Hugh busied himself in pulling on his shirt, and made no reply.
“Well, ’tis time the colonel took you in hand,” Ridydale blustered. “You need to be taught what befits a gentleman.”
Then he went noisily out of the room, and Hugh heard him clatter down the ladder from the loft. Looking out at the little window he saw Ridydale head for the stables, and he hoped the man might not make inquiries there or bring any one into disgrace for what had befallen. Then, as he turned back to finish dressing, a new alarm seized Hugh: what if the corporal, in his irritation, should refrain from speaking for him to Colonel Gwyeth? But next moment he had quite accepted the thought; indeed, he seemed all along to have half suspected some miscarriage would destroy his faint hope of the last few hours. It would only be of a piece with all that happened to him since he set out from Everscombe.
So, on the whole, he was surprised when about an hour later the cottager’s wife knocked at his door with the news that a trooper was below, come to take him before the colonel. No, he was not excited, Hugh told himself, for he cared not what the issue might be; he had twice gone so eagerly to meet his father, and each time been so bitterly disappointed, that now, whatever good fortune might be before him, it could awake in him no fresh anticipation. Yet, for all that, he came down the ladder rather briskly, and, when he found himself actually setting forth to Colonel Gwyeth’s quarters, felt a thrill of something like apprehension.
The bit of walk up the byway and along the main road to the great house, the back of which Hugh knew so well from his stable days, ended all too soon. Still repeating to himself that he did not care, he was not frightened, Hugh followed the trooper through the doorway; and then the door had closed, he was left alone in a dim back room, and suddenly he realized that in sober truth he was near to trembling with nervous dread. He was afraid of that flushed, red-haired man who had publicly rejected him; he was afraid of his roughness and more afraid of his tenderness, and if it had not been for shame at running away so ignominiously he would have bolted out of the house. Since that was not to be thought of he sat down on the window-seat and studied the dead leaves and withered flower-stalks of a strip of garden outside. Then he looked about the room and counted the oak panels in the walls and the diamond panes in the windows, but after all his eyes strayed to the door opposite, by which his guide had left him, and he found himself listening to the subdued hum of men’s voices that sounded within. Once a single voice rose choked and impatient, and immediately after feet scurried down the passage outside the entrance door. Getting up, Hugh tried hard to stare out at the window, but soon found himself facing the door and listening. All within was quiet now; indeed, there was not a sound nor a warning when at length the door was flung open and Ridydale himself beckoned him to come in. “Don’t be afeard, sir,” he said under his breath as Hugh passed him, and even in the midst of his own agitation Hugh noted that the corporal’s face was anxious and his manner subdued.
“No prompting, Corporal Ridydale,” interrupted a stern voice that Hugh remembered. “Come hither, sirrah.”
Hugh halted where he was, a few paces from the door, and looked toward the fireplace. Before the hearth Colonel Gwyeth was standing with his hands behind him; the set of his lips could not be judged because of his thick beard, but his brows were contracted so his eyes looked black beneath them. “So this is my son,” he began more quietly.
Hugh bowed his head without speaking; for the moment he dared not trust his voice.
“Come, come, hold up your head, man,” the colonel broke out impatiently; and then, with a visible effort to maintain his quieter tone, “Why have you not come to me ere this?”
“I did not court a second rejection, sir,” Hugh answered, with a steady voice, though his hands were crushing his cap into a little wad.