“I mean to try and like anything which offers me a chance of getting on in the world,” was the reply.
“Then I hope you may get on, and that I shall some day see you rich and prosperous, a millionnaire. It is possible; in this house, it is scarcely needful for me to tell you, all things are, humanly speaking, possible.” And with that Lord Kemms held out his hand, which Alick could have kissed for very gratitude.
“I will call at Berrie Down on Monday,” said his lordship, when Alick had passed through the open hall door. Having announced which intention, he returned to the dining-room, where he reported the gist of the conversation to Mr. Raidsford.
“The greatest kindness you could have done Squire Dudley would have been to take him at his word,” was Mr. Raidsford’s practical comment on the affair.
“Perhaps so; but I could not afford to be less honest and honourable than they,” Lord Kemms answered.
“Ay, that is the misery of it,” said his host. “Honest and honourable falling among thieves!”
Some similar thought to this it had been, perhaps, which suggested to Lord Kemms the idea of calling at Berrie Down. Some vague fancy of saving Arthur—of rescuing him from the Philistines! But when once he found himself seated in Squire Dudley’s drawing-room, he felt how futile was any such hope, how utterly vain it would be for him to proffer advice, or counsel caution to his neighbour.
Already the poison had begun to work; already he had dreamed his dreams, and beheld his visions; already he had made his thousands, and spent them in imagination; already the glory of the future flung a brightness across his path, and made him look on life more cheerfully, on his fellow-men more kindly.
Let success bring what it would, it could not bring more than Arthur already saw advancing towards him. Prophetically, out of the great City he beheld riches, and honours, and glories, travelling northward to Berrie Down. The dust of the approaching caravan was clear to his mental vision as the turf stretching down to the Hollow.
If for a moment he was taken aback, it was when Lord Kemms told Mr. Black, in his presence, he had decided to decline his obliging offer. But Mr. Black so coolly pooh-poohed what he called his lordship’s hasty rejection,—so resolutely refused to take “no” for an answer,—so determinedly, and yet pleasantly, said they “could talk the matter over at some future time, there was no hurry about it,”—so utterly ignored the fact of Lord Kemms having assured him his mind was made up, he would have nothing whatever to do with the company,—that Arthur was reassured, and believed Mr. Black, when that gentleman subsequently informed him Lord Kemms had only been a little set against the affair by “that meddling upstart, Raidsford.”