There was no indiscriminate generosity in that attachment; he never voluntarily increased Malcourt's salary or decreased his responsibilities; he got out of his superintendent every bit of labour and every bit of amusement he could at the lowest price Malcourt would take; yet, in spite of that he really cared for Malcourt; he secretly admired his intellectual equipment; feared it, too; and the younger man's capacity for dissipation made him an invaluable companion when Portlaw emerged from his camp in November and waddled forth upon his annual hunt for happiness.
Something of this Hamil learned through the indiscriminate volubility of his host who, when his feelings had been injured, was amusingly naive for such a self-centred person.
"That damn Louis," he confided to Hamil over their after-dinner cigars, "has kept me guessing ever since he took command here. Half the time I don't understand what he's talking about even when I know he's making fun of me; but, Hamil, you have no idea how I miss him."
And on another occasion a week later, while laboriously poring over some rough plans laid out for him by Hamil:
"Louis agrees with you about this improvement business. He's dead against my building Rhine-castle ruins on the crags, and he had the impudence to inform me that I had a cheap mind. By God, Hamil, I can't see anything cheap in trying to spend a quarter of a million in decorating this infernal monotony of trees; can you?"
And Hamil, for the first time in many a day, lay back in his arm-chair and laughed with all his heart.
He had hard work in weaning Portlaw from his Rhine castles, for the other invariably met his objections by quoting in awful German:
"Hast du das Schloss gesehen—
Das hohe Schloss am Meer?"
—pronounced precisely as though the words were English. Which laudable effort toward intellectual and artistic uplift Hamil never laughed at; and there ensued always the most astonishing causerie concerning art that two men in a wilderness ever engaged in.
Young Hastings, a Yale academic and forestry graduate, did fairly well in Malcourt's place, and was doing better every day. For one thing he knew much more about practical forestry and the fish and game problems than did Malcourt, who was a better organiser than executive.