“One moment. Pray lower your voice, keep your temper, and remember that you are speaking to a gentleman.”
“Speaking to a gentleman? A nice sort of gentleman! You mean an uncertificated bankrupt, who won’t do the right thing by his family and marry the girl who could set them on their legs again; a pious humbug who preaches to everybody else, but isn’t above carrying on a low intrigue with a barmaid, and then having the impudence to say that he means to disgrace us by marrying her.”
“I have asked you to lower your voice, Mr. Milward.”
“Lower my voice? I think it is high time to raise it when I find myself let in for an engagement with the sister of a man who does such things. You needn’t look at me, Sir Henry Graves,—Sir Henry indeed! I repeat, ‘let in.’ However, you must mend your manners, or Ellen will suffer for it, that is all; for I shall throw her over and wash my hands of the whole show. The bankruptcy is bad enough, but I’m hanged if I will stand the barmaid. Edward Milward of Upcott with a barmaid for a sister-in-law! Not if he knows it.”
Then Henry answered, in a quiet and ominous voice: “You have been so good, Mr. Milward, doubtless more in kindness than in anger, as to point out to me with great directness the errors, or assumed errors, of my ways. Allow me, before I say anything further, to point out to you an error in yours, about which there is no possibility of doubt. You say that you propose ‘to throw over’ my sister, not on account of anything that she has done, but because of acts which I am supposed to have done. In my judgment it will indeed be fortunate for her should you take this course. But not the less do I feel bound to tell you, that the man who behaves thus towards a woman, having no cause of offence against her, is not what is usually understood by the term gentleman. So much for my sister: now for myself. It seems to me that there is only one answer possible to conduct and language such as you have thought fit to make use of; and were I well, much as I dislike violence, I should not hesitate to apply it. I should, Mr. Milward, kick you out of this room and down yonder stairs, and, should my strength not fail me, across that garden. Being crippled at present, I am unable to advance this argument. I must, therefore, do the best I can.” And, taking up the crutch that stood by his chair, Henry hurled it straight at him. “Now go!” he thundered; and Mr. Milward went.
“I hope that Ellen will feel pleased with the effect of her embassy,” thought Henry; then suddenly he turned white, and, choking with wrath, said aloud, “Great Heaven! to think that I should have come so low as to be forced to suffer such insults from a cur like that! What will be the end of it? One thing is clear: I can’t stand much more. I’m done for in the Service; but I dare say that I could get a billet as mate on a liner, or even a command of some vessel in the Canadian or Australian waters where I am known. Unless there is a change soon, that is what I’ll do, and take Joan with me. Nobody will sneer at her there, anyway —at least, nobody who sees her.”
Meanwhile Ellen was standing in the hall making pretence to arrange some flowers, but in reality waiting, not without a certain sense of anxiety, to learn the result of the interview which she had been instrumental in bringing about. She hoped that Henry would snub her fiancé in payment of sundry remarks that Edward had made to her, and which she had by no means forgotten, although she was not at present in a position to resent them. She hoped also, with some lack of perspicuity, that Henry would be impressed by Edward’s remonstrances, and that, when he came to understand that her future was imperilled, he would hasten to sacrifice his own. But here she make her great mistake, not foreseeing that a man of Milward’s moral fibre could not by any possibility neglect to push a fancied vantage home, any more than he could refrain from being insolent and brutal towards one whom he thought at his mercy; for, even in the upper walks of life, individuals do exist who take pleasure in grinding the heads of the fallen deeper into the mire.
Presently Ellen was alarmed to hear Henry’s words “Now go” echo through the house, followed by the sound of a banging door. Next instant Edward appeared upon the stairs, and the expression of his features betrayed a wondrous mixture of astonishment, fear and indignation.
“What have you been doing, Edward?” she said, as he approached. “You do not mean to tell me that you have been brawling, and in this house?”
“Brawling? Oh yes, say that I have been brawling,” gasped Edward, when at last he managed to speak. “That infernal brother of yours has thrown a crutch at me; but by all means say that I have been brawling.”