Antony made a little sound indicative of entire assent. He was becoming interested in the recital.
“I learnt a little more about him,” went on Nicholas smiling thoughtfully, “though he never guessed I made any enquiries. That was later. At the moment Job Grantley’s tale was enough for me,—that, and something else he chanced to say. After he had gone I sat thinking, first of past days, then of the future. A distant cousin was heir to the property, a fellow to whom Curtis would have been a man after his own heart. I’d never had what you might precisely term a feeling of bosom friendship towards William Gateley. Oddly enough, you came into my mind at the moment. I remembered the whole scene on the moorland. I could not get away from the memory. Then the thought flashed into my mind to make you my heir. It seemed absurd, but it remained a fixture, nevertheless. The main thoroughly reasonable objection was that I knew exceedingly little about you. The child is not always father to the man. Fate takes a hand in the after moulding at times. Yet if it were not you it would be Gateley. That, at all events, was my decision. Then I conceived the notion of making you live as one of the labourers on the estate, in short of giving you some first-hand knowledge of a labourer’s method of living, and incidentally of the tenderness of Curtis. Do you follow me?”
Antony nodded, an odd smile on his lips. He remembered his own conjecture, suggested by Mr. Albert George’s discourse. The education was absolutely unnecessary.
“I fancied,” went on Nicholas, “that it might teach you to be more considerate if you had any tendencies in an opposite direction. But—” he paused a moment, then smiled grimly,—“well, you may as well have the truth even if it is slightly unpalatable, and you can remember that I did not know you as a man. I was not sure of you. If you had known I was up here, and you had got an inkling of the game I was playing, what was to prevent you from playing your own game for the year, I argued, in fact pretending to a sympathy with the tenants which you did not feel. I have never had the highest opinion of human nature. On that account I conceived the idea of dying. It was easily carried out. The folk around were amazingly gullible; the report spread like wild-fire,—through the village, that is to say. I don’t for a moment suppose it went much beyond it. The solicitors were in our confidence, and no obituary notice appeared in the papers. The villagers were not likely to notice the omission. Gateley is in Australia. Yes; it was easy enough to manage. But I see the weakness in the business now. You might quite well have imagined Hilary to be the watch-dog, and have played your game to him, and if I’d died suddenly before the year was up, and you had disclosed your true hand, matters would not have been as I had intended them to be. It was a mad idea, I have no doubt, though on the whole I am not sure that it wasn’t its very madness that most appealed to me.” He stopped.
“And what,” said Antony, “is to be the outcome of this confidence now?” There was a certain stiffness in the question. The odd feeling of resentment was returning. He suddenly saw the whole business as a stupid child’s game, a game in which he had given his word of honour with no smallest advantage to any single human being, and with quite enormous disadvantages to himself.
“The main outcome,” said Nicholas, “is that I wish to offer you—Antony Gray—the post of agent on my estate for the remainder of my lifetime. At my death the will I have already drawn up holds good. The year’s probation for you therein mentioned is not likely to be long exceeded, even if it is exceeded at all. At least such is Doctor Hilary’s opinion.”
There was a silence. Nicholas was watching Antony from under his shaggy eyebrows. The man was actually hesitating, debating! What in the name of wonder did the hesitation mean? Surely the offer of the post of agent was infinitely preferable to that of under-gardener? If the latter had been accepted, why on earth should there be hesitation regarding the former? So marvelled Nicholas, having, of course, no clue to the inner workings of Antony’s mind. And even if he had had, the workings would have appeared to him illogical and unreasonable. It is truly not fully certain whether Antony understood them himself. He only knew that whereas it would be possible, though difficult, for him to remain in the neighbourhood of the Duchessa as Michael Field, gardener, to remain as Antony Gray, gentleman, appeared to him to be impossible; though precisely why it should be, he could not well have explained to himself.
“I should prefer to decline the offer,” replied Antony quietly.
Nicholas’s face fell. He was blankly disappointed, as blankly disappointed as a child at the sudden frustration of some cherished scheme. In twenty minutes Spencer Curtis, agent, would be blandly entering the library, and there would be no coup de théâtre, such as Nicholas had pictured, to confront him.
“May I ask the reason for your refusal?” questioned Nicholas, his utter disappointment lending a flat hardness to his voice.