Then Neil went back to the house, and rang the door bell with polite consideration. “The new-comers will certainly know more than the policeman,” he thought, “and I can get no letter till Monday morning. It will be very annoying to be in this doubt until then.”
He had plenty of time for these reflections, for the bell was not noticed, and he rang again with a little more impetuosity. This time it was answered by a huge Highlander, with a dog by a leash, and a dogwhip in his hand; and Neil trembled with fear. He knew the man. He had once been his lawyer, and lost his case, and the man had accused him of selling his case. There was no proof of the wrong, none at all, and it was not believed by anyone except Reginald Rath, and even Roberta allowed he was too prejudiced to be fair. These circumstances passed like a flash through Neil’s heart, as Bruce Kinlock glared at him.
“How dare you show your face at my door?” he asked. “Be off, you whippersnapper, or I’ll set the dog on you.”
“I have always believed, until the present moment, 277 that this was my house. Can you tell me where my family has removed to?”
“You never had any right in this house but the right of sufferance. Honest Reginald Rath has taken your wife away—he’s done right. Ye know well you are not fit company for the lady Roberta. As for your family, they have the pity of everyone. What kind of a brute is it that has not a shilling for a dying mother, though he’s owing his family ninety pounds, and far more love than he deserves. Go, or it will be worse for you! You sneaking ne’er-do-well.”
Kinlock had spoken with inconceivable passion, and the very sight of the red-headed, gigantic Highlander, sputtering out words that cannot be written, and of the growling brute, that only required a relaxed hand to fly at his throat, made him faint with terror.
“I am sure, Mr. Kinlock——”
“How daur you ‘mister’ me? I am Kinlock, of Kinlock! You had better take yourself off. I’m at the end of my patience, and I cannot hold this kind of a brute much longer. And if he grabs any kind of a human being, he never lets go while there’s life in him. I can’t say how he would treat you—one dog does not eat another dog, as a rule.” Then he clashed-to the door, and Neil was grateful. He did not ask again for it to be opened.
He went to his office. Perhaps there was a letter for him there. It was locked, and the man who kept 278 the keys lived over the river. Thoroughly weary and distressed, and full of anxious forebodings, he went to a hotel, and ordered supper in his own room. He did not feel as if he could look anyone in the face, with this dreadful uncertainty hanging over his life. What was the matter?
Thinking over things he came to no conclusion. It could not be his few words with Roberta on the night of his return from London. A few words of contradiction with Roberta were almost a daily occurrence, and she had always accepted such offers of conciliation as he made. And he was so morally obtuse that his treatment of his mother and sister, as influencing his wife, never entered his mind. What had Roberta to do with his mother and Christine? Suppose he had treated them cruelly, what right, or reason, had she to complain of that? Everything was personal to Neil, even moralities; he was too small to comprehend the great natural feelings which make all men kin. He thought Kinlock’s reference to his dying mother a piece of far-fetched impertinence, but he understood very well the justice of Kinlock’s personal hatred, and he laughed scornfully as he reflected on the Highlander’s longing to strike him with the whip, and then set the dog to finish his quarrel.