“I’ve an eye for you, my friend,” murmured the baronet. “What do you do in this happy valley, where winds and waters should be the only forces to strive with?”
He was pondering a little all the way to Stockbridge; and there Betty Pollack came upon him with a blush and a smile, like a posy of sweetbriar, and drew his honour a mug of ale. She knew him now by report, of course; and was curious, with the gossips of the neighbourhood, as to the history of his mysterious coming. Near all the years of her short life, “Delsrop,” unclaimed and deserted, had been lonely, enchanted ground for the builders of local tradition to lay their airy bricks on.
“Is your honour for Winchester?” she said. “The evenings draw in, and it’s well to be over the downs by sunset. There have been bad characters about of late.”
“Betty,” said he, “will you give me a curl to put over my heart for a charm?”
She laughed and then looked grave.
“I’m not that sort,” she said. “I keep my favours for my inferiors.”
“And what am I but one?”
“Well,” said she, “I think you are, to talk so.”
It was like a glimpse of an orchard through a wall-wicket to tarry with her a moment; but he must needs be up and onward if he wished to reach the old Burgh before dark fell.
Therefore he mounted and went his way, whereby we need not pursue him; for it was devoid of incident, and of much emotion but weariness.
He slept that night at the “George,” and the next morning sought out his agent and went deep into matters of business with him.
The upshot was so satisfactory, that he felt justified, then and there, in giving considerable commissions for furniture, and in arranging for the hire of such servants as were at least indispensable.
He dined early, and had made his return journey, with a heart considerably lightened and braced to content by three o’clock.
As he came within sight of the iron gate, he noticed to his surprise a horse tethered amongst the bushes off the road; and still more did he marvel upon nearing it, to see that it was a well-groomed animal and a lady’s, by token of the side-saddle.
He dismounted, and leading his own beast over the turf, pushed open the gate, and stood still to reconnoitre. No sign of the owner of the horse was there—no sound of voice or footstep in the green glooms beyond.
Uncertain what to do he remained a moment looking this way and that, when suddenly there broke upon his ear a shrill scream of terror. It seemed to issue not twenty paces away, from the direction of the ruined lodge.
He dropped the reins and sprang forward.
“Here!” he shouted. “What is it? Where are you?”
Crying, frenzied words came back to him—a woman’s voice, but inarticulate. Guided by it, however, he ran round by way of a little tangled garden that brought him to the rear of the low building.
Nothing was to be seen; but here the voice appealed to him in agony from out the very ground. He fell upon his knees by a sunk heap of rubbish—saw in a moment, and snapped vigorously at two gloved hands, that wavered up at him from a ruin of weeds and broken earth.
As he held on, frantically hauling, with his jaw set square, the matted ground shook and crumbled under his feet. He saw what was happening, and, throwing himself back with a mighty effort of resolution, drew slowly from the bowels of the earth, as it were, the collapsed and almost senseless form of a young woman. Then, scarcely might he stagger with her to a place of security, when a rent opened in the spot whence he had struggled, and a great pad of undergrowth went down with a roar and hollow splash of water to ugly depths.
Mr. Tuke laid his dainty salvage on thedébrisof a bench, and looked down upon it all amazed. It presented the form of a girl, of nineteen or twenty perhaps, with a quantity of pale golden hair dragged and tumbled over her very white face, and her dress and velvet spencer—both rich and fashionable—torn and stained in twenty places. Her eyes were closed, and her gloved hands daubed with mud and roots of grass.
He was quite at a loss as to what to do; and could only stand helplessly above her, wondering who she could be, and what the chance that had brought her into so perilous a position. Vaguely he recalled certain specifics for faintness, that seemed scrawled illegibly in the commonplace-book of his mind. Wringing her ears, or her nose—he could not remember which—suggested itself as a remedy dimly familiar. Burnt feathers, also—but whether forin- orexternal application, he had no recollection—fluttered faintly in the background of his fancy. Now he thought he would lay her flat, and now seat her upright like a limp Eastern idol, in the hope that the position most favourable to Nature’s purpose would induce recovery.
While he was speculating in great embarrassment, the young lady solved the problem for herself by opening her eyes, and giving out a little tremulous sigh, like the flutter of a scorched moth.
“Oh!” she whimpered—a line of pain coming across her brow—“where is mysaltier?”
It was her chain, ending in a little medallion called abréviaire—at that time fashionable—that she missed. Life devoid of this trinket was a petty possession.
“It must have gone whither you nearly followed, into a disused well,” said Mr. Tuke, becomingly grave.
He added with some humour of impertinence:
“How a foot, too light to bruise a daisy, could tread so heavy a measure, passes my comprehension.”
A little flush, as when a spoonful of red wine is dropped into a glass of milk, came to her cheek and delicate ear.
“I felt it going,” she whispered; “and screamed out. Did you save me? And are you the new squire of ‘Delsrop’? Oh, sir! I am ashamed.”
She broke off abruptly, and, blushing a more vivid pink, rose to a sitting posture, and put back the hair from her face in a bewildered manner.
“I hardly know what I say or do,” she said. “I was so frightened; and I have lost mysaltier. My horse is somewhere outside. Will you help me to it?”
“You are not in a state to ride. Wait and rest, and I will escort you whither you wish by and by.”
“No; I must go now. My brother will be home from cock-fight and raging for his supper. It was wrong of me to venture in, and I have lost mysaltier, and nearly my life. Will you have search made for it in the well? It is gold, and thebréviaireis shaped prettily like aridicule.”
“It shall be found, if possible. If you must go, I will ride with you.”
“No, no.”
“Yes, indeed. And whither may I squire you, madam?”
“To ‘Chatters,’ if you must. ’Tis his house—my brother’s.”
“Your brother’s?”
“He is Sir David Blythewood, sir.”
“You must pardon me. I have only made mydébutin the neighbourhood this day or so.”
“Yes; I know.”
She looked at him with a vague little smile. Her eyes swam as pale a blue as plumbago flowers. Her features were cut to a sharpish pattern; but their complexion was of snow berries, and the softness of youth triumphed over all angles. Suddenly she put her hands to her rumpled hair.
“My hat!” she cried.
“I fear it has followed thesaltier. We must make shift without it.”
She rose at once and took the arm he offered. The shock and the fright seemed to have confused her, so that her actions and most of her speech were mechanical.
When he had helped her to mount and was riding beside her, he had full opportunity, in the intermittent silences that fell awkwardly between them, to study her very dainty personality. She managed her “grey” like one finely educated in the science of horsemanship. All graces of mien and action seemed exhibited with the cultivated art that conceals art.
Now and again he would be conscious of an inquisitive glance shot in his direction, and the little confusion that followed upon discovery was skillfully expressed.
A long two miles they rode together, by further way of the “Delsrop” road; and presently, skirting a sweep of park-land—in ordered contrast with Mr. Tukes’ domain—came in view of a lodge and gates of the most admired substantiality.
Here the gentleman would insist upon delivering up his charge, and returning the way he had come. No pretty remonstrances would avail to make him spoil the romance of the situation by so much as a yard of anti-climax.
“I am too happy in having been the means of help,” said he. “If you are beholden to me at all, a word of thanks from your brother would make me a debtor instead of a creditor.”
She smiled back delightfully.
“He shall come in person,” she said, “and bring you a receipt of my safe custody.”
She laughed and waved to him, and was gone up the drive.
He stood hat in hand until she had disappeared. Then he mounted and rode back, with a heart full of sun and merriment.
Indeed, it was like a sail to a castaway, this vision in his waste of days. To know that refined civilization was within a couple of miles or so of his gates, did more to reconcile him to his embowered lot, than any philosophy of nature. He felt friendless and isolated no longer; but rather inspired to a pursuit that should make of his thickets a garden of Hesperus.
In this mood of exaltation he reached his own door, rapped on it with the butt of his riding-whip, and, as it was swung open, encountered the figures of Whimple and his sister arrayed as if for a journey.
Theman’s face looked fallen and hectic; but he was recovered at least of his fit. Darda clung to his arm, a frail, defiant, wisp of a thing, her hair a quivering mist of fire in the light of the low-down sun.
“Whither away?” said the baronet in surprise. “My horse, Whimple.”
Dennis put his sister gently to one side, and took the bridle. Standing thus, he turned to his master and spoke him quietly.
“We stayed to deliver you the keys, sir. I have made all snug against our going.”
“And where do you wend now?” said Mr. Tuke mockingly.
“I don’t know, sir; indeed, I don’t. We must make shift in a barn for to-night.”
“And your belongings—your personal effects?”
The servant made a sad expressive gesture. “Only our poor clothes,” it seemed to imply.
“Now, my good fellow,” said the baronet, a little grimly, “I decline, you know, to take the responsibility of this self-martyrdom. It is a weak attempt to put me in the wrong, which is no improvement of your case. I gave an order which was not carried out.”
“She gives her word, sir, she never put the skull there.”
“Nor you?”
“Nor I, indeed, sir.”
“H’m! It must be one of those remnants of mortality that provide for themselves, it seems. Anyhow, it is gone now, I presume?”
“I will swear I took it away and locked it up.”
“Very well. Then let us say no more about it. Do you wish to stay on?”
“I wish, sir, with all respect, to do my duty by the place that has so long harboured us.”
“Which meansIam not included in the contract, and that you would take service elsewhere if you could get a better.”
The man was protesting, but the other stopped him with a laugh.
“Go your ways,” said he. “I see no reason why you should love me. We will make it a question of duty, and abide by that.”
Throughout the little discussion, Darda had stood in the entrance, passive and indifferent. Now, foreseeing the upshot, she turned and walked away into the gathering dusk of the house.
Mr. Tuke followed, jovially whistling. All the evening he was in great spirits, and at supper he had up a bottle of Muscadine, jacketed with a half-century growth of cobwebs and tartar, and drank to the blue of a couple of eyes that were comically, and a little sweetly, in his thoughts.
He went to bed, slept like Innocence, and woke like Justice, and, as he lay on his morning pillow, pondered the oddities of his new life.
One small matter exercised his mind perplexingly—his antipathy to the man Whimple. Whence it was born, and on what cherished, he found it difficult to decide. The fellow was respectful, obedient, and, so far as he knew, honest. Yet, from the first, he had felt an inclination, unusual to his bent, to bully him and depreciate his efforts. Something in the man—he could not tell what—woke suspicion in him—unjustified, he verily believed. He would remedy this, if possible; would look with a broader view of toleration on the conduct of his spiritless dependent.
The resolve was frank and characteristic enough; and he was decided to give it immediate expression. But so it happened, an incident of the coming day was to reawaken and confirm his deepest distrust in the unhappy caretaker.
All the morning he spent riding about his ragged estate, exploring, investigating, calculating possibilities and planning improvements. It was past mid-day when he turned his horse’s head homewards, and then he was by a dense thicket that skirted a little long wood of lofty trees. Here he dismounted; for it struck him that this was the fringe of the very holt he had penetrated on his first coming, and he must put his conjecture to the test. He tied up his horse and plunged amongst the branches, and presently was rewarded by catching a glimpse through the thronging trunks of the mossy lap of the drive and the dank stones of the ruined lodge. Right opposite the latter, but well hidden in the brush, he sat himself down upon a tumbled log; for he was hot and weary, and the high green silence of the place smote upon his senses like a cathedral anthem. Far away the tap of a woodpecker rang like an elfin hammer; things unseen pattered from a height upon the dead leaves—mere accents on solitude; the “caw” of a sailing rook came through the leafy canopy overhead with a weight of drowsy utterance.
He closed his eyes blissfully—and opened them again with a start.
Something soft-footed had entered the drive by way of the iron gate—had paused, and was peering forward with a concentrated gaze.
He made this out—cautiously shifting his body for the better view—to be a tall, dark-featured woman—a gipsy-like creature by every token—keen-faced; very poorly dressed. Presently she moved secretly, a yard at a time, in skirmishing advances, as a mouse does.
Suddenly she gave a little run; stopped; drew her ragged shawl tightly about her bosom, and uttered a low exclamation of greeting. To whom? It was with a curious wonder that the watcher saw coming from the other direction his man Whimple. He, the latter, moved as the woman, with a like air of secrecy; and he had a scared look in his face, too, as if he were on some errand of a disturbing privacy.
The two met, with a hasty familiarity of welcome, and words passed between them. These were earnest, rapid, vehement; but Mr. Tuke could not gather their import. More than once the woman’s voice wavered up for an instant into a tone of scorn and indignation, which was as quickly subdued.
Then, in a moment, something had passed from the man to the stranger—something, wrapped in an old chequered handkerchief, that she received delicately and hid under her shawl,—and they had parted, and the woman had gone to the gate with a sound of sobbing.
“Mr. Whimple, Mr. Whimple,” thought Mr. Whimple’s master—“if there was only a little more brass in your hang-dog face, I could respect, if I didn’t encourage, your tactics.”
He saw the fellow turn and scurry away as he had come, and gave an indrawn whistle deflected at the stop, as men do who vent upon themselves an emotion of surprise.
“Now, what is the riddle?” he muttered. “Our effectless friend can find the means to a little barter on his own account, it seems. But where is in all the house to tempt his honesty? Well, forewarned is forearmed; and there is an end of the reaction in your favour, Mr. Dennis.”
He left the wood by and by, and made for the house, lost in speculation. For the present he was resolved to allude in no way to the interview he had been witness of; and to alter no whit of his manner towards his servant. So should he be clad in double proof who keeps secret his discovery of his enemy’s ambush.
Despite the decision, however, he found it no light matter to give to his consideration for his dependent that air of spontaneity he had made it his task to exhibit. He could hardly tell if it were his own reawakened suspicions they saw themselves reflected in the man’s face; but—so it seemed to him—the latter was full of a covert significance of guilt and trepidation that was expressed in a certain watchfulness most difficult to ignore.
He was sitting, having finished his dinner, deep in thought; when this very fellow entered to say that a man without craved the indulgence of a word with his honour.
“A man?—What man?” said Tuke.
“He is a stranger to me, sir.”
“Did you ask his name—his business?”
“No, sir.”
“Go and do so, blockhead!”—He lost his patience for a moment; then, recollecting himself, “Tell him to walk in here,” he added more mildly.
In response to this amiable permission, an individual, whose wooden face wore the perpetual smile of an “Aunt Sally,” and whose clothes smelt of stables and were mere patched horse-cloths in appearance, advanced to the threshold of the hall, where he stood, after touching his forelock, with an expression on his features of the most engaging vacuity.
“Now, my man!” said the baronet; “what is your business?”
“I come to enkvire, master, if ye has a gawdner?”
“A gardener? No, I have not.”
The oddity’s little eyes looked anywhere but at the speaker. He seemed to be joyously calculating the dimensions of the ceiling.
“Mebbe ye vants a gawdner?” he said roguishly.
“Maybe you want to be engaged? Where do you hail from—any place hereabouts?”
“Not I, squeer. I comes fro’ Suth’ampt’n.”
“And what are your qualifications?”
“I’m Joe Corby.”
“What are your qualifications for the post, I say?”
“All’s one for that. I’m a gawdner, squeer.”
“Do you know a cabbage from a rose?”
“Aye; and a spade from a stallion.”
Mr. Tuke scanned the fellow in silence for a moment.
“And a barrow from a rakehell, I suppose?” said he quietly. “You are too accomplished for me. Whimple, show this person off the premises.”
“Meaning I’m to go?” said the man, in a sort of genial surprise.
“Certainly. Whimple!”
“Look’ee here, master,” said the intruder, hesitating and apparently embarrassed, “I’ll ventur’ to speak Gawd’s truth, with your honour’s kind indulgence. I’m a Jack-o’-trades, I am—a handy man, ye might call me, and tough as a dawg in bout or brawl. You live lonely, says I to myself—the gent lives lonely; and there be reskel characters about in every lonely by-way. He might find me useful, the gent might; and my sarvice is for him, so be he rekvires it. Roses, says you? Well, not partiklerly; but cabbages—yes—bein’ all heart and head. That’s what I am—heart and head, and both at your honour’s sarvice. I know a thing or two. Them shutters, now—how be they fastened?”
Actually, as he spoke, he was stepping into the room, smile and all, with the apparent intention of setting his mind at rest on the subject. However, the gentleman jumped up and barred his way.
“What!” cried the latter. “Take yourself off, fellow—you aren’t wanted here!”
The man stopped; scratched his head with a laughable expression of chagrin, and retreated muttering.
“No offence, master; no offence,” said he, and either a very comical or a very wicked light glinted in his little eyes as he retired.
Dennis escorted him without, and the voices of the two in low converse came to Mr. Tuke where he stood. He rattled on the window angrily, and the man slouched off, going in the direction of the drive.
Now the oddness of this apparition and of the interview it had brought about was filling the baronet with a sense of uneasiness. There had been that in the fellow that had seemed to belie his assumption of stupidity; and, after a moment’s thought, Tuke left the hall, quitted the house by a back door, and started rapidly upon a privatedétourthat should bring him upon the drive at a point near to the ruined lodge. He wished to satisfy himself as to two little matters—whether or no the man had confederates in waiting at the gate, and whether or no he would make his exit in proper course.
He sped so energetically, that, when at last he struck the thickets at the back of the lodge, and, moving cautiously, peered through the trees, he found that he had fairly outrun his quarry and must await its coming. For this purpose no better ambush could offer than the deserted cottage itself.
Stepping warily, he moved round by way of the garden he had entered once before, and passed with a little thrill that torn patch in the tangle that remained an intimate mark in his memory. It was with a tickle of nervousness that, as he went by, he paused an instant and, looking down, caught sight of a glint of slimy wall on which the very canker of death seemed to lie in an oily scab.
At the back of the lodge stood a crazy porch of rustic woodwork, and therefrom a door, lolling on broken hinges, gave access to the interior of the building. There was a gap here sufficient for the entrance of a man, and he went through it swiftly, and along a stone-paved passage beyond, that was dumb with dust and littered with flaked rags of plaster and crackling wall-paper. So he made his way to a front room that looked upon the drive; and here he paused with a certain measure of astonishment. For on some mouldering shelves that spanned a recess by the chimney, lay in orderly arrangement of ugliness Darda’s banished museum of curiosities.
“So-ho!” he breathed. “This is how the law is evaded.”
He nodded to himself with set lips, and moved to the window. In the moment of his doing so, a low crooning voice broke upon his ears, and the fantastic figure of the girl herself came out from amongst the trees opposite and stood in a shaft of sunlight that broke from above into that luminous well of leafiness.
She smiled and sang, making a harmony of weird discords; and throwing her head back, with her hands beneath, it received the touch of the sun upon her mouth, and seemed to return it with a fond little sound of kissing.
She was so near to him, that he could see the pulse in her throat fluttering like a bird’s as she murmured her strange music—could note every movement of the spirit that rose from her heart to her lips.
Suddenly she was silent, and gazing before her, dropped an odd little curtsey and stood still. Mr. Joseph Corby had, it appeared, come down the drive and was slouching into view. He stopped before the girl; yet not, it seemed, as one who was altogether unacquainted with her or ignorant of her reputation; for he stood at gaze with some expression of hilarity, but none of wonder upon his face.
“That’s right, missy,” he said. “Drink the sun, like the new wine it is for a merry maid. It’s yaller, for youth, as is cowslips and buttercupses and pretty gildilocks; but give me the old red of Oporto for a seasoned skin, and a ship’s bucket of it to drink against bed-time.”
Darda laughed shrilly.
“You could swallow a lake of it, I expect,” said she, “like the troll in the fairy tale.”
“That’s it,” he said, “a lake of wine.”
He came quite close to the girl, and advanced his red face so that his injected eyes looked full into hers.
“A lake of wine,” he repeated. “Have you ever heard tell of one?”
She shook her head smiling.
“Come now,” said the man—and the watcher saw his jovial face suddenly assume a very evil and menacing look. “Have you ever heard of one, I say? You’d better answer.”
Again she shook her head.
“You must know, you know,” said the fellow, his eyes staring and his mouth creasing at the corners. “You ain’t a lively sucker o’ the old stem and growed up here all these years not to have heard on it. What is it, I say? What’s become o’ the Lake of Wine?”
He gripped her wrist as he spoke. She uttered a little shriek of pain and anger—not of fear—and sprang back from him. She even made a feint of aiming a blow at him with her soft fist.
“You dare to touch me!” she cried. “My nails are like thorns.”
“Aye, and so’s your mind,” muttered the man. He looked at her in savage gloom a moment; then his broad face cleared, and he grinned in a conciliatory manner.
“Come, missy,” he said, with an upward jerk of his chin. “We’ll be good friends, I can see. I not expeerunce spurit in a gal without knowing how to admire it. Of course if you’re set on havin’ a secret from old Joe, Joe’s not the man to appint to find it out. His wit’s a rumfusticus sort o’ target to put up agen your bright arrers. I only axed out o’ curiosity—has you ever heard tell of a Lake of Wine?—and no, says you.”
The girl was silent.
“You never did, now did you?” said the man, his face all one bunch of geniality.
She nodded and laughed in an elfin manner.
“Perhaps I did,” she said. “What then?”
He breathed out a great grunt of satisfaction.
“I thought so,” said he. “Well, what’s become on it?”
She was laughing again, when Dennis’s voice came from a distance, calling her. At the sound she sprang forward immediately, evaded Mr. Corby, who had made a clutch at her, and was sped out of sight up the drive before he could collect his faculties.
“Missy!” he had called, as she ran from him. “You and me must meet agen and have a long talk. Missy! mum’s the word!” but she had given no sign of hearing him.
Left by himself, the fellow plunged into a ruminative mood; spat thoughtfully upon the ground; and then all of a sudden made rapidly for the gate and vanished up the road.
Mr. Tukeand his man were employed upon a very profitless and monotonous task. The one—the first—was engaged in drawing stagnant water from a well in a bucket; the other received and toiled away with each vessel-full in succession, and flung it broadcast about the garden.
They had cleared from the well-rim the torn earth and rubbish that encumbered it. A flap of wood had originally protected the mouth of the hole; but the slobbering tooth of Time had chewed this to the veriest pulp, upheld only by the clutch of the grass roots that had spread over and beyond it, and it had become the merest question of accident as to whose foot should first break into the pitfall.
Despite the unchancy look of the place, measurement with a plumb revealed the fact that not so much as four feet of dead water lay at the bottom of the inky funnel; and this four feet Mr. Tuke had set himself patiently to withdraw, in fulfilment of a certain promise made to a couple of rather colourlessbeaux yeux.
Now, for an hour had the two been regularly dipping and spilling, in the remote hope of finding a gold chain andbréviairecurled snugly in the pail after some particular haul. But it seemed a forlorn and fruitless search. If the gewgaw had in truth slipped in, it was for a certainty imbedded in the silt and slime at the bottom.
Fatigue was telling a little upon the loose physique of the servant. His cheeks were hot and his breath laboured. But the master worked on, vigorous and pre-occupied, and gave little thought to the other’s condition.
Indeed, his want of consideration could plead the excuse that he had much present matter to meditate and digest. He had inherited, it seemed, the lonely lordship of many mysteries; and to the devil’s captured attorneys, he could have thought, had been committed the task of drawing up his new lease of life, so teeming was it with uninterpretable perplexities, after the most admired human models.
Once or twice he spoke to his servant, in a stern, even voice that was really little of an invitation to confidence.
“Whimple,” he had said, “had you any previous knowledge of the fellow who called yesterday?”
“I have seen him about, sir.”
“Had he ever spoken to you before?”
“He had—he may have once or twice.”
It was always an aggravation that this man could never, it appeared, give a direct answer.
“What do you mean by ‘may have’? Has he or has he not?”
“He has, sir.”
“On what matters?”
“I don’t know, sir—of no importance—I really couldn’t tell.”
Mr. Tuke glanced up angrily.
“You part with every word as if it were a tooth. Now, mind,” he said sharply—“you’ll give him a wide berth for the future. I’ll not have anything concerning me discussed between you—concerning me, or my house, or whatsoever connected with the estate.”
Once again, as the man took the bucket from him, he had looked into his face and said:
“So your removal of the abominations belonging to your sister was an evasion, after all?”
Whimple gave a gasp and dropped his eyes.
“Sir,” he muttered piteously—“I thought you would never know, or, knowing, never mind. She—she—it would break her heart to part with them altogether. They are abominations to you and me——”
“You can leave yourself out of the question, fellow. I don’t concern myself with the quality of your emotions.”
The other twined his nervous fingers together over the bucket handle. Suddenly he spoke up, with a flushed face.
“If they are to go, sir, I would rather take the girl, with all her cranks and fancies, and do my best to seek a living elsewhere.”
The baronet looked hard at the poor baited creature.
“Am I losing touch of humanity in face of a little botheration?” he thought. Then he added aloud, with a spirit of scorn: “Words, words! But you would force me again into being the agent of your self-martyrdom. It won’t do, my friend. The lodge may serve as museum until it is pulled down. I see at least that the most disgusting item of the collection has vanished.”
“The skull, sir? Yes, it is gone.”
They laboured at their task once more; and once more Mr. Tuke fell into profound musing over the perplexities of his later lot. In this connection were two matters for worrying consideration—two flails that beat up the dust of his mind in the absence of any sound grain of evidence.
Of these, the first was a certain hyperbolic expression used and reiterated by yesterday’s rogue—a preposterous inquiry that had yet seemed instinct with a subtle undermeaning, and, so weighted, had sung and buzzed ever since in the eavesdropper’s brain.
“The Lake of Wine!” The term had been surely employed to cover or suggest a tangible fact. Its persistent repetition by Mr. Joe Corby precluded the idea that it was merely an accidental fancy played upon for the girl’s behoof.
Then, what was its interpretation?—to what did it allude? Beyond the surmise that it must refer to something concealed upon, or connected with, his bugbear property, it was obviously impracticable for him to reach.
So, rebounding from a blank wall of speculation, he would stumble against his second trouble. This, in its essence, was nothing but a fear, or the shadow of one. It amounted to sounds about the house of a night—sounds indistinctly acknowledged by a consciousness on the borderland of slumber and acute to nice impressions of the senses. He could recall them thundering on the drum of his visionary ear, and could remember starting up wildly awake to be aware of nothing in all the atmosphere of his room but a ticking silence. Still, the feeling would remain that something had been moving, creeping, breathing in his neighbourhood only a moment earlier; and more than once he had risen, with a wet forehead, to satisfy himself that he had been merely dreaming.
This recurrent uneasiness he had experienced on every night but the first of his inhabitance of the room; and it was beginning to thread his being with a little strand of nervousness. Oddly he felt himself in some telepathic way to be the centre of a nebulous mystery without having the remotest idea as to what was its nature. But his present lot was so strange, his position so isolated, that, even as a fearless man, he felt he was justified in adopting some nice precautions against the possibility of midnight surprises.
Now it occurred to him that upon that single night only of his arrival had he enjoyed immunity from this shadowy sense of unseen company in his room; and he could not fail to remember that upon that occasion alone had the shutters of the broad window been closed and fastened. Ever since, by his own order, had they remained open. Moreover, as was his custom, he slept with a lattice flung wide to the inpour of fresh cold air.
Certainly to assume that any midnight visitor could have taken advantage of this so far as to enter, by way of ladder or creeper, and prowl about his chamber without immediately awakening him, seemed a ridiculous supposition. Yet, as a wise man, it would perhaps be as well for the future to obviate, by closing the shutters, the necessity of suffering an apprehension so far-fetched.
“Whimple,” said he, as the man brought the bucket wearily back to the well-side—“why, when I first came, did you so protest against my flinging open the shutters of my bedroom?”
The servant hesitated, then stammered:
“I—I thought it wisest, sir. The—the house is lonely, and the neighbourhood harbours some rogues, I fear.”
“Such as him you are on speaking terms with? Well, I have altered my mind. For the future, close them—you understand?”
For the life of him he could not treat the man with even an assumption of confidence. He would have thought the revocation of his order received with unmistakable relief, had he not been so steeped in suspicion of all things.
He was bending to his work again, when a voice hailing him from over the garden hedge made him start and turn round.
“Hi! Are you Squire Tuke?”
“At your service,” said he, and went forward.
A little man seated on a great horse was there in the drive—a pert cocksparrow knowingly-attired and bristling with pride of raiment. He had a comical small face, very pale, and his hat was of the last-approved shade of grey, with a broad ribbon of black and a broader buckle about it.
He looked a mere handy-dandy snip; though he had in fact at that time come of age some five years; but his whimsical self-sufficiency not the fly on the bull’s horn could have outdone.
He raised his hat in a very courtly manner as the other approached.
“I have to apologize,” he said, “for this unceremonious greetin’.”
His voice was high and restive, as if it were not yet quite broken in.
“By no means,” said Mr. Tuke. “You are Sir David Blythewood, I presume?”
The manling had by this time dismounted. He reached a hand over the hedge—a little gloved paw, small as a girl’s—and offered it in grasp to the gentleman.
“I ask the honour of your acquaintance,” said he. “My sister owes her life to you, I hear. ’Twas an admirable rescue, and more than her deserts.”
He grinned all over his little face.
“She was pryin’, Mr. Tuke—she was pryin’. She didn’t let that cat out of the bag, I’ll warrant. Ever since your comin’ she’d been eatin’ her heart out to get a glimpse of the lord of Wastelands, as they call you.”
“Indeed? I am happy to interest Miss Blythewood. She suffers no hurt from her mishap, I hope?”
“Rest you, rest you. The hurt’s to her vanity, by Gad. ’Twas rich for her to make her bow wrong end up. She’s Miss Royston—my half-sister; and a devilish responsible legacy, by the token. She keeps house for me. I say, you’ll let us be acquainted. D’you breed from your own game-eggs? There’s a pit at Stockbridge kept by old Pollack of the inn. I’ve a duckwing cockerel, March sittin’ would torment ye;—hackles as gold as his mettle. Come Yule, I’ll back him, fifty pounds a side, against the bloodiest rooster you can show.”
So he ran on. Hisnaïveself-importance, half-nullified by the frankness of his boyish confidence, was like a gush of sweet air through the enwrapping gloom of the other’s surroundings.
“We’ll see,” said Mr. Tuke, with a smile—“we’ll see. At present, as you may observe, I’ve my work cut out here for months.”
Sir David craned his neck over the hedge.
“It’s a wilderness, good truth,” said he. “Is that Whimple? He’s a spine-broke artichoke, he is, with a worm at his root. What’s he doin’ there? Sure that’s the hole that Angel near sunk into. You ain’t never—why, you ain’t never dippin’ for that chain of hers?”
“We are, though.”
The youngling turned to him with a grin and a titter.
“It’s a shame, by cock,” said he. “I ought to have sent a message, but clean forgot. You may save yourself the trouble. She had left it at home all the time.”
Mr. Tuke, all considered, received this belated information very handsomely.
“Then I have laboured like Jacob,” said he. “But my second term is yet to serve.”
Sir David chuckled.
“Rachel was a prodigious coquette,” he said. “Well, Mr. Tuke, I’m forgettin’ my manners keepin’ you talkin’ here.”
“No, no. Come to the house.”
He was reluctant to part with the bright little dandy; but the latter was already in the saddle.
“Can’t,” he chirped. “I’ve an appointment at four, and Angel ’ll be faintin’ to hear tell of every word you’ve spoke. I say—I’ll draw the bow on that Jacob. You must come over to my place, and let’s be friends.”
The lord of Wastelands walked with him to the gate, and bid him a cheery good-speed as he cantered away.
He was dipping out of sight, when a long man, with a rod over his shoulder, came past up the road, and leered sourly as he went by at the baronet.
“Come,” thought the gentleman, “I’ve seen you once before. What do you fish for in these dry beds, my friend?”
He waited until the man had vanished over the hill. The latter had looked back once on his way, and seeing himself observed, had gone forward with no further token of inquisitiveness.
Mr. Tuke returned to his house, in a pleasantly preoccupied frame of mind. He was both cheered and amused over the meeting with his lively neighbour, and promised himself a substantial dividend of fun out of that investment in the other’s friendship. He called to Whimple, as he passed, that he should need him no longer, and so went by to his front door, and, on the threshold, met Darda.
At once, some impulse of the moment drove him to look full in her face and to say: “What is the Lake of Wine?”
The girl backed from him, and stared a breathless instant with round eyes of wonder. Then she gave a small soft laugh, and, twining her fingers together, set her lips chilly like frosted rosebuds shrunk from opening to a north-easter.
“Darda,” he said, “will you not tell me? I think you don’t know what is the Lake of Wine, or where it is?”
“I know—I know!” she cried suddenly—“but what have you done that I should tell you?”—and, with a changeling screech, she sprang past him and vanished up the drive.
“A manto see you, sir.”
“His name?”
“’Tis Richard Breeds, sir, of the ‘Dog and Duck.’”
“Breeds?”
“The landlord, sir.”
“What does he want?”
For answer, Dennis wriggled his shoulders, with a scared look.
“You don’t know, of course. Tell him to wait me in the hall.”
A few minutes later Mr. Tuke descended the stairs, and, happening to be in slippered feet, walked without sound in search of his visitor, whom, curiously, he came upon comprehensively examining the fastenings of the oaken shutters, his bullet-head bent low. At a cough the man started erect, and, gasping with embarrassment, ducked an awkward bow to the master of the house.
“They are of good, tough wrought-iron,” said the latter grimly.
“So I see, sir. I was takin’ a hint for my own little place with all respect. I’m lonely situated, too.”
He lied, of course, with scarcely professional ease. He was a short, fleshy man, with an unwholesome damp skin like veal, and rum-buds over his face in patches, as if he were stricken with a plague—which, indeed, he was, of a bibulous order. His manner was very nervous and self-depreciatory, and the only accent of character that marked his tumid physiognomy was in the expression of his ratty and restless little eyes.
Mr. Tuke took his measure during a moment of silence that was obviously disconcerting to him.
“Now, sir,” said the first, at length. “What is your business?”
“I called, your honour, to axe if I could supply your honour with liquor, milk, eggs and garden produce. I keep the ‘Dog and Duck’ on the Stockbridge road, and maybe, I thought, ’twould be handier to your honour and more reasonable-like to deal at a half-way house.”
“That depends. I leave these matters to my servant, who does his catering, I believe, in the village. I know your house of call, and have marked one or two of the visitors you entertain.”
“Maybe, sir, maybe. It’s not my business, now is it, to put every gentleman as demands a measure of ale through his catechism?”
“That seems an odd answer. Did I make any reflections? Scarcely, I think. The law takes means to deal with rogues without consulting the prejudices of landlords.”
The visitor looked very ill at ease. Clearly the conversation had taken a turn entirely unexpected by him.
“Your honour’s perfectly right,” he said, pressing his damp hands together. “Yet the law gives us no licence to refuse a customer for the reason we don’t like his looks.”
Eliciting no response—“I’m a peaceable man,” he went on, with some anguish of protest. “Give me bowl and pipe and a snug ingle-corner, and Fortin may set her cap at me, and die a old maid despite. But ain’t it hard, sir—now ain’t it hard that I’m to be coloured with the reputation of them as takes shelter under my roof and find my character in question for the mere contact?”
“You enlarge greatly upon a hint,” said Mr. Tuke. “I understand, then, that youhaveunwelcome guests to entertain?”
Mr. Breeds winced almost imperceptibly; but his eyes took a glint of cunning.
“I don’t say that,” said he. “I speak on general premises, as they calls ’em, and on behalf o’ the fraternity. Mr. Brander—himyou may a’ seen—is to my knowledge a scholard and an angler; which is not, by your honour’s favour, indictable offences—no, not either of ’em.”
“Assuredly. And that other gentleman, with the beetroot face and venerable white hair?”
The landlord sucked his lips together, in an absurd affectation of perplexity.
“Oh, him!” he cried suddenly and jovially. “That’s Mr. Fern, that is—a traveller, from abroad, come on a tower through the old country.”
Then, in the same breath, he went on deprecatingly, with a ludicrous decline of spirit:
“It’s all force the favour and take the blame with us, sir. I’m a peaceable soul that loves a pot, and circumstances conspire to upset me.”
Mr. Tuke looked at the man keenly. Somehow the latter seemed in travail with that he could not, or would not, give expression to. His hands shook, and beads of leaden perspiration stood on his forehead. By and by he glanced stealthily at the other, and went flaccid to see himself under scrutiny.
“Mr. Tuke—your honour,” said he, in a hoarse, vibrative voice, “I weren’t never fitted to be a landlord—that’s the solemn truth. A man as keeps a inn stands balanced between his custom and his conscience; and then comes an extry pot and bowls him off of his legs. Give me your word to compensate me agen the loss, and I’ll shut up the ‘Dog and Duck’ to-morrow and set the place a-fire.”
He said it in a tentative, apologetic way, and was quite ready to join in the other’s cackle of merriment over the suggestion.
“No, no, my friend,” said Mr. Tuke. “I’ve plenty on my conscience without the guardianship of a scrupulous innkeeper.”
Then he added sternly:
“You’ve said much or little, but enough. Dree your pothouse weird, my friend; and take the consequences if you knowingly harbour law-breakers. We’ve talked round the subject; and now you can hardly expect me, upon my soul, to fall in with your offer of a half-way market.”
“Very well, sir,” said the landlord, chapfallen; and, “Bear in mind, Mr. Breeds,” said the other, “that to be caught examining a householder’s shutters is scarcely a recommendation to his favour.”
He saw the fellow off the premises—marked his going till he was well out of sight; then returned to the hall and pondered the interview.
This seemed to him, as regarded the visitor’s share in it, a confirmation of his suspicions that there was a certain mystery toward which he was the indefinite subject and centre. More—it convinced him that if mischief of any sort was somewhere in process of incubation the tavern of which Mr. Breeds was landlord was the place most likely to contain the egg.
Now, as a man who had once already taken his own life in hand, he was not greatly sensitive to alarms that might have unnerved persons of a more precise conduct. Indeed, in the tasteless monotony of his present days, he would have welcomed, perhaps, the necessity of some vigorous action justly undertaken on his own behalf. But it was this blind search for a clue to the intangible—this turning round and round in a vain effort to grasp a chimera, that at first worried and depressed him.
If he could only have received certain confirmation of his surmises that some rascal intrigue was afoot; if in all his little world there had been a single soul he could trust and depend upon, his course would have been easier. As it was, how did the case stand? A very desert loneliness had begotten in him already a distrust of his neighbours, of whom, undoubtedly, were a few of shady visage and equipment. But, here, surely every ale-house had itspersonnelof loafers and idle rogues; and it seemed monstrous to assume that in broad day, within call, as it were, of a considerable village, a plot—of which a private gentleman, making out life meagrely in a near empty house, was the object—could be hatching at his very door.
That was so; yet his reckoning must include those two enigmatical visitors, the professed end of each of which was far from being, he felt positive, its real one; and must include Mr. Joseph Corby’s pregnant allusions—to the crazed girl—to some unknown quantity with a fanciful title.
Considering all this from each and every aspect, he did so work himself up to a state of savage irritation over the intolerable strain it entailed upon a mind prone to pre-occupation in less morbid matters, that he must have in the unfortunate Whimple and ease upon him his burden of annoyance.
“Tell me,” said he. “Do you know anything of this man Breeds by reputation?”
“I know—yes, sir; I have heard of him.”
“Oh! for heaven’s sake, man, give a straightforward answer for once. I ask you what is his reputation?”
“Indeed, sir, it is none of the best; though I have heard nought immediately to his discredit.”
“Again and again. Isn’t it a mere slander to impute evil and back from specifying it? What is he charged with?”
“Nothing, but that his house is the resort of topers and padding gentry.”
“And is it on that account you make a sealed coffin of ‘Delsrop’ o’ nights and would have me suffocate in my bedroom?”
The servant showed a distressed hesitation.
“Is it, I say?” persisted his master.
“Yes, sir—indeed—that is—oh, sir! ’tis an old habit with me. The house is isolated—dark; it lies in the shadow—my God! in what a shadow.”
Mr. Tuke stared in positive amazement. Was the fellow crazed like his sister? A pretty thing if he should discover himself the keeper of a private lunatic asylum.
“Control your emotions,” he said coolly. Whimple’s lips were trembling. The man had permitted himself an outburst of which for hours he would feel the effects.
“I would ask you,” said Mr. Tuke, with an irrepressible little sneer—“if the question is unexciting—when did the present owner of the ‘Dog and Duck’ come into possession?”
“’Twas last Martinmas, sir. The tavern then had been long to let. ’Twas last Martinmas.”
“And whence did he come? Do you know?”
“No, sir. I don’t know.”
“Now, Mr. Whimple, I want to ask you another question. Have you any reason to understand what is implied by the Lake of Wine?”
If he had accused the man of murder, the latter could not have gone a more ghastly white, or have more by his expression associated himself with that he disowned. He even staggered a little where he stood; and it was painful to witness his sick effort at self-control.
“None whatever?” echoed Mr. Tuke, closely scrutinizing the servant’s face, and interpreting the tortured answer from the motion of his lips.
“Your reply,” he went on, biting as acid, “is convincing, of course. Why should you know? I don’t myself, and I am as much interested in the matter as you, maybe. I only asked, because I seek the clue to a mystery that vents itself in strange visits, and secret interviews, and unaccountable sounds at night. Then, too, there is a footprint on the flower-bed under the hall-window this morning; but what of that when I have a caretaker so zealous and so scrupulous? Only, I take some amusement out of puzzles; but I am impatient, and very apt, at the last, to cut a knot that bothers me with a bullet. You can go.”
He had to repeat his permission before the servant seemed to understand and to gather the nerve to retreat. But, the moment he was vanished, the baronet clapped his hand on the table, with an oath.
“The fellow is in the league against me, whatever it is!” he cried in inward fierceness; and his soul rejoiced that at last it had some tangible justification for its innate antipathy to the man.
It was patent that this Lake of Wine was the clue to the riddle and the pass-word of the conspirators. But with the last how deeply was the caretaker involved; and to what extent was he to be depended on in the performance of his nightly services? Probably his officiousness in that respect was employed as a blind. Not probably was his habitual nervousness assumed. In greatest likelihood he was in weak process of corruption—one hand held to his duty, the other to his interest; and, if this were so, no doubt was as to which way his constitutional depravity would eventually decide him to incline.
Then would it be wise to here and now give him short shrift of notice, and so rid the house of an incubus and an embarrassment? Scarcely; for so should he—Robert Tuke—not only advertise himself in apprehension of his surroundings, whereby his enemies might be tempted to a bolder policy; but he should drive from his camp an informer, whose uses, so long as he assumed himself undetected, must all be for his intended victim.
No; the fellow must stay for the present, and be treated with a show of consideration, too; else would mistrust awakened in him greatly complicate the situation.
It was a maddening hotch-potch of confusion; the more so as all this fabric of suspicion, being builded on conjecture, might at any moment resolve itself into thin air.
Mr. Tukewas arrayed resplendent,cap-à-pie. His personal baggage had reached him from London, and he felt human, in the sense of the beast of civilization, once more. If his household was as yet unenlarged and his halls filled with little but echoes, he had at least a retiring chamber worthy of the most exquisite refinements of a Georgian toilet.
It was four o’clock of a sunny afternoon as he descended the stairs, pulling on his gloves; for he was for a little party at “Chatters,” to meet a neighbour or so, and Whimple held his horse at the door.
Taking him altogether, he was a handsome and amiable-looking gentleman, and manly withal; nor did his subscription to the dandyism of the day exhibit exaggeration or tastelessness. It is true his hair, now surmounted by the high-crowned beaver hat of the period, was “craped,” as the fashion-books would say, over his forehead, and liberally anointed with some lustrous oil; but cleanliness in this respect would have then been considered the merest affectation of eccentricity. For the rest, his long riding-coat, of many capes, concealed a toilet of cloth and silk and plaited lawn that, in its mode and finish, bespoke the highest traditions of metropolitan elegance.
So, at any rate, thought Betty Pollack, who was standing in the porch waiting to have a word with his honour.
Betty had driven over with her grandfather in an old taxed-cart, which was now drawn up at the broad end of the drive.
She curtsied like a daffodil to the sun; and Mr. Tuke nodded brightly to her as he buttoned the last ray of his glories into his coat.
“On what errand, my girl?” said he.
“With a humble message from grandfather, your honour,” she answered—“that there’s a battle-royal in his cockpit Saturday forenoon, and will your honour condescend to take a seat?”
“I don’t know. What wouldyouhave me do, Betty?”
“Sure, your honour’s the best judge. Cocks will be cocks, I suppose; but ’tis a cruel business to set natural enemies to the scratch, think I; and I’d rather have them in broth, with their necks wrung, when all’s said and done.”
“Then, I won’t come.”
“Oh! but save us! that’s only a woman’s view.”
“It flies with all the force of beauty behind it, my dear.”
The girl shrunk back a little.
“Then I was to ask you,” she said, in a more strained voice, “if you would favor us with your custom in the matter of poultry and butter and garden stuff?”
The gentleman laughed.
“Why, I’ve turned away one with the same offer already,” cried he. Then, seeing her fall back timid, as if at a rebuff: “Could you undertake to supply ’em very fresh?” he said, with mock gravity.
“Oh! rest your honour!” she said eagerly. “We could drive over every day, if needs were.”
“Say, twice a week, Betty. And, if you lack garden stuff, why come none the less, and I’ll take a fruitful pleasure of your visits.”
He caught his stirrup and mounted, and was gone with a smiling nod to the girl. At the entrance to the drive, the old man saluted him respectfully. He pulled up, and was about to exchange a word with the gaffer, when he remembered his deafness, and made as if to proceed on his way. But Grandfather Pollack leaned out of his cart and beckoned him.
“That’s a full-blooded girl,” he said, in a hoarse whisper. “A sweet, neat filly, I calls her.”
Mr. Tuke, feeling the uselessness of speech, nodded after a reserved manner.
“That girl,” said the old man, with a small experimental leer of confidence, “would serve a gentleman well for her beauty and her lovingness.”
He tapped the sleeve of the other’s riding-coat.
“I’m poor, sir, I’m poor and failin’. What a chance if I had a piece o’ goods that costly as to be worth a little annuity to me!”
He received a grunt and scowl of indignation for answer; but it was doubtful if he read their significance.
Mr. Tuke shook off the old clawing touch and rode on. He did not, however, put a short period to the evil by forbidding the ancient rascal then and there his presence. Which of us has the courage to strike at the snake of temptation on the first protrusion of his head from the ground? We want to circumvent him, with that truly human habit of temporizing that so often ends by our getting entangled in the toils.
Now he was righteously incensed; yet as he rode away under the yellowing trees, his thoughts ran warm on the ardent beauty of melancholy that characterized the face of all things about him; and gradually his mood fell from indignation to a tenderness that was almost a passion.
Miss Angela Royston received her preserver very prettily, and thanked him with an exaggerated effusiveness which was the more embarrassing inasmuch as the company, to whom the ultimate revelation of what he had done seemed to present itself as a rather tame anti-climax, had already treated his advent (but this was by way of provincialgaucherie) as if it were an intrusion.
The party was of the nature of a kettle-drum, it appeared, with supper to follow and genteel games. The young baronet was not yet in evidence, being ridden to some kennels across country and late in returning; but there were two or three squireens who obviously desired the moral support of his presence, and, lacking it, had so strenuously beaten about in the waste lands of their brains for ideas, as to have grown as apoplectic and nearly as expressionless as tomatoes. A notable member of the company was the Honourable Mrs. Tatty, whose turban was so immense as to give her the perpetual appearance of tilting up her nose to keep it from falling off; and whose observations invariably drew rein on the brink or pit-edge of profundity, where, when one expected much, they sat down abruptly and refused, as it were, to yield their further confidences to strangers.
This lady was accompanied by a quizzical little person, a cousin from London, who was of the order of those who curry favour with their present, by laughing at their late, company; and a saturnine gentleman, addressed as Captain Luvaine—who said little, and said that as if he grudged it—completed the party.
To all was Mr. Tuke presented—generally as a neighbour of a romantic cast; and it needed much of his acquired urbanity and deftness in society to carry off the situation without a show of self-consciousness.
“We call you the lord of Wastelands,” said Miss Royston, with a little smiling blush, as if she offered him the fruit of her invention. Certainly she looked a very dainty body, and she bore her daintiness as if it were a burden she loved. Her fair hair, combed over her forehead and falling in ringlets on her neck, was banded with a fillet of gold like a sunbeam. Her robe was of pure white satin, clasped at one shoulder with a diamond button; and in her hand she flirted a little sparkling fan no bigger than a pheasant’s wing, and much its colour.
Naturally, in the presence of this radiant bird of his feather, Mr. Tuke lost mental sight and consideration of homely Betty.
“Waste lands they may be,” said he gaily; “but consecrated to beauty since you visited them.”
“It was a laying on of lands, not hands,” she cried merrily in response. “I brought away a rare impression of their picturesqueness—but ’twas on my gown;” and then the fine creature must give the company the history of her introduction to the squire of romance, whom she looked at very tenderly as she eulogized him.
“A remarkable situation,” said Mrs. Tatty, scenting the neighbourhood of the pit with uplifted nostrils. “Mr. Richardson himself never imagined a more pronounced. Sure there is an affinity in circumstance—and therein lies the explanation.”
“It was like poor Julia’s experience,” said the little cousin from London. “Only that Julia wastrop embarrassée de sa personneto extricate herself with grace.”
“Oh!” cried Angela. “I blush to hear you talk of grace.”
“’Twas after meat, my dear,” said Mrs. Tatty, with a splendid benevolence of humour; and immediately sat down, morally, on the brink.
Mr. Tuke laboriously strained at a camel of wit. “Before, before!” he cried—“for ’twas the grace that introduced food for reflection.”
“Am I that” cried Miss Royston. “Then I must beangélique glacée. But my poorbréviaire, that I cried to have lost! Had I had that charm with me, no accident would have befallen.”
“But fifty others failed to save you,” said the baronet, with a low bow, and, it must be admitted, considerable gallantry; for his back was yet stiff with dipping for the abominable trinket.
And at this point Sir David entered the room.
His sister ran at him, and scolded him with twenty little tricks of endearment.
“Sure, sir,” she cried, “this is pretty behaviour to your guests!”—and she came forward on his arm, mutely daring slander to deny perfection to so beautiful a couple.
The little gentleman was charmed to meet his new neighbour, and said so with amazing condescension. He was very daintily attired, and prodigal of self-important courtesy to all.
“I passed your fellow,” he said, “hob-nobbin’ with a gipsy hag. I know the witch by sight. He caught me up later, and we fell a-talkin’. We’ve been neighbours, you know, ever since I can remember. There’s no beast-leech like him in all the county.”
“Indeed?” said Mr. Tuke dryly.
“You’d not think it, eh? It’s truth, sir. Why,” said the baronet, “I don’t s’pose the fellow’s ever fired a fowling-piece in his life; but he knows more of the habits of animals, ground and winged, than any dozen sportsmen in the parish. Ain’t that so, Charlie?”
“That’s so, by Gad, Davy,” said the squireen addressed, greatly stimulated and emboldened by the presence of his host.
“He cured my bitch Daisy of a capped hock,” said another; and then looked as if he wished he hadn’t spoken.
“They are all Jack-puddings to showman Davy,” whispered Miss Angela, looking up at her cavalier with a waggish twinkle.
“Come!” cried the master of “Chatters.” “Who’s for a game? Let’s have ‘Pinch without Laughin’.’”
The squireens boisterously assented; but Miss Royston and the cousin from London cried “No! no!” feeling their little powdered noses in jeopardy. So they played “Hot Cockles,” and “Jack’s Alive,” and “Shadow Buff,” and enjoyed themselves after the light-hearted manner of the period, the problems of which were, indeed, mostly exercised in merriment.
When they settled down at last, flushed and dishevelled, Mr. Tuke looked in the face of a certain lady, with whom he sat in a corner, and was aware of his pulses drumming a little thickly.
“I think I have lived an empty life for long,” he said; “and now I have learned to know myself.”
She twinkled up at him archly.
“Does the knowledge repay the study?” said she.
“Cruel!” he answered. “Ah! if you only guessed my tutor.”
“But I cannot.”
“Think, madam, what eloquent teachers are your eyes.”
“Indeed, they have pupils, sir. Oh, the heavenly pedagogues!”
“Their irises paint one the colour of hope. It is blue, I vow.”
“Like the rose that lives in man’s imagination. Oh, fie, Mr. Tuke! Here is an ardent philosopher of the desert! Tell me, does the house of shadows yield many mysteries? I am dying to hear all about it.”
“Then I will save you.”
“As you have once already.”
“It yields—yes; I think I can say it yields one at least.”
“Oh! oh! what is it about?”
“A Lake of Wine.”
Both talkers turned round with a start. Captain Luvaine had, it appeared, been seated solitary near them, and had dropped upon the ground a heavy book in which he had been reading.
“Really, Captain Luvaine,” said Miss Royston peevishly, “I protest you near frightened me to death.”
The melancholy soldier was apologizing with much humility and confusion, when up came Sir David, and insisted upon carrying off the gentlemen for a pipe and a glass.