Bluecaster moved in his chair and opened his lips. There was breeding in the way he mastered his inward shrinking, and tried to smooth the warring elements into courtesy.
“You are making things a little difficult, Mr. Holliday!” he said gently. “Won’t you sit down and allow us to finish the discussion quietly? You will gain nothing by vilifying an honourable gentleman whom all here remember with affection and regret.”
“I’ll sit down when I’m through!” Brack said insolently. “I’m asking your lordship for a straight answer. Are you on my side or are you not?”
Bluecaster looked down the table. There was no staving it off. He must act if he could get no other to act for him. In his extremity he did what he had always done—dropped his burden for Lanty to pick up.
“I am on the Lancasters’ side always,” he answered Brack. “You have produced no conclusive arguments, and naturally I put their word before yours. If Mr. Lancaster thinks the Lugg should stand, I think so, too. That is all I have to say.”
It was cowardice, and it sounded like courtesy—flight and fear, though it seemed like standing shoulder to shoulder; and only two men present guessed it for what it was. Bluecaster was shirking, and for the moment Lancaster filled with passionate revolt; but out of the wrath and clamour at the injustice something nobler rose and conquered. He heard the call to help that no true fighter ever denies; he saw the young man caught in a trap too cruel for his hesitant soul, and he put out his hand to him at once. He looked up the table with a smile and nodded, and as Bluecaster’s face lost its strain, and the trusting dog-look came back into his eyes, he yielded to the old rush of keen affection. Of course, you did things for Bluecaster, though you damned yourself to all eternity!
The decision was left to him, the one person in the world who could not possibly see the problem unbiassed. Even if he had not believed, there could scarcely have been but one answer. And he did believe. He did trust the Lugg. The fear that dogged him was not of his own heart, but put into him from outside. Brack could talk a clock into stopping. But there was only one answer.
“I stand by my father’s work, of course!” he said cheerfully, and with a passionate exclamation Brack sank into his seat. And then old Wolf spoke again.
“And now you’ll let me the Pride, Mr. Lancaster!”
He turned to the other question with a start. Wolf and his worries had been out of his mind for the moment. Now they wove a thread in the weft of his father’s warp. He hedged, trying to put the point aside.