“It sounds all right when you put it like that, of course. Very majestic and Back to the Flood and all that kind of thing, don’t you know?—though it isn’t exactly comfortable to think of the family spooks perching like a lot of lost roosters on that slimy cedar. But I should have thought you would be glad to be free of them. Thank the powers I’ve no family ghost-bones to be pulling my back hair when I’m out to enjoy myself! I’ve been standing alone ever since I wore openwork socks, and I feel fit enough to go on standing till the Judgment! But from what I’ve seen of life, Christian, there comes a time to every man when he’s got to learn to stand alone; and it strikes me very forcibly, Laker, my lad, that you’ll have to take your turn along with the rest!”
She laid her hand on Christian’s for a second, with the freedom of good comradeship, but as her eyes dropped to the square strength of her fingers, foiled by the slender strength of his, she drew it back and pulled on her gloves sharply, conscious again of the intangible barrier that had arisen momentarily when he asked her pardon. “I’m just talking through my hat!” she added, with an angry little stamp, while he watched her in amused bewilderment, having no clue to her change of mood. “Well, go on dying as often and as suddenly as you please—you and your bunch of devil’s firewood! And now I’m going out to talk on my own level—to the stable-boy!”
After she had gone, a message came to Christian from his mother, and he climbed the stairs to Slinker’s own room, which still was as he had left it, and was likely to remain so as long as Alicia Lyndesay reigned at Crump. Slinker had disdained the library and the other rooms on the ground floor used by his conservative ancestors, and had fitted himself a den overlooking the stable-yard. “Too many eyes looking on,” he had said of the family portraits, and graced his walls with others, obviously minus family, and chiefly remarkable for teeth. “No rotten old views for me!” he had observed likewise, and had blocked sky and air daily with a cloud of expensive smoke.
The room was full of sporting implements of the newest type and the highest finish; beautiful, untried things stuck in corners or against a wall to drag out a useless existence; for Slinker had been no sportsman. He liked the look of the things well enough—the old blood spoke sufficiently for that—but he rarely handled even a gun, though in shooting-kit he was a most convincing spectacle; so much so, indeed, that few had ever grasped his real form as a shot, except a nervous keeper or two with eyes down their backs, and a badly-frightened dog.
From over the mantelpiece Slinker himself greeted his entrance, slim, sleek, irritatingly guileless in expression. To the casual eye there had been sufficient resemblance between the half-brothers to rouse a sense of impotent wrath in Christian’s very dissimilar soul. Both were fair and blue-eyed, gentle-voiced and quiet in movement; points, however, which really served to mark an amazing difference to one intimate with both. Christian’s athletic grace had been in Slinker chiefly the artistic wisdom of an over-patronised tailor. Christian’s gentleness was fear to hurt; Slinker’s, mere backstairs policy. Christian’s charming serenity was the outward expression of his inward self; Slinker’s guilelessness veiled deceit as deep as the sea.
Eluding the eyes of the portrait with difficulty, Christian experienced an actual shock as he met those of Deborah from the opposite wall, grave and rather haughty, as if disturbed by the picture-postcard society around her. Moved by a sudden unaccountable impulse, he placed himself before the photograph, so that Slinker’s travelling gaze could no longer reach it.
His mother was seated at the desk in the recess by the fireplace, surrounded on all sides by Stanley’s papers. Judging from her face, she was not finding this voyage of discovery any too plain sailing.
Without speaking, she motioned him to a chair, and, avoiding Slinker’s ostentatious saddle-bags, he dropped obediently into the Windsor which the dead master had kept for his tenants.
“It is time things were settled,” she said at last, turning just sufficiently in his direction to indicate that she was addressing him and not Flossie Featherfin cake-walking in the alcove. “I suppose you know that Stanley had engaged a new agent? We cannot keep the man waiting any longer. No doubt you are willing to confirm the appointment?”
“I wanted to ask you about that,” Christian put in. “I had a letter from him, this morning. He seems all right, of course—good testimonials and all that kind of thing—but I should prefer a personal interview before settling anything definite.”