0295m
I turned with a start, my grip of the wall slipped, and, with more precipitation than grace, I descended to the garden again to find myself confronted by a decidedly formidable individual. He was a gentleman of something over sixty years of age, but tall and broad and upright far beyond the common, and even though his left arm was in a sling of black silk I should not have cared to try conclusions with him. His face was ruddy and fresh, his features aristocratic and well-marked, his eyes blue and very bright, and he was dressed in a shooting-suit and leather leggings. The air of proprietorship, the wounded left arm, and the family resemblance left me in no doubt as to who he was. I was, in fact, about to enjoy the interview with Sir Philip Shafthead for the sake of which I had entered his garden.
Yet, strange though it may seem, gratitude for this stroke of good luck was not my first sensation.
“Who the devil are you, and what are you doing here, sir?” he repeated, sternly.
He had not heard of my arrival, then, and on the instant the thought struck me that since he did not know who I was, I might make the experiment of feigning ignorance of him.
“I address a fellow-guest of Sir Philip's, no doubt? I said, with as easy an air as is possible for a man who has just fallen from the top of a wall where he had no business to have climbed.
“Fellow-guest!” he repeated. “Do you mean to pretend you are visiting Helmscote?”
“I am about to; though I confess to you, sir, that Sir Philip is at present unaware of my intention.”
“Indeed?” said he.
“Yes,” I said. “You are doubtless a friend of Sir Philip's, sir?”
He emitted something that was between a laugh and an exclamation.
“More or less,” he replied. “And who are you?”
“My name is d'Haricot, and I am a friend of his son, Dick Shafthead.”
He started perceptibly, and looked at me with a different expression.
“I have heard your name,” he said.
“As you are staying at Helmscote you have no doubt heard of Dick's imprudence?” I went on, boldly.
“I have,” he replied, shortly. “Have you come to see Sir Philip about that?”
“Yes,” I said. “I have travelled down with Miss Shafthead this morning; she left me here for a short time while she went in to see her parents, and while waiting I had the indiscretion to mount this wall, in order to obtain a better view of the beautiful old house. It is the finest mansion I have seen in England. No wonder, sir, that Dick is so attached to his home!”
“Yet, as you are aware, he has run away from it,” said the baronet, dryly.
“Ah,” I said, “you have doubtless heard the father's view of his escapade. Will you let me tell you the son's, while I am waiting?”
“Had you not better keep this for Sir Philip—that is, if he consents to hear you?”
“No,” I said, eagerly. “I have no secrets to tell, and if I can persuade you that Dick has some excuse for his conduct, perhaps you, too, might say a word to Sir Philip in his favor.”
“It is unlikely,” said the baronet; “but go on.”
At that moment I spied Daisy entering the garden, though fortunately her father's back was towards her. Swiftly I made a signal for her to go away, and after an instant's astonished pause she turned and slipped quietly out again. I had been given a better chance than I had dared to hope for.
8000
“At the journey's end a welcome;
For the wanderer a friend!”
—Cyd.
9299m
IR I began, “I must tell you, in the first place, that there is this to be said for Dick Shafthead—and it is an argument he is too generous to use himself—he took counsel of a friend, who, perhaps rashly, urged him to follow the dictates of his heart.”
“Indeed?” said the baronet.
“Yes; I can answer for it, because I was that friend; and that is one of the reasons why I was so eager to plead for him with Sir Philip.”
“It sounds a damned poor one,” said he. “'May I ask why you advised a son to rebel against his father?”
“If I had thought his father would regard his marrying the girl he loved as an act of rebellion, I might—though I do not say I would—have advised him otherwise. But he had told me that Sir Philip was a man of great sense and understanding; therefore I argued that he would not take a narrow or prejudiced—”
“Prejudiced!” he exclaimed.
“Or a prejudiced view of his son's conduct. I knew he was a good churchman; therefore, as a follower of a Carpenter's Son, he could not seriously let any blemish on a girl's pedigree stand between his son and himself. Besides, he was so highly placed that an alliance with his family would be sufficient to ennoble. Furthermore, as he loves his son, he would wish for nothing so much as his happiness. Lastly, being a great gentleman, Sir Philip would give a lady's case every consideration.” But at this the baronet's feelings could no longer be contained.
“By God, sir!” he exclaimed. “Do you mean to say you preached this damnable sermon to my—to Dick Shafthead?”
I had not preached this sermon, nor anything very much like it; but these were undoubted the arguments I ought to have used.
“I argued from what he had told me of his father,” I replied. “If I am incorrect in my estimate of Sir Philip; if he is not a Christian, a gentleman, an affectionate father, and a man of sense, then, indeed, I reasoned wrongly.”
At this thrust beneath his guard, Sir Philip was silent, and I hastened to follow up my attack.
“Another argument I used—and it seemed to me the strongest—was this: that as Dick had told me of the deep affection Sir Philip felt for Lady Shafthead, I knew his father had a heart which could love a woman devotedly, and he had but to turn back the pages of his own life to find himself reading the same words as his son.”
“Sir Philip loved a lady of his own degree and station,” he answered.
“And Dick a relative of that lady,” I said. “A girl with the same blood in her veins, and a character which no one can impeach. Can Sir Philip?”
“Her character is beside the point,” said he.
“Dick's father would not say so of his son's wife,” I retorted.
Again the baronet seemed at a loss for a fitting answer; and from his expression I think he was on the point of revealing his identity, and sending me forthwith to the devil; but without a pause I hurried up the rest of my artillery.
“Even if Sir Philip remains deaf to all that I have hitherto said, there yet remains this, which must, at least, make him pause. He will be losing a son.”
“And the son will be losing his father.”
“Yes; and therefore Sir Philip will not only be suffering, but inflicting a misfortune.”
“I may remind you, sir, that Dick has only to listen to reason.”
“Dick's mind is made up; and can you, sir, who know these Shaftheads, expect them to abandon their resolutions so easily? From whom has he inherited his firmness and tenacity? From his father, of course; and he from that long line of ancestors who have made the name of Shafthead honorable since the days of Edward the Third! The warrior who was ennobled on the field of Blenheim has not left descendants of milk and water!”
“I am perfectly aware that Dick is obstinate as the devil,” replied the baronet, but this time in a tone that seemed to have in it a trace of something not unlike satisfaction.
“And so, sir, his father will be ruthlessly discarding a second daughter-in-law.”
At these words the change that came over the baronet was so sudden and violent that I almost repented of having uttered them.
“What do you mean?” he exclaimed, in a stifled voice. “Dick didn't tell you? He does not know!”
“No,” I replied. “I learned it through an old companion in arms of Major Shafthead.”
For a moment there was a pause. Then he said, in a steadier voice:
“And does this seem to you an argument for permitting another son to commit an act of folly?”
“It does seem an argument for not breaking the last link with the generation to come.”
The baronet turned round and walked a few paces away from me; then he turned back and said:
“Well, sir, if it is any satisfaction to you, I may tell you that you have already discharged your task. I am Sir Philip Shafthead.”
“What!” I exclaimed, in simulated surprise. “Then I must indeed ask your pardon for the freedom with which I have spoken. My affection for your son is my only excuse.”
“He is fortunate in his friends, sir,” said Sir Philip, though with precisely what significance I could not be sure. “You will now have luncheon with us, I hope.”
We walked in silence to the house, my host's face expressing nothing of what he thought or felt.
In a long, low room whose oak panelling and beams were black with age and whose windows tinged the sunshine with the colors of old coats of arms, I was introduced to Lady Shafthead. She was like her daughter, smaller and slighter than the muscular race of Shaftheads, gray-haired and very charming and simple in her manner. Daisy stood beside her, and both women glanced anxiously from one to the other of us. What those who knew him could read in Sir Philip's countenance, I cannot say. For myself, I merely professed my entire readiness for lunch and my appreciation of Helmscote, but, surreptitiously catching Daisy's eye, I gave her a glance that was intended to indicate a fair possibility of fine weather.
Evidently she read it as such, for she replied by a smile from which all her distrust had vanished.
The meal passed off in outward calm and with no reference to the conversation of the morning. Indeed, Sir Philip scarcely spoke at all, and I was too afraid of making a discordant remark to say much myself.
“You will excuse me from joining you in the smoking-room at present,” said the baronet, when we had finished. “Daisy, you will act as hostess, perhaps?”
Nothing could have suited me better than this arrangement, and for an hour we discussed our embassy and its prospects with the friendliness of two intimates who have shared an adventure.
Then Lady Shafthead entered and said with a smile towards us both,
“Sir Philip has written to Dick.”
“He is forgiven?” I cried.
“He is told to come home.”
“Alone?”
“Yes, alone.”
My face fell for a little, but Lady Shafthead's air reassured me.
“For the present, at all events, alone,” she said.
“And may the present be brief!” I replied. “And now his ambassador must regretfully return to town.”
“Oh, but you are staying with us, I hope,” said Lady Shafthead.
“With one collar, a tweed suit, and no razors?”
“Can't you send for your things?” suggested Daisy.
And that is precisely what I did.
The next day the prodigal returned and had a long interview with his stern parent. At the end of it he joined me in the smoking-room.
“Well?” I asked.
“An armistice is declared,” said Dick. “For six months the matter is not to be mentioned.”
“And that is all?”
“All at present.”
“But six months, Dick! Can you wait?”
“Call it three weeks,” said Dick. “I know the limit to the governor's patience. He never let a matter remain unsettled for one month in his life.” He filled his pipe deliberately, standing with his legs wide apart and his broad back to the fire, while an expression of amused satisfaction gathered upon his good-looking countenance.
“I say,” he remarked, abruptly, “don't think I'm ungrateful. You did the trick, monsieur, and I won't forget it in a hurry.”
As he said this he turned his back to me and took a match-box from the mantel-shelf, as though he had merely made a casual remark about the weather, but by this time I knew the value of such undemonstrative British thanks.
Another condition that Sir Philip had made was that his son should not return to London until the Christmas vacation was over, and, though this was a matter of merely two or three weeks, Dick found it harder than a six months' postponement of his marriage. But to me, I fear, it did not seem so unreasonable, for, as he could not have his sweetheart's company, he insisted on retaining mine; so, after a polite protest, which Lady Shafthead declared to be unnecessary and Daisy to be absurd, I settled down to spend my Christmas at Helmscote.
At that time there was no one else staying in the house, so that when I sat down at dinner that night, one of a friendly company of five, I felt almost as though I was a member of the family. And the Shaftheads, on their part, seemed bent on increasing this illusion. Once I cheerfully alluded to my exile—cheerfully, because at that moment the thought had no sting.
“An exile?” said Lady Shafthead, smiling at me as a good mother might smile. “Not here, surely. You must not feel yourself an exile here.”
And, indeed, I did not. For the first time since I landed in this country, I felt no trace of strangeness, but almost as though I had begun to take root in the soil. Circumstances had not enabled me to enjoy any family life since I was a boy, and had I been given at that moment a free pardon and a ticket to Paris, I should have said, “Wait, please, for a few months, till I discover to which nation I really do belong. Here I am at home. Perhaps, if I return, I should now be lonely.”
The very look of my room when I retired to bed impressed me further with this feeling. The fire was so bright, the curtains so warm, every little circumstance so soothing. I drew up the blind and looked out of a latticed casement-window into a garden bathed in moonlight, and my heart was filled with gratitude. Last thing before I went to sleep, I remember seeing the firelight playing on the walls and mingling with a long ray from the moon, and the fantastic designs seemed to form themselves into letters making a message of welcome. And this message was signed “Daisy Shafthead.”
At what hour I woke I cannot say; but I felt as though I had not been long asleep, and that something must have roused me. The fire had burned low, but the long beam of moonlight still fell across my bed and made a patch of light on the opposite wall. Suddenly it was obscured, and at the same moment I most distinctly heard a noise—a noise at the window. I turned on my pillow with that curious sensation in my breast that by the metaphysical may easily be distinguished from exhilaration. I had left the curtains a little apart with an oblong of blind showing light between them. Now there was a dark body moving stealthily either before or behind this.
For a moment I lay still, then, with a spring so violent as almost to suggest that I had exercised some compulsion upon my movements, I leaped out of bed.
0308m
The next instant the body had disappeared, and I heard a scraping noise, apparently on the outside wall. I rushed to the window and drew aside the blind. The casement was certainly open, but then I had left it so. I put out my head and looked carefully over the garden. Not a movement anywhere, not a sound. I waited for a time, but nothing more happened, and then I went to bed again, first, I confess, closing and fastening the window; and in a little the whole incident was lost in oblivion.
With the prosaic entry of daylight and a servant to fill my bath, I began to wonder whether the whole thing was not a dream, and, in fact, I had almost persuaded myself that this was the case when I spied, lying on the floor below the window, a slip of paper. It was folded and addressed in pencil to “M. d'Haricot, confidential.” I opened it and read these words:
“Beware how you betray! Lumme also is watched. Therefore be faithful, if it is not too late!”
“What the devil!” I said to myself, after reading these incomprehensible words two or three times. “Is this a practical joke—or can it be from—?” I hastily turned the scrap over, looked at it upside down, and against the light, but no, there was no mark to give me a clew.
So meaningless did the warning seem that before the day was far spent it had ceased to trouble me.
8000
“Enter Tritculento brandishing a rapier. Ordnance shot off 'without.”
—Old Stage Direction.
9311
HAT day slipped by smoothly and swiftly as a draught of some delicious opiate, and every moment my fancy became anchored more securely to Helmscote. But upon the next morning I received a letter from my Halfred which, though it amused and moved me by the good fellow's own happiness, yet contained one perplexing piece of news. I give the epistle in his own words and spelling.
“DEAR Sir,—Hopping the close reached you safely i added the waterprove coat for shooting in rain supposing such happened. Miss Titch has concented to marry me some day but not now you being sir the objec of my attentions for the present hence i am happy beyond expression also she is and i hop you approve sir. Another package has come for Mister Balfour not to be oppened and marked u d t which Mr. Titch says means undertake to return but I have done nothing hopping I am right yours obediently ALFRED WINKES.”
No, Halfred, U. D. T. did not mean “Undertake to return,” but bore a much graver significance, and this news made me so thoughtful that at least one pair of bright eyes remarked it at breakfast.
“No bad news, I hope,” said Daisy, as we went together to the door to inspect the weather.
“None that you cannot make me forget,” I replied, with a more serious gallantry than I had yet shown towards her.
A little rise of color in her face did indeed make me forget all less absorbing matters.
“By the time you leave us, you perhaps won't find us still so consoling,” she replied, with a smile.
“Don't remind me of that day,” I said. “It is a long way off—a hundred years, I try to persuade myself!”
Little did I think how soon fate would laugh at my confidence.
To-day we were to shoot pheasants. The baronet had his arm out of the sling for the first time, and this so raised his spirits that I felt sure Dick's six months' probation were already divided by two, at least. Two friends were coming from a neighboring house, and the other gun was to be my second, Tonks, who was expected to stay for the night. Presently he appeared and greeted me with a friendly grin.
“You haven't got Lumme to fire at to-day,” he remarked.
I drew him aside.
“Tonks,” I said, “that incident is forgotten—also the cause of it. You understand?”
He had the uncomfortable perspicacity to glance over at Daisy as he replied:
“Right O; I won't spoil any one's sport.”
This game of pheasant-shooting is played in England with that gravity and seriousness that the Briton displays in all his sports. No preparations are wanting, no precautions omitted. You stand in a specially prepared opening in a specially grown plantation, while a specially trained company of beaters scientifically drive towards you several hundred artificially incubated birds invigorated by a patent pheasant food. Owing to the regulated height of the trees and the measured distance at which you stand these birds pass over you at such a height (and, owing to the qualities of the patent food, at such a pace), and the shot is rendered what they call “sporting.” Then, at a certain distance from his gun and a certain angle, the skilful marksman discharges both barrels, converts two pheasants into collapsed bundles of feathers, snatches a second gun from an attendant, and in precisely similar fashion accounts for two more. The flight of the bird is so calculated that the bad shot has little chance of hitting anything at all, so that the pheasant may return to his coop and be preserved intact for another day. When such a shot is firing, you will hear the host anxiously say to the keeper at the end of the day: “Did he miss them all clean?”
And if the answer is in the affirmative, he will add:
“Excellent! I shall ask him to shoot again.”
A clean miss or a clean kill—that is what is demanded in order that you may strictly obey the rules of the sport, and at my first stand, where I was able to exhibit five severed tails, a mangled mass which had received both barrels at three paces, and seven swiftly running invalids, my enthusiasm was quickly damped by the face Sir Philip pulled on hearing my prowess.
“Never mind,” said Daisy, who had come to see the sport, “you couldn't expect to get into it just at first.”
“Come and give me instruction,” I implored her. “Don't be in such a hurry!” she cried, as she stood beside me at the next beat. “Look before you shoot—that's what Dick always says you ought to do. Now you've forgotten to put in your—wait! Of course! No wonder nothing happened; you had forgotten to put in the cartridges. Steady, now. Oh, but don't wait till it's past you! Dick says—Good shot! Was that the bird you aimed at?”
“Mademoiselle, it was the bird a far-seeing Providence placed within the radius of my shot. 'L'homme propose; Dieu dispose.'”
“I shouldn't trust to Providencetoomuch,” said she.
Well, between Heaven and Miss Shafthead, aided, I must say for myself, by a hand and eye that were naturally quick and not unaccustomed to exercises of skill, I managed by the end of the day to successfully uphold the honor of my country. The light was fading when we stopped the battue, the air was sharp, and the ground crisp with frost. My fair adviser had gone home a little time before, and, wrapped in pleasant recollections and meditations, I had fallen some way behind the others as we walked homeward across a stubble-field. The guns in front passed out through a gate into a lane, and I was just following them when a man stepped from the shadow of the hedge and said to me:
“A gentleman would speak to you.”
I looked at him in astonishment.
He was an absolute stranger, and his manner was serious and impressive. Behind him, in the opposite direction from that in which my friends had turned, stood a covered carriage, with another man wrapped in a cloak a few paces in front of it, and a third individual holding the horse's head.
“That is the gentleman,” added the stranger, indicating the man in the cloak.
In considerable surprise I turned towards the carriage.
“M. d'Haricot,” said the shrouded individual.
“M. le Marquis!” I cried, in astonishment.
It was indeed none other than he whom I have before mentioned under the name of F. II, secretary of the league, conspirator by instinct and profession, by rank and name the Marquis de la Carrabasse.
“What are you doing here, my dear Marquis?” I exclaimed.
He regarded me with a fixed and searching expression.
“The hour is ripe,” he said. “The moment has come to strike! Here is my carriage. Come!”
For a moment I was too astonished to reply. Then, in a reasonable tone, I said:
“Pardon, Marquis, but I must first take leave of my hosts.”
“You cannot.”
“That is to be seen,” I replied, losing my temper a little.
Before I could make a movement the Marquis was covering me with a revolver, and from the corner of my eye I could see that the man who had first spoken to me had drawn one, too.
“Enter the carriage,” said the Marquis. “I do not trust you.”
0317m
“Since you give me no alternative between a somewhat prolonged rest in this ditch and the pleasure of your society, I shall choose the latter,” I replied, with as light an air as possible. “But I warn you, Marquis, that this conduct requires an explanation.”
He continued to look sternly at me, holding his revolver to my head, but making no reply, while, in as easy a fashion as possible, I strolled up to the carriage.
Then, to my surprise, I saw that they had employed one of the beaters to hold their horse, a man whom I recognized at once as having carried my cartridge-bag.
“You may now go,” said the Marquis to this man, handing him coin. “And for your own sake be silent!”
I could have laughed aloud at the delightful simplicity of thus hiring a stranger at random to aid in an abduction and then expecting him to keep his counsel, had I not seen in it an omen of further failures. So certain was I that the news of my departure would now reach Helmscote before night that I did not even trouble to send a message by him.
The man who had first spoken to me jumped upon the box and took the reins, the Marquis and I entered the carriage, and through the dusk of that winter evening I was carried off from Helmscote.
“Now, M. le Marquis,” I said, sternly, “have the goodness to explain your words and conduct to me.”
He looked at me intently for a moment and then answered:
“On your honor, are you still faithful?”
“What do you mean, monsieur?”
“Lumme has not betrayed us?”
“Lumme!” I exclaimed, in astonishment, and then suddenly remembered the warning paper. “Did you throw that paper into my bedroom?”
“An agent threw it for me. Did you obey the warning?”
“Again I must ask for an explanation. What has M. Lumme to do with it and what do you suspect me of?”
“M. Lumme is in the English Foreign Office,” said the Marquis, with emphasis.
0319m
“And you suspect me of having betrayed my cause to him? On my honor, monsieur, even were I inclined to treason I should as soon think of confiding in that man whom you so rashly employed to hold your horse!”
“Sir Shafthead is in the English government.” said the Marquis, unmoved by my sarcasm.
“Sir Philip Shafthead was at one time a member of Parliament, but is so no longer. But what of that?”
“You have told him nothing?”
“I have not.”
“You have been watched,” said he. “Every movement you have made is known to me.”
“And why?” I exclaimed. “Why should you think it necessary to watch me?”
“Why did you not send me any report yourself?”
“You did not ask for one.”
“I had not the honor to be informed of your address,” said he.
“I wrote to you as soon as I was settled in London, and to this day have never received a reply.”
“You wrote?” he exclaimed, with some sign of disturbance.
“I did, I repeated, and I quoted some words I remembered from my letter.
“Pardon!” said the Marquis, “I do remember now receiving that letter, but I must have mislaid it, and I certainly forgot that you had written.”
“And, having forgotten an important communication, you proceed to suspect me of treason! This is excellent, M. le Marquis!”
“My dear friend,” he replied, in an agitated voice, “you then assure me I was wrong in mistrusting you?”
“Absolutely!”
“Pardon me, my friend! I am overwhelmed with confusion!”
He was so genuinely distressed, and the sincerity of his contrition was so apparent, that what could I do but forgive him? But what carelessness, what waste of time in dogging the steps of a friend, what indications of mismanagement at every turn! And even at that moment I was apparently embarked under this leader upon some secret and hazardous undertaking. Well, there was nothing for it but to do my best so far as I was concerned.
“Ah, here is the station,” said he. “The train should now be almost due.”
“Train for London, sir?” said the porter. “Gone ten minutes ago. No, sir, no more trains tonight.”
“Peste!” cried the Marquis. “Ah, well, my friend, we must look for some lodging for the night.”
“But perhaps we might catch a train at another station,” I suggested.
Yes, by driving ten miles we could just catch an express.
“Bravo!” said the Marquis. “You are full of ideas, my dear d'Haricot.”
“And you?” I said to myself, with a shrug.
We arrived just in time, and on the platform were joined by our driver.
“Let me introduce Mr. Hankey,” said the Marquis.
So this was the elusive Hankey. Well, I shall not take the trouble to describe him. Imagine a scoundrel, and you have his portrait. I was thankful he did not travel in the same compartment with us, but evidently regarded himself as in an inferior position.
“You trust that man implicitly?” I asked the Marquis, when we had started.
“Implicitly!” he replied, with emphasis.
“I do not,” I said to myself.
By ten o'clock that night I was seated with the Marquis de la Carrabasse in my own rooms, thinking, I must confess, not so much of politics and dynasties as of the friends I had just lost for who could say how long.
8000
“Conspiracy requireth a ready wit—and a readier exit.”
—Francis Gallup.
9323
HE Marquis de la Carrabasse, secretary of the U. D. T.
League, and known in their circles as F. II, enters this history so near its end that I shall not stop to give a prolonged account of him. Yet he was a person so remarkable as to merit a few words of description. The inheritor of an ancient title, but little money; a Royalist to the point of fanaticism; a man of wide culture and many ideas, and of the most perfect simplicity of character and honesty of purpose, he had devoted his whole life to the restoration of the monarchy, alternated during lulls in the political weather by an equally feverish zeal for scientific inventions of the most ambitious nature. Yet, owing to the excess of his enthusiasm and fertility of mind over the more prosaic qualities that should regulate them, practical success had hitherto eluded this talented nobleman. His flying-machines had only once risen into the element for which they were intended, and then the subsequent descent had been so precipitate as to incapacitate the inventor for a month. His submarine vessel still reposed at the bottom of the Mediterranean, and the last I heard of his dynamite gun was that the fragments were to be found anywhere within a radius of three miles around its first discharge. As to his merits as a conspirator, my exile bears witness.
Yet he was a man for whom I could not but entertain a lively affection. Of medium height and slender figure, he had a large, well-shaped nose, a black mustache tinged with gray, whose vigorously upward curl had a deceptively truculent air at first sight, and a splendid dark eye, at times piercing and bright and at others dreamy as the eye of a somnambulist. Add to this a manner naturally courteous and simple, which, however, he was in the habit of artificially altering to one of decision and mystery, when he thought the rôle he was playing suited this transfiguration, and you have the Marquis de la Carrabasse, so far as I can sketch him.
We had only just seated ourselves in my room, when Halfred entered beaming with pleasure at the prospect of seeing me again.
“'Appy to see you back, sir,” he began, joyfully.
“A most hunexpected pleasure, sir. I thought as 'ow you wasn't comin' till hafter the festivities of Christmas, sir.”
But at this point his eye fell upon my friend the Marquis, and his expression changed in the drollest manner. Halfred's British prejudices had become adjusted to me by this time, but evidently the very appearance of this stranger was altogether too foreign for him. He became abnormally solemn, and handed me a budget of letters that had come this evening, with no further comment, while his eye plainly said, “Have a care what company you keep!”
In the mean time my guest had been regarding him with a rapt and thoughtful gaze, and now he said, in the most execrable English:
“Vill you please get me a bread or biskeet?”
“Bread, sir?” replied Halfred, starting and looking hard at him. “Slice of 'am with it?”
“What did he say?” the Marquis asked me, in French.
I explained.
“Ah, yes; some pork; certain! Vich it vill also quite good and so to be.”
0326m
What he meant by this riddle I cannot tell; but I can assure you he sent the honest Halfred from the room with a very perturbed countenance.
In a few minutes he had brought us some much-needed refreshments, and, with a last dark glance towards my unconscious visitor, retired for the night.
On our journey the Marquis had kept his counsel with that air of mystery he could assume so effectively, nor had I pressed him with questions; but when our hunger was somewhat abated I began to consider it time that I was taken into his confidence. For I had gathered enough to feel sure that some coup was very shortly to be tried.
“M. le Marquis,” I said, “have you nothing to tell me?”
“First, my dear friend, read your letters,” he replied.
“But they can wait.”
“I beseech you!”
A little struck by his tone, I opened the first, and as I read the contents I could not refrain from an exclamation of astonishment.
“You have unexpected news?” he said.
“'The Bishop of Battersea has much pleasure in accepting M. d'Haricot's kind invitation.'” I read, aloud. “Mon Dieu! I am to have a bishop to dinner in three days' time; and a bishop I have never invited!”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive!”
“Read your other letters. Possibly they will throw light upon this.”
I opened the next, and cried in bewilderment: “Sir Henry Horley has much pleasure also! But I have never asked him; I have only met him once at a country house!”
The Marquis smiled.
“Do not be too sure you have not asked these gentlemen,” he said.
“But I swear—”
“Read this!”
He handed me an invitation-card on which, to my utter consternation, I saw these words engraved: “Monsieur d'Haricot requests the pleasure of————company to dinner to meet—” and here followed a name it would be indecorous to reproduce in these frivolous memoirs, the name of that royal personage for whose cause we loyalists of France were striving!
“What!” I exclaimed. “It is true?”
“What is?”
“Thatheis to honor me with his company?”
“Scarcely, my dear d'Haricot,” said the Marquis, with a smile. “But I have full authority to take what steps I choose.”
“To employ this ruse?”
“Certainly, if I deem it advisable.”
“But to what end?”
“Listen!” said he, his dark eyes glowing with enthusiasm and his face lighting up with patriotic ardor. “I have asked a party of your most influential friends to dine with you, inducing them by a prospect of this honor. You will tell them that his Highness cannot meet them there, but that he bids them, as they reverence their own sovereign, to assist his righteous cause. When they are inflamed with ardor, you will lead them from the table to the special train which I shall have waiting. A picked force will place themselves under our orders. By next morning the King shall be proclaimed in France.”
For a minute I was too staggered to answer him.
“But, my dear Marquis,” I replied, when I had recovered my breath, “Icannot induce these sober and law-abiding Englishmen to follow me, perhaps to battle.”
“Not all, perhaps, but some, certainly. My dear friend, you have the gift of tongues; you can move, persuade, influence to admiration. I myself would try, but you know the English language better, I think, than I, and then I am unknown to these gentlemen. Ah, you will not desert us, d'Haricot! Your King demands this service of you!”
“Of me?”
“Yes; he mentioned your name when I spoke to him of our schemes.”
“He wished me to perform this act?”
“I had not then arranged it. But is it for you to choose the nature of your service?”
“If it is put to me thus, I shall endeavor to do my best,” I replied. “But I confess I do not care for this scheme of yours.”
No use in protesting; the Marquis rose and embraced me with such flattering words as I hesitate to reproduce.
“It is done! It is accomplished already!” he cried.
I disengaged myself and endeavored to reflect. “This is all very well,” I said. “But of what use to us is a bishop?”
“We wish the support of the English Church.”
“And Sir Henry Horley?”
“Also of the nobility.”
“But he is scarcely a nobleman, only a baronet,” I explained. “And, besides, I only know him slightly. He is not my friend.”
“Embrace him; make him your friend.”
I fancied I saw myself; but what was the good in arguing with an enthusiasm like this?
I proceeded to read my other answers, and I did not know whether to feel more astonished at the list of guests or at the curious knowledge of my movements and acquaintances which my visitor must somehow have acquired. The acceptances included Lord Thane, with whom I had only the very slightest acquaintance, Mr. Alderman Guffin, at whose house I had once dined, one or two people of social position whom I had met through Lumme or Shafthead, and General Sholto.
“Ah, the General!” I said. “Well, he, at least, is an old soldier.”
“Be kind to him; he is our brightest hope,” said the Marquis.
I looked at him in astonishment. “What do you know of him?”
I could have sworn he blushed. “What do I not know of all your friends?” he replied.
Could it be from the inquiries of Hankey he had learned all this, and took so much interest in my gallant neighbor? I remembered now how the General had once met that disreputable individual. Yet it did not seem to me altogether a complete explanation.
But conceive of my astonishment when, among the few refusals, I found one from Fisher!
“What do you know of him?” I asked.
“He is a philanthropist. I regret that he cannot accept,” said the Marquis, with an air of calm mystery yet with another suggestion of flush in his face. He knew of my philanthropic escapade, then—and how?
“Well,” I said, at last, “I am prepared to assist you in any way I can. In the two days left I shall arrange my affairs—and now I must send some explanation of my disappearance to Lady Shafthead.”
He rose and grasped my arm.
“Not a word to her,” he said. “I do not trust the member of Parliament. We must run no risk.”
I protested, but no; he implored me—commanded me.
“A line to my friend Dick Shafthead, then?” I suggested. “He, at least, is beyond suspicion.”
“My friend, we are serving the King,” he replied.
“Very well,” I said, though my heart sank a little at this sudden rupture with those kind friends.
My visitor rose to depart, and just then his eye fell on two immense packing-cases placed against the wall.
“Ah,” he said, “they are safe, I see.”
I took a lamp in my hand and came up to examine the latest arrived of those mysterious gifts, whose source I now plainly perceived.
“I should not let that lamp fall upon this box of bonbons,” he remarked, lightly, and yet with a note of warning.
“Why not, Marquis?”
“The little packet may explode,” he laughed.
Involuntarily I started.
“It contains, then—?”
“The munitions of war,” he answered.
“And the other?”
“Was to try you, my dear friend. It contains only bricks. Forgive me for putting you to this test. I should not have doubted you.”
“But to try me?” I said. “How would you have known if I had called in a detective?”
The Marquis looked at me.
“I had not thought of that,” he confessed.
It was my turn to look at him, and, I fear, not altogether with a flattering eye.
“Why was it addressed to Mr. Balfour?” I asked.
“A ruse,” he replied, with his air of confident mystery returning somewhat. “A mere ruse, my dear friend.”
“I perceive,” I said, a little dryly. “Well, you can trust me for my own sake not to explode this box; also to make the preparations for this dinner.”
“My friend, I make them.”
“You?”
“Read your invitation again.”
I looked at the card sent out in my name, and then I noticed that an address was placed in one corner, “Twenty-two Beacon Street, Strand.”
“What is the meaning of this?”
“It is a house I have hired for two weeks,” he replied. “The dinner, as you see, takes place there. Hankey and I make all preparations.”
“And I do nothing?”
“You prepare yourself for the hour of action. Brave friend, au revoir!”
“Au revoir, Marquis.”