“We left very soon after luncheon, father; but the days are so short.”
“Not any shorter than they were last week. You have had time to become familiar with their shortness, and to make your calculations accordingly.”
“I am sure you didn’t want us, father,” said the sturdy Peggy; “so you needn’t make a fuss.”
Colonel Marchant gave his youngest born a withering scowl, but took no further notice of her contumacy.
“Pray sit down, Mr. Vansittart, and take a cup of tea before you tramp home again. You must be a good walker to make so light of that long road—for I suppose you came by the road.”
“I am country bred, Colonel Marchant, and am pretty well used to tramping about, on foot or on horseback.”
“Ah, you live near Liss, Eve told me. Have you good hunting thereabouts?”
Vansittart mentioned three or four packs of hounds accessible from his part of the country.
“Ah,” sighed the Colonel, “you young men think nothing of prodigious rides to cover, and long railway journeys. You hunt with the Vine from Basingstoke—with the Hambledon from Bishop’s Waltham! You are tearing about the country all November and December, I have no doubt?”
“Indeed, Colonel, I am not so keen a sportsman as you appear to think. A couple of days a week content me, while there are any birds to shoot in my covers.”
“Ah, two days’ hunting and four days’ shooting. I understand. That is what an Englishman’s life should be, if he lives on his estate. Sir Hubert tells me you have travelled a good deal?”
“I have wandered about the Continent, on the beaten paths. I cannot call myself a traveller, in the modern acceptation of the word. I have never shot lions in Africa, nor have I ever bivouacked among the hill-tribes in Upper India, nor risked my life, like Burton, in a pilgrimage to Mecca.”
“Ah, the men who do that kind of thing are fools,” grumbled the Colonel. “Providence is too good to them when they are allowed to come home with a whole skin. I have no sympathy with any explorer since Columbus and Raleigh. After the discovery of America, tobacco, and potatoes, the rest is leather and prunella.”
“The Australian and Californian goldfields were surely a good find,” suggested Vansittart.
“Has all the gold ever found there made you or me a shilling the richer, Mr. Vansittart? It has reduced the purchasing value of a sovereign by more than a third, and for men of fixed incomes all the world over those goldfields have been a source of calamity. When I was a lad, a family man who was hard up could take his wife and children to France or Belgium, and live comfortably on the income he had been starving on in London. Now, life is dear everywhere—even in an out-of-the-way hole like this,” concluded the Colonel, savagely.
Vansittart observed him closely as he talked, and was all the better able to do so, as the Colonel was not given to looking at the person he addressed. He had a way of looking at the fire or at his boots while he talked. His enemies called it a hangdog air.
He had not a pleasant face. It was a face wasted by dissolute habits, a face in which the lines were premature and deep, lines that told of discontent and sullen thought. Vansittart could but agree with Hubert Hartley’s estimate of Colonel Marchant. He was not a nice man. He was not a man to whom openhearted men could take kindly.
But he was Eve’s father.
Vansittart had been sorry for her yesterday; sorry for her because of those narrow means which cut her off from the pleasures and privileges of youth and beauty. He was sorrier for her today, now that he had seen her father.
He took his tea by the family hearth, which had lost its air of rollicking happiness and Bohemian liberty. The five girls were all seated primly at the round table, silent for the most part, while the Colonel rambled on with his egotistical complaining, in the tones of a man maltreated alike by his Creator and by society.
“Sir Hubert Hartley has a fine place at Redwold,” he said, “and he got it dog-cheap. He is a very lucky man.”
“He’s an uncommonly good fellow,” said Vansittart, “and he ought to be an acquisition to the neighbourhood.”
“Oh, the neighbours take to him kindly,” retorted the Colonel. “He’s rich—gives good dinners and good wine. That is the kind of thing country people want. They don’t ask too many questions about a man’s pedigree when his cellar and his cook are good.”
“My brother-in-law’s pedigree is not one to be ashamed of, Colonel Marchant.”
“Of course not, my dear fellow. Honest labour, talent, patience, invention, the virtues of which Englishmen are supposed to be proud. But you don’t mean to tell me that the Hartleys date from the Heptarchy, or even came over with the Conqueror. There was a day—when I was a lad, unless my memory of social matters plays me false—when county people clung to the traditions of caste, and didn’t bow down to the golden calf quite so readily as they do now.”
Vansittart could but agree with Peggy as to her father’s demerits. He stole a glance at the child on the opposite side of the table, but she was too much absorbed in bread and jam to notice her father’s speech, or the impression he was making. Eve had a pained look. He felt very sorry for her as he watched her restless fingers smoothing out the gloves which lay on the table before her, with a movement that told of irritated nerves.
He finished his cup of tea, and rose to go; yet lingered weakly, intent on resolving certain jealous doubts of his, if it were possible.
“I see you are a stickler for blue blood, Colonel Marchant,”
