William raised careworn eyes as this bright incarnation of sanguine youth came into the office in which he sat almost as if it were a condemned cell. He knew, better than Rupert who knew the Hepplestalls so little, what wrath would come when they two faced an outraged Board, and this sedate, this almost smiling confidence seemed to him as offensive as buffoonery at a funeral. “You look very cheerful,” he greeted his nephew resentfully.
“Why not?” said Rupert. “It’s a mistake to call optimism a cheap virtue. How are you, Uncle?”
“I suppose you slept last night,” was the reply from which Rupert was to gather that sleep at such a crisis was considered gross.
“Yes, thanks,” he said. “At Matlock. I drove up quietly, because I wanted to think. Really, of course, I’d decided in the first five minutes after opening your letter.”
“You decided very quickly,” said William, who had come to no decision.
“My wife made the same remark,” said Rupert. “But that’s a day and a half ago, and my first opinion stands. I’ve decided to sell.” Speaking, he gave a just perceptible jerk of the head which William remembered as a characteristic of Sir Philip when he, too, announced one of his quick decisions, and the little movement was not a grateful sight to William. Sir Philip’s son had his father’s trick and, it seemed, his father’s way of arriving rapidly at a conclusion. William, victim to irresolution as he always was, was sliding off his fence into opposition, through nothing more logical than jealousy of this boy who had the gift of making up his mind swiftly. “Am I to understand that your wife has other views?” he asked. It was hardly likely in such a wife, in an actress, but Rupert’s words seemed to suggest that Mary had given him pause, and if William was going to oppose this headstrong boy, any ally, however unlikely, would be welcome.
But, “Wives don’t count in this,” said Rupert bruskly, and, he thought, truthfully. It was true at any rate between Rupert and the wife of William; Rupert’s decision had been made before he opened Gertrude’s prompting letter. But William and William’s wife were another matter, and William shuffled uneasily on his chair as he admitted the influence in this crisis of the Service of Gertrude who was not born a Hepplestall. He must be strong.
“Quite right,” lie said firmly. “Wives don’t count. But it isn’t the case that you decide, Rupert. The Board decides.”
“I make it from your letter that for the practical purposes of this deal, you and I decide.”
“It still is not the case that you decide.”