The Honour of the Clintons Part 38

DEAR MR. CLINTON,

My nephew, Inverell, has made a communication to me concerning which I should like to have a conversation with you. If you will do me the honour of calling on me when you are next in London I will do my best to meet you at any hour you may arrange for. But as my time is apt to be occupied a good deal ahead, if you can make it convenient to see me here at 12 o'clock next Tuesday morning, I shall run no risk of disappointment.

Yours very truly, CHEVIOT.

"Now I shall have something to take hold of," said the Squire, brightening.

He dressed that morning in better spirits than he had shown for some time. Poor little Joan! It had hurt him terribly that her happy love story had been cut off short, snuffed out altogether, as it had seemed, by the postponement of her young lover's visit. He had made no sign, and it was now a month ago and more since the letter had been written to him. Joan must have given up hope by this time. She must be sick at heart, poor child! Yet she never showed it. She was tender of _his_ wounds, anxious to brighten his life. But what did his life, now almost within sight of its end--broken, dishonoured--matter beside her young life, just opening into full flower, only to be stricken by the same blight of dishonour? He would have given anything--life itself--to lift the weight off her, so tender had his conscience become under the pummelling of fate, so big his heart for those to whom he owed love and shelter. As bitter as death itself it was to feel that he who had surrounded his dear ones--dear all through, though subjugated to his whims and prejudices--with everything that wealth and ease could provide for refuge, should see them stripped of his succour, and himself powerless to protect them.

He shaved himself by the window looking out on to his broad, well-treed park, where his horses were being exercised. He looked at them with some stirring of interest. Somehow, he had not cared to look at them of late, whether it was that the mirth of the stable-lads, subdued by reason of their being in sight of the windows of the house, but none the less patent in its youthful irresponsibility, jarred on his sombre mood; or that such signs of his own wealth as a string of little-used hunters, kept on because he had always kept them, hurt him because of the futility of his wealth to help in the present distress.

What, after all, could young Inverell have done? Mrs. Clinton's letter had, on instructions, been entirely non-committal. He had been asked to postpone his visit. No reason had been given; no future time suggested. He could only have waited--in surprise and dismay--for a renewal of the invitation. He could not, after that letter, have written to Joan. Perhaps he might, after a week or two had elapsed, have written to the Squire himself. But by that time the blight had begun to spread. It must have reached his ears pretty quickly. The higher the rank the fresher the gossip; and the name of Clinton would not have pa.s.sed him by, if it had been whispered ever so lightly.

Well, what then? The Squire, sensitive now to the very marrow, drooped again. He had held aloof. There was no gainsaying that. Five weeks had pa.s.sed, and Joan had been left unhappy, to lose some little shred of hope every day. It was natural perhaps. He was almost a young prince--not one of those of his rank who marry lightly to please their fancy of the moment. He would be right to wait for a time if the house from which he had chosen his bride was under a cloud, to see what that cloud was and whether it would pa.s.s. If it continued to hang black and threatening over those who made no effort to lift it, he might come to ask himself in time whether he could not s.n.a.t.c.h his lady from under its dark canopy; but he would not ask it until time had been given for its removal. Oh, the bitterness of the thought that it was Kencote, of all houses, over which the cloud lay thick and heavy--Kencote, which had basked in the mild suns.h.i.+ne of honour and dignity for as long as, or longer than his own house had attracted its more radiant beams!

But now he had moved. This letter must mean that a chance was to be given for the head of the house to clear himself. Whatever came of it, it was the first chance that the Squire had had, and he was eager to take it.

He regarded the letter from all points of view, and was inclined to think favourably of it. It bore a great name--that of a man of the highest honour in the counsels of the nation, known to everyone. It was courteously written. "Dear Mr. Clinton." The Squire could not remember ever having met him. He was of a younger generation than the great men he had foregathered with in his youth and theirs. d.i.c.k would probably have some slight acquaintance with him, but even d.i.c.k, who had been so much in the swim, had not habitually consorted with Cabinet Ministers of the first rank. The Squire would know many of his friends and relations, of course. His own name would be known to the great man--Clinton of Kencote--there was still virtue in it. It was not as if the young man had gone to his guardian and told him that he wanted to marry the daughter of this or that country gentleman whose status would have to be explained and examined. This was a letter to an equal. It was nothing that he was asked to go up and present himself before the writer. The Squire was quite ready to pay due deference to a man whose claim to deference was founded on distinction of a sort that he did not claim himself. It was hardly to be expected that a Secretary of State in the middle of an Autumn Session should wait upon him. Nothing more could have been desired than that he should put his request with courtesy, which he had done.

d.i.c.k, when he showed him the letter, was not so sure. "Of course you would have to go to London to meet him," he said. "But it's really no less than a summons, for a time and place that he doesn't consult you about. However, we won't worry ourselves about that. What are you going to say to him?"

The Squire hadn't thought that out yet. He should know when he got there, and heard what Lord Cheviot wanted of him.

"I think it's pretty plain what he wants," said d.i.c.k. "You've got to show my lord that you're a fit and proper person to form an alliance with. That's what we're brought to. It's the most humiliating thing that has happened yet. If it weren't for poor little Joan I should say chuck his letter into the fire, and don't answer it, and don't go."

It was significant of the change that had been wrought in the Squire that it was d.i.c.k who should be expressing angry resentment at the hint of a slight to the Kencote dignity, and he who should say, "I don't take it in that way. And in any case I would sink my own feelings for the sake of Joan."

"You'll have to be careful," said d.i.c.k. "He will want to overawe you with his position. That's why you are to go and see him at his office.

Why couldn't he have asked you to his house or his club, or called on you at yours? This is a private matter, and privately we're as good as he is; or, at any rate, we want nothing from him."

"But we do," said the Squire. "We want Joan's happiness."

"If Inverell wants Joan, he will take her. She's good enough for him, or anybody, not only in herself but in her family."

"She would be if we were not under this cloud."

"She is in any case. Don't lose sight of that when you are talking to him. He has a sort of cold air of immense dignity about him; he is polite and superior at the same time."

"Do you know him?"

"No. At least I've been to his house. We nod in the street. He knows who I am. He came down to Kemsale some years ago. He was a friend of old Cousin Humphrey's. Didn't you meet him then?"

"Perhaps I did," said the Squire. "I don't remember. Ah, if poor old Humphrey Meads.h.i.+re had been alive, a lot of this wouldn't be happening."

Lord Meads.h.i.+re, a kinsman of the Squire's, had been Lord Lieutenant of the county, and the leading light in it, for very many years. But he had died, a very old man, two years before, and the grandson who had succeeded him was "no good to anybody."

"Don't let him overawe you," was d.i.c.k's final advice, significant enough, as addressed to the Squire, of what had been wrought in him.

There was no attempt made to overawe him, unless by the ceremony that hedges round a great Secretary of State in his inner sanctuary, when the Squire presented himself at the time appointed.

Lord Cheviot rose from his seat and came forward to meet him. "It is good of you, Mr. Clinton," he said, shaking hands, "to come to me here.

If you had been in London I should have called on you."

He was a tall, severe-looking man who seldom smiled, and did not smile now. He was so much in the public eye, and had for years played a part of such dignity, that it was impossible for the Squire, bucolic as he was, not to be somewhat impressed, now that he was in his presence.

But his greeting had removed any feeling that had been aroused by d.i.c.k's criticism of his letter, and he put the Squire still more at his ease by saying as he took his seat again, "I had the pleasure of meeting you some years ago at Lord Meads.h.i.+re's. I think he was a relation of yours."

"Yes," said the Squire. "Poor old man, we miss him a great deal in my part of the world."

Lord Cheviot bowed his head. He had finished with the subject of Lord Meads.h.i.+re.

"As you know, Mr. Clinton," he said, "I was guardian to my nephew during his minority. He was brought up as a member of my own family; I stand as a father to him, more than is the case with most guardians.

That will excuse me to you, I hope, for interfering in a matter with which, otherwise, I should have had no concern."

The Squire did not quite like the word "interfering," and made no reply.

"He has told me that he wishes to marry your daughter, that she is everything, in herself, that could be desired as a wife for him, which I have no sort of hesitation in accepting--in believing."

"In herself!" Again the Squire kept silence, though invited by a slight pause to speak.

"He tells me that it was understood that he should go to you immediately after he and this very charming young lady had parted in Scotland, that he had Mrs. Clinton's invitation, and that it was withdrawn, and has not since been renewed."

The Squire had to speak now. He made a gulp at it. "There were reasons," he said, "why I wished the proposal deferred for a time. I needn't say," he added hurriedly, "that they had nothing to do with--with your nephew himself."

"You mean that you would not object to a marriage between him and your daughter?"

Was there a trace of satire in this speech? None was apparent in the tone in which it was uttered, or in Lord Cheviot's face as he uttered it, sitting with his finger tips together, looking straight at his visitor.

If there was satire its sting was removed by the Squire answering simply: "Such a marriage could only have been gratifying to me"; and perhaps it was rebuked by his adding, "I have never met your nephew, but he bears such a character that any father must have been gratified for his daughter's sake."

This gave the word to Lord Cheviot, whose att.i.tude had been that of one waiting for an explanation.

He changed his position, and bent forward. "I think, under the circ.u.mstances, Mr. Clinton, we are ent.i.tled to ask why you wished the proposal--otherwise gratifying--to be deferred."

There was a tiny p.r.i.c.k in each of his speeches. The Squire was made more uncomfortable by them than was due even from the general discomfort of the situation.

He raised troubled eyes to those of his questioner. "I suppose you are not ignorant," he said, "of what is being said of us?"

"Of 'us'?" queried Lord Cheviot.

"Of me and my family. All the world seems to be talking of us."

Lord Cheviot dropped his eyes. He may not have liked to be put into the position of questioned, instead of questioner.

"I am not ignorant of it," he said.