It happened towards the end of his visit--another airless day of that mild January. Mr. Dawes was playing against a scratch team of cads, and had to go down to the ground in the morning to settle something. Rickie proposed to come too.
Hitherto he had been no nuisance. "You will be frightfully bored," said Agnes, observing the cloud on her lover's face. "And Gerald walks like a maniac.""I had a little thought of the Museum this morning," said Mr. Pembroke. "It is very strong in flint arrow-heads.""Ah, that's your line, Rickie. I do envy you and Herbert the way you enjoy the past.""I almost think I'll go with Dawes, if he'll have me. I can walk quite fast just to the ground and back. Arrowheads are wonderful, but I don't really enjoy them yet, though I hope I shall in time."Mr. Pembroke was offended, but Rickie held firm.
In a quarter of an hour he was back at the house alone, nearly crying.
"Oh, did the wretch go too fast?" called Miss Pembroke from her bedroom window.
"I went too fast for him." He spoke quite sharply, and before he had time to say he was sorry and didn't mean exactly that, the window had shut.
"They've quarrelled," she thought. "Whatever about?"She soon heard. Gerald returned in a cold stormy temper. Rickie had offered him money.
"My dear fellow don't be so cross. The child's mad.""If it was, I'd forgive that. But I can't stand unhealthiness.""Now, Gerald, that's where I hate you. You don't know what it is to pity the weak.""Woman's job. So you wish I'd taken a hundred pounds a year from him. Did you ever hear such blasted cheek? Marry us--he, you, and me--a hundred pounds down and as much annual--he, of course, to pry into all we did, and we to kowtow and eat dirt-pie to him. If that's Mr. Rickety Elliot's idea of a soldier and an Englishman, it isn't mine, and I wish I'd had a horse-whip."She was roaring with laughter. "You're babies, a pair of you, and you're the worst. Why couldn't you let the little silly down gently? There he was puffing and sniffing under my window, and Ithought he'd insulted you. Why didn't you accept?""Accept?" he thundered.
"It would have taken the nonsense out of him for ever. Why, he was only talking out of a book.""More fool he."
"Well, don't be angry with a fool. He means no harm. He muddles all day with poetry and old dead people, and then tries to bring it into life. It's too funny for words."Gerald repeated that he could not stand unhealthiness.
"I don't call that exactly unhealthy."
"I do. And why he could give the money's worse.""What do you mean?"
He became shy. "I hadn't meant to tell you. It's not quite for a lady." For, like most men who are rather animal, he was intellectually a prude. "He says he can't ever marry, owing to his foot. It wouldn't be fair to posterity. His grandfather was crocked, his father too, and he's as bad. He thinks that it's hereditary, and may get worse next generation. He's discussed it all over with other Undergrads. A bright lot they must be. He daren't risk having any children. Hence the hundred quid."She stopped laughing. "Oh, little beast, if he said all that!"He was encouraged to proceed. Hitherto he had not talked about their school days. Now he told her everything,--the "barley-sugar," as he called it, the pins in chapel, and how one afternoon he had tied him head-downward on to a tree trunk and then ran away--of course only for a moment.
For this she scolded him well. But she had a thrill of joy when she thought of the weak boy in the clutches of the strong one.
