“You’ll stop and have a bite with us now you’re here, surely! It’s not so many more chances we’ll have of a crack with you. Wolf’ll likely be set on getting back, so we’ll let him be, but I’ll not take nay from you, Lup, so you can just set yourself down! There’s Brack here with all Canada at his finger-ends, ready to learn you anything you’ve a mind to, an’ a deal more, I reckon! I’m real glad you looked in. The master’s never a word for us home-keeping folk after sales an’ such-like. He’s that weary he gets sluming in his chair afore he’s half-through, and it’s vexing when one’s aching for a bit o’ news. Brack’s not been; leastways, he’s never mentioned it.”
“Oh say! I have, though,” Brack put in hastily, conscious that his perfunctory interest in the sale of an historic herd was bound to go against him. “Guess I was too taken up to remember. I’d other business shouting, but I just blew over for a spell—thought it was up to me to give ’em a look-in.” As for the stock, it had been very much over-rated, he considered. All the best stuff went over the pond; everybody knew that, and he happened to be able to confirm it. Lup would find it so for himself when he got across. Yes, sir, he had been at the sale, right enough! That was the best of a car; you could whiz about all over the place, and see a chunk of everything that was going.
“You stopped just on half an hour,” Lup put in, fixing him steadily across the table. “I saw when you come—you were having a bit of a turn-up with the Duke’s shover; and I saw you quit—at the tail of a cart to the first motor-shop. And the biggest stock wasn’t in the ring till you’d been gone more than a while. It was a rare good sale. There’s no finer beasts in the world.”
Brack felt his halo dwindling.
“Engine-trouble—fixed in five minutes!” he answered casually. “No use my stopping, anyway—prices ran too all-creation big. You feel mighty thrilled, of course, watching good stock put to the hammer, even when you’ve got to grit your teeth on your tongue to keep it mum, but I d another trail to follow. I don’t mind laying that half the farmers there went just for the fun of the circus—they weren’t out to buy. You and your father, I take it, weren’t on to anything, now that Ninekyrkes is changing hands, and you’re for out West?”
Lup flushed, and fell into dogged silence. The afternoon had been bitter as Dead Sea drink. Time and again the surface of the situation had been explained to inquiring minds, and in most cases had met with disapproval. More than one county gentleman had buttonholed him, asked his plans, and dropped him with a shrug. His father’s contemporaries had wagged censuring heads, and, as often as not, a tongue to match. Already he felt something of an outcast. Not that he really cared a whit for condemnation. It would be a poor-blooded Westmorland farmer that even looked aside at criticism; but where his pride had shaken off concern, his heart had not gone unscathed. Even on his accustomed gaze the pathos of old Wolf had smitten hard. He knew afterwards—months afterwards—that this was the last happy day the old man ever had. Mixing with the huge crowd in the beautiful park, greeting and greeted at every step, tuned to the excitement of a big sale, he was young and keen again, forgetting the future. On this happy flickering of dead joy it was Lup’s business to lay the chill, extinguishing hand of reality. He wondered how often he had reiterated the same dull speech: “Nay, father, what we want no more wi’ stock, you’ll think on!” just as he had wondered, each time, how soon he would have to speak it again. It was like killing something that would not die, and in spite of his efforts the old man had insisted on bidding at Rosedale Queen, until Lup had sought out Lancaster and begged him to bring him to reason. Somehow Lanty had succeeded, and Wolf had dropped out, his eager desire followed by a piteous apathy. The agent stayed near, trying to cheer him, but with little result. Old Wolf’s swan-song, he thought, had been that frenzied bidding at Rosedale Queen.
Brack had the whip of the conversation again, and was making the most of it. All Mrs. Dockeray could elicit from Lup was that Rose Diamond had sold for two hundred and fifty guineas, or that Denny had picked up Rosedale Squire for seventeen, and already saw himself beating the King at the Royal—statements barely stemming the steady flow of Brack’s assurance. The mother fretted and wondered, watching the girl’s eyes as they travelled between the two, weighing them in the balance.
But Francey could not look at them as she, at the same age, would have looked. In the daughter’s case, education of a high class had sharpened the over-critical faculty of a fine intelligence until it held her emotional capacity captive. She saw them more as types than as human flesh and blood. She could neither be fascinated by the surface charm of the one, nor lose herself in the primitive strength of the other. Behind Brack’s refinement and overplayed ease she saw that he was restless, meretricious, lacking in stability. Around Lup’s steady sanity and simple faith she felt the rough shell of his ignorance. Lup saw as his fathers saw, loved as they loved, glimpsing life sharply but narrowly, not in the least with her wider if more dangerous vision. There were depths in her he would never fathom, finenesses he might respect but never grasp, shades of feeling making life vivid that he would always fail to seize. Brack could seize them, after his own fashion. She could feel him follow her mood almost as it turned its coat, where Lup would have been blundering up blind alleys, or sitting dumbly at corners, waiting her return. Her interest quickened, so that Brack flattered himself and shone. It was with real reluctance that he tore himself from his thrilling attitude of cock-o’-the-midden.
“Guess I feel leaving Ladyford like leaving home!” he said sentimentally. “I saw mighty little of hearth and home for many a long year.” (The string of the exiled orphan-nephew twanged with fine effect.) “Lup, I sure envy you, hanging out just over the way! Why didn’t you hit the trail last year, old man? I’d have had Ninekyrkes, then, instead of Thweng. You’d have found me real neighbourly, Mrs. Dockeray!”
The words were meant for Francey, with the tail of an eye on Lup, for he knew well enough the talk that was going; but if he expected to score he was disappointed.