“And—and, in short, it is what it is!” continued Sir Charles. “Nothing can upset it! And in it, in as few words as ever he could use, Mr. Matthew Palkeney leaves everything of which he dies possessed to—Mr. Parslewe! Wonderful!”
Parslewe thrust his hands in his pockets.
“I don’t see anything very wonderful about it,” he remarked, coldly. “We were of the same blood! The old man evidently wanted to—and he did. But he never consulted me, you know, Sperrigoe.”
“All the more pleasant surprise for you, my dear sir!” exclaimed Sir Charles. A new mood appeared to have come over him; after re-reading the will more attentively, he rubbed his hands, chuckled, beamed on all three of us, and seemed to have had a great weight lifted off his mind. “My hearty congratulations, sir!” he went on, with an almost reverential inclination of his head across the table. “A very, very handsome property you have come into by this, Mr. Parslewe! One of the most beautiful old houses in England, a charming, if small estate, and—yes, I should say, as a good estimate, some five or six thousand a year! Delightful!”
But Parslewe, leaning back in his chair, with his hands thrust in his breeches pockets, had set those thin lips of his. He looked over the table at Sir Charles as if he were never going to speak. But he spoke.
“Aye!” he said, in his driest, hardest tones. “Just so! Maybe! But you see, I don’t want it. And I won’t have it!”
A dead silence fell on us. Madrasia turned wonderingly towards her guardian. I was already watching him. As for Sir Charles Sperrigoe, he flushed crimson—as if somebody had struck him an insulting blow. He leaned forward.
“You—my dear sir, I am, I fear, inclining to deafness,” he said. “Did I understand you to say——”
“I said I don’t want it, and I won’t have it!” repeated Parslewe, loudly. “I should have told old Matthew that if he’d ever asked me about it. I’m a man of fixed and immutable principle. When I went out to India as a young man, I made a vow that I’d never own or take anything in this life that I didn’t earn by my own effort, and I’ll stick to it! I don’t want the Palkeney estate, nor the Palkeney house, nor the Palkeney money—I’ve plenty of money of my own, more than I know what to do with, and a house that suits me better than this does. If you want to know me, look again at that motto! What I please, that I’ll do! And I won’t have this—that’s flat!”
Sir Charles’s astonished face regained its normal colour, and he suddenly laughed with genuine amusement.