"Poor old Edmund! It would be a sad thing if he had to know about it after all."
"Yes; I don't think it will happen. I don't in the least think it will happen. She'll let me know if she wants the money. She practically promised me that. I'm rather glad now that Edmund did prevent my warning him about it. I had just come from her, and I felt doubtful as to what she would do. I shouldn't have told him everything—only something that would have broken the shock to him if it had come. But it's weeks ago now. She's apparently decided not to do anything. I think the danger is past."
"It looks like it; and I'm very glad of it. Poor Edmund! He clings to that boy's memory, though I'm afraid he'd have given him nothing but trouble if he'd lived. You've been very good, William, in keeping the worst of it from him. You've done it even since you quarrelled with him. Now look here—can't you carry it a bit further and make friends with him again?"
"Oh, I'm quite ready to make friends with him if he wants it. I've told you so. But as for taking the first step, which I suppose is what you want me to do, I tell you I'm tired of taking first steps. When this absurd dispute began, I put aside one offence after the other from him, and acted on what I thought was beneath it all—I mean the very thing you rely on—our always having got on well together as brothers and all that. He didn't rely on that. Every step I took was made the basis of further offence. No, I'm not going out on that road again. If he wants me he knows well enough how to get me."
"My dear fellow, I dare say you're in the right and he's in the wrong—all the way through if you like. But it's a question of acting generously."
"I've tried to do that. But when your generosity is thrown back in your face time after time—! No, it's no good, Crowborough. I'm ready to put it all aside and begin again; but I'm not going to make any more advances."
With this Lord Crowborough had to be content. He made the most of it to Colonel Eldridge. William was quite ready to return to their former relations, but he was still sore about the way in which his efforts at reconciliation had been rejected, as he considered. Couldn't Edmund himself write something that would put it right? He felt sure that William would respond.
"I'll think about it," said Colonel Eldridge. "I'm not going to do anything in a hurry."
He thought about it very carefully. He wanted to have it over. William had said he was ready to have it over; but did he really want it, in the same way, or didn't he much care? His whole attitude now seemed to show that he hardly cared at all. He was leaving Hayslope and all his interests there, which had been much to him. Now, besides all the other interests of his successful life, they counted for very little, and he, his brother, was just part of them. If he were to put aside his resentments, which still caused him acute annoyance when he remembered their successive occasions, and to make some advance towards reconciliation, wouldn't it be taken as just an indication that he had found himself unable to do without William's assistance and was ready to eat humble pie in order to get it again?
No, he couldn't do it. William would no doubt respond effusively. He would pretend that nothing had ever happened, and behave with that excessive brotherliness which he had always found it difficult to respond to, though he had valued it as expressing the feeling which he had also cherished. With the memory of all that would have to be ignored still fresh in his mind, he knew that he could not meet that attitude graciously—not for some time to come. It would be a false intimacy to which he would be immediately invited; not false, perhaps, on William's part, because with all his late offences endorsed, and the excitements of his life taking up most of his attention, he would be relieved to be able to give his impulses play; but certainly false on his part, who must have time in which to get back to the old terms.