Claude was deeply moved by the spectacle of a stronger man than himself so stricken in every nerve. He looked very compassionately upon the eager open face. There were a few grey hairs about either temple, but in the faint starlight they looked perfectly white; and there were crow's-feet under the eyes that seemed to have escaped his attention till now. He consented to remain on one condition: he must go back and put out the lights, and close the windows in the Poet's Corner. So Jack went with him; and those lights were the only sign of life in all the vast expanse of ancient masonry, that still belonged to one of them, though they knew not now to which. It was this thought, perhaps, that kept both men silent on the terrace when the lights had been put out and the windows shut. Then Jack ran his arm affectionately through that of Claude, and together they turned their backs upon those debatable stones.
Lady Caroline Sellwood was delighted to find Jack in the hall on making her descent next morning. He appeared lost, however, in a gloomy admiration of the ghostly guard in armour. The attitude and the expression were alike so foreign to him that Lady Caroline halted on the stairs. But only for a moment; the next, Jack was overwhelmed by the soft tempest of her good-will, and making prodigious efforts to return her smiles.
Suddenly she became severe.
"You're knocked up! You look as if you hadn't had a wink of sleep. Oh, I knew how it would be after all that racket; you dear, naughty Duke, you should have spared yourself more!"
"I was a fool," admitted Jack. "But—but I say, Lady Caroline, I do wish you wouldn't Duke me!"
"How sweet of you," murmured Lady Caroline.
"You know you didn't last night!" he hastily reminded her.
"But that was an occasion."
"So is this!" exclaimed Jack, and his tone struck the other more than she showed.
"Where is Claude?" inquired Lady Caroline suddenly.
"On his way to Devenholme."
"Devenholme!"
"And London, for the day. He had to catch the 9.40."
"So he has gone up to town! Odd that one never heard anything about it—I mean to say he could have made himself so useful to one. May I ask when he decided to go?"
Jack hesitated. He had been charged to keep a discreet tongue during Claude's absence; he had been supplied with a number of reasons and excuses ready-made; but perfect frankness was an instinctive need of this primitive soul, whose present thoughts stood out in easy print upon his face, even as he resolved to resist his instincts for once.
"He decided—this morning," said Jack at last; and he took from his pocket a lengthy newspaper cutting attached to a pale green slip: "This is an article on him and his books, that has just appeared in theParthenon. What wouldn't I give to lay a hold of the brute who wrote it! I call it the sort of thing to answer with a hiding. It's one of a series headed 'Our Minor Poets,' which Claude says has been bad enough all through; but this article on him is the worst and most brutal of the lot. And—and—and old Claude took it to heart, of course; and—and he's run up to town for the day."
"Because of a severe criticism! I should have thought he was used to them by now. Poor dear Claude, he can string a pretty rhyme, but he never was a poet. And you, Jack—since you insist—you never were an actor—until to-day!"
Jack hung his head.
"You don't do it well enough, you dear fellow," continued Lady Caroline caressingly. "As if you could impose upon me! You must first come to me for lessons. Candidly now: what has taken him up to town in such a hurry? The same thing that—kept you awake all night?"
"Candidly, then," said Jack, raising his haggard face doggedly, "it was! And if you'll come out upon the terrace for five minutes I'll tell you exactly what's wrong. You have a right to know; and I can trustyounot to let it go any further for the moment. Even if I couldn't, I'd have to tell you straight! I hate keeping things up my sleeve; I can't do it; so let me make a clean breast of the whole shoot, Lady Caroline, and be done with it till Claude comes back."
Lady Caroline took a discouraging view of the situation. The Red Marquis had been capable of anything; related though they had been, she could not help telling Jack that her parents had forbidden her to dance with his father as a young girl. This might be painful hearing, but in such a crisis it was necessary to face the possibilities; and Lady Caroline, drawing a little away from her companion in order to see how he was facing them, forgot to take his arm any more as they sauntered in the sun. She undertook, however, to keep the matter to herself until Claude's return, at the mention of whose name she begged to look at the cutting from theParthenon.
"A most repulsive article," her mother informed Olivia after breakfast, but not until she had repeated to the girl the entire substance of the late conversation on the terrace. "I never read anything more venomously ill-bred in my life; and so untrue! To say he is no poet—our Claude! But we who know him, thank goodness we know better. It is the true poetry, not only in but between every line, that distinguishes dear Claude from the mere stringers of pretty rhymes of whom the papers sicken one in these latter days. But where are you going, my love?"
"To get ready to go with—Jack."
"To go where, pray?"
"Why, to Devenholme, as we arranged last night," replied Olivia, with spirit. "He said he would drive me over; andyousaid 'how sweet of him,' and beamed upon us both!"
Lady Caroline winced. "You impertinent chit!" she cried viciously; "you know as well as I do that what I have told you alters everything. Once and for all, Olivia, I forbid you to drive into Devenholme with—with—with—that common man!"
"Very well; the drive's off," said the girl with swift decision; and she left her mother without another word.
She put on her habit and went straight to Jack.
"Do you mind if werideinto Devenholme instead of driving?"
"Mind! I should like it even better."
"Then suppose we go to the stable-yard and see about our horses ourselves; and while we are there, we may as well stay and start by the back road, which will save at least a quarter of a mile."
"My oath," said Jack without further provocation, "you might have been dragged up in the bush!"
"I wish I had been!" exclaimed Olivia bitterly. He could not understand her tone. Nor did he ever know the meaning of the momentary fighting glitter in the brave brown eyes of the girl.
He rode as an inveterate bushman, entirely on the snaffle, with inelegantly short stirrups and a regrettable example of the back-block bend; nor did his well-broken hack give him a chance of exhibiting any of the finer qualities of the rough-riding school. But indeed for the most part the couple sat at ease in their saddles, while the horses dawdled with loose reins and lazy necks in the cool shadows of the roadside trees. By mutual consent they had dispensed with an attendant groom. And Olivia had never been so kind to Jack, as on this day when he was under so black a cloud, with so heavy a seal upon his lips.
For once she talked to him; as a rule she liked better to listen, with large eyes intent and sympathetic lips apart—ever ready with the helpful word. But to-day she was wishful to entertain, to take him out of himself, to console without letting him suspect that she knew as much as he had told her mother. In a sense she knew more, for Lady Caroline had duly exaggerated his frank confession; and the girl's heart bled for her friend, on the brink of a disillusion without parallel in her knowledge. So she told him of her life in town and elsewhere; of the treadmill round of toilsome pleasure; of the penance of dressing and smiling with unflagging prettiness; of the hollow friendships and hollower loves of that garish life, and the unutterable staleness of the whole conventional routine. No doubt she overstated her case; and certainly her strictures were themselves conventional; but she was perfectly aware of both facts, and would have been exceedingly sorry to have had this conversation recorded against her. Olivia had a healthy horror of superiority, either of the moral or the intellectual order. But she was conducting a conversation with an obvious purpose; and it was only when he told her again, and more earnestly than before, how suited she was for the bush, that she proposed the canter which brought them a mile nearer Devenholme.
"Now it's you to play," she told him as they drew rein; "and I want to hear some of your adventures. You've never told us any, yet you must have had heaps. So far I've only heard about the hut, the sheep, the homestead, and your old boss."
"A white man!" cried Jack. "I wish you knew him."
"So do I; but I can quite picture him, and just now I would much rather hear about some of your own adventures. So begin."
Jack laughed.
"Really, Miss Sellwood, I never had one in my life!"
"Then really, my Lord Duke, I can't believe a word——"
Jack was laughing no more.
"Don't call me that," he said. "It would be so much kinder to call me Jack!"
She had forgotten. Her heart smote her now, and the difficulty was to conceal her unsuspected sympathy. So she insisted on his calling her Olivia, to conclude the bargain. And the double innovation made them both so self-conscious, that she forgot her thirst for his adventures, while he brooded heavily upon his bitter-sweet advancement won loo late.
So they came into Devenholme as the sun was shining fore and aft along the quaint old English streets. And in the town, where he was well enough known by this time, poor Jack was received with a cruel consideration that would have hurt him even more than it did had he dreamt how it affected his companion. The tender-hearted girl was inexpressibly grieved, and never more than when the jeweller mentioned a hundred guineas as the price of the ring to be changed; indeed, the situation in the jeweller's shop was perilously charged with hidden emotions. In this terribly equivocal position, Jack could not press upon Olivia things for which he might never be able to pay; neither could Olivia now refuse any present at all, nor yet lead him as low as she would have liked in the price, for fear of revealing her illicit knowledge. So at last they hit upon a curb-bracelet that fastened with a tiny padlock. It cost but forty-five shillings. And when he had locked it upon her right wrist, he pocketed the key without a remark, then paid ready money and left the shop in a throbbing agony of shame. The poor jeweller stood bowing them out with the hundred-guinea ring still in his hand.
It was necessary to bait the horses; it was equally essential for the pair themselves to have something to eat. So they rode under the olden arch of the oak-lined Falcon, and it was "your Grace" at every step, with ironic iteration very hard for either of them to bear without a word to the other. They dismounted therefore with the less delay; and Olivia turned her back upon the coffee-room window, and on an elderly, bald, well-dressed man, whose cool fixed stare made the girl extremely angry, when Jack at her side gave a shout of delight.
"So help me never!it's the boss himself!"
Olivia turned, and there was the objectionable old fellow in the window smiling and waving to her enchanted companion. And this was the man of whom she had heard so often! She did not stop to consider how he came to be here; the back-blockers were already at explanations, but Olivia was not listening. She was thinking of the bearded, jovial, hearty squatter of her imagination; and she was glancing askance at the massive chin and forehead, and at the white moustache cropped close over the bad mouth of the real man.
"Mr. Dalrymple—my old boss—Miss Sellwood!" shouted Jack, introducing them with a wealth of pantomime. "We're coming up to lunch with you, sir; that is, you're to lunch with me; it's my shout!"
And poor Olivia found herself swept off her feet, as it were, into the presence of a man whom all her instincts had pronounced odious at sight.
But the higher court of the girl's intellect reversed this judgment on the appeal of her trained perceptions. The elderly squatter was not after all a man to be summed up at a glance or in a word: his undoubted assurance was tempered and redeemed by so many graces of manner and address as to upset entirely the girl's preconceptions of his class. At table he treated her with a princely courtesy, imperceptibly including her in a conversation which poor Jack would have conducted very differently if left to himself. After the first few minutes, indeed, Olivia could see but two faults in the squatter; the first was the fierce light his charming manners reflected on those of Jack; and the second was a mouth which made the girl regret the austere cut of his moustache whenever she looked at Mr. Dalrymple.
"So you left before shearing, sir!" cried Jack, who was grossly eager for all station news. "I wonder you did that. They must be in the thick of it now!"
"They were to begin on the fifth of this month. The shearing, Miss Sellwood, is the one divine, far-off event towards which the whole sheep-station moves," added Mr. Dalrymple, with a glibness worthy of Claude Lafont.
"And don't you forget the lamb-marking," chimed in Jack. "I hope it was a good lambing this year, sir?"
"Seventy-nine per cent.," replied Dalrymple. "I'm afraid that's Greek to you, Miss Sellwood—and perhaps better so."
"You see, I'm as keen as ever on the old blocks!" cried Jack. It was a superfluous boast.
"So I do see; and I must say, Jack, you surprise me. Do you notice how he 'sirs' me, Miss Sellwood? I was on my way to pay homage to the Duke of St. Osmund's, not to receive it from Happy Jack of Carara!"
"Do you often come over to England, Mr. Dalrymple?" asked Olivia quickly. For the girl had seen the spasm in Jack's face, and she knew how the anæsthetic of this happy encounter had exhaled with the squatter's last speech.
"No, indeed!" was the reply. "I haven't been home for more years than I care to count; and the chances are that I shouldn't be here now but for our friend the Duke. He unsettled me. You see, Miss Sellwood, how jealous are the hearts of men!Ihad no inheritance to come home to; but I had my native land, and here I am."
"And you have friends in Devenholme?"
"I have one friend; I wish that I dared say two," replied the squatter, looking from Jack to Olivia in his most engaging manner. "No, to tell you frankly, I was on a little inquisitive pilgrimage to Maske Towers. I did not wait for an invitation, for I knew that I should bring my own welcome with me."
"Of course, of course; come out to-morrow!" exclaimed Jack nervously. "I'll send in for you, and you must stay as long as ever you can. If only I'd driven in, as I meant to, we'd have taken you back with us. Yet on the whole to-morrow will be best; you must give us time to do you well, you know, Mr. Dalrymple. It'll be a proud day for me! I little expected to live to entertain my own boss!"
Indeed, his pride was genuine enough, and truly characteristic of the man; but at the back of it there was a great uneasiness which did not escape the clear, light eye of Dalrymple. Not that the squatter betrayed his prescience by word or sign; on the contrary, he drank Jack's health in the champagne provided by him, and included Olivia's name in a very graceful speech. But Jack drank nothing at all; and having reduced his roll to a heap of crumbs, he was now employed in converting the crumbs into a pile of pellets.
Olivia pitied his condition; that tremulous brown hand, with the great bush freckles still showing at the gnarled finger-roots, touched her inexpressibly as it lay fidgeting on the white table-cloth. She strained every nerve to keep the squatter engaged and unobservant; and she found herself fluctuating, in a rather irritating manner, between her first instinctive antipathy and her later liking for the man. He was extremely nice to her; he had an obvious kindness for poor Jack; and she apprehended a personal magnetism, a unique individuality, quite powerful enough to account for Jack's devotion to him. She felt the influence herself. Yet there was something—she could not say what.
The way in which her last vague prejudice was removed, however, made a deep impression upon Olivia, besides giving her a startling glimpse of her own feelings. And it all came of a casual remark of Dalrymple's, in elucidation of his prompt expedition to the district, to the effect that the Duke of St. Osmund's had once saved his life.
"Your life!" cried Olivia, while Jack ceased meddling with his bread.
"To be sure. Is it possible he has never told you the story?"
"Not a word of it! And only this morning, as we rode in, I asked him if he had never had any adventures!"
Her face was a flushed reproach.
"I'd forgotten that one," said Jack sheepishly. "I really had. It's so long ago; and it wasn't much when you come——"
"Not much!" interjected Dalrymple. "I should be very sorry to find myself in such a tight place again! It's some thirteen years ago, Miss Sellwood. I was thinking of taking up some cattle country in the unfenced part of Queensland. I had gone up to have a look at the place, and the blacks attacked us while I was there. We were three strong in an iron store: the owner, a stray shearer, and myself. The shearer had his horse hung up outside; he could have got away quite easily in the beginning; but our horses were all turned out, and he wouldn't leave us. So we dragged his horse inside, and we set to work to defend the store."
"I know that shearer!" cried Olivia proudly. "Yet he hangs his head! Oh, go on, Mr. Dalrymple, go on!"
"From daybreak to sundown," continued the squatter, "we defended ourselves with a Winchester, a double-barrelled shot-gun, and an old muzzle-loading rifle. The blacks came on by the score, but they couldn't get in, and they couldn't set fire to the corrugated iron. It was riddled like a sieve, and each of us three had a hole in him too; but there was a wall of dead blacks up against the iron outside, and they were as good as sandbags. We should have beaten the fellows off before midnight if our powder had held out. It didn't; so I assure you we shook hands, and were going to blow up the place with a twenty-gallon tin of petroleum, that was luckily inside, when our friend the shearer came out with an idea. His horse had a ball in its body and was screaming like a woman, so thatitwas no use. I recollect we put it out of its pain with our last charge. But there was long dry grass all round up to within some fifteen yards of the store; and after dark the shearer ran out three or four times with a bucket of petroleum, and once with a box of matches. The last time but one the blacks saw him. They had surrounded the place at a pretty respectful radius, and they were having what we call a spell; but they saw him the last time but one. And when he went out again and struck his matches they had something to aim at. Well, his first match went out, and there was a sheaf of spears sticking in the sand and three new holes through the house. We waited; not another thing could we see. We didn't know whether he was dead or alive, and we heard the blacks starting to rush us. But we also heard the scratch of a second match; in another instant the thing flared up like a circular lamp—and us in the middle of the burner! The country was burnt black for miles all round, and we ourselves had a hot time of it, Miss Sellwood; but here are two of us, at all events, to tell the tale."
Olivia bowed to him; she could not speak. Then for a little she turned her wet eyes, wet with enthusiasm, upon the awkward hero of the tale. And without more words the party broke up.
Jack was still remonstrating with Dalrymple when the girl rejoined them outside.
"Come now!" she said. "Was it true, or wasn't it?"
"More or less," admitted Jack.
"Was it true about the horse and the petroleum and the spears?"
He confessed that it was, but discredited his memory as a clumsy qualification. Olivia turned away from him, and said no more until she was in her saddle; then while Jack was mounting she rode up to the squatter.
"I am truly grateful to you, Mr. Dalrymple," she said; "and all the others will be as grateful as I am, and will look forward to your visit. But for you, we might all have gone on being entertained by a hero unawares. You must tell us more. Meanwhile I for one can thank you most heartily!"
And she leant over and frankly pressed his hand; but said very little all the long ride home. Jack assured her, however, that he had never thought of his wound for years, although he must have a bullet in him somewhere to that day; he also told her that the fight with the blacks had been the beginning of his connection with his old boss, whose service he had never left until the end. And for miles he spoke of no one else; he was so grateful to Olivia for liking his friend, and he had so many stories of Dalrymple to set as well as he could against that one of himself. So the ride drew to an end in the golden afternoon, with never a tender word between the pair, though his heart was as full as hers; but she could not speak; and the great seal lay yet upon his lips.
Nobody was about when they dismounted, so Jack himself led the horses back to the stables, while Olivia gathered up her habit and scaled the steps. The stable clock struck five as the former was returning by way of the shrubbery; another seven hours, and Claude would come home with the news. For such an issue, it was still an eternity to wait. But Jack felt that the suspense would be easily endurable so long as he could have sight and speech of Olivia Sellwood; without her, even for these few minutes, it was hardly to be borne.
Yet this stage of his ordeal was made up of such minutes. He returned to desolate rooms. Olivia had disappeared; nor could he pitch upon a soul to tell him where she was. Door after door was thrown open in vain; each presented an empty void to his exacting eyes. He ran outside and stood listening on the terrace. And there, through an open upper window he heard a raised voice railing, which he could not but recognise as that of Lady Caroline. Her words were indistinguishable. But as Jack looked aloft for the window, one was passionately shut, and he neither heard nor saw any more.
The first persons he ultimately encountered were Mr. Sellwood and the agent. They had golf-clubs in their hands and wholesome sweat upon their brows. The agent treated Jack as usual; the Home Secretary did not. He stated that he had at last won a round; but his manner was singularly free from exultation; indeed, it was quite awkward, as though perfect cordiality had suddenly become a difficult matter, and he was ashamed to find it so. Certainly there had been no difficulty of the kind before. And Jack noted the change, but was too honourable himself to suspect the cause.
He next fell in with the Frekes. This excellent couple loved Jack for his goodness to their children, who were not universally popular. They now carried him off to tea in the nursery, where he stayed until it was time to dress for dinner. Jack liked the children; it was not his fault that they were so seldom in evidence. They were obviously spoilt; but Jack thought they were taken too seriously by all but their parents, who certainly did not take them seriously enough. So he had many a romp with the little outcasts, but never a wilder one than this afternoon, for the children took him out of himself. Their society, had he but known it, was even better for him in the circumstances than that of Olivia herself; it was almost as good as another meeting with Dalrymple of Carara. He rose at length from under his oppressors, dusty, dishevelled and perspiring, but for the moment as light-hearted as themselves. And there were the grave, sympathetic eyes of the parents resting sadly upon him to recall his trouble. Why should they look sad or sympathetic? Everybody had changed towards him; this was the difference in the Frekes. Could they have divined the truth? No suspicion of a broken confidence entered his head; yet it was sufficiently puzzled as he dressed, with unusual care, to make a creditable last appearance at the head of the table which would prove never to have been his at all. He had quite made up his mind to that; he found it appreciably harder to reconcile himself to the keen disappointment which awaited him in the dining-room.
Olivia was not coming down.
"She has knocked herself up," explained Lady Caroline tersely. "So would any girl—not an Australian—who rode so far on such a day. Your Grace might have known better!"
Jack stared at her like a wounded stag; then he uttered an abject apology, for which, however, he obtained no sort of a receipt. Lady Caroline had turned and was talking to some one else. But it was not this that cut him to the heart; it was her mode of addressing him, after their conversation of the early morning.
Later in the evening he remembered that railing voice and the shutting of the window upstairs; and with a burning indignation he divined, all at once, who it was that had been so spoken to, and why, with the true cause of Olivia's indisposition.
This was in the darkness of his hut, with Livingstone asleep in his lap. In another minute Jack was striding through the pines, on his way to the drawing-room for a few plain words with Lady Caroline Sellwood. He never had them. Lady Caroline was gone to bed. It was almost eleven; within an hour Claude would be back, and a moral certainty become an absolute fact. Hunt's tale was true. Had it been otherwise, Claude would have telegraphed. He had left, indeed, on the distinct understanding that he should do no such thing; his mission was to be kept a secret, and a telegram might excite suspicion; yet even so he would have sent one had all been well. Jack was sure of it; his exhausted spirit had surrendered utterly to an ineluctable despair.
In this humour he sought the Poet's Corner, and found its twohabituésfurtively chuckling over some newspaper. Their gaiety cut him to the quick. Yet he longed to enter into it.
"What's the joke?" he asked. "I want something to make me laugh!"
"This wouldn't," replied Edmund Stubbs. "It's not benign enough for you."
"It's only a piece of smart scribbling," explained Llewellyn, lighting a fresh cigarette with the stump of the last.
Jack was behind them; quite innocently he put his head between theirs and looked for himself. The paper was theParthenon. There was but one article on the open page. It was headed—
Our Minor Poets.
XXVIII.Mr. Claude Lafont.
"So that amuses you?" said Jack at last.
"Quite," said Llewellyn.
"You think it just, eh?"
"Oh, hang justice! It's awfully nice copy. That's all it has any right to be. Justice doesn't matter a hang; theParthenon'snot written for the virtuous shopkeeper; it isn't meant to appeal to the Nonconformist Conscience."
"Besides, the articleisjust," protested Stubbs. "We know what Lafont is, between ourselves; he's an excellent chap, but his poetry—save the mark!—would hardly impose on Clapham and Wandsworth. His manner's cheap enough, but his matter goes one cheaper; it's the sort of thing for which there should be no charge." Stubbs drained his glass.
Jack was blazing.
"I don't know what you mean by 'cheap,'" he cried; "but from reading that article, which I happen to have seen before, I should call it a jolly 'cheap' word. I don't set up to be a clever man. I only know what I like, and I like everything of Claude's that—that I can understand. But even if I didn't I should be sorry to go about saying so in his own house!"
"Hisown house!" exclaimed the Impressionist.
"We didn't know it was his," said Stubbs.
"What's mine is Claude's," replied Jack, colouring. "It was before I turned up, and it will be again when—whenever I peg out."
With that he was gone.
"Sounds suicidal," remarked Llewellyn.
"Or celibate," said Stubbs, replenishing his glass.
"Poor beast!" concluded the artist.
Here their host returned.
"I'm very sorry, you fellows," said he, with absurd humility. "I'm all off colour to-night, and I know I've made a rude ruffian of myself. Some of these days you'll understand; meantime will you forgive me?"
"Ihave nothing to forgive," replied Llewellyn.
"We'll say no more about it," said Stubbs.
And Jack shook hands with them both before leaving them for good; then he hurried through the length of the building to the great conservatory, where Stebbings was putting out the lights. The conservatory was at that extreme of the Towers which the dogcart would pass first. Here, too, was room and air for a man distraught. So Jack called out to Stebbings to leave the lights on longer.
"And light some more," he added suddenly. "Light up every lamp in the place! I shall stay here until Mr. Lafont returns."
"Yes, your Grace."
"Stebbings!"
"Your Grace?"
"For God's sake don't call me that again! I—I'm not used to it, Stebbings—any more than you're used to me," added Jack inconsequently; and he fled into the grounds until the old man should be gone.
The night was very dark and heavy; clouds obscured the moon, shedding a fine rain softly upon drive and terrace. Jack raised his face, and a grateful sprinkling cooled its fever. He longed for a far heavier fall, with the ancient longing of those prehistoric days when a grey sky and an honest wetting were the rarest joys in life. Could he indeed return to that rough routine after all these weeks of aristocratic ease? The bushman might exchange his wideawake for a coronet, but could the peer go back to the bush? Time must show. The only question was whether Hunt had lied or told the truth; and the answer could not be much longer delayed. Already it was half-past eleven; there was the clang creeping lazily through the night, round quarter of a mile of intervening wall, and half a hundred angles.
He would have gone down the drive to meet the dogcart; but the night was too dark; and beside him blazed the great conservatory like a palace of fire. He entered it again, and now he had it to himself; the statues among the tree-ferns were his only companions. But in his absence old Stebbings had placed a little table with brandy and soda-water set out upon it; even the butler had seen and pitied his condition.
The third quarter struck. The sound just carried to the conservatory, for now the rain was heavier, and the rattle overheard warred successfully against all other noises. The dogcart might drive by without Jack's hearing it. The suspense was horrible, but a surprise would be more horrible still. He was becoming unstrung; why should he not tune himself up with the brandy? His voluntary teetotalism was too absurd; he had made no promise, taken no pledge, but only a private pride in his self-discipline as it had gone on from day to day. Not a drop had he touched since that afternoon at Dover so long, so long ago! As he reckoned up the time, the forgotten lust possessed him; it had been even so on Carara, when the periodical need of a cheque would first steal over his lonely spirit. He thought now of those occasions and their results; he knew himself of old; but he was no longer the same man—resistance would be ridiculous now. He took another look at the night; then he filled a wine-glass with raw brandy—raised it—and impulsively dashed the whole upon the marble flags. The brandy widened in a shallow amber flood; the broken glass lay glittering under the lamps; and in Jack's ears the patter of the rain (which had never abated) broke out anew.
He could not account for his act; he did not know it for the culmination of a highly nervous condition induced by the twenty-four sleepless hours of unrelieved suspense. It was neither more nor less, and yet it enabled him to hold up his head once more. And as he did so, there—through the swimming crystal walls—between a palm-tree and a Norfolk Island pine—were the two red eyes of the dogcart dilating in the dark.
The great moment had come, and it was not so great after all. Jack's little outburst had left him strangely calm. He went to the door and hailed the dogcart in a loud, cheery voice. The lamps stopped. Claude came within range of those in the conservatory, and shook himself on the steps. Then he entered, looking unusually healthy, but dripping still.
"A brute of a night for you," said Jack apologetically. "Take off that coat, and have some brandy. Mind where you go. I've had a spill."
This was the reaction. Claude understood.
"Then you don't want to hear the news?"
"I know it. I've known it for hours."
"That I can see you haven't. Listen to me. There was no English marriage. Give me your hand!"
It was limp and cold.
"You don't believe me!" said Claude severely.
Jack subsided in a chair.
"I can't," he whispered. "I can't."
"You soon will. I wish to goodness I'd taken you with me to-day. Now listen: there was some truth in Hunt's story, but more lies. The marriage was a lie. There never was a marriage. There was something rather worse at the time, but a good deal better now. My grandfather patched it up, exactly as I thought. He packed my uncle out to Australia, and he settled two hundred a year on the Hunts, on the single condition of 'perpetual silence as to the connection between the two families.' I've seen the covenant, and those are the very words. The condition has been broken after all these years. And the Hunts' income stops to-day."
Jack had roused himself a little; he was no longer apathetic, but neither was he yet convinced.
"It seems a lot of money to hush up so small a matter," he objected. "Are they sure there was no more in it than that?"
"Maitland and Cripps? Perfectly sure; they've been paying that money for nearly forty years, and there's never been a hint at a marriage until now. Certainly there's none in the settlement. But to make assurance surer, young Maitland took a cab and drove off to see his father—who was a partner in '53, but has since retired—about the whole matter. And I took another cab, and drove straight to the old parish church facing the river at Chelsea. I found the clerk, and he showed me the marriage register, but there was no such marriage on that date (or any other) inthatchurch; so why in any? One lie means dozens. Surely you'll agree with me there?"
"I must; it's only the money that sticks with me. It seems such a case of paying through the nose. But what had old Maitland to say?"
"Everything," cried Claude. "He remembered the whole business perfectly, and even saying to my grandfather much what you're saying to me now. But I've told you the kind of man the old Duke was; he was a purist of the purists, besides being as proud as Lucifer, and a scandal so near home hit him, as you would say, in both eyes at once. He considered he got good value for his money when he hushed it up. They showed me a letter in which he said as much. Young Maitland unearthed it after he had seen his father, and with it others of a later date, in which the Duke refused to revoke or even to curtail the allowance on the woman's death. That's all; but surely it's conclusive enough! Here we have a first-class firm of solicitors on the one hand, and a clumsy scoundrel on the other. Which do you believe? By the way, they're anxious to prosecute Hunt on all sorts of grounds if you'll let them."
"I won't."
"I think you ought to," said Claude.
"No, no; too much mud has been stirred up already; we'll let it rest for a bit."
"But surely you'll get rid of the Hunts after this?"
"I'll see."
Claude was disappointed; he had looked for a different reception of his news.
"Do you mean to say you're not convinced yet?" he cried.
"No," said Jack, "I'm quite satisfied now; you hem the thing in on every side. But I wish to goodness all this had never happened!"
"So do we all; but if there was a doubt, surely it was best to set it at rest? If I were you, I should feel as one does after a bad dream."
Jack was on his feet.
"My dear old mate," he cried, "and so I do! But I'm only half woke up; that's what's the matter with me, and you must give me time to pull myself together. You don't know what a day I've had; you never will know. And you—my meat's your poison, and yet you've been doing all this for me just as if it was the other way round; and not a word of thanks at the end of it. Claude—old man—forgive me! Thanks won't do. They're no good at all in a case like this. What can a fellow say? If it was you, you'd say plenty——"
"I hope not," interrupted Claude, laughing. "Wait till you do me a good turn. You've done me many a one already, and I've never said a word."
But Jack would shake hands, and even Claude's face was shining with a tender light as a soft step fell upon the marble, and Lady Caroline Sellwood entered from the drawing-room. The door had been left open. But it was instantly evident that her Ladyship had not been eavesdropping, or at least not to any useful purpose; for she planted herself before the two men in obvious ignorance as to which was the man for her. She was still in the handsome dress that she had worn all the evening; and between her plump, white, glittering fingers she nursed the purple smoking-cap that had always been—and was still—intended for the Duke of St. Osmund's.
"It was no good," she cried tragically, looking from Claude to Jack and back again at Claude. "I simply couldn't go to bed until I knew. And now—and now I'm torn two ways; for pity's sake, put me out ofonemisery."
"It's all up," said Jack deliberately. He owed Lady Caroline a grudge for the shrill scolding he had heard upstairs, and another for Olivia's absence from the dinner-table. He was also curious to see what Lady Caroline would do.
She sailed straight to Claude, holding the smoking-cap at arm's length.
"My dear, dear Claude!HowI congratulate you! I find, after all, that the smoking-cap, which was originally intended——"
"Dear Lady Caroline," interposed Claude hastily, "everything is as it was. Hunt's story is a complete fabrication; I'd no idea that you knew anything about it."
"I couldn't help telling Lady Caroline," said Jack. Lady Caroline turned upon him with hot suspicion.
"You said it was all——"
He interrupted her.
"I wasgoingto say that it was all up with Hunt. He loses two hundred a year for his pains."
"Is that possible?" cried her Ladyship.
"It's the case," said Claude; "so everything is as it was, and as it should be."
Lady Caroline exhibited no further trace of her discomfiture.
"I wish we hadn't all interrupted each other," she laughed. "Iwas about to remark that the smoking-cap, which was originally intended to have what one may term a frieze, as well as a dado, of gold lace, will look much better without the frieze, so there's really no more to do to it. Take it, my dear, dear Jack, and wear it sometimes for my sake. And forgive a mother for what one said about Olivia's ride. Claude, I shall make another cap for you; meanwhile, let me congratulate you—again—on your noble conduct of to-day. Ah, you neither of you congratulate me on mine! Yet I am a woman, and I've kept your joint secret—most religiously—from nine in the morning to this very hour!"
Her answer was altogether astonishing; she leant back in the boat and looked him full in the face. A quick flush tinged her own, and the incomparable eyebrows were raised and arched; but underneath there was an honest tenderness which Olivia was not the girl to conceal.
"Was that your water-lilies?" said she; but this was not the astonishing speech. He had lured her afloat on impudently false pretences; she had a right to twit him with that.
"There are no water-lilies," he confessed; "at least, never mind them if there are. Oh, I was obliged to make some excuse! There was nowhere else where we could talk so well. I tell you again I have the cheek to love you! I can't help it; I've loved you ever since that day in London, and you've got to know it for good or bad. If it makes you very angry, I'll row you back this minute." He was resting on his oars under cover of the little island; the Towers were out of sight.
"Why in the world didn't you speak yesterday?" was Olivia's extraordinary reply.
"Yesterday?" faltered Jack.
"It was such a chance!"
"Not for me! My tongue was tied. Olivia, I was under a frightful cloud yesterday! You don't understand——"
"What if I do? What if I did at the time?"
"I don't see how you could," said Jack.
"Instinctively," replied Olivia, to screen her mother. "I knew something was wrong, and I have since been told what. If only you had spoken then!"
She dropped her eyes swiftly; the tear ran down her cheek.
"But why? Why then, better than now?"
"BecauseIcare, too," she whispered, so that the words just travelled to his ear.
"Olivia! My—do you know what you've said? Do you mean it?"
"Of course I care. I mean that much. You are different from everybody else."
"Then——"
"There must be no 'then.'"
"But you said you cared. Tell me—I don't understand."
"I can never marry you," said Olivia, looking him once more in the face. And her eyes were dry.
"Why not, if it is true—that you care?"
"Because you are what you are—and I—oh! how can I say it even to you? I am so ashamed. I have been thrown at your head from the very first—no, I have no right to say that. How I hate everything I say! You must understand; I am sure you do. Well, in the beginning I couldn't bear to speak to you, because I knew—what was hoped—and I seemed to see and hear it in every look and word. It hurt me more than I ever can tell you. The same sort of thing had happened before, but I had never minded it then. I suppose all mothers are like that; it's natural enough, when you come to think, and I'm sure I never resented it before. I wouldn't have minded it in your case either; I wouldn't have minded anything if I hadn't——"
The words would not come.
"Hadn't what?" he said.
"If I hadn't liked you—off my own bat!"
"But if you really do, my glorious girl, surely that fixes it? We have nothing to do with anybody else. What does it matter how they take it?"
"It matters to my pride."
"I don't see where your pride comes in."
"Of course you don't; you are not behind the scenes. And I can't make you see. I'm not going to give my own people away to that extent, not even to you. But—I can just picture my mother's face if we went in this very minute and told her we were engaged! She would fall upon both our necks!"
"That wouldn't matter," said Jack stolidly. "That would be all right."
"It would be dreadful—dreadful. I couldn't bear it when I know that yesterday——"
She checked herself firmly.
"Well, what of yesterday?"
"It would have been quite a different thing."
"What! if I'd spoken then?"
"I—think so."
"You would have said——"
"I should have found out what your trouble was. You would have told me everything. And then—and then——"
He leant still further forward.
"If you had wanted me very much——"
"Idowant you very much."
"I should have found it easier to say 'yes'"—the word was hardly audible—"than I ever shall now!"
"But why, Olivia? Tell me why!"
"You force it from me, word by word," complained the girl.
"Then let me see. I think I begin to see. You like me in myself almost well enough to marry me. Well, thank God for that much! But you don't want to marry the Duke of St. Osmund's, because you're mortally afraid of what people will say. You think they'll say you're doing it for the main chance. And so they will—and so they may! They wouldn't say it, and you wouldn't think it, of any other man in my position; no, it's because I'm not fit for my billet, that's how it is! Not fit for it, and not fit for you; so they'd naturally think you were marrying me for what I'd got, and that you couldn't bear. Ah, yes, I see hard enough; it's as plain as a pikestaff now!"
The girl saw, too; with the unconscious bluntness of a singularly direct nature, he had stripped her scruples bare, and their littleness horrified Olivia. The moral cowardice of her hesitation came home to her with an insupportable pang, and her mind was made up before his last sentences put her face in flames.
"You are wrong," she could only murmur; "oh, you are dreadfully wrong!"
"I am right," he answered bitterly, "andyouare right. No wonder you dread the hard things that would be said of you! Take away the name and the money, and what am I? A back-block larrikin—a common stockman!"
"The man for me," said Olivia hoarsely.
"Ah, yes, if I were not such a public match!"
"Whatever you are—whatever you may be—if you want me still——"
"Want you! I have wanted you from the first. I shall want you till the last!"
Her reply was indistinct; her tears were falling fast; he took her two white hands, but even them he did not touch with his lips. A great silence held them both, and all the world; the island willows kissed the stream; in the sheet of gold beyond, a fish leapt, and the ripple reached the boat in one long thin fold. The girl spoke first.
"We need not be in a hurry to tell everybody," she began; but the words were retracted in the same breath. "What am I saying? Of course we will tell. Oh, what a contempt you must have for me!"
"I love you," he answered simply. "I am too happy to live. It's all too good to be true. Me of all men—the old bushman!"
She looked lovingly on his bearded and sunburnt face, shining as she had never seen it shine before.
"No; it's the other way about," she said. "I am not half good enough for you—you who were so brave yesterday in your trouble—who have been so simple always in your prosperity. It was enough to turn any one's head, but you—ah, I don't only love you. I admire you, dear; may God help me to make you happy!"
They stayed much longer on the lake, finally disembarking on its uttermost shore, because Olivia was curious to see how the hut would look in the first rosy light of her incredible happiness. And when they came to it, the sunlight glinted on the new iron roofing; the pine-trees exhaled their resin in the noon-day heat following the midnight rain; and the shadows were shot with golden shafts, where all was golden to the lovers' eyes.
Jack made a diffident swain; it was the girl who slipped her hand into his.
"You will never pull it down?" she said. "We will use it for a summer-house, and to remind you of your old life. And one day you will take me out to the Riverina, and show me the hut you really lived in, and all your old haunts. Oh, I shouldn't mind if we had both to go out there for good! A hut would take far less looking after than the Towers, and I should have you much more to myself. What fun it would be!"
Jack thought this a pretty speech, but the girl herself was made presently aware of its insincerity. They had retraced their steps, and there in front of them, cool and grey in the mellow August sunshine, with every buttress thrown up by its shadow, and the very spires perfectly reflected in the sleeping lake, stood the stately home which would be theirs for ever. Olivia saw it with a decidedly new thrill. She was looking on her future home, and yet her husband would be this simple fellow! Wealth could not cloy, nor grandeur overpower, with such a mate; that was perhaps the substance of her thought. It simplified itself next moment. What had she done to deserve such happiness? What could she ever do? And a possible tabernacle in the bush entered into neither question, nor engaged her fancy any more.
They rowed over, and were in mid-water when the landau drove up to the house. It had been sent in for Mr. Dalrymple early in the forenoon. They saw nothing, however, until they landed, when the equipage was proceeding on its way to the stables, having deposited the guest. At this discovery, the Duke's excitement knew no bounds, so Olivia urged him to run on and leave her; and he took her advice, chiefly regretting that he had missed the proud moment of welcoming his old boss in the hall.
Jack regretted this the more when he reached the house. There was Dalrymple of Carara beginning his visit by roundly abusing the butler in the very portico! The guest was in a towering passion, the butler in a palsy of senile agitation; and between them on the step lay Dalrymple's Gladstone bag.
"Whatisthe matter?" cried Jack, rushing up with a very blank face. "Stebbings, what's this? What has he done, Mr. Dalrymple?"
"Refused to take in my bag! Says it's the footman's place!"
"Then what's he here for? The man must be drunk. Are you, Stebbings?"
The butler murmured an inarticulate reply.
"Get to your pantry, sir!" roared Jack. "You shall hear more of this when you are sober. Old servant or new servant, out you clear!"
And he took up the bag himself, as Stebbings gave a glassy stare and staggered off without a word.
"I'm extremely sorry for losing my temper," said Dalrymple, taking Jack's arm as they entered the house; "but it always was rather short, as I fear I needn't remindyou. Really, though, your disgraceful old retainer would have provoked a saint. Drunk as fool in the middle of the day; drunk and insolent. Has the man been with you long?"
"Only fifty years or so with the family," replied Jack savagely; "but, by the living Lord, he may roll up his swag!"
"Ah! I wouldn't be hasty," said Dalrymple. "One must make allowances for one's old retainers; they're a privileged class. How good of you, by the way, to send in for me in such style! It prepared me for much. But I am bound to say it didn't prepare me for all this. No, I never should have pictured you in such an absolute palace had I not seen it with my own eyes!"
And now the visitor was so plainly impressed by all he saw, that Jack readily forgave him the liberty he had taken in rating Stebbings on his own account. Still the incident rankled. Dalrymple was the one man in the world before whom the Duke of St. Osmund's really did desire to play his new part creditably; and what could be said for a peer of the realm who kept a drunken butler to insult his guests? Jack could have shaken the old reprobate until the bones rattled again in his shrivelled skin. Dalrymple, however, seemed to think no more about the matter. He was entirely taken up with the suits of armour here in the hall: indeed Olivia discovered him lecturing Jack on his own trophies in a manner that would have led a stranger to mistake the guest for the host.
It may be said at once that this was Dalrymple's manner from first to last. It was that of the school-master to whom the boy who once trembled at his frown is a boy for evermore. And it greatly irritated Jack's friends, though Jack himself saw nothing to resent.
The Duke led his guest into the great drawing-room, and introduced him with gusto to Lady Caroline Sellwood and to Claude Lafont. But all his pride was in the visitor, who, with his handsome cynical face, his distinguished bearing, and his faultless summer suit, should show them that at least one "perfect gentleman" could come out of Riverina. Jack waited a moment to enjoy the easy speeches and the quiet assurance of Dalrymple; then he left the squatter to Lady Caroline and to Claude. It was within a few minutes of the luncheon hour. Jack wanted a word with Stebbings alone. The more he thought of it, the less able was he to understand the old butler's extraordinary outbreak. Could he have been ill instead of drunk? A charitable explanation was just conceivable to Jack until he opened the pantry door; it fell to the ground that moment; for not only did he catch Stebbings in the act of filling a wine-glass with brandy, but the butler's breath was foul already with the spirit.
"Very well, my man," said Jack slowly. "Drink as much as you like! You'll hear from me when you're sober. But show so much as the tip of your nose in the dining-room, and I'll throw you through the window with my own hands!"
The upshot of the matter was indirect and a little startling; for this was the reason why Dalrymple of Carara took the head of his old hand's table at luncheon on the day of his arrival; and obviously it was Dalrymple's temporary occupation of that position, added to his unforgettable past relations with his host, which led him to behave exactly as though the table were his own.
A difficulty about the carving was the more immediate cause of the transposition. In the ordinary course, this was Stebbings's business, which he conducted on the sideboard with due skill; in his absence, however, the footmen had placed the dishes on the table; and as these included a brace of cold grouse, and neither Jack nor Claude was an even moderate practitioner with the carving-knife, there was a little hitch. Mr. Sellwood was not present; he took his lunch on the links; and Jack made no secret of his relief when the squatter offered to fill the breach.
"Capital!" he cried; "you take my place, sir, and I wish you joy of the billet." And so the thing fell out.
It had the merit of seating the Duke and Olivia side by side; and the happy pair were made distinctly happier by the mutual discovery that neither had as yet confided in a third soul. At the foot of the table, in the position which Jack had begged her to assume at the outset of her visit, sat Lady Caroline Sellwood. The clever young men were on opposite sides, as usual; nor did they fail to exchange those looks of neglected merit and of intellectual boredom which were another feature of their public appearances. Their visit had not been altogether a success. It was a mystery why they prolonged it. They had been invited, however, to spend a month at Maske Towers, which, after all, was neither an uncomfortable resting-place nor a discreditable temporary address.
Francis Freke said a Latin grace inaudibly, and then the squatter went to work at the birds. These were a present from afar; there were no moors "on" Maske, as Jack explained, with a proud eye on Dalrymple's knife. It flashed through the joints as though the bird had been already "boned"; on either side the breast fell away in creamy flakes; and Dalrymple talked as he carved, with the light touch and the easy grace of a many-sided man of the world. At first he seemed to join in everybody's conversation in turns; but he was only getting his team together; and in a little everybody was listening to him. Yet he talked with such tact that it was possible for all to put in their word; indeed, he would appeal first to one, then to another, so that the general temper of the party rose to a high level. Only Olivia and Claude Lafont felt that this stranger was taking rather much upon himself. Otherwise it was a pleasure to listen to him; he was excellently well informed; before the end of the meal it came out that he had actually read Claude's poems.
"And lived to tell the tale!" he added with characteristic familiarity. "I can tell you I felt it a risk after reading that terrible depreciation of you in theParthenon; you see, I've been in England a few days, and have been getting abreast of things at my hotel while my tailors were making me externally presentable. By the way, I ran across a young Australian journalist who is over here now, and who occasionally scribbles for theParthenon. I asked him if he knew who had made that scurrilous attack upon you, Mr. Lafont. I was interested, because I knew you must be one of Jack's relations."
"And did you find out?" inquired Claude, with pardonable curiosity.
"He found out for me. The culprit was a man of your name, Mr. Stubbs; no relation, I hope?"
"I hope not," said Stubbs, emptying his glass; and his pallid complexion turned a sicklier yellow, as though his blood were nicotine, and the nicotine had mounted to his face.
"I should like to hear that name in full," said Lady Caroline down the length of the table. "I read the article myself. It was a disgrace to journalism. It is only fair to our Mr. Stubbs that we should hear his namesake's Christian name."
"I think I can oblige," said Dalrymple, producing his pocket-book. "His name was—ah! here it is! His name was Edmund. Edmund Stubbs!"
Edmund Stubbs was not unequal to the occasion. He looked straight at Jack.
"Will you kindly make it convenient to send me in to Devenholme in time for the next train?" he said. "If the Australian—gentleman—is going to stay in your house, I, for one, shall trespass no longer on your hospitality."
"Nor I, for another!" Llewellyn chimed in.
And without further ceremony the mordant couple left the table and the room. Jack looked embarrassed, and Claude felt sorry for Jack. As for Olivia, she had felt vaguely indignant with Dalrymple ever since he had taken the head of the table; and this scene put a point to her feelings, while it also revived her first prejudice against the squatter. Lady Caroline, however, congratulated him upon an excellent piece of work.
"You have performed a public service, my dear Mr. Dalrymple," said she. "Dear Jack will, I know, forgive me when I say that those two young men have never been in their element here. They are all right in a London drawing-room, as representatives of a certain type. In a country house they are impossible; and, for my part, I shall certainly never send them another card."
Jack also was ceasing to disapprove of the humiliation of Edmund Stubbs, whose remarks overnight in the Poet's Corner had suddenly recurred to his mind.
"Did you know it was the same man?" said he, pushing back his chair.
"I'm afraid I did," replied the squatter, as he rose. "They told me he was staying down here, and I could hardly avoid exposing the fellow. I hope, my dear Jack, that you will forgive the liberty I undoubtedly took in doing so. I am the germ that expels the other germs—a sort of anti-toxine in cuffs.Similia similibus, if my memory serves me, Mr. Lafont. Before long you may have to inject a fresh bacillus to expelme! Meantime, my dear Jack, let me offer you a cigar to show there's no ill-feeling."
"No, thanks," said Jack, for once rather shortly; "you've got to smoke one of mine. It's my house!" he added, with a grin.
And the remark was much appreciated by those to whom it was not addressed; on Dalrymple it produced no effect at all.
The engagement became known in the course of the afternoon, and the news was received in a manner after all very gratifying to the happy pair. Lady Caroline Sellwood did indeed insist on kissing her future son-in-law, but the obvious attitude she now assumed did not impose upon him for a moment. He had seen through her the night before; he could never believe in the woman again. In any case, however, her affectation of blank surprise, and her motherly qualms concerning the prospective loss of her ewe lamb, were a little over-acted, even for so inexperienced an observer as the Duke of St. Osmund's. She knew it, too, and hated Jack with all her hollow heart for having found her out; to him, it was, after this, a relief to listen to the somewhat guarded observations of Mr. Sellwood, whose feelings in the matter were just a little mixed.
Of the rest, Francis Freke volunteered his services for the great event, and both he and his wife (who brought down her entire speaking family to say good-night to "Uncle Jack") were consumed with that genuine delight in the happiness of others which was their strongest point. Claude, too, was not only "very nice about it," as Olivia said, but his behaviour, in what was for him a rather delicate situation, showed both tact and self-control. Never for a moment did look or word of his suggest the unsuccessful suitor: though to be sure he had scarcely qualified for such arôle. Olivia and he had never been more than friends. On her side, at least, the friendship had been of that perfectly frank and chronic character which is least likely to develop into love. And no one knew this better than Claude himself, who, moreover, was not even yet absolutely sure that his own undoubted affections were inspired by the divine impulse for which his poet's heart had so often yearned. At all events he had thought upon the one maiden for very many months; and putting it no higher than this, his present conduct was that of a tolerably magnanimous man.
The one person who raised an unsympathetic eyebrow was Dalrymple the squatter. He seemed surprised at the news and, for the moment, rather annoyed; but Jack recalled the deplorably cynical view of women for which the owner of Carara had been quite notorious in the back-blocks, and the squatter's displeasure did not rankle. Nor was it expressed a second time. Either the sight of the pair together, who made no secret of their happiness; either this pretty spectacle, or the dictates of good taste, moved Dalrymple, ultimately, to the most graceful congratulations they had yet received. And it was characteristic of the man that his remarks took the form of an unsolicited speech at the dinner-table.
He had been only a few hours in the house, yet to all but Mr. Sellwood (who did not meet him until evening) the hours seemed days. For the squatter was one of those men who carry with them the weight of their own presence, the breath of an intrinsic power, subtly felt from the first; thus the little house-party had taken more notice of him in one afternoon than the normal stranger would have attracted in a week; and to them it already seemed inevitable that he should lead and that they should follow whether they would or no. Accordingly, they were not in the least surprised to see Dalrymple on his legs when the crumb-cloth had been removed; though all but Jack deemed the act a liberty; and the squatter still adopted the tone of a master felicitating his men, rather than that of a guest congratulating his host.
Yet the speech was fluent and full of point; and the speaker himself made a sufficiently taking figure, leaning slightly forward, with the tips of his well-shaped fingers just resting on the black oak board that dimly reflected them. An unexceptionable shirt-front sat perfectly on his full, deep chest, a single pearl glistening in its centre; and there was a gleam of even teeth between the close-cropped, white moustache and the ugly, mobile, nether lip, whence every word fell distinct and clear of its predecessor. The Home Secretary had heard a worse delivery from his own front bench; and he was certainly interested in the story of the iron hut and the savages of Northern Queensland, which Dalrymple repeated with the happiest effect. Olivia forgave him certain earlier passages on the strength of these; her heart was full; only she could not lift her eyes from the simple chain about her wrist, for they were dim. The speech closed with the dramatic climax of the tale; there had been but one interruption to the flow of well-chosen words, and that was when the speaker stopped to blow out a smoking candle without appealing to his host.
The health of the pair was then drunk with appropriate enthusiasm; poor Jack blurted out a few honest words, hardly intelligible from his emotion; and the three ladies left the room.
"There's one more point to that yarn," said Dalrymple, closing the door he had held open, "that I don't think you yourself are aware of, Jack. It was when you got back to the store, with your shirt burnt off your back, and the country in a blaze all round, that I first noticed the legend on your chest. As you probably know, Mr. Sellwood, the Duke has one of his own eagles tattooed upon his chest. I saw it that day for the first time. I felt sure it meant something. And years afterwards, when I heard that a London solicitor was scouring the Colonies for the unknown Duke of St. Osmund's, it was the sudden recollection of that mark which made me to some extent the happy instrument of his discovery."
"To every extent!" cried Jack, wringing his benefactor's hand. "I've always said so. Mr. Sellwood, I owe him everything, and yet he makes a song about my scaring away a few blackfellows with a bush-fire! By the hokey, I've a good mind to have him live happily with us ever after for his pains!"
The Home Secretary bent his snowy head: his rosy face was the seat of that peculiarly grim expression with which political caricaturists have familiarised the world. Dalrymple's light eyes twinkled like polished flints; here was high game worthy of his gun. He took the empty chair on Mr. Sellwood's left.
"I understand, sir, that you are fatally bitten with golf?" began the squatter in his airiest manner. The other lit a cigarette with insolent deliberation before replying.
"I'm fond of the game," he said at length, "if that's what you mean."
"That was precisely what I did mean. Pardon me if I used an unparliamentary expression. I have read a great deal in your English papers—with which I never permit myself to lose touch—of the far-reaching ravages of the game. Certainly the disease must be widespread when one finds a Cabinet Minister down with the—golf!"
"We don't pronounce thel," Mr. Sellwood observed. "We call itgoff." For though in political life an imperturbable temper was one of his most salient virtues, the Home Secretary was notoriously touchy on the subject of his only game.
Dalrymple laughed outright.
"A sure symptom, my dear sir, of a thoroughly dangerous case! But pray excuse my levity; I fear we become a little too addicted to chaff in the uncivilised wilds. I am honestly most curious about the game. I'm an old fogey myself, and I might like to take it up if it really has any merits——"
"It has many," put in Claude cheerily, to divert an attack which Mr. Sell wood was quite certain to resent.
"Has it?" said the squatter incredulously. "For the life of one I can't see where those merits come in. To lay yourself out to hit a sitting ball! I'd as soon shoot a roosting hen!"
"Hear, hear!" cried Jack. "That's exactly whatIsay, Mr. Dalrymple."
The discussion had in fact assumed the constituent elements of a "foursome," which may have been the reason why the Home Secretary was unable any longer to maintain the silence of dignified disdain.
"I should like to take you out, the two of you," he said, "with a driver and a ball between you. I should like to see which of you would hit that sitting ball first, and how far!"
"We'll take you on to-morrow!" exclaimed Jack.
But the Home Secretary made no reply.
"I'm not keen," remarked Dalrymple. "It can't be a first-class game."
"You're hardly qualified to judge," snapped Sellwood, "since you've never played."
"Exactly why Iamqualified. I'm not down with the disease."
"Then pray let us adopt the Duke's suggestion, and play a foursome to-morrow—like as we sit. Eh, Mr.—I beg your pardon, but I quite forget your name?"
"Dalrymple," replied the squatter; "and yours, once more?"
"Look in Whitaker," growled the Home Secretary, rising; and he left the table doubly angered by the weakness of his retort, where indeed it was weak to have replied at all.
Decidedly the squatter was no comfortable guest. Apart from his monstrous freedom of speech and action, which might pass perhaps on a bush station, but certainly not in an English country house, he was continually falling foul of somebody. Now it was the butler, now a fellow guest, and lastly a connection of his host, and one of Her Majesty's Ministers into the bargain. In each case, to be sure, the other side was primarily in the wrong. The butler was the worse for drink; theParthenonman had indulged in gratuitous abuse of his friend; even Mr. Sellwood had taken amiss what was meant as pure chaff, and had been the first to begin the game of downright rudeness at which the old Australian had soon beaten him. Yet the fact remained that Dalrymple was the moving spirit in each unpleasantness; he had been a moving spirit since the moment he set foot in the house, and this was exactly what the other guests resented. But it was becoming painfully apparent that Jack himself would take nothing amiss; that he was constitutionally unable to regard Dalrymple in any other light than that of his old king, who could still do no wrong. And this being so, it was impossible for another to complain.