“When is it ye’re leavin’?Is it the ocean’s heavin’That sets your stummick grievin’,To see what lies before?What ails that nowt ’ll start ’ee?We wait ye right and hearty,Oh, Mounseer Buonaparte,Upon S’thampton shore!
“When is it ye’re leavin’?Is it the ocean’s heavin’That sets your stummick grievin’,To see what lies before?What ails that nowt ’ll start ’ee?We wait ye right and hearty,Oh, Mounseer Buonaparte,Upon S’thampton shore!
“When is it ye’re leavin’?
Is it the ocean’s heavin’
That sets your stummick grievin’,
To see what lies before?
What ails that nowt ’ll start ’ee?
We wait ye right and hearty,
Oh, Mounseer Buonaparte,
Upon S’thampton shore!
Chorus, gen’men, chorus!
We wait ye ri’ and hearty,Oh, Mou’seer Buonaparte,Upo’ S’thampton shore!”
We wait ye ri’ and hearty,Oh, Mou’seer Buonaparte,Upo’ S’thampton shore!”
We wait ye ri’ and hearty,
Oh, Mou’seer Buonaparte,
Upo’ S’thampton shore!”
He thumped the table, did that crapulous squireen, and all the others joined in, as by honour expected—like school-boys beating the bounds of time.
Truth to tell, the hour was late, the whisky-punch was low in the bowl, and the three little moon-calves were very drunk. One of them, moreover, was in process of insulting Captain Luvaine.
“You’re no’ good company, sir,” he had said, after staring at that baneful person for some solemn moments. “I thick you no’ goo’ company, and I—hic!—ta’ leaverer-telleso”;—and he nodded profoundly, with the air of one who has solved a long-vexing problem.
“Well, sir,” said the captain, “you’re welcome to your opinion for me.”
He had sat out the orgy; but with something a gloomy and preoccupied air, and with a frequent manner of impatience to have it ended.
“Whas you say?” said the offender, cocking his head magisterially. “Whas you say, sir?” Then he sang:
Jake gave Moll a push—Derry-derry-down.Moll fell into a bush—Derry-down-derry.
Jake gave Moll a push—Derry-derry-down.Moll fell into a bush—Derry-down-derry.
Jake gave Moll a push—
Derry-derry-down.
Moll fell into a bush—
Derry-down-derry.
“Is that to your taste, capt’n? or d’ye prefer somethig i’ the psalmody fashion?”
Sir David and Mr. Tuke interfered. They had been moderate in their cups; and the latter, at least, was seasoned.
“Oh, Charlie!” said the baronet, “get off to bed with you. You’re drunk, man.”
“He’s got a face as sour as rennet, Davy. It’s cur-curdled the milk o’ human kideness in me.”
This was good for the manling. Mr. Tuke patted him on the back.
“There,” he said, “go and sleep it off. The captain gives you good-night.”
“And a ring for the hog’s snout to-morrow!” thundered the soldier.
“Fie, sir—fie!” whispered the other. “’Tis but a tipsy boy”—and with great ado, he and the baronet made a patch of the peace, and got the squireens outside and on their horses, and saw them ride off swaying.
The wind drove with gusts of sleet at them, as they turned tail and fled into the house once more; for the night had bellied up slurred and stormy, and there was a melancholy sound in every keyhole of the hall.
They found the soldier standing up grave and lowering; but his eyes took an eager look upon their re-entrance, and he stepped up to his host with an air of impatient apology.
“I was an ass to take offence at that pigwash,” said he—“the more so as Ihavebeen poor company, I confess; and you, sir” (he turned suddenly upon Tuke), “have been the cause of it.”
“I!” exclaimed the visitor, in a voice vibrating all the harmonics of surprise.
“You, sir. Blythewood,” said the soldier, turning upon the baronet, “I make no apology for harping upon an old string in your presence. You know my monomania, and the wrack it hath made of my peace. I have waited but for those Jack-puddings to begone, to speak.”
Mr. Tuke could only stare in amazement; and “Fire away, old cock!” quoth the master of the house.
Then he added: “You’ll take beds here, the two of you, or we shall come to words.”
Both gentlemen protested; but the other would not listen, and he ended by carrying his point.
“And now,” said Blythewood, “charge your piece—whatever it is—and let fly at our friend; and so to t’other glass.”
Captain Luvaine’s eyes had a light of strange trouble in them, and he gnawed his knuckles nervously.
“I startled you just now, Mr. Tuke,” he said. “’Twas some words you let fall disturbed me, so that I dropped the book.”
“Believe me, sir, I was innocent of designs on your composure.”
“I know, I know—that is, of course—how could it be otherwise?”
“How, indeed? But I am all at sea.”
“They could not have been accidental. No, ’twas impossible. And yet—you uttered the words, sir—‘the Lake of Wine’—there was no mistake. I heard you.”
“And what then, Captain Luvaine? Do I deny it?”
“No, no. Only—oh, sir! the lady says ‘What mystery?’ and you answer ‘The Lake of Wine.’ Could that be an invention—a mere playful fancy? ’Tis out of reason.”
At the first reference to this strange title, Sir David had given a low whistle; and he now came forward and took the soldier by the sleeve.
“Harkee, Luvaine!” he said. “Here’s the yeast to work ye up like a pan of bread. Did he say that? Then it’s a strange thing, by God. But, steady, man. And, what d’ye say?—shall I, before more’s spoke, give Mr. Tuke the history of your trouble?”
The other’s mouth was twitching in an agitated manner.
“Well,” he said, after a moment’s thought, “I’m like to lose command of myself whenever that nightmare gets up. Speak, Davy, and I’ll sit mum while I can.”
The baronet turned to his astonished neighbour.
“’Tis passing strange, upon my soul, that the words should be on your lips,” said he; “for ’twas the name of a great ruby that was stole from Luvaine’s father.”
“The Lake of Wine?”
“The Lake of Wine, sir. Ronald Luvaine was a dependent of Hastings in John Company’s pay, and received the stone in reward of some particular nice service.”
“A crimson token and an apt. Was it plucked from the withered bosom of some starved Begum?”
“That’s no concern of ours,” said Sir David dryly. “The point is that the gem was stole from Ronald Luvaine, that was my father’s friend, and that he went crazy of it and died in a year or so.”
The soldier jumped to his feet with an insane look.
“And his son,” he cried, “that should have been a rich man, succeeded to an empty legacy and a search of hate that shall be unending.”
He tossed one arm aloft, with a grandiose gesture. Mr. Tuke stared at him, his brain full of bewilderment and wonder.
“Steady, Luvaine!” said Sir David once more; then proceeded to discuss the other with admirable ingenuousness.
“It hath made a wreck of his life, as he says—this sense of wrong and loss. We have been acquainted from boys—at least since I was one—and the grievance hath enlarged upon him with the years. Not to this day has he lighted upon any clue to the stone’s whereabouts, though the cursed red stain of it has bitten into his life.”
“It hath corroded me!” cried the soldier, unabashed. He seemed to think his conduct justified by the magnitude of his loss. “I have wrought for a pittance when I should have ruffled it with the highest.”
“But, how was it lost?” asked the listener, with some secret scorn for such a bitterness of avarice as he could not conceive would demoralize other than a contemptible nature.
“Proposals were made by a syndicate for its purchase,” put in Sir David hastily. “The whole thing was a monstrous swindle, planned with every elaboration. Ronald Luvaine was ill-advised enough to let the stone out of his hands, and——”
“There was the last of it,” cried the captain madly—“and the plunge for me into a hell of disappointment and misery.”
His jaw was shaking like a rabid dog’s.
“Not for a day since my dying father swore me to the curse of vengeance,” he cried, “has the stone been out of my mind. Judge then of my agitation when I hear you, a stranger, casually refer to it by name as having some bearing on a mystery connected with your house.”
“But not with me,” said Mr. Tuke coldly. There was something nameless in the man’s frenzy—an uncleanly savour of passion that was devoid of all nobility.
“I can have no objection,” he went on, “to acquaint you of the circumstances that inspired me to so unfortunate a reference.”
“If you please, sir,” said the soldier, in a tone that was almost a menace.
Sir David saw the blood leap to his new neighbour’s face.
“Humour him, humour him,” he whispered, “in the Lord’s name!”
“Well, sir,” said Mr. Tuke, “if you will give me your attention, I will endeavour to recall the matter for your behoof”—and he then and there recounted those experiences of his at “Delsrop” that had awakened his suspicions, ending up with the history of the interview between Mr. Joseph Corby and the crazed girl.
To this description Sir David listened with some open-mouthed astonishment, and Captain Luvaine with a black concentration of his every faculty upon the minutest details.
As the speaker ended, he, the latter, blew out all his restraint in a labouring sigh, and stared before him with eyebrows pulled together like the strings of a purse.
“’Tis passing strange,” he muttered. “There can be but one Lake of Wine. Whence does the fellow come, and wherefore?”
“That, sir, I know no more than you.”
“Blythewood,” said the soldier, turning suddenly on the baronet, “has no tenant been in ‘Delsrop’ since the time of the gallows-bird?”
“None, Luvaine, till our friend here.”
The other addressed Mr. Tuke with icy civility.
“Perhaps I discuss what is yours with undue freedom, sir. My excuse must be that ‘Delsrop’ is a tradition for desolation; and to us of the neighbourhood it hath long been a thickset of mysteries. Here is another, it seems, that I little thought to connect with the place. Is it asking you too great a favour to acquaint me of developments, should they occur?”
“By no means. I will undertake that you are informed of the progress of any events that seem to touch upon a certain subject.”
The soldier bowed low, and walked to the door.
“Why, man—you are never going?” cried Sir David.
“You must hold me excused—yes. This strange recountal has vastly disturbed me. I would seek counsel of my pillow.”
The door closed behind him. Mr. Tuke turned mutely to his host.
“Zounds!” whispered the latter to his silent inquiry. “The beggar is half off his head with life-long brooding over his grievance. The loss occurred in ’76, when I was a child—a brat of two or so. He was a young man when his father died, and I had the story fifty times from Ned here before I was out of my teens. His long face is one of my first remembrances. The families were connected, and he played off the privileges of cousinship upon me to the hilt, by Gad!”
“He spoke of me as a neighbour.”
“And that he is, in a way. He settled, when he retired from the service, in Winchester, where his regiment used to lie. And there he eats out his heart, like Sir Thingumbob in the Tower, planning what he would have done if the old stone had rounded off his jointure. It was valued at £70,000, if you can believe him.”
“A melancholy story. How the wind rises!—And who was the gallows-bird he referred to?”
Sir Davidladled out into fresh glasses from the dregs of the jorum.
“A toast!” said he, the leaping candle-light making a shifting grotesque of his wholesome young face. “Here’s to the memory of the last tenant o’ ‘Delsrop,’ and the health of the new one!”
“With all my heart. How was the beggar called? He hath entailed me a legacy of weeds. Washethe gallows-bird?”
The visitor spoke in jest, and was surprised to have, “Aye, that he was,” for answer.
“Great heavens!” he exclaimed.
The baronet flung himself back in his chair with a chuckle.
“You little expected that,” said he. “But there’s a reservation I’ll own to. They strung him up after he was dead.”
He went into a fit of laughter over the other’s astonished expression.
“I see you are unacquainted with the tale,” he said. “’Tis a tattered old boggart of the past that the neighbourhood has years-long ceased to throw stones at. But, you’ll pardon me, Tuke. What the devil induced you to invest in those ragged acres yonder?”
“I didn’t. I succeeded to them.”
“Direct?”
“Certainly.”
He had hesitated in answering. The little man gazed at him inquisitively.
“You are—you are not in mourning,” he said.
“For my father? Scarcely. He died in ’80. A widow even may be excused for doffing black in twenty years.”
“I see. You are an absentee landlord. Fie, sir! We hold you responsible thereby for many a pretty ghost tale.”
He answered jocosely; but he was looking at the other with a certain ruminative wonder.
“Twenty years,” he murmured. “Why, then, your father must have stepped straight into old Turk’s shoes.”
“The former tenant? Was that his name?”
“Turk—yes.”
He was still engulfed in retrospect. His eyes were fixed, unwinking, like a doll’s.
“Well,” he said at last—sucking at the stem of his “church-warden” as if he were a baby ravenous for its “comforter”—“it fair upsets me, it does.”
“What does?”
“How you can ’a let a fruitful estate like that go to wrack and ruin for twenty years.”
Mr. Tuke was silent. Had he spoken, and the truth, he could only have echoed the other’s wonder. As it was, his mouth was tied to an adequate explanation.
Blythewood blew away the problem with a cloud of smoke.
“We’ve got you at last, anyhow,” he said. “And that’s nine points of the law. I’ll wager you don’t know, sir, whence your house gets its name.”
“I can’t take you. You’re right.”
“’Tis the short for Devil’s-rope,—that’s what it is; the cursed bind-weed that will honeycomb a county from an inch of root if you give it rein. The story goes that, when they dug the foundations, it lay thick in the soil as macaroni in a dish.”
“That’s odd enough; and an ominous name for the last tenant by your showing. What was his history that you make a secret of?”
“Tut! ’tis no secret. Did you hear that?—the wind ’ll blow the casement in. ’Tis no secret; but I was only a lad of five when they found him hanging on the downs, and so can give you little but the fruits of hearsay.”
“And what are they?”
“As dry as apple-johns by this date. Fill your glass. The fellow’s name was Turk, I say; and he looked his name.—Zounds! ’tis like his ghost ravenin’ with fury to get the grip of us.—He must ’a been an ugly beggar; for I can remember him plain as plain for all I was only five years old when he was found swingin’.”
“What was he like?”
“Like? Like a gurgoyle on a church—a face to sweat o’ nights with thinking on. A murderous-looking caitiff, sir, with red stubble under his jasey and a bloody long tuck at his side. Yet I can mind me of a look in his eyes—or in one of ’em; for t’other was fixed in his head and chalky like a boiled cod’s—that wasn’t all of the rest. ’Twas fear, or sufferin’—or compound of both; and it lessened the fright I stood in of meetin’ him.”
“Was he always there—at ‘Delsrop,’ I mean, in your early memory of it?”
“Save us, no. The place belonged to the Woodruffs up to ’77, when it came into the market. The new owner wasn’t in possession—no, not a year. He turned up sudden—was there on a day, with his black-bodin’ face; and nobody knew where he’d come from or what was his business in life. They didn’t find out then or afterwards. He kept himself to himself; received no visitors and wanted none; lived his days solitary, shut up like a miser; and didn’t so much as weed the gravel of his drive.”
“And so disappeared?”
“Disappeared? Not he. He was a landmark to every traveller for months to come. I mind the mornin’ well—ah! even through this lapse of time—that young Peterson, our landreeve, rode over to ‘Chatters,’ with a face like whey, and said as how Mr. Turk had been found murdered and hangin’ in the chains on Stockbridge downs.”
“Hanging?”
“Aye! There they’d strung him up that did the deed; for he’d been stabbed first—nigh a dozen angry wounds that had sucked at the steel like mouths—and then set to dangle for a jest to the daws.”
“And when they ran the rogues to earth?”
“They never did, sir—they never did. To this day the man’s fate is locked up in the mystery of his life.”
“But at the inquest——”
“None was held. ’Twas an odd thing, you’ll say; and a cursed odd thing it was. But none was held for all that. Men’s minds were disorganized at that time, ’tis said. There was the French and Spanish coalition, and dark trouble about a possible descent on the coast—like as there is now. Who was to think of one murdered land-loper, that nobody knew or claimed, when all eyes were turned to the sea? Anyhow, there he swung and rotted, to the huge scandal of the neighbourhood, till he and his head parted company and came to the ground.”
“But there must have been legatees—executors—lawyers interested, at the very least?”
“They never put in a claim, then. The fellow was here, and gone, and narry a sign. ’Twas a queer business.”
“Well, heaven rest his bones at the last!”
“I’ll give you Amen to that. You are its deputy for one of them by all account.”
“Eh! What d’ye say?”
“’Tis a tale hereabouts that Whimple’s mad sister has the creature’s skull in keepin’—that for months she hovered like a crow under the gallows, and picked it up at last when it fell.”
“Good God! She has—or had. I’ve seen it.”
“Ah! A pretty plaything for a maid. Well, that’s Mr. Turk’s story, as I know it.”
The listener sat for some moments in a profound and bewildered silence. Vaguely, through his brain, like faint harmonics, ran the words of the lawyer Creel and his own question to which they had been an answer: “When did it come to him?” “That I may answer you. It was in the year ’79.”
So his father had himself slipped into possession of this mysterious estate at the very time that ghastly scarecrow was tossing in the wind. How then was it, that he had not caused inquiry to be made as to the fate of his predecessor—had not set bloodhounds on the track of the assassins—had not even allotted the poor remains some decent burial?
For the first time a little mist of darkness gathered in his heart—a suspicion born of the unaccountable secrecy that was the main condition of his inheritance.
Presently he looked up with a troubled face.
“Then Whimple and his sister,” he said, “were early put in charge of the deserted place?—but they were, of course. The fellow told me so himself.”
“Aye, aye,” said Sir David. “He was only a lad of eighteen when he first came—a great weedy gawk with scared eyes.”
“Twenty years haven’t improved upon that. My God! what an existence!”
“Well, sir, it may suit a being or not. We ain’t all built for coal-porters. The measure of a man’s work is his willingness to it; and Dennis is no Jackalent for all his diffidence. He knows a spavin from a thrush; and I’ll tell ye somethin’ more—he can put rhymes together equal to Milton or Mr. Pye.”
“Umph!” said the other.
Miss Angelacame out on the steps to wave farewell to her brother’s guest of the night. This was in itself a particular favour; for she made it rather less than a rule to submit her charms to the broad search-light of the early morning. But—to speak figuratively—to withhold a curtesy after yielding a kiss is to value the shadow at more than the substance; for, so it was, she had already vouchsafed her gallant her company while yet the grey of dawn was melting on the blinds.
It came about in this manner—that into Mr. Tuke’s waking dreams stole a strain of music very sweet and melancholy. The rogue slept lightly and unvexedly, as sinners do; and, moved by the mystic cadence, he rose, dressed with great dispatch, and descended the stairs in obedience to the alluring summons.
Now, it was soon evident that this proceeded from a little panelled parlour or boudoir, at the open door of which he paused a-tiptoe, drinking in the vision of a pale morning Cecilia seated at a pianoforte communing with her soul in the softest of harmonies and an angelic gown.
“Thank you!” said he presently, in a pause. “I have risen with the lark.”
St. Cecilia started and turned about with a very pretty confusion.
“Mr. Tuke!” she cried; and presented him with a blush through her ringlets like a moss-rose.
“Ah! madam,” said he, “I dropped upon you like a spider in your bower. Your voice thrilled my web and I must needs fall.”
“But I thought——”
“You thought me gone. Alas! if I have imperilled my welcome by craving your brother’s hospitality till the morning. But, so it seemed to me, your beauty would owe me a recompense for a sleepless night; and I dared to stay to claim it.”
“Oh, sir! You are pleased to make a sport of me. But, indeed, you are very welcome; though, I protest, nothing would have induced me to sing, had I known you in the house.”
“And so would you have denied one soul a full measure of happiness.”
“Poor soul.”
She looked round at him with a little smile, mocking and bewitching at once. She had seated herself at the instrument again and was running her fingers lightly over the keys.
“Are they not beautiful?” she said.
He had stolen up behind her.
“They are,” he murmured. “Like white butterflies fluttering over the chiming flowers of fairyland.”
“Mr. Tuke!” she said—“what are?”
“Your fingers, of course.”
“Oh, fie, sir! I spoke of these melodious pianofortes. Is not mine a darling? ’Tis by Clementi, and a present from my brother.”
“How can I take this praise on trust?”
“You need not, if you have already been eavesdropping—dropping like a spider, I should say.”
“Sing to me.”
“Oh! I could not.”
“Sing to me, please.”
She laughed and protested. It was early—her voice was ropy as a hen’s—she only warbled for her own entertainment, and professed no knowledge of or subtilty in the art—indeed she had never submitted herself to discipline therein. And did not Mr. Tuke think that no acquired skill could compensate for the loss of native simplicity?—even should native simplicity (though she did not add this) ring a little false now and again?
Mr. Tuke thought just as she did. He would rather listen to pretty Maudlin any day, than to the artfullest Pasta that ever shrieked herself into fame.
At last Miss Royston gave way. “Dove sono I bei momenti?” she sang, in a fine, cultivated little voice, that was not unpleasant, as exemplifying the art that can surmount natural disabilities. And, when she had finished, her one listener applauded fatuously.
“I would cry Brava!” said he, “were it not for bringing the atmosphere of the footlights into these enchanted gardens.”
“That is right,” said Miss Royston; “though a little warmth would comfort them just now.”
She was resolute not to sing again, despite his protestations. She had a nice eye for proportion in all matters affecting her own appearance, moral or physical.
She led him across the room to a glazed door in a recess. The icy blast of the night had fallen dead on the grass, where it lay stiff amongst the ruin of the leaves it had scattered. He saw a wide stretch of frosty lawn, on which the fingers of the rising sun were busy assorting a millions of iridescent jewels.
“It is like the angels of the Israelites snowing manna against breakfast-time,” said Mr. Tuke. He was in a mood of most dreamy romanticism. All this cultured and human beauty of orderliness seemed to him very gracious after his experience of desolation.
The lady glanced secretly at her cavalier, with an approving tenderness. He fulfilled her expectations of him—stood appropriately in the foreground of the picture of mysterious melancholy her fancy had painted to receive him.
“I could not breakfast on manna,” she said, with a full little laugh. “What sugar-babies the Israelites must have been! But I have often gone without breakfast at all when sketching, so completely has the pleasure absorbed me.”
“You are an artist, too!”
She owned that she was; and, indeed, she had quite a skill in making pretty little copies of landscapes after Turner, Bright, Stothard, and others, which she signed with her own name. Less often she ventured upon art at first hand. She had penetration enough to mentally appraise that subtle distinction shown by friends in the degrees of admiration accorded respectively her imitative and her original work.
Now, however, in the assurance of appreciative comment, she was moved to reach for the manna she would have herself believe she despised.
“That is one of my poor originals,” she said, inviting him by a gesture to an escritoire on which lay an open sketch-book.
He took it up, as a priest lifts the Gospels; though not—in further illustration—to kiss it. Here his reverence halted on the brink of perplexity.
“Do you know what it is?” she murmured slyly, but a little anxiously “You ought to.”
“Of course,” he said—almost in a perspiration already. “It is—it is a gate, is it not?”
She was disappointed at the outset.
“How did you know?” she said, with a note of irrepressible irony in her voice. “It is clever of you to have lighted on the truth at once; and I tried so hard to conceal it. Yes, it is a gate—the gate of your own wilderness.”
He looked at her helplessly.
“Is not this sort of thing—this—this wash-painting, in its infancy, as—as it were?”
“Oh, yes! Mine, you would say, tries to run before it can walk.”
“No, no, no,” he murmured.
It was a shock to her to discover his inability to read the soul behind the—possible immature—performance.
“Turn over,” she said. “Perhaps you will like the others better.”
He obeyed, with a vague air of wonderment. The remainder pages were filled with copies, very elegant and painstaking.
“Ah!” he said, with a real relief and an air of embarrassed conciliation. “These are beautiful. You paint in two styles, it seems. How clever you are. I like this the better. I know nothing about such things, of course, and can only judge when I understand a picture and when I don’t. And they are all your own work? You are a genius, upon my soul.”
She did not gainsay him. Perhaps she would not in any case. But now she was indifferent to his praise or silence. Her hero, she thought—a little crossly, it must be confessed—was not all transcendental. What man was? The most amorous appealing eyes, in their moments of apparent inspiration, were usually, if the truth should be confessed, an index of thoughts dreamily loitering through visions of flint-locks, steeple-chases, and even vulgar tankards of small-beer. Now-a-days, whatever savour of romance clung about the creatures, was from their persistent contact, through every phase of evolution, with the finer feminine clay. Yet, could a soul completely gross and commonplace find its expression in a personality so melancholy and so noble? She glanced at her companion with a reviving tenderness. Of earth he might be; but she thrilled to remember the strength of his arms as he bore her from the sinking well-mouth. After all, Apollo was a sportsman before he was a poet; or it never would have occurred to him to skin critics who derided his lays.
“There,” she said. “You have seen them all. I keep you here, and you are famishing for food of a very different order.”
She led the way to the breakfast-room. He followed with a lamb-like submissiveness. There was a vague feeling at his heart of distress or something of the nature of it. He opined that he had been churlish; though quite in what respect he could not understand. But he was conscious of having unwittingly given offence where none should have been taken; and so, being human, he felt an atom aggrieved.
Captain Luvaine, it appeared, still kept his bed.
Sir David, however, flung abroad an atmosphere of boisterous good-humour. He rallied his guest and his sister upon their rising-sun worship.
“Gad!” he cried. “I heard you tunin’ up, my dear, before I could see to t’other end of my bed. Don’t do it, Angel; or you’ll be gettin’ chilblains on your little ten toes. ’Twas all for you, Tuke. I’ll tell you, sir, she ain’t in the habit of frosting her little nose o’ common days.”
“Why,” said the other—“you’re wrong. Miss Royston had no knowledge I slept here.”
“Eh!” said the baronet, his eyes a double note of exclamation; and “Davy, be quiet!” implored his sister.
The manling fell into a fit of laughter.
“Don’t you believe it!” he crowed hoarsely. “She understood you was goin’ to stop, an——”
Miss Royston was crushing the little villain in her arms.
“Don’t listen to him, Mr. Tuke!” she cried. “He’s a bad, bad boy!”
She made a very pretty picture, as she turned with radiant face and tumbling hair to their guest. Her girlish grace commanded the situation.
“I didn’t know—I didn’t, I didn’t!” she cried; and “Fibs, Tuke!” was the response in a smothered voice.
Now the visitor was a salted gallant; but he found something very sweet in this delicate-skinned, coquettish maid of many arts and graces. She was like an exotic whiff from the glass-house of his former life—good God! how vague and far away that seemed now. This gave him a full feeling about the heart; a feeling as though he, a years-long exile, had chanced across a compatriot in the land of his desolation; and the consequences was that he, who would not while he might, was now wavering to a parlous state in the afternoon of his fortunes.
The vision of her standing on the steps to bid him God-speed abode with him during the length of his homeward journey, and would often rise up before him at intervals during the day.
Sir David had stretched up to him, as he sat mounted for his departure, hat in hand.
“Tuke,” the little man whispered, “that is a cursed queer business you told us about, and it jumps oddly with Luvaine’s. You will hold me at your service if you need assistance. I am a Justice of the Peace, sir.”
He smacked his chest; dropped back on his heels, and cried “A votre service!” with extreme elegance.
Somethingsingular in the appearance of his house engaged Mr. Tuke’s attention the moment he drew rein before the door. Desolate and haunted it always looked; but now there was a deathly air about the place that was an additional burden on its eeriness.
The reason of this he found was not far to seek. Behind the latticed glazing of every window the strong shutters were closed and bolted, though it was now eleven o’clock of a sunny, brisk morning.
He dismounted and tried the front door. It was fastened also. On the echo of his angry summons fell the sound of a light step within.
“Who are you?” cried Darda’s voice shrilly through the keyhole.
“Open, girl! What is the meaning of this?”
She drew the bolts reluctantly—deliberately. In his impatience to enter he almost threw her down.
“What is the meaning of this?” he repeated.
She had backed into a shadowy angle of the hall, and thence looked at him with a sullen defiance. He had to again put his question, and harshly.
“Oh!” she said, nodding at him with an angry look, “what trouble hasn’t your coming brought on us!”
“Now,” he said peremptorily, “explain yourself.”
“We lived at peace with the shadows and the spirits before,” she answered. “Since you came they take to worrying us; and they have madehisface like death.”
“Whose face, you jade?”
“His—my brother’s. They were about the house all last night—creeping, creeping, as soft as snow on withered leaves. He feared that they would get in, and he dared not rest or sleep till daylight came; and now he is on his bed.”
Tuke strode to the end of the hall.
“Whimple!” he thundered. “Come and take my horse!”
He felt Darda’s breath at his ear, and turned to find she had come swiftly after him with her white face.
“You devil!” she hissed. “You bring the evil, and then torture my Dennis from his sleep.”
He put her sternly aside, and, twisting about for another violent summons, subsided into an “’umph!” of petulance.
The man was standing silent before him, the same scared look in his eyes that he had learned to loathe.
“Why is the house locked and sealed like this?” he demanded.
“I dared not open it, sir, till you came.”
The servant spoke in a faint, tired voice.
“Dared not! and why?” said his master.
Whimple looked about him helplessly, as if he sought a loophole of escape from the question.
“Come,” said the other, “why did you not dare?”
“I was frightened; terrified. There were noises and footsteps.”
“The wind or any other natural cause. These bugbears don’t stalk in the daytime. A pretty caretaker, upon my word!”
He looked at the fellow gloomily; hesitated, and, bidding him roughly see to his horse, turned into the dining-hall, closed the door, unbolted and threw open the shutters, and sat himself down before a dull fire.
“What is it all? what is it all?” he thought desperately. “Am I in good truth being stalked and shadowed, and for what reason? And is that fellow in the league against me? Blythewood knows him well, and has a high opinion of him. What then? What favourable view can I possibly take of his reticence and evasiveness? For all I know, Blythewood himself may be the chief of a colony of pads and cut-throats. I am a lamb amongst wolves—knowing nought of the neighbourhood; moving in the dark. I am drowned and overwhelmed in a sea of mysteries—in a cursed Lake of Wine. And there, there, there! Luvaine’s fabulous stone!”
He sprang to his feet, and set to pacing the room.
“By God!” he cried aloud, “I will stand it no more! I will be master of my own, and subscribe no longer to the infernal bullying of circumstances!”
In the midst of his excitement the vision of Angela rose before him, sparkling,spirituelle—a true child of the thoughtless, effervescent life of his everyday custom.
“Oh, I am a fool!” he murmured. “She and her brother carry their patents of respectability on their sleeves.”
But from now he was determined to throw off all gloom and trepidation; to go his way and improve his estate without idle speculations as to antagonistic forces at work, and to strike, and strike hard, if he was interfered with.
All that day he sang and whistled over his labour of investigation. Perhaps, in the background of his fancy, rose and broadened a dawn of new hopes and possibilities. Perhaps he pictured there a “Delsrop” restored, cultivated and flourishing, and contiguous to other fruitful acres, wherein his interest was figured in a certain dainty lady, destined to be the mother of one who should recover his own waived surname and title. For so, he could not forbear reflecting, had the titular restriction been imposed upon himself alone.
He was coming across his lawn on the afternoon of the following day, when he noticed a cart issue from the drive and stop, and saw Betty Pollack jump down with a basket on her arm.
He strolled, conscious of a sudden spring of pleasure in his veins, towards the girl, who dropped a pretty curtsey to him as he neared her.
“Come round the kitchen-gardens, Betty,” said he; “and see if you can supply anything we don’t already possess.”
He glanced with a certain defiance, as he spoke, at the old gaffer seated in the gig, mumchance and blinking, like a withered owl, and led the way to a crazy door that opened into a walled garden.
Betty followed him timidly, and looked shyly about her as he introduced her to the prospect.
“There!” said he. “Is not that Eden?”
“It is very neglected and unkempt,” said the girl gravely. “There is work for two men here for many days; and then the soil would want well manuring, to make it fruitful.”
He laughed. His careless eye roved over her charms luxuriously. Suddenly, child of his new-found tenderness, a great pity awoke in his heart for this poor lamb, so treacherously shepherded.
“Betty,” he said gently, “have you no mother?”
She smiled with a little falling sadness.
“Oh, your honour, she died before I can remember.”
“Or father?”
Betty looked sheepish.
“Father was shot by the Preventive in ’91,” she murmured.
“H’m! and he there—has he brought you up and cared for you?”
“Ever since? Yes.”
“And he’s good to you?”
Her rosy face took an expression of surprise.
“Grandfather? Oh, yes! We are the only two left. I shall be—I shall be quite alone when he is gone.”
Could this—the desire to secure protection for his own, on whatever condition, be the explanation of the old man’s attitude? A wryed morality, if it were; but at least forethoughtful and unselfish. But no. The suggestion had been an evil and self-interested one.
“Do you serve the tap all day, Betty?” said he.
“Mostly, your honour. But Jim will take a turn when we go a-jaunting.”
“Who is Jim?”
“He’s the stable-boy.”
“Well, what have you got for me there?”
She groped in her basket.
“Here’s turnips and little carrots, and a right early stick of celery.”
“I’ll pay you double for each, and throw a kiss in for interest, Betty.”
She backed a step or two.
“Will you please not to talk like that?”
“I will please; I will please. Deeds are better than words.”
She made as if to run from him; but pulled herself up and stood still with eyes full of trouble.
His blood raced in his veins. She looked a very Andromeda—warm and winning and pathetic. He went a hurried pace, slid his arm about her, and kissed her lips softly. The moment he had done it, he was sorry.
She never moved, panting where she stood.
“I hope you will be ashamed,” she said, with a little breaking sob.
He answered humbly: “I am, Betty—there, I am;” and gave her a glance of remorse.
Then he added: “Go to your grandfather, my dear. Maybe, after all, the old scamp is safer than the young.”
“Yes,” she said, striving to steady her voice. “I mustn’t come hither again.”
She turned and moved away a step or two, her pretty head hanging. Suddenly she faced about, and came at our gentleman with a little spit of passion.
“I trusted you, and it was unfair. And I came to give your honour warning, and now I won’t!”
The words were hardly out of her lips when her eyes were drowned in tears.
“Yes, yes—I will, I will!” she cried, and buried her face in her hands.
Tuke smiled and put his arm again about the girl. She showed no sign of resentment—even allowed herself to be pulled a trifle closer to him.
“Betty, my little wench—what is it all? What is the to-do?”
“Oh!” she looked up at him through blinking lashes—“there are evil men about.”
“Why, so I know, my dear. And what then?”
She clasped her fingers convulsively over the basket-handle.
“I fear for your honour. There is something dark afoot; and you live lone and the times is troublous.”
“But all this is for any understanding. Have you nothing more?”
“I have my eyes and my ears. I see folks, and I hear a many words that isn’t meant for me. There’s a man, Breeds, your honour—ah! you know him; a feckless creature, but dangerous in his cups. He’s not to be trusted. He consorts wi’ rogues and hath a hanging reputation. I would your honour could lay him by the heels for harbouring cut-throats.”
“I have my eye on him, Betty.”
He could get nothing more definite from the girl. She was full of alarm and uneasiness on his account, but on what founded she had a difficulty in explaining. She knew only that of late certain strangers, of a somewhat villainous cast, were housed within the walls of the old wayside tavern; that occasionally a couple of them would drop into the tap of the “First Inn,” and secretly terrify her, secretly listening, with muttered innuendoes and hoarse whisperings on the subject of some projected scheme of roguery.
Then Stockbridge was little more than a rustic village—a boorish community of clodpolls, that nightly slept away the memory of its daily toil in a beery stupor of indifference; and what practical influence could thence be brought to bear on blackguards predetermined to some deed of darkness?
The moral was all of woman’s intuition, and therefore to be accorded respect.
Mr. Tuke acknowledged this; but he laughed away Betty’s fears; while she, good girl, forgetful of her right of offence, did entreat him, with many pretty words and troubled looks, and a clasping of her hands—olive as young ripening filberts—to be on his guard.
He saw her drive away and disappear. Then, with set lips and a dour contraction of his eyebrows, he made for the house to order his horse to be saddled.
He was a man whose constitutional good-nature underlay whole stories of determination. The topmost of these was to temporize with no discomfort, moral or physical; but to strike at the root of the trouble before analyzing it. He would never have a tooth that pained him stopt; but must suffer the moment’s wrench to save days of dull aching.
Now it was that he saw the centre of the unaccountable to be that same beetled-browed tavern. To the “Dog and Duck” he would ride forthwith, and so seek counsel of the very heart of the mystery.
Oppressivedusk was drooping as Mr. Tuke came in sight of the lonely tavern on the downs. The inconsistent moodiness of autumn had fallen into another humour as the day declined. The steely thrust of wind at night—a morning cold and fair and pure, such as ever seems an earnest of weeks of serene tranquillity—and then, as noon ticked into evening, a dull fall in the barometer, and gathering battalions of clouds rolling to the front, with a noise of rumbling in them like the labouring wheels of gun-carriages—such was the record of twenty-four hours.
Glancing with frowning eyes, at the little forlorn building livid above him against a wall of menacing purple, the horseman pricked his nag to the slight ascent, and, clattering up to the inn door, flung himself out of the saddle and looped his reins to a ring set in the lintel-post.
Straightway he crossed the threshold, and turning sharply to the left, found himself in the room of the bay-window and the tap of the “Dog and Duck.”
Not a soul was in it—no sign of life, but, somewhere, a distant murmuring of voices.
It was a paltry little shop, with a pewtered counter, and under it, on the customer-side, a ditch or groove set in the floor and filled with sawdust for obvious purposes. A few beer-barrels; a squat flask or two of schiedam on a shelf; some common earthenware mugs, white with a blue band, and bearing the excise stamp on a tin bottom—these were the important features of the bar. Above the latter, from a blackened beam, hung a great ship’s lantern, eloquent of rancid oil; and to the back was a glazed door leading into a room no larger than a cabin, in which a little fire blinked a red eye like a drowsy watch-dog.
Mr. Tuke—fingering in the pocket of his riding-coat the butt of a duelling pistol, loaded and primed—rapped on the counter with his riding-whip.
Listening, he was conscious of a sudden cessation of the murmuring sounds—of an appreciable pause; and then a door opened gently, and somebody came into the bar-parlour. This new-comer, whoever he was—for he took stock in the dusk without showing himself—seemed to go out softly again after a moment’s scrutiny; and following his exit, the other was dimly aware of the sounds again, but more subdued, and broken with an intermittent cough that was like suppressed laughter.
He rapped again, and immediately the door was opened a second time, but now with an air of business; a heavy step shuffled across the cabin, and the landlord appeared at the glazed door.
Mr. Breeds was not the Mr. Breeds of a former experience. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and was here the master of everything but himself. In illustration of this, his puffed and heated face bore an expression of boldness that was entirely the painting of strong waters. Tipsy, he was a cumbrous changeling, with just a sufficiency of humour to be insolent.
He drew the red tip of his “churchwarden” so far out of the corner of his mouth as to allow passage to a question fired awry in a spit of smoke.
“What d’ye call for?”
Mr. Tuke put his clinched left hand on the counter, and stared sternly in the bloated face.
“I want nothing but a word with you. It’s this. Do you know who I am?”
“Sure,” said Mr. Breeds, with a chuckle.
“That’s well. Now listen. There’s Winton, a city fifteen miles off, and a fast gaol in it. Men lie by the heels there for lesser crimes than housebreaking, and hang, too.”
For all his liquid cargo the landlord went white.
“I dare say, sir—I dare say,” quoth he, in a jerking voice. “And how do that concern me?”
“You know best. Maybe you have taken me for one of your pugmill squireens with blinkers to his head. You’d better cleanse your brain on that point. I see and I hear, Mr. Breeds, and I’m dangerous to meddle with. You understand me—yes, you do.”
“So help me God, sir, I know nought of any attempt on your house!”
“You see? Did I say there had been one? You rogue! I’ve a mind to put a bullet in you now.”
The landlord dropped his pipe on the floor, and cried abjectly—
“Sir—Mr. Tuke! In the Lord’s name, what d’ye accuse me of?”
“Of nothing, of course. I warn you—that’s enough.”
“But, sir——”
“Mr. Breeds, Mr. Breeds!”—he shook a threatening finger at him—“let me advise you to take a fair hint and meditate on it. You consort with blackguards, sir; you harbour ruffians. Shall I connect this or not with signs and sounds and visits that have disturbed me of late?”
“I am an innkeeper, sir,” said the other sullenly. “I’m not to pick or choose where custom offers. Let the law look after its own. I stand upon my rights.”
“Aye, aye; that’s boor’s English for treading on other people’s corns.”
He turned to go, daring a retort with the tail of his eye. On the threshold he paused. A sinister little laugh had reached him from the bowels of the house. In a moment he strode back, fierce and lowering.
“You have company in the inn now. Where do they sit?”
The landlord did not answer; but, in the gathering darkness of the tap, there was a sound as if his teeth chattered.
Without another word, Tuke stepped into the passage, and stood listening. All was silent; but somewhere to the rear of the building a thread of light broke the run of the panelling almost from ceiling to floor. For this thread he made, and coming plump against a door, burst it open and half fell into a long dimly-lighted room with a trestle-table set in the middle of it.
Recovering himself, he stood at instant guard. The light of a couple of oil-lamps on the wall swam in his eyes and blinded him for a moment. Then his vision cleared, and he saw his company—two men seated at the table, and one who stood by a half-closed door to his left.
The room was full of tobacco-smoke, and a reeking smell of warm hollands hung in the air like a sickly dew.
“Charge your rummers, gentlemen!” said some one in a thin nasal voice. It was such a queerly weak and ineffective voice, that despite a certain awkwardness in his situation, the intruder could not forbear fixing his eyes on the speaker with a start of wonder.
Then he recognized him at once. It was the squab white-haired man, with a face like a hip, whom he had seen at lounge on the window-sill.
Him he had expected to find; nor much less the gentleman like a decayed schoolmaster, whom he had happened on a-fishing, and who sat next to the other.
“Mr. Joseph Corby should be the third,” thought he; and sure enough it was Joe who stood by the door.
Now, not the least embarrassing part of the business was that his entrance, with a face set to any contingency, was to all appearance accepted by the company as in the natural order of custom. No one fell awkward over it, or assumed an air as of resenting his presence.
He hesitated a moment, then sat himself down in a chair opposite the two men.
“A dull evening, gentlemen,” said he; “with promise of a dirty night.”
Mr. Fern—by token of his scarlet face—was the one to answer in a high manner of politeness.
“The more fortunate we, sir, for being under cover,” he said.
One would have taken the persistent strain of speech to account for his apoplectic hue. If he were a rogue, he had none of the melodramatic hall-marks. His face, possibly from its consuming colour, was as expressionless as a brick, and his eyes, under their ragged brows, gleamed like cold and passionless agates.
“Fortunate, as you say,” said Mr. Tuke; “the more as it is like to stay midnight skulkers from disturbing the rest of peaceable folk.”
“Quite so, quite so, though I don’t trace the connection—eh, Brander?”
The sardonic fisherman, his arms folded, had been watching the new-comer from under covert brows. He gave a little contemptuous laugh.
“Perhaps the gentleman is a sufferer from nerves,” said he.
“No,” said Tuke coolly, “I don’t think I am. I have full confidence in myself and in my defences. It is my way to strike at an annoyance before I examine it, as I would at any unaccustomed beast that ran across my path.”
“An excellent principle, sir. Impulse is a much-maligned factor in our system. Second thoughts are second-best thoughts too often. Landlord, is our supper served?”
“’Tis on the table, Mr. Fern,” came the answer, somewhere from the darkness of the bar.
Both men rose, and Mr. Tuke with them. He felt desperately the utter ineffectiveness of the situation. How could he, on a shadow of circumstantial evidence, throw their presumed roguery in the teeth of a couple of strangers merely because they had put up at a wayside tavern? A sort of dull fury worked in his heart. What had his impulsive visit gained him but present isolation in the midst of a dangerous company?
Without, the storm had broken; the slam of thunder shook the lonely house; the lightning fought for mastery in the room with the smoking oil-lamps, and prevailed, painting all faces with a violet glaze.
“That man,” said he, pointing at the genial Joseph, and wild to bring an edge to circumstance—“does he sup with you?”
“Surely, sir,” said Mr. Fern, pausing with an expression of extreme surprise.
“Ah! I recognize him as the fellow who applied to me for the post of gardener. You are well-suited for company, gentlemen.”
“He waits on us, sir—he waits on us. Joseph, is this true that I hear—that, unknown to me, you seek another service?”
“Yes,” said the man, with a grin. “If I could better myself I would.”
“Ah!” said Mr. Fern, with mild severity, “this must not occur again, Joseph. I sanction no such underhand proceedings. If you are dissatisfied with your position, tell me so plainly, and you are welcome to go seek a less indulgent master.”
“Oh, I’m all right, Mr. Fern!”
The other turned benevolently to the perplexed baronet. Throughout, the man Brander had stood silent, his hands thrust into his pockets, his hat pulled over his eyes, a slight grin creasing his parchment jaws.
“I must call your interest in me and my affairs unaccountable, sir,” said the former gravely; “but it is no doubt to be attributed to purely friendly motives.”
He bowed cumbrously, signified to Joseph to go before, and passed out with his other companion into the passage, closing the door gently to behind him.
Left to himself, Mr. Tuke stood for a moment dumfounded and quite at a loss as to what to do next. Then, with a quick, impatient exclamation, he flung himself into a chair before the hearth.
Why did he wait on at all? He told himself that it was for a lull in the storm that crashed and bellowed overhead. All the same he knew that he delayed going for the reason that makes men linger out a fruitless suit—because he impotently hoped for some anti-climax to justify his action.
Presently, rising from a fog of perplexity, he pulled with violence a bell-rope that hung near him. The landlord himself answered the summons, and immediately.
“Bring me a bottle of port,” said the visitor; and added suggestively, “uncorked.”
Mr. Breeds accepted the order, with some unintelligible response; vanished, brought back the wine and a glass, and offered the bottle to the other’s inspection.
“Good. Open it and go.”
He sat and sipped and pondered the situation.
There was no fire in the grate before him, but a bundle of the towy stuff known as “crinoline”; and this, as the wind moaned down the chimney, heaved and pulsed like a thing that breathed very silently. After a time this stealthy, life-like action wrought a certain uneasiness in him. He filled another glass, drained it, and glanced with a growing sickness of alarm at the palpitating mass. Good God! it was swelling, writhing in monstrous and unnatural motion! He tried to shriek out. His voice had left him. He could hear it very faint and agonized fifty miles away. He struggled to rise to his feet. The thing was out of the fire-place now—climbing his knees—lapping him in, overwhelming him from foot to throat.
With a liquid grunt, that rang in his own congested brain like his dying yell, he sank down in a heap and into immediate unconsciousness.
A dream, a memory of a wire factory he had once been shown over—this to re-connect him with a world he had sunk fathom-deep from; a buzzing and whistling in his brain, from which the brassy filament was being whirled to spin round a great reel at which some shadowy horror toiled; a snapping of the attenuated strand—and Mr. Tuke came to consciousness with a shock.
Even then, at first, he could not disassociate himself from the business of his quickening stupor; but saw the criss-cross of wires on all his drowsy eyes looked at. Somewhere in his forehead was the hole the screaming thread had issued from. He put up his hand vaguely to feel the acrid wound he knew must be there; for his whole skull yet throbbed and ached from the jarring process. He groped for the fancied mark, curiously, and then with a sense of grievance. If it had closed already, the torture would go on in his brain and find no outlet.
Suddenly the instinct of motion came to him, and he staggered to his feet. Yet his eyes were half-blind to the reality of his surroundings.
Bit by bit, however, these shook out into distinctness, vibrating like a spun coin before they settled down and became the commonplace objects of the room he had fallen asleep in. And then he saw that broad daylight was beating through a little high window, half-choked with creepers, that pierced the wall at the far end.
A few moments later the furious jangling of a bell seized every echo in the “Dog and Duck.” He who had awakened them, finding no response follow, flung out into the passage storming like a maniac.
An old shuffling woman was coming towards him. She was so old and so bent that, it seemed, to stoop a little lower would complete her circuit of days. A great mobcap was perched on her wrinkled poll, and under it her eyes ran moist with the humours of long-decayed passions.
“Where is the landlord of this tavern?” thundered Mr. Tuke.
The last trump would have done no more than tickle her auriculum.
“Eh!” she said, chafing her miserable old hands.
“Where is Breeds?” he roared.
“To be sure,” she whined, “hewent off arly to Stockbridge.”
“And left you in charge—you unconscionable old beldame?” he added under his breath.
“Aye, aye,” she answered. “In charge to wake the gen’leman as had fell asleep over his cups.”
“And where are the others—the three who are stopping in the house?”
“I know nowt about en. There be nubbody here but you. I come fro’ Gorepit yon to do the tending when Breeds goes a-jaunting. He said nowt about anybody but you; and that your nag were in the stable.”
Fuming, driven beyond himself, his head one racked and aching bone, the baronet pushed past the withered hag and started on an exploration of the house. He flung up the stairs, and passed into more than one meagre little bed-chamber. Each was tenantless; as was every room upon the floor below.
“I have been drugged, by God!” he thought to himself; and went out to the rear where the stables were.
Here he found his horse comfortably stalled, and with all his housings yet on him.
He climbed into the saddle. He might have had a full sack upon his shoulders, from the trouble it cost him. As he rode away, he could have thought his head rocking like a toy-tumbler. He had to hold on with a frantic grip, or he would have rolled off into the road and probably snapped his spine like a stick of celery. The flinty track seemed to slide under him as if it were a long ribbon reeling off a drum. And all the time the pain in his head was horrible.
Presently he was sicklily aware of a woman’s figure crossing from a field-path in front of him. Even in his anguish, something that was familiar in its pose struck him.
“Betty!” he murmured thickly; and pulling up his horse with uncalculated abruptness, actually toppled out of the saddle, and fell in a heap to the ground.
She ran to him, uttering a faint cry. The horse had swerved on the moment, and one of its rider’s feet was wedged in a stirrup. She caught the bridle, backed the frightened animal, and so saved its master a deadly mangling.
Then, looping the reins over her arm, she bent above the prostrate man, with shining eyes full of rebuke and pity.
“Oh!” she said—“how could your honour be so foolish?”
He smiled up at her with a lost look of pain.
“How, Betty?” he whispered.
“You should ’a slept it off,” she said, “before you took the road.”
“You think me tipsy?”
She answered with a little sigh.
“Betty, my dear”—the mere effort of speech wrung a moan from him—“I’m not tipsy, upon my honour. I was fool enough to trust Mr. Breeds, that’s all; and he repaid me by drugging my wine.”
“You come fro’ the ‘Dog and Duck’?”
“I’ve spent the night there in a chair.”
“Oh, Mr. Tuke! What made you go?”
“Why, I wanted to see for myself.”
She went quite pale; and suddenly there was a bright tear running down her cheek.
“Oh, me!” she whispered. “’Twas I drove you to it. You might ha’ been murdered, and ’twas I drove you to it.”
“Nonsense, Betty. ’Twas coming to a head before you spoke. I should have had it out with Mr. Breeds in any case, sooner or later.”
“And he poisoned your wine? Oh, oh!”
“Now, my dear—that was only a move in the game. Forewarned is forearmed, you know. But my head seems like to burst. Will you put your cool hand on it, Betty?”
She acquiesced timidly, as he lay against the hedge-side. But soon, emboldened by the yearning pity that, in her sex, so passionlessly yields itself to any passionate appeal for help or comfort, she wrought with instinctive sympathy upon the throbbing temples and pressed the hard pain from them.
“It is like a little snow-wind from the mountains blowing over flowers,” murmured the patient drowsily. “What are you doing at ‘Delsrop’ again, Betty?”
“At ‘Delsrop’! Sure your honour’s dreaming,” she cooed. “You lie a’most within hailing distance of the ‘First Inn.’”
Mr. Tuke uttered an exclamation and struggled into a sitting posture.
“Eh!” he cried in a startled voice, and looked bewildered about him. True enough, the roofs of Stockbridge showed over the trees a quarter of a mile below him.
“Oh, Betty!” he groaned—“whither have my sodden wits led me?—And I made sure I was lying near the gates of the drive. I must mount and prick homewards.”
He rose to his feet with difficulty. His face was ghastly with nausea.
“You are in no state,” said the girl—“your honour is in no state to go alone. Come and rest awhile at the inn, and wend back in an hour or so.”
“I believe you are right,” he muttered stupidly. “Give me your arm, Betty, and lead me on. I’m blind and weak as a new-born kitten. But Mr. Breeds must be called to a reckoning by and by.”
“Yes, yes!” she cried—“but not now.”
She walked by his side, helping him so far as she could. It took them long, short distance as it was, to reach the inn. Once there, she led him up to a fresh-smelling guest-room, with a great four-poster in it, and wishing him sleep and a quick recovery, shut him in and went about to see to his horse.
All the morning and into the afternoon her heart sang in her breast like a robin. She was busy in the bar by herself when her gentleman walked in, refreshed, in his right mind, and very fairly recovered of his unintended debauch. He put out his hand and took one of hers into its grasp, firmly and caressingly, while she looked down and was busy over something with the point of her sandal.
“Betty,” said Mr. Tuke, “it has come to me that you pulled my heel out of the stirrup this morning. I was too befuddled at the time to realize it.”