“There is the complication”—Christian began again, and hesitated. “That is to say—you know even better and more fully than I do, to what a great extent I am in your hands. And there the complication, as I said, arises. I have been working very hard on the figures—with the lawyers in London, and here since I arrived—but before we touch those at all, I ought to tell you frankly, Emanuel: I do not see my way to meeting the conditions which you suggested to me last autumn, when we met first.” Emanuel seemed in no wise perturbed by the announcement. His nervous face maintained its unmoved gravity. “It was never anything more than a pious hope that you would,” he commented. “I may add,” he went on, “that even this hope cannot be said to have survived your first visit. Otherwise, I should have tried to have you see London under different auspices—through different eyes.”
The calmness with which the decision he had regarded as so momentous met acceptance disconcerted Christian. He had mentally prepared for the defense of his hostile attitude toward the System—and, lo! not a syllable of challenge was forthcoming.
“But there remains, all the same, the principal difficulty,” he said, thinking hard upon his words. “It does not lessen my obligations to you as my chief creditors.” He looked from one to the other, as if in uncertainty as to which was the master mind. “You have both been very open with me. You have told me why it was that you devoted a large fortune to buying up the mortgages on the estate which is now mine—and to lending always more money upon it—until now the interest eats up the income like a visitation of locusts. But my knowledge of the motives does not help me. And you must not think, either,” his confidence was returning now, and with it a better control over his phrases—“that I am begging for help. I look the situation in the face, and I do not feel that I am afraid of it. I see already many ways in which I can make a better fight of it than my grandfather made.”
Lord Julius held up a hand. “Is there not a misconception there?” he asked, pleasantly enough. “A fight involves antagonists—and I intervened in poor Kit’s affairs as a protector, not as an assailant.”
Christian stood erect, and knitted his brows in puzzled thought upon both the manner and the matter of these words.
“But it is still the same,” he persisted. “You were his good friend—as I know you are mine—or hope very sincerely that you are—but none the less you were his overwhelmingly big creditor, as now you are mine. If one is greatly in debt, then one struggles to get out. It is in that sense that I meant the word ‘fight.’ And, to repeat, I see many ways of making progress. I find that Welldon is not exclusively my man. He is the agent of three other estates as well, because we could not pay him enough here for all of his services. That I will alter at once. I find that we have no mineral bailiff. The company at Coalbrook has paid such royalties as it pleased, without check of any sort. We have the right to examine their books, but it has never been exercised. Next week my secretary and Welldon go to Coalbrook. I find that the company’s lease of twenty-one years expires next February. Eh bien! It will be strange if I do not get ten thousand pounds hereafter, where less than four has come in hitherto. My lawyers already know of capitalists who desire to bid for the new lease—and the estimate of increase is theirs, not mine. But these are details. I mention them to you only to show you that I am not afraid. But anxious, I do not deny that I am. I have not been bred to these things—and I may easily make mistakes. It would take a great load off my mind if—if, in some measure, you would be my advisers as well as my creditors.”
“Why should you ever have doubted that?” asked Emanuel, in a tone of somber kindliness.
“Ah, but I do not mean advice about the management of the estate,” put in Christian, with an over-eager instinct of self-defense. “I do not shrink from taking that completely on my own shoulders. I would not trouble you with anything of that sort. But of larger matters——”
“There is one large matter,” interrupted Lord Julius, speaking with great deliberation, “which I find outweighing all others in my mind. It is not new to my mind—but to-day it pushes everything else aside. It is the thought of the family itself. I have told you this before—let me say it to you again. Everything that I have done—every penny that I have laid out—has been with this one end in view—the family. Yet this morning I have been thinking of it—and I am frightened. While poor old Kit lingered along, it was not so easy to grasp it, somehow—but his going off makes it glaring. There are too few of us. I am alone in my generation—and so is Emanuel in his—and so are you in yours, save for those rowdy simpletons Eddy and Gus. And beyond you, there is only that little girl baby of Cora Bayard’s! I want you to marry, Christian. I want to see sons of yours growing up here at Caermere—hearty, fine boys to carry the name of Torr along. That I am really in earnest about. By comparison with it, nothing else on earth matters—for us.”
“Oh, I shall marry,” Christian replied, in smiling seriousness. “Of course, that is the obvious thing to be done. And now”—he looked at his watch—“it is time for me to dress. It is arranged that you and Emanuel and Kathleen drive to the church in the carriage with me. It is not quite orthodox precedence, I know, but I could not bear to—to have it otherwise. And we will think no more about those other matters until tomorrow.”