CONTERMINOUS COURSES
Between five and six o'clock in the afternoon of Monday, August 16th, when the last train but one steamed into the small station at Inglesby, six miles from Gateby, one passenger left it. He was a tall man in a light tweed suit. His luggage consisted of a portmanteau and a gun-case. After looking in vain for a conveyance outside the station, he found the station-master and asked where he could get one to take him to Gateby; the station-master directed him to the inn.
Between six and seven, but rather more than an hour later, the last train of the day came in. It also deposited a single passenger—another sportsman, for he too carried a gun-case; moreover, he went through the same performance as the last arrival: looked first for a conveyance and then for the station-master, to whom he put the same question about a trap and Gateby, and from whom he received the same direction. But the official was struck with the coincidence, and dropped a word or two about "the other gentleman;" at which this one, whose name was Edmonstone, started, though he walked off to the inn, a porter following with his baggage, without putting further questions.
The inn had a great square parlour, scrupulouslyclean and flagged with red tiles, where Dick entered, and clattered on the well-scoured table. The person of the landlady, who presently appeared, was in the nicest harmony with floor and furniture, so neat and spotless, and in hand and face so very red. Her speech, however, as she asked what was wanted, was by way of being rough.
"In the first place," said Edmonstone, "two glasses of beer"; and presently handed one to the porter, who tendered his respects, received sixpence, repeated his respects with emphasis, and withdrew. "In the next place a horse and trap."
"We've no hosses an' traps here, yooung man."
"Come now!" said Dick. "They told me at the station this was just the place where there was one."
"Mebbe it is, but it's out now. Where is't ye want to be?"
"Gateby."
"Gaätby! Why, that's where it's gone with t'other gentleman!"
"Indeed? To Colonel Bristo's, do you know?"
"That was it."
"It's a pity I didn't come by the other train!" His tone puzzled the woman. "We might have travelled together, by Jove! What was the gentleman like?"
"Very tall."
"Taller than I am, I suppose?"
"Yes—easy."
"A fair beard?"
"To be sure. You know him, then?"
"Very well indeed. We ought to have travelled together. Has the trap that took him come back yet?"
"Not it. It hasn't had time."
"It must go back with me when it does. Don't look like that, woman; here's a sovereign for the job!"
He flung the coin on the table. The woman stared at him and at it, seemed doubtful whether to take or leave the sovereign, but eventually overcame her scruples, honestly determining to throw in a good square meal for the money.
"The trap won't be back yet a bit, sir. You'll be wanting——"
"Nothing, except to be left alone," broke in the strange guest. "That's all the trouble I shall put you to—that, and to tell me when the trap's ready."
There was no use in saying more to the gentleman. He might not be quite right—he might fly at a body. The good woman left him gazing abstractedly out of the window; yet she had scarcely closed the door when she heard him clattering to and fro over the tiled floor like a caged beast.
His thoughts were in a tumult. He calmed them by a strenuous effort. He strove to look the matter in the face. What was the matter?
Ned Ryan, the Australian outlaw, who had been screened on condition that he came near the Bristos no more, had broken that condition; had somehow heard that Edmonstone was not to be one of the shooting-party in Yorkshire, and was even now the Colonel's newly-arrived guest.
After all, perhaps this was no more than Dick had been prepared for, since his journey from Teddington to Waterloo in the same compartment with Jem Pound and Elizabeth Ryan; he had listened to a villain's suspicionsof a brother villain; from that moment he had shared those suspicions. Dick realised then, and only then, that while he was not near the Bristos they were not safe from the advances of "Mr. Miles," if he was bold enough to make them. But the sudden realisation of his fears took Dick's breath away; he had not bargained to find Miles already at Gateby—he had no definite plan for the defeat of Miles, and he was certain that the man described to him by the mistress of the inn was Miles—as certain as if he had seen him himself.
Then how was he to act? Was he to show no quarter, since this villain had played false? That course presented difficulties—dangers as well; and at the least it involved a violent scene under Colonel Bristo's roof. Must he, then, parley a second time with the villain—let him off again, trust him again, go on shielding a known desperado? No. Ned Ryan could be trusted no further, shielded no more. There were more things than one to be considered—more people than one. The man must receive his deserts.
And to accomplish this—to deliver to justice a criminal of the first water—this young Edmonstone went blindly forward, with thoughts of doing it without fuss and all but single-handed.
There was little daylight left when Dick was driven out of Inglesby; night fell long before he saw the lights of Gateby; it was fully nine when they reached the little square stone house behind the hedge. The dogs in the kennel not far from the house barked an alarm. The front door opened, and Dick saw a well-known figure outlined against the light of the passage.It was the Colonel himself, and his greeting was most cordial. Yet how hard it was to put any heart into the answer! Dick tried, failed miserably, and knew it. Before there was time for many sentences, Dick found himself hustled into a room—a long, faded, unlovely room—in which sat two ladies, Miss Bristo and Mrs. Parish.
The meeting between Alice and Dick—who had not seen each other since that fateful second evening of July—was perfectly careless without being conspicuously cold. It may be assumed that neither was wholly free from some sort of agitation; but it is to be suspected that each had prepared for the same, and masked accordingly. The mummery on both sides was excellently well managed.
Observations the most natural in the world, as well as the most commonplace, were the order of the minute.
"How rude," said Alice, "you must have thought us not to send to meet you! But we have actually only one pony, and he had gone to Melmerbridge, which is in the opposite direction."
"We thought," said Mrs. Parish, "that as you had not telegraphed, and did not come by the usual train, you could not be coming to-night."
"Pray don't name it," Dick answered to the one lady; and to the other: "I really must apologise for forgetting to wire."
The window was wide open, for the night was warm: and through the window came the voices of men chatting, and the faint scent of cigars. Among the voices Dick immediately distinguished one that hewas prepared for, and listened for—the soft, deep voice of Miles. Strangely enough, he only caught the well-known tones on the moment of entering the room; speaking himself, and being spoken to by those in the room, he could hear no more than a hum outside; and when he listened again, during the first pause, he could no longer hear Miles.
Very soon the conversation outside ceased altogether, and a moment later the men appeared in the room. There were but two of them, and Miles was not one. As for Mr. Oliver and Captain Awdry, they had only come for the first three days, and had both gone on the Saturday evening.
Dick remembered one of the two men; a heavy-jawed, squarely-built young man, whose eyes were of pale green, whose chin never by any chance appeared to have been shaved since the day before yesterday, whose expression in repose was too demure for a man. This was Philip Robson, and Dick shook hands with him. The dapper little dark man Dick had never seen before. Whoever he was, he seemed to know Alice pretty well, by the way he promptly pestered her for a song.
"So you have only recently returned from Australia, I understand," Robson said to Dick. "I, too, am fresh from those parts. And I am told you came by sailing-ship—so did I—as surgeon."
The dapper young gentleman at the other side of the room here made an inane remark in a loud tone about both being in the same boat, which was ignored by the worthy doctor and Dick, who stared. If they were listening they must have heard this wag informingMiss Bristo that she ought to laugh, and vowing that he would throw away no more good things in mere perishable words of mouth.
"No," said Alice, "write them. It is far the best. The point is so much more easily seen in print; and then, instead of pearls wasted on us poor things, the whole world roars at them."
"Sixty thousand people have the chance," Laurence Pinckney answered—in allusion, it was believed, to the circulation of "his" weekly paper.
But he seemed to have nothing smart ready just then, for he went back to begging for a song.
"Mr. Miles was somewhat tired, I presume, Dr. Robson?" Mrs. Parish was saying. "You see he had a great rush to come to-day. We only knew this morning, when we got his telegram—so thoughtful of him to send one!—that he had found it possible to come at all."
"Yes. He appeared to me to be considerably fatigued—indeed, when he left us I thought him looking pale. I offered to mix him a little something that would fit him for to-morrow. But he wouldn't let me."
Cousin Philip became professional on the slightest provocation.
Dick was asking the Colonel about the sport so far.
"Forty-eight brace the first day, forty-two the second; five guns; over dogs. But," added the Colonel, whispering, "my young friend over there hits nothing at all. Philip is fair; but as for me, I don't see as I used to. Awdry was the crack shot. But you and Miles will be a better pair than Awdry and Oliver."
Dick and Miles—coupled! That silenced Dick. He felt his very skin bristle at the thoughts that poured in upon his mind.
"Do you know Mr. Miles?"
The question was put in a solemn undertone by Cousin Philip. Considering Dick's thoughts at that moment, it was almost a startling question. He waited a moment before replying.
"Yes," he then said slowly, "I know him."
"An interesting man," said the doctor, "a profoundly interesting man; that I can see, and I congratulate myself on making his acquaintance. I shall enjoy his society, I know. And a Colonial, too."
"My dear fellow, Colonials are as good as any other people."
Dick had often to tell people that; but the words were scarcely spoken before it struck him that, in this connection, they were a little incongruous.
"They may be; they may be. But when I travelled for an insurance company in New Zealand, I know I didn't think so. We went round the stations—the agent and I—insuring people, you know."
Dick did know. He had himself met with many such professional Samaritans in Riverina. They were not popular there.
"Well," continued the young doctor, "I don't think we were always well treated. In some places they actually seemed to regard us with suspicion. We didn't meet with the least respect, I can assure you. Once or twice we were downright insulted. Now in England——"
"Let us listen to this song," said Dick. Robson was really too ponderous.
Alice had at last yielded to the importunities of Laurence Pinckney, and was singing something in French. That young gentleman turned over the leaves, but he did not look entirely appreciative. When the song was over, he complained of the French words. He wanted something in English; though he could not refrain from a trenchant and sweeping criticism of all the words of all the ballads and songs foisted on the musical world during this last decade of a degenerate age.
There was no more singing, however; and presently the small party broke up.
"Early hours for the moors," the Colonel said. "Philip, will you show Dick his room? I'm sorry we've had to put you outside, Dick; but there are more of us out than in, and there's really no choice. We all rough it when we go a-shooting."
Dick laughed, and mentioned that the last few years had not made him luxurious. The Colonel was on the stairs, candle in hand. Dick would have liked to speak to him then and there, and tell him everything—but Robson was there too: an inquisitive fellow, unless Dick's memory was at fault; a man who would prick up his ears if he heard a private interview asked for in his presence. So Dick merely said:
"I must be up early and look round. Shall I see you, sir, then?"
"See me? Why, you'll find I've been about for a good hour before you dream of awaking! Take it easy, boy; you've been travelling all day. I'm different.I never slept longer than six hours in my life. Good-night, Dick; good-night, Philip;" and Colonel Bristo went off to bed.
Edmonstone followed Robson out into the dark, comforting himself with the determination to tell Colonel Bristo everything before breakfast next morning. They walked for some moments, then stopped before a door that opened upon a flight of deal stairs. A candle and matches were on the bottom step. The good doctor discharged his duty to the full by lighting the candle and handing it to Dick.
"It is the room on the left," said Robson.
"Anyone in the room on the right?"
"No, I think not—I'm sure not. You are over the stable and that; Pinckney and I are a few yards away, over the laundry. Good-night."
"Good-night, Robson. I say, Robson!"
"Well?"
"Who is Pinckney?"
"Son of a brother officer of the Colonel's. Comes from town, I fancy."
"What does he do—besides making an ass of himself?"
"He writes, I think."
"I'm not surprised; he's got cheek enough for anything! Good-night, Robson."
STRANGE HUMILITY
Dick found his room plainly and scantily furnished but delightfully fresh, clean, and comfortable. There was but one narrow strip of carpet by the bedside, but the boards were as snowy as an admiral's poop; the narrow bed stood out into the middle of the room, to the left as you came in at the door. The ceiling, and the walls, and the blind, and the bed, and the tall new candles, and the dressing-table on which they stood, were all very white indeed. At the foot of the bed Dick found his portmanteau and gun-case, and the first thing he did was to put together his gun, and stand it in one corner of the room, ready for next day. He happened to stand it in the corner nearest the bed head, and farthest from the door; but there was no design in that: the whole action was mechanical.
He undressed slowly, or rather he was long in beginning. He stood, resting his elbows on the chest of drawers, and his chin in his palms, and watched the candle burn half-way down before he so much as wound his watch. It was only the wick's last throes that reminded him to put an end to its flickering and get into bed. But by that time Dick's mind was made up. When he lay down to sleep he knew precisely what he was going to do first thing in the morning,and more or less what he meant to say. He fell quickly into a dreamless slumber.
After sleeping like an infant for two or three hours he experienced something very like a dream, and that about the very man of whom he would certainly have dreamt sooner or later. But this was no dream. Dick was awakened: he lay still for a moment, peering through the darkness, and listening with all his ears. Then he started up in his bed, and called sternly:
"Who is there? Who are you?"
At the foot of the bed a tall figure loomed through the darkness. The challenge was answered: first with a short, soft laugh, then in the mildest tones of the man who had passed himself off as Miles the squatter.
"Hush! I have come to explain."
"Oh, it is you!" though Dick had known who it was from the moment the light, stealthy step disturbed him.
"Yes; it isn't a burglar, so lie down again. I tell you I come with a frank explanation. I suppose you will listen to a man?"
"Why should I? You have broken faith with me!"
"It amounts to that, I own. It must seem to you that I deserve no further consideration at your hands. Very well; all I ask is a hearing."
The tones were so unlike anything that could have been expected from the lips of this man that Edmonstone was taken aback; they were so low as to be scarcely audible; they were humble, and they were sad. It was this very humility that at first excited Dick's suspicion.
"I will listen to you now," said he, after a moment's thought, "but it is the last thing I shall do for you. You might first strike a light. There are matches on the dressing-table behind you, and two candles, I think."
Miles complied unsuspectingly with this reasonable request. He was some time, however, in finding the matches. Yet he heard no sound (Dick's arm was so long, so lithe his movement) until the candles were alight; when two loud clicks caused him to wheel suddenly round, throwing one candlestick with a crash to the floor.
Dick was sitting up quietly in his bed, as he had been sitting a moment before; but in his hands was a double-barrelled gun—cocked—the butt not six inches from his shoulder, the muzzle not three feet from Miles's breast. It could be brought to the shoulder in a small fraction of a second. It could be fired with sufficient deadliness without being brought to the shoulder at all. A finger was upon each of the triggers. The light of the single candle glittered upon the barrels.
"Now, my friend," said Dick, "I am ready to listen to you as long as you like."
Miles stared fixedly at the hammers of the gun. He did not speak, he did not draw back. He stood there, in his shirt and trousers, motionless and silent. This was not, as we know, his first interview under arms, but it was the first in which the arms had been in the hands of the other side; moreover, he had once pressed a pistol to the head of this Edmonstone whose gun covered him now. The reversal of things was complete—thetables were turned to the last inch. The strange part of it was that the outwitted bushranger's face showed no trace of cunning baffled, or the fury of an animal at bay, which might have been expected of him. On the contrary, his countenance gradually filled with quite another expression—one of reproach.
"I am not a fool," he said, speaking at last. "I was never yet fool enough to tackle a forlorn hope. Therefore, even if I had come into this room armed to the teeth to offer you violence, I should not dream of competing against those double-barrels. But as I came empty-handed, and in peace, I, for my part, can say all I have to say comfortably into their muzzles—they can make no difference to me, unless you press too hard on those triggers in your anxiety; and if you did, perhaps it would be the best turn you or any man could do me! At the same time you are treating me like a dog. The only words that have left my lips were as submissive as any victor need want; I turned my back on you without the smallest suspicion, yet turn round again to find you pointing a gun at me!"
"You call that bad treatment!" Edmonstone sneered. "You forget, perhaps, that you have no business to be loose in the world; you forget that I found you out and shielded you, wrongly enough, on certain terms, which you have broken! Well, I am reminding you; but I am not likely to give you a second chance of playing me false. That is why I keep the sight of my gun in a line with your stud—so; that is why, if you come a step nearer, I won't answer for consequences."
"Considering," said Miles, "how I treated you afew years ago, and what you owe to that treatment, I should have thought you might behave rather differently to-night; you might have shown a little generosity, outlaw as I am."
"You remind me," said Dick, "that in '82, in the scrub near Balranald, you stuck up me and my mate, and took almost everything we had—except our money. I didn't require to be reminded of that forbearance of yours. I haven't forgotten it, and I know pretty well its worth by now, though hitherto I have overvalued it. But that old account—supposing it to be one, for argument's sake—was squared last month; you have been fool enough to open a new one."
"It is a pity," said Miles, bitterly, "that I didn't let Jem Pound knife you!"
"On the contrary, through saving me then you found one man in England actually ready to screen you from justice. If you had not broken faith with him that man would screen you still; but as it is—Steady! don't move! I am pressing the trigger."
"Do you mean that you are going to betray me after all?" cried Miles, in a quick gasp of dismay, yet drawing back—he had taken a step forward in his agitation.
"What else would you have me do? Give you another chance? Honestly," cried Dick, with honesty in his tone, "I wish that I could! But can you expect it?"
"Listen to me!" cried Miles, in a deep faltering voice. "Listen to me!"
"I am listening."
"The other day, then—I mean the night you foundme out, you and those blood-suckers—I was on the brink of a new life! You smile—but before Heaven it is the truth! I had lived for weeks as I never lived before—among good people. Bad as I was, they influenced me, at first without my knowing it. It was a new side of life to me. I found it was the best side. I grew—well, call it happy. Then I looked back and loathed the old days. I began to map out a better life for myself. I was a new man, starting afresh. I thanked God for my escape, for it seemed like His act."
"If the fellow isn't in earnest," thought Dick, "this is the worst blasphemy I ever heard. I half think he means what he says, poor wretch."
"It was you that blotted out that new existence—just as it opened out before me! It was you that drove me from my haven! It was you that turned me adrift in a city full of foes! So much for your side of the balance between us!"
Dick was half-carried away by the man's rough eloquence, and the note of pathos in his deep tones. But he was only half-carried away; he was a man hard to shift when his stand was once taken. His answer was shrewd:
"That city is the safest place in the world for such as you—safer even than the bush. As to your friends, did you expect to live on them forever?"
The other's vehemence was checked.
"Perhaps you intended to become one of the family!" said Edmonstone scornfully, pursuing his advantage.
Miles pulled himself together, and dismissed thiskeen question with a smile and a wave of the hand; but the smile faded quickly; nor had it been anything better than a ghastly mockery.
"You do not appreciate my position," said Miles presently, fetching a deep sigh; "you cannot put yourself in my place. No honest man could, I suppose! And you shut me off from all decent living; you made me bid good-bye to the people who had befriended me, and somehow—well, made me wish I was a little less the ruffian! I became an outcast! I tried to make new friends, but failed. I had lost my nerve somehow—that was the worst of it! I resolved to throw it up, and quit England. I took my passage for New York, and—"
"Do you mean what you say? Have you actually done that?"
"Yes. The ticket is in my room, which is opposite this room." He pointed to the door. "I can bring it to show you."
"No; stay where you are; I believe you. When do you sail?"
"In a week—next Tuesday."
Dick breathed more freely. Here was an extenuating circumstance of the broken compact. On the whole, Dick was glad to find one.
"Go on," said Dick, in a slightly less hostile tone: "tell me the rest, and what it was that induced you to come up here."
"Surely you can see the rest for yourself? Surely you can put yourself in my place at this point? I own that hearing you were not to be of the party finally induced me to come—I thought you would not hearof it till afterwards; but I came to bid my friends good-bye! to get one more glimpse of a kind of life I had never seen before and shall never see again! for one more week in a pure atmosphere."
"Oh! not to make up to Miss Bristo, then?"
Blunt though the words were, each one was a self-inflicted stab to the heart of the man that spoke them.
"No!" cried Miles, and his voice was turned suddenly hoarse; "no, before Heaven!"
"If I believed it was that, I think I should pull this trigger on the spot."
"It is not," cried Miles; "I swear it is not," he whispered.
And Dick believed him then.
"Why, man," the bushranger went on, more steadily, "you have got me under the whip here. Down with the lash and cut me to ribbons the first time you see me playing false. Keep your eye on me; watch me all day; I can do nothing up here without your knowledge; I cannot speak but you will hear what it is I say. As to Miss Bristo, I will not go near her—but this is a small part of the whole. In my whole conduct you will find me behave like—like a changed man. Only let me stay this week out. But one other thing—a thing I would go down on my knees to you for, if that would do any good: don't open their eyes when I am gone. There will be no need to; they will forget me as Miles the squatter if you let them. Then let them. They think well of me because I saved the old man from drowning. Edmonstone, you can let me keep their good opinions if you will. God help me! they are the only goodopinions I ever honestly earned, because I got them entirely through that simple, paltry affair at the seaside. Do not rob me of them, now or afterwards. That is all I ask."
Dick was beginning to waver.
There was an honest ring in Ned Ryan's asseverations; and after all it was just possible that a villain, who had shown a soft side at least once before, might be softened right through by the gracious influence of an English home. Then Sundown, the bushranger, desperado though he had been, had preserved hands unstained by blood; and Sundown the bushranger had saved him, Edmonstone, from death and ruin in the Australian wilds, and Colonel Bristo from drowning. Such acts could not be made light of or forgotten, no matter who was their author.
Dick was relenting, and the other saw it.
"Stay!" said Miles, suddenly. "You have my word only so far. I can show you a better pledge of good faith if you will let me."
"Where is it?"
"In my room."
Edmonstone nodded. Miles left the room, and returned immediately with a paper, which he handed to Edmonstone.
"Why, this is a receipt of passage-money for two!" said Edmonstone, looking up. "You are not going out alone, then?"
"No," said Miles. His voice was low. His back was to the window, through which grey dawn was now stealing. It was impossible to see the expression on his face—its outline was all that was visible.
"Who is going with you?"
"My wife!" whispered Miles.
Dick was taken aback, glad, incredulous.
"Your wife!" he said. "Then you admit that she is your wife? When did you see her?"
"Yesterday."
"But not until then!" Dick meant to put a question; he did not succeed in his excitement—his tone was affirmative.
"No, not until then," said Miles quietly; "because, though I have been watching her as closely as I dared, it was the first chance I got of seeing her without seeing Pound. He thinks she has not seen me since the night in Bushey Park. She must not escape him until the very day of joining me on board the steamer. If she did, he would find her sooner or later; and then he would find me, which is all he is living for. That man would murder me if he got the chance. Do you understand now?"
Dick made no reply, but it all seemed clear and intelligible to him; Pound's hold upon Mrs. Ryan, and the false position in which that fiend placed the woman at the meeting of husband and wife, which accounted for Ryan's misunderstanding and heartless treatment of his wife on that occasion; the reconciliation of husband and wife; their projected departure for America; the necessity of deceiving Pound meanwhile, and getting away without his knowledge. All these things seemed natural enough; and, told in the desperately earnest tones of a strong man humbled, they carried conviction with them. Nor were they pleaded in vain.
The way in which Dick finally put the matter was this:—
"Remember," he said, "that it is for my friends' sake as much as for yours; that this is our second treaty; and that if you break one particle of it there are always four men in the house here, and villagers in plenty within a cooee of us."
"I know all these things," said Miles, very humbly, "and will forget none of them."
And so the interview ended.
When Miles was gone, Dick lifted his gun, which had lain long upon the counterpane, pressed the lever, bent down the barrels, and aimed them at the glimmering window-blind. The early morning light shone right through the gleaming bores—the gun had been empty all the time! Dick felt ashamed of the part that it had played in the interview.
AN ALTERED MAN
Colonel Bristo was rambling about the place, according to habit, for a good hour the next morning before the early breakfast, but he saw nothing of Dick until the bell rang for that meal.
"I thought you meant turning out early?" said the old fellow to the young one, with a smile. "I've been looking for you in vain; but I'm glad you followed my advice and took it easy. Did you sleep well, though? That's the main thing; and 'pon my soul, you look as though you had been awake all night!"
"Oh, I was all right, thanks, sir; I slept pretty well," said Dick, with awkward haste.
The Colonel felt pretty sure that Dick had been all wrong, and slept not at all. There was a haggard look about him that put the fact beyond the contradiction of words.
"You didn't see Miles, I suppose?" said the Colonel after a moment's thought. "His room is close to yours, you know."
"I did see him. We—we exchanged a few words."
Dick's tone and manner were strange.
"Confound them both!" thought the Colonel. "They have clashed already. Yes, that is it. I wonder how it came about? I didn't think they were suchimplacable foes. Mrs. Parish hinted to me long ago that they were, and that it would be best not to have them here together. Is it all on Alice's account, I wonder? Anyway, it is by no scheme of mine that they are here together. Why, I wrote Miles a list of our little party without a word about Dick. I never thought Dick was coming. Yet I am glad now he is come."
"It was really kind of you," said Colonel Bristo aloud, "to give in and come after all."
"No," said Dick, with sudden fire. "I'm thankful I came! I am grateful to you for refusing to take my first refusal. Now that I am here, I would not be elsewhere at this moment for the whole world!"
The Colonel was pleased, if a little puzzled, by this vehement outburst.
"Are you really going out again—back to the bush?" he said presently.
"Yes," said Dick, the fire within him quickly quenched. "I have quite settled that point—though I have told no one but you, Colonel Bristo."
"Well, well—I think you are making a sad mistake; but of course every man decides for himself."
That was all Colonel Bristo said just then, for he knew that the young people had barely seen one another as yet. But up on the moor, an hour or two later, when the guns divided, he felt inclined to say something sharp, for the manner in which Dick avoided shooting with Miles was rather too pointed, and a good deal too ridiculous and childish for the Colonel's fancy.
That evening the conversation at the Colonel's dinner,and that around the beer-stained board—dedicated of an evening to the engrossing domino—in the inn at Gateby, were principally upon the selfsame topic—to wit, the excellence of Miles's shooting.
"I can't conceive," said the Colonel, "seeing that you have never shot grouse in your life before, how you do it."
"If I couldn't shoot straight," said the hero of the evening (for the bag that day was the biggest yet, thanks to Miles), "I ought to be shot myself. I was reared on gunpowder. In the bush—instead of the silver spoon in your mouth—you are born with a fire-arm in your hand!"
Dick smiled grimly to himself. And yet this was the longest speech the Australian had made all the evening. Miles was strangely subdued, compared with what he had been at Graysbrooke. The Colonel and his daughter had each noticed this already; and as for Mrs. Parish, she was resolved to "speak up" on the subject to Alice, whom she blamed for it entirely.
"Yon yoong man—him 't coomed las' night—t' long wan, I mean," declared Andy Garbutt in the pot-house, banging down his fourth glass (empty) upon the table, which upset several dominoes and led to "language"—"yon yoong man's t'bes' shot I iver seed. The way he picked off t'ould cocks, an' let be t'yoongsters an' all, was sumthink clever. I niver seed owt like it. They do say 'tis his first taast o' t'mowers—but we isn't the lads to swaller yon! Bob Rutter, y' ould divle—fill oop t' glasses."
And though perhaps, hyperbole ran riot upon theheels of intoxication, still in Robert Rutter's genial hostelry "t' long chap's" reputation was there and then established.
But the marked change in Miles's manner was, to those who had known him best before, inexplicable. Never had a shooting-party a more modest, mild, and unassuming member, even among the worst of shots; and Miles was, if anything, better than Captain Awdry. His quiet boastfulness was missing. He might have passed the weeks since the beginning of July in some school of manners, where the Colonial angles had been effectually rounded off, and the old free-and-easy habits toned down. Not that he was shy or awkward—Miles was not the man to become either the one or the other; but his manner had now—towards the Colonel, for instance, and Alice—a certain deference-with-dignity, the lack of which had been its worst fault before. Dick, who scarcely spoke three words to him in as many days, suddenly awoke to a sense of relief and security.
"Poor fellow!" he thought, "he is keeping his word this time, I must own. Well, I am glad I didn't make a scene; and the week is half over. When it is quite over, I shall be still more glad that I let him off. For, after all, I owe him my life. I am sorry I threatened him during our interview, and perhaps I need not have avoided him so studiously since. Yet I am watching him, and he knows it. I watch him sometimes when he cannot possibly know it, and for the life of me I can see nothing crooked. My belief is that he's only too thankful to get off on the terms, and that he wouldn't break them for as much as his lifeis worth; besides which, his remorse the other night was genuine."
Mrs. Parish, for her part, was quite sure that it was love unrequited with Mr. Miles, and nothing else. She fumed secretly for two days, and then "spoke up" according to her intention. What she said was not well received, and a little assault-at-words was the result.
Dr. Robson told Mr. Pinckney that he found Miles a less interesting man to talk to than he had been led to expect from his conversation the first evening. Mr. Pinckney replied that if all the Australians were as unsociable, he was glad he didn't live out there. Though Miles, he said, might be a fine sportsman and a devilish handsome dog, there was evidently "nothing in him;" by which it was meant that he was not intellectual and literary—like L. P.
Colonel Bristo was fairly puzzled, but, on the whole, he liked the new Miles rather less than the old.
As for Alice, though she did her best to exclude her personal feelings from the pages of her diary, she could not help just touching on this matter.
"I never," she wrote, "saw anybody so much changed as Mr. Miles, and in so short a time. Though he is certainly less amusing than we used to think him, I can't help admitting that the change is an improvement. His audacity, I remember, carried him a little too far once or twice before he left us. But he was a hero all the time, in spite of his faults, and now he is one all the more. Oh, I can never forget what we owe to him! To me he is most polite, and not in the least (as he sometimes used to be) familiar, I am thankful tosay. The more I think of it the less I can account for his strange behaviour that night of our dance—because it was so unlike what he had been up till then, and what he is now."
Of Dick this diary contained no mention save the bald fact of his arrival. There was, indeed, a sentence later on that began with his name, but the few words that followed his name were scored out so carefully as to be illegible. The fact was that the estrangement between the pair was well-nigh hopeless. They conversed together, when they did converse, with mutual effort. Dick found himself longing to speak—to ask her forgiveness before he went—but without opportunity or encouragement. Alice, on the other hand, even if ready to meet an overture half-way, was the last person in the world to invite one. Under the conditions of the first few days, meeting only at breakfast and dinner, and for an hour or so in the drawing-room afterwards, these two might have been under one roof for weeks without understanding one another a whit the better.
But meanwhile, Alice seemed to benefit very little by her change from the relaxing Thames valley to the bracing Yorkshire moors; and as for Dick—except when the Colonel was present, for whose sake he did make an effort to be hearty—he was poor company, and desperately moody. He was also short-tempered, as Philip Robson found out one morning when they were tramping over the moor together. For Cousin Philip was sufficiently ill-advised to inform his companion that he, Dr. Robson, thought him looking far from well—at a moment when no good sportsmanwould have opened his mouth, unless in businesslike reference to the work in hand.
"I'm all right, thanks," Dick answered shortly, and with some contempt.
"Ah!" said Philip, compassionately, "perhaps you are not a very good judge of your own health; nor can you know how you look. Now, as a medical man—"
"Spare me, my dear fellow. Go and look at all the tongues of the village, if you must keep your eye in. They'll be charmed. As for me, I tell you I don't want—I mean, I'm all right."
"As a medical man," pursued Philip, "I beg to dif—"
"Hang it!" cried Dick, now fairly irritated. "We didn't come out for a consultation, did we? When I want your advice, Robson, you'll hear from me."
With such men as Robson, if they don't feel the first gentle snub (and the chances are all against it), anything short of an insult is waste of breath. Yet, having driven you into being downright offensive, they at once turn sensitive, and out with their indignation as though they had said nothing to provoke you. Witness the doctor:
"I thought," he cried, beginning to tremble violently, "I came out with a gentleman! I meant what I said for your good—it was pure kindness on my part, nothing else. I thought—I thought—"
At that point he was cut short; for Edmonstone had lost his temper, turned on his heel with a short, sharp oath, and made Philip Robson his enemy from that minute.
EXTREMITIES
That same evening (it was on the Thursday), on his return from shooting, Dick Edmonstone found, among the other letters on the table in the passage, one addressed to himself in a strange hand. The writing was bad, but characteristic in its way; Dick had certainly never seen it before. The envelope bore a London postmark. He took the letter into the little back room, the gunroom, and sat down to read it alone.
Twilight was deep in this room, for the window was in an angle of the house, facing eastward, and was overshadowed by the foliage of a fair-sized oak. Some out-lying small branches of this tree beat gently against the upper pane; the lower sash was thrown up. The window was several feet above the ground. The corner below was a delightful spot, shaded all day from the sun; a basket-work table and chair were always there, for the nook was much affected by Mrs. Parish, and even by Alice, in the hot, long, sleepy afternoons.
Edmonstone had read to the end of his letter, when the door opened and Miles entered the room. Dick looked up and greeted him: "This is lucky. I was just coming to look for you. I want to speak to you."
The other's astonishment was unconcealed. Sincethe small hours of Tuesday the two had not exchanged a dozen words. Edmonstone had avoided Miles on the moor, and elsewhere watched him as a terrier watches a rat in a trap. Miles could not guess what was coming.
"I have a letter here that will interest you," said Dick. "Listen to this:
"'Dear Edmonstone,—I thought I'd look you up yesterday, as I had nothing on, but, like my luck, I found you away. Your people, however, treated me handsomely, and I stayed all the afternoon. We talked Australia; and this brings me to the reason of my writing to you. Your people told me of a rather mysterious Australian who stayed some time with the people you are with now, and went out again very suddenly at the beginning of last month. His name was Miles; your sister described him to me, and the description struck me as uncommon like that of a well-known gentleman at present wanted by the police of the Colony. The fact is, I have stumbled across an old mate of mine (a sergeant in the mounted police), who is over here after this very gent, and who I am helping a bit in the ready-money line. As he is working on the strict q.t., I must not tell you whom he's after. In fact, it's all on my own account I am writing you. I haven't told him anything about it. It's my own idea entirely, and I want you to tell me just this: Have your friends heard anything of this Miles since he left them? because I've been making inquiries, and found that no such name as Miles has been booked for a passage out at any of the London offices during the past twomonths! Of course I may have got hold of a wild-goose notion; but Miss Edmonstone told me that your friends made this Miles's acquaintance in an offhand kind of a way, and nobody else knew anything about him. Anyway, I'll wait till I hear from you before telling Compton, who's down at the seaside on a fresh clue.—Yours faithfully, Stephen Biggs.'"
"'Dear Edmonstone,—I thought I'd look you up yesterday, as I had nothing on, but, like my luck, I found you away. Your people, however, treated me handsomely, and I stayed all the afternoon. We talked Australia; and this brings me to the reason of my writing to you. Your people told me of a rather mysterious Australian who stayed some time with the people you are with now, and went out again very suddenly at the beginning of last month. His name was Miles; your sister described him to me, and the description struck me as uncommon like that of a well-known gentleman at present wanted by the police of the Colony. The fact is, I have stumbled across an old mate of mine (a sergeant in the mounted police), who is over here after this very gent, and who I am helping a bit in the ready-money line. As he is working on the strict q.t., I must not tell you whom he's after. In fact, it's all on my own account I am writing you. I haven't told him anything about it. It's my own idea entirely, and I want you to tell me just this: Have your friends heard anything of this Miles since he left them? because I've been making inquiries, and found that no such name as Miles has been booked for a passage out at any of the London offices during the past twomonths! Of course I may have got hold of a wild-goose notion; but Miss Edmonstone told me that your friends made this Miles's acquaintance in an offhand kind of a way, and nobody else knew anything about him. Anyway, I'll wait till I hear from you before telling Compton, who's down at the seaside on a fresh clue.—Yours faithfully, Stephen Biggs.'"
"What name was that?" asked Miles quickly. He had listened calmly to the end. But at the very end the colour had suddenly fled from his face.
"Biggs—the Hon. Stephen, M. L. C. A warm man for a campaign, rich as Crœsus. If he's set his heart upon having you, he'll chase you round and round the world——"
"No. I mean the other man—the name of the sergeant."
Dick referred to the letter.
"Compton," he said.
"Compton!" repeated Miles in a whisper. "The only 'trap' in Australia I ever feared—the only man in the world, bar Pound, I have still to fear! Compton! my bitterest enemy!"
Edmonstone rose from the armchair in which he had been sitting, sat down at the table, opened a blotter, and found a sheet of notepaper.
"Must you answer now?" cried Miles.
"Yes; on the spot."
"What do you mean to say?"
"I have not decided. What would you say in my place? I am a poor liar."
"If we changed places, and I had treated you asyou have treated me these two days—since our compact—I should write them the worst, and have done with it," said Miles, in a low tone of intense bitterness. "You professed to trust me. Yet you won't trust yourself near me on the moors; you fear foul play at my hands. You watch me like a lynx here at the house; yet I swear man never kept promise as I am keeping mine now! You do things by halves, Edmonstone. You had better end the farce, and wire the truth to your friend."
Reproach mingled with resignation in the last quiet words. Edmonstone experienced a twinge of compunction.
"Nonsense!" he said. "I should be a fool if I didn't watch you—worse than a fool to trust you. But betraying you is another matter. I don't think of doing that, unless——"
"I can keep my word, Edmonstone, bad as I may be! Besides, I am not a fool."
"And you are going on Monday?"
"Yes—to sail on Tuesday; you have seen my ticket."
"Then you shall see my answer to this letter."
Dick then dashed off a few lines. He handed the sheet, with the ink still wet, to Miles, who read these words:
"Dear Biggs,—A false scent, I am afraid. Ladies are never accurate; you have been misinformed about Miles. I knew him in Australia! He cannot be the man you want.—Yours sincerely,"R. Edmonstone."
"Dear Biggs,—A false scent, I am afraid. Ladies are never accurate; you have been misinformed about Miles. I knew him in Australia! He cannot be the man you want.—Yours sincerely,
"R. Edmonstone."
The sheet of writing paper fluttered in Miles's hand. For one moment an emotion of gratitude as fierce as that which he himself had once inspired in the breast of Edmonstone, swelled within his own.
"You are a friend indeed," he murmured, handing back the letter. "And yet your friendship seems like madness!"
"My old mate swears that I am mad on the subject!"
Dick folded and enclosed his note in an envelope, directed it, and got up to go. Miles followed him to the door and wrung his hand in silence.
When the door was closed upon Edmonstone, Miles sank into the armchair, and closed his eyes.
His expression was human then; it quickly hardened, and his face underwent complete transformation. A moment later it was not a pleasant face to look upon. The ugliness of crime had disfigured it in a flash. The devils within him were unchained for once, and his looks were as ugly as his thoughts.
"Curse it!"—he was thinking—"I must be losing my nerve: I get heated and flurried as I never did before. Yet it was not altogether put on, my gratitude to this young fellow: I do feel some of it. Nor were they all lies that I told him the other night; I am altered in some ways. I believe it was that spice of truth that saved me—for saved I am so far as he is concerned. Anyway, I have fooled him rather successfully, and he'll know it before he has done with me! True, I did not bargain to meet him here, after what the Colonel wrote; but I flatter myself I made the best of it—I can congratulate myself upon every step. No;one was a false step: I was an idiot to show him the passage-money receipt; it was telling him the name and line of the steamer and opening up the track for pursuit when we are gone. And yet, and yet—I could not have laid a cleverer false scent if I had tried! Instead of money flung away, that passage-money will turn out a glorious investment; we'll show a clean pair of heels in the opposite direction, while our good friends here think of nothing but that one steamer! And so, once more, everything is turning out well, if only I can keep this up three days longer; if only Jem Pound and Frank Compton do not trouble me; if only—if only I am not mistaken and misled as to the ease with which I may carry off—my prize!"
And strange to say, as he thought of that final coup, the villainy faded out of his face—though the act contemplated was bad enough, in all conscience!
All at once a creaking noise startled Miles. He rose from his chair, and crossed with swift noiseless steps over to the window. A man was lifting himself gingerly from the basket-work chair—the man was Philip Robson.
Miles leant out of the window, seized him by the collar, and drew him backward with a thud against the wall below the window.
"Eavesdropper! listener!" hissed Miles; and quick as lightning he changed his hold from the doctor's collar to the doctor's wrists, which he grabbed with each iron hand and drew upward over the sill.
The sill was more than six feet from the ground. The doctor stood on tiptoe—helpless—in a trap. Thedoctor's face was white and guilty. The doctor's tongue was for the moment useless.
"What were you doing there?" Miles demanded quietly, but with a nasty look about the eyes.
"I—I had been asleep. I came back early from the moors because Edmonstone insulted me. I was just awake. Let go my hands, will you? I heard something—a very little—I could not help it. What do you mean by holding my wrists like this? Leave loose of them, I say!"
"Then tell me what you heard."
"Something that I could not understand. If you don't let me go this instant, I'll sing out!"
"Will you stand and talk sensibly, and listen to what I tell you?"
"Yes, I swear I will."
"There, then, you're free. Now I'll just tell you, in effect, what you did hear," said Miles, whose inventive brain had been busy from the moment he had discovered Robson. "You heard Edmonstone speak to me as though I was a villain: well, he firmly believes I am one. You heard him read me a letter from some one 'wanting' me: he has read me many such letters. I believe you heard me asking him in effect not to tell any one, and thanking him: this is what I make a point of doing. The fact is, Edmonstone is under the delusion that I am a man who robbed him in Australia. This is what's the matter!"
Miles tapped his forehead significantly.
"You don't mean it!" cried Robson, starting back.
"I do; but not so loud, man. His friends don'tsuspect anything; they needn't know; it's only on this one point. What, didn't you hear our last words? I said, 'It seems like madness.' He answered, 'My old mate'—meaning the man who was with him at the time of the robbery—'my old mate,' he says, 'swears that I am mad on that subject.'"
"Whew!" whistled the doctor. "Yes, I heard that."
"It speaks for itself, eh? But I put it to you as a medical man," said Miles, rising still more fully to the occasion, and remembering the doctor's weak point: "I put it to you as a medical man—has there not been something strange about his manner?"
Robson thought at once of the disagreeable incident of the morning.
"There has, indeed," he said, without hesitation; "I have noticed it myself!"
Even Miles marvelled at his own adroitness; he was elated, and showed it by fetching a deep sigh.
"Poor Edmonstone! he is quite touched on the point. Perhaps the affair brought on a fever at the time, for he is an excitable fellow, and that would account for it."
"But is he safe?" asked Robson, eagerly. "He can't be!"
"Oh, yes, he is; quite. I repeat, it is only on that one point, and nobody knows it here. And, mind, you are not to breathe a word of it to any single soul!"
Philip was entirely taken in for the time being; but his silence was another matter. That could only be pardoned, even on short lease, by an apology from therude Colonial. The doctor's wrists smarted yet; his self-esteem was still more sore.
"I am so likely," said he, with fine irony, "to do your bidding after the manner in which you have treated me!"
"Call it taking my hint," said Miles, with a nasty expression in the eyes again. "You will find it a hint worth acting upon."
"You had no business to treat me as you did. It was a gross outrage!" said the doctor, haughtily.
"Come, now, I apologise. It arose from my irritation on Edmonstone's account, at the thing getting out. For his sake, you must indeed promise to hold your tongue."
"Very well," said Philip Robson, reluctantly; "I—I promise."
And he meant at the time to keep his promise, if he could. In fact, he did keep it. For a little calm reflection, away from the glamour thrown by Miles's plausibility, and in the sober light of Philip's own professional knowledge, served to weaken the case of insanity against Dick Edmonstone. At the same time, reflection strengthened Edmonstone's case against Miles, though Robson had only oblique information as to the specific nature of that case. But at any rate there was no harm in opening the letter-box (which was cleared in the morning) late at night, and sending just one anonymous line to the same name and address as those upon the envelope directed in Edmonstone's hand. If Miles was really a forger of some kind, and Edmonstone was really shielding him, then there was an excellent chance of scoring off them both at once.And Philip Robson had contracted a pretty strong grudge against both these men since morning.
Meanwhile Miles remained subdued and pensive, furtively attentive, but extremely humble, towards Miss Bristo, and talkative to one person only—Mrs. Parish. He was indeed, as he said, no fool. He was full of cunning and coolness, foresight and resource. He was biding his time—but for what?
THE EFFECT OF A PHOTOGRAPH
Laurence Pinckney was a hopeless sportsman. When he realised this for himself he laid down his gun, and presently took up with Miss Bristo's camera as a weapon better suited to him.
Alice had made no use of the apparatus for weeks and weeks; it was sent down with other luggage without her knowledge, and she never thought of unpacking it until Mr. Pinckney pleaded for instruction; when—perhaps because Alice felt that without an occupation this visitor would be on her hands all day—he did not plead in vain. He did not, however, require many lessons. He knew something about it already, having given the subject some attention (in the reading room of the British Museum) before writing one of his rollicking articles. Nor were the lessons she did give him much of a nuisance to Alice, for when he forgot to talk about his work, and refrained from coruscation, there was no more sensible and polite companion than Laurence Pinckney.
When, therefore, he set out on that Friday's ramble, which produced one really good negative, and a number of quaint little Arcadian observations jotted down in his notebook, it was with the entire photographic impedimenta slung about his person, and some ideain his head of an article on "The North Yorkshire Dales," to be illustrated by the writer's own photographs.
His destination was a certain ancient abbey, set in gorgeous scenery, eight long miles from Gateby. But long before he got there a hollow of the plain country road tempted him, and he fell.
It was quite an ordinary bit of road; a tall hazel-hedge, and a pathway high above the road on the left; on the right, a fence with trees beyond it, one of them, an oak of perfect form, that stood in the foreground, being of far greater size than most of the trees in this district, and in strong contrast to its neighbours. That was really all. It never would have been picturesque, nor have taken our artist's fancy, but for the sunlight on the wet road and the fleecy pallor of the sky where it met the sharp line of distant dark blue hills far away over the hazel-hedge, to the left. But the sunlight was the thing. It came, as though expressly ordered, from, so to say, the left wing. It rested lightly on the hedge-tops. It fell in a million golden sparks on the shivering leaves of the old oak. But it cleared the deep-cut road at a bound, leaving it dark. Only a long way further on, where the bend to the right began, did his majesty deign to step down upon the road; and just there, because everything was wet from last night's rain, it was a road of silver.
No sooner, however, was the picture focussed than the sun, which made it what it was, disappeared behind a cloud—a favourite and mischievous dodge of his for the mortification of the amateur photographer.
Now, while Pinckney waited for the sun to comeout again, which he saw was going to happen immediately, and while he held in his fingers the pneumatic ball connected with the instantaneous shutter, two figures appeared at the bend of the road that had been silver track a moment before. They were a man and a woman, trudging along with the width of the road between them. Pinckney watched them with painful interest. If the cloud cleared the sun at that moment they would be horribly in the way, for worse clouds were following on the heels of this one, and the opportunity must be seized. There was nothing, of course, to prevent his taking the tramps as they walked—no, it would spoil the picture. Stay, though; it would add human interest. But the cloud did not pass so rapidly after all, and the man and woman drew near the camera.
There was something peculiar in the appearance of the man that struck Pinckney at once as un-English. This peculiarity was difficult to localise. It was not in his clothes, which indeed looked new, but it was partly in his heavy face, smooth-shaven and suntanned, partly in his slow, slouching, methodical walk, and very much in his fashion of carrying his belongings. Instead of the pudding-like bundle of the English tramp he carried across his shoulders a long, neatly-strapped cylinder, the outer coating of which was a blanket. About the woman, on the other hand, there was nothing to strike the attention. Pinckney's first glance took in, perhaps, the fact that her black skirt was torn and draggled, and her black bodice in startling contrast to her white face; but that could have been all.
Back came the sun, in a hurry, to the hedge-top and the oak-tree, and the distant curve of the road. Pinckney had decided in favour of the tramps in his picture, but they were come too near. He requested them in his blandest tones to retrace a few steps. To his immense surprise he was interrupted by a sullen oath from the man, who at once quickened his steps forward, motioning to the woman to do the same.
"Thankee for nothing, and be hanged to you! Wait till we pass, will you?"
If Pinckney had wanted further assurance that the man was a foreign element, these sentences should have satisfied him; for your honest British rustic is not the man to reject the favours of the camera, be they never so promiscuous and his chance of beholding the result never so remote.
Pinckney's answer, however, was a prompt pressure of the pneumatic ball in his hand—a snap-shot at short range, the click of which did not escape the sharp ears of the strange-looking, heavily-built old man.
"Have you took us?" asked he fiercely.
"Oh no," replied the photographer, without a blush, "I'm waiting till you pass; look sharp, or I'll lose the sun again!"
The man scowled, but said no more. Next moment he passed by on one side of the camera, and the woman on the other. Pinckney looked swiftly from one to the other, and marked well the face of each. That of the man repelled him, as bull-dog jaws upon a thick, short neck and small, cruel-looking glittering eyes would repel most of us, even without this man's vileexpression. The man was tall and broad, but bent, and he looked twenty years older at close quarters than at a distance. The woman, on the other hand, was young, but so worn, and pinched, and soured, and wearied that you had to look closely to find a trace of youth. She never raised her eyes from the ground as she walked; but Pinckney made sure they were dark eyes, for the well-formed eyebrows were blue-black, like a raven's feather. Her wrist-bone showed prominently—seeming to be covered by little more than skin—as she caught together the shawl at her bosom with her left hand; a plain gold hoop was on its third finger.
Pinckney watched the pair out of sight, still walking with the whole road between them.
"That brute," muttered Pinckney, "beats his wife!"
And then he exposed another plate from the same position, packed up the apparatus, and went his way.
Some hours later—towards evening, in fact—as Pinckney returned from his ruined abbey and came in sight of Gateby, the rain—which had gathered during the afternoon—came down from the leaden twilit sky in earnest. It rains violently in the dales; and the photographer, hungry though he was, and more than ready for dinner, saw no reason for getting wet to the skin when the village was within a stone's-throw, and the shooting-box half-a-mile further on. He burst into the inn for shelter; and honest Robert Rutter conducted him to the private parlour with peculiar satisfaction, having been intimate with Gatebyrain many years, and knowing also a thing or two about the appetites of gentlemen from the south.
Pinckney, left alone, examined the room. It was gaudily carpeted, uncomfortably furnished, stuffy for want of use and air, and crowded with gimcracks. Foxes and birds, in huge cases, were perilously balanced on absurd little tables. The walls were covered with inflamed-looking prints, the place of honour being occupied by portraits of mine host and hostess unrecognisable. The large square centre-table was laid out in parterres of books never opened. In fact, the parlour was not what you would have expected of the remote dales. For this very reason, perhaps, that realist Pinckney took particular pains over the description which was promptly set down in his note-book. The landlord coming in during the writing, moreover, the poor man's words were taken out of his mouth and set down red-hot, and on the phonetic principle, in a parenthesis.
This visit of Rutter's resulted subsequently in a heavy supper of ham and eggs and beer, and a fire in the parlour, before which Pinckney contentedly smoked, listening to the rain, which was coming down indeed in torrents.
It was while this easy-going youth was in the most comfortable post-prandial condition that the voices in a room, separated from the parlour only by a narrow passage, grew loud enough to be distinctly audible in it. Up to this point the conversation had been low and indistinct, occasional laughter alone rising above an undertone; now the laughter was frequent and hearty. The reasons were that the room in questionwas the tap-room, and the fourth round of beer was already imbibed. One voice—in which the local accents were missed—led the talk; the rest interjaculated.