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Updated: May 25, 2025
His silence clothed him like armour, and he never really emerged from it save when a fiendish sense of humour tempted him. This, and this alone, so it seemed to Babbacombe, had any power to draw him out. And the instant he had flung his gibe at the object thereof, he would retreat again into that impenetrable shell of silence.
"Why go into these details?" he questioned harshly. "I warned you at the outset what to expect. I am a swindler to the backbone. The sooner you bundle me back to where I came from, the better. I sha'n't run away this time." "I shall not prosecute," Babbacombe said. "You will not!" West blazed into sudden ferocity. He had the look of a wild animal at bay.
He swung around with the words and shut the window with a bang. But again Babbacombe took his cue from that inner prompting to which he had trusted all his life. For the first time he liked the man; for the first time, so it seemed to him, he caught a glimpse of the soul into which the iron had been so deeply driven.
But Babbacombe was dissatisfied. "Do see a doctor. I am sure it ought to be properly dressed," he urged. "I'll take you myself in the motor, if you will." She yielded at length to his persuasion, though plainly against her will, and an hour later they drove off together, leaving the rest of the party to follow the hounds. At the park gate they overtook West, walking swiftly.
"You can put it down to anything you like," he said, "except philanthropy." West considered a moment. "Very well, sir," he said finally, his aggressive tone slightly modified. "In that case I will come with you." He turned about, and thrust his arms into the coat Babbacombe held for him, turned up the collar, and without a backward glance, stepped into the waiting motor.
Sweeping round a rise in the ground, they came into sudden sight of the castle. Ancient and splendid it rose before them, its battlements shining in the sun a heritage of which any man might be proud. Babbacombe waited for some word of admiration from his companion. But he waited in vain. West was mute.
Later in the day he went again, and found that the doctor was with her. He decided to wait, and paced up and down the drawing-room for nearly an hour. Eventually the doctor came. Babbacombe knew him slightly, and was not surprised when, at sight of him in the doorway, the doctor turned aside at once, and entered the room.
He settled to the work with a certain grim relish, and it was a perpetual marvel to Babbacombe that he mastered it from the outset with such facility. Keepers and labourers eyed him askance for awhile, but West's imperturbability took effect before very long. They accepted him without enthusiasm, but also without rancour, as a man who could hold his own.
"It was," said West. "Then this cheque this cheque for two hundred and fifty pounds where did it come from, West?" There was a note of entreaty in Babbacombe's voice. West jerked up his head at the sound. It was a gesture openly contemptuous. "Can't you guess?" he said. Babbacombe stiffened at the callous question. "You refuse to answer me?" he asked. "That is my answer," said West.
The smallest digression on Babbacombe's part he invariably ignored as unworthy of his attention, till even Babbacombe, with all his courtly consideration for others, began to regard him as a mere automaton, and almost to treat him as such. Had he realised in the faintest degree what West was enduring at that time, his heart must have warmed to the man, despite his repellent exterior.
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