“He told me, aunt, the last thing last night that he was going,” she said.
“Why did you not mention it?”
“I thought he would have told you. I saw him speaking to you. He had received some telegram about a horse. He’s the most flighty man in the world about such things. I am to write to him before I leave this tomorrow.” Then the Duchess did not believe a word of the engagement. She felt at any rate certain that if there was an engagement, Lord Rufford did not mean to keep it.
XLI
The Senator Is Badly Treated
While these great efforts were being made by Arabella Trefoil at Mistletoe, John Morton was vacillating in an unhappy mood between London and Bragton. It may be remembered that an offer was made to him as to the purchase of Chowton Farm. At that time the Mistletoe party was broken up, and Miss Trefoil was staying with her mother at the Connop Greens. By the morning post on the next day he received a note from the Senator in which Mr. Gotobed stated that business required his presence at Dillsborough and suggested that he should again become a guest at Bragton for a few days. Morton was so sick of his own company and so tired of thinking of his own affairs that he was almost glad to welcome the Senator. At any rate he had no means of escaping, and the Senator came. The two men were alone at the house and the Senator was full of his own wrongs as well as those of Englishmen in general. Mr. Bearside had written to him very cautiously, but pressing for an immediate remittance of £25, and explaining that the great case could not be carried on without that sum of money. This might have been very well as being open to the idea that the Senator had the option of either paying the money or of allowing the great case to be abandoned, but that the attorney in the last paragraph of his letter intimated that the Senator would be of course aware that he was liable for the whole cost of the action be it what it might. He had asked a legal friend in London his opinion, and the legal friend had seemed to think that perhaps he was liable. What orders he had given to Bearside he had given without any witness, and at any rate had already paid a certain sum. The legal friend, when he heard all that Mr. Gotobed was able to tell him about Goarly, had advised the Senator to settle with Bearside—taking a due receipt and having some person with him when he did so. The legal friend had thought that a small sum of money would suffice. “He went so far as to suggest,” said the Senator with indignant energy, “that if I contested my liability to the man’s charges, the matter would go against me because I had interfered in such a case on the unpopular side. I should think that in this great country I should find justice administered on other terms than that.” Morton attempted to explain to him that his legal friend had not been administering justice but only giving advice. He had, so Morton told him, undoubtedly taken up the case of one blackguard, and in urging it had paid his money to another. He had done so as a foreigner—loudly proclaiming as his reason for such action that the man he supported would be unfairly treated unless he gave his assistance. Of course he could not expect sympathy. “I want no sympathy,” said the Senator;—“I only want justice.” Then the two gentlemen had become a little angry with each other. Morton was the last man in the world to have been aggressive on such a matter;—but with the Senator it was necessary either to be prostrate or to fight.
But with Mr. Gotobed such fighting never produced ill blood. It was the condition of his life, and it must be supposed that he liked it. On the next morning he did not scruple to ask his host’s advice as to what he had better do, and they agreed to walk across to Goarly’s house and to ascertain from the man himself what he thought or might have to say about his own case. On their way they passed up the road leading to Chowton Farm, and at the gate leading into the garden they found Larry Twentyman standing. Morton shook hands with the young farmer and introduced the Senator. Larry was still woebegone though he endeavoured to shake off his sorrows and to appear to be gay. “I never see much of the man,” he said when they told him that they were going across to call upon his neighbour, “and I don’t know that I want to.”
“He doesn’t seem to have much friendship among you all,” said the Senator.
“Quite as much as he deserves, Mr. Gotobed,” replied Larry. The Senator’s name had lately become familiar as a household word in Dillsborough, and was, to tell the truth, odious to such men as Larry Twentyman. “He’s a thundering rascal, and the only place fit for him in the county is Rufford gaol. He’s like to be there soon, I think.”
“That’s what provokes me,” said the Senator. “You think he’s a rascal, Mister.”
“I do.”
“And because you take upon yourself to think so you’d send him to
