Gladys herself. Yes, of course it is Lacrima. Hadn’t you observed it? But you dear men are so stupid, aren’t you, in these things?”
Mrs. Romer rubbed one white hand over the other; and beamed upon her husband through her spectacles.
Mr. Romer frowned. “But the Traffio girl is so, so—you know what I mean.”
“So quiet and unimpressionable. Ah! my dear, it is just these quiet girls who are the very ones to be enjoying themselves on the sly.”
“How far has this thing gone, Susan?”
“Oh you needn’t get excited, Mortimer. It has not really ‘gone’ anywhere. It has hardly begun. In fact I have not the least authority for saying that she cares for him at all. I think she does a little, though. I think she does. But one never can tell. I can, however, give you my word that he cares for her. And that is what we were talking about, weren’t we?”
“I shall pack him off to my office in London,” said Mr. Romer.
“He wouldn’t go, my dear. I tell you he wouldn’t go.”
“But he can’t live on nothing.”
“He can. He will. Sooner than leave Nevilton Maurice would eat grass. He would become lay-reader or something. He would sponge on Mrs. Seldom.”
“Well, then he shall walk to Yeoborough and back every day. That will cool his blood for him.”
“That will do him a great deal of good, dear; a great deal of good. Auntie always used to say that Maurice ought to take more exercise.”
“Lickwit will exercise him! Make no mistake about that.”
“How you do look round you, dear, in all these things! How impossible it is for anyone to fool you, Mortimer!”
As Mrs. Romer uttered these words she glanced up at the Reynolds portrait above their heads, as if half-suspecting that such fawning flattery would bring down the mockery of the little Lady-in-Waiting.
“I can’t help thinking Lacrima would make a very good wife to some hard-working sensible man,” Mr. Romer remarked.
His lady looked a little puzzled. “It would be difficult to find so suitable a companion for Gladys,” she said.
“Oh, of course I don’t mean till Gladys is married,” said the quarry-owner quickly. “By the way, when is she going to accept that young fool of an Ilminster?”
“All in good time, my dear, all in good time,” purred his wife. “He has not proposed to her yet.”
“It’s very curious,” remarked Mr. Romer pensively, “that a young man of such high connections should wish to marry our daughter.”
“What things you say, Mortimer! Isn’t Gladys going to inherit all this property? Don’t you suppose that a younger son of Lord Tintinhull would jump at the idea of being master of this house?”
“He won’t be master of it while I live,” said Mr. Romer grimly.
“In my opinion he never will be”; added the lady. “I don’t think Gladys really intends to accept him.”
“She’ll marry somebody, I hope?” said the master sharply.
“O yes she’ll marry, soon enough. Only it’ll be a cleverer man, and a richer man, than young Ilminster.”
“Have you any other pleasant little romance to fling at me?”
“O no. But I know what our dear Gladys is. I know what she is looking out for.”
“When she does marry,” said Mr. Romer, “we shall have to think seriously what is to become of Lacrima. Look here, my dear,”—it was wonderful, the pleasant ejaculatory manner in which this flash of inspiration was thrown out,—“why not marry her to John? She would be just the person for a farmer’s wife.”
Mrs. Romer, to do her justice, showed signs of being a little shocked at this proposal.
“But John,”—she stammered;—“John—is