“Ho, turning your back on Wyvern, like all the rest! Well, sir, the world’s wide, you can choose your road. I don’t ask none o’ ye to stay and see me off—not I. I’ll not be without someone when I die to shut down my eyes, I dare say. Get ye gone.”
“I thought, sir—in fact I was quite convinced,” said Charles Fairfield, a little disconcerted, “that you had quite made up your mind, as I have mine, sir.”
“So I had, sir—so I had. Don’t suppose I care a rush, sir, who goes—not a d⸺d rush—not I. Better an empty house than a bad tenant.”
Up rose the old man as he spoke, “Away with them, say I; bundle ’em out—off wi’ them, bag and baggage; there’s more like ye—read that,” and he thrust the letter at him like a pistol, and leaving it in his hand, turned and stalked slowly up the terrace, while the Captain read the following note:—
“Sir—I hardly venture to hope that you will ever again think of me with that kindness which circumstances compel me so ungratefully to requite. I owe you more than I can ever tell. I began to experience your kindness in my infancy, and it has never failed me since. Oh, sir, do not, I entreat, deny me one last proof of your generosity—your forgiveness. I leave Wyvern, and before these lines are in your hand, I shall have found another home. Soon, I trust, I shall be able to tell my benefactor where. In the meantime may God recompense you, as I never can, for all your goodness to me. I leave the place where all my life has passed amid continual and unmerited kindness with the keenest anguish. Aggravated by my utter inability at present to repay your goodness by the poor acknowledgment of my confidence. Pray, sir, pardon me; pray restore me to your good opinion, or, at least if you cannot forgive and receive me again into your favour, spare me the dreadful affliction of your detestation, and in mercy try to forget
When Charles Fairfield, having read this through, raised his eyes, they lighted on the old man, returning, and now within a few steps of him.
“Well, there’s a lass for ye! I reared her like a child o’ my own—better, kinder than ever child was reared, and she’s hardly come to her full growth when she serves me like that. D⸺n ye, are ye tongue-tied? what do you think of her?”
“It would not be easy, sir, on that letter, to pronounce,” said Charles Fairfield, disconcerted. “There’s nothing there to show what her reasons are.”
“Ye’r no Fairfield—ye’r not, ye’r none. If ye were, ye’d know when ye’r house was insulted; but ye’r none; ye’r a cold-blooded sneak, and no Fairfield.”
“I don’t see that anything I could say, sir, would mend the matter,” said the Captain.
“Like enough; but I’ll tell ye what I think of her,” thundered the old man, half beside himself. And his language became so opprobrious and frantic, that his son said, with a proud glare and a swarthy flush on his face—
“I take my leave, sir; for language like that I’ll not stay to hear.”
“But ye’ll not take ye’r leave, sir, till I choose, and ye shall stay,” yelled the old Squire, placing himself between the Captain and the steps. “And I’d like to know why ye shouldn’t hear her called what she is—a ⸻ and a ⸻.”
“Because she’s my wife, sir,” retorted Charles Fairfield, whitening with fury.
“She is, is she?” said the old man, after a long gaping pause. “Then ye’r a worse scoundrel, ye black-hearted swindler, than I took you for—and ye’ll take that—”
And trembling with fury, he whirled his heavy cane in the air. But before it could descend, Charles Fairfield caught the hand that held it.
“None o’ that—none o’ that, sir,” he said with grim menace, as the old man with both hands and furious purpose sought to wrest the cane free.
“Do you want me to do it?”
The grip of old Squire Harry was still powerful, and it required an exertion of the younger man’s entire strength to wring the walking-stick from his grasp.
Over the terrace balustrade it flew whirling, and old Squire Harry in the struggle lost his feet, and fell heavily on the flags.
There was blood already on his temple and white furrowed cheek, and he looked stunned. The young man’s blood was up—the wicked blood of the Fairfields—but he hesitated, stopped, and turned.
The old Squire had got to his feet again, and was holding giddily by the balustrade. His hat still lay on the ground, his cane was gone. The proud old Squire was a tower dismantled. To be met and foiled so easily in a feat of strength—to have gone down at the first tussle with the “youngster,” whom he despised as a “milksop” and a “Miss Molly,” was to the old Hercules, who still bragged of his early prowess, and was once the lord of the wrestling ring for five and twenty miles round, perhaps for the moment the maddest drop in the cup of his humiliation.
Squire Harry with his trembling hand clutched on the stone balustrade, his tall figure swaying a little, had drawn himself up and held his head high and defiantly. There was a little quiver in his white old features, a wild smile in his eyes, and on his thin, hard lips, showing the teeth that time had left him; and the blood that
