Your dear mother and I have talked it all over. There's nothing to be done but bide our time. It will pa.s.s over."

There was a distinct change in his att.i.tude towards his eldest son. He was accustomed to greet his other sons with that fatherly, "Well, my boy!" but not d.i.c.k. d.i.c.k had the master-head. He never presumed on it to set up authority where it would be hurtful to his father's self-complacency, but he was accustomed to rule, none the less, and the Squire to rely on him to decide in every difficulty. But now he had decided for himself. d.i.c.k was his much-admired and trusted son, but not, in this matter, his director, nor even his adviser.

"He got the better of you, I suppose," said d.i.c.k, seating himself at the table.

"I suppose he did. I don't know. Is that how you would put it, Nina?"

"Your father saw," said Mrs. Clinton, "when it came to the point, that it meant, if he was to clear himself, he must heap all the blame upon Susan, and in a lesser degree on Humphrey. If he had done that he must have satisfied Lord Cheviot. But he would not do it."

"Rather rough on Joan," said d.i.c.k with a slight frown.

"I have told Joan everything," said Mrs. Clinton, "and she sees it as we do. She is content to wait."

"Read that," said the Squire, taking the fateful letter from his pocket. "That is what we have to face. I didn't see my way to deny it, so I left his Lordship to attend to the affairs of the nation."

"But it isn't true!" said d.i.c.k, when he had read it. "It looks like the truth, but it isn't. You could have denied every word of it, except the first statement--about Susan."

The Squire looked at his wife with a smile. "d.i.c.k sees it at once," he said. "It took you and me half the night to get at it, Nina; and I should never have got at it by myself. Well, it isn't true, d.i.c.k, as far as it puts blame on me which I don't deserve. But it's true about Susan. I couldn't tell him the story; so I came away."

"And he will tell Inverell that he showed you this letter and you could make no reply to it."

"Yes, I suppose so."

d.i.c.k looked deeply disturbed. "I wish I had been there," he said.

"If you had been there, d.i.c.k," said Mrs. Clinton, "I think you would have done just the same as your father did. Have you ever faced the necessity of bringing the charge against Susan with your own lips? I don't think you could do it, if it came to the point."

d.i.c.k rose and went to the window. "We could not deny it if they brought us to the point," he said. "No; but that is different."

He thought for a moment, swinging the ta.s.sel of the blind. "It seems to me," he said, "to have come to the point where Humphrey ought to speak--ought to be sent for. _We_ can't do it. No; perhaps you are right; until we are pushed to a point where we shall have to do it.

But he could; and it ought to be done. Why should father be made to suffer these indignities? Why should poor little Joan lose her happiness in this way? I'm not sure that it isn't our duty to speak out, even now, however much we should dislike having to."

"I can't see it in that way, d.i.c.k," said the Squire. "As I said to you once before, Susan was one of us. We should have had to share her disgrace, as a family, if she had been alive; and a very terrible disgrace it would have been, though we might have been shown to be free of blame ourselves. We can't cut ourselves off from her now she is dead. To put it on the lowest ground, it wouldn't do us any good.

n.o.body would respect us more for it. They would say that we could keep silence about it to save our own skins, but put it all on to her directly it became known. I wouldn't mind what they said, if I didn't feel the same myself. I am not going to mind for the future what anybody says. Let them say what they like. We know that we have done nothing wrong--or very little--and that must be enough for us."

d.i.c.k returned to the letter in his hand. "They want us to go for them," he said. "Cheviot must have seen that."

"He did," said the Squire. "I told him I should consider what was to be done."

"Have you considered it?" d.i.c.k looked at him as if ready to hear a decision, not to advise on one.

"Your mother and I think we had better take no steps, for the reason I have already given."

"It's plain enough what it means," said d.i.c.k. "They want the story out. They think they will gain, even though it also comes out that she asked you for money. We put too much faith in that weapon. She would give the same reasons that she gave to you. They would sound plausible enough. They have chosen their ground well. I thought they would have spread lies, which we couldn't have proved to be lies, without taking action. I've no doubt that Colne thinks this is the truth, and finds it serves their purpose best. It has certainly served it here."

"For the time," said Mrs. Clinton.

"Well, say you take no notice of this. Are they going to stop at this?

On these lines they can force us to take action, sooner or later, if that is what they want. We ought to be prepared for it."

"We must take each occasion as it comes," said the Squire.

"I think that Humphrey ought to be written to. I don't think it will be possible to avoid taking action, if they press us. We can stand this. We don't know that we shall be able to stand the next move, or the one after. It is he who has got us into this--he, even more than poor Susan, as it turns out. He ought to come home and face it with us. You ought to write to him by this mail, father; or I will, if you like."

"Wait a little, d.i.c.k," said the Squire. "I must think it out. Your mother and I must think it out together."

He was glad enough, a few days later, that Humphrey had not been written to by that mail. For there was a letter from him, from Australia. It was written from the Union Club in Sydney, and ran as follows:

MY DEAR FATHER,

I did not write to you by the last mail, because there was something I wanted to say, and was not quite ready. On the voyage out here I thought constantly of what had happened at home before Susan's death, and asked myself if there was anything I could do in the way of reparation. The money part of it we settled together before I left England; but I think there is something else that I ought to do.

Supposing the story were to come out in some way, and I were out of England, it might be very awkward for you. Mrs. Amberley would be sure to hear of it, and she would be sure to come down on you. You might not feel inclined to tell the whole story, to clear yourself of any complicity in what I did, and it might be weeks or months before you could get at me.

So I have put down exactly what happened, in the form of an affidavit, which I am sending you under another cover. You can keep it by you, to use if the occasion should ever arise. I am not at all sure that if Mrs. Amberley ever comes back to England and makes any attempt to reinstate herself, it ought not to be sent to her; but I cannot bring myself to ask you to do that. I only say that if you think it ought to be done, I shall accept your decision. I should do again what I did to save Susan, and of course it would be great pain to me to have her name brought forward now; but she was so sincerely sorry for what she had done before she died, that I believe she would have been glad for me to take any steps to put the wrong right as far as possible. But, as I say, it is too hard to make up my mind to take what I suppose would be the only step that could really put everything right as far as we are concerned. You might tell mother and d.i.c.k about it now, and I will leave it in your hands.

I have made up my mind to stay out here for a year or two, and possibly for good. I like the country, and I like the people. I have made a good many friends already, especially here in Sydney. I am staying in this club, and it is like being amongst one's friends at home, except that everybody seems to have something to do. I have been up country, and I like that better still. In a month or so I am going on to a sheep station to learn the job, and if I find it suits me I shall ask you to help me buy one of my own. One gets a great deal of open-air life, and the work is interesting, and not too arduous. I mean that one could get down here, and to the other cities, and go home on a visit every few years. I shouldn't know what to do in England now, and I'm tired of doing nothing. Here I should have plenty to do, and could forget a good deal of the past, which has been so painful to all of us.

Give my love to mother, and all of them. I will write to her by the next mail.

Your affectionate son, HUMPHREY.

The paper to which Humphrey had referred was in a long envelope among the Squire's other letters. He opened it, and read a plain, straightforward account of everything that had happened within Humphrey's knowledge.

"I went to my father on May 29th," part of it ran, "and asked him to pay this sum to Gotch. When he refused, I told him under a promise of secrecy of my wife's action, and told him that a concession to Gotch would have the indirect effect of keeping this from being known, and save himself and my family, as well as my wife, from the disgrace of an exposure. He told me that if that was the only way in which silence could be kept, matters must take their course, and refused to do anything. I then went to my sister-in-law, Mrs. Richard Clinton, and persuaded her to let Gotch have the money, which she did, knowing nothing of why I wanted it paid to him....

"My father advised me to tell Lord Sedbergh of what had happened, or to allow him to tell him, and if possible to get him to accept the price of the necklace that had been stolen....

"Just before her death, my wife asked me to do what I could to put right the wrong that she had done, and I sign this account of what she told me, and of what happened afterwards within my knowledge, in the firm belief that she would have wished me to do it...."

So there was the exoneration of the Squire, of everything that he had done, in his hands, to use as he pleased.

His thoughts were tender towards the son who had given him so much trouble, but now seemed to be in such a fair way of making up for the mistakes of his past life. As he sat and thought about him, it was not, at first, the relief that he had so honourably sent, little knowing how pat to the occasion it would come, that filled his thoughts, but the decision that Humphrey had come to with regard to his own future.

It seemed to the Squire an eminently right one. Humphrey was going on to the land, on which every man, according to his view, had the best chance of making the most of his life, and escaping the perils that beset the town-dweller. That it was in that great new country, where the land meant so much more even than it did in England, where there were still fields to conquer, still room in the great pastoral or agricultural armies, that Humphrey was going to make himself a place, was an added fitness. He would be entering on a new life in a new land. He was young yet. He would forget the past, but he would not forget the lessons he had learnt from it. He might even marry again; the Squire's vision broadened to embrace a new branch of the Clinton tree, to flourish in years to come on the fertile soil of that Britain overseas. Life on the land--it was the same in essence wherever it was lived, healthy, useful, and honourable. Thank G.o.d that Humphrey had embraced it! Thank G.o.d for one Clinton more to live it, in honour and well-being!

When he came to consider the doc.u.ment that Humphrey had put into his hands, he could not quite make up his mind what to do with it. He thought he would go down to the Dower House and consult d.i.c.k; but went to find his wife instead.

"I am glad that Humphrey has done this," she said, "very glad indeed.

I think it is plain what use he thinks should be made of it, although he cannot bring himself to say so."

"You think that it ought to be sent to Mrs. Amberley?"

"I think that if that is done, and you write and tell him so, he will recognise that it was that feeling that directed him to write it. It will be full rest.i.tution. No need for us to balance her guilt and her punishment. She was wronged there, whether she was actually punished for it or not. Poor Susan's last cry to me was, 'If I could only do something to put it right before I die!' This will put it right, as far as any sin can be put right. It has been the one thing lacking.

And it comes from Humphrey--from her, through Humphrey."