Under False Pretences. Sergeant Adeline
beat fast; he threw away the end of his cigar, and advanced to meet his cousin with an air of unconcern which was evidently assumed for the occasion. It passed unremarked, however. Brian was in no mood for considering Hugo's expression of countenance.
They took two or three turns up and down the garden walk without uttering a word. Brian was absorbed in thought, and Hugo had his own reasons for being afraid to open his mouth. It was Brian who spoke at last.
"Come away from the house," he said. "I want to speak to you, and we can't talk easily underneath all these windows. We'll go down to the loch."
"Not to the loch," said Hugo, hastily.
Brian considered a moment. "You are right," he said, in a low tone, "we won't go there. Come this way." For the moment he had forgotten that painful scene at the boat-house, which no doubt made Hugo shrink sensitively from the sight of the place. He was sorry that he had suggested it.
The day was calm and mild, but not brilliant. The leaves of the trees had taken on an additional tinge of autumnal yellow and red since Brian last looked at them with an observant eye. For the past week he had thought of nothing but of the intolerable grief and pain that had come upon him. But now the peace and quiet of the day stole upon him unawares; there was a restfulness in the sight of the steadfast hills, of the waving trees—a sense of tranquility even in the fall of the yellowing leaves and the flight of the migrating song-birds overhead. His eye grew calmer, his brow more smooth, as he walked silently onward; he drew a long breath, almost like one of relief; then he stopped short, and leaned against the trunk of a tall fir tree, looking absently before him, as though he had forgotten the reason for his proposed interview with his cousin. Hugo grew impatient. They had left the garden, and were walking down a grassy little-trodden lane between two tracks of wooded ground; it led to the tiny hamlet at the head of the loch, and thence to the high road. Hugo wondered whether the conversation were to be held upon the public highway or in the lane. If it had to do with his own private affairs, he felt that he would prefer the lane. But he dared not precipitate matters by speaking.
Brian recollected his purpose at last, however. After a short interval of silence he turned his eyes upon Hugo, who was standing near him, and said, gently—
"Sit down, won't you?—then we can talk."
There was a fallen log on the ground. Hugo took his seat on it meekly enough, but continued his former occupation of digging up, with the point of a stick that he was carrying, the roots of all the plants within his reach. He was so much absorbed by this pursuit that he seemed hardly to attend to the next words that Brian spoke.
"I ought, perhaps, to have had a talk with you before," he said. "Matters have been in a very unsettled state, as you well know. But there are one or two points that ought to be settled without delay."
Hugo ceased his work of destruction; and apparently disposed himself to listen.
"First, your own affairs. You have hitherto had an allowance, I believe—how much?"
"Two hundred," said Hugo, sulkily, "since I joined."
"And your pay. And you could not make that sufficient?"
Hugo's face flushed, he did not answer. He sat still, looking sullenly at the ground. Brian waited for a little while, and then went on.
"I don't want to preach, old fellow, but you know I can't help thinking that, by a little decent care and forethought, you ought to have made that do. Still, it's no good my saying so, is it? What is done cannot be undone—would God it could!"
He stopped short again: his voice had grown hoarse. Hugo, with the dusky red still tingeing his delicate, dark face, hung his head and made no reply.
"One can but try to do better for the future," said Brian, somewhat unsteadily, after that moment's pause. "Hugo, dear boy, will you promise that, at least?"
He put his hand on his cousin's shoulder. Hugo tried to shrink away, then, finding this impossible, averted his face and partly hid it with his hands.
"It's no good making vague promises," he said by-and-bye. "What do you mean? If you want me to promise to live on my pay or anything of that sort——"
"Nothing of that sort," Brian interrupted him. "Only, that you will act honourably and straightforwardly—that you will not touch what is not your own——"
Hugo shook off the kindly hand and started up with something like an oath upon his lips. "Why are you always talking about that affair! I thought it was past and done with," he said, turning his back upon his cousin, and switching the grass savagely with his cane.
"Always talking about it! Be reasonable, Hugo."
"It was only because I was at my wits' end for money," said the lad, irritably. "And that came in my way, and—I had never taken any before——"
"And never will again," said Brian. "That's what I want to hear you say."
But Hugo would say nothing. He stood, the impersonation of silent obstinacy, digging the end of his stick into the earth, or striking at the blue bells and the brambles within reach, resolved to utter no word which Brian could twist into any sort of promise for the future. He knew that his silence might injure his prospects, by lowering him in Brian's estimation—Brian being now the arbiter of his fate—but for all that he could not bring himself to make submission or to profess penitence. Something made the words stick in his throat; no power on earth would at that moment have forced him to speak.
"Well," said Brian at last, in a tone which showed deep disappointment, "I am sorry that you won't go so far, Hugo. I hope you will do well, however, without professions. Still, I should have been better satisfied to have your word for it—before I left Netherglen."
"Where are you going?" said Hugo, suddenly facing him.
"I don't quite know."
"To London?"
"No, Abroad."
"Abroad?" repeated Hugo, with a wondering accent. "Why should you go abroad?"
"That's my own business."
"But—but—" said the lad, flushing and paling, and stammering with eagerness, "I thought that you would stay here, and that Netherglen and everything would belong to you, and—and——"
"And that I should shoot, and fish, and ride, and disport myself gaily over my brother's inheritance—that my own hand deprived him of!" cried Brian, with angry bitterness. "It is so likely! Is it you who have no feeling, or do you fancy that I have none?"
"But the place is yours," faltered Hugo, with a guilty look, "Strathleckie is yours, if Netherglen is not."
"Mine! Yes, it is mine after a fashion," said Brian, while a hot, red flush crept up to his forehead, and his brows contracted painfully over his sad, dark eyes. "It is mine by law; mine by my father's will; and if it had come into my hands by any other way—if my brother had not died through my own carelessness—I suppose that I might have learnt to enjoy it like any other man. But as it is—I wish that every acre of it were at the bottom of the loch, and I there, too, for the matter of that! I have made up my mind that I will not benefit by Richard's death. Others may have the use of his wealth, but I am the last that should touch it. I will have the two or three hundred a year that he used to give me, and I will have nothing more."
Hugo's face had grown pale. He looked more dismayed by this utterance than by anything that Brian as yet had said. He opened his lips once or twice before he could find his voice, and it was in curiously rough and broken tones that he at length asked a question.
"Is this because of what people say about—about you—and—Richard?"
He seemed to find it difficult to pronounce the dead man's name. Brian lifted up his face.
"What do people say about me and Richard, then?" he said.
Hugo retreated a little.
"If you don't know," he said, looking down miserably,