“I’ve a mind for it, yes.”
“Dress then. I’ll wait for you,” and moved over to the window-seat and lounged there, till I had pulled on my clothes. He sat sullenly regarding me; I could not estimate his disposition to me, believing that his father had instructed him to treat me with civility; from time to time I stole a glance at him reflected dully in the mirror, noting the health and strength of him, and could not find it in me to hate the fellow as with cause I hated his father. Dressed at last, a towel about my neck, I said, “At your service, cousin,” and he, lurching up from his seat, strode before me down the gallery, and brought me by a dark stair out of the house into the courtyard. I had a certain hesitation in accompanying him—with my escape from being shipped overseas with Blunt on the Black Wasp fresh in my mind; but reassured that I was safe now through my grandfather’s direction, I set my dread aside.
He had anticipated my hesitation, it seemed, for he swung round, and demanded curtly, “Are you afraid to go with me, cousin?”
“No, I’m not afraid,” I answered.
He cast a look about him, shot out his hand and gripped my sleeve. He said, in that harsh tone of his, “You’ve no need to be, whatever others may do. D’ye understand me?”
“I’m happy to understand.”
“You saw me swilling last night.”
“Ay, I saw.”
He said simply, “Wouldn’t the house and the folk in it drive a man to the devil?”—and turned abruptly and crossed the courtyard with me at his heels.
The courtyard was deserted. Neglect and decay marked it; the moss grew green in crevices and cracks of the paving stones; the ivy held the out-buildings as it held the house. The great stables were bare but for three horses in the stalls; a fellow ill of look, of middle-age, but seeming young by comparison with the old men about my grandfather, was plying a broom.