Chapter Twenty Four.
“Requiem Aeternam...”
Though beloved by their tenantry and dependents the Wagrams were not exactly popular with the county—as spelt with a capital C. This saw reason, or thought it did, to regard them as exclusive and eccentric. To begin with, they seldom entertained, and then not on anything like the scale it was reckoned they ought. A few shooting parties in the season, and those mostly men, though such of the latter as owned wives and daughters brought them; or an occasional gathering, such as we have seen, mainly of ecclesiastical interest. It was a crying shame, declared the county, that a splendid place like Hilversea Court should be thrown away on two solemn old widowers; and it was the duty of one of them—Wagram at any rate—to marry again. But Wagram showed not the slightest inclination to do anything of the kind.
Not through lack of opportunity—inducement. He was angled for, more or less deftly—not always with a mercenary motive; but, though courteous and considerate to the aspiring fair, by no art or wile could he be drawn any further—no, not even into the faintest shadow of a flirtation. It was exasperating, but there was no help for it, so he had been given up as hopeless. He might have recognised the duty but for the existence of his son. Hilversea would have its heir after him—that was sufficient.
He was eccentric, estimated his acquaintances, in that he worked hard at matters that most people leave to an agent; but this was a duty, he held—a sacred trust—to look into things personally; the result we have referred to elsewhere. As for entertaining, well, neither he nor the old Squire cared much about it. On the other hand, they were careful that many a day’s sport, with gun or rod—but mostly the latter—should come in the way of not a few who seldom had an opportunity of enjoying such.
But now of late there had befallen that which caused the county aforesaid to rub its eyes, and this was the manner in which the Wagrams seemed to have “taken up” Delia Calmour. It was not surprised that a brazen, impudent baggage like that should have pushed herself upon them on the strength of the gnu incident, the marvel was that she should have succeeded—have succeeded in getting round not only Wagram but the old Squire as well, and the county resented it. Once when she was at Hilversea some callers, of course, of her own sex, took an opportunity of testifying their disapproval by being markedly rude to the girl. This Wagram had noticed, and had there and then paid her extra attention by way of protest. And Haldane too—he who thought the whole world was hardly good enough to have the honour of containing that girl of his, and yet he allowed her to associate with a daughter of tippling, disreputable old Calmour! What next, and what next!
But if the Wagrams were eccentric they could afford to be, and that for a dual reason: in the first place, they were “big” enough; in the next, they cared literally and absolutely not one straw for the opinion of the county. If a given line commended itself to their approbation they took it, completely regardless of what the county or anybody else might choose to say or think—and this held equally good of father and son—which was as well, for, as time went by, on this matter it “said” plenty.
A wafting of it reached Wagram one day, at the mouth of Clytie’s quondam victim—“Vance’s eldest fool,” as the old Squire had, with cynical aptitude, defined that much plucked youth.