“Maybe it would,” said Harry. “They got help and carried him home, and Sant went with him. He’s been there ever since, I think. At least he’s not come back here. Anyhow it stops the warrant business for the time. And there we are. Nobody knows the real truth but old Jacob; and Sant bound him to silence for the present. We’ve been looking after you ever since, young gentleman; and here I am, having taken my turn by the fire.”
“It’s very good of you, you old idiot,” I said rather tremulously. “Harry, if—if he’s rested, do you think you could send Uncle Jenico to me now?”
He nodded, comprehending perfectly, and went out. I don’t intend to recount the meeting that followed. If I had loved the old man before, you may understand what penitence now made of my feelings. I was painfully suspicious that that secrecy as to my own movements had been dictated rather by private selfishness than consideration for my relative. Certainly I had feared that, had he been told of our purposed trip to the sands, he would, in his uneasiness of mind, have put forward all sorts of objections, even, perhaps, had I proved obstinate, to a personal appeal to me not to desert him in his depressed condition. And now, supposing that eternal seal had been put on our actions, what a heritage of mental torture, of unfounded self-accusations to impose on that blameless soul! I ended by swearing that for the future no simplest scheme of mine should take shape without his sanction. And then he was pacified, though still, while Rampick’s fate was undecided, in a fever of nervousness to keep me within sight and touch.
I came down to dinner, at which Harry was an invited guest, and made up handsomely for my late abstinence. We had a merry meal, though still in some perturbation as to Mr. Sant’s prolonged absence. During the course of it, I suddenly found a huge 21, scrawled on a scrap of paper, lying on the table beside me. A smutty thumb print in one corner informed me at once of the authorship.
“Three times seven, Fancy-Maria?” I said. “That’s a good girl! I knew you’d come round to my point of view in the end.”
She backed, giggling, out of the room; and a heavy sound in the hall which followed, endorsed, so to speak, by a pasty disc on her bustle when she reappeared, showed us that she had sat down in the pudding. But that, fortunately, was when we were at the cheese.
Mrs. Puddephatt was genteel and a little distant in her visitations during the meal; and, finally, with such spectral significance, that Uncle Jenico, though she had not spoken, felt constrained to offer her a sort of apology.
“There’s something behind, you think,” said he. “Well, candidly, there is, but it’s not exactly our secret as yet, my dear woman. When it is, you shall have all the facts.”
She gave a sharp wince, as if suddenly recalled to herself with a pin; and, drawing herself up with her arms folded, gazed at him with stony abstraction.
“Which you was addressing me, Mr. Paxton?” she said. “Would you take the liberty now to repeat yourself?”