But no message came on the morrow, or on the next day. No message came at all; and though it was possible to attribute this to the Squire’s condition—for he was reported to be very ill—and Clement did his best to attribute it to that and to keep up his spirits, the tide of time wears away even hope, and presently he began to see that he had built on the sand.
At any rate no message and no acknowledgment came, unless a perfunctory word of thanks dropped by Arthur counted as such. And Clement had soon to recognize that what he had done, he might as well, for any good it was likely to do him, have left undone. His father, who had no thought of anything but his son’s credit, was merely chagrined. But with Clement, who had built high hopes upon the event, hopes of which his father and Betty little dreamed, the wound went far deeper.
CHAPTER XVIII
The Squire raised himself painfully on his elbow and hid the bag between pillow and tester, where he could assure himself of its presence by a touch. Then he sank back with a grunt of relief and his hand went to the keys, which also had their home under his pillow. He clung to them—they were his badge of authority, of power. While he had them, sightless as he was, he was still master; about his room, the oak-panelled chamber, spacious but shabby, with the uneven floor and the low wide casement, the life of the house still circled.
“Good lad!” he muttered. “Good lad! Jos?”
“Yes, father.” She rose and came towards him.
“Where’s Arthur?”
“He went out with your message.”
“To be sure! To be sure! I’m forgetting.”
But, once started on the road to recovery, he did not forget much. From his high, four-post bed with the drab hangings in which his father and grandfather had died, he gripped house and lands in a firm grip. Morning by morning he would have his report of the lambs, of the wheat, of the hay-corps, of the ploughing on the eight acres where the Swedish turnips were to go. He would know what corn went to the mill, what mutton to the house. The bounds-fence that Farmer Bache had neglected was not forgotten, nor the young colt that he had decided to take against Farmer Price’s arrears, nor the lease for lives that involved a knotty point of which he proved himself to be in complete possession.