‘I will do nothing of the kind. I will not be treated as a child,’ cried Ernest, in a loud voice.
‘Then take the consequences, sir,’ shouted Sir Rupert, still louder. ‘Leave my presence, sir; leave the room, sir; leave the house, sir; and do not dare to show yourself again, sir, till I ask you, which will be never, never, sir, so help me——’
Ernest, with a white and rather scared face, got up and quietly walked away.
His father and he never met again in the flesh.
There were many efforts at reconciliation, but all had fallen through. Ernest, before leaving the Hall, had gone to his mother to say good-bye, and there had been a very painful scene. The poor woman was torn by conflicting emotions. She was passionately fond of her boy, and desperately afraid of her fierce spouse. But her maternal instincts carried the day, and she braved her husband’s anger, seeking to win forgiveness for her son. She failed utterly. The parties to the quarrel were equally determined, but in different ways. Ernest was weakly and foolishly obstinate; Sir Rupert, harsh, implacable, unrelenting. Father insisted upon submission unconditional and complete; son refused even to admit that he was wrong. Farrington Hall was a sad house while the dispute was in progress, and Lady Farrington was a very unhappy woman. Then, while matters were still unaccommodated, came the orders for active service, and she was in a paroxysm of despair. She made piteous appeals to Sir Rupert; she wrote imploring letters to her son, she besought the Horse Guards to delay embarkation, and pleaded all sorts of excuses to keep him at home. But fate and the authorities were inexorable, and Ernest, very much against his own will too, was compelled to start for the Coast.
He had never revisited the Hall. His father would not ask him, and he would not offer himself. His mother begged to be allowed to go to Southampton to bid him a last farewell, but Sir Rupert positively forbade it; and Ernest left the country with no one—except broken-hearted Mimie—to bid him adieu.
This was why the news of his death fell so heavily upon them all at home. Lady Farrington broke down utterly. She was like Rachel, and refused to be comforted. Sir Rupert, although he was still outwardly calm and impassive, felt it more than he could say. But he showed his grief very differently. It was a sort of relief to him to burst forth into the loudest invectives—not against himself, although his parental cruelty might well have caused him the keenest remorse, but against all who might, by the smallest implication, be deemed to be responsible for Ernest’s untimely end. Where was Diggle? Why had he allowed the young fellow out of his sight? And Sir Garnet, what excuse would the general make for leaving a young officer to be thus out-matched and massacred by the rascally foe? He even included Mimie Larkins in his reproaches, although she manifestly was but little to blame. He could not at first bring himself to think well of Herbert, whose brave act in trying to save his officer’s life was hailed with enthusiasm in this country as soon as it became known. What had this sergeant done? Only his duty. It was the duty of every sergeant or corporal in the service to lay down his life for a Farrington, of course. And the young fellow had been amply rewarded—over rewarded, if anything—for his pains.
But deeper down in Sir Rupert’s heart there was anguish and sharp regret. As a father he was deeply grieved at the loss of an only son; but as the proud owner of an old title and wide estates, it cut him to the heart to think that he must be the last of his line. Was it for this that he had schemed and manœuvred? For this that he had caused Lady Farrington to be placed under restraint—had abandoned her protégé to starve? Then followed a wave of better feeling towards the gallant young fellow who had heaped coals of fire on his head. What a fine action it was! How splendidly the young man had behaved! He half wished that Herbert was really the heir to the family honours, now that there was no one else to inherit them.
Upon this point he would have met with some sharp opposition within his family, had he expressed his opinion. Much as poor Ernest was regretted by all, there were some who, after the first decorous mourning, found themselves quite able to reconcile themselves to his loss. To Mrs. Cavendish-Diggle, Ernest’s death meant a certain tangible gain. She could never succeed to the baronetcy, certainly, but there were the broad acres of Farrington which, faute de mieux, would now undoubtedly come to her. Possibly, if Diggle did but take his proper place in life, and could be persuaded to enter Parliament, a grateful Government might be brought to continue the baronetcy through the female branch. Mrs. Cavendish would have been only too pleased that her infant son should some day resume the name and arms of the Farrington family, and that the Diggle-Farringtons should become celebrated as the proprietors of Farrington Hall. The son was forthcoming, indeed more than one; but poor Cavendish-Diggle was not himself quite equal to the task which the ambitious Letitia would have imposed upon him. The Gold Coast campaign, in fact, had nearly cost him his life, and had left him almost a wreck. Weeks of low fever upon a miserable sickbed in the malarious bush, had nearly finished him; and long before the end of the war he had returned to England more dead than alive. His life in the long run was spared, but the once smart dandy reappeared a broken, half-crippled man, one much more fitted to spend the remainder of his days in European health resorts, drinking the waters and taking the baths, than in any active struggle for parliamentary or contested family honours. Before the return of the Duke’s Own to England he had retired upon half-pay, and took no further part in regimental affairs.