Mr. Scarborough's Family Part 59

"There is no reason why he shouldn't;--but he mayn't, you know."

"He is not married yet."

"No;--he is not married yet. And then he has also stopped the allowance he used to make you." Harry nodded a.s.sent. "Now, all this is a great shame."

"I think so."

"The poor gentleman has been awfully bamboozled."

"He is not so very old," said Harry, "I don't think he is more than fifty."

"But he is an old goose. You'll excuse me, I know. Augustus Scarborough got him up to London, and filled him full of lies."

"I am aware of it."

"And so am I aware of it. He has told him stories as to your conduct with Mountjoy which, added to some youthful indiscretions of your own--"

"It was simply because I didn't like to hear him read sermons."

"That was an indiscretion, as he had the power in his hands to do you an injury. Most men have got some little bit of petty tyranny in their hearts. I have had none." To this Harry could only bow. "I let my two boys do as they pleased, only wishing that they should lead happy lives.

I never made them listen to sermons, or even to lectures. Probably I was wrong. Had I tyrannized over them, they would not have tyrannized over me as they have done. Now I'll tell you what it is that I propose to do.

I will write to your uncle, or will get Mr. Merton to write for me, and will explain to him, as well as I can, the depth, and the blackness, and the cruelty,--the unfathomable, heathen cruelty, together with the falsehoods, the premeditated lies, and the general rascality on all subjects,--of my son Augustus. I will explain to him that, of all men I know, he is the least trustworthy. I will explain to him that, if led in a matter of such importance by Augustus Scarborough, he will be surely led astray. And I think that between us,--between Merton and me, that is,--we can concoct a letter that shall be efficacious. But I will get Mountjoy also to go and see him, and explain to him out of his own mouth what in truth occurred that night when he and you fell out in the streets. Mr. Prosper must be a more vindictive man than I take him to be in regard to sermons if he will hold out after that." Then Mr.

Scarborough allowed him to go out, and if possible find the shooters somewhere about the park.

CHAPTER XLI.

MOUNTJOY SCARBOROUGH GOES TO BUSTON.

Mr. Grey returned to London after staying but one night, having received fresh instructions as to the will. The will was to be prepared at once, and Mr. Barry was to bring it down for execution. "Shall I not inform Augustus?" asked Mr. Grey.

But this did not suit with Mr. Scarborough's views of revenge. "I think not. I would do by him whatever honesty requires; but I have never told him that I mean to leave him anything. Of course he knows that he is to have the estate. He is revelling in the future poverty of poor Mountjoy.

He turned him out of his house just now because Mountjoy would not obey him by going to--Brazil. He would turn him out of this house if he could because I won't at once go--to the devil. He is something overmasterful, is Master Augustus, and a rub or two will do him good. I'd rather you wouldn't tell him, if you please." Then Mr. Grey departed, without making any promise, but he determined that he would be guided by the squire's wishes. Augustus Scarborough was not of a nature to excite very warmly the charity of any man.

Harry remained for two or three days' shooting with Mountjoy, and once or twice he saw the squire again. "Merton and I have managed to concoct that letter," said the squire. "I'm afraid your uncle will find it rather long. Is he impatient of long letters?"

"He likes long sermons."

"If anybody will listen to his reading. I think you have a deal to answer for yourself, when you could not make so small a sacrifice to the man to whom you were to owe everything. But he ought to look for a wife in consequence of that crime, and not falsely allege another. If, as I fear, he finds the wife-plan troublesome, our letter may perhaps move him, and Mountjoy is to go down and open his eyes. Mountjoy hasn't made any difficulty about it."

"I shall be greatly distressed--" Harry begun.

"Not at all. He must go. I like to have my own way in these little matters. He owes you as much reparation as that, and we shall be able to see what members of the Scarborough family you would trust the most."

Harry, during the two days, shot some hares in company with Mountjoy, but not a word more was said about the adventure in London. Nor was the name of Florence Mountjoy ever mentioned between the two suitors. "I'm going to Buston, you know," Mountjoy said once.

"So your father told me."

"What sort of a fellow shall I find your uncle?"

"He's a gentleman, but not very wise." No more was said between them on that head, but Mountjoy spoke at great length about his own brother and his father's will.

"My father is the most singular man you ever came across."

"I think he is."

"I am not going to say a good word for him. I wouldn't let him think that I had said a good word for him. In order to save the property he has maligned my mother, and has cheated me and the creditors most horribly--most infernally. That's my conviction, though Grey thinks otherwise. I can't forgive him,--and won't; and he knows it. But after that he is going to do the best thing he can for me. And he has begun by making me a decent allowance again as his son. But I'm to have that only as long as I remain here at Tretton. Of course I have been fond of cards."

"I suppose so."

"Not a doubt of it. But I haven't touched a card now for a month nearly.

And then he is going to leave me what property he has to leave. And he and my brother have paid off those Jews among them. I'm not a bit obliged to my brother. He's got some game of his own which I don't quite clearly see, and my father is doing this for me simply to spite my brother. He'd cut down every tree upon the place if Grey would allow it.

And yet, to give Augustus the property, my father has done this gross injustice."

"I suppose the money-lenders would have had the best of it had he not."

"That's true. They would have had it all. They had measured every yard of it, and had got my name down for the full value. Now they're paid."

"That's a comfort."

"Nothing's a comfort. I know that they're right, and that if I got the money into my own hand it would be gone to-morrow. I should be off to Monte Carlo like a shot; and, of course it would go after the other.

There is but one thing would redeem me."

"What's that?"

"Never mind. We won't talk of it." Then he was silent, but Harry Annesley knew very well that he had alluded to Florence Mountjoy.

Then Harry went, and Mountjoy was left to the companionship of Mr.

Merton, and such pleasure as he could find in a daily visit to his father. He was, at any rate, courteous in his manner to the old man, and abstained from those irritating speeches which Augustus had always chosen to make. He had on one occasion during this visit told his father what he thought about him, but this the squire had taken quite as a compliment.

"I believe, you know, that you've done a monstrous injustice to everybody concerned."

"I rather like doing what you call injustices."

"You have set the law at defiance."

"Well, yes; I think I have done that."

"According to my belief, it's all untrue."

"You mean about your mother. I like you for that; I do, indeed. I like you for sticking up for your poor mother. Well, now you shall have fifty pounds a month,--say twelve pounds ten a week,--as long as you remain at Tretton, and you may have whom you like here, as long as they bring no cards with them. And if you want to hunt there are horses, and if they ain't good enough you can get others. But if you go away from Tretton there's an end of it. It will all be stopped the next day."

Nevertheless, he did make arrangements by which Mountjoy should proceed to Buston, stopping two nights as he went to London. "There isn't a club he can enter," said the squire, comforting himself, "nor a Jew that will lend him a five-pound note."

Mountjoy had told the truth when he had said that nothing was a comfort.

Though it seemed to his father and to the people around him at Tretton that he had everything that a man could want, he had, in fact, nothing,--nothing to satisfy him. In the first place, he was quite alive to the misery of that decision given by the world against him, which had been of such comfort to his father. Not a club in London would admit him. He had been proclaimed a defaulter after such a fashion that all his clubs had sent to him for some explanation; and as he had given none, and had not answered their letters, his name had been crossed out in the books of them all. He knew himself to be a man disgraced, and when he had fled from London he had gone under the conviction that he would certainly never return. There were the pistol and bullet as his last a.s.sured resource; but a certain amount of good-fortune had awaited him,--enough to save him from having recourse to their aid. His brother had supplied him with small sums of money, and from time to time a morsel of good luck had enabled him to gamble, not to his heart's content, but still in some manner so as to make his life bearable. But now he was back in his own country, and he could gamble not at all, and hardly even see those old companions with whom he had lived. It was not only for the card-tables that he sighed, but for the companions of the card-table. And though he knew that he had been scratched out from the lists of all clubs as a dishonest man, he knew also, or thought that he knew, that he had been as honest as the best of those companions. As long as he could by any possibility raise money he had paid it away, and by no false trick had he ever endeavored to get it back again.