This brought them to breakfast time, and after breakfast, George’s accounts were thoroughly gone into, with the result that confusion was soon worse confounded, for either George could not keep accounts or the Squire could not follow them. Ida, sitting in the drawing-room, could occasionally hear her father’s ejaculatory outbursts after this kind:
“Why, you stupid donkey, you’ve added it up all wrong, it’s nine hundred and fifty, not three hundred and fifty;” followed by a “No, no, Squire, you be a-looking on the wrong side—them there is the dibits,” and so on till both parties were fairly played out, and the only thing that remained clear was that the balance was considerably on the wrong side.
“Well,” said the Squire at last, “there you are, you see. It appears to me that I am absolutely ruined, and upon my word I believe that it is a great deal owing to your stupidity. You have muddled and muddled and muddled till at last you have muddled us out of house and home.”
“No, no, Squire, don’t say that—don’t you say that. It ain’t none of my doing, for I’ve been a good sarvant to you if I haven’t had much book larning. It’s that there dratted borrowing, that’s what it is, and the interest and all the rest on it, and though I says it as didn’t ought, poor Mr. James, God rest him and his free-handed ways. Don’t you say it’s me, Squire.”
“Well, well,” answered his master, “it doesn’t much matter whose fault it is, the result is the same, George; I’m ruined, and I suppose that the place will be sold if anybody can be found to buy it. The de la Molles have been here between four and five centuries, and they got it by marriage with the Boisseys, who got it from the Norman kings, and now it will go to the hammer and be bought by a picture dealer, or a manufacturer of brandy, or someone of that sort. Well, everything has its end and God’s will be done.”
“No, no, Squire, don’t you talk like that,” answered George with emotion. “I can’t bear to hear you talk like that. And what’s more it ain’t so.”
“What do you mean by that?” asked the old gentleman sharply. “It is so, there’s no getting over it unless you can find thirty thousand pounds or thereabouts, to take up these mortgages with. Nothing short of a miracle can save it. That’s always your way. ‘Oh, something will turn up, something will turn up.’”
“Thin there’ll be a miricle,” said George, bringing down a fist like a leg of mutton with a thud upon the table, “it ain’t no use of your talking to me, Squire. I knaw it, I tell you I knaw it. There’ll never be no other than a de la Molle up at the Castle while we’re alive, no, nor while our childer is alive either. If the money’s to be found, why drat it, it will be found. Don’t you think that God Almighty is going to put none of them there counter jumpers into Honham Castle, where gentlefolk hev lived all these ginerations, because He ain’t. There, and that’s the truth, because I knaw it and so help me God—and if I’m wrong it’s a master one.”
The Squire, who was striding up and down the room in his irritation, stopped suddenly in his walk, and looked at his retainer with a sharp and searching gaze upon his noble features. Notwithstanding his prejudices, his simplicity, and his occasional absurdities, he was in his own way an able man, and an excellent judge of human nature. Even his prejudices were as a rule founded upon some solid ground, only it was as a general rule impossible to get at it. Also he had a share of that marvellous instinct which, when it exists, registers the mental altitude of the minds of others with the accuracy of an aneroid. He could tell when a man’s words rang true and when they rang false, and what is more when the conviction of the true, and the falsity of the false, rested upon a substantial basis of fact or error. Of course the instinct was a vague, and from its nature an undefinable one, but it existed, and in the present instance arose in strength. He looked at the ugly melancholy countenance of the faithful George with that keen glance of his, and observed that for the moment it was almost beautiful—beautiful in the light of conviction which shone upon it. He looked, and it was borne in upon him that what George said was true, and that George knew it was true, although he did not know where the light of truth came from, and as he looked half the load fell from his heart.
“Hullo, George, are you turning prophet in addition to your other occupations?” he said cheerfully, and as he did so Edward Cossey’s splendid bay horse pulled up at the door and the bell rang.