The Master of Greylands: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

It was not often that the Master of Greylands allowed anger to overpower him. In his younger days he had been subject to fits of intemperate passion, but time and self-control had well-nigh stamped the failing out. Perhaps until this moment he had believed it had left him for ever. His passion rose now: his face was scarlet; his clenched hands were kept by force down to his side, lest they should deal a blow at Anthony. Them, so far, he controlled, but not his tongue: and he poured forth a torrent of abuse.

"Go back to where you came from, insolent, upstart braggart!" were the words he finished up with. "You are no true son of my brother Basil. Ill-doing though he was, he was not a fire-brand, striving to spread malignant dissension amid a peaceable community."

"Uncle James, I shall never go back until I have come to the bottom of this matter," spoke the young man, firmly: and it may be that his unruffled temper, his very calmness of bearing, only served to irritate all the more Mr. Castlemaine. "The best man of law that London will afford I shall summon to my aid: he must force you to show the title by which you hold possession of the estate; and we shall then see which has the most right to it, you or I."

The words inflamed Mr. Castlemaine almost to madness. With a fierce oath--and bad language, though common enough then, was what he was rarely, if ever, betrayed to use--he lifted his hand to strike. Anthony, startled, got away.

"What have I done to merit this treatment, Uncle James?" he remonstrated. "Is it because I am a relative? You would not, for shame, so treat a stranger."

But the Master of Greylands, flinging back a word and look of utter contempt, went striding on his way, leaving his nephew alone.

Now it happened that this contest was witnessed by the superintendent of the coastguard, Mr. Nettleby, who was walking along the path of the neighbouring field behind the far-off intervening hedge, bare at that season. He could not hear the words that passed--the whole field was between--but he saw they were angry ones, and that the Master of Greylands was in a foaming passion. Calling in at the Dolphin Inn, he related before one or two people what he had seen: and Anthony, when he returned soon after, gave the history of the interview.

"I'm sure I thought Mr. Castlemaine struck you, sir," resumed the officer.

"No, but he would have liked to strike me," said Anthony. "I stepped back from his hand. It is very foolish of him."

"I think he would like to kill Mr. Anthony, for my part, by the way he treats him," said John Bent. But the words were only spoken in the heat of partisanship, without actual meaning: just as we are all given to hasty assertions on occasion. However, they were destined to be remembered afterwards by Greylands.