Part 36

“That’s just the question: it seems so much less my own house than before I had come into it!” The Captain offered Mr. Prodmore a cigarette which that gentleman, also taking a light from him, accepted; then he lit his own and began to smoke. “As I understand you,” he went on, “you lump your two conditions? I mean I must accept both or neither?”

Mr. Prodmore threw back his shoulders with a high recognition of the long stride represented by this question. “You will accept both, for, by doing so, you’ll clear the property at a stroke. The way I put it is--see?--that if you’ll stand for Gossage, you’ll get returned for Gossage.”

“And if I get returned for Gossage, I shall marry your daughter. Accordingly,” the young man pursued, “if I marry your daughter----”

“I’ll burn up, before your eyes,” said this young lady’s proprietor, “every scratch of your pen. It will be a bonfire of signatures. There won’t be a penny to pay--there’ll only be a position to take. You’ll take it with peculiar grace.”

“Peculiar, Mr. Prodmore--very!”

The young man had assented more than he desired, but he was not deterred by it from completing the picture. “You’ll settle down here in comfort and honour.”

Clement Yule took several steps; the effect of his host was the reverse of soothing; yet the latter watched his irritation as if it were the working of a charm. “Are you very sure of the ‘honour’ if I turn my political coat?”

“You’ll only be turning it back again to the way it was always worn. Gossage will receive you with open arms and press you to a heaving Tory bosom. That bosom”--Mr. Prodmore followed himself up--“has never heaved but to sound Conservative principles. The cradle, as I’ve called it,--or at least the rich, warm coverlet,--of your race, Gossage was the political property, so to speak, of generations of your family. Stand therefore in the good old interest and you’ll stand like a lion.”

“I’m afraid you mean,” Captain Yule laughed, “that I must first roar like one.”

“Oh, I’ll do the roaring!”--and Mr. Prodmore shook his mane. “Leave that to me.”

“Then why the deuce don’t you stand yourself?”

Mr. Prodmore knew so familiarly why! “Because I’m not a remarkably handsome young man with the grand old home and the right old name. Because I’m a different sort of matter altogether. But if I haven’t these advantages,” he went on, “you’ll do justice to my natural desire that my daughter at least shall have them.”

Clement Yule watched himself smoke a minute. “Doing justice to natural desires is just what, of late, I’ve tried to make a study of. But I confess I don’t quite grasp the deep attraction you appear to discover in so large a surrender of your interests.”

“My surrenders are my own affair,” Mr. Prodmore rang out, “and as for my interests, as I never, on principle, give anything for nothing, I dare say I may be trusted to know them when I see them. You come high--I don’t for a moment deny it; but when I look at you, in this pleasant, intimate way, my dear boy--if you’ll allow me so to describe things--I recognise one of those cases, unmistakeable when really met, in which one must put down one’s money. There’s not an article in the whole shop, if you don’t mind the comparison, that strikes me as better value. I intend you shall be, Captain,” Mr. Prodmore wound up in a frank, bold burst, “the true comfort of my life!”

The young man was as hushed for a little as if an organ-tone were still in the air. “May I inquire,” he at last returned, “if Miss Prodmore’s ideas of comfort are as well defined--and in her case, I may add, as touchingly modest--as her father’s? Is she a responsible party of this ingenious arrangement?”

Mr. Prodmore rendered homage--his appreciation was marked--to the elevated character of his young friend’s scruple. “Miss Prodmore, Captain Yule, may be perhaps best described as a large smooth sheet of blank, though gilt-edged, paper. No image of any tie but the true and perfect filial has yet, I can answer for it, formed itself on the considerable expanse. But for that image to be projected----”

“I’ve only, in person, to appear?” Yule asked with an embarrassment that he tried to laugh off.

“And, naturally, in person,” Mr. Prodmore intelligently assented, “do yourself, as well as the young lady, justice. Do you remember what you said when I first, in London, laid the matter before you?”

Clement Yule did remember, but his amusement increased. “I think I said it struck me I should first take a look at--what do you call it?--the corpus delicti.”

“You should first see for yourself what you had really come into? I was not only eager for that,” said Mr. Prodmore, “but I’m willing to go further: I’m quite ready to hear you say that you think you should also first see the young lady.”

Captain Yule continued to laugh. “There is something in that then, since you mention it!”

“I think you’ll find that there’s everything.” Mr. Prodmore again looked at his watch. “Which will you take first?”

“First?”

“The young lady or the house?”

His companion, at this, unmistakeably started. “Do you mean your daughter’s here?”

Mr. Prodmore glowed with consciousness. “In the morning-room.”

“Waiting for me?”

The tone showed a consternation that Mr. Prodmore’s was alert to soothe. “Ah, as long, you know, as you like!”