CHAPTER LIII
BUTS REBUTTED
Sir Duncan Yordas was a man of impulse, as almost every man must be who sways the wills of other men. But he had not acted upon mere impulse in casting away his claim to Scargate. He knew that he could never live in that bleak spot, after all his years in India; he disliked the place, through his father's harshness; he did not care that any son of his, who had lain under charge of a foul crime, and fled instead of meeting it, should become a “Yordas of Scargate Hall,” although that description by no means involved any very strict equity of conduct. And besides these reasons, he had another, which will appear very shortly. But whatever the secondary motives were, it was a large and generous act.
When Mrs. Carnaby saw her brother, she was sure that he was come to turn her out, and went through a series of states of mind natural to an adoring mother with a frail imagination of an appetite—as she poetically described it. She was not very swift of apprehension, although so promptly alive to anything tender, refined, and succulent. Having too strong a sense of duty to be guilty of any generosity, she could not believe, either then or thereafter, that her brother had cast away anything at all, except a mere shred of a lawsuit. And without any heed of chronology—because (as she justly inquired), what two clocks are alike?—she was certain that if he did anything at all to drive off those horrible lawyers from the house, there was no credit due to any one but Pet. It was the noble way Pet looked at him!
Pet, being introduced to his uncle, after dinner, when he came home from fishing, certainly did look nobly at him, if a long stare is noble. Then he went up to him, with a large and liberal sniff, and an affable inquiry, as a little dog goes up to a big one. Sir Duncan was amused, having heard already some little particulars about this youth, whose nature he was able to enter into as none but a Yordas could rightly do. However, he was bound to make the best of him, and did so; discovering not only room for improvement, but some hope of that room being occupied.
“The boy has been shockingly spoiled,” he said to his sister Philippa that evening; “also he is dreadfully ignorant. None of us are very great at scholarship, and never have much occasion for it. But things are becoming very different now. Everybody is beginning to be expected to know everything. Very likely, as soon as I am no more wanted, I shall be voted a blockhead. Luckily the wars keep people from being too choice, when their pick goes every minute. And this may stop the fuss, that comes from Scotland mainly, about universal distribution—or some big words—of education. 'Pet,' as you call him, is a very clever fellow, with much more shape of words about him than ever I was blessed with. In spelling I saw that he was my master; and so I tried him with geography, and all he knew of India was that it takes its name from India rubber!”
“Now I call that clever of him,” said Miss Yordas; “for I really might have forgotten even that. But the fatal defect in his education has been the want of what you grow, chiefly in West India perhaps—the cane, Duncan, the sugar-cane. I have read all about it; you can tell me nothing. You suck it, you smoke it, and you beat your children with it.”
“Well,” said Sir Duncan, who was not quite sure, in the face of such authority, “I disremember; but perhaps they do in some parts, because the country is so large. But it is not the ignorance of Pet I care for—such a fault is natural and unavoidable; and who is there to pick holes in it? The boy knows a great deal more than I did at his age, because he is so much younger. But, Philippa, unless you do something with him, he will never be a gentleman.”
“Duncan, you are hard. You have seen so much.”