“Mr Lester is not going to Hazelby, sir,” said the man; “he went to Lord Milford’s early this morning in the dog-cart. He left word that he would not disturb you, sir.”
The engagement at Milford flashed across Cheriton’s mind, and with dismay and indignation he perceived that Alvar had not thought it worth while to break it on Chris Fleming’s account. In a moment he recognised the utter ruin that would fall on all chance of Alvar’s success with his tenants, still more the disgrace that he would bring on himself in the eyes of the whole bench of magistrates, by the neglect of such an obvious duty, while on his own part he felt that it was such an unkindness as he hardly knew how to forgive. His first impulse was to let the matter alone, and to leave Alvar to bear the brunt of his own misdoings. But then the thought came of the distress to the Flemings, of the fatal injury to the boy from the weeks of undeserved detention, and, after all, the discredit would fall on them all alike. He forgot all his intention of nursing his cold, forgot its very existence, as he perceived, on looking at his watch, that he had barely time to reach Hazelby for the meeting.
“It is all the same,” he said, “my going to Hazelby will answer every purpose. Tell them to bring Molly round at once. As Mr Lester has the dog-cart, I will ride.”
“There is a very cold wind, and it looks like rain, sir.”
“That can’t be helped,” said Cheriton, “there is no time to lose.”
He tried to make his expedition seem a matter of course; but every one in the house believed that he went because the squire had gone off on his own pleasure, or out of what the old cook did not hesitate to call “nasty spite,” had refused to justify little Fleming. Indeed, as Cheriton rode hurriedly away, he could hardly divest himself of the same opinion.
In the meanwhile, Alvar no sooner found himself well on the way to Milford than he began to feel pangs of compunction. The cold wind and drizzling rain beat in his face, as the conviction was borne in upon him, that Cheriton would certainly go to Hazelby in his place. He had not been at Milford since the day of the great rejoicing, when Cheriton, with all his fresh honours, had met them there, had wooed, and, as he thought, won Ruth Seyton; when he himself was Virginia’s acknowledged lover. He called her to mind, as she had walked by his side in smiling content, as she played with the children—felt now, as he never had then, the wistfulness of her eyes when they met his, and almost for the first time he recognised that the want of devotion had been on his side. He had not loved her enough. A sense of discouragement and despondence seized on him, a deep melancholy softened the resentment which he had been cherishing. As he looked back on the years of his father’s neglect, on Virginia’s dismissal, on his brother’s views of what his position required, for once the sense of his shortcomings overpowered his sense of the many excuses for them. His indifference to the chance of Cheriton’s running a great risk touched him with a self-reproach for which his theories of life offered no palliative. He could not rest, and with a suddenness and vehemence of action most unusual with him, he turned to Lord Milford as they prepared to start on their day’s sport, declared that he had suddenly recollected an important engagement, and must beg them to excuse him at once; overruled all objections on the score of his horse wanting rest by declaring that he would only drive to the station, and go by train to Hazelby.
“I am humiliated by my want of courtesy to your lordship, but it is necessary that I should go,” he said; but what with the delay of starting, and the absence of a train at the last moment, the magistrates’ meeting was over long before he reached Hazelby, every one had dispersed, and the court-house was shut.
He could not bring himself to ask any questions; but ordered a conveyance and started on his way back to Oakby, hardly knowing whether to reveal his change of purpose or not. On the road he passed the three Fleming brothers, trudging home through the mud. They looked away, and omitted to touch their hats to him. Alvar said to himself that he did not care; but the sense of unpopularity can never be other than bitter. He thought to himself that after all English gentlemen did not always live on their estates. There were hundreds of his father’s rank who did not hold his father’s view of their duties. He could shut Oakby up, let it, go where he would never see it again. But where? Never as the disinherited heir would he set foot in Seville, and he had no craving to hunt tigers in India, or buffaloes on the prairies. He did not wish to go yachting; did not care to travel; he hated the fogs and the colourlessness of London. He was as little ready to cut himself loose from all his moorings as Cheriton himself. Suddenly, as he drove on, he saw one of the Oakby grooms riding fast towards him. The man pulled up as he passed.
“Mr Cheriton is ill, sir; Mrs Lester is there, and she sent me for the doctor.”