“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” he said. “Mr. Pank, I’ll take double my usual quantity of Scotch whisky.”
“With me, Mr. Rawson,” the grocer insisted. “We’ve missed you the last few days.”
Rawson sighed.
“I felt too worried in my mind for company,” he confessed. “It’s no secret to you all, so why should I act mysterious about it. There’s skeery doings at the Hall.”
There was a little rustle of interest. Rawson, disposed for gossip, waited until his drink was placed in his hand and solemnly pledged its donor.
“To begin with,” he confided, “it’s no secret now that we’re in trouble. We may have acted foolish,” he went on. “Nothing, of course, can be said for seventy thousand pounds lost at Newmarket, and a trifle more than that last year. Foolish we may have been, but the gentry have always had their weaknesses. The hounds have cost us a cool eight thousand a year for the last five years, and subscriptions getting less all the time. Then the taxes. It seems whatever sort of government we get these days they want your money—fingers all itching for it. Get you all ways! Income Tax and Land Tax—why, it’s a wonder they don’t grab the breath out of your body. It’s the first time such a thing’s happened to me in my career, but last night—you’ll believe me, gentlemen—I had my notice.”
There was a murmur of sympathy. Rawson raised his glass and drank.
“It was Mr. Henry, as usual, who had to tackle the job,” he continued. “He sent for us one by one to his study, where he sat as prim and formal as ever, with all his catalogues around and his books of reference. ‘Rawson,’ he said, ‘you have been an excellent servant, but conditions render it necessary for my brother and me to close this house for the present. We are, in fact, ceasing to keep an establishment. I am compelled, therefore, to ask you to accept a month’s notice.’ All very proper and regular, gentlemen, but I could see that Mr. Henry were feeling it. Mrs. Shane came out all crying. I seen him afterwards, though, and he were just the same as usual, except that his face were as white as parchment.”
“It do be a sad loss for all,” Mr. Pank declared. “There’s no word of anything but good in these parts for any of them—for the Squire, or Mr. Henry, or Mr. Gregory either.”
“As though this weren’t trouble enough,” Rawson proceeded portentously, “there’s all sorts of mysterious doings and rumours afloat, about enough to drive a body crazy. You mind the young man Fielding, who called himself a retired schoolmaster and sat in the corner pretending to make flies?”