“I have sometimes wondered whence he obtained the means to live as expensively as he did,” responded Carlyon, in his level voice,
“Yes!” Bedlington said eagerly. “Yes, indeed, and I too have wondered! I do trust we may not find anything seriously amiss! I cannot flatter myself the poor boy took me as much into his confidence as I could have wished.”
“He certainly did not take me into it.”
“No, well! I do not desire to mar the harmony of this evening by reproaching you, and I shall accordingly say nothing of that. Yet I cannot but feel that had you treated him with more sympathy—”
“My dear sir, you, I am persuaded, treated him with a marked degree of sympathy, but it does not appear to have won you his confidence.”
“True. It is very true! Sometimes I have asked myself if I caressed him too much, allowed him too much license. You know he has been free to treat my house as his home ever since his poor father’s death—that is to say, ever since he was of an age to be glad of a house in town where he might be sure of a welcome. Indeed, I have treated him like my own son, but I do not know that it answered. I hope I have not been the innocent means of leading him into temptation!”
Carlyon looked faintly surprised. “How should you be, indeed?”
“Oh, as to that—! In an establishment such as mine, you understand—my position as A.D.C. to the Regent. I need not say more! I am sure I do not know the half of the people who come to the house, and how could I tell whom poor Eustace might be meeting there? Young men cannot always be trusted to keep the line, and alas, there was a weakness in him—one must own it!—that might have led him to allow himself to be drawn into the wrong company.”
He went on in this strain for some time, but as his host remained politely unresponsive, abandoned it at last and relapsed into melancholy abstraction. He roused himself to inquire about the funeral arrangements, desiring Carlyon to postpone the date to enable him to attend the ceremony and almost tearfully begging him not to neglect the least pompous detail of it. Upon hearing that the cortege would set out from the chapel where Eustace’s body was at present lying, and not from Highnoons, he looked very much shocked and could not think it right. He wished to know the style of the cards Carlyon had no doubt sent out and the number of carriages he had ordered, not to mention the mutes and the plumes, and was only silenced by Carlyon’s saying that since Eustace, after making himself odious to the entire neighborhood, had met his end in a drunken brawl that must still further lessen his credit with his acquaintances, the more private and unostentatious his obsequies were the better it would be for all concerned.
“I shall attend the funeral!” Bedlington declared. “I mean to spend a night with that poor young creature at Highnoons. I dare say she will be glad of the counsel of an old man. I am sure I do not know what is to become of her, for it is not to be expected that Eustace has left her in affluence. That crazy old house, very nearly in ruins, from what I could see of it! It would cost a fortune to put it in order, and there she is, saddled with its upkeep and none to support or guide her!”
“Mrs. Cheviot does not reside there alone. She has an elderly companion with her.”
“Yes, yes, a poor little dab of a woman! I don’t know what your notions may be, Carlyon, but I should advise selling the place if any could be found to buy such a ramshackle, old-fashioned house.”
“No doubt she will do so, but until we have probate it is too early to be making plans.”
“Of course. That is understood! But she cannot like to have such a place on her hands and to be put to the expense of paying the wages of I dare say four or five servants. I feel I should do all I can for her—poor Eustace’s bride, you know, and her circumstances so uncomfortable, for there is no blinking the fact that her father died under a cloud! I declare, I have a good mind to invite her to come up to London with me and to stay in Brook Street until she knows how things may stand! Then the servants may be paid off and the house closed. What do you say to that, eh?”
“I cannot advocate the leaving of the house untenanted, sir,” was all the answer he could win from Carlyon.
He very soon took himself off to bed, and Carlyon was able to join John, whom he found yawning over a dying fire.
“Hallo!” John said. “Has he been boring on forever? You should have let me bear you company!”
“No, you are too severe with him. He cannot talk al his ease in face of your grim scowls. I find it hard myself.”
“You!” John said, bursting out into a laugh. “Well, had he anything to say that was to the point?”
“He is very uneasy, I fancy. There was some talk of his having unwittingly led Eustace into temptation, as though he had a suspicion some worse mischief than he knows of might have been on hand.”
“Led him into temptation! Pray, how?”
“Apparently he feels that his house is forever full of evil company. He says he does not know the half of the people who frequent it, and ascribes this to his being the Regent’s A.D.C.,” Carlyon said, with only a flicker of a smile.
“A delightful reflection upon Prinny! Refreshingly honest, I swear!”
“I am going to bed,” Carlyon said. “An evening spent in Bedlington’s company is the most fatiguing thing I know. I pity Mrs. Cheviot! He is a dead bore!”
“Oh, he still stands by his threat to inflict himself upon her, does he?”
“Yes, and to invite her to return to Brook Street with him while Highnoons is shut up and the servants dismissed.”
“Ha! So that he may search the place at his leisure!” said John, grinning. “Much obliged to him!” He accompanied his brother out into the hall and picked up his bedroom candle. “When have you arranged the funeral? Should I attend?”
“As you wish. I must do so, at all events. It is postponed for two days, Bedlington having affairs that must keep him in town.”
“Deuce take the old fidget!” John growled. “You will be glad to be done with this, Ned, and know Eustace safe underground!”
“I shall certainly be glad to be done with it, and wish I saw my way through it.”
John gripped his elbow, roughly squeezing it. “Ay, it has been the devil of a business. As for seeing your way, I do not wonder you cannot! Here is this widow left on your hands, as I told you before! Well, it serves you right, old fellow!”
“Nonsense!” Carlyon said.
In the morning, Lord Bedlington made his appearance dressed for his journey. A somewhat malicious suggestion, put forward by John, that he must surely wish to attend the inquest which was to be held in the coffee room of the inn at Wisborough Green, he greeted with a strong shudder. His mind seemed to be divided between horror at an inquest’s having to be held over any member of his family, and a shocked realization that he had come into Sussex quite improperly clad. His anxiety to put himself into mourning at once, coupled with a fear that Schultz, his tailor, might not be able to supply his needs in due time, formed the subjects of his breakfast table conversation and certainly hastened his departure. By ten o’clock his chaise was bowling away down the avenue and Carlyon was giving orders for his own carriage to be brought up to the house.
He and John drove to Highnoons to take up Nicky, and discovered this young gentleman to be almost completely restored to health, his spirits only damped by the thought of what lay before him. He smiled gratefully at John and said it was devilish good of him to have come down from London.