229
/p>
The younger brother looked with a sort of inquisitive grin at the elder.
"You're ready to put your money on him to that extent? Well, all I know is, father's dead set against him--and I've no use for him--never had!"
"That's because you didn't know him," said Stephen briefly. "What did you ever have against him?"
He looked sharply at his brother. The disagreeable idea crossed his mind that his father, whose weakness for Maurice he well knew, might have told the story to the lad.
Maurice laughed, and pulled his scanty moustache as he turned away.
"Oh! I don't know--we never hit it off. My fault, of course. Ta, ta."
As Stephen rode away he was haunted for a few minutes by some disagreeable reminiscences of a school holiday when Maurice had been discovered drunk in one of the public-houses of the village by the Rector, who had firmly dug him out and walked him home. But this and other recollections, not dissimilar, soon passed away, under the steady assault of thoughts far more compelling....
* * * * *
He took the bridle-path through Maudeley, and was presently aware, in a clearing of the wood, of the figure of Meynell in front of him.
The Rector was walking in haste, without his dogs. He was therefore out on business, which indeed was implied by the energy of his whole movement.
He looked round, frowning as Stephen overtook him.
"Is that you, Stephen? Are you going home?"
"Yes. And you?"
Meynell did not immediately reply. The autumn wood, a splendour of gold and orange leaf overhead, of red-brown leaf below, with passages here and there where the sun struck through the beech trees, of purest lemon-yellow, or intensest green, breathed and murmured round them. A light wind sang in the tree-tops, and every now and then the plain broke in--purple through the gold; with its dim colliery chimneys, its wreaths of smoke, and its paler patches which stood for farms and villages.
Meynell walked by the horse in silence for