‘My boy,’ said Sir Sykes, plunging with an effort into the subject nearest to his thoughts, ‘you can’t suppose that I like to see you wasting your young life in indolent inaction, or that I am blind to the fact that the quiet humdrum ways of Carbery often pall upon you.’
Jasper pricked up his ears. Here was an exordium which promised well, too well almost. Could it be possible that his father was going to sign, so to speak, his social ticket-of-leave, and to send him back where Fashion reigned supreme—to London, Newmarket, Melton? Had the Fates grown kind; and could he, Jasper Denzil, with a satisfactory bank balance, once more take his place in the constellation of the gilded youth of Britain? He opened his lazy eyes a very little wider, and looked at his father with a renewed interest in the next words that he should hear.
‘The case,’ went on Sir Sykes, ‘lies in a nutshell. You are discontented simply because you have nothing to occupy you and no one to care for. I should like very much, Jasper, to see you happily married; I should indeed.’
Jasper stared. His roseate visions of a prompt reappearance in betting-rings and military clubs were fading fast. But this novel anxiety on the part of Sir Sykes as to his son’s matrimonial future might be twisted somehow into the foundation of at least a qualified prosperity. ‘He can’t mean,’ such was Jasper’s inward soliloquy, ‘myself and my wife to be mere pensioners, living indolently here at Carbery. He must do something for us, he must indeed; unless it is an heiress he is about to suggest as a desirable daughter-in-law.’—‘I suppose I must marry, like other people, some of these days,’ said Jasper, with Pall-Mall philosophy.
‘And there is this advantage in your position,’ returned Sir Sykes, in a quick flurried manner, ‘that you need not look for fortune in a wife. The heir-expectant of Carbery can afford to disregard such matters as dowry and portion.’
A little pink flush rose to the roots of Jasper’s fair hair. He did not quite enjoy the hearing himself described as heir-expectant, not feeling sure but that a covert sneer was intended; but it was pleasant to be told that he was not expected to earn his bread, as he had known other broken-down men of fashion to do, by wedlock. Perhaps it was rank, not wealth, on which the governor’s thoughts ran—perhaps Lady Gladys De Vere. But here Jasper’s meditations were interrupted, and his thoughts turned into a new channel, when the baronet suddenly said: ‘Has it never occurred to you that Miss Willis, our new inmate here at Carbery, was a very charming little person, a good girl, and a clever one, and who would make an excellent wife?’
The explosion of a hand-grenade would not have produced a more startling effect on Jasper’s nerves than did this wholly unexpected speech on the part of Sir Sykes. For a moment or two he sat motionless, with arched eyebrows and parted lips, and then said, stammeringly: ‘Why, I thought the relationship—no, not that, but I supposed—obstacle—marriage!’
It was for Sir Sykes then to look astonished. Either he was a consummate actor, or his son’s last words had been to him utterly inexplicable.
‘I hardly know,’ said the baronet, in that cold half-haughty tone that had become habitual to him, ‘to what you allude, or what insuperable stumbling-block you conceive to stand in your way, should you incline to do so sensible a thing as to pay your addresses to my ward, Miss Willis. She has, it is true, no fortune; but that deficiency, as I have already said, is one which I can easily remedy. In addition to Carbery Chase, which is quite,’ he added with marked emphasis, ‘at my own disposal, I have a large amount of personal property, and should be willing to settle a considerable income on your wife—I say on your wife, Jasper, because, unhappily, I cannot rely on your prudence where money is concerned.’