at the
question, curtains seemed to drop from all around me, and leave me
in the midst of pains and miseries, in a chill air that froze me to
the marrow. I saw myself alone--thee in Egypt and I here, and none
of our blood and name beside me. For we are the last, Davy, the
last of the Claridges. But I said coldly, and with what was near to
anger, that he should link his name and fate with that of Luke
Claridge: "Which of ye two goes first is God's will, and according
to His wisdom. Which, think thee," added I--and now I cannot
forgive myself for saying it--"which, think thee, would do least
harm in going?" "I know which would do most good," he answered,
with a harsh laugh in his throat. Yet his blue eyes looked kindly
at me, and now he began to nod pleasantly. I thought him a little
mad, but yet his speech had seemed not without dark meaning. "Thee
has had a visitor," I said to him presently. He laughed in a
snarling way that made me shrink, and answered: "He wanted this and
he wanted that--his high-handed, second-best lordship. Ay, and he
would have it, because it pleased him to have it--like his father
before him. A poor sparrow on a tree-top, if you tell him he must
not have it, he will hunt it down the world till it is his, as
though it was a bird of paradise. And when he's seen it fall at
last, he'll remember but the fun of the chase; and the bird may get
to its tree-top again--if it can--if it can--if it can, my lord!
That is what his father was, the last Earl, and that is what he is
who left my door but now. He came to snatch old Soolsby's palace,
his nest on the hill, to use it for a telescope, or such whimsies.
He has scientific tricks like his father before him. Now is it
astronomy, and now chemistry, and suchlike; and always it is the
Eglington mind, which let God A'mighty make it as a favour. He
would have old Soolsby's palace for his spy-glass, would he then?
It scared him, as though I was the devil himself, to find me here.
I had but come back in time--a day later, and he would have sat here
and seen me in the Pit below before giving way. Possession's nine
points were with me; and here I sat and faced him; and here he
stormed, and would do this and should do that; and I went on with my
work. Then he would buy my Colisyum, and I wouldn't sell it for all
his puffball lordship might offer. Isn't the hous