He bawled once more into the hood, with an added peremptoriness of tone: “I explained it all to you, hours ago, and I’m sure you understand it perfectly. Christian naturally wished to pay his respects to you, but if your back is too bad, why, there’s no more to be said—and we’ll be off. Goodbye to you!”
“Did I know his mother? Who was his mother? I have no recollection of her.” The duke spoke peevishly, twitching his sunken lips in what was plainly an effort to pout them. Christian noted with curiosity that as he surrendered himself to such mental exertion as the talk demanded, the aged man’s face grew disagreeably senile in effect. An infinity of gossamer-like wrinkles showed themselves now, covering the entire countenance in a minute network.
“No, you didn’t know his mother!” replied Lord Julius, with significant curtness. “It is more to the point that you should know him, since he is to be your successor. Look at him—and say something to him!”
The duke managed to testify on his stiffened lineaments the reluctance with which he did what he was told, but he shifted his eyes in a sidelong fashion to take a brief survey of the young man. “Cressage could have given you five stone ten,” he said to him, brusquely, and turned his eyes away.
Christian cast a look of bewildered inquiry up at Lord Julius, but encountered only a smile of contemptuous amusement. He summoned the courage to declare, in a voice which he hoped was loud enough: “I am glad to hear, sir, that this is one of your good days. I hope you will have many more of them!”
Of this assurance His Grace seemingly took no note. After a short pause he began speaking again. “There’s a dog up here,” he said, with the gravity befitting a subject to which he had given much thought, “that I’m sure falls asleep, and yelps in her dreams, and disturbs me most damnably, and I believe it’s that old bitch Peggy, and when I mention it the fellows swear that she’s been taken away, but I suspect that she hasn’t.”
“We will look to it,” put in Lord Julius perfunctorily. He added, upon an afterthought, “Did the guns annoy you, this forenoon?”
The duke’s thoughts were upon something else. He turned his eyes again, and apparently spoke to Christian. “A good hearty cut across the face with a whip,” he said, with kindling energy, “is what’d teach-swine like Griffiths their place—and then let ’em summons you and be damned. A farmer who puts up barbed-wire—no gentleman would listen to his evidence for a minute. Treat them like the vermin they are—and they’ll understand that. Cressage had the proper trick with them—a kick in the stomach first and reasons afterward. That’s the only way this country can be hunted. When I got to riding over eighteen stone, and couldn’t take anything, that ruffian Griffiths screwed up his gates and sent me round the turnpike like a damned peddler, and Ambrose—it was Ambrose, wasn’t it?—or am I thinking of Cressage? But they weren’t together—here, Julius! It was you who were speaking of Ambrose! What about him? By God, I wish he had my back!”
Lord Julius, with the smile in his beard hardening toward scorn, took Christian by the arm. “I think you’ve had enough grandfather to go on with,” he said, quietly. “Never mind making your adieux. They would be quite wasted on him.”
Without further words, they turned and moved away through the dogs to the window, and so into the house. The doctor, still at his book, rose once more upon their approach, and this time Lord Julius halted to speak with him.