'Mr. Bloodworth, I was told, when at a short distance from the house, that you must have entered it about the time that I left; now I particularly wish to have some conversation with you, so I turned my horse. Higgs, it is private business,' he said, nodding to Shady, who, with an air of much satisfaction, left the steward with one far better able, as he felt, to cope with him than himself.
The doctor looked at his watch. 'I have already spent some hours here, Mr. Bloodworth, and am far beyond my usual time for dinner; but I am so deeply interested in the affairs of your master, that I am determined if possible to come to an understanding with you as to—that—in fact, pray, Mr. Bloodworth, what is the meaning of all this? I find Sir Valary suffering from severe nervous shocks, owing entirely to your interviews with him. Though known to be one of the richest men in the county, and possessing as liberal a heart as a gentleman of his station ought to have, his household, I find, is limited to bare necessities, and even the young lady his daughter has no command of money. What does it all mean, Mr. Bloodworth? I must tell you in plain English that the whole is laid at your door.'
All this was said in the heat and rapidity of indignation, and it was about the last kind of attack that the doctor had meditated making. He had ridden back hastily, and had settled as he rode what would be the wisest way of handling the steward, so as to get at the secret. 'I must take him quietly,' he said to himself, 'make no charges, suspect nothing;' and he had even prepared the opening of his harangue; but the sight of Bloodworth, his face inflamed with passion, looking much as Marjory had described him on his last visit to Sir Valary, had completely thrown him off his balance, and all his wise resolutions went to the winds. The steward felt the advantage of his position, and said somewhat sullenly, if Sir Valary had any complaint to make of him, he would hear it from himself; he was answerable to no one else; and with regard to the expenditure of the household, he was not responsible for that; but Sir Valary was not the only rich man in the world that chose rather to live like a poor one; however, it was not his duty to interfere in such matters; he supposed Sir Valary had a right to spend or save without accounting to any one.
'Well, well, well, well,' said the doctor, vexed with himself for his rashness, 'I spoke hastily; but you must know, Bloodworth, that you are the talk of the country, and that people consider you have obtained such an influence over Sir Valary, that you can get him to consent to anything, and, therefore, all the hard measures with tenants, and the penurious way in which he lives, are ascribed to you.'
Bloodworth shrugged his shoulders. 'I never cared much for what people said of me,' he answered.
'Very good,' said the doctor; 'it's a fine thing to have a clear conscience; but what I want to know is, why latterly your visits have excited him so strangely?'
After a short pause, Bloodworth, who kept his eyes fixed on the ground all the time, scarcely raising them, said, 'Sir Valary is very much altered lately; things that did not fret him fret him now; the business that I am obliged to tell him makes him furious—that is no fault of mine.'
'But your own behaviour the last time?' said the doctor, in a voice which showed that Bloodworth's words had not been without some effect.
'Well, I was wrong, and I own it; I am a bad temper; I get ill-will every way; there is not a tenant that wouldn't shoot me if he could; the people at the house hate me worse than a dog; the squire has no name bad enough for me—and all because I follow out Sir Valary's directions; and then when I go to him to tell him what I've done, and find him take everything the wrong way, it puts me off, and I forget myself; I did last time, I know it, and I am sorry for it.'
He said this with an air of so much candour, with something so like injured innocence, that he quite won the doctor, who was a far better adept in detecting the evil workings of the body than the secret mischiefs of the mind.