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To my friend, William Van Bueren Portlaw, I leave my dogs, rods, and guns with a recommendation that he use them and his legs. "7th. To my sister, Lady Tressilvain, I leave my book of comic Bridge rules, and to her husband a volume of Methodist hymns. "I'll be in town again, shortly, and expect you to have my will ready to be signed and witnessed.
But Malcourt let him tell the news in his own way; and he did, imparting it in bits with naive enjoyment, apparently utterly unconscious that he was doing exactly what his superintendent had told him to do. "You are a diplomat, aren't you?" said Malcourt with a weary smile. "A little, a little," admitted Portlaw modestly.
"What you need are 'Drover's Remedies," observed Wayward, peering at him through his spectacles; and Portlaw unsuspiciously made a memorandum of the famous live-stock and kennel panacea for future personal emergencies.
"Well, we're going to try an old English receipt on those trout," he began cheerfully and stopped short at sight of Hamil's face. "What's the matter?" he asked bluntly. "Nothing." Hamil returned to his chair and picked up a book; Portlaw looked at him for a moment, then, perplexed, sorted his mail and began to open the envelopes.
And now, in the two years of his official tenure, Malcourt already completely dominated him, often bullied him, criticised him to his face, betrayed no illusions concerning the absolute self-interest which dictated Portlaw's policy in all things, coolly fixed and regulated all salaries, including his own, and, in short, matched Portlaw's undisguised selfishness with a cynicism so sparkling and so frankly ruthless that Portlaw gradually formed for him a real attachment.
Ascott was not at Pride's Hall her house when he presented himself at the door. Her servant, evidently instructed, did not know where Mrs. Ascott and Miss Palliser had gone or when they might return. So Portlaw betook himself heavily to the village inn, where he insulted his astonished stomach with a noonday dinner, and found the hard wooden chairs exceedingly unpleasant.
Cardross laughed gently over her embroidery; Malcourt, who was reading the stock column in the News, turned and looked curiously at Hamil, then at Shiela. Then catching Mrs. Carrick's eye: "Portlaw is rather worried over the market," he said. "I think he's going North in a day or two." "Why, Louis!" exclaimed Mrs. Cardross; "then you will be going, too, I suppose."
Portlaw consulted his note-book, made a wry face, and gave Malcourt the exact total. Malcourt turned carelessly in his chair. "O Herbert!" he called across to his brother-in-law; "don't you and Helen want to take us on?" "Rather!" replied Tressilvain briskly; and came trotting across the room, his close-set black eyes moving restlessly from Malcourt to Portlaw.
"My Lord!" said Portlaw plaintively to Malcourt, "I had no idea she'd do such a thing to me; had you?" "Didn't I tell you she would?" said Malcourt. "I know women better than you do, though you don't believe it." "But I thought she was rather fond of me!" protested Portlaw indignantly. "That may be the reason she's going to chasten you, friend.
Oh, it's a gay region; Lake Desolation lies just beyond that spur; Lake Eternity east of us; Little Scalp Lake west a fine bunch of names for a landscape in hell; but Portlaw won't change them.