Both dicta were true. Headstrong and susceptible, there was hardly ever a time when Hilary Blachland was outside some entanglement: more than once getting him into a serious scrape. Such, however, did not invariably come to the ears of his uncle, though now and then they did, and on one occasion Sir Luke found himself obliged to pay down a heavy sum to keep an uncommonly awkward breach of promise case against his nephew from coming into court. Hilary at last made Passmore too hot to hold him, but the worst of it was that sooner or later the same held good of everywhere else. Still, the infinity of trouble he gave him notwithstanding, this scapegrace was the one of his two nephews for whom Sir Luke had the softest place in his heart—but at last the climax arrived, and the name of that climax was the name of the suit which we have just heard Sir Luke mention. Therein Hilary had got himself—as his uncle had forcibly put it—“into a most infernal mess.” His said uncle, moreover, had found himself called upon to pay the somewhat heavy damages and costs.
He need not have done so, of course. He might have left the scapegrace to drag himself out of the mud he had got into. But, unlike many men who have coined their own wealth, there was nothing close-fisted about Sir Luke Canterby. He had disbursed the large sum with scarcely a murmur—anything to close down the confounded scandal. But with Hilary Blachland he was seriously angry and disgusted, and told him as much in no halting terms. The other replied he had better go abroad—and the sooner the better. So he took himself off—which, declared Sir Luke, was the most sensible thing he had decided to do for some time. He changed his mind though, on learning that Hilary had not gone alone, and—missed him, as he put it to himself and his most intimate friend, viz. Canon Lenthall, “like the very devil.”
“By the way,” said Percival when lunch was half through. “I brought out a later paper from Passmore. Here it is,” producing it from the pocket of his Norfolk jacket. “Want to see it, uncle? Not much news, I expect.”
“Let’s see the stock and share column,” holding out one hand for the paper, and fixing his glasses with the other. A glance up and down a column, then a turning over of the sheet. Then a sudden, undisguised start.
“God bless my soul! What’s this?”
His hand shook as he held the news sheet, running his glance hastily down it. “Why, that must be Hilary. There, Canon, read it out I can hardly see—there—that paragraph.”
The old priest took the paper. “‘Trouble brewing in Mashonaland’? Is that it? Yes? Well, here’s what they say:—
“‘Stirring times seem in store for our Chartered Company’s pioneers in their new Eldorado. It has been known that Lo Bengula’s concession of the mining rights in Mashonaland to that Company was very distasteful to his people, and for some time past these have been manifesting their displeasure in such wise as to show that it is only a question of time when the settlers of Mashonaland will find themselves called upon to vindicate their rights by force, against their truculent neighbours. The last instance that we have seems to have happened early in November, when an armed force of Matabele crossed into Mashonaland, raiding and threatening at their own sweet will. Several native servants in the employ of settlers were murdered in cold blood, Lo Bengula’s warriors asserting their right to carry on their time-honoured pastime, declaring that the lives of these people were not included in the concession; but so far they have refrained from murdering Europeans. One specific example of the unbridled aggressiveness of these savages is also to hand. The impi went to the house of a man named Blachland, a trader and hunter residing near the head waters of the Umnyati river. Two of his servants had got wind of its approach, and after warning their master fled for their lives to the bush. It appears however, that Blachland was ill with a bad attack of fever, and too weak to move.’”
An exclamation from Percival and Sir Luke caused the reader to pause.