The Project Gutenberg eBook ofLady KilpatrickThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Lady KilpatrickAuthor: Robert Williams BuchananRelease date: August 11, 2017 [eBook #55337]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by David Widger from page images generouslyprovided by the Internet Archive*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LADY KILPATRICK ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Lady KilpatrickAuthor: Robert Williams BuchananRelease date: August 11, 2017 [eBook #55337]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by David Widger from page images generouslyprovided by the Internet Archive
Title: Lady Kilpatrick
Author: Robert Williams Buchanan
Author: Robert Williams Buchanan
Release date: August 11, 2017 [eBook #55337]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
Credits: Produced by David Widger from page images generouslyprovided by the Internet Archive
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LADY KILPATRICK ***
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CONTENTS
LADY KILPATRICK
CHAPTER I.—INTRODUCES DESMOND AND DULCIE.
CHAPTER II.—LORD KILPATRICK.
CHAPTER III.—MR. PEEBLES RECEIVES A MESSAGE.
CHAPTER IV.—A SURPRISE FOR DESMOND.
CHAPTER V.—LADY DULCIE OFFERS CONSOLATION.
CHAPTER VI.—THE MEETING IN THE GRAVEYARD.
CHAPTER VII.—BLAKE, OF BLAKE’S HALL.
CHAPTER VIII.—MOYA MACARTNEY.
CHAPTER IX.—IN WHICH MISCHIEF IS BREWING.
CHAPTER X.—ANOTHER INTERVIEW.
CHAPTER XI.—MOTHER AND SON.
CHAPTER XII.—MR. PEEBLES PREPARES FOR WAR.
CHAPTER XIII.—FATHER AND SON.
CHAPTER XIV.—LADY KILPATRICK.
CHAPTER XV.—THE MOVING BOG.
CHAPTER XVI.—IN WHICH LORD KILPATRICK NAMES HIS HEIR.
On a summer evening, twenty years ago, a girl and a youth were strolling slowly along the strip of yellow sands which leads from the verge of the Atlantic to the steep line of rock dominated by Kilpatrick Castle.
The girl, who was not more than seventeen years of age, carried her hat and parasol in her hand: the first a serviceable article, little superior in form and material to that generally worn by the superior peasants of the district; the other a dainty trifle in pale blue silk, better in keeping with the tailor-made dress and dainty French shoes in which its owner was dressed. She had a delightfully fair and fresh complexion, a little freckled by a too free exposure to the sun, and her dark blue eyes shone from under the rather disorderly waves of her light golden hair with an expression of harmless audacity and frank gaiety eloquent of youth and health and innocence.
Her companion, who might have been three or four years her senior, was a long-limbed, supple youngster of the finest Western Irish type. His hair, long, black and curly, escaped in natural ripples from under a battered soft felt hat, and framed an olive-hued face of great strength and delicacy, lit by a pair of black eyes sparkling with honest, boyish impudence. The merest shade of callow down darkened his upper lip. He was clad in rough and rather ill-cut tweeds, stained in brown patches with salt water, and the collar of a flannel shirt, innocent of stud or necktie, left to view a sun-tanned, muscular throat. His long legs kept swinging pace with the tripping lightness of the girl’s walk, and he looked down at her from his superior height with a mingling of admiration and protection very pretty to witness, and of which she was perhaps a shade too obviously unconscious.
‘We shall be late for dinner,’ said the girl, breaking the first silence which had fallen upon them since the beginning of a long day’s ramble. ‘Uncle will be angry.’
‘Sorra a bit,’ replied the boy. ‘The old gentleman’s temper’s queer at times, but it has to be mighty bad before he’s angry withyou. And as to being angry withme, sure I’m used to it. It’s not often he’s anything else.’
‘My uncle is very fond of you,’ said the girl, ‘and very kind to you—kinder than you deserve, most people think.’
‘Your uncle!’ repeated the boy. ‘Which of ’em?’
‘Lord Kilpatrick, of course!’
‘Indeed he is, then! He’s been as good as a father to me nearly all my life. I owe to him all I have and all I am.’
‘Tell me, Desmond,’ said the girl, after another short interval of silence, ‘why does Lord Kilpatrick take so great an interest in you, and yet let you run about like—like a young colt? Isn’t it time that you began to take life seriously, and to think of doing something?’
‘Faith, I suppose it is,’ said Desmond. ‘I’ve been trying for the last six months to find what kind o’ life I’m fit for. I’ll take to something by-and-by. As to why Lord Kilpatrick’s so good to me, you know just as much as I know myself, Lady Dulcie; Mr. Peebles, that knows more of his ways than anybody else, says ’tis to aise his conscience.’
‘To ease his conscience?’ the girl repeated.
‘Just that,’ said Desmond. ‘An old debt he owed and never paid till my parents were dead. ’Twas my mother asked him to pay it by looking after me. He promised, and he’s kept his word—more power to him.’
‘Do you remember your parents?’
‘No. Both died before I could run about. They were gentlefolk, I suppose, or I’d not be called the Squireen, and I’ve the true gentlemanly knack o’ getting into scrapes. But let’s talk of something else, Lady Dulcie; ’tis a subject that always makes me sad.’
‘Why?’ asked Dulcie.
‘Why,’ said Desmond, ‘there’s times when I feel like a boat on the sea, all alone. I’ve neither kith nor kin, only friends. You’ll laugh at me, I know, but there’s times, when I’m by myself, I feel the mist rising to my eyes and the lump in my throat, thinking I’ve never known a father’s care nor a mother’s love.’
The bright face had lost its merry impudence for the moment, and the quick, swinging step slackened.
‘Laugh at you!’ repeated Dulcie. ‘I’ll never laugh at you for that. AndIcare for you, Desmond.’
‘And that might come to be the bitterest of all,’ said Desmond. ‘You’re like a star in the sky above me, Lady Dulcie. You’re a rich young lady, and I’m only a poor boy dependent on strangers. But come, now,’ he continued after a short pause, ‘I’ve answered your question, will you answer mine? Is it true what I hear all about the place, that you’re to marry Richard Conseltine?’
‘Nonsense!’ said Dulcie, flushing redly. ‘I’m not going to marry anybody!’
‘Ah!’ said Desmond dryly, ‘that’s what all the girls say, but they never mean it.’
‘I mean it. I think marriage is absurd. Don’t you?’
‘Sure I do,’ responded Desmond. ‘But the priest says it’s convenient, if the world is to continue. Tell me, now, what d’ye think of Master Richard?’
‘Think of him?’ said Dulcie slowly. ‘Oh, I think—I think he’s my cousin, and as stupid as girls’ cousins always are.’
‘That’s mighty hard on boys in general,’ said Desmond laughingly, ‘for they’re mostly some girl’s cousin. I may be myself, for all I know. But Richard’s as fond of you as a fox of a goose—a duck, I mean. And that’s why he hatesme.’
‘For shame, Desmond! How has he ever shown that he hates you?’
‘Shown it? Faith, he doesn’t need to show it. It just comes out of him like steam from boiling water. Much I care for the hate or the love of the likes o’ him! I can run him out of breath, fight him out of time, gallop him out of hearing, swim him out of seeing, chaff him out of temper—and as for loving, sure if he loves you, I’ll just adore you, and so beat him at that as well!’
The girl smiled, with her face concealed by the brim of her sun-bonnet, and turned a little away from this brisk wooer, whose bursts of affectionate impudence were generally followed by long intervals of silence.
‘You adore too many, Desmond,’
‘Sorra one but yourself.’
‘Nonsense!’ cried Dulcie. ‘What were you doing with Rosie this morning in the stable-yard?’
‘I mistook her for her mistress,’ said Desmond. ‘No, sure,’ he added, as the girl flushed a little angrily, ‘I don’t mane that.’
‘I should think you didn’t “mane that!”’ said the young lady. ‘I should like to catch you kissing me.’
‘I’m agreeable to be caught,’ returned the unabashable.
‘Oh, you Irish boys!’ cried Dulcie, with a transparent simulation of contempt. ‘You kiss anybody, so it’s no compliment.’
‘That depends,’ said Desmond. ‘There’s kissing for duty, and kissing for interest, and kissing for love. There’s a mighty difference between kissing a rose and kissing a thorn. But, after all, what’s a kiss but a salutation?’
‘You’re a great deal too forward,’ said Dulcie, with an almost matronly air of reproof.
‘Then get behind me,’ responded Desmond, ‘and I’ll go backward.’
The battle of wit was interrupted at this point by the sudden appearance of a man at the end of the ascent leading to the Castle. As he approached, the young couple fell apart a little, and advanced to meet him with a proper and respectful distance between them.
‘It’s Blake of Blake’s Hall,’ said Desmond, as he neared them.
‘In his usual condition of an afternoon,’ said Dulcie.
The man, tall and strongly built, with a mane of black hair and whiskers streaked heavily with gray, and a flushed face, was reeling and tacking along the narrow path. His hat reposed at a dangerous angle at the back of his head, and his waistcoat was open to catch the cooling breeze. There was an air of jolly ferocity about him; but in spite of that and of the disorder of his dress and the other signs of dissipation he carried about with him, the least observant person in the world would hardly have taken him for anything but a gentleman. As he came level with the young people he stopped in his walk and in the scrap of Irish song he was chanting, and saluted the young lady with a wide and unsteady sweep of the hat.
‘Good morning, Lady Dulcie.’ The voice, though husky, and at that moment a little thick with liquor, was sound and full and sweet, and the brogue simply defied phonetics to render it. ‘Ye’re a cure for sore eyes. Desmond, ye divil, give us your fin.’
‘You have been dining with my uncle, Mr. Blake?’ asked Lady Dulcie.
‘Faith, I have, then,’ returned Mr. Blake; ‘and if the company had only been as good as the dinner and the wine—and the whisky—’tis not yet I’d been after leaving it.’
‘And what was the matter with the company?’ asked Desmond.
‘It appears to me, Mr. Desmond Macartney,’ said Blake, with portentous, drunken dignity—‘it appears to me, sor, that a gentleman of the long descent and the high breedin’ of Lord Kilpatrick might have thought twice before inviting a man o’ my blood to sit at the same table with a low, dirty, six-an-eight-scrapin’ thief of an attorney. The back o’ my hand and the sole of my foot to ’m! the filthy reptile! I’ve left my mark on ’m, an’ I’ve spoke my mind of him, and ’twill be a long day ere he forgets Patrick Blake, of Blake’s Hall.’
‘My uncle?’ cried Lady Dulcie in a tone of half amaze, half question.
‘Your uncle, Lady Dulcie!’ answered Blake. ‘’Tis not in that fashion that a gentleman of my figure behaves to a gentleman of his. ’Tis not at the head of a nobleman that I throw bottles, nor, sor,’ he continued to Desmond, as if the interruption had come from him, ‘’tis not him I’d call a dirty thief nor a filthy reptile, and that I’d have ye to know, sor.’
‘You’ve been quarrelling with somebody at his lordship’s table?’ said Desmond.
‘I have, then! And if Dick Conseltine and that white-livered boy of his, and old Peebles—may the devil fly away with the whole boodle of ’m—if they hadn’t interfered and spoilt the sport, I’d have had the ruffian’s blood. By the lud, I’d have smashed him like an egg!’ He drove one powerful fist into the palm of the other with such force as to overbalance himself, and was only prevented by Desmond’s restraining hand from coming to the ground. ‘’Tis an insult before Heaven; ’tis an insult to ask a gentleman to put his legs under the mahogany with such a snake as that!’
‘You had your legs under the mahogany a pretty long time before you found ’twas an insult, from the looks of you,’ said Desmond dryly. ‘Now, look here, Mr. Blake, ’tis not for a boy of my years to be after offering lessons in politeness to a gentleman of yours, but I’ll just ask you to remember that the host whose hospitality you’re insulting is this lady’s uncle.’
Blake’s ferocity vanished with ludicrous suddenness. He began to stammer apologies to Lady Dulcie.
‘And then, too, Mr. Blake,’ continued Desmond, ‘you’d claim the right to choose the guests at your own table—if you had one,’ he interpolatedsotto voce; ‘and Lord Kilpatrick, or any gentleman, has the same right.’
‘And that’s true, if the devil spoke it,’ cried Blake. ‘Desmond Macartney, ye’re a gentleman. Ye can carry a gentleman’s apology to a gentleman without demeaning yourself. Present my apologies to his lordship, and tell him that I’ll honour myself by presenting them personally when I hear that he’s got rid of his present company.’
‘’Tis Mr. Feagus, of Ballymote, that you’ve had the row with?’
‘Faith then, it is, and ye can tell him that if he has the spunk to stand up at twenty paces I’ll do sufficient violence to my feelings as a gentleman to honour him by lettin’ daylight into him.’
‘Nonsense, Mr. Blake,’ said Desmond. ‘Men don’t fight duels nowadays.’
‘No, by the saints!’ cried Blake; ‘they stab each other with inky pens, and suck each other dry with lawsuits, by the help of such parchmint-scrapin’ vermin as Jack Feagus. ’Tis a dirty world we live in, Desmond, my boy, but sure that’s all the more reason that the few decent men should stick together. I’m goin’ on to Widdy Daly’s shebeen, and if ye’re inclined for a drink at the stone cow, I’ll be proud of your company.’
‘Later, perhaps,’ said Desmond. ‘I’ve Lady Dulcie to take care of now, you see.’
‘Ah!’ said Blake, with a vinous smile at the girl, ‘’tis the best end of the stick that ye’ve got hold of, Desmond Macartney. Whisky’s a good familiar craythur, but ’tis a mighty poor substitute for the colleens.
Good luck to ye. Lady Dulcie, your obedient servant.’
He swaggered off, his recent anger quite forgotten, and a moment later the quiet evening air rang tunably with a scrap of Irish song:
‘And thin he’d reply, with a wink of his eye,
Arrah! Paddy, now can’t ye be aisy’
‘’Tis a beautiful voice,’ said Desmond, standing still to listen. ‘’Twould have been better for poor Blake, maybe, if it hadn’t been so fine; it’s just been the ruin of him.’
‘The horrid old man!’ said Dulcie.
‘I wonder uncle admits him to his table.’
‘Oh, sure, there’s no harm in poor Blake!’ said Desmond. ‘He’s nobody’s enemy but his own, and there’s no better company in Ireland, till he gets too much of the whisky inside him, or sees an attorney.’
‘What makes him hate lawyers so?’ asked Dulcie.
‘Sure he has reason,’ returned the boy, who had all an Irishman’s apparently innate detestation of law and its exponents. ‘He lost one half of his acres in trying to keep the other half, years ago, before you and I were born, and Feagus, who acted for him, played him false. That’s the story, at least, and I don’t find it hard to believe, for he’s an ugly customer, that same Feagus.’
They passed together through the ruined arch, which had been in former times the main point of ingress, through the outer wall of the Castle, the rough and ponderous stones of which had, in these later years of peace, gone to the building of stables, offices, and peasants’ cottages. The main building, a huge castellated mansion with an aspect of great age and rugged strength, contrasted strongly in its air of well-kept prosperity with most proprietorial residences in that part of Ireland. Skirting the side of the Castle, they came upon a garden and pleasaunce, bright with flowering plants and emerald turf, commanding a view of the sea, now shining with the glaring tints of sunset, which were reflected too by the bay-windows of the Castle façade.
A heavy-faced, sullen-looking young man, dressed in an ultra-fashionable dress suit, and strangling in a four-inch collar, was sprawling ungracefully on a garden seat with a newspaper on his knees and a cup of coffee on the rustic table at his elbow. He turned at the sound of footsteps on the garden gravel, and seeing Dulcie, rose clumsily to his feet.
‘His lordship has been asking for you, Lady Dulcie.’
‘Dinner is over, I suppose?’ said Dulcie.
‘Yes, dinner is over,’ said the young man, scowling, ‘and so is the fight.’
‘We’ve heard all about the fight from Blake. We met him on the rocks,’ said Desmond.
The young man took no heed of the remark, and did not even look at the speaker.
‘I’m getting pretty tired of living down here among these savages,’ he continued to Lady Dulcie, with an attempt at the accent of a certain type of London men, a drawl which struggled vainly against a pronounced Dublin brogue. ‘Bottles flying at people’s heads—it isn’t my style, you know.’
‘Sure,’ said Desmond, ‘if we’re so savage as all that, ’twould be a charity to stop here among us and civilize us. We’re willing to learn, Mr. Richard Conseltine, and willing to teach the little we know.’
The young dandy looked at him with a heavy insolence, in which there was a lurking touch of fear, but did not deign to address him.
‘His lordship’s awf’ly upset. My father’s with him, and the doctor’s been sent for.’
‘I’ll go and see him,’ said Dulcie.
‘Desmond, you might go and ask Mrs. O’Flaherty for some dinner for both of us. I’m as hungry as a hunter.’
‘I’ll follow you directly,’ said Desmond.
‘You’ll come at once, if you please,’ she said, with a pretty imperiousness.
‘Come!’
They went away together, young Conseltine following them with a deepening of his usual ill-bred, angry scowl.
‘The supercilious brute!’ said Desmond under his breath.
‘One fight a day is quite enough, Desmond,’ whispered Lady Dulcie.
‘Fight!’ said Desmond. ‘Much of a fight ’twould be. I’d——-’
‘Quite so,’ Dulcie interrupted him quietly. ‘I know you’d—and as I don’t want you to, you’ll just go quietly, and ask to have some dinner laid for us, and keep out of his way for the rest of the evening.’
Four of our leading characters, including our best apology for a hero, have introduced themselves. All that remains to be explained, at least for the present, is that Dulcie Broadhaven, called by courtesy Lady Dulcie, was the youngest daughter of Lord Belmullet, who had married Lord Kilpatrick’s only sister and left her a widow with several children and heavily mortgaged estates in county Mayo; and that Dulcie was just then paying one of her annual visits to her uncle’s castle in Sligo. Here she had struck up a friendship with young Desmond, who had for years been a sort of protégé of Lord Kilpatrick. Only in the wild west of Ireland are such intimacies common or even possible, but there, where the greater and the smaller gentry still meet on terms of free and easy equality, and where the vices of more civilized society are still unknown, they excite no comment.
Mr. Blake’s abrupt and angry departure from the Castle left anything but comfortable feelings in the breasts of one or two of his late convives. Lord Kilpatrick, an elderly nobleman, whose originally feeble constitution had not been improved by early dissipation, and who was afflicted with a mysterious cardiac disorder, which caused him constant nervous tremors, was in a condition of semi-senile anger over Blake’s violation of the sanctities of his dinner-table. Mr. Feagus, Blake’sbête noire, was naturally and excusably enraged by the terms of unmeasured contempt in which the latter had addressed him. He was almost as great a rascal as Blake thought him, but he had a full measure of the commonest of Irish virtues, brute courage; and had it not been for the interference of my lord’s brother, Mr. Conseltine, his son Richard, and old Mr. Peebles, my lord’s butler, valet, general factotum, and tyrant, Blake might have had cause to regret his outrage on his host’s hospitality.
‘The beggarly bankrupt brute!’ he cried. ‘By the blood of the saints, Mr. Conseltine, if ’Twas not for the respect I owe you as my lord’s brother—ye used me ill, sir, in holding me back!’
Conseltine, a dark man of late middle age, with an inscrutable face and a manner of unvarying suavity, poured a bumper of burgundy, and held it out to the angry attorney.
‘Drink that, Mr. Feagus. ’Tis a fine cure for anger. Maybe I’ve not used you so ill as you think. Mr. Peebles,’ he continued, ‘you had better assist my brother to his room. Pray be calm, my dear Henry. The disturbance is over. If you will permit me, I will do myself the pleasure of looking in on you before retiring.’
His lordship, his face twitching, and his hands tremulous with anger, sat back in his chair, and pettishly brushed the old Scotchman’s hand from his shoulder.
‘At my table!’ he ejaculated angrily, for the sixth time.
‘Ay,’ said Peebles, with a broad, dogmatic drawl. ‘Ye should keep better company. Come awa’, my lord, come awa’. Ye’ll get nae good by sitting there glowering at folk.’
‘Hold your tongue, sir!’ snapped the nobleman. ‘How dare you address me in that fashion?’
‘Come awa’, come awa’,’ repeated Peebles gently, as one speaks to a froward child. ‘Ye’ll be doing yourself a mischief.’
The old lord rose tremulously, and left the room on his servant’s arm. Mr. Conseltine stepped rapidly forward to open the door, and shook his brother’s hand as he passed from the room. Then, returning, he addressed Feagus, who was still puffing with anger.
‘Sit down, Mr. Feagus. Fill again, man, and wash the taste of that drunken blackguard out of your mouth. Yes, yes,’ he continued, seeing Feagus about to speak; ‘he’s all that you could call him, but he has to be endured; he knows too much to be crossed.’
‘Knows?’ snorted Feagus; ‘and what does he know, then?’
Conseltine looked warily round before replying, and then, bending across the table till his face was within a foot of Feagus’s, he said in a low voice:
‘He knows all about Moya Macartney.’
‘Moya Macartney!’ echoed his son. ‘And who, pray, is Moya Macartney?’
‘She was a peasant girl, away down in Kenmare. My brother married her—a sham marriage—’Twas Blake that played priest for him, and pretended to be in Holy Orders.’
‘That’s true!’ murmured Feagus. ‘And after—tell him what came of it!’
‘The old story. Henry grew tired of his plaything. One day, when the child—they had a child—was two years old, he told Moya the truth. She went on like a madwoman for a time, and then went quite cold and quiet. Henry thought ’Twas all right, and that she had accepted the situation; but within two hours she disappeared, taking the child with her, and for a month or two nothing was heard of her.’
‘Well?’ said Dick eagerly.
‘Then,’ continued Conseltine, ‘one night—a devilish cold winter’s night it was, too—the boy was brought to my brother with a letter. “Take your child,” the letter said, “and as you use him may God use you! You’ll never hear from me again.” ’Twas signed “Moya Macartney,” and a week later her body was found on the sands of Kenmare Bay.’
‘A good riddance,’ said Feagus. ‘And now, Dick, guess the name of the child!’
Dick looked questioningly at his father, who said quietly:
‘The child is the Squireen, Desmond Macartney.’
Feagus gazed sideways from under his ponderous brows at young Conseltine. The boy’s sullen mask was almost as inscrutable as his father’s smooth face.
‘Does Desmond Macartney guess that he’s my lord’s son?’ asked the youth.
‘No,’ said Conseltine. ‘A story was trumped up that he was the orphan son of people to whom my brother owed obligations. He’s too big a fool to trouble himself asking questions.’
‘Well, then,’ said Feagus, ‘spake out and let me know what ’tis ye fear.’
‘I fear my brother’s weakness. He may leave all to this young vagabond. He’s been conscience-haunted about Moya Macartney’s death ever since it happened, and I know that more than once he has made his will in favour of the Squireen. There’s not a square yard of the estate entailed. He could leave it to a beggar in the street if he liked, and Dick would get nothing but the title. I’m as certain as I can be that he has sent for you to make a will; and with that old rascal Peebles always whispering in his ears, praising the bastard, and running down Dick, there’s danger.’
‘Well?’ asked the lawyer, after a pause.
‘Well?’ Conseltine’s smooth voice echoed him.
There was silence for a full minute, during which Feagus sat looking over his glass from father to son.
‘Plain speech is best, Mr. Conseltine. I’m a friend of the family—a humble friend—and I’d like to see justice. Will ye spake straight, and say what ye’d have done?’
Conseltine smiled with half-shut eyes.
‘I thought you’d understand me,’ he said coolly. ‘I’m sure that the interests of the family are safe in your hands, and you may be sure that the family won’t be ungrateful.’
‘Ye can trust me, sor,’ said Feagus. ‘I’ll take care that justice is done. Ye needn’t fear your brother’s wakeness if I have the drawin’ o’ the will.’
Conseltine nodded again. The worthy trio brought their glasses together with a light chink, and drank.
‘You see now,’ continued Conseltine, ‘why Blake has to be humoured. He’s capable of blowing on us in one of his drunken tantrums, and then the whole story would be ripped up.’ Feagus nodded.
‘Keep out of his way, Mr. Feagus, or, if you meet him, control your temper. That’s all I wanted to say, and I think we understand each other.’
‘Fairly well,’ said Feagus.
‘’Tis a pretty kettle o’ fish I’m stirring,’ he said to himself, when father and son had left him alone; ‘but I’ll be surprised if I don’t keep the biggest trout for my own share. I’ll help Conseltine to get the estates, and then I’ll be on his back like the old man o’ the sea on Sinbad’s. Here’s success to virtue! ‘’tis a fine drink this, and ’tis not often, Jack Feagus, that ye get the chance of drinkin’ real wine out of a live lord’s cellar.’
Lord Kilpatrick had meanwhile been conducted to the drawing-room by the faithful, though outwardly unsympathetic, Peebles. Sitting at the open oriel window in a high-backed antique chair, he drew in the soft evening air with tremulous gulps. His face, which in youth and manhood had been singularly handsome, was drawn with pain and pettish anger, and wore that peculiar gray tinge so often seen in the complexions of people afflicted with diseases of the heart. His long, waxen fingers drummed irritably on the arm-pieces of his chair, so that the rings with which they were decorated cast out coruscations of coloured light.
Peebles, a long, dry Scotchman, who but for his white hair might have been of any age from thirty-five to eighty, long in leg and arm, long in the back, long in the nose and upper-lip, shrewd of eye, dry and deliberate in action, moved soundlessly about the room until summoned by his master’s voice.
‘Peebles!’
‘My lord?’
‘How do I look? No flattery, now. Speak out.’
‘Much flattery ye’ll get frae me, or ever did,’ muttered Peebles, taking his stand before the invalid, and scrutinizing him with a cast-iron countenance of no name-able expression.
‘Well, Peebles, well! How do I look?’
‘My lord,’ said Peebles, after another thirty seconds’ inspection, ‘you look as green as grass and as sick as peasemeal!’
‘Nonsense! Pooh! Rubbish!’ Each word shot out of his lordship’s mouth like a bullet, ‘I never felt better.’
‘Ye never looked worse,’ said Peebles.
‘God bless my soul!’ said his lordship. ‘It must be those damn’d globules that Clarke is giving me. They’re ruining my liver—actually ruining it. Infernal idiots of doctors!’ His fingers moved faster. ‘Go away, Peebles, go away!’
Peebles retired into the background, and stood scraping his lantern jaws with his right hand.
‘Peebles!’ said the old gentleman presently.
‘My lord?’
‘You don’t think——’ Lord Kilpatrick paused, hem’d, and finally shot the question out of himself with a suddenness which showed how strong a repugnance he had to conquer before he could ask it—‘you don’t think I’m going todie?’
‘Ye don’t suppose ye’reimmortal, do ye?’ asked the unbending servitor.
‘Of course not! Confound you for an unfeeling blockhead!’ cried his master. ‘Give me your advice—tell me what to do.’
‘I’m to prescribe for ye?’ asked Peebles, looking, as he stood outlined against the oblong of white sky seen through the window, like the silhouette of some curious species of parrot.
‘If you can!’
‘What else have I been doing this last nineteen years,’ asked Peebles, ‘but prescribing the one sure remedy ye winna tak’? My lord, your disease is pride.
Try the black draught of humility and the blue pill of atonement!’
‘What the devil are you talking about?’ asked his lordship, looking angrily at his servant, who returned his gaze quite unmoved.
‘Ye know weel what I’m talkin’ aboot,’ he returned, with no quickening of his usual deliberate drawl. ‘Acknowledge your child, Lord Kilpatrick, and thank God humbly on your knees for such a son to bless your declining years.’
‘By Heaven!’ cried his lordship, sitting up in his chair, ‘you—you—how dare you trifle with me?’ The gray shade deepened on his face, his trembling hands were pressed against his heart. ‘I have done my uttermost. I have provided for the boy. I have looked after his welfare—can a man do more?’
‘Ay, he can! Desmond Macartney is your flesh and blood. Acknowledge him before the world—it’s all the atonement ye can make to the poor lass that’s gone.’
‘She was not my wife!’
‘Ay was she,’ returned Peebles, ‘in the sight o’ God!’
His lordship struggled up in his seat with an oath.
‘That’s enough! You are out of my service, Peebles, from this moment—I discharge you!’
‘I’m agreeable,’ said Peebles, with unmoved calm.
‘And without a character—mind that!’
‘Character, is it?’ said the dour old Scot. ‘If ever I need one, I’ll gang till a God-fearing man, and no’ till your father’s son. Good-afternoon to your lordship.’ Peebles had reached the door when his lordship’s voice arrested him:
‘Stay—stay! I—ha!—I command you!’ ‘Too late!’ said Peebles coolly. ‘I’m no longer at your lordship’s orders—I’m discharged.’
‘Nonsense!’ said Kilpatrick. ‘Why do you provoke me, Peebles? I have been a good master to you—a forbearing master. If we parted I should—I should miss you.’
‘No doot o’ that,’ returned Peebles, smiling. ‘Dismiss me, and ye dismiss your conscience. Dismiss me, and the Deil has ye, tooth and nail.’
His lordship laughed, but with no aspect of enjoyment.
‘You’re an assuming old scoundrel, Peebles. My conscience? Gad!—my conscience, indeed!’
‘Ay, and your conscience says, “Make amends to your own begotten son, the bairn of the puir lass who died for your sake, and who loved ye, Lord Kilpatrick.”’
The old lord’s head sank upon his breast; his eyes were dim with a sudden moisture.
‘I lovedher, Peebles—I loved her!’
‘And yet ye played that deil’s trick on her, with the aid o’ yon scoundrel Blake.’
‘How could I marry one so much my inferior?’ asked Kilpatrick tremulously.
‘And yet there are moments when I think that if—if she had not—if she had had a little more patience, I might have done it. There, there,’ he continued, with his usual testiness, ‘let it sleep. Don’t talk about it. As for Desmond, I have brought him up almost like my own son and heir. He has wanted nothing—he shall never want. I shall provide for him in my will.’
‘Grandly, no doot,’ said Peebles, with the abrupt snort which was his laugh, ‘with Mr. Conseltine at your lug, pleading for that smug-faced imp, his son.’
‘Desmond shan’t be forgotten,’ said Kilpatrick. ‘Nothing on earth shall make me forget Desmond.’
‘There’s just a chance,’ said Peebles, after an interval of silence, scraping at his chin—‘there’s just a chance that Desmond, when he kens ye’re his father, will refuse to tak’ a shilling o’ your money. I know the lad, for isn’t he like the child o’ my ain old age—haven’t I watched over him and seen him grow—haven’t I had daily tolieto him, and tell him that he has neither father nor mother, but only a kind friend who knew them both—and haven’t I heard his voice break when he has asked of his dead mother? Man alive!’ he continued, in answer to Kilpatrick’s stricken look, ‘do your duty—acknowledge your son before the world! If anything can get ye a free pass through the gates of heaven, it will be a deed like that!’
‘Gad!’ said Kilpatrick, ‘I’ve a mind to do it, if only to spite my brother Dick. Peebles, do you think I’m a fool? Do you think I don’t know Dick Conseltine? He’s looking forward to my funeral. He wants the estate for young spindleshanks, my nephew. Suppose I showed him a trick worth two of that, eh? Ha, ha!’
His lordship’s rather spiteful chuckle was cut short by a rap at the door.
Peebles opened it, and Mr. Conseltine appeared.
‘My dear Henry,’ he said, advancing solicitously, ‘I trust you are better?’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Kilpatrick uneasily; ‘but——’
‘In that case,’ said Conseltine, smoothly interrupting him, ‘may I talk to you privately for a few minutes?’
‘If you desire,’ said his brother. ‘Don’t go, Peebles. Never mind Peebles, Dick He’s my conscience, my—myalter ego—eh, Peebles?’
‘As it is a family matter,’ said Conseltine, ‘I would prefer——’
‘Peebles is one of the family,’ said his lordship; ‘I’ve no secrets from him.’
‘Very good,’ said Conseltine, suffering no shade of annoyance to cloud his smooth face. ‘Mr. Peebles doubtless agrees with me that you exaggerate the gravity of your condition, and that, unless you specially desire it, the drawing up of a new will can be postponed. In the will already placed in my possession you, as is natural, devise the bulk of your estate to your next-of-kin. Do I understand that you desire to alter or modify that arrangement?’
His lordship, nervously interlacing his fingers, glanced at Peebles.
‘Tell your brother the truth, my lord. Tell him ye wish to leave the estates to your own begotten son.’
‘My brother has no son, Mr. Peebles,’ said Conseltine sternly.
‘Ay has he,’ said Peebles—‘Desmond Macartney.’
‘The fruit of a foolish liaison with a peasant. My dear Henry——’
‘Peebles is right, Dick,’ said Kilpatrick. ‘Desmond should be my heir.’
‘My dear Henry!’ said Conseltine, ‘you must surely be mad. Proclaim your folly to the world! Acknowledge a waif and stray as your flesh and blood! It is simply midsummer madness! Thank God, whatever you do with any portion of your personal possessions, you can’t pass your patrimonial title to one born out of wedlock.’
Kilpatrick looked from his brother to Peebles, and back again, interlacing his fingers and dragging them apart.
‘Faith,’ he said, ‘that’s true, that’s true, Peebles. The title must go to my next-of-kin. It must go. There’s no help for it, and the title, with nothing to support it! eh? You must see that, Peebles. Gad, I’m sorry—I’m devilish sorry!’ He rose. ‘Never mind, Peebles, Desmond shan’t be forgotten. Trust me, he shan’t be forgotten.’
Conseltine offered him his arm, and he took it with a glance at his servant.
‘Ay, my lord,’ said Peebles, with an immovable face, ‘lean on your brother. It’s good to have loving kith and kin.’
Voices and laughter were heard from the landing without, and a moment later Dulcie, with Desmond at her heels, entered the room.