I admit I was a little nervous about the effect of his arrival and appearance on the arbiters of my household, but in twenty-four hours they were all his slaves. He talked to Bates as to a fellow man without any spurious bridging of the fixed gulf, and presented him with a strange exotic pipe. The Chinese silks destined for Louisa he gave to Mrs. Rattray, and I overheard him telling the entranced lady that he had brought them home for her in gratitude for her care of myself, about which he said I wrote so constantly. Thus I was made as it were accessory to his falsehoods and a partaker in the benefit of them.
Most amazing of all I found him plucking fruit I would not have dared to touch while he told sea-tales to the completely subjugated gardener.
To me he was delightful as ever. There was all his boyish affection, but that film was there, and I was aware of the spell he exercised as something to be resisted in his own interest. We never spoke of my refusal to send the thousand, but the memory of it was there between us.
He was then only twenty-three, but his aspect and manner of a fully equipped man of the world, of vigour and competence to subdue circumstances to his will, made him seem older. It justified a certain humorous treatment of myself as a kind of “dear old thing.” I had to brace myself to keep my head.
It was not until the third evening that I fairly got the talk on to his own affairs and prospects.
I unfolded a scheme I had for settling him in the family estate as my representative. I explained my own coward flight and my desire, that notwithstanding that, the name should not lapse.
“In any case,” I argued, “your son, if you ever have one, will inherit. I shall not marry.”
“Everybody thinks that,” he objected.
“We won’t discuss it,” I said, “but in my case there are reasons why you may take it as definite.”
He looked up and saw at once that this was final.