‘I don’t know why he should, sir,’ Jervase answered. ‘He’s had an honest reputation all his life. Now what is there in this,’ he went on, taking up the scrap of writing the General had laid upon the table, ‘what is there in this to frighten anybody? Who’s William Ford, of Ontario, for instance? William Buckle, U.S.A.—who’s he? And what’s this other fellow’s name—George Lightfoot, late of Melbourne, now in England——’
‘Why!’ cried Polson, suddenly, ‘that’s the very blackguard I——’
He paused suddenly, and turned with a gesture of dismay. He had given himself no time to calculate the significance of the words he had used, and they were no sooner spoken than he knew intuitively that he had at least in part betrayed his father. A lad of a more honest impulse and conduct could not have been found in all England; but even if his father were a rogue—and the belief that he was nothing short of that had already shocked him to the heart—it was not a son’s business to betray him. It was the son’s concern to suffer his own share of shame, if shame should come, and to preserve a front of unshaken confidence. Polson was frozen at his own indiscretion.
‘That is the blackguard,’ said the General, with a certain silky quiet which had in his time grown to be very terrible to people who had come to understand its meaning, ‘that is the blackguard, Polson? Be good enough to enlighten us a little further. You have some acquaintance with Lightfoot, late of Melbourne, now in England, though your father has no knowledge of him.’
‘What do you know about any fellow of that name?’ Jervase asked wrathfully. ‘What bee have you got in your bonnet?’
‘Let us see the bee, Polson, let us see the bee.’
‘Why, sir,’ said Polson, turning with outspread hands of appeal, ‘it comes to nothing. It happened a week or two ago that I found a hulking fellow with a digger’s beard and a red shirt—one of those chaps we’ve seen lately back from Ballarat and Geelong—skulking about outside the gate. I asked him what he wanted, and he was drunk and abusive, and—well, I had to give him a hiding.’
‘Yes,’ said the General, ‘you had to give him a hiding. Why?’
‘I’ve told you, sir,’ Polson stammered. ‘The fellow was drunk, and—when I ordered him away, he got so beastly cheeky that I had to go for him.’
‘Before this happened,’ said the General, somewhat drawling on the words, ‘you exchanged cards and confidences?’ Polson stretched out his hands again in appeal, and the General, looking at him with a countenance impassive as the Sphinx, felt a pang of pity in his heart, for the lad was a good lad, and the old warrior knew it, and he had been near to loving him, this past half-dozen years. And the boy was not merely pale with the suffering of his mind, but his very eyes had lost their colour, as a man’s eyes do when he has received a shot in battle. The General knew that look, and had seen it in the eyes of dying comrades. It touched him nearly, but he gave no sign. ‘Why did the man tell you his name, and that he came from Melbourne?’