“I did not. Would you have had me ask for her?” replied the Colonel, with the air of a man who has dared the ultimate.
“No, dear, you did perfectly right. And it’s my opinion that everybody else will follow your example.” His wife knew better than to goad a man gone wholly desperate.
The third day at lunch she had her opportunity with Gaspard, but, as the Colonel said, shamelessly crowing over her, nothing was said about the conventions. The Colonel’s report of Gaspard’s grave heart seizure had driven in her front line. Augusta, however, was merely biding her time. She was still on guard, and waiting a favourable moment to make the counter-attack.
CHAPTER X
The semi-conscious moments of waking to a new day were filled with foreboding for the Colonel. Some horrid evil was impending. It took him some moments to clothe the thing with reality. Once realised, however, its potence was immediate and irresistible. It brought the Colonel sitting bolt upright in bed. With a groan he lay down again, determined to obliterate the spectre in that most completely satisfying of sensuous delights, the luxuriating in forty winks stolen from the morning hours rightfully dedicated to the toils of the new day. In vain. Not one wink, much less forty, could he purloin. Paul was in his mind’s eye—Paul now in one pose, now in another: Paul smiling, Paul tensely earnest; Paul astride Joseph and dashing about like a centaur; Paul wide-eyed in wonder, in dismay, in mute, pallid grief, and himself gibbering now in one formula, now in another, the announcement that Paul’s father must be ostracised from the polite circles of the Windermere Valley and that Paul must make choice between his father thus ostracised and the “big white house” and its dwellers.
The thing was a ghastly and cruel outrage, imposed upon him by fate inexorable, in the person of his clear-eyed, clear-headed, resolute wife. She was right, doubtless, though the soft-hearted little Colonel could not properly appraise the full ethical value of her arguments. The boy would be horribly hurt, and during those three years the roots of comradeship had struck deep into the lives of both boy and man, perhaps more deeply in man than in boy. They had ridden the valley for long miles together, they had hunted and fished, they had camped, they had boxed together, and in all these the boy had showed an eager aptitude in acquiring a finish and perfection of attainment that had filled his instructor with affectionate pride. The boy’s high spirit, his courage, his quick, keen perceptive powers, his grace in motion, his artistic passion for finish in everything he did, had knit the Colonel’s very soul to him. It warmed the little Colonel’s fighting heart, for instance, to have the boy in his boxing lessons come back again and again with a spirit that only grew more insatiable with punishment. For the Colonel was no dilettante instructor in the manly art, and every lesson ended in a fight that left the boy on the point of taking the count and the man pumping for wind.
No wonder the Colonel loathed his task. One consideration, and one only, held him to it. Either he must accomplish it or leave it to his wife, and, loyal soul as he was, he shuddered to think how very thoroughly and conscientiously Augusta could do her duty. No, there was nothing else for it. The task was his, and he would see it through. He would lure Paul off for a ride and somewhere in the environment of the open woods offering distraction he would deliver himself of his message.
But fate, in the shape of a young Holstein bull, took a hand, and to some purpose.
“There he is again, Uncle Colonel, among the Sleeman cattle, and you know they roam for ever and ever. Shall I cut him out?” Paul was pointing an indignant finger at the young Holstein bull which had broken through the Pine Croft fence.
“Can’t understand how that fence won’t hold the brute,” replied the Colonel. “It is supposed to be bull tight. Well, he’s got a bunch of your cattle with him. We must quietly edge them along toward the bars. That will be easier than finding the break. Ride ’em quietly, Paul. No hurry. Sing to ’em, boy.”