John Enderby | Page 9

words, detached from your character, sir, would be traitorous; but as we stand, two gentlemen of England face to face, they seem to me like the words of an honest man, and I love honesty before all other, things. Get to your home, sir. You must not budge from it until I send for you. Then, as proof of your fidelity to the ruler of your country, you shall go on whatever mission I send you."
"Your Highness, I will do what seems my duty in the hour of your summons."
"You shall do the will of the Lord," answered the Protector, and, bowing a farewell, turned upon his heel. Enderby looked after him a moment, then moved towards the door, and as he went out to mount his horse he muttered to himself:
"The will of the Lord as ordained by Oliver Cromwell--humph!"
Then he rode away up through Trafalgar Square and into the Tottenham Court Road, and so on out into the Shires until he came to Enderby House.
Outside all was as he had left it seven years before, though the hedges were not so well kept and the grass was longer before the house. An air of loneliness pervaded all the place. No one met him at the door. He rode round into the court-yard and called. A man-servant came out. From him he learned that four of Cromwell's soldiers were quartered in the house, that all the old servants, save two, were gone, and that his son had been expelled the place by Cromwell's order two days before. Inside the house there was less change. Boon companion of the boisterous cavaliers as his son had been, the young man's gay hours had been spent more away from Enderby House than in it.
When young Enderby was driven from his father's house by Cromwell, he determined to join the Scotch army which was expected soon to welcome Charles the Second from France. There he would be in contact with Lord Rippingdale and his Majesty. When Cromwell was driven from his place, great honours might await him. Hearing in London, however, that his father had returned, and was gone on to the estate, he turned his horse about and rode back again, travelling by night chiefly, and reached Enderby House four days after his father's arrival there.
He found his father seated alone at the dinner-table. Swinging wide open the door of the dining-room he strode in aggressively.
The old man stood up in his place at the table and his eyes brightened expectantly when he saw his son, for his brain was quickened by the thought that perhaps, after all his wrong-doing, the boy had come back to stand by him, a repentant prodigal. He was a man of warm and firm spirit, and now his breast heaved with his emotions. This boy had been the apple of his eye. Since the day of his birth he had looked for great things from him, and had seen in him the refined perpetuation of the sturdy race of the Enderbys. He counted himself but a rough sort of country gentleman, and the courtly face of his son had suggested the country gentleman cast in a finer mould. He was about to speak kindly as of old, but the young man, with clattering spurs, came up to the other end of the table, and with a dry insolence said:
"By whose invitation do you come here?"
The blood fled from the old man's heart. For a moment he felt sick, and his face turned white. He dropped his head a little and looked at his son steadily and mournfully.
"Shall a man need an invitation to his own house, my son?" he said at last.
The arrogant lips of the young man tightened; he tossed up his head. "The house is mine. I am the master here. You are an outlaw."
"An outlaw no longer," answered the old man, "for the Protector has granted me again the home of which I was cruelly dispossessed."
"The Protector is a rebel!" returned the young man, and his knuckles rapped petulantly upon the table. "I stand for the King--for King Charles the Second. When you were dispossessed, his late martyred Majesty made me master of this estate and a knight also."
The old man's hands clinched, in the effort to rule himself to quietness.
"You are welcome to the knighthood which I have never accepted," said he; "but for these estates--" All at once a fierce anger possessed him, and the great shoulders heaved up and down with emotion--"but for these estates, sir, no law nor king can take them from me. I am John Enderby, the first son of a first son, the owner of these lands since the time my mother gave me birth. You, sir, are the first of our name that ever was