Lord Ostermore and Mr. Caryll looked across the lawn towards the house, but failed to see any sign of her ladyship's approach.
Mr. Caryll raised questioning eyes to his servant's stolid face, and in that moment caught the faintest rustle of a gown behind the arbor. He half-turned to my lord, and nodded slightly in the direction of the sound, a smile twisting his lips. With a gesture he dismissed Leduc, who returned to the neighborhood of the pond.
His lordship frowned, angered by the interruption. Then: “If your ladyship will come inside,” said he, “you will hear better and with greater comfort.”
“Not to speak of dignity,” said Mr. Caryll.
The stiff gown rustled again, this time without stealth. The countess appeared, no whit abashed. Mr. Caryll rose politely.
“You sit with spies to guard your approaches,” said she.
“As a precaution against spies,” was his lordship's curt answer.
She measured him with a cool eye. “What is't ye hide?” she asked him.
“My shame,” he answered readily. Then after a moment's pause, he rose and offered her his seat. “Since you have thrust yourself in where you were not bidden, you may hear and welcome, ma'am,” said he. “It may help you to understand what you term my injustice to my son.”
“Are these matters wherewith to importune a stranger—a guest?”
“I am proposing to say in your presence what I was about to say in your absence,” said he, without answering her question. “Be seated, ma'am.”
She sniffed, closed her fan with a clatter, and sat down. Mr. Caryll resumed his long chair, and his lordship took the stool.
“I am told,” the latter resumed presently, recapitulating in part for her ladyship's better understanding, “that his Grace of Wharton is intending to reopen the South Sea scandal, as soon as he can find evidence that I was one of those who profited by the company's charter.”
“Profited?” she echoed, between scorn and bitter amusement. “Profited, did ye say? I think your dotage is surely upon you—you that have sunk nigh all your fortune and all that you had with me in this thieving venture—d'ye talk of profits?”
“At the commencement I did profit, as did many others. Had I been content with my gains, had I been less of a trusting fool, it had been well. I was dazzled, maybe, by the glare of so much gold. I needed more; and so I lost all. That is evil enough. But there is worse. I may be called upon to make restitution of what I had from the company without paying for it—I may give all that's left me and barely cover the amount, and I may starve and be damned thereafter.”
Her ladyship's face was ghastly. Horror stared from her pale eyes. She had known, from the beginning, of that twenty thousand pounds' worth of stock, and she had had—with his lordship—her anxious moments when the disclosures were being made six months ago that had brought the Craggses, Aislabie and a half-dozen others to shame and ruin.
His lordship looked at her a moment. “And if this shipwreck comes, as it now threatens,” he continued, “it is my son I shall have to thank for't.”
She found voice to ask: “How so?” courage to put the question scornfully. “Is it not rather Rotherby you have to thank that the disclosures did not come six months ago? What was it saved you but the friendship his Grace of Wharton had for Charles?”
“Why, then,” stormed his lordship, “did he not see to't that he preserved that friendship? It but needed a behavior of as much decency and honor as Wharton exacts in his associates—and the Lord knows how much that is!” he sneered. “As it is, he has gone even lower than that abandoned scourer; so low that even this rakehell duke must become his enemy for his own credit's sake. He attempts mock-marriages with ladies of quality; and he attempts murder by stabbing through the back a gentleman who has spared his worthless life. Not even the president of the Hell Fire Club can countenance these things, strong stomach though he have for villainy. It is something to have contrived to come so low that even his Grace of Wharton must turn upon him, and swear his ruin. And so that he may ruin him, his grace is determined to ruin me. Now you understand, madam—and you, Mr. Caryll.”
Mr. Caryll understood. He understood even more than his lordship meant him to understand; more than his lordship understood, himself. So, too, did her ladyship, if we may judge from the reply she made him.
“You fool,” she railed. “You vain, blind, selfish fool! To blame Rotherby for this. Rather should Rotherby, blame you that by your damned dishonesty have set a weapon against him in his enemy's hands.”
“Madam!” he roared, empurpling, and coming heavily to his feet. “Do you know who I am?”
“Ay—and what you are, which is something you will never know. God! Was there ever so self-centered a fool? Compassionate me, Heaven!” She rose, too, and turned to Mr. Caryll. “You, sir,” she said to him, “you have been dragged into this, I know not why.”
She broke off suddenly, looking at him, her eyes a pair of gimlets now for penetration. “Why have you been dragged into it?” she demanded. “What is here? I demand to know. What help does my lord expect from you that he tells you this? Does he—” She paused an instant, a cunning smile breaking over her wrinkled, painted face. “Does he propose to sell himself to the king over the water, and are you a secret agent come to do the buying? Is that the answer to this riddle?”
Mr. Caryll, imperturbable outwardly, but very ill at ease within, smiled and waved the delicate hand that appeared through the heavy ruffle at his wrist. “Madam, indeed—ah—your ladyship goes very fast. You leap so at conclusions for which no grounds can exist. His lordship is so overwrought—as well he may be, alas!—that he cares not before whom he speaks. Is it not plainly so?”
She smiled very sourly. “You are a very master of evasion, sir. But your evasion gives me the answer that I lack—that and his lordship's face. I drew my bow at a venture; yet look, sir, and tell me, has my quarrel missed its mark?”
And, indeed, the sudden fear and consternation written on my lord's face was so plain that all might read it. He was—as Mr. Caryll had remarked on the first occasion that they met—the worst dissembler that ever set hand to a conspiracy. He betrayed himself at every step, if not positively, by incautious words, why then by the utter lack of control he had upon his countenance.
He made now a wild attempt to bluster. “Lies! Lies!” he protested. “Your ladyship's a-dreaming. Should I be making bad worse by plotting at my time of life? Should I? What can King James avail me, indeed?”
“'Tis what I will ask Rotherby to help me to discover,” she informed him.
“Rotherby?” he cried. “Would you tell that villain what you suspect? Would you arm him with another weapon for my undoing?”
“Ha!” said she. “You admit so much, then?” And she laughed disdainfully. Then with a sudden sternness, a sudden nobility almost in the motherhood which she put forward—“Rotherby is my son,” she said, “and I'll not have my son the victim of your follies as well as of your injustice. We may curb the one and the other yet, my lord.”
And she swept out, fan going briskly in one hand, her long ebony cane swinging as briskly in the other.
“O God!” groaned Ostermore, and sat down heavily.
Mr. Caryll helped himself copiously to snuff. “I think,” said he, his voice so cool that it had an almost soothing influence, “I think your lordship has now another reason why you should go no further in this matter.”
“But if I do not—what other hopes have I? Damn me! I'm a ruined man either way.”
“Nay, nay,” Mr. Caryll reminded him. “Assuming even that you are correctly informed, and that his Grace of Wharton is determined to move against you, it is not to be depended that he will succeed in collecting such evidence as he must need. At this date much of the evidence that may once have been available will have been dissipated. You are rash to despair so soon.”
“There is that,” his lordship admitted thoughtfully, a little hopefully, even; “there is that.” And with the resilience of his nature—of men who form opinions on slight grounds, and, therefore, are ready to change them upon grounds as slight—“I' faith! I may have been running to meet my trouble. 'Tis but a rumor, after all, that Wharton is for mischief, and—as you say—as like as not there'll be no evidence by now. There was little enough at the time.
“Still, I'll make doubly sure. My letter to King James can do no harm. We'll talk of it again, when you are in case to travel.”
It passed through Mr. Caryll's mind at the moment that Lady Ostermore and her son might between them brew such mischief as might seriously hinder him from travelling, and he was very near the truth. For already her ladyship was closeted with Rotherby in her boudoir.
The viscount was dressed for travelling, intent upon withdrawing to the country, for he was well-informed already of the feeling of the town concerning him, and had no mind to brave the slights and cold-shoulderings that would await him did he penetrate to any of the haunts of people of quality and fashion. He stood before his mother now, a tall, lank figure, his black face very gloomy, his sensual lips thrust forward in a sullen pout. She, in a gilt arm-chair before her toilet-table, was telling him the story of what had passed, his father's fear of ruin and disgrace. He swore between his teeth when he heard that the danger threatened from the Duke of Wharton.
“And your father's destitution means our destitution—yours and mine; for his gambling schemes have consumed my portion long since.”
He laughed and shrugged. “I marvel I should concern myself,” said he. “What can it avail me to save the rags that are left him of his fortune? He's sworn I shall never touch a penny that he may die possessed of.”
“But there's the entail,” she reminded him. “If restitution is demanded, the Crown will not respect it. 'Twill be another sop to throw the whining curs that were crippled by the bubble, and who threaten to disturb the country if they are not appeased. If Wharton carries out this exposure, we're beggars—utter beggars, that may ask an alms to quiet hunger.”
“'Tis Wharton's present hate of me,” said he thoughtfully, and swore. “The damned puppy! He'd make a sacrifice of me upon the altar of respectability, just as he made a sacrifice of the South Sea bubblers. What else was the stinking rakehell seeking but to put himself right again in the eyes of a town that was nauseated with him and his excesses? The self-seeking toad that makes virtue his profession—the virtue of others—and profligacy his recreation!” He smote fist into palm. “There's a way to silence him.”
“Ah?” she looked up quickly, hopefully.
“A foot or so of steel,” Rotherby explained, and struck the hilt of his sword. “I might pick a quarrel with him. 'Twould not be difficult. Come upon him unawares, say, and strike him. That should force a fight.”
“Tusk, fool! He's all empanoplied in virtue where you are concerned. He'd use the matter of your affair with Caryll as a reason not to meet you, whatever you might do, and he'd set his grooms to punish any indignity you might put upon him.”
“He durst not.”
“Pooh! The town would all approve him in it since your running Caryll through the back. What a fool you were, Charles.”
He turned away, hanging his head, full conscious, and with no little bitterness, of how great had been his folly.
“Salvation may lie for you in the same source that has brought you to the present pass—this man Caryll,” said the countess presently. “I suspect him more than ever of being a Jacobite agent.”
“I know him to be such.”
“You know it?”
“All but; and Green is assured of it, too.” He proceeded to tell her what he knew. “Ever since Green met Caryll at Maidstone has he suspected him, yet but that I kept him to the task he would have abandoned it. He's in my pay now as much as in Lord Carteret's, and if he can run Caryll to earth he receives his wages from both sides.”
“Well—well? What has he discovered? Anything?”
“A little. This Caryll frequented regularly the house of one Everard, who came to town a week after Caryll's own arrival. This Everard—Sir Richard Everard is known to be a Jacobite. He is the Pretender's Paris agent. They would have laid him by the heels before, but that by precipitancy they feared to ruin their chances of discovering the business that may have brought him over. They are giving him rope at present. Meanwhile, by my cursed folly, Caryll's visits to him were interrupted. But there has been correspondence between them.”
“I know,” said her ladyship. “A letter was delivered him just now. I tried to smoke him concerning it. But he's too astute.”
“Astute or not,” replied her son, “once he leaves Stretton House it should not be long ere he betrays himself and gives us cause to lay him by the heels. But how will that help us?”
“Do you ask how? Why, if there is a plot, and we can discover it, we might make terms with the secretary of state to avoid any disclosure Wharton may intend concerning the South Sea matter.”
“But that would be to discover my father for a Jacobite! What advantage should we derive from that? 'Twould be as bad as t'other matter.”
“Let me die, but ye're a slow-witted clod, Charles. D'ye think we can find no way to disclose the plot and Mr. Caryll—and Everard, too, if you choose—without including your father? My lord is timidly cautious, and you may depend he'll not have put himself in their hands to any extent just yet.”
The viscount paced the chamber slowly in long strides, head bent in thought, hands clasped behind him. “It will need consideration,” said he. “But it may serve, and I can count upon Green. He is satisfied that Caryll befooled him at Maidstone, and that he kept the papers he carried despite the thoroughness of Green's investigations. Moreover, he was handled with some roughness by Caryll. For that and the other matter he asks redress—thirsts for it. He's a very willing tool, as I have found.”
“Then see that you use him adroitly to your work,” said his mother. “Best not leave town at present, Charles.”
“Why, no,” said he. “I'll find me a lodging somewhere at hand, since my fond sire is determined I shall pollute no longer the sacrosanctity of his dwelling. Perhaps when I have pulled him out of this quicksand, he will deign to mitigate the bitterness of his feelings for me. Though, faith, I find life endurable without the affection he should have consecrated to me.”
“Ay,” she said, looking up at him. “You are his son; too much his son, I fear. 'Tis why he dislikes you so intensely. He sees in you the faults to which he is blind in himself.”
“Sweet mother!” said his lordship, bowing.
She scowled at him. She could deal in irony herself—and loved to—but she detested to have it dealt to her.
He bowed again; gained the door, and would have passed out but that she detained him.
“'Tis a pity, on some scores, to dispose so utterly of this Caryll,” she said. “The pestilent coxcomb has his uses, and his uses, like adversity's, are sweet.”
He paused to question her with his eyes.
“He might have made a husband for Hortensia, and rid me of the company of that white-faced changeling.”
“Might he so?” quoth the viscount, face and voice, expressionless.
“They were made for each other,” her ladyship opined.
“Were they so?”
“Ay—were they. And faith they've discovered it. I would you had seen the turtles in the arbor an hour ago, when I surprised them.”
His lordship attempted a smile, but achieved nothing more than a wry face and a change of color. His mother's eyes, observing these signs, grew on a sudden startled.
“Why, fool,” quoth she, “do you hold there still? Art not yet cured of that folly?”
“What folly, ma'am?”
“This folly that already has cost you so much. 'Sdeath! As I'm a woman, if you'd so much feeling for the girl, I marvel ye did not marry her honestly and in earnest when the chance was yours.”
The pallor of his face increased. He clenched his hands. “I marvel myself that I did not,” he answered passionately—and went out, slamming the door after him, and leaving her ladyship agape and angry.
Lord Rotherby, descending from that interview with his mother, espied Hortensia crossing the hall below. Forgetting his dignity, he quickened his movements, and took the remainder of the stairs two at a stride. But, then, his lordship was excited and angry, and considerations of dignity did not obtain with him at the time. For that matter, they seldom did.
“Hortensia! Hortensia!” he called to her, and at his call she paused.
Not once during the month that was past—and during which he had, for the most part, kept his room, to all intents a prisoner—had she exchanged so much as a word with him. Thus, not seeing him, she had been able, to an extent, to exclude him from her thoughts, which, naturally enough, were reluctant to entertain him for their guest.
Her calm, as she paused now in acquiescence to his bidding, was such that it almost surprised herself. She had loved him once—or thought so, a little month ago—and at a single blow he had slain that love. Now love so slain has a trick of resurrecting in the guise of hate; and so, she had thought at first had been the case with her. But this moment proved to her now that her love was dead, indeed, since of her erstwhile affection not even a recoil to hate remained. Dislike she may have felt; but it was that cold dislike that breeds a deadly indifference, and seeks no active expression, asking no more than the avoidance of its object.
Her calm, reflected in her face of a beauty almost spiritual, in every steady line of her slight, graceful figure, gave him pause a moment, and his hot glance fell abashed before the chill indifference that met him from those brown eyes.
A man of deeper sensibilities, of keener perceptions, would have bowed and gone his way. But then a man of deeper sensibilities would never have sought this interview that the viscount was now seeking. Therefore, it was but natural that he should recover swiftly from his momentary halt, and step aside to throw open the door of a little room on the right of the hall. Bowing slightly, he invited her to enter.
“Grant me a moment ere I go, Hortensia,” he said, between command and exhortation.
She stood cogitating him an instant, with no outward sign of what might be passing in her mind; then she slightly inclined her head, and went forward as he bade her.
It was a sunny room, gay with light color and dainty furnishings, having long window-doors that opened to the garden. An Aubusson carpet of palest green, with a festoon pattern of pink roses, covered two-thirds of the blocked, polished floor. The empanelled walls were white, with here a gilt mirror, flanked on either side by a girandole in ormolu. A spinet stood open in mid-chamber, and upon it were sheets of music, a few books and a bowl of emerald-green ware, charged now with roses, whose fragrance lay heavy on the air. There were two or three small tables of very dainty, fragile make, and the chairs were in delicately-tinted tapestry illustrating the fables of La Fontaine.
It was an apartment looked upon by Hortensia as her own withdrawing-room, set apart for her own use, and as that the household—her very ladyship included—had ever recognized it.
His lordship closed the door with care. Hortensia took her seat upon the long stool that stood at the spinet, her back to the instrument, and with hands idle in her lap—the same cold reserve upon her countenance-she awaited his communication.
He advanced until he was close beside her, and stood leaning an elbow on the corner of the spinet, a long and not ungraceful figure, with the black curls of his full-bottomed wig falling about his swarthy, big-featured face.
“I have but my farewells to make, Hortensia,” said he. “I am leaving Stretton House, to-day, at last.”
“I am glad,” said she, in a formal, level voice, “that things should have fallen out so as to leave you free to go your ways.”
“You are glad,” he answered, frowning slightly, and leaning farther towards her. “Ay, and why are you glad? Why? You are glad for Mr. Caryll's sake. Do you deny it?”
She looked up at him quite calm and fearlessly. “I am glad for your own sake, too.”
His dark brooding eyes looked deep into hers, which did not falter under his insistent gaze. “Am I to believe you?” he inquired.
“Why not? I do not wish your death.”
“Not my death—but my absence?” he sneered. “You wish for that, do you not? You would prefer me gone? My room is better than my company just now? 'Tis what you think, eh?”
“I have not thought of it at all,” she answered him with a pitiless frankness.
He laughed, soft and wickedly. “Is it so very hopeless, then? You have not thought of it at all by which you mean that you have not thought of me at all.”
“Is't not best so? You have given me no cause to think of you to your advantage. I am therefore kind to exclude you from my thoughts.”
“Kind?” he mocked her. “You think it kind to put me from your mind—I who love you, Hortensia!”
She rose upon the instant, her cheeks warming faintly. “My lord,” said she, “I think there is no more to be said between us.”
“Ah, but there is,” he cried. “A deal more yet.” And he left his place by the spinet to come and stand immediately before her, barring her passage to the door. “Not only to say farewell was it that I desired to speak with you alone here.” His voice softened amazingly. “I want your pardon ere I go. I want you to say that you forgive me the vile thing I would have done, Hortensia.” Contrition quivered in his lowered voice. He bent a knee to her, and held out his hand. “I will not rise until you speak my pardon, child.”
“Why, if that be all, I pardon you very readily,” she answered, still betraying no emotion.
He frowned. “Too readily!” he cried. “Too readily for sincerity. I will not take it so.”
“Indeed, my lord, for a penitent, you are very difficult to please. I pardon you with all my heart.”
“You are sincere?” he cried, and sought to take her hands; but she whipped them away and behind her. “You bear me no ill-will?”
She considered him now with a calm, critical gaze, before which he was forced to lower his bold eyes. “Why should I bear you an ill-will?” she asked him.
“For the thing I did—the thing I sought to do.”
“I wonder do you know all that you did?” she asked him, musingly. “Shall I tell you, my lord? You cured me of a folly. I had been blind, and you made me see. I had foolishly thought to escape one evil, and you made me realize that I was rushing into a worse. You saved me from myself. You may have made me suffer then; but it was a healing hurt you dealt me. And should I bear you an ill-will for that?”
He had risen from his knee. He stood apart, pondering her from under bent brows with eyes that were full of angry fire.
“I do not think,” she ended, “that there needs more between us. I have understood you, sir, since that day at Maidstone—I think we were strangers until then; and perhaps now you may begin to understand me. Fare you well, my lord.”
She made shift to go, but he barred her passage now in earnest, his hands clenched beside him in witness of the violence he did himself to keep them there. “Not yet,” he said, in a deep, concentrated voice. “Not yet. I did you a wrong, I know. And what you say—cruel as it is—is no more than I deserve. But I desire to make amends. I love you, Hortensia, and desire to make amends.”
She smiled wistfully. “'Tis overlate to talk of that.”
“Why?” he demanded fiercely, and caught her arms, holding her there before him. “Why is it overlate?”
“Suffer me to go,” she commanded, rather than begged, and made to free herself of his grasp.
“I want you to be my wife, Hortensia—my wedded wife.”
She looked at him, and laughed; a cold laugh, disdainful, yet not bitter. “You wanted that before, my lord; yet you neglected the opportunity my folly gave you. I thank you—you, after God—for that same neglect.”
“Ah, do not say that!” he begged, a very suppliant again. “Do not say that! Child, I love you. Do you understand?”
“Who could fail to understand, after the abundant proof you have afforded me of your sincerity and your devotion?”
“Do you rally me?” he demanded, letting through a flash of the anger that was mounting in him. “Am I so poor a thing that you whet your little wit upon me?”
“My lord, you are paining me. What can you look to gain by this? Suffer me to go.”
A moment yet he stood, holding her wrists and looking down into her eyes with a mixture of pleading and ferocity in his. Then he made a sound in his throat, and caught her bodily to him; his arms, laced about her, held her bound and crushed against him. His dark, flushed face hovered above her own.
Fear took her at last. It mounted and grew to horror. “Let me go, my lord,” she besought him, her voice trembling. “Oh, let me go!”
“I love you, Hortensia! I need you!” he cried, as if wrung by pain, and then hot upon her brow and cheeks and lips his kisses fell, and shame turned her to fire from head to foot as she fought helplessly within his crushing grasp.
“You dog!” she panted, and writhing harder, wrenched free a hand and arm. Blindly she beat upwards into that evil satyr's face. “You beast! You toad! You coward!”
They fell apart, each panting; she leaning faint against the spinet, her bosom galloping; he muttering oaths decent and other—for in the upward thrusting of her little hand one of its fingers had prodded at an eye, and the pain of it—which had caused him to relax his hold of her—stripped what little veneer remained upon the man's true nature.
“Will you go?” she asked him furiously, outraged by the vileness of his ravings. “Will you go, or must I summon help?”
He stood looking at her, straightening his wig, which had become disarranged in the struggle, and forcing himself to an outward calm. “So,” he said. “You scorn me? You will not marry me? You realise the chance, eh? And why? Why?”
“I suppose it is because I am blind to the honor of the alliance,” she controlled herself to answer him. “Will you go?”
He did not move. “Yet you loved me once—”
“'Tis a lie!” she blazed. “I thought I did—to my undying shame. No more than that, my lord—as I've a soul to be saved.”
“You loved Me,” he insisted. “And you would love me still but for this damned Caryll—this French coxcomb, who has crawled into your regard like the slimy, creeping thing he is.”
“It sorts well with your ways, my lord, that you could say these things behind his back. You are practiced at stabbing men behind.”
The gibe, with all the hurtful, stinging quality that only truth possesses, struck his anger from him, leaving him limp and pale. Then he recovered.
“Do you know who he is—what he is?” he asked. “I will tell you. He's a spy—a damned Jacobite spy, whom a word from me will hang.”
Her eyes lashed him with her scorn. “I were a fool did I believe you,” was her contemptuous answer.
“Ask him,” he said, and laughed. He turned and strode to the door. Paused there, sardonic, looking back. “I shall be quits with you, ma'am. Quits! I'll hang this pretty turtle of yours at Tyburn. Tell him so from me.”
He wrenched the door open, and went out on that, leaving her cold and sick with dread.
Was it but an idle threat to terrorize her? Was it but that? Her impulse was to seek Mr. Caryll upon the instant that she might ask him and allay her fears. But what right had she? Upon what grounds could she set a question upon so secret a matter? She conceived him raising his brows in that supercilious way of his, and looking her over from head to toe as though seeking a clue to the nature of this quaint thing that asked him questions. She pictured his smile and the jest with which he would set aside her inquiry. She imagined, indeed, just what she believed would happen did she ask him; which was precisely what would not have happened. Imagining thus, she held her peace, and nursed her secret dread. And on the following day, his weakness so far overcome as to leave him no excuse to linger at Stretton House, Mr. Caryll took his departure and returned to his lodging in Old Palace Yard.
One more treasonable interview had he with Lord Ostermore in the library ere he departed. His lordship it was who reopened again the question, to repeat much of what he had said in the arbor on the previous day, and Mr. Caryll replied with much the same arguments in favor of procrastination that he had already employed.
“Wait, at least,” he begged, “until I have been abroad a day or two, and felt for myself how the wind Is setting.”
“'Tis a prodigiously dangerous document,” he declared. “I scarce see the need for so much detail.”
“How can it set but one way?”
“'Tis a question I shall be in better case to answer when I have had an opportunity of judging. Meanwhile, be assured I shall not sail for France without advising you. Time enough then to give me your letter should you still be of the same mind.”
“Be it so,” said the earl. “When all is said, the letter will be safer here, meantime, than in your pocket.” And he tapped the secretaire. “But see what I have writ his majesty, and tell me should I alter aught.”
He took out a drawer on the right—took it out bodily—then introduced his hand into the opening, running it along the inner side of the desk until, no doubt, he touched a spring; for suddenly a small trap was opened. From this cavity he fished out two documents—one the flimsy tissue on which King James' later was penned; the other on heavier material Lord Ostermore's reply. He spread the latter before him, and handed it to Mr. Caryll, who ran an eye over it.
It was indited with stupid, characteristic incaution; concealment was never once resorted to; everywhere expressions of the frankest were employed, and every line breathed the full measure of his lordship's treason and betrays the existence of a plot.
Mr. Caryll returned it. His countenance was grave.
“I desire his majesty to know how whole-heartedly I belong to him.”
“'Twere best destroyed, I think. You can write another when the time comes to dispatch it.”
But Ostermore was never one to take sensible advice. “Pooh! 'Twill be safe in here. 'Tis a secret known to none.” He dropped it, together with King James' letter, back into the recess, snapped down the trap, and replaced the drawer. Whereupon Mr. Caryll took his leave, promising to advise his lordship of whatever he might glean, and so departed from Stretton House.
My Lord Rotherby, meanwhile, was very diligent in the business upon which he was intent. He had received in his interview with Hortensia an added spur to such action as might be scatheful to Mr. Caryll. His lordship was lodged in Portugal Row, within a stone's throw of his father's house, and there, on that same evening of his moving thither, he had Mr. Green to see him, desiring news.
Mr. Green had little to impart, but strong hope of much to be garnered presently. His little eyes twinkling, his chubby face suffused in smiles, as though it were an excellent jest to be hunting knowledge that should hang a man, the spy assured Lord Rotherby that there was little doubt Mr. Caryll could be implicated as soon as he was about again.
“And that's the reason—after your lordship's own express wishes—why so far I have let Sir Richard Everard be. It may come to trouble for me with my Lord Carteret should it be smoked that I have been silent on the matters within my knowledge. But—”
“Oh, a plague on that!” said his lordship. “You'll be well paid for your services when you've rendered them. And, meanwhile, I understand that not another soul in London—that is, on the side of the government—is aware of Sir Richard's presence in town. So where is your danger?”
“True,” said Mr. Green, plump hand caressing plumper chin. “Had it not been so, I should have been forced to apply to the secretary for a warrant before this.”
“Then you'll wait,” said his lordship, “and you'll act as I may direct you. It will be to your credit in the end. Wait until Caryll has enmeshed himself by frequent visits to Sir Richard's. Then get your warrant—when I give the word—and execute it one fine night when Caryll happens to be closeted with Everard. Whether we can get further evidence against him or not, that circumstance of his being found with the Pretender's agent should go some way towards hanging him. The rest we must supply.”
Mr. Green smiled seraphically. “Ecod! I'd give my ears to have the slippery fellow safe. Codso! I would. He bubbled me at Maidstone, and I limped a fortnight from the kick he gave me.”
“He shall do a little more kicking—with both feet,” said his lordship with unction.
Five days later, Mr. Caryll—whose recovery had so far progressed that he might now be said to be his own man again—came briskly up from Charing Cross one evening at dusk, to the house at the corner of Maiden Lane where Sir Richard Everard was lodged. He observed three or four fellows lounging about the corner of Chandos street and Bedford street, but it did not occur to him that from that point they could command Sir Richard's door—nor that such could be their object—until, as he swung sharply round the corner, he hurtled violently into a man who was moving in the opposite direction without looking whither he was going. The man stepped quickly aside with a murmured word of apology, to give Mr. Caryll the wall that he might pass on. But Mr. Caryll paused.
“Ah, Mr. Green!” said he very pleasantly. “How d'ye? Have ye been searching folk of late?”
Mr. Green endeavored to dissemble his startled expression in a grin that revealed his white teeth. “Ye can't forgive me that blunder, Mr. Caryll,” said he.
Mr. Caryll smiled fondly upon him. “From your manner I take it that on your side you practice a more Christian virtue. It is plain that you forgive me the sequel.”
Mr. Green shrugged and spread his hands. “You were in the right, sir; you were in the right,” he explained. “Those are the risks a man of my calling must run. I must suffer for my blunders.”
Mr. Caryll continued to smile. But that the light was failing, the spy might have observed a certain hardening in the lines of his mouth. “Here is a very humble mood,” said he. “It is like the crouch before the spring. In whom do you design to plant your claws?—yours and your friends yonder.” And he pointed with his cane across the street towards the loungers he had observed.
“My friends?” quoth Mr. Green, in a voice of disgust. “Nay, your honor! No friends of mine, ecod! Indeed, no!”
“No? I am at fault, then. Yet they look as if they might be bumbailiffs. 'Tis the kind ye herd with, is't not? Give you good-even, Mr. Green.” And he went on, cool and unconcerned, and turned in through the narrow doorway by the glover's shop to mount the stairs to Sir Richard's lodging.
Mr. Green stood still to watch him go. Then he swore through his teeth, and beckoned one of those whose acquaintance he had disclaimed.
“'Tis like him, ecod! to have gone in in spite of seeing me and you! He's cool! Damned cool! But he'll be cooler yet, codso!” Then, briskly questioning his satellite: “Is Sir Richard within, Jerry?”
“Ay,” answered Jerry—a rough, heavily-built tatterdemalion. “He's been there these two hours.”
“'Tis our chance to nab 'em both, then-our last chance, maybe. The game is up. That fine gentleman has smoked it.” He was angry beyond measure. Their plans were far from ripe, and yet to delay longer now that their vigilance was detected was, perhaps, to allow Sir Richard to slip through their fingers, as well as the other. “Have ye your barkers?” he asked harshly.
Jerry tapped a heavily bulging pocket, and winked. Mr. Green thrust his three-cornered hat a-cock over one eye, and with his hands behind the tails of his coat, stood pondering. “Ay, pox on't!” he grumbled. “It must be done to-night. I dursn't delay longer. We'll give the gentlemen time to settle comfortably; then up we go to make things merry for 'em.” And he beckoned the others across.
Meanwhile Mr. Caryll had gone up with considerable misgivings. The last letter he had received from Sir Richard—that day at Stretton House—had been to apprise him that his adoptive father was on the point of leaving town but that he would be returned within the week. The business that had taken him had been again concerned with Atterbury the obstinate. Upon another vain endeavor to dissuade the bishop from a scheme his king did not approve had Sir Richard journeyed to Rochester. He had had his pains for nothing. Atterbury had kept him there, entertaining him, and seeking in his turn to engulf the agent in the business that was toward—business which was ultimately to suck down Atterbury and his associates. Sir Richard, however, was very firm. And when at last he left Rochester to return to town and his adoptive son, a coolness marked the parting of those two adherents of the Stuart dynasty.
Returned to London—whence his absence had been marked with alarm by Mr. Green—Sir Richard had sent a message to Mr. Caryll, and the latter made haste to answer it in person.
His adoptive father received him with open arms, and such a joy in his face, such a light in his old eyes as should have gladdened his visitor, yet only served sadden him the more. He sighed as Sir Richard thrust him back that he might look at him.
“Ye're pale, boy,” he said, “and ye look thinner.” And with that he fell to reviling the deed that was the cause of this, Rotherby and the whole brood of Ostermore.
“Let be,” said Mr. Caryll, as he dropped into a chair. “Rotherby is undergoing his punishment. The town looks on him as a cut-throat who has narrowly escaped the gallows. I marvel that he tarries here. An I were he, I think I'd travel for a year or two.”
“What weakness made you spare him when ye had him at the point of your sword?”
“That which made me regret that I had him there; the reflection that he is my brother.”
Sir Richard looked at him in some surprise. “I thought you of sterner stuff, Justin,” he said presently, and sighed, passing a long white hand across his bony brow. “I thought I had reared you to a finer strength. But there! What of Ostermore himself?”
“What of him?”
“Have you not talked again with him of the matter of going over to King James?”
“To what end, since the chance is lost? His betrayal now would involve the betrayal of Atterbury and the others—for he has been in touch with them.”
“Has he though? The bishop said naught of this.”
“I have it from my lord himself—and I know the man. Were he taken they'd wring out of him whatever happened to be in him. He has no discretion. Indeed, he's but a clod, too stupid even to be aware of his own stupidity.”
“Then what is to be done?” inquired Sir Richard, frowning.
“We'd best get home to France again.”
“And leave matters thus?” He considered a moment, and shook his head, smiling bitterly. “Could that content you, Justin? Could you go as you have come—taking no more than you brought; leaving that man as you found him? Could you?”
Mr. Caryll looked at the baronet, and wondered for a moment whether he should persevere in the rule of his life and deal quite frankly with him, telling him precisely what he felt. Then he realized that he would not be understood. He could not combat the fanaticism that was Sir Richard's in this matter. If he told him the truth; how he loathed the task; how he rejoiced that circumstances had now put it beyond his reach—all he would achieve would be to wound Sir Richard in his tenderest place and to no purpose.
“It is not a matter of what I would,” he answered slowly, wearily almost. “It is a matter of what I must. Here in England is no more to be done. Moreover, there's danger for you in lingering, or I'm much mistaken else.”
“Danger of what?” asked Sir Richard, with indifference.
“You are being spied upon.”
“Pho! I am accustomed to it. I have been spied upon all my life.”
“Like enough. But this time the spies are messengers from the secretary of state. I caught a glimpse of them lurking about your doorway—three or four at least—and as I entered I all but fell over a Mr. Green—a most pertinacious gentleman with whom I have already some acquaintance. He is the very man who searched me at Maidstone; he has kept his eye upon me ever since, which has not troubled me. But that he should keep an eye on you means that your identity is suspected, and if that be so—well, the sooner we are out of England the better for your health.”
Sir Richard shook his head calmly. The fine-featured, lean old face showed no sign of uneasiness. “A fig for all that!” said he. “I go not thus—empty-handed as I came. After all these years of waiting.”
A knock fell upon the door, and Sir Richard's man entered. His face was white, his eyes startled.
“Sir Richard,” he announced, his voice lowered portentously, “there are some men here who insist upon seeing you.”
Mr. Caryll wheeled in his chair. “Surely they did not ask for him by name?” he inquired in the same low key employed by the valet.
The man nodded in silence. Mr. Caryll swore through his teeth. Sir Richard rose.
“I am occupied at present,” he said in a calm voice. “I can receive nobody. Desire to know their business. If it imports, bid them come again to-morrow.”
“It is over-urgent for that, Sir Richard Everard,” came the soft voice of Mr. Green, who thrust himself suddenly forward past the servant. Other figures were seen moving behind him in the ante-room.
“Sir,” cried Sir Richard angrily. “This is a most insolent intrusion. Bentley, show this fellow the door.”
Bentley set a hand on Mr. Green's shoulder. Mr. Green nimbly twisted out of it, and produced a paper. “I have here a warrant for your apprehension, Sir Richard, from my Lord Carteret, the secretary of state.”
Mr. Caryll advanced menacingly upon the tipstaff. Mr. Green stepped back, and fell into a defensive attitude, balancing a short but formidable-looking life-preserver.
“Keep your distance, sir, or 'twill be the worse for you,” he threatened. “Hi!” he called. “Jerry! Beattie!”
Jerry, Beattie, and two other ruffians crowded to the doorway, but advanced little beyond the threshold. Mr. Caryll turned to Sir Richard. But Mr. Green was the first to speak.
“Sir Richard,” said he, “you'll see that we are but instruments of the law. It grieves me profoundly to have you for our object. But ye'll see that 'tis no affair of ours, who have but to do the duty that we're ordered. Ye'll not give these poor fellows trouble, I trust. Ye'll surrender quietly.”
Sir Richard's answer was to pull open a drawer in the writing-table, by which he was standing, and whip out a pistol.
What exactly he may have intended, he was never allowed to announce. An explosion shook the room, coming from the doorway, upon which Mr. Caryll had turned his shoulder; there was a spurt of flame, and Sir Richard collapsed forward onto the table, and slithered thence to the ground.
Jerry, taking fright at the sight of the pistol Sir Richard had produced, had forestalled what he supposed to be the baronet's intentions by firing instantly upon him, with this disastrous result.
Confusion ensued. Mr. Caryll, with no more thought for the tipstaves than he had for the smoke in his eyes or the stench of powder in his nostrils, sped to Sir Richard. In a passion of grief and anxiety, he raised his adoptive father, aided by Bentley, what time Mr. Green was abusing Jerry, and Jerry was urging in exculpation how he had acted purely in Mr. Green's interest, fearing that Sir Richard might have been on the point of shooting him.
The spy went forward to Mr. Caryll. “I am most profoundly sorry—” he began.
“Take your sorrow to hell,” snarled Mr. Caryll, his face livid, his eyes blazing uncannily. “I believe ye've murdered him.”
“Ecod! the fool shall smart for't if Sir Richard dies,” grumbled Mr. Green.
“What's that to me? You may hang the muckworm, and what shall that profit any one? Will it restore me Sir Richard's life? Send one of your ruffians for a doctor, man. And bid him hasten.”
Mr. Green obeyed with alacrity. Apart from his regrets at this happening for its own sake, it would suit his interests not at all that Sir Richard should perish thus. Meanwhile, with the help of the valet, who was blubbering like a child—for he had been with Sir Richard for over ten years, and was attached to him as a dog to its master—they opened the wounded man's sodden waistcoat and shirt, and reached the hurt, which was on the right side of the breast.
Between them they lifted him up gently. Mr. Green would have lent a hand, but a snarl from Mr. Caryll drove him back in sheer terror, and alone those two bore the baronet into the next room and laid him on his bed. Here they did the little that they could; propping him up and stemming the bleeding, what time they waited through what seemed a century for the doctor's coming, Mr. Caryll mad—stark mad for the time—with grief and rage.
The physician arrived at last—a small, bird-like man under a great gray periwig, with pointed features and little eyes that beamed brightly behind horn-rimmed spectacles.
In the ante-room he was met by Mr. Green, who in in a few words told him what had happened. Then the doctor entered the bedchamber alone, and deposing hat and cane, went forward to make his examination.
Mr. Caryll and Bentley stood aside to give place to him. He stooped, felt the pulse, examined the lips of the wound, estimating the locality and direction of the bullet, and his mouth made a clucking sound as of deprecation.
“Very deplorable, very deplorable!” he muttered. “So hale a man, too, despite his years. Very deplorable!” He looked up. “A Jacobite, ye say he is, sir?”
“Will he live?” inquired Mr. Caryll shortly, by way of recalling the man of medicine to the fact that politics was not the business on which he had been summoned.
The doctor pursed his lips, and looked at Mr. Caryll over the top of his spectacles. “He will live—”
“Thank God!” breathed Mr. Caryll.
“—perhaps an hour,” the doctor concluded, and never knew how near was Mr. Caryll to striking him. He turned again to his patient, producing a probe. “Very deplorable!” Mr. Caryll heard him muttering, parrot-like.
A pause ensued, and a silence broken only by occasional cluckings from the little doctor, and Mr. Caryll stood by, a prey to an anguish more poignant than he had ever known. At last there was a groan from the wounded man. Mr. Caryll started forward.
Sir Richard's eyes were open, and he was looking about him at the doctor, the valet, and, lastly, at his adopted son. He smiled faintly at the latter. Then the doctor touched Mr. Caryll's sleeve, and drew him aside.
“I cannot reach the bullet,” he said. “But 'tis no matter for that.” He shook his head solemnly. “The lung has been pierced. A little time now, and—I can do nothing more.”
Mr. Caryll nodded in silence, his face drawn with pain. With a gesture he dismissed the doctor, who went out with Bentley.
When the valet returned, Mr. Caryll was on his knees beside the bed, Sir Richard's hand in his, and Sir Richard was speaking in a feeble, hoarse voice—gasping and coughing at intervals.
“Don't—don't grieve, Justin,” he was saying. “I am an old man. My time must have been very near. I—I am glad that it is thus. It is much better than if they had taken me. They'd ha' shown me no mercy. 'Tis swifter thus, and—and easier.”
Silently Justin wrung the hand he held.
“You'll miss me a little, Justin,” the old man resumed presently. “We have been good friends, lad—good friends for thirty years.”
“Father!” Justin cried, a sob in his voice.
Sir Richard smiled. “I would I were your father in more than name, Justin. Hast been a good son to me—no son could have been more than you.”
Bentley drew nigh with a long glass containing a cordial the doctor had advised. Sir Richard drank avidly, and sighed content when he returned the glass. “How long yet, Justin?” he inquired.
“Not long, father,” was the gloomy answer.
“It is well. I am content. I am happy, Justin. Believe me, I am happy. What has my life been? Dissipated in the pursuit of a phantom.” He spoke musingly, critically calm, as one who already upon the brink of dissolution takes already but an impersonal interest in the course he has run in life.
Judging so, his judgment was clearer than it had yet been; it grew sane, and was freed at last from the hackles of fanaticism; and there was something that he saw in its true proportions. He sighed heavily.
“This is a judgment upon me,” he said presently. He turned his great eyes full upon Justin, and their dance was infinitely wistful. “Do you remember, Justin, that night at your lodging—that first night on which we talked here in London of the thing you were come to do—the thing to which I urged you? Do you recall how you upbraided me for having set you a task that was unworthy and revolting?”
“I remember,” answered Justin, with an inward shudder, fearful of what might follow.
“Oh, you were right, Justin; right, and I was entirely wrong—wickedly wrong. I should have left vengeance to God. He is wreaking it. Ostermore's whole life has been a punishment; his end will be a punishment. I understand it now. We do no wrong in life, Justin, for which in this same life payment is not exacted. Ostermore has been paying. I should have been content with that. After all, he is your father in the flesh, and it was not for you to raise your hand against him. 'Tis what you have felt, and I am glad you should have felt it, for it proves your worthiness. Can you forgive me?”
“Nay, nay, father! Speak not of forgiveness.”
“I have sore need of it.”
“Ah, but not from me; not from me! What is there I should forgive? There is a debt between us I had hoped to repay some day when you were grown truly old. I had looked to tend you in your old age, to be the comfort of it, and the support that you were to my infancy.”
“It had been sweet, Justin,” sighed Sir Richard, smiling upon his adopted son, and putting forth an unsteady hand to stroke the white, drawn face. “It had been sweet. It is sweet to hear that you so proposed.”
A shudder convulsed him. He sank back coughing, and there was froth and blood on his lips. Reverently Justin wiped them, and signed for the cordial to Bentley, who stood, numbed, in the background.
“It is the end,” said Sir Richard feebly. “God has been good to me beyond my deserts, and this is a crowning mercy. Consider, Justin, it might have been the gibbet and a crowd—instead of this snug bed, and you and Bentley here—just two good friends.”
Bentley, losing all self-control at this mention of himself, sank weeping to his knees. Sir Richard put out a hand, and touched his head.
“You will serve Mr. Caryll, Bentley. You'll find him a good master if you are as good a servant to him as you have been to me.”
Then suddenly he made the quick movement of one who bethinks himself of something. He waved Bentley away.
“There is a case in the drawer yonder,” he said, when the servant was beyond earshot. “It contains papers that concern you—certificates of your birth and of your mothers death. I brought them with me as proofs of your identity, against the time when the hour of vengeance upon Ostermore should strike. They twill serve no purpose now. Burn them. They are best destroyed.”
Mr. Caryll nodded understanding, and on Sir Richard's part there followed another fight for breath, another attack of coughing, during which Bentley instinctively approached again.
When the paroxysm was past, Sir Richard turned once more to Justin, who was holding him in his arms, upright, to ease his breathing. “Be good to Bentley,” he murmured, his voice very faint and exhausted now. “You are my heir, Justin. All that I have—I set all in order ere I left Paris. It—it is growing dark. You have not snuffed the candles, Bentley. They are burning very low.”
Suddenly he started forward, held as he was in Justin's arms. He half-raised his arms, holding out his hands toward the foot of the bed. His eyes dilated; the expression of his livid face grew first surprised, then joyous—beatific. “Antoinette!” he cried in a loud voice. “Antoi—”
And thus, abruptly, but in great happiness, he passed.