"One on 'em's up in his room, but I dunnot know which," grunted old Mrs. Lee, in answer to Eager's request for the boys, either or both, and he went up at once. A tap on Jim's door received no answer. Jack's opened to him at once.
"Mr. Eager!" And there was a hungry look in the boy's eyes.
"Hard at work, old chap?"--at sight of a number of books spread out on the table. "I thought this was holidays with you."
"I tried, but I couldn't get down to it."
"Where's Jim?"
"He's off down along--couldn't it still. Have you brought us any word from Gracie?"--very anxiously.
"Well, I've come to have a talk with you about that." And the Rev. Charles pulled out his pipe and began to fill it. "You ought to have spoken to me first, you know----"
"Oh?--didn't know--not used to that kind of thing, you know."
"I suppose not. Still, that is the proper way to go about it."
"What does Gracie say?" asked Jack impatiently.
"I've come to ask you both, Jack, to let the matter lie for a time." And Jack's foot beat an impatient tattoo. "You see, Gracie had no idea whatever of this, and it has knocked the wind out of her. You can't imagine how upset she is. First, she thought you were joking. Then she had a good cry, and now I've left her staring into the fire, fearing you can never all be friends again as you always have been."
"Why, of course we can!"
"I told her so, but she says things can never be the same."
"We don't want them the same."
"No, I know. But you see, Jack, Gracie has not been thinking of you two in that way; and in the way she has always thought of you, as her dearest friends, she likes the one of you just as much as the other."
Jack grunted.
"After this it will be impossible for her to regard you simply as friends. But you must give her time----"
"Is there any one else?" growled Jack.
"There is no one else. I asked her."
"And--how--long----"
"To name a time, I should say a year."
"A great deal may happen in a year. We may all be dead."
"The chances are that this will be a year of great happenings," said Eager gravely. "The issues are in God's hands. May He grant us all a safe deliverance!"
"You really think it will be war?" asked the boy quickly. "I fear so!"
Jack sat gazing steadily into the fire and limned coming glories in the dancing flames.
"A year's a terrible long time to wait when you feel like a starving dog. But if there's a war . . . yes--that would make it pass quicker."
"Have you said anything to your grandfather about this matter?"
"How could we till we knew which----"
Eager nodded. "Best leave it so at present. How soon will Jim be back? I'd like to have a word with him too."
"I don't know. He's a good deal worked up."
"I'll go along and meet him."
"I'll come too?"
"No. Better let me see him by himself. You can talk it over together afterwards. I hope this won't make any difference between you two, Jack."
"One of us has got to put up with disappointment some time," said Jack steadily. "But we'll just have to stand it."
Eager tramped away along the rim of the tidal sand, well pleased with Jack's reasonable acceptance of the situation. Jim, he felt sure, would be no less sensible, and matters would run on smoothly; and so Time, the great Solver of Problems, would be given the opportunity of working out this one also.
Deeply pondering the whole matter, and letting his thoughts wander back along the years, he tramped on almost forgetful of the actual reason for his coming. It was not till a gleam of light amid the sand-hills on his left told him he had got to Seth Rimmer's cottage, that he knew how far he had come. Jim might have called there, so he rapped on the door and went in.
"Ech, Mr. Eager! It's good o' you to come and see an owd woman like this," said Mrs. Rimmer from the bed.
"It's always a pleasure to see you, Mrs. Rimmer. You're one of the ones that it does one good to see."
"It's very good o' yo'."
"But I came really to look for Jim Carron. They told me he had come down this way, and I thought he might have called in to see you."
"No. I havena seen owt of him."
"And you're all alone? Where's everybody?"
"Th' mester's at his work--God keep him; it's a bad, black night!--and Seth--he's away."
"And where's my friend Kattie? She ought not to leave you all alone like this."
"Ech, I'm used to it. 'Oo's always slipping out. I dunnot know who----" she began, with a quite unusual fretfulness, which showed him she had been worrying over it.
And then the door opened and Kattie came in, ruffled somewhat with the south-west wind, which had whipped the colour into her face. With a bit of cherry ribbon at her throat, and another bit in her hair, and her eyes sparkling in the lamplight, she looked uncommonly pretty.
"How they all grow up!" thought Eager to himself. "Here's another who will set the village boys by the ears; and it seems no time since she was a child running about with scarce a rag to her back!"
"Mr. Eager?" said Kattie in surprise.
"I came to find Jim Carron, Kattie. I suppose you haven't seen him about anywhere?"
"I saw some one walking up along," said Kattie, "but it was too dark to see who it was."
"Jim, I'll be bound. Good night, Mrs. Rimmer! Good night, Kattie! I'll be in again in a day or two." And he set off in haste the way he had come.
A few minutes' quick walking showed him a dim figure strolling along the higher causeway of dried seaweed and drift, and kicking it up disconsolately at times, just as he used to do as a boy when seeking treasure.
"That you, Jim?" And the figure stopped.
"Hello!--what--you, Mr. Eager?"
"Just me. I came to look for you. Kattie told me you'd come on----"
"Kattie?"
"Well, she said she'd seen some one pass, and I guessed it was you. I've been in having a talk with Jack, my boy, and I wanted to see you too." And he linked arms and went on.
"Yes?"
"About your letter to Gracie." And Eager felt the boy's arm jump inside his own. "It was a tremendous surprise to her, you know. She had never thought of either of you in that way, and it knocked her all of a heap. Now I want you all to let matters rest as they are for a year, Jim----"
"A year! Good Lord!"
"I know how you feel, lad, but it is absolutely the only thing to be done. You've been like brothers to her, you know. You are both very dear to her; but when you ask her suddenly to choose between you, she cannot. I couldn't myself. You are both dearer to me than any one in the world . . . almost . . . after Gracie, . . . but if you put me in a comer and bade me, at risk of my life, say which of you I liked best--well, I couldn't do it. And that's just her position."
"I'm afraid . . . I don't suppose I stand much chance . . . against old Jack. . . . He's a much finer fellow. . . . But, oh, Mr. Eager . . . I can't tell you how I feel about her. . . . If it could make her happy I'd be ready to lie right down here and die this minute." And Eager pressed the jerking arm inside his own understandingly.
"I believe you would, my boy. But it wouldn't make for Gracie's happiness at all to have you lie down and die. You must both live to do good work in the world and make us all proud of you. And the work looks like coming, Jim, and quickly."
"You mean this war they're talking about?"
"Yes. I'm afraid there's no doubt it's coming, and war is a terrible thing."
"It'll give one the chance of showing what's in one, anyway."
"Some one has to pay for such chances."
"I suppose so . . . . unless one pays oneself. . . . I don't know that I particularly want to kill any one, but I suppose one forgets all that in the thick of it. . . . Anyway, if it comes to fighting I think I can do that . . . if I haven't got much of a head for books and things."
"I believe you will do your duty, whatever it is, my boy, and no man can do more."
"Well?" asked Gracie eagerly, when Eager got home again. "Did you see them? Quick, Charlie! Tell me!"
"Yes, I saw them. Jack at home--trying to work. Jim down along--couldn't sit still."
"The poor boys!"
"They are very much in earnest, but I have got them to see the reasonableness of waiting--for a year at least."
"I'm glad. I don't know how I can ever choose between them, Charlie."
"Don't trouble about it, dear. Things have a way of working themselves out if you leave them to themselves."
"I wonder!" she said wearily.
"Things can never be the same again," was the doleful refrain of all Gracie's thoughts as she tossed and tumbled that night, very weary but far too troubled to sleep.
And at Carne there were two more in like case.
"Seen Mr. Eager?" asked Jack when Jim came in.
"Yes," nodded Jim, and nothing more passed between them on the subject.
But here too things could never be quite the same again, for, good friends as ever though they might remain in all outward seeming, neither could rid his mind of the fact that the other desired beyond every other thing in life the prize on which his own heart was set. And that ever-recurring thought tended, no matter how they might try to withstand it, to division. Similarity of aim, when there is but one prize, inevitably produces rivalry, and rivalry scission.
They strove against it.
"Jim, old boy, this mustn't divide us," said Jack next day, when both were feeling somewhat mouldy.
"Course not," growled Jim, but all the same the cloud was over them.
Eager had asked them to come in to tea that afternoon, so that he might be with them all at this first meeting and help to round awkward corners.
But they all three felt somewhat gauche and ill at ease at first, as was only natural. For Gracie's face, swept by conscious blushes, was lovelier than ever, and set both their hearts jumping the moment she came into the room. And it is no easy matter for a girl to appear at her ease in the company of two love-sick young men who know all about each other's feelings and hers.
They were both inclined to gaze furtively at her with melancholy in their eyes, and for the time being the old gay camaraderie was gone; and at times, when she caught them at it, it was all she could do to keep from hysterical laughter, while all the time she felt like crying to think that they would never all be the same again.
But Eager exerted himself to the utmost to charm away the shadows, gave them some of the humours of his sharp-witted parishioners, and finally got them on to the outlook in the East, which set them talking and left Grace in comparative comfort as a listener.
Jack gave them eye-openers in the matter of new guns and projectiles. Jim asserted with knowledge that if the cavalry got their chance they would give a mighty good account of themselves. Eager expressed the hope that the Government would awake to the fact that the whole matter was obviously promoted by the French Emperor for his own personal aggrandisement, and would not allow England to be made his willing instrument. The boys knew little of the political aspect of the case, but hoped, if it came to fighting, that they would be in it.
And Grace sat quietly and listened, and wondered what the coming year would hold for them all.
So by degrees the stiffness of their new estate wore off, and before the boys left they were all talking together almost as of old, but not quite. Still she went to bed that night somewhat comforted, and slept so soundly as almost to make up for the night before.
"What's the matter with those boys?" asked Sir Denzil of Eager next day, when they met for the discussion of certain arrangements respecting the boys' allowances. "Are they sick? Any typhus about?" And there was actually a touch of anxiety in his voice.
"No, sir, they are not sick bodily. They're in love."
"The deuce! With whom?"
"Gracie."
"What--both of them?"--suspending his pinch of snuff in mid-air to gaze in astonishment at Eager.
"Yes, both of them."
"So!"--snuffing very deliberately, and then nodding thoughtfully. "So the puzzle of Carne hits you too. And what does Miss Gracie say about it?"
"She is very much upset. They had all been such good friends, you see, that she had never regarded them in that light."
"And you?"
"I have persuaded them to let matters remain on the old footing, as far as that is possible, for at least a year. By that time----"
"Yes, this next year may bring many changes," said the old gentleman musingly; and presently, "Well, I'm glad they have shown so much sense, Mr. Eager--and you too. I have the highest possible opinion of Miss Gracie. Now as to the money. They cannot live on their pay, of course. What do you suggest?"
"Not too much. Jim will be at somewhat more expense than Jack, but it would not do to discriminate. I should say a couple of hundred each in addition to their pay. It won't leave them much of a margin for frivolities, and that is just as well."
"Very well. I will instruct my lawyers to that effect. Three hundred and fifty or four hundred a year would not have gone far with us in my day, but no doubt things have changed. Do your best to keep them from high play. It generally ends one way, as you know."
"I have no reason to believe they are, either of them, given to it. Of course----"
"They've not tasted their freedom yet. It's bound to be in their blood. Put them on their guard, Mr. Eager. We don't want them milksops, but put them on their guard. It will come with more weight from you than from me."
"There is no fear of them turning out milksops, Sir Denzil. They are as fine a pair of lads as Carne has ever seen, I'll be bound, and they'll do us all credit yet. I'll talk to them about the gaming. Jack is too keen on his work, I think. Jim----"
"Ay, Jim's a Carron, right side or wrong. You'll find he'll run to the green cloth like a mole to the water."
"I'll see that he goes with his eyes open, anyway. I don't think he'll put us to shame. Jim's no great hand at his books, but he's got heaps of common sense, and he's true as steel."
"All that no doubt," said the old gentleman, with a dry smile. "But you'll find that boys will be boys to the length of their tether. When they've exhausted the possibilities of foolishness they become men--sometimes," with a touch of the old bitterness.
New men--and women--new manners and customs, to say nothing of costumes.
The accession of the young Queen cut a deep cleft between the old times and the new. But human nature at the root is very much the same in all ages, no matter what its outward appearance and behaviour.
The wild excesses of the Regency days had given place to the ordered decorum of a Maiden Court. The young Queen's happy choice of a consort confirmed it in its new and healthy courses. But, placid to the point of dullness though the surface of the stream appeared, down below there were still the old rocks and shoals, and now and again resultant eddies and bubbles reminded the older folk of the doings of other days.
Now--as at all times, but undoubtedly more so than during the two preceding reigns--to those who believed in study and hard work as a means of personal advancement, the way was open. And now still, as at all times, but especially in those latter times, to those who craved the pleasures of the table, whether covered with a white cloth or a green, or simply bare mahogany, the way was no less open to those who knew.
Jack, down at Chatham, was much too busy with his books, and such practical application of them as could be had there, to give a thought to the more frivolous side of things.
Jim, cast into what was to him the whirl of London--though his grandfather would have viewed it scornfully over a depreciatory pinch of snuff, with something of the feelings of an old lion turned out to amuse himself in a kitchen garden--Jim found this new free life of the metropolis very delightful and somewhat intoxicating.
Harrow had been a vast enlargement on Carne. London was a mightier enfranchisement than Harrow.
But first of all he was a soldier, very proud of his particular branch of the service, and bent on fitting himself for it to the best of his limited powers.
In the first flush of his boyish enthusiasm he worked hard. His horsemanship was above the average; his swordsmanship, by dint of application and constant practice, excellent; and he slogged away at his drill and a knowledge of the handling of men as he had never slogged at anything before.
He bade fair to become a very efficient cavalryman, and meanwhile found life good and enjoyed himself exceedingly.
His wide-eyed appreciation of this expansive new life appealed to his fellows as does the unbounded delight of a pretty country cousin to a dweller in the metropolis. They found fresh flavour in things through his enjoyment of them, and laid themselves out to open his eyes still wider.
His enthusiasm for their common profession was in itself a novelty. They decided that all work and no play would, in his case, result in but a dull boy, as it would have done in their own if they had given it the chance; and so, whenever opportunity offered--and they made it their business to see that it was not lacking--they carried him off among the eddies and whirlpools of society and insisted on his enjoying himself.
But, indeed, no great insistence was necessary. Jim found life supremely delightful, and savoured it with all the headlong vehemence of his nature.
He had never dreamed there were so many good fellows in the world, such multitudes of pretty girls, such endless excitements of so many different kinds. Life was good; and Jack, deep in his studies at Chatham, And Charles Eager, busy among his simple folk up north, alike wagged their heads doubtfully over the hasty scrawls which reached them from time to time with exuberant but sketchy accounts of his doings, always winding up with promises of fuller details which never arrived.
Gracie enjoyed his enjoyment of life to the full, and wept with amusement over his attempts at description of the people he met, and never suffered any slightest feeling of loss in him, for he wound up every letter to her with the statement that, on his honour, he had not yet met a girl who could hold a candle to her, and that he did not believe there was one in the whole world, and that if there was he had no wish to meet her, and so he remained--hers most devotedly, hers most gratefully, hers only, hers till death, and so on, and so on--Jim.
As to Sir Denzil, who received a dutiful letter now and again and got all Eager's news in addition, he only smiled over all these carryings-on, and said the lad must have his fling, and it sounded all very tame and flat compared with the doings of his young days. And If the boy came a cropper in money matters he would be inclined to look upon it as the clearest indication they had yet had as to his birth, for there never had been a genuine Carron who had not made the money fly when he got the chance. None of which subversive doctrine did Eager transmit to the exuberant one in London, lest it should but serve to grease the wheels and quicken the pace towards catastrophe; and he earnestly begged, and solemnly warned, Sir Denzil to keep his deplorable sentiments to himself, lest worse should come of it.
And to Charles Eager, deeply as he detested the thought of war, it seemed that, from the purely personal point of view, as regarded Jim and his fellows in like case, a taste of the strenuous life of camp and field would be more wholesome than this frivolous whirl of London.
Jim, in his joyous flights, met many a strange adventure.
He had gone one night with some of his fellows--Charlie Denham, second lieutenant in his own regiment, and some others--to a house in St. James's Street, where Chance still flourished vigorously in spite of Act 8 & 9 Vict. c. 109, and stood watching the play, with his eyes nearly falling out of his head at the magnitude and apparent recklessness of it all.
It was a curious room--the walls hung with heavy draperies, no sign of a window anywhere about it; and it had a feeling and atmosphere of its own, one to which fresh air and sweetness and the light of day were entirely foreign. It was furnished with many easy chairs and couches, and softly illuminated by shaded gas pendants which threw a brilliant light on to the tables, but left all beyond in tempered twilight.
The entrance too had struck Jim as still more remarkable. A small, mean door in a narrow side-street yielded silently to the Open Sesame of certain signal-taps and revealed a very narrow circular staircase, apparently in the wall of the house. At every fifteen or twenty steps upwards was another stout door, which opened only to the prearranged signal, and there were three such doors before they arrived at first a cloak-room, then a richly appointed buffet, and finally the gaming-room.
If the descent to hell is proverbially easy, the ascent to this particular antechamber was rendered as difficult as possible, to any except the initiated, and he was presently to learn the reason why.
There was a solid group round each of the tables, and some of the players occasionally gave vent to their feelings in an exultant exclamation--more frequently in a muttered objurgation; but for the most part gain or loss was accepted with equal equanimity, and Jim wondered vaguely as to the depths of the purses that could lose hundreds of guineas on the chance of the moment, and could go on losing, and still show no sign.
His wonder and attention settled presently on the most prominent player at the table, an outstanding figure by reason of his striking personal appearance and the size and steady persistence of his stakes.
He might have been any age from sixty to eighty; looking at him again, Jim was not sure but what he might be a hundred. His hair was quite white, but being trimmed rather short carried with it no impression of venerableness. The face below was equally colourless, without seam or wrinkle, perfectly shaped, like a beautiful white cameo and almost as immobile. His eyes were dark and still keen. At the moment they were intent upon the game and Jim watched him fascinated.
He was playing evidently on some system of his own and following it out with deepest interest, though nothing but his eyes betrayed it.
His slim white hand quietly placed note after note on certain numbers, and replaced them with ever-increasing amounts as time after time the croupier raked them away. Now and again a few came fluttering back, but for the most part they tumbled into the bank with the rest. But, whether they came or went, not a muscle moved in the beautiful white face, and the stakes went on increasing with mathematical precision.
Many of the others had stopped their spasmodic punting in order to give their whole attention to his play. Their occasional guineas had come to savour of impudence alongside this formidable campaign.
Jim watched breathlessly, with a tightening of the chest, though the outcome was nothing to him, and wondered how long it could go on. The man must be made of money. He knew too little of the game to follow it with understanding, but he watched the calm white face with intensest interest, and out of the corners of his eyes saw the slim white hand quietly dropping small fortunes up and down the table and replacing them with larger ones as they disappeared.
Then a murmur from the onlookers told him of some change in the tun of luck, but the white face showed no sign. And suddenly the group round the table began to disintegrate.
"What is it?" jerked Jim to his neighbour.
"He's broken the bank. Wish I had half his nerve and luck and about a quarter of his money."
"Who is he?"
"Don't you know? Lord Deseret. Gad, he must have taken ten thousand pounds to-night!"
"Come along, Carron," said one of his friends. "All the fun's over, but it was jolly well worth seeing."
And as Jim turned he found himself face to face with Lord Deseret, who stood quietly tapping one hand with a bundle of bank-notes, folded lengthwise as though they were so many pipe-spills.
"Carron?" he said gently. "Which of you is Carron?"
"I am Jim Carron, sir--at your service." And the keen kindly eyes dwelt pleasantly on him and seemed to go right through him.
"JimCarron?" said the old man, and tapped him on the arm with the wedge of bank-notes, and indicated an adjacent sofa and his desire for his company there. "And why not Denzil? It always has been Denzil, hasn't it?"
"Well, you see, there are two of us, sir, and we are both Denzil, so we are also Jack and Jim to prevent mistakes."
"Two of you, are there?"--with a slight knitting of the smooth white brow, on which all the wildest fluctuations of the tables had not produced the faintest ripple of emotion. "Two of you, eh? And which of you is Lady Susan Sandys's boy? Which is to be Carron of Carne when the time comes?"
"Ah, now! that is more that I can tell you, sir. We are a pair of unfortunate twins, and no one knows which is the elder."
"Twins, eh?" And even to Jim's unpractised eye there was a look of surprise on the calm white face. "That is somewhat awkward for the succession, isn't it? Which is the better man?"
"Oh--Jack, miles away. He's got a head on him. He's at Chatham in the Engineers. I'm in the Hussars."
"There may be work even for the Hussars before long. There certainly will be for the Engineers. You're all looking forward to it, I suppose?"
"Very much so, sir. You think there's no doubt about it?"
"None, I fear, my boy. It will bring loss to many, gain to a few, but the gain rarely equals the loss. Do you play?" he asked abruptly.
"Very little. It's all quite new to me. I've hardly found my feet yet."
"This kind of thing," he said, flipping the bank-notes, "is all very well if you can afford it. Take my advice and keep clear of it."
Jim laughed, as much as to say, "Your example and your good fortune belie your words, sir."
"I can afford it, you see," said Lord Deseret, in reply to the boy's unspoken thought. "When you are as old as I am, and if you have wasted your life as I have," he said impressively, "you may come to play as the only excitement left to you. But I hope you will have more sense and make better use of your time. Will you come and see me?"
"I would very much like to, sir, if I may."
"You are occupied in the mornings, of course." And he pulled out a gold pencil-case and scribbled an address on the back of the outermost bank-note, and handed it to Jim. "Any afternoon about five, you will find me at home."
"But----" stammered Jim, much embarrassed by the bank-note.
"Put it in your pocket, my boy. You will find some use for it, unless things are very much changed since my young days. Your father's son--and your grandfather's grandson for the matter of that--need feel no compunction about accepting a trifling present from so old a friend of theirs. You cannot in any case put it to a worse use than I would. I shall look for you, then, within a day or two." And with a final admonitory tap of the sheaf of notes and a kindly nod, he left Jim standing in a vast amazement.
Lord Deseret had gone out by the door leading to the buffet and staircase. He was back on the instant with his hat and cloak on, just as a sharp whistle from some concealed tube behind the hangings cleft the air, and, in the sudden silence that befell, Jim heard the sound of thunderous blows from the lower regions.
Lord Deseret looked quickly round and beckoned to him.
"The police," he said quietly. "Get your things and keep close to me. It would never do for you to be caught here. There is plenty of time. Those doors will keep them busy for a good quarter of an hour or more. Now, Stepan!" And a burly man, who had suddenly appeared, pulled back the heavy curtains from a corner and opened a narrow slit of a door, and they passed through to another staircase, which led up and up until, through a trap-door, they came out on to the roof. They passed on over many roofs, with little ladders leading up and down over the party-walls, and finally down through another trap, and so through a public-house into a distant street.
"A thing we are always subject to," said Lord Deseret gently, "and so we provide for it. Don't forget to come and see me. Good night!"
"You're in luck's way, old man," said his friend Denham. "Deseret is a man worth knowing. Let's go and have something to eat." And they all went over to Merlin's and had a tremendous supper, for which they allowed Jim to pay because he was in luck's way and had made the acquaintance of Lord Deseret.
And many such supper-bills would have made but a very trifling hole in Lord Deseret's bank-note.
Perhaps it was that heavy supper, and its concomitants, that tended to fog Jim's recollection of something in his talk with Lord Deseret which had struck a jarring note in his brain at the time, and had suggested itself to him as odd and a thing to be most decidedly looked into when opportunity offered.
The feeling of it was with him next day, but he could not get back to the fact or the words which had given rise to it. Something the old man had said had caused him a momentary surprise and discomfort, and then had come the abiding surprise, from which the momentary discomfort had worn off, of that enormous bank-note, and after that the hasty exit over the roofs and the tumultuous supper at Merlin's, with much merriment and wine and smoke. It was not easy to get back through all that fog to the actual words of a casual conversation.
But there certainly was something. What, in Heaven's name, was it, that it should haunt him in this fashion?
And then, as he did his best for the tenth time, in his thick-headed, blundering way, to cover the ground again step by step, it suddenly flashed upon him.
"And which of you is Lady Susan Sandys's boy?"
That was it! "Which of you is Lady Susan Sandys's boy?" the old man had asked quite casually, as though expecting a perfectly commonplace answer.
Were they not, then, both Lady Susan Sandys's boys?
To be suddenly confronted with a question such as that--to come upon even the suggestion of a flaw in the fundamental facts of one's life, is a facer indeed.
Whatcouldthe old boy mean? There was no sign of decrepitude about him. That he was in fullest possession of very unusual powers of brain and nerve, his prowess at the tables had shown. What could he mean?
Twin brothers must surely have the same mother. And yet from Lord Deseret's question, and the way he put it, and the searching look of the kindly keen eyes, one might have supposed that he knew, and every one else knew, something to the contrary.
To one of Jim's simple nature, there was only one thing to be done, and that was to go to Lord Deseret and ask him plainly what he meant.
He had already written to Jack, conveying to him his half of the unexpected windfall, before he had succeeded in getting back to the root of the trouble. And he had simply told him how he had met Lord Deseret, an old friend of their father's, and how he had broken the bank at roulette and had insisted on making him a present, which was obviously given to them both, and so he had the pleasure of enclosing his half herewith; and Lord Deseret was an exceedingly jolly old cock, and the finest-looking old boy he had ever seen, and the way he followed up that bank till it broke was a sight, and he, Jim, was half inclined to buy himself another horse, as the mare he had was a bit shy and skittish in the traffic, though no doubt she would get used to it in time.
It was after five before he found out what he wanted to ask Lord Deseret, and so the matter had to stand over till next day, rankling meanwhile in his mind in most unaccustomed fashion, and exercising that somewhat lethargic member much beyond its wont.
That night Denham and the rest were bound for Covent Garden to see Madame Beteta in her Spanish dances.
Vittoria Beteta had burst upon the town a month or two before and taken it by storm. She claimed to be Spanish, but her dances were undoubtedly more so than her speech.
She had a smattering of her alleged native language, and of French and Italian, and, for a foreigner, a quite unusual command of the difficult English tongue.
Whatever her actual nationality, however, she danced superbly and was extraordinarily good-looking, and knew how to make the most of herself in every way.
Her age was uncertain, like all the rest. She looked eighteen, but, as she had been dancing for years in most of the capitals of Europe, she was probably more. What was certain was that she had witching black eyes, and raven black hair, and a superb figure, and danced divinely, and drew all the world to watch her.
Jim was charmed, like all the others. He had never seen anything so exquisitely, so seductively graceful.
He gazed, with wide eyes and parted lips, till the others smiled at his absorption.
"There's your new catch beckoning to you, Carron," said Denham suddenly, but he had to dig him lustily in the ribs before he could distract his attention from the dancer.
"Here, I say! Stop it!" jerked Jim, unconsciously fending the assault with his elbow, while he still hung on to the Beteta's twinkling feet with all the zest that was in him.
"There's Lord Deseret waving to you--in the stage-box, man." And Jim, following his indication, saw Lord Deseret, in a box abutting right on to the stage, waving his hand and beckoning to him.
"You have the luck," sighed Denham. "He wants you in his box. Wonder if he has room for two little ones."
"Come on and try." And Jim jumped up.
"Wait till the dance is over or you'll get howled at, man." And Denham dragged him down again, until the outburst of applause announced the end of the figure and they were able to get round to Lord Deseret's box.
He received them cordially, and as he had the box all to himself Charlie had no reason to feel himself superfluous.
"Yes, she is very 'harming and dances remarkably well," said Lord Deseret. "It was I induced her to come over here. I saw her in Vienna two years ago, and advised her then to add London to her laurels. Would you like to meet her? We could go round after the next dance. She will have a short rest then."
"Oh, I would," jerked Jim.
And so presently he found himself, with Lord Deseret and Charlie Denham, who could hardly stand for inflation, in Mme Beteta's dressing-room.
She was lying on a couch, swathed in a crimson silk wrap and fanning herself gently with a huge feather fan, over which the great black eyes shone like lamps.
"Señora," said Lord Deseret in Spanish, with the suspicion of a smile in the corners of his eyes, "may I be allowed the pleasure of introducing to you some young friends of mine?" And she struck at him playfully with the plume of feathers, disclosing for a moment a laughing mouth and a set of fine white teeth. And Jim thought she looked hardly as young as her eyes and her feet would have led one to suppose.
"Do you understand Spanish?" she asked of Jim, in English.
"No, I'm sorry to say----"
"Then you see, milord, it is notcomme il fautto speak it where it is not understood." And she laughed again.
"I stand corrected, madame. We will not speak our native tongue. This is my young friend, James Carron."
And Jim, gazing with all his heart at the wonderful dancer, got a vivid impression of a rich dark Southern face, and a pair of great liquid black eyes glowing upon him through the tantalising undulations of the great dusky fan, which wafted to and fro with the methodic regularity of a metronome.
"And this is Lord Charles Denham. Both gallant Hussars, and both aching to show the colour of their blood against your friends of St. Petersburg."
"Ah, the horror!" she said gently. "But you do not look bloodthirsty, Mr. Carron." And the great black eyes seemed to look Jim through and through.
"I don't think I am really, you know. But if there is to be fighting one looks for chances, of course."
"And the chance always of death," she said gravely.
"One takes that, of course."
"But it is always the next man who is going to be killed, madame," struck in Charlie. "Oneself is always immune. Lord Deseret was at Waterloo, yet here he is, very much alive and as sound as a bell."
"He had the good fortune. May you both have as good!"
"They were anxious to express to you their admiration of your dancing, madame," said Lord Deseret. "But we seem to have fallen upon more solemn subjects."
"I have never seen anything like it," said Jim.
"It is exquisite beyond words, a veritable dream," said the more gifted Charlie.
"Ah, well, it seems to please people, and so it is a pleasure to me also. You are from--where, Mr. Carron?"
"From the north--from Carne,--the Carrons of Carrie, you know."
The dusky plume wafted noiselessly to and fro in front of her face, and its pace did not vary by the fraction of a hair's breadth. Over it, and through it, the great black eyes rested on his face in curiously thoughtful inquisition.
Suddenly, with an almost invisible jerk of the head, she beckoned him to closer converse, and holding the fan as a screen invited him inside it, so to speak.
"Do you play?" she asked gently.
"Very little," he said in surprise. "I have only my pay and an allowance, you see."
"That is right. He"--nodding towards Lord Deseret--"is not a good example for young men in that respect."
"He has been very kind to me. And he warns me strongly against it."
"All the same he does not set a good example. Will you come and see me?"
"I would be delighted if I may."
"Come and breakfast with me to-morrow at twelve. I shall be alone."
She gave him an address in South Audley Street, and then dismissed them all with, "Now you must go. Here is my dresser, and I have but ten minutes more." And they made their adieux and bowed themselves out.
"Is Madame English?" asked Denham, as they seated themselves in the box again.
"Originally, I think so. But she has lived much abroad and has become to some extent cosmopolitan. She certainly is not Spanish, or if she is she has most unaccountably forgotten her native tongue," said Lord Deseret, with his hovering smile.
"She dances in Spanish, anyway," said Charlie exuberantly.
"And that is all that concerns us at the moment."