“I can’t think he did anything of the sort,” Lady Markham said, but she would not enter into the question.
It was not wonderful, however, if Alice was angry. She had sent him away because of the general family anger against him; and lo, nobody seemed to feel that anger except herself.
But it may be easily understood how Fairfax felt it a fatality when he found Gus’s portmanteaux packed, and himself awaiting his return to go by the same train.
“Why should I stay here?” he said. “I did not come to England to stay in a village inn. I will go with you, and go to that lawyer, and get it all settled. Why should they make such a fuss about it? I mean no one any harm. Why can’t they take to me and make me one of the family? except that I should be there instead of my poor father, I don’t know what difference it need make.”
“But that makes a considerable difference,” said Fairfax. “You must perceive that.”
“Of course it makes a difference; between father and son there is always a difference—but less with me than with most people. I do not want to marry, for instance. Most men marry when they come into their estates. There was once a girl in the island,” said Gus, with a sigh; “but things were going badly, and she married a man in the Marines. No, if they will consent to consider me as one of the family—I like the children, and Alice seems a nice sort of girl, and my stepmother a respectable motherly woman——, eh?”
Some hostile sound escaped from Fairfax which made the little gentleman look up with great surprise. He had not a notion why his friend should object to what he said.
But the end was that the two did go to town together, and that it was Fairfax who directed this enemy of his friends’ where to go, and how to manage his business. Gus was perfectly helpless, not knowing anything about London, and would have been as likely to settle himself in Fleet Street as in Piccadilly—perhaps more so. Fairfax could not get rid of his companion till he had put him in communication with the lawyer, and generally looked after all his affairs. For himself nothing could be more ill-omened. He went about asking himself what would the Markhams think of him?—and yet what could he do? Gus’s mingled perplexity and excitement in town were amusing, but they were embarrassing too. He wanted to go and see the Tower and St. Paul’s. He wanted Fairfax to tell him exactly what he ought to give to every cabman. He stood in the middle of the crowd in the streets folding his arms, and resisting the stream which would have carried him one way or the other.
“You call this a free country, and yet one cannot even walk as one likes,” he said. “Why are these fellows jostling me; do they want to rob me?”
Fairfax did not know what to do with the burden thus thrown on his hands.