“Laurence,” he said, after a little pause, and with some energy in his tone, “you will not, at least, coerce me in any way as to where or how I spend these two years?”
“How do you mean?” said Mr Cheviott, cautiously, with perhaps even a shade of suspiciousness in his tone. But Arthur did not resent, if he perceived it; he looked up into his cousin’s face, and somehow the sight of his own plead more in his favour than any words. All the comeliness and colour, all the boyish heartiness, seemed to have faded away out of his features as if by magic; in their stead there was a pale, almost haggard look of anxiety which touched Mr Cheviott inexpressibly. He turned away uneasily.
“It’s altogether too bad,” he muttered to himself; “it is altogether wrong. Here am I made to feel almost as if it were all my doing, and Arthur with all the heart and spirit crushed out of him, poor fellow! And, after all, he has not done anything wrong—all the result of his father’s folly; it is altogether too bad. Far better have left him penniless from the beginning.”
But Mr Cheviott was not in the habit of allowing his feelings, however righteous, to run away with him. In a moment or two he replied quietly to his cousin’s question.
“I have no wish to coerce you about anything,” he said, weariedly; “I only want to decide how to make the best of a bad business. Where would you like to go?”
“Like to go? Nowhere,” said Arthur, bitterly. “Where I would have a chance of doing any good is the question. I was thinking I might do worse than take to studying farming, and that sort of thing, systematically—go to Cirencester or one of those agricultural colleges, eh?”
“With a view to settling down at the Edge?” said Laurence, maliciously.
“No, but with a view to getting an agency—the agency of an estate, I mean, once Alys is of age. I don’t see anything unreasonable in that. If Alys doesn’t sell Lydon, perhaps she will take me into consideration.”
“Don’t sneer, Arthur; it is not Alys’s fault,” said Mr Cheviott. “I don’t think your idea is an unreasonable one,” and relieved to find his cousin so practically inclined, he went on to discuss the rival merits of the various agricultural colleges.
It was daylight, or dawn, at least, before the cousins separated, but, tired as he was, Captain Beverley did not go to bed till he had written and rewritten half a dozen times the conceded note of farewell to Mrs Western.