“You’ll only be turning it back to the way it was always worn. Gossage will receive you with open arms. Stand in the good old interest and you’ll stand like a lion.”
“I fear you mean I must first roar like one.”
“Oh, I’ll do the roaring! Leave that to me.”
“Then why the deuce don’t you stand yourself?”
Prodmore knew familiarly why. “Because I’m not a remarkably handsome young man with the grand old home and the right old name. But if I haven’t these advantages, you’ll do justice to my natural desire that my daughter shall have them.”
Yule smoked a minute. “Doing justice to natural desires is what I’ve lately tried to make a study of. But I don’t grasp the deep attraction you discover in so large a surrender of your interests.”
“My surrenders are my own affair. You come high, but when I look at you I recognise one of those cases in which one must put down one’s money. I intend you shall be, Captain, the true comfort of my life!”
Yule was hushed. “May I inquire if Miss Prodmore’s ideas of comfort are as well defined—and as touchingly modest—as her father’s? Is she a responsible party of this ingenious arrangement?”
Prodmore appreciated the scruple. “Miss Prodmore may be best described as a large smooth sheet of blank, though gilt-edged, paper. No image of any tie but the true and perfect filial has yet formed itself on the considerable expanse. But for that image to be projected—”
“I’ve only, in person, to appear?” Yule laughed, embarrassed.
“Do you remember what you said when I first laid the matter before you in London?”
“I think I said it struck me I should first take a look at—what do you call it?—the corpus delicti.”
“I was eager for that, and I’m quite ready to hear you say you should first see the young lady.”
“There is something in that, since you mention it!”
“I think you’ll find there’s everything.” Prodmore looked at his watch. “Which will you take first? The young lady or the house?”
Yule started. “Do you mean your daughter’s here?”
Prodmore glowed. “In the morning-room.”
“Waiting for me?”
“As long, you know, as you like!”
Yule’s alarm was not assuaged. “Let her remain so! I’ll first take the house.”
“Shall I go round with you?”
“I’d rather, on the whole, go round alone.”
Chivers returned at this moment from the morning-room, looking with limpid earnestness from one to the other. “There’s tea on, sir!” he persuasively jerked to the younger man.
Prodmore answered. “Then I’ll join my daughter.” He gained the door, repeating with a proud gesture—the offering of a flower of his own raising—his happy formula: “The rose on its stem!” And so passed out.
Chivers, settling some small object, was suddenly addressed by Yule. “I say, my friend, what colour is the rose?”
The old man turned to the open door. “Rather a brilliant—”
“A brilliant?”
“Kind of old-fashioned red.” His smile went out. “It’s the only one left—on the old west wall.”
Yule laughed. “I’m not alluding to the garden, but to the young lady at present in the morning-room. Do you happen to have noticed if she’s pretty?”
Chivers stood queerly rueful. “Laws, sir—it’s a matter I mostly notice; but isn’t it a matter—of taste?”
“Pre-eminently. That’s why I appeal to yours.”
The old man flushed. “Mine was always a sort of fancy for something more merry-like.”
“She isn’t merry-like, poor Miss Prodmore?” But Yule’s attention dropped before the answer came. “What are you? To whom do you belong?”
“If you could just only tell me, sir! I quite seem to waste away—for someone to take an order of.”
“Who pays your wages?”
“No one at all, sir,” said the old man simply.
Yule, fumbling in a waistcoat pocket, produced a coin which his hand placed in shy practical relation to Chivers. “Then there’s a sovereign. And I haven’t many!”
The old man studied him. “Ah, then, shouldn’t it stay in the family?”
Yule wheeled round, struck, then touched. “I think it does, old boy.”
“I’ve served your house, sir.”
“How long?”
“All my life.”
For a time they faced each other. “Then I won’t give you up!” Yule said at last.
“Indeed, sir, I hope you won’t give up anything.”
“It remains to be seen.” He looked toward the open door. “Is that the garden?”
“It was!” Chivers sighed.
“Shall I show you how it used to be?”
“It’s just as it is, alas, that I happen to require it!” Yule reached the door. “Don’t come—I want to think.” And he walked out.
Chivers wondered aloud. “What does he want, poor dear, to think about?” But a high, clear voice cut off his speculation. From the stairs descended a wonderful lady—tall, radiant, laughing, rustling—calling out: “Housekeeper, Butler, old Family Servant!” She fairly waked the sleeping echoes, and Chivers gazed up at her, half dismayed, half dazzled, with the sense of a duty neglected. “Oh, I should have told him of her!”
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