“Well, don’t funk things with me,” Christian advised him, with a testiness of which, upon the instant, he was ashamed. “Look here,” he continued, less brusquely, “I could take it from your brother that he did not want to do things. That fits him: he is not the kind of man to apply himself in that way. But I have the feeling that you are different. There ought to be performance—capacity—of some sort in you, if I could only get to know what it is. You are only my age. Isn’t there something that particularly appeals to you?”
Augustine balanced himself meditatively upon his heels. “You say you bar the City”—he remarked with caution. “Would you have any objection to Johannesburg? It’s not what it was, by any means, but it’s bound to pick up again. I might do myself very well there—with a proper start.”
“But you are thinking always of money!” broke in Christian, sharply once again. “Suppose that there was no question of money—suppose, what shall I say? that you had twelve hundred a year, secure to you without any effort of your own—what would you do then?”
This seemed very simple to Augustine. “I would do whatever you wanted me to do,” he replied, with fervor.
Christian shrugged his shoulders, and dismissed him with a gesture. “We will speak again about it,” he said coldly, and turned away.
Descending the great staircase a few minutes later, Christian entered the door which Barlow had been waiting to open for him—and made his first public appearance as the dispenser of Caermere’s hospitality.
The guests, after the old mid-day fashion of the place, were already for the most part gathered in the large dining-hall, and stood or sat in groups upon the side pierced by the tall windows. These guests did not dissemble the interest with which they from time to time directed glances across to the other side, where a long table, laid for luncheon, put in evidence a grateful profusion of cold joints and made-dishes.
A pleased rustle of expectancy greeted Christian’s advent, but it seemed that this did not, for the moment at least, involve food and drink. He strolled over to the company, and, as he exchanged words here and there, kept an attentive eye busy in taking stock of its composition. There were some forty persons present, of whom three-fourths, apparently, were county people. A few casual presentations forced themselves upon him, but the names of the new acquaintances established no foothold in his memory. He smiled and murmured words which he hoped were seasonable—but all the while he was scanning the assemblage with a purpose of his own.
At last he came to Kathleen, and was able to have a private word in her ear. “I do not see her anywhere,” he whispered.
“I could not prevail upon her to come in to lunch,” she answered; “I imagine it is partly a question of clothes. But she is being looked out for. And afterward I will take charge of her again, if you like—though——”