Part 5 (1/2)

”You're a sportsman?”

”All men living in the country are,--more or less.”

”Colonel Askerton shoots a great deal. He has the shooting of Belton, you know. He'll be delighted, I'm sure, to see you if you are here some time in September. But you, coming from Norfolk, would not care for partridge-shooting in Somersets.h.i.+re.”

”I don't see why it shouldn't be as good here as there.”

”Colonel Askerton thinks he has got a fair head of game upon the place.”

”I dare say. Game is easily kept if people knew how to set about it.”

”Colonel Askerton has a very good keeper, and has gone to a great deal of expense since he has been here.”

”I'm my own head-keeper,” said Belton; ”and so I will be,--or rather should be, if I had this place.”

Something in the lady's tone had grated against his feelings and offended him; or perhaps he thought that she a.s.sumed too many of the airs of proprietors.h.i.+p because the shooting of the place had been let to her husband for thirty pounds a-year.

”I hope you don't mean to say you'll turn us out,” said Mrs.

Askerton, laughing.

”I have no power to turn anybody out or in,” said he. ”I've got nothing to do with it.”

Clara, perceiving that matters were not going quite pleasantly between her old and new friend, thought it best to take her departure. Belton, as he went, lifted his hat from his head, and Clara could not keep herself from thinking that he was not only very handsome, but that he looked very much like a gentleman, in spite of his occupation as a farmer.

”By-bye, Clara,” said Mrs. Askerton; ”come down and see me to-morrow, there's a dear. Don't forget what a dull life I have of it.” Clara said that she would come. ”And I shall be so happy to see Mr. Belton if he will call before he leaves you.” At this Belton again raised his hat from his head, and muttered some word or two of civility. But this, his latter muttering, was different from the first, for he had altogether regained his presence of mind.

”You didn't seem to get on very well with my friend,” said Clara, laughing, as soon as they had turned away from the cottage.

”Well, no;--that is to say, not particularly well or particularly badly. At first I took her for somebody else I knew slightly ever so long ago, and I was thinking of that other person at the time.”

”And what was the other person's name?”

”I can't even remember that at the present moment.”

”Mrs. Askerton was a Miss Oliphant.”

”That wasn't the other lady's name. But, independently of that, they can't be the same. The other lady married a Mr. Berdmore.”

”A Mr. Berdmore!” Clara as she repeated the name felt convinced that she had heard it before, and that she had heard it in connection with Mrs. Askerton. She certainly had heard the name of Berdmore p.r.o.nounced, or had seen it written, or had in some shape come across the name in Mrs. Askerton's presence; or at any rate somewhere on the premises occupied by that lady. More than this she could not remember; but the name, as she had now heard it from her cousin, became at once distinctly connected in her memory with her friends at the cottage.

”Yes,” said Belton; ”a Mr. Berdmore. I knew more of him than of her, though for the matter of that, I knew very little of him either. She was a fast-going girl, and his friends were very sorry. But I think they are both dead or divorced, or that they have come to grief in some way.”

”And is Mrs. Askerton like the fast-going lady?”

”In a certain way. Not that I remember what the fast-going lady was like; but there was something about this woman that put me in mind of the other. Vigo was her name; now I recollect it,--a Miss Vigo. It's nine or ten years ago now, and I was little more than a boy.”

”Her name was Oliphant.”

”I don't suppose they have anything to do with each other. What riled me was the way she talked of the shooting. People do when they take a little shooting. They pay some trumpery thirty or forty pounds a year, and then they seem to think that it's almost the same as though they owned the property themselves. I've known a man talk of his manor because he had the shooting of a wood and a small farm round it. They are generally shopkeepers out of London, gin distillers, or brewers, or people like that.”