Downstairs at Winsyatt they knew very well what was going on; the uncle was out to spite the nephew. With the rural working class’s innate respect for good husbandry they despised Charles for not visiting more often—in short, for not buttering up Sir Robert at every opportunity. Servants in those days were regarded as little more than furniture, and their masters frequently forgot they had both ears and intelligences; certain abrasive exchanges between the old man and his heir had not gone unnoticed and undiscussed. And though there was a disposition among the younger female staff to feel sorry for the handsome Charles, the sager part took a kind of ant’s-eye view of the frivolous grasshopper and his come-uppance. They had worked all their lives for their wages; and they were glad to see Charles punished for his laziness.

Besides, Mrs. Tomkins, who was very much as Ernestina suspected, an upper-middle-class adventuress, had shrewdly gone out of her way to ingratiate herself with the housekeeper and the butler; and those two worthies had set their imprimatur—or ducatur in matrimonium—upon the plump and effusive widow; who furthermore had, upon being shown a long-unused suite in the before-mentioned east wing, remarked to the housekeeper how excellent a nursery the rooms would make. It was true that Mrs. Tomkins had a son and two daughters by her first marriage; but in the housekeeper’s opinion—graciously extended to Mr. Benson, the butler—Mrs. Tomkins was as good as expecting again.

“It could be daughters, Mrs. Trotter.”

“She’s a trier, Mr. Benson. You mark my words. She’s a trier.”

The butler sipped his dish of tea, then added, “And tips well.” Which Charles, as one of the family, did not.

The general substance of all this had come to Sam’s ears, while he waited down in the servants’ hall for Charles. It had not come pleasantly in itself or pleasantly inasmuch as Sam, as the servant of the grasshopper, had to share part of the general judgment on him; and all this was not altogether unconnected with a kind of second string Sam had always kept for his bow: a faute de mieux dream in which he saw himself in the same exalted position at Winsyatt that Mr. Benson now held. He had even casually planted this seed—and one pretty certain to germinate, if he chose—in Mary’s mind. It was not nice to see one’s tender seedling, even if it was not the most cherished, so savagely uprooted.

Charles himself, when they left Winsyatt, had not said a word to Sam, so officially Sam knew nothing about his blackened hopes. But his master’s blackened face was as good as knowledge.

And now this.

Sam at last ate his congealing mutton, and chewed it, and swallowed it; and all the time his eyes stared into the future.

Charles’s interview with his uncle had not been stormy, since both felt guilty—the uncle for what he was doing, the nephew for what he had failed to do in the past. Charles’s reaction to the news, delivered bluntly but with telltale averted eyes, had been, after the first icy shock, stiffly polite.

“I can only congratulate you, sir, and wish you every happiness.”

His uncle, who had come upon him soon after we left Charles in the drawing room, turned away to a window, as if to gain heart from his green acres. He gave a brief account of his passion. He had been rejected at first: that was three weeks ago. But he was not the man to turn tail at the first refusal. He had sensed a certain indecision in the lady’s voice. A week before he had taken train to London and “galloped straight in again”; the obstinate hedge was triumphantly cleared. “She said ‘no’ again, Charles, but she was weeping. I knew I was over.” It had apparently taken two or three days more for the definitive “Yes” to be spoken.

“And then, my dear boy, I knew I had to face you. You are the very first to be told.”

But Charles remembered then that pitying look from old Mrs. Hawkins; all Winsyatt had the news by now. His uncle’s somewhat choked narration of his amorous saga had given him time to absorb the shock. He felt whipped and humiliated; a world less. But he had only one defense: to take it calmly, to show the stoic and hide the raging boy.

“I appreciate your punctiliousness, Uncle.”

“You have every right to call me a doting old fool. Most of my neighbors will.”

“Late choices are often the best.”

“She’s a lively sort of woman, Charles. Not one of your damned niminy-piminy modern misses.” For one sharp moment Charles thought this was a slight on Ernestina—as it was, but not intended. His uncle went obliviously on. “She says what she thinks. Nowadays some people consider that signifies a woman’s a thruster. But she’s not.” He enlisted the agreement of his parkland. “Straight as a good elm.”

“I never for a moment supposed she could be anything else.”

The uncle cast a shrewd look at him then; just as Sam played the meek footman with Charles, so did Charles sometimes play the respectful nephew with the old man.

“I would rather you were angry than…” he was going to say a cold fish, but he came and put his arm round Charles’s shoulder; for he had tried to justify his decision by working up anger against Charles—and he was too good a sportsman not to know it was a mean justification. “Charles, now damn it, it must be said. This brings an alteration to your prospects. Though at my age, heaven knows…” that “bullfinch” he did refuse. “But if it should happen, Charles, I wish you to know that whatever may come of the marriage, you will not go unprovided for. I can’t give you the Little House; but I wish emphatically that you take it as yours for as long as you live. I should like that to be my wedding gift to Ernestina and yourself—and the expenses of doing the place up properly, of course.”

“That is most generous of you. But I think we have more or less decided to go into the Belgravia house when the lease falls in.”

“Yes, yes, but you must have a place in the country. I will not have this business coming between us, Charles. I shall break it off tomorrow if—”

Charles managed a smile. “Now you are being absurd. You might well have married many years ago.”

“That may be. But the fact is I didn’t.”

He went nervously to the wall and placed a picture back into alignment. Charles was silent; perhaps he felt less hurt at the shock of the news than at the thought of all his foolish dream of possession as he drove up to Winsyatt. And the old devil should have written. But to the old devil that would have been a cowardice. He turned from the painting.

“Charles, you’re a young fellow, you spend half your life traveling about. You don’t know how deuced lonely, bored, I don’t know what it is, but half the time I feel I might as well be dead.”

Charles murmured, “I had no idea…”

“No, no, I don’t mean to accuse you. You have your own life to lead.” But he did still, secretly, like so many men without children, blame Charles for falling short of what he imagined all sons to be—dutiful and loving to a degree ten minutes’ real fatherhood would have made him see was a sentimental dream. “All the same there are things only a woman can bring one. The old hangings in this room, now. Had you noticed? Mrs. Tomkins called them gloomy one day. And damn it, I’m blind, they were gloomy. Now that’s what a woman does. Makes you see what’s in front of your nose.” Charles felt tempted to suggest that spectacles performed the same function a great deal more cheaply, but he merely bowed his head in understanding. Sir Robert rather unctuously waved his hand. “What say you to these new ones?”

Charles then had to grin. His uncle’s aesthetic judgments had been confined for so long to matters such as the depth of a horse’s withers and the superiority of Joe Manton over any other gunmaker known to history that it was rather like hearing a murderer ask his opinion of a nursery rhyme.