He took out a memorandum book now, and made an entry in it with much deliberation, then sat for some time wrapped in thought, gnawing absently at his pencil case, a trick which he had acquired, and of which the dinted surface of the silver bore tokens.
“One may trust a Denmead to be honourable,” he reflected with a curious sense of satisfaction. “The boy will never mention that little private arrangement as to Crosbie’s retiring in four years. I have bought the living and now the question is how can I use it best to further my own ends? After all, it’s just as well that this fool has refused it. I can use it as a bait for some one else, and I’m quit of Ralph for ever. Though the boy is so like his father in face there’s much more go in him than there ever was in poor Denmead. He has a bit of the sturdy pluck and energy of his little Welsh mother. Pshaw! I needn’t trouble about him. He’s the sort that will swim and not sink, and a little course of starvation will bring him down from his impossible heights and teach him that he must do as other men do.”
With that he rose and left the library in search of his wife, and having chatted pleasantly enough with her at afternoon tea, he casually alluded to Ralph’s departure.
“What!” said Lady Mactavish, “Is he going out to India, do you mean.”
“Not that I know of,” said Sir Matthew with a laugh. “He has failed ignominiously in his examination, and has been most insufferably impertinent to me. I have given him his congé, and he will trouble us no more.”
“The ungrateful boy!” said Lady Mactavish indignantly, “after all that you have done for him too.”
“He has behaved very badly,” said Sir Matthew; “and I think, my dear, we are well quit of him. I shall not see him again, but you had better just say good-bye to him, and by-the-by, I think you might give him a couple of five-pound notes; I should be sorry to launch him into the world without a penny in his pockets. It might make people think that I had been harsh with him.” Ralph had gone straight up to the schoolroom in search of Evereld, but something had delayed her and he found the place deserted. Throwing himself down on the window-seat, he let the soft west wind cool his flushed face and tried to think calmly over the interview with Sir Matthew. The attack on his father had angered him as nothing else could have done, and it was over this rather than over his own future that he mused. The sound of Evereld’s voice singing in the passage roused him, but before she had reached the schoolroom, the red baize door leading from the other part of the house creaked on its hinges, and Lady Mactavish appeared upon the scene.
“I was looking for you, Ralph,” she said, entering the room in front of Evereld. “I learn, to my great annoyance, that you have failed in your examination, failed ignominiously. It is quite clear to us all that you have not been working properly.”
“But every one says that the Indian Civil is such a dreadfully stiff exam,” said Evereld, “and he did work very hard in Germany; they all said so.”
“Don’t interrupt me, my dear,” said Lady Mactavish. “It is not a matter you can understand. After all that Sir Matthew has done for you. Ralph, I think at least you might have behaved properly to him. He tells me that you were so impertinent that he has been forced to order you out of the house.”