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Mr. Casely
by
The young gentleman thus alluded to by Mr. Casely had gone home in a state of stupefaction. He did not attempt to frame a thought. His limbs took him along mechanically. He passed one of his aunts as he went to his room, but he did not make any sign. When he had settled down, a tap came at his door.
“Mr. Ellington’ll have dinner laid for him in his study. He wants to see you, Sir, in the study as soon after dinner as possible.”
Young Ellington heard this without any fresh shock. The worst had passed, and nothing henceforth could hurt him.
He could eat nothing. He found himself adding up the number of glasses; dividing it into couples; counting the squares on the wall-pattern; going through all the forlorn trivialities that employ the mind when suffering has passed out of the conscious stage. When his time came for meeting the terrible old man, he stepped straight into the study without knocking, and stood stupidly waiting for the voice that he knew would come. A thought of dignity never occurred to him. Had he been a mere libertine he would have brazened it out, and would have tried at flippancy. But he was not a libertine; he was simply an inexperienced young man who was suffering remorse at its deadliest.
“You had better sit down.”
He sought a chair, took his seat, and once more waited.
“Need we exchange any words about this business? You can have nothing to say, so perhaps you had better leave the talking to me. You have behaved like a scoundrel. You have crippled my hands. Only a year ago I turned Thomson’s girl off the estate, and gave her father notice to quit the cottage after her. I got some newspaper chatter aimed at me then, and now, by God, you’ve done worse than the fellow who ruined poor Thomson. Look up there, and you’ll see your father’s portrait. He was a merry lad in his day, but he wouldn’t have intrigued with a washerwoman. That’s about what you have done. However, we’ll have no more scolding. Of course, you understand that the affair is to be done with?”
“It depends upon you, Sir. If you will, I dare marry her.”
“I thought you were a little mad. Go! I wish I could say go for altogether. I have some time to live though, and you shall know something meanwhile. Go!”
The unfortunate had not a word to say even against his grandfather’s brutal insolence. He went, and passed the night in much the same way as did Casely, save that where Casely’s pride was still stubborn, Ellington’s pride was broken.
III.
When the spring came there were gay doings at the Hall. Old Mr. Ellington had taken a sudden turn, and the housekeeper was near bidding good-bye to her reason. There were extra men engaged in the stables, and the black mare, Matchem, and the Squire’s cob had very grand company indeed. Things went so far that one morning the Branspath hounds met on the Common by the Hall. For fifty-five years such a thing had not been seen. The great dappled dogs stood in a clump by the high north wall of the fruit garden, and the villagers stared round in wonder. The gorse to the southward of the House was drawn, and a fox was found. There was a wild crash and clamour for a few minutes in the plantation where Mary Casely used to meet her lover, and then I am sorry to say that the Huntsman began to use very bad language. Nothing had been attended to; the hounds might as well have been entered at rabbits. The fox never even had occasion to break covert, and the gay assemblage rode away towards Branspath before two o’clock in the afternoon. The science of earth-stopping had not been pushed to its final term on the Ellington estate, but still there was hope now that the hounds had once been permitted to cross the border which divided Squire Ellington’s property from that of the next sporting landowner.