CHAPTER XXII
DICK COMES HOME
As the time came near for Dick's visit the Squire's mood changed from one of genial satisfaction to a nervous irascibility, which, as Joan said to Nancy, made him very difficult to live with.
"I know," Nancy agreed. "It is really rather degrading to have to try and keep him in a good temper."
"Good temper!" repeated Joan. "It is as much as one can do to keep him from snapping off one's head for nothing at all; in fact, one can't do it."
"I think," said Nancy reflectively, "that a time will come when we shall have to take father in hand and teach him how to behave. That's darling mother's mistake—that she's never done it. My view is that a woman has got to keep a man in order, or he will tyrannise over her. Don't you think that is so, Joan?"
"From what I have observed," replied Joan—they were sitting on the big sofa before the schoolroom fire—"I should say it was. And it's a bad thing for men themselves. Of course, we know quite well that father is frightened to death of what Dick will say to him when he comes, but if we were old enough—and mother cared to do it—to make him hide it up when he's with us, it wouldn't have nearly such a bad effect on him. He would have to forget it sometimes; now he never does."
Whether or no the Squire was frightened to death of what Dick would say to him when he came, he was certainly upset at the idea of what lay before him. Although he had as yet taken no definite steps, he had come to the decision that Dick, as far as was possible, should be disinherited, if he made the marriage that now seemed inevitable. The news of Humphrey's desirable engagement had made the other look still more undesirable, and it had taken off the edge of his strong aversion to act in a way so opposed to all his life-long intentions. It seemed almost to have justified his decision, and it had certainly softened to himself the sting of it.
But it was one thing to allow his mind to dwell on the unhoped-for compensations of his decision, when Dick by his own choice had cut himself off from Kencote and remained away from it, and it was quite another to contemplate his coming back, before the decision was made irrevocable, on a footing so different from the one he had hitherto occupied. The Squire was made intensely uncomfortable at the thought of how he should bear himself. He did now want to see his eldest son again, and to be friends with him. That desire had been greatly weakened while his mind had occupied itself with Humphrey's affair, but he saw, dimly, that it had only been sleeping, that he would always want Dick, however much he might have reason to be pleased with Humphrey, and that he was laying up for himself unhappiness in the future in working to put Humphrey into Dick's place, as he had rashly promised himself that he would do.
Humphrey, perhaps unwisely as regards his own interest, had announced his departure for London soon after it was known that Dick was coming down, and the Squire was left to turn things over in his mind with the distraction of Humphrey's affairs and Humphrey's presence withdrawn from him.