CHAPTER XLV.
ROGUES FALL OUT.
As we walked very slowly through the wilderness of thistles, which had once been a fair park trimly kept, I disturbed the mind of Sam—which was busy with abstruse calculations of all sorts of odds—by asking rather suddenly what I was to say, and how I should conduct myself in the presence of this man. For I felt a deep dislike to him, not only because he had been such a plague to Kitty, but on account of his bad character and loose ways. And my ill-will towards him had been increased by his cowardly treatment—as it seemed to me—of the patient people round him, and encroachment on their loyalty.
“You mustn’t ask me, my dear fellow,” answered Sam; “the thing is out of my line altogether. You wanted to see him, and here he is. I must leave you to the light of nature, although he is rather a dark specimen. Perhaps he knows nothing about your trouble. But he is up to most of Downy Bulwrag’s tricks, or at any rate knows when to suspect him. And if he has had a row with Bulwrag, and can see his way to harm him, he will do it. For Pots is a very spiteful fellow. You had better appear first as my companion. I can manage not to let him catch your name; for he is rather hard of hearing, though he won’t allow it. I shall work matters round till Downy’s name comes up; and your business will be to hold your tongue and listen, until you can strike in with advantage. He will see me, I think, because I wrote to tell him that I had a little money for him. There is nothing like that to fetch Pots.”
After a little reconnoitring from a window at the flank, we were admitted by an ancient footman, who looked as if he never got his wages, and shown into a shabby room, fusty, damp, and comfortless. Here we waited nearly half an hour, while Henderson drummed on the floor with his stick, and at last began to blow a horn which he found behind a looking-glass. Then the master of the house appeared, and shook hands with Sam, and bowed to me.
It is easy enough to introduce a stranger, so that his name shall be still unknown; and Sir Cumberleigh, not being quick of hearing, received my name as “Johnson.” “On the turf?” he inquired; and Sam said, “Yes; he has been on it every day this week;” which was true enough in one sense; and I longed to be back in a garden again, where we grow rogues, but nothing like so many.
“Very glad to see you, very glad indeed, young sir.” This gentleman offered his hand as he spoke; but I bowed, as if I had not seen it. It may be a stupid old bit of priggery; but no man’s hand comes into mine, while I am longing to smite him in the face. And I could not help smiling at our host’s new manners, so different entirely from what he showed in London—unless he had been vastly misdescribed to me. He pretended now to dignity and distance, and a fine amount of grandeur; for no other reason that I could guess, except that he was upon his native soil, breathing the air of his ancestral vaults, and cheating folk who let him cheat because his fathers did it.
But all this air of loftiness had no effect on Sam; who had rubbed whiskers many times even with a Duke, when their minds were moving on a good thing together.
“Got a bit of rhino for you, Pots,” he said, and I thought it showed little good taste on his part, for Sam’s ancestors had been stable-boys, and I have always been a good Conservative; “not so much as I could wish; but every little is a help. And everybody says that you are awfully hard up. Hope it isn’t true; but we must have seen you at the July, if you had been at all flush.”
“I have not been very fortunate of late,” replied the Baronet, still keeping up his dignity on my account; “and my property here has been much impaired by—by a lot of things that did not come off. I was not at Newmarket, because I intend to have nothing more to do with racing matters; which I must leave to people who are sharper than myself, and have different views of integrity. But anything really due to me—”