The Nonesuch Read Free Page B

have been. By the time he went to Harrow I wasn’t such a cawker as I was when Laurie was a boy.’ He paused, slightly frowning, and then said abruptly: ‘You know, George, when my father died, I was too young for my inheritance!’
    ‘Well, I own we all thought so – made sure you’d play ducks and drakes with it! – but you never did so, and –’
    ‘No, I did worse: I ruined Laurie.’
    ‘Oh, come now, Waldo –’ George protested, adding after a moment’s reflection: ‘Encouraged him to depend on you, you mean. I suppose you did – and I’m damned if I know why, for you never liked him above half, did you?’
    ‘I didn’t. But when I was – what did he call it? – swimming in riches ,and my uncle was possessed of no more than an independence – besides being as big a screw as our cousin Joseph, and keeping Laurie devilish short – it seemed so hard-fisted not to come to Laurie’s rescue!’
    ‘Yes, I see,’ said George slowly. ‘And having once begun to frank him you couldn’t stop.’
    ‘I might have done so, but I didn’t. What, after all, did it signify to me? By the time I’d acquired enough sense to know what it signified to him ,the mischief had been done.’
    ‘Oh!’ George turned this over in his mind. ‘Ay, very likely! But if you think the fault is yours, all I can say is that it ain’t like you to leave him to sink or swim now! What’s more, I don’t believe you would!’
    ‘No, I was afraid he wouldn’t believe it either,’ admitted Sir Waldo. ‘He seems to have done so, however, which makes me hopeful that the mischief has not gone beyond repair.’
    George uttered a bark of sceptical laughter. ‘He’ll be gapped in some hell before the week’s out – and don’t tell me you’ve tied him up, because he ain’t such a bottlehead that he don’t know you’d never compel him to pay the forfeit!’
    ‘I haven’t, but I paid his gaming debts only on his promise that he would incur no more of them.’
    ‘His promise – ! Good God, Waldo, you don’t depend on that, do you?’
    ‘But I do. Laurie won’t go back on his word: witness his rage today, only because I’ve compelled him to pledge it!’
    ‘Once a gamester always a gamester!’
    ‘My dear George, Laurie is no more a gamester than I am!’ replied Sir Waldo, amused. ‘All he wishes to do is to sport a figure in the world. Do believe that I know him much better than you do, and take that frown off your face!’ He slipped his hand within his cousin’s arm, grasping it lightly. ‘Instead, tell me this, old chap! Do you want Broom Hall? Because, if you do – and you need not fly up into the boughs! – I hope you know you’ve only to –’
    ‘I do not!’ interrupted George, with unnecessary violence. ‘Merely because I said I thought it an odd start in Cousin Joseph to have left his property to you – By the bye, my aunt didn’t like it above half, did she?’
    ‘No – most understandable! But I really can’t feel that Lindeth stands in the least need of Broom Hall.’
    ‘Oh, lord, no! – any more than I do! Bless the boy, he never gave it a thought! You know, Waldo, it’s my belief he’s going to cut up all her hopes! Ever since he came down from Oxford she’s been trying to push him into the first style of fashion – and into an eligible marriage – and then, when there isn’t a ton party he ain’t invited to attend, what does he do but beg you to let him go with you into the wilds of Yorkshire! I promise you, I was hard put to it not to burst out laughing at the look in her face when young Julian said the Season was a dead bore! Mark me if she don’t prevent his going with you!’
    ‘She won’t even make the attempt. She’s by far too fond of him to try to thrust him down any path he doesn’t wish to follow – and has too much commonsense as well. Poor Aunt Lindeth! I do most sincerely pity her! She was obliged to abandon her efforts to bring her husband into fashion, for he