"You've been to a wedding," she cried, "and I've never heard a word about it! Whose was the wedding? Some of the tenantry, of course, or the bride would hardly have presented you with her bouquet!"
And she reached it down, and widened her pretty nostrils over the fading flowers; but they smelt of death; and their waxen whiteness had here and there the tarnish of a half-eaten apple.
"There was no bride," said Jack, "and no wedding."
"Then why this bride's bouquet? No! I beg your pardon; it isn't a fair question."
"It is—perfectly. I had it made for a young lady. The head-gardener made it, but I told him first what I wanted. There was no word of a wedding; I only thought a nosegay would be the right sort of thing to give a young lady, to show her she was mighty welcome; and I thought white was a nice clean sort of colour. But it turned out I was wrong; she wouldn't have liked it; it would only have made her uncomfortable; so, when I found out that, I just let it rest."
"I see," said Olivia, seeing only too clearly. "Still, I'm not sure you were right: if I had been the girl——"
"Yes?"
The quick word altered the speech it had also interrupted.
"I should have thought it exceedingly kind of you," said Olivia, after a moment's reflection.
She replaced the flowers on the chimney-board, and then led the way out among the pines.
"I'm sorry you were in such a hurry," he said, overtaking her when he had locked up the hut. "I might have made you some billy-tea. The billy's the can you make it in up the bush. I had such a work to get one over here! I keep some tea in the hut, and billy-tea's not like any other kind; I call it better; but you must come again and sample it for yourself."
"We'll see," said Olivia smilingly; but with that she lost her tongue; and together they crossed the lake in mutually low spirits. It was as though the delicate spell of simple friendship had been snapped as soon as spun between them, and the friends were friends no more.
On the lawn, however, in a hammock under an elm, they found a young man smoking. It was Mr. Edmund Stubbs, who had arrived, with his friend the Impressionist, on the Saturday afternoon. He was smoking a pipe; but the ground beneath him was defiled with the ends of many cigarettes; and close at hand a deck-chair stood empty.
"I smell the blood of Mr. Llewellyn," said Olivia, coming up with the glooming Duke. "He smokes far too many cigarettes!"
"He has gone for more," said the man in the hammock.
"I wonder you don't interfere, Mr. Stubbs; it must be so bad for him."
"On the contrary, Miss Sellwood, it is the best thing in the world for him. A man must smoke something. And an artist must smoke cigarettes. You can tell what he does smoke, however, from his work. Pipe-work is inevitably coarse, banal, obvious, and only fit to hang in the front parlours of Brixton and Upper Tooting. Cigar-work is little better; but that of the cigarette is delicate, suggestive, fantastic if you will, but always artistic. Ivor Llewellyn's is typical cigarette-work."
"How very interesting," said Olivia.
"My colonial!" muttered the Duke.
At the same time they caught each other's eyes, turned away with one consent, nor made a sound between them until they were out of earshot of the hammock. And then they only laughed; yet the spell that had been broken was even thus made whole.
It is comparatively easy to read a character from a face. This is always a scientific possibility. To fit the face to a given character is obviously the reverse. And those who knew the worst of Lady Caroline Sellwood, before making her acquaintance, received, on that occasion, something like a shock. They had nourished visions of a tall and stately figure with a hook-nose and an exquisitely supercilious smile; whereas her Ladyship was decidedly short, and extremely stout, with as plebeian a snub-nose and as broad a grin as any in her own back-kitchen. Instead of the traditionally frigid leader of society, she was a warm-hearted woman where her own interests were not concerned; where they were, she was just what expedience made her, and her heart then took its temperature from her head, like the excellent servant it had always been. A case very much in point is that of her relations with Claude Lafont, whom, however, Lady Caroline had now her own reasons for fearing no more. As for the Duke of St. Osmund's, her heart had been a perfect oven to him from the first.
Nor did she make any pretence about the matter—it was this that so repelled Olivia. But the very falsity of the woman was frank to the verge of a virtue; and the honest dishonesty of her front hair (which was of the same shade as Olivia's, only much more elaborately curled) was as bluntly emblematic as a pirate's flag. Lady Caroline Sellwood was honestly dishonest to the last ounce of her two hundredweight of avoirdupois.
This was the kind of thing she thought nothing of doing. She had been engaged for months upon an egregious smoking-cap for Claude Lafont. That is to say she had from time to time put in a few golden stitches, in front of Claude, which her maid had been obliged to pick out and put in again behind the scenes. Claude, at any rate, had always understood that the cap was for him—until one evening here in the conservatory, when he saw Lady Caroline coolly trying it on the Duke.
"It never did fit you, Claude," she explained serenely. "It was always too small, and I must make you another. Only see how it fits the dear Duke!"
The dear Duke was made the recipient of many another mark of unblushing favour. He could do no wrong. His every solecism of act or word, and they still cropped up at times, was simply "sweet" in the eyes of Lady Caroline Sellwood, and his name was seldom on her lips without that epithet.
Moreover, she would speak her mind to him on every conceivable topic, and this with a freedom often embarrassing for Jack; as, for example, on the first Sunday after church.
"I simply don't know how Francis dared!" Lady Caroline exclaimed, as she took Jack's arm on the sunlit terrace. "Twenty-one minutes by my watch—and such drivel! It didn't seem so to you? Ah, you're so sweet! But twenty-one minutes was an outrage, and I shall tell the little idiot exactly what I think of him."
"I rather like him," said Jack, who put it thus mildly out of pure politeness to his companion; "and I rather liked what he said."
"Oh, he's no worse than the rest of them," rejoined Lady Caroline. "Of course I swear by the sweet Established Church, but the parsons personally, with very few exceptions, I never could endure. Still, it's useful to have one in the family; he does everything for us. He christens the grandchildren, and he'll bury the lot of us if he's spared, to say nothing of marrying poor Olivia when her time comes. Ah well, let's hope that won't be yet! She is my ewe lamb. And all men are not such dear sweet fellows as you!"
This sort of speech he found unanswerable; and although treated by her Ladyship with unflagging consideration, amounting almost to devotion, Jack was never at his ease in such interviews.
One of these took place in the hut. Lady Caroline insisted on seeing it, accompanied by Olivia. Of course the whole idea charmed her to ecstasies; it was so original; it showed such a simple heart; and the hut itself was as "sweet" as everything else connected with the Duke. So was the pannikin of tea which Jack was entreated to brew for her in the "billy": indeed, this was too sweet for Lady Caroline, who emptied most of hers upon the earth behind her camp-stool—an act which Jack pretended not to detect, and did not in the least resent. On the contrary, he put a characteristic construction upon the incident, which he attributed exclusively to Lady Caroline's delicate reluctance to hurt his feelings by expressing her real opinion of the tea; for though personally oppressed by her persistent kindness, he was much too unsophisticated, and had perhaps too good a heart of his own, ever to suspect an underlying motive.
Towards the end of that week, in fact on the Friday afternoon, they were all taking tea on the terrace; or rather all but the two talented young men, who were understood never to touch it, and who, indeed, were somewhat out of their element at the Towers, except late at night, when the ladies had gone to bed. "I can't think why you asked them down," said Lady Caroline to Claude. "I didn't," was the reply; "it was you, Jack." "Of course it was me," cried the astonished Jack, "and why not? Didn't they use to go to your rooms, old man, and to your house, Lady Caroline?" "Ah," said her Ladyship, with her indulgent smile, "but that was rather a different thing—you dear kind fellow!" All this, however, was not on the Friday afternoon, when Lady Caroline was absorbed in very different thoughts. They were not of the conversation, although she put in her word here and there; the subject, that of the Nottingham murder, being one of peculiar interest. The horrible case in question, which had filled the papers all that week, had ended the previous day in an inevitable conviction. And even Claude was moved to the expression of a strong opinion as he put down theTimes.
"I must say that I agree with the judge," he remarked with a shudder. "'Unparalleled barbarity' is the only word for it! What on earth, though, was there to become 'almost inaudible with emotion' about, in passing sentence? If I could see any man hanged with equanimity, or indeed at all, I confess it would be this loathly wretch."
"Claude," said Lady Caroline, "I'm ashamed of you. He is an innocent man. He shall not die."
"Who's to prevent it?" asked Jack.
"I am," replied Lady Caroline calmly.
"There'll probably be a petition, you see," exclaimed Claude. "Then the Home Secretary decides."
"And I decide the Home Secretary," said Lady Caroline Sellwood.
It was grossly untrue, and Olivia shook her head in answer to the Duke's astounded stare, but her mother's eyes were again fixed thoughtfully on lawn and lake. The short dry grass was overrun with wild thyme, innumerable butterflies played close to it, as spray, and the air hummed with bees likewise in love with the aroma, whose fragrance reached even to the terrace. But Lady Caroline noted none of these things, nor yet the shadows of spire and turret encroaching on the lawn—nor yet the sunlight strong as ever on the lake beyond. She was already pondering on the best way of bringing a certain matter to a head. This quiet country life, with so tiny a house-party, and with one day so like another, was excellent so far as it went, but the chances were that it would not go the whole way. It lacked excitement and incentive. It was the kind of life in which an attachment might too easily stagnate in mere foolish friendship. It needed an event; a something to prepare for, to look forward to; a something to tighten the nerves and slacken the tongue; and yet nothing that should give the Duke an opportunity of appearing at a public disadvantage.
So this was the difficulty. It disqualified the dance, the dinner-party, even the entertaining of the county from 3.30 to 6.30 in the grounds. But Lady Caroline overcame it, as she overcame most difficulties, by the patient application of her ingenious mind. And her outward scheme was presently unfolded in the fewest and apparently the most spontaneous words.
"He is not guilty, and he shall not die," she suddenly observed, as though the Nottingham murder had all this time monopolised her thoughts. "But let us speak of something else; I had, indeed, a very different matter upon my mind, until the papers came and banished everything with this ghastly business. The fact is, dear Duke, that you should really do something to entertain your tenantry, and possibly a few neighbours also, before they begin to talk. They will expect it sooner or later, and in these things it is always better to take time by the forelock. Mind, I don't mean an elaborate matter at all—except from their point of view. I would just give them the run of the place for the afternoon, and feed the multitude later on. Francis, don't look shocked! I hope you'll be there to ask a blessing. Then, Duke, you could have a band on the lawn, and fireworks, and indeed anything you like. It's always good policy to do the civil to one's tenantry, though no doubt a bore; but you needn't shake hands with them, you know, and you could leaven the lower orders with a few parsons and their wives from the surrounding rectories. It's only a suggestion, of course, and that from one who has really no right to put in her oar at all; still I know you won't misunderstand it—coming fromme."
He did not; his face had long been alight and aglow with the red-heat of his enthusiasm; and now his words leapt forth like flames.
"The very ticket!" he cried, starting to his feet. "A general muster of all sorts, and we'll do 'em real well. Fizz and fireworks! A dance on the lawn! And I'll make 'em a speech to wind up with!"
"That would be beautiful," said Lady Caroline with an inward shudder. "What a dear fellow you are, to be sure, to take up my poor little suggestion like this!"
"Take it up," cried Jack, "I should think I would take it up! It'll be the best sport out. Lady Caroline, you're one in two or three! I'm truly thankful for the tip. Here's my hand on it!"
His hand was pressed without delay.
"It really is an excellent suggestion," said Claude Lafont, in his deliberate way, after mature consideration. "It only remains to settle the date."
"And the brand of fizz, old man, and the sort of fireworks! I'll leave all that to you. And the date, too; any day will do me; the sooner the better."
"Well," said Lady Caroline, as though it had only just struck her, "Olivia's birthday is the twentieth——"
"Mamma!" cried that young lady, with real indignation.
"And it's her twenty-first birthday," pursued the other, "and she is my ewe lamb. I must confess I should like to honour that occasion——"
"Same here! By all manner o' means!" broke in the Duke. "Now, Miss Sellwood, it's no use your saying one word; this thing's a fixture for the twentieth as ever is."
The girl was furious. The inevitable, nay, the intentional linking of her name with that of the Duke of St. Osmund's, entailed by the arrangement thus mooted and made, galled her pride to the quick. And yet it was but one more twang of the catapult that was daily and almost hourly throwing her at his head; neither was it his fault any more than hers; so she made shift to thank him, as kindly as she could at the moment, for the compliment he was so ready to pay her—at her mother's suggestion.
"You could hardly get out of it, however, after what was said," she added, not perhaps inexcusably in the circumstances.
"No more can you," retorted the Duke. "And here comes the very man we must all consult," he added, as the agent appeared, a taking figure in his wrinkled riding breeches, and with his spurs trailing on the dead-smooth flags.
The agent handed Jack a soiled note, and then sat down to talk to the ladies. This he did at all times excellently, having assurance and a certain well-bred familiarity of manner, which, as the saying is, went down. In this respect he was a contrast to all the other men present. He inquired when the Home Secretary would be back and ready for his revenge on the links. And he heard of the plans for the twentieth with interest and a somewhat superfluous approval. Meanwhile the Duke had read his note more than once, and now he looked up.
"Where did you get this?" he asked, displaying the crumpled envelope, which had also a hole through the middle.
"In rather a rum place," replied the agent. "It was nailed to a tree just outside the north gates."
"Well, see here," said Jack, who stood facing the party, with his back to the stone bulwark of the terrace, and a hard look on his face; "that's just the sort of place where I should have expected you to find it, for it's an anonymous letter that some fellows might keep to themselves—but not me! I'm for getting to the bottom of things, whether they're nice or whether they're nasty. Listen to this: 'To theDukeof St. Osmund's'—he prints 'Duke' in big letters, as much as to say I'm not one. 'A word in yourGrace'sear'—he prints that the same. 'They say,' he says, 'that you hail from Australia, andIsay you're not the first claimant to titles and estates that has sprung from there. Take a friendly tip and put on as few frills as possible till you're quite sure you are not going to be bowled out for a second Tichborne. Awell-wisher.' Now what does it all mean? Is it simple cheek, or isn't it? I recollect all about Tichborne. I recollect seeing him in Wagga when I was a lad, and we took a great interest in his case up the bush; but why am I like him? Where does the likeness come in? I've heard fat men called second Tichbornes, but I don't turn twelve stone. Then what can he mean? Does he mean I'm not a Duke? I know I'm not fit to be one; but that's another matter; and if it comes to that, I never claimed to be one either; it was Claude here who yarded me up into this pen! Then what's it all about? Can any lady or gentleman help me? I'll pass the letter round, and I'll be mightily obliged if they can!"
They could: it was pure insolence, not to be taken seriously for a single moment. So they all said with one consent; and Jack was further advised to steel himself forthwith against anonymous letters, of which persons in his station received hundreds every year. The agent added that he believed he knew who had written this one; at least he had his suspicions.
In a word, the affair was treated by all in the very common-sense light of a mere idle insult; any serious sympathy that was evinced being due entirely to the fact that Jack himself seemed to take it rather to heart. Lady Caroline Sellwood dismissed the matter with the fewest words of all; nevertheless, Jack detected her in a curious, penetrating, speculative scrutiny of himself, which he could not fathom at the time; and her Ladyship had a word to say to Claude Lafont after obtaining his arm as far as the house.
"That sort of thing is never pleasant," she observed confidentially, "and I can't help wishing the dear fellow had kept his letter to himself. It gives one such disagreeable ideas! I am the last person to be influenced by such pieces of impudence, as a general rule; still I could not help thinking what a very awkward thing it would be if your Mr. Cripps had made a big mistake after all! Not awkward fromeverypoint of view, dear Claude"—and here she pressed his arm—"but—but of course he had every substantial proof?"
"Of course," said Claude. "I looked into it, as a matter of form, on Cripps's return; though his word was really quite sufficient. Well, he had copies of the certificate of Jack's birth, and of that of my uncle's marriage, besides proof positive that Jack was Jack. And that was good enough for me."
"And for me too," said Lady Caroline, dropping his arm. "He is a dear fellow; I hardly know which is greater, my regard for him or my sympathy with you!" And her Ladyship marched upstairs.
Meantime the agent had led Jack aside on the terrace.
"I know who sent that letter," said he. "I had my suspicions all along, and I recognised the disguised hand in a moment. It was Matthew Hunt."
"Well?" said Jack.
"Well, it was meant merely as an annoyance: a petty revenge for the handsome thrashing you gave the fellow six weeks ago—I wish I'd seen it! But that's not the point. The point is that I think I could bring it home to the brute; and I want your Grace to let me try."
"I can't. What's the good? Leave bad alone; we should only make it worse."
"Then mayn't I raise the rent of the Lower Farm?"
"No; not yet, at any rate. I mean to give the fellow a chance."
"And an invitation for the twentieth too?"
"Certainly; he's a tenant, or his father is; we can't possibly leave them out."
"Very well; your Grace knows best."
And the agent went his way.
It was three o'clock in the early morning of the twentieth of August. A single jet of gas, lighting a torch in the mailed hand of a life-size man-at-arms, burnt audibly in the silent hall; making the worst of each lugubrious feature, like a match struck in a cavern. And Claude Lafont was sitting up alone, in the Poet's Corner, at work upon his birthday offering to Olivia Sellwood.
At three, however, it was finished in the rough. The poet then stretched his fingers, took a clean sheet of paper, and started upon the fair copy in his prettiest hand. It began—
"What songs have I to sing you?What tales have I to tell?"
"What songs have I to sing you?What tales have I to tell?"
And there it stuck, as though these questions were indeed unanswerable; the fact being, there was another still to come, which, however, involved an execrable couplet as it stood. Claude twisted it about for half-an-hour; realised its gratuitous badness; tried not to ask this inane question at all, hunted his rhyming dictionary up and down, and found he must; and finally, with a prayer that it might impose upon Olivia, and another for forgiveness from the Muse, finished his first stanza with—
"What garlands can I bring youFrom Fancy's fairest dell?Before the world grew old, dear,The lute was lightlier strung;Now all the tales are told, dear,And all the songs are sung."
"What garlands can I bring youFrom Fancy's fairest dell?Before the world grew old, dear,The lute was lightlier strung;Now all the tales are told, dear,And all the songs are sung."
It is needless to quote more. The sentiments were superior to their setting. An affectionatecamaraderiewas employed, with success, as a cloak for those warmer feelings of whose existence in his own bosom the poor poet was now practically convinced. And the lines in themselves were not all or wholly bad; there was a certain knack in them, and here and there some charm. But if infinite pains could have made them a work of genius, that they would have been. It was almost five when Claude made his best signature at the foot of the last verse; yet there were but four of these, or thirty-two lines in all.
He put them in an envelope which he sealed deliberately with his signet-ring. The deliberation of all his private doings was enormous; neither the hour nor an empty stomach could induce briskness at the expense of pains. Yet Claude was exceedingly hungry, and the night had put an edge on his nerves. As he paced the floor the undue distinction between his steps, so soft on the rugs, and so loud on the parquetry, became exaggerated in his nervous ears; and all the silence and all the darkness of the sleeping Towers seemed to press upon that single lamp-lit, sounding room, like fathoms of wide sea upon a diver's helm. Claude had not thought of such things while he was still at work; he had rather overdone matters, and he poured out a sparing measure of whisky from the decanter upon the table.
There were other glasses with dregs at the bottom. The air was tainted with stale smoke, and within the fender lay the remains of many cigarettes. This was why Claude was so late. He had been late in making a start. Stubbs and Llewellyn had sat up with him till the small hours. The Poet's Corner was the one spot in which these young men seemed really at home. Here, by midnight, but seldom before, they could manage to create unto themselves their own element; for their Philistine host went early to his eccentric lair; but there were always his easy-chairs to lounge in, his whisky to drink, and Claude Lafont to listen to their talk.
Not that the poet was so good a listener as he had been once; the truth being, that he found himself a little out of touch with his clever friends—he hardly knew why. It might be the living under one roof with them; he himself would never have asked them down. Or it might be the simultaneous hourly contact with an opposite type of man—the kindly, unaffected dunce—the unburnished nugget, reeking yet of the Australian soil, but with the gold wearing brighter every day.
Certain it was that the benefit of the cousins' close companionship had not been all on one side. If the force of example had toned down some of Jack's pristine roughness of speech and manner, it had taken a like effect upon sundry peculiarities of a converse character in Claude. In a word, there had been an ideal interchange between the two, founded on a mutual liking. The amelioration of the Duke was sufficiently obvious to all; that of Claude struck Olivia especially, who had never been blind to his faults; needless to add, he was himself the last to see how he had changed. Yet he divined something of it now. As he thought of the verses he had just written, and of the critic to whom he would have submitted them in all humility a couple of months ago, he knew that he was no longer as he had been then; for he had not the faintest intention of allowing that critic to see these verses at all.
So Claude calmed his nerves, eating biscuits the while, and sipping soda-water merely tinctured with whisky; until all at once the lamp began to flicker and to smell, and the song of the birds, singing in Olivia's birthday, came at last to his ears through the plate-glass and rich curtains of the octagonal window. Then he rose; and in half a minute the lamp was out, the curtains drawn, a sash thrown up, and the risen sun shining mercilessly on the dishevelled head and blue chin and battered shirt-front of Claude Lafont.
The cool, fresh scene inspired him with delight; it was indeed a disgraceful novelty to the poet. He thought nothing of rhyming "morn" with "dawn," and yet of this phenomenon itself he had little or no experience. He would gain some now; he also promised himself the unique pleasure of rousing the early-rising Jack. So he got out of the window, and soaked his feet in the dew, only to meet Jack emerging from his hut, with towels on his arm, as he approached it. Nor was the Duke's surprise very flattering; but his chaff was fair enough. He was himself about to bathe in the creek at the north end of the tank. Would Claude join him and then go back to the hut for an early pannikin of bush tea? Claude would, and did, feeling (as all felt at Jack's hut) that he had been flashed through the thick of the earth, and come out in the wilds of Australia.
In the hut a log fire had burnt well up by the time they returned with wet towels and glowing skins. Over the flames hung the billy-can, with boiling water throbbing against the side. Jack lifted it down with a stick, and threw a handful of tea among the bubbles. "Shall I sweeten it?" he then asked; and, at Claude's nod, threw in another handful of brown sugar.
"There, that's real bush tea for you," continued the Duke, in a simmer of satisfaction himself as he stirred the mixture with the stick. "Now take the pannikin and dip it in. There's no milk, mind; that wouldn't be the thing at all. Here are some biscuits, and they aren't the thing either. I'd have made you a damper, only I never could strike a camp-oven; it's been trouble enough to raise the plant I've got. What do you think of the tea?"
"Capital!" cried Claude, who was seated on the bunk. And indeed the whole thing appealed to his poetic palate; for he could not forget that this hut was within half a mile of the Towers themselves, in which the Duke took evidently far less pleasure; and the many-sided contrast amused his literary sense, even while it piqued his family pride.
"How I wish it was the real thing!" said Jack, with a sigh. "I'd have a camp-oven, then, and you should have your mutton chop and damper served up hot. I used to be an artist at a damper. Then after breakfast I'd take you with me round the paddocks, and you'd help me muster a mob and drive them to the tank; and you'd hear them bleat and see them start to run when they smelt the water. My colonial oath, I can see 'em and hear 'em now! Then we'd give our mokes a drink in the middle of 'em, and we'd take a pull at our own water-bags. Then we might camp under the nearest hop-bush for a snack, and I should yard you up at the homestead, and make you know my old boss before the day was over. What a day it would be for you! You wouldn't believe the sky could get so blue or your face so red. But it's no use talking—here we are again!" And he set down his empty pannikin with another sigh.
"You wouldn't really prefer that life to this?"
"No; perhaps not; but I like to think of it, as you can see."
"Surely you like your new life best by this time? You wouldn't go back there now?"
"I like my new friends best; I wouldn't go back on them. Olivia and you, for instance."
"It's her birthday," said Claude; but a silence had intervened.
"So it is. God bless her! I haven't got her anything, because I seemed to make a mull of it with those flowers. Have you?"
"Yes, I have a trifle for her; it's rather a different thing on her birthday, you know. And—and I've written her a few verses; that's what I've been doing all night."
"Clever dog!" said Jack enviously. "See what it is to be a man of genius; here's where it comes in so handy. And has Llewellyn done her something, too?"
"Yes; a portrait of herself."
"Well, let him label it to that effect, or she may put her foot in it like me. He never shows me his blooming drawings now. But I wish you'd let me see your poem."
"It's not all that; it's only verses, and pretty bad ones too; still, you shall hear them if you like, and if I can remember them," said Claude, who would have found much more difficulty in forgetting them so soon. "I only wish they were better! There are some lamentable lines here and there. I tried to iron them out, but they wouldn't all come."
"Go on!" cried Jack, lighting his pipe. "I'll tell you whether they're good or bad. You go ahead!"
And Claude did so, only too glad of a second opinion of any kind; for he had little or no intellectual self-reliance, and was ever ready to think his productions good or bad with their latest critic. On this occasion, however, he would have been better pleased with the general enthusiasm of the Duke, had not the latter proceeded to point out particular merits, when it transpired that the ingenuity of the rhymes was what impressed him most. Knowing where they came from, the poet himself was unable to take much pride in this feature.
"They're splendid!" reiterated Jack. "You ought to be the laureate, old man, and I've a good mind to tell 'em so in the House of Lords. You're far and away ahead of Shakespeare at rhyming; he hardly ever rhymes at all; I know that; because there used to be a copy of him in my old hut. I say, I like that about the garlands from Fancy's dell; that's real poetry, that is. But do you mind giving me the last four lines again?"
Claude gave them—
"While yet the world was young, dear,Your minstrel might be bold:Now all the songs are sung, dear,And all the tales are told."
"While yet the world was young, dear,Your minstrel might be bold:Now all the songs are sung, dear,And all the tales are told."
"First-chop," said Jack, whose look, however, was preoccupied. "But what's that you're driving at about the minstrel being bolder? What was it you'd have said if only you'd had the cheek? Say it to me. Out with it!"
"I don't know, really," said Claude, laughing.
"Then I do: you're dead nuts on Olivia!"
"What's that?"
"You like her!"
"Naturally."
"As much as I do!"
"That all depends how much you like her, Jack."
There was a moment's pause. The Duke was sitting on his heels in front of the fire, into which he was also staring fixedly; so that it was impossible to tell whether the red light upon his face was spontaneous or reflected. And he spoke out now without turning his head.
"Old man," he said, "I've wanted a straight word with you this long time—about Olivia. Of course I know I oughtn't to call her Olivia behind her back, when I daren't to her face; but that's what she is in my own heart, you see—and that's where she's pegged out a claim for good and all. Understand? We can't all talk like books, old man! Still I want to make myself as plain as possible."
"You do so. I understand perfectly," said Claude Lafont.
"That's all right. Well, as I was saying, she's pegged out a claim that no other woman is ever going to jump. And what I was going to say was this: you remember that night in your rooms in town? I mean when I said I meant no harm, and all that; because I spoke too soon. Worse still, I felt mean when I did speak; it didn't ring true; and long I've known that even then there was only one thing that would have held me back. That was—if she'd been your girl! I gave you a chance of saying if she was, but you only laughed; and sometimes I've thought your laugh wasn't any truer than my word. So I've got to have it in plain English before I go the whole hog. Claude—old man—she never was—your girl?"
"Never," said Claude decidedly.
"You never asked her—what I think of asking one of these days?"
"Never."
"Thank God, old man. I'm dead nuts on her myself, I tell you frankly; and I mean to tellherwhen I can rake together the pluck. I'm not sure I can keep it to myself much longer. The one thing I'm sure of is that she'll laugh in my face—if she isn't too riled! I hear her doing it every night of my life as I lie where you're sitting and listen to the pines outside. I hear her saying every blessed thing but 'yes!' Yet it isn't such cheek as all that, is it, Claude? I want your candid opinion. I'm not such a larrikin as I was that day you met me, am I?"
And he turned to the other with a simple, strong humility, very touching in him; but Claude jumped up, and getting behind him so that their eyes should not meet, laid his hands affectionately on the Duke's shoulders.
"You are not the same man," he said with a laugh; "yet you are the same good fellow! I could wish Olivia no better fate—than the one you think of. So I wish you luck—from my heart. And now let us go."
On the lawn they found the Home Secretary driving a dozen golf-balls into space from an impromptu tee. He had come for good now, the session being over at last. And this was his daily exercise before breakfast, and his valet's daily grievance, whose duty it was to recover the balls.
Mr. Sellwood accompanied the younger men into the house, where Claude had still to shave and dress; but the Duke was the uninterested witness of an interesting scene, between the Home Secretary and his wife, before any one else came down to breakfast. The subject was that of the Nottingham murder.
"They are making an example of you!" said Lady Caroline bitterly, looking up from her husband's daily stack of press-cuttings, which she always opened.
"Let them," said Mr. Sellwood, from the depths of theSportsman, which he read before any of his letters.
"They call it a judicial murder—and upon my word, so do I! Your decision is most unpopular; they clamour for your resignation—and I must say that I should do the same. Here's a cartoon of you playing golf with a human skull for the ball!"
"Exactly how I mean to spend my day—barring the skull."
"They know it, too; it's a public scandal; even if it wasn't, I should be ashamed of myself, with that poor man awaiting his end!"
"He was hanged five minutes ago," declared the Home Secretary, consulting his watch. "And I may as well tell you, my dear, that I had his full confession in my pocket when I gave my decision the night before last. It appears in this morning's papers. And I fancy that's my hole," added Mr. Sellwood, nodding at Jack.
But Jack had no more to say than Lady Caroline, utterly routed for once. The Duke did not perhaps appreciate the situation, or perhaps he was not listening; for his eyes hung very wistfully on Olivia's plate, which was laden and surrounded by birthday offerings of many descriptions. There were several packets by post, and an open cheque from the Home Secretary. Claude had added his beautifully sealed envelope before going upstairs, and now Llewellyn came in with his "likeness of a lady." The lady was evidently lost in a fog; the likeness did not exist; and the whole production was exactly like a photographic failure which is both out of focus and "over-exposed." But it was better than poor Jack's contribution of nothing at all.
A loose chain of fairy lights marked the brink of the lake; another was drawn tight from end to end of the balustrade rimming the terrace; and between the two, incited by champagne and the Hungarian band, the rank and file of the tenantry cut happy capers in the opening eye of the harvest moon.
At one end of the terrace the fire-workers awaited the word to rake and split the still serenity of the heavens; at the other, the fairy footlights picked out the twinkling diamonds and glaring shirt-fronts of the house-party, the footmen's gilt buttons and powdered heads; for the men had just come out of the dining-room, and tea was being handed round.
"It is going beautifully—beautifully!" whispered Lady Caroline, swooping down upon the Duke, who had himself made straight for her daughter's side. "Inside and out, high and low, all are happy, it is one huge success. How could it be otherwise? You make such a charming host! My dear Jack, I congratulate you from my heart; and the occasion must be my excuse for the familiarity."
"No excuse needed; I like it," replied the Duke. "I only wish you'd all call me Jack," he added, with a sidelong look at Olivia; "surely we're all pretty much in the same family boat! Well, I'm glad you think it's a success, and I'm glad I make a decent host; but I shouldn't if I hadn't got the loan of such an excellent hostess, Lady Caroline."
"You are so sweet!"
"Nay, it's you that's so jolly kind," laughed Jack. "The fact is, Lady Caroline, I can get along all right at my own table so long as I don't have to carve—and when I make up my mind to go straight through cold water. I was sorry not to drink Miss Sellwood's health in anything stronger; but it's better so."
"So fine of you," murmured Lady Caroline; "such a noble example! You can't think how I've admired it in you from the first!"
Yet she looked to see whether his remarks had been overheard. They had not; even Olivia had turned away before they were made, and her mother now followed her example. She was rewarded by seeing the Duke at the girl's side again when next she looked round.
They were standing against the balustrade, a little apart from the rest. They had set their cups upon the broad stone rim. Jack began to stir his tea with the impotent emphasis of one possessed by the inexpressible. But Olivia gave him no assistance; she seemed more interested in the noisy dancers on the sward below the terrace.
"I hope you've had a good time, on the whole," he began, ineptly enough, at last. "All this is in your honour, you know!"
"Surely not all," replied the girl, laughing. "Still I don't know when I had such a delightful birthday, and I want to thank you for everything with all my heart."
"Everything!" laughed Jack nervously. "I've done nothing at all; why, I didn't even give you a present. That was through a stupid mistake of mine, which we needn't go into, because now's the time to rectify it. I've been waiting for a chance all the evening. The thing only came a few minutes before dinner. But better late than never, they say, and so I hope you'll still accept this trifle from me, Miss Sellwood, with every possible good wish for all the years to come. May they be long and—and very happy!"
His voice vibrated with the commonplace words. As he ceased speaking he took from his waistcoat pocket something that was certainly trifling in size, and he set it on the balustrade between the two tea-cups. It was a tiny leathern case, and Olivia held her breath. Next moment an exquisite ring, diamonds and emeralds, scintillated in the light of the nearest fairy lamp.
"This is never for me?" she cried, aghast.
"That it is—if you will take it."
She was deeply moved: how could she take a ring from him? And yet how could she refuse, or how explain! Each alternative was harder than the last.
"It is far too good for me," she murmured, "for a mere birthday present! You are too generous. I can't dream of letting you give me anything half so good!"
"What nonsense! It is not half good enough; it's only the best I could get from Devenholme. I sent in the dogcart for the crack jeweller of the place; it brought him back with a bagful of things, and this was the best of a bad lot. I wish I'd kept the fellow! You might have chosen something else."
She saw her loophole and made no reply.
"Would you prefer something else?" he asked eagerly.
"Well, if you insist on giving me a present, it must be something not half so good."
"That's my affair."
"And perhaps not a ring."
"That's another matter, and on one condition I'm on: you must let me drive you in to-morrow to choose for yourself."
She consented gratefully. Her gratitude was the more profuse from, it may be, an exaggerated sense of the dilemma in which she had found herself a moment before; at all events it was very kindly and charmingly expressed. So Jack pocketed the ring and swallowed his tea in excellent heart; longing already for the morrow, for the expedition to Devenholme with Olivia alone at his side.
"That excellent follow seems very busy with our Olivia. Is there anything in it?" asked Mr. Sellwood of his wife.
"I have no idea," replied Lady Caroline; "you know I never interfere in such matters. I'm glad you think him an excellent fellow, though. He is simply sweet."
"In fact we might do worse from every point of view; is that it?" said the Home Secretary dryly. "I'm inclined to agree with you. I hope he won't foozle his shot by being in too great a hurry."
The fireworks had begun. Rocket after rocket split the sky and descended in a shower of stars. A set-piece stood out against the lake; it represented six French eagles on a shield.
"Come and have a look at the family fowls," said Jack, rejoining Olivia, who had been talking to Claude. "I'd swop the lot for one respectable emu; it would be a good deal more appropriate for a Duke like me."
Among other things he had learnt at last to pronounce his own title correctly. Also, he looked well at all times in evening dress, but he had never looked better than he did to-night. Claude had these consolations as he watched the pair go down and mingle with the throng.
As a matter of fact the Duke of St. Osmund's had never been in higher spirits in the whole course of his chequered career. Olivia had not, indeed, accepted his offering, but she had done much better, for now he was sure of having her to himself for hours the next day. And what might not happen in those hours? This was one factor in his present content; her little hand within his arm was another that thrilled him even more; but there were further and smaller factors which yet astonished him, each with its unexpected measure of gratification. There were the people bowing and curtseying as he came among them with Olivia on his arm. There were the momentary glimpses of the stately Towers, seen from end to end in a flash, as a bursting rocket spattered the sky with a million sparks that changed colour as they floated to the earth. And there was the feeling, never before this moment entirely unmixed, that after all it was better to be the Duke of St. Osmund's than Happy Jack of New South Wales.
"You were right!" he exclaimed, in an attempt to voice what he felt to Olivia; "you were quite right that day in the hut to say 'I wonder,' to what I said about not minding if I woke up and found myself on Carara after all. You setmewondering at the time, and now I rather think that I should mind a good deal. This place grows upon you. I feel it more and more every morning when I get the first glimpse of it, coming through the pines. But I never felt it as I do to-night—look at that!"
The entire front of the building was lit up by an enormous Roman candle, playing like a fountain on the terrace. Turret and spire and battlement were stamped sharp and grey against the darkling sky. The six Corinthian columns of the portico stood out like sentinels who had taken a step forward as one man. And in the tympanum overhead the shield of the six eagles that was carved there showed so plainly that Olivia and Jack pointed it out to each other at the same moment.
"You mustn't think I've no respect for the fowls," said the Duke, when they were both left blinking in the chaste light of the reproving moon; "I'm proud enough of them at the bottom of my heart. I may be slow at catching on to new ideas. I know I didn't at first take to everything like a duck to water. I couldn't, after the life I'd led; it was too much for one man. But I am getting used to it now. As old Claude says, I'm beginning to appreciate it. I am so! This has been the proudest day of my life; I'm proud of everything, of the place, the people——"
"And yourself most of all!" cried a thick voice at his elbow, while Olivia's fingers tightened on his other arm.
It was Matthew Hunt. He was flushed with wine, but steady enough on his legs. Only his tongue was beyond control, and a crowd was at his heels to hear what he would say next.
"Yes, I remember you," he continued savagely. "I shan't forget that morning in a hurry——"
"Yet you seem to have forgotten who you are speaking to," put in the Duke quietly.
Hunt laughed horribly.
"Forgotten? I never knew! All I know is as I'mnotspeaking to his Grace the Duke——"
Olivia was not shaken off. She only felt a quivering in the arm she held; she only guessed it was the other arm that shot out too quick for her sight from his further shoulder: and all she saw was the dropping of Hunt at their feet, as if with a bullet through his brain. She conquered her impulse to scream, and she found herself saying instead, "Well done! It served him right!" And the voice sounded strange in her own ears.
But her opinion was freely echoed by those who had followed in Hunt's wake. A dozen hands raised him roughly, and kept their hold of him even when he was firm upon his feet, half stunned still, but wholly sobered. He tried to shake them off, but they answered that he must first apologise to his Grace. He refused, and they threatened him with the pond. He gave in then, in a way, speaking one thing, but looking another, which was yet the plainer of the two to the Duke. It meant that all was not yet over between him and Hunt. And Jack was very silent as he led Olivia back to the terrace.
"You were quite right," she said as they went; "had I been a man I would have done it for you."
"You're a splendid girl," he replied, to her confusion; but that was all; nor did he seem conscious of what he said.
Already it was late, and in another hour the band had stopped; the fireworks were over; the people all gone, and gone the memory of their ringing cheers from the heart of the Duke, who stood alone with Claude Lafont on the moonlit terrace. Claude had heard of Hunt's insolence and summary chastisement; he regretted the incident extremely; but his state of mind was nothing to that of the Duke, who was now a prey to reactionary depression of the severest order.
"Are there any revolvers in the house?" said he. "I shall want a loaded one to-night."
"What in the world for?" cried Claude in dismay.
"Not for my own brains; you needn't alarm yourself. But you see what a bitter enemy I've made; he might get me at his mercy out there at the hut. There was murder in his eye to-night, or else truth in his words, and that you won't allow. But there was one or the other. So I want a shooter before I go over."
"If only you wouldn't go over at all! What's the use, when there are dozens of good rooms lying idle in the house? It does seem a madness!"
"Well, I am half thinking of giving it up; but not to-night, or that brute may go killing my cats. He's capable of anything. Give me a revolver like a good chap."
Claude fetched one from the gun-room. He it was who still knew the whereabouts of all things, who kept the keys, and who arranged most matters for the Duke. He was Jack's major-domo as well as his guide, philosopher, and friend.
To-night they walked together as far as the shores of the lake. Claude then returned, but for some reason the pair shook hands first. No word was said, save between eye and eye in the pale light of the new harvest moon. But Claude had never yet seen his cousin gaze so kindly on the home of their common ancestors as he did to-night before they separated. And that look was a consolation to the poet as he returned alone to the house.
"This is the last link with that miserable bush life," said Claude to himself; "and it's very nearly worn through. He's beginning to see that there wasn't so much after all in the inheritance of Esau. After to-night we shall have no more of this nonsense of camping out in a make-believe bush hut; he will sleep under his own roof, like a sane man, and I'll get him to burn the bush hut down. After that—after that—well, I suppose the wedding-bells and the altar rails are only a question of time!"
And Claude went within, to talk of art and of books until bookman and artist went to bed; but he himself returned to the terrace instead of following their example. A dark depression was brooding over his spirit, his mind was full of vague forebodings. He had also a hundred regrets, and yet the last and the least of these was for the moment the most poignant too. He was sorry he had yielded to Jack in the matter of that revolver. And even as the thought came into his head—by some strange prescience—surely never by coincidence—he heard a shot far away in the direction of the lake. He held his breath, and heard a single throb of his own heart; then another shot; and then another and another until he had counted five.
Now it was a five-chambered revolver that Claude had handed fully loaded to his cousin.
The Duke had proceeded to his hut with the slow and slouching gait of a man bemused; yet the strings of his body were as those of a lute, and there was an inordinate keen edge to his every sense. He heard the deer cropping the grass far behind him; and he counted the very reverberations of the stable clock striking a half-hour in the still air. It was the half-hour after midnight. The moon still slanted among the pines, and Jack followed his own shadow, with his beard splayed against his shirt-front, until within a few yards of his hut. Then he looked quickly up and about. But the hut was obviously intact; there was the moon twinkling in the padlock of which the key was in his pocket; and Jack returned to his examination of the ground.
He was a very old bushman; he had a black-fellow's eye for a footprint, and he had struck a trail here which he knew to be recent and not his own. He followed it to the padlocked door, and round the hut and back to the door. He found the two heel-marks where the man had sat down to think some matter over. Then he took out his key and went within, but left the door wide open; and while his back was still turned to it, for he could not find his matches, there was a slight noise there, and the moon's influx was stemmed by a man's body.
"Good morning, Hunt," said Jack, without turning round.
The tone, no less than the words, took the intruder all aback. He had planned a pretty surprise, only to receive a prettier for his pains.
"How did you know it was me?" he cried.
"By your voice," was the reply; and the matches were found at last.
"But before that?"
"I expected you. Why didn't you go on sitting there with your back to the door?"
"You saw me!" cried Hunt, coming in.
"I saw your tracks. Hullo! Be good enough to step outside again."
"I've come to talk to you——"
"Quite so; but we'll talk outside."
And Hunt had to go with what grace he might. Jack followed with a couple of camp-stools, pulled the door to, sat down on one of the stools, and motioned Hunt to the other. The great smooth face shook slowly in reply; and the moonlight showed a bulbous bruise between the eyes, which made its author frown and feel at fault.
"Yes, you may look!" said Hunt through the gap in his set teeth which was a piece of the same handiwork. "You hit hard enough, but I can hit harder where it hurts more. A fine Dukeyouare! Oh, yes; double your fists again—do. You won't hit me this time. There's no one looking on!"
"Don't be too sure, my boy," replied Jack. "Don't you make any mistake!"
Hunt stuck a foot upon his camp-stool and leant forward over his knee.
"Recollect why you struck me to-night?"
"Perfectly."
"Well, I deserved it—for being such a fool as to say what I had to say at a time like that. It was the drink said it, not me; I apologise again for saying it there, I apologise to you and me too. I was keeping it to say here."
"Out with it," said Jack, who to his own astonishment was preserving a perfect calm; as he spoke he began filling a pipe that he had brought out with the matches.
"One thing at a time," said Hunt, producing a greasy bank-book. "I'll out with this first. You may have heard that the old Duke had a kind of weakness for my folks?"
"I have heard something of the sort."
"Then I'll trouble you to run your eye over this here pass-book. It belongs to my old dad. It'll show you his account with the London and Provincial Bank at Devenholme. It's a small account. This here book goes back over ten years, and there's some blank leaves yet. But look at it for yourself; keep your eye on the left-hand page from first to last; and you'll see what you'll see."
Jack did so; and what he saw on every left-hand page was this: "per Maitland, £50." There were other entries, "by cheque" and "by cash," but they were few and small. Clearly Maitland was the backbone of the account; and a closer inspection revealed the further fact that his name appeared punctually every quarter, and always in connection with the sum of fifty pounds received.
"Ever heard of Maitland, Hollis, Cripps and Co.?" inquired Hunt.
Jack started; so this was the Maitland. "They are my solicitors," he said.
"They were the old Duke's too," replied Hunt. "Now have a look at the other side of the account. You know the Lower Farm; then look and see what we pay for rent."
"I know the figure," said Jack, handing back the pass-book. "It is half the value."
"Less than half—though I say it! And what does all this mean—two hundred a year paid up without fail by Maitland, Hollis, Cripps and Co., and the Lower Farm very near rent free? It means," said Hunt, leaning forward, with an evil gleam on either side of his angry bruise—"it means that something's bought of us as doesn't appear. You can guess what for yourself. Our silence! Two hundred a year, and the Lower Farm at a nominal rent, all for keeping a solitary secret!"
"Then I should advise you to go on keeping it," said Jack, with cool point; yet for all his nonchalance, his heart was in a flutter enough now; for he knew what was coming—he caught himself wondering how much or how little it surprised him.
"All very fine," he heard Hunt saying—a long way off as it seemed to him—whereas he was really bending farther forward than before. "All very fine! But what if this secret has improved in value with keeping? Improved, did I say? Lord's truth, it's gone up a thousand per cent. in the last few weeks; and who do you suppose sent it up? Why, you! I'll tell you how. I dessay you can guess; still I'll tell you, then there'll be no mistakes. You've heard things of your father? You know the sort he was? You won't knock me down again for mentioning it, will you? I thought not! Well, when the Red Marquis, as they used to call him, was a young man about the house here, my old dad was in the stables; and my old dad's young sister was the Duchess's own maid—a slapping fine girl, they tell me, but she was dead before I can remember. Well, and something happened; something often does. But this was something choice. Guess what!"
"He married her."
"He did. He married her at the parish church of Chelsea, in the name of Augustus William Greville Maske, his real name all but the title; still, he married the girl."
"Quite right too!"
"Oh, quite right, was it? Stop a bit. You were born in 1855. You told me so yourself; you may remember the time, and you stake your lifeIdon't forget it. It was the sweetest music I ever heard, was that there date! Shall I tell you why? Why, because them two—the Red Marquis and his mother's maid—were married on October 22d, 1853."
"Well?"
Hunt took out a handful of cigars which had been provided for all comers in the evening; he had filled his pockets with them; and now he selected one by the light of the setting moon and lit it deliberately. Then he puffed a mouthful of smoke in Jack's direction, and grinned.
"'Well,' says you; and you may well 'well!' For the Red Marquis deserted his wife and went out to Australia before he'd been married a month. And out there he married again.But you were five years old, my fine fellow, before his first wife died, and was buried in this here parish!You can look at her tombstone for yourself. She died and was buried as Eliza Hunt; and just that much was worth two hundred a year to us for good and all; because, you see, I'm sorry to say she never had a child."
Both in substance and in tone this last statement was the most convincing of all. Here was an insolent exultation tempered by a still more insolent regret; and the very incompleteness of the triumph engraved it the deeper with the stamp of harsh reality.
Jack saw his position steadily in all its bearings. He was nobody. A little time ago he had stepped into Claude's shoes, but now Claude would step into his. Well, thank God that it was Claude! And yet—and yet—that saving fact made facts of all the rest.
"I've no doubt your yarn is quite true," said Jack, still in a tone that amazed himself. "But of course you have some proofs on paper?"
"Plenty."
"Then why couldn't you come out with all this before?"
Hunt gave so broad a grin that a volume of smoke escaped haphazard from his gaping mouth.
"You'd punished me," he said, admiring the red end of his cigar; "I'd got you to punish in your turn, and with interest. So I gave you time to get to like the old country in general, and this here spot in particular; to say nothing of coming the Duke; I meant that to grow on you too. I hope as I gave you time enough? This here hut don't look altogether like it, you know!"
Jack's right hand was caressing the loaded revolver in the breast-pocket of his dress-coat; it was the cold, solid power of the little living weapon that kept the man himself cool and strong in his extremity.
"Quite fair," he remarked. "Any other reason?"
"One other."
"What was that?"
"Well, you see, it's like this"—and Hunt dropped his insolence for a confidential tone far harder to brook. "It's like this," he repeated, plumping down on the camp-stool in front of Jack: "there's nobody knows of that there marriage but us Hunts. We've kep' it a dead secret for nearly forty years, and we don't want to let it out now. But, as I say, the secret's gone up in value. Surely it's worth more than two hundred a year to you? You don't want to be knocked sideways by that there Claude Lafont, do you? Yet he's the next man. You'd never let yourself be chucked out by a chap like that?"
"That's my business. What's your price?"
"Two thousand."
"A year?"
"Two thousand a year. Come, it's worth that to you if it's worth a penny-piece. Think of your income!"
"Think of yours. Two hundred on condition you kept a single secret! That was the condition, wasn't it?"
"Well?"
"You've let the secret out, you cur!" cried Jack, jumping to his feet. "And you've lost your income by it for good and all. Two thousand! You'll never see another two hundred. What, did you take me for a dirty skunk like yourself? Do you think I got in this position through my own fault or of my own accord? Do you think I'm so sweet on it as to sit tight at the mercy of a thing like you? Not me! What you've told me to-night the real Duke and his lawyers shall hear to-morrow; and think yourself lucky if you aren't run in for your shot at a damnable conspiracy! Did you really suppose I cared as much as all that? Do you think—oh! for God's sake, clear out, man, before I do you any more damage!"
"Oh, you're good at that," said Hunt through his broken tooth. He had risen, and now he retreated a few paces. "You're not bad with your fists, you fool, but I've come prepared for you this time!" and he drew a knife; but the revolver covered him next instant.
"And I for you," retorted Jack. "I give you five seconds to clear out in. One—two——"
"My God, are there such fools——"
"Three—four——"
The man was gone. At a safer range he stopped again to threaten and gloat, to curse and to coax alternately. But Jack took no more notice; he turned into the hut, flung the pistol on the table, and stood motionless until the railing died away. Yet he had heeded never a word of it, but was rather reminded that it had been by its very cessation, as one notes the stopping of a clock. It made him look out once more, however; and, looking, he saw the last of Matthew Hunt in the moonlit spaces among the pines. His retreating steps died slowly away. The snapping of a twig was just audible a little after. And then in the mellow distance the stable clock chimed and struck one; and again Jack found himself keeping an imaginary count of the reverberations until all was still.
He stood at the door a moment longer. The feathered barbs of the pine-trees were drawn in ink upon a starry slate. The night was as mild and clear and silent as many a one in the Riverina itself; and Jack tried to think himself there; to regard this English summer as the bushman's dream that he had so often imagined it here in his model bush hut. But his imagination was very stubborn to-night. The stately home which was not his rose in his mind's eye between him and the stars; once more he saw it illumined in a flash from spire to terrace; once more the portico columns marched forward as one man, while the six eagles flew out in the tympanum above; and though a purring arose from his feet, and something soft and warm rubbed kindly against his shins, he could no longer forget where he was and who he was not. He was not the Duke. He was the wrong man after all. And the hut that he had built and inhabited, as a protest against all this grandeur, was a monument of irony such as the hand of man had never reared in all the world before.
The wrong man! He flung himself upon the elaborately rude bed to grapple with those three words until he might grasp what they meant to himself. And as he lay, his little cat leapt softly up and purred upon his heart, as if it knew the aching need there of a sympathy beyond the reach of words.
Only one aspect of his case came home to him now, but that was its worst aspect. The life he was to lose mattered little after all. He might miss it more than he had once thought; it was probable he would but truly appreciate it when it was a life of the past, as is the way of a man. Yet even that could be borne. The losing of the girl was different and a million times worse. But lose her he must: for what was he now? Instead of a Duke a nobody; not even a decently born peasant; a nameless husk of humanity, a derelict, a nonentity, the natural son of a notorious rake. Must he go back then to the bush, and back alone? Must he put himself beyond the reach of soft words and softer eyes for ever? He could feel again that little hand within his arm; and it was worse a hundredfold than the vision of the Towers lit from end to end by the light of a bursting rocket. Would not the grave itself——
Wait.
There was the pistol on the table. The pale light lay along the barrel. He held his breath and lay gazing at the faint gleam until it grew into a blinding sun that scorched him to the soul. And he hardly knew what he had done when Claude Lafont found him wandering outside with the hot pistol still in his hand.
Jack looked upon the breathless poet with dull eyes that slowly brightened; then he pressed the lever, shot out the empty cartridges, blew through the chambers, and handed the revolver back to Claude.
"I've no more use for it. I'm much obliged to you. No, I've done no damage with it; that's just the point. I was emptying it for safety's sake. I'm so sorry you heard. I—Ididthink of emptying it—through my own head."
"In Heaven's name, why?"
"Only for a moment, though. It would have been a poor trick after all. Still I had to empty it first and see that afterwards."
"But why? What on earth has happened?"
"I'm not the man after all."
"What man?"
"The Duke of St. Osmund's."
And Claude was made to hear everything before he was allowed the free expression of his astonishment and incredulity. Then he laughed. His incredulity remained.
"My dear fellow," he cried, "there's not a word of truth in the whole story. It's one colossal fraud. Hunt's a blackguard. I wouldn't believe his oath in a court of justice."
"What about the bank-book?"
"A fraud within a fraud!"
"Not it. I'll answer for that. Oh, no; we could have inquired at the bank. Hunt's a blackguard, but no fool. And you know what my father was; from all accounts he wasn't the man to think twice about a little job like bigamy."
"I wouldn't say that; few men of our sort would be so reckless in such a matter," declared the poet. "Now, from allIknow of him, I should have said it was most inconsistent with his character to marry the girl at all. Everything but that! And surely it's quite possible to explain even that two hundred a year without swallowing such a camel as downright bigamy. My grandfather was a sort of puritanical monomaniac; even in the days of his mental vigour I can remember him as a sterner moralist than any of one's school-masters or college dons. Then, too, he was morbidly sensitive about the family failings and traditions, and painfully anxious to improve the tone of our house. Bear that in mind and conceive as gross a scandal as you like—but not bigamy. Do you mean to tell me that a man like my grandfather would have thought two hundred a year for all time too much to pay for hushing such a thing up for all time? Not he—not he!" There fell a heavy hand upon Claude's back.
"Claude, old boy, I always said you were a genius. Do you know, I never thought of that?"
"It's obvious; besides, there's the Eliza Hunt on the gravestone, I've seen it myself. But look here—I'll tell you what I'll do."
"What, old man?"
"I'll run up to town to-morrow and see Maitland, Hollis, Cripps about the whole matter. They've paid the money; they are the men to know all about it. Stop a moment! Hunt was clever enough to have an exact date for the marriage. What was it again?"
"October 22d, 1853."
"I think he said Chelseaparishchurch?"
"He did."
Claude scribbled a note of each point on his shirt-cuff.
"That's all I want," said he. "I'll run up by the first train, and back by the last. Meanwhile, take my word for it, you're as safe as the Queen upon her throne."
"And you?" said Jack.
"Oh, never mind me; I'm very well as I am."
Claude was fully conscious of his semi-heroic attitude; indeed he enjoyed it, as he had enjoyed many a less inevitable pose in his day. But that he could not help; and Jack was perhaps the last person in the world to probe beneath the surface of a kind action. His great hand found Claude's, and his deep voice quivered with emotion.
"I don't know how it is," he faltered, "but this thing has got at me more than I meant it to. Hark at that! Three o'clock; it'll be light before we know where we are; you won't leave a fellow till it is, will you? I'm in a funk! I've got to believe the worst till I know otherwise—that's all about it. The day I shan't mind tackling by myself, but for God's sake don't go and leave me to-night. You've got to go in the morning; stop the rest of the night out here with me. You shall have the bunk, and I'll doss down on the floor. I'll light the fire and brew a billy of tea this minute if only you'll stay with me now. Didn't you once say you'd have hold of my sleeve? And so you have had, old man, so you have had: only now's your time—more than ever."