“All right, father,” replied Walter, and the conversation passed on to another subject.
The three weeks came and went; the steeplechase came off, and Walter was one of the riders. The admired of all eyes, he for a time surmounted all difficulties. At last, in endeavouring to clear an unusually wide ditch, he was thrown, and his horse so badly injured that the poor animal had to be shot. Walter himself, though stunned and bruised, was not seriously hurt, and was able to return home in time for dinner.
The party had assembled in the drawing-room, all but Mr Huntingdon. Five minutes—ten—a quarter of an hour past the usual time, but the squire had not made his appearance. At last his step was heard rapidly approaching. Then he flung the door hastily open, and rushed into the room, his face flushed, and his chest heaving with anger. Striding up to Walter, he exclaimed: “So this is the end of your folly and disobedience. You go contrary to my orders, knowing that I would not have you take part in the steeplechase; you ruin another man’s horse worth some three hundred guineas; and then you come home, just as if nothing had happened, and expect me, I suppose, to pay the bill. But you may depend upon it I shall do nothing of the sort.”
No one spoke for a few minutes. Then Walter stammered out that he was very sorry.
“Sorry, indeed!” cried his father; “that’s poor amends. But it seems I’m to have nothing but disobedience and misery from my children.”
“Dear Walter,” said his sister gently, “are you not a little hard upon the poor boy?”
“Hard, Kate?—poor boy?—nonsense! You’re just like all the rest, spoiling and ruining him by your foolish indulgence. He’s to be master, it seems, of the whole of us, and I may as well give up the management of the estate and of my purse into his hands.”
Miss Huntingdon ventured no reply; she felt that it would be wiser to let the first violence of the storm blow by. But now Amos rose, and approached his father, and confronted him, looking at him calmly and steadily. Never before had that shy, reserved young man been seen to look his father so unflinchingly in the face. Never, when his own personal character or comfort had been at stake, had he dreamt of so much as a remonstrance. He had left it to others to speak for him, or had submitted to wrong or neglect without murmuring. How different was it now! How strange was the contrast between the wild flashing eyes of the old man, and the deeply tranquil, thoughtful, and even spiritual gaze of the son! Before that gaze the squire’s eyes lost their fire, his chest ceased to heave, he grew calm.
“What’s the meaning of this?” he asked in a hoarse voice.
“Father,” said Amos slowly, “I am persuaded that you are not doing full justice to dear Walter. I must say a word for him. I do not think his going and riding in the steeplechase was an act of direct disobedience. I think your leave was implied when you said that at any rate he must not look to you for a horse. I know that you would have preferred his not going, and so must he have known, but I do not think that he was wrong in supposing that you had not absolutely forbidden him.”