’But you think I exercise some control or coercion
over my cousin, Mr. Mark Wylder. He’s not
a man, I can tell you, wherever he is, to be bullied,
no more than I am. I don’t correspond with
him. I have nothing to do with him or his affairs;
I wash my hands of him.’
Captain Lake turned and walked quickly to the door,
but came back as suddenly.
’Shake hands, Sir. We’ll forget it.
I accept what you say; but don’t talk that way
to me again. I can’t imagine what the devil
put such stuff in your head. I don’t care
twopence. No one’s to blame but Wylder himself.
I say I don’t care a farthing. Upon my
honour, I quite see—I now acquit you.
You could not mean what you seemed to say; and I can’t
understand how a sensible man like you, knowing Mark
Wylder, and knowing me, Sir, could use such—such
ambiguous language. I have no more influence
with him, and can no more affect his doings, or what
you call his fate—and, to say the
truth, care about them no more than the child unborn.
He’s his own master, of course. What the
devil can you have been dreaming of. I don’t
even get a letter from him. He’s nothing
to me.’
’You have misunderstood me; but that’s
over, Sir. I may have spoken with warmth, fearing
that you might be acting under some cruel misapprehension—that’s
all; and you don’t think worse of me, I’m
very sure, Captain Lake, for a little indiscreet zeal
on behalf of a gentleman who has treated me with such
unlimited confidence as Mr. Wylder. I’d
do the same for you, Sir; it’s my character.’
The two gentlemen, you perceive, though still agitated,
were becoming reasonable, and more or less complimentary
and conciliatory; and the masks which an electric
gust had displaced for a moment, revealing gross and
somewhat repulsive features, were being readjusted,
while each looked over his shoulder.
I am sorry to say that when that good man, Mr. Larkin,
left his presence, Captain Lake indulged in a perfectly
blasphemous monologue. His fury was excited to
a pitch that was very nearly ungovernable; and after
it had exhibited itself in the way I have said, Captain
Lake opened a little despatch-box, and took therefrom
a foreign letter, but three days received. He
read it through: his ill-omened smile expanded
to a grin that was undisguisedly diabolical.
With a scissors he clipt his own name where it occurred
from the thin sheet, and then, in red ink and Roman
capitals, he scrawled a line or two across the interior
of the letter, enclosed it in an envelope, directed
it, and then rang the bell.
He ordered the tax-cart and two horses to drive tandem.
The captain was rather a good whip, and he drove at
a great pace to Dollington, took the train on to Charteris,
there posted his letter, and so returned; his temper
continuing savage all that evening, and in a modified
degree in the same state for several days after.
