Bath Tangle

London, or to Scarborough, if you like: that’s all one to me!”

“Oh, no, I shall not!” countered Gerard. “It is not in your power to compel me! You have told me where I may find Emily, and find her I will! She must tell me with her own lips that her feelings have undergone a change, that she is happy in her engagement, before I will believe it! I tell you this because I scorn to deceive you! You shall never say that I went without informing you of my intention!”

“I shall never say that you went at all,” said Rotherham, thrusting back his chair, and rising suddenly to his feet. “And I will tell you why, cockerel! You dare not! For just so long as I will bear with you, you crow a puny defiance! But when my patience cracks, you have done with crowing! Beneath all this bombast, you are so much afraid of me that one look is enough to make you cringe!” He gave a bark of laughter. “You disobey my commands! I wish I may see it! You haven’t enough spirit to do so much as keep your knees from knocking together when I comb you down! I know exactly what you will do in this case. You will boast of what you have a very good mind to do, play the broken-hearted lover to gain the sympathy of the credulous, whine to your mother about my tyranny, and give as an excuse for your chickenheartedness the fear that if you failed to respond to my hand on your bridle I should wreak my vengeance on your brothers! What you will not say is that you fear my spurs! But that is the truth!”

He paused, scanning his ward. Gerard was as white as his preposterous shirt-points, trembling a little, and breathing jerkily, but his burning eyes were fixed on Rotherham’s face, and did not flinch from the piercing challenge of those contemptuous grey ones. His hands were clenched at his sides; he whispered: “I would like to kill you!”

“I don’t doubt it. You would probably like to hit me too, but you won’t do it. Nor will you treat me to any more of your heroics. You may remain here tonight, but tomorrow you will return whence you came.”

“I wouldn’t remain another instant under your roof for anything you might offer me!” Gerard gasped.

“Gerard, I said I would have no more heroics!”

“I am leaving Claycross—now!” Gerard spat at him, and plunged towards the door.

“Not so fast! You are forgetting something!” Gerard paused, and looked over his shoulder. “You told me that your pockets were to let, which is not surprising, after all this posting about the country. How much do you want?”

Gerard stood irresolute. To spurn this offer would be a splendid gesture, and one which he longed to make; on the other hand, there were the post-charges to be paid, and more than a month to be lived through before he received the next quarter’s allowance. His sense of dramatic value was outraged by what he perceived to be an anticlimax of a particularly galling nature, and it was in anything but a grateful tone that he said: “I shall be obliged to you if you will advance me fifty pounds, cousin!”

“Oh, you will, will you? And what shall I be expected to advance midway through the next quarter?”

“Rest assured that I shall not ask you to advance me a penny!” said Gerard grandly.

“You wouldn’t dare to, would you?” said Rotherham, opening a court-cupboard at the end of the room, and taking from it a strong-box. “You would apply to your mother. Well, since it appears to be entirely my fault that you are at a standstill, I’ll let you have your fifty pounds. Next time you wish to upbraid me, do it by letter!”

“If you refuse to advance me my own money, I will only accept yours as a loan!” declared Gerard. “I shall repay you the instant I come of age!”

“As you please,” shrugged Rotherham, unlocking the strongbox.

“And I will give you my note-of-hand!”

“By all means. You’ll find a pen on my desk.”

Gerard cast him a look of acute loathing, snatched up a quill, dragged a sheet of paper at random from a sheaf, and in trembling haste wrote a promise to pay. He then flung the quill down, and said: “I shall meet that on the day I gain possession of my principal at latest! And, if I can contrive it, much sooner! I’m obliged to you! Goodbye!”

He then crammed the bills held out to him into his pocket, and hurried out of the room, slamming the door behind him. Rotherham put his strong-box away, and walked slowly back to his desk. He picked up the note-of- hand, and began, abstractedly, to tear it into small shreds, his brows lowering, and his lips compressed. The door opened again, and he glanced up quickly.

It was his steward who had entered, and who said in a quiet but resolute voice: “My lord, you will please allow me to have speech with you!”

“Well?”

“I saw Mr Gerard as he left the house, my lord. It is not for me to remonstrate with you, but since there is no one else to do it, I must! You must not let him go like that!”

“I’m damned glad he has gone. My temper will stand no more of him!”

“My lord, this will not do! He is your ward, remember! I have never seen such a look on his face before. What did you do to him, to make him as white as his shirt?”

“What the devil do you suppose I did to a whey-faced weakling I could control with my right hand tied behind me?” demanded Rotherham wrathfully.

“Not that you used your strength, my lord, but your tongue!”

“Yes, I used that to some purpose,” said Rotherham, with a grim smile.

“My lord, whatever he may have done—”

“He has done nothing. I doubt if he has the spirit to do anything but nauseate me with his gasconades and his fustian theatrics!”

“Let me fetch him back!” Wilton begged. “You should not frighten him so!”

“I should not be able to frighten him so!”

“You frighten many people, my lord. It has sometimes seemed to me that when your black mood is on you it is your wish to frighten people. But I am sure I don’t know why, for you can never tolerate anyone who fears you.”

Rotherham looked up quickly, a reluctant laugh escaping him. “True!”

“It is not too late: let me fetch Mr Gerard back!”

“No. I should not have flayed him, I acknowledge, but the temptation to do so was irresistible. It will do him no harm, and may do him a great deal of good.”

“My lord—”

“Wilton, I have a considerable regard for you, but you have not the power to make me change my mind!”

“I know that, my lord,” Wilton said. “There was only one person who ever had that power.”

Danger flickered in Rotherham’s eyes, but he did not speak. The steward looked steadily at him for a moment, and then turned, and walked out of the room.

18

Mr Monksleigh reached Bath after dark, and in a thrasonical mood. When he had given the order to the post- boy to take the Bath road, he had done so in the white heat of his rage, but with a quake of fear in his heart. The experience he had passed through had set every nerve in his slight body quivering, for although he had been stung to fury by the lash of Rotherham’s tongue only pride had kept him from breaking down, and betraying the terror beneath his bravado. He was both timid and abnormally sensitive; and from having a keen and often morbid imagination was apt to fancy that persons who, in fact, never gave him a thought were criticizing him unkindly. Anticipation was more dreadful to him than performance; and to be harshly rated turned him sick. A wish to appear to be of consequence was unhappily allied to a lack of self-confidence which he tried to conceal under a boastful manner; and nothing could more surely have won for him the contempt of his guardian. There was never a more ill-assorted pair; and if Gerard was the last boy alive to appeal to Rotherham, no worse guardian than Rotherham could well have been found for a boy compact of timidity and vainglory. A much younger Gerard, at once anxious to impress an almost unknown guardian and afraid that he would be despised by him, encountered a look from those hard, bright eyes, and wilted under it. It was neither angry nor disdainful; it was almost incurious, but it utterly