“Well, that is all over,” he said. “It will be a lesson to me. I am a confounded fool at bottom after all. Whatever mental advantages you may have, that’s what the best of us have to come to. My blood gets hot, and I lose my head. There’s a few extenuating circumstances though. Have you forgotten, Paul, that we were to sail in October, and it’s the 20th of September now? Not a word have I heard from you since you left Oxford, three weeks ago. What was I to think? I know what’s happened in the meantime; and I don’t say,” said Spears, slowly, “that if you were to throw us overboard at the last moment, it would be a thing without justification. I told you at the time you would be more wise to let us alone. But you never had an old head on young shoulders. A generous heart never counts the cost in that way; still—— And the time, my dear fellow, is drawing very near.”
“I may as well tell you,” said Paul, tersely, “I am not going with you, Spears.”
The man sat firm in his chair as if he had received a blow, leaning back a little, pressing himself against the woodwork.
“Well!” he said, and kept upon his face a curious smile—the smile, and the effort alike, showing how deeply the stroke had penetrated. “Well!” he repeated, “now that I know everything—now you have told me—I don’t know that I have a word to say.”
Paul said nothing, and for another minute there was again perfect silence. Then Spears resumed—
“I thought as much,” he said. “I have always thought it since the day you went away. A man understands that sort of thing by instinct. Well! it’s a disappointment, I don’t deny; but no doubt,” said Spears, with a suppressed tone of satire in his voice, “though I’ve no experience of the duties of a rich baronet, nor the things it lays upon you, no doubt there’s plenty to do in that avocation; and looking after property requires work. There’s a thousand things that it must now seem more necessary to do than to start away across the Atlantic with a set of visionaries. I told you so at the beginning, Paul—or Sir Paul, I suppose I ought to say; but titles are not much in my way,” he added, with a smile, “as you know.”
“You may save yourself the trouble of titles here, for I am not Sir Paul, nor have I anything in the way of property to look after that will give me much trouble. It appears—” said Paul, with a smile that was very like that of Spears, which sat on his lips like a grimace, “it appears that I have an elder brother who is kind enough to relieve me from all inconvenience of that sort.”
Spears turned to Fairfax with a look of consternation, as if appealing to him to guarantee the sanity of his friend.
“What does he mean?” he cried, bewildered.
“We need not go into all the question,” said Paul. “Fairfax, haven’t they got that cab yet? My foot’s better—I can walk to the door, and these gentlemen seem to be dispersing. We need not enter into explanations. I’m not a rich baronet, that is about all. The scum has not come uppermost this time. You see you made a mistake in your estimate of my motives.”