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Title: The Trespasser, Volume 2.
Author: Gilbert Parker
Release Date: August, 2004 [EBook #6220]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on September 27, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRESPASSER, BY PARKER, V2 ***
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THE TRESPASSER
By Gilbert Parker
Volume 2.
VI. WHICH TELLS OF STRANGE ENCOUNTERS
VII. WHEREIN THE SEAL OF HIS HERITAGE IS SET
VIII. HE ANSWERS AN AWKWARD QUESTION
IX. HE FINDS NEW SPONSORS
X. HE COMES TO "THE WAKING OF THE FIRE"
XI. HE MAKES A GALLANT CONQUEST
CHAPTER VI
WHICH TELLS OF STRANGE ENCOUNTERS
A few hours afterwards Gaston sat on his horse, in a quiet corner of the
grounds, while his uncle sketched him. After a time he said that Saracen
would remain quiet no longer. His uncle held up the sketch. Gaston
could scarcely believe that so strong and life-like a thing were possible
in the time. It had force and imagination. He left his uncle with a
nod, rode quietly through the park, into the village, and on to the moor.
At the top he turned and looked down. The perfectness of the landscape
struck him; it was as if the picture had all grown there--not a suburban
villa, not a modern cottage, not one tall chimney of a manufactory, but
just the sweet common life. The noises of the village were soothing, the
soft smell of the woodland came over. He watched a cart go by idly,
heavily clacking.
As he looked, it came to him: was his uncle right after all? Was he out
of place here? He was not a part of this, though he had adapted himself
and had learned many fine social ways. He knew that he lived not exactly
as though born here and grown up with it all. But it was also true that
he had a native sense of courtesy which people called distinguished.
There was ever a kind of mannered deliberation in his bearing--a part of
his dramatic temper, and because his father had taught him dignity where
there were no social functions for its use. His manner had, therefore,
a carefulness which in him was elegant artifice.
It could not be complained that he did not act after the fashion of
gentle people when with them. But it was equally true that he did many
things which the friends of his family could not and would not have done.
For instance, none would have pitched a tent in the grounds, slept in it,
read in it, and lived in it--when it did not rain. Probably no one of
them would have, at individual expense, sent the wife of the village
policeman to a hospital in London, to be cured--or to die--of cancer.
None would have troubled to insist that a certain stagnant pool in the
village be filled up. Nor would one have suddenly risen in court and
have acted as counsel for a gipsy! At the same time, all were too well-
bred to think that Gaston did this because the gipsy had a daughter with
him, a girl of strong, wild beauty, with a look of superiority over her
position.
He thought of all the circumstances now.
It was very many months ago. The man had been accused of stealing and
assault, but the evidence was unconvincing to Gaston. The feeling in
court was against the gipsy. Fearing a verdict against him, Gaston rose
and cross-examined the witnesses, and so adroitly bewildered both them
and the justices who sat with his grandfather on the case, that, at last,
he secured the man's freedom. The girl was French, and knew English
imperfectly. Gaston had her sworn, and made the most of her evidence.
Then, learning that an assault had been made on the gipsy's van by some
lads who worked at mills in a neighbouring town, he pushed for their
arrest, and himself made up the loss to the gipsy.
It is possible that there was in the mind of the girl what some common
people thought: that the thing was done for her favour; for she viewed it
half-gratefully, half-frowningly, till, on the village green, Gaston
asked her father what he wished to do--push on or remain to act against
the lads.
The gipsy, angry as he was, wished to move on. Gaston lifted his hat to
the girl and bade her good-bye. Then she saw that his motives had been
wholly unselfish--even quixotic, as it appeared to her--silly, she would
have called it, if silliness had not seemed unlikely in him. She had
never met a man like him before. She ran her fingers through her golden-
brown hair nervously, caught at a flying bit of old ribbon at her waist,
and said in French:
"He is honest altogether, sir. He did not steal, and he was not there
when it happened."
"I know that, my girl. That is why I did it."
She looked at him keenly. Her eyes ran up and down his figure, then met
his curiously. Their looks swam for a moment. Something thrilled in
them both. The girl took a step nearer.
"You are as much a Romany here as I am," she said, touching her bosom
with a quick gesture. "You do not belong; you are too good for it. How
do I know? I do not know; I feel. I will tell your fortune," she
suddenly added, reaching for his hand. "I have only known three that I
could do it with honestly and truly, and you are one. It is no lie.
There is something in it. My mother had it; but it's all sham mostly."
Then, under a tree on the green, he indifferent to village gossip, she
took his hand and told him--not of his fortune alone. In half-coherent
fashion she told him of the past--of his life in the North. She then
spoke of his future. She told him of a woman, of another, and another
still; of an accident at sea, and of a quarrel; then, with a low, wild
laugh, she stopped, let go his hand, and would say no more. But her face
was all flushed, and her eyes like burning beads. Her father stood near,
listening. Now he took her by the arm.
"Here, Andree, that's enough," he said, with rough kindness; "it's no
good for you or him."
He turned to Gaston, and said in English:
"She's sing'lar, like her mother afore her. But she's straight."
Gaston lit a cigar.
"Of course." He looked kindly at the girl. "You are a weird sort,
Andree, and perhaps you are right that I'm a Romany too; but I don't know
where it begins and where it ends. You are not English gipsies?" he
added, to the father.
"I lived in England when I was young. Her mother was a Breton--not a
Romany. We're on the way to France now. She wants to see where her
mother was born. She's got the Breton lingo, and she knows some English;
but she speaks French mostly."
"Well, well," rejoined Gaston, "take care of yourself, and good luck to
you. Good-bye--good-bye, Andree." He put his hand in his pocket to give
her some money, but changed his mind. Her eye stopped him. He shook
hands with the man, then turned to her again. Her eyes were on him--hot,
shining. He felt his blood throb, but he returned the look with good-
natured nonchalance, shook her hand, raised his hat, and walked away,
thinking what a fine, handsome creature she was. Presently he said:
"Poor girl, she'll look at some fellow like that one day, with tragedy
the end thereof!"
He then fell to wondering about her almost uncanny divination. He knew
that all his life he himself had had strange memories, as well as certain
peculiar powers which had put the honest phenomena and the trickery of
the Medicine Men in the shade. He had influenced people by the sheer
force of presence. As he walked on, he came to a group of trees in the
middle of the common. He paused for a moment, and looked back. The
gipsy's van was moving away, and in the doorway stood the girl, her hand
over her eyes, looking towards him. He could see the raw colour of her
scarf. "She'll make wild trouble," he said to himself.
As Gaston thought of this event, he moved his horse slowly towards a
combe, and looked out over a noble expanse--valley, field, stream, and
church-spire. As he gazed, he saw seated at some distance a girl
reading. Not far from her were two boys climbing up and down the combe.
He watched them. Presently he saw one boy creep along a shelf of rock
where the combe broke into a quarry, let himself drop upon another shelf
below, and then perch upon an overhanging ledge. He presently saw that
the lad was now afraid to return. He heard the other lad cry out, saw
the girl start up, and run forward, look over the edge of the combe, and
then make as if to go down. He set his horse to the gallop, and called
out. The girl saw him, and paused. In two minutes he was off his horse
and beside her.
It was Alice Wingfield. She had brought out three boys, who had come
with her from London, where she had spent most of the year nursing their
sick mother, her relative.
"I'll have him up in a minute," he said, as he led Saracen to a sapling
near. "Don't go near the horse."
He swung himself down from ledge to ledge, and soon was beside the boy.
In another moment he had the youngster on his back, came slowly up, and
the adventurer was safe.
"Silly Walter," the girl said, "to frighten yourself and give Mr. Belward
trouble."
"I didn't think I'd be afraid," protested the lad; "but when I looked
over the ledge my head went round, and I felt sick--like with the
channel."
Gaston had seen Alice Wingfield several times at church and in the
village, and once when, with Lady Belward, he had returned the
archdeacon's call; but she had been away most of the time since his
arrival. She had impressed him as a gentle, wise, elderly little
creature, who appeared to live for others, and chiefly for her
grandfather. She was not unusually pretty, nor yet young,--quite
as old as himself,--and yet he wondered what it was that made her so
interesting. He decided that it was the honesty of her nature, her
beautiful thoroughness; and then he thought little more about her. But
now he dropped into quiet, natural talk with her, as if they had known
each other for years. But most women found that they dropped quickly
into easy talk with him. That was because he had not learned the small
gossip which varies little with a thousand people in the same
circumstances. But he had a naive fresh sense, everything interested
him, and he said what he thought with taste and tact, sometimes with wit,
and always in that cheerful contemplative mood which influences women.
Some of his sayings were so startling and heretical that they had gone
the rounds, and certain crisp words out of the argot of the North were
used by women who wished to be chic and amusing.
Not quite certain why he stayed, but talking on reflectively, Gaston at
last said:
"You will be coming to us to-night, of course? We are having a barbecue
of some kind."
"Yes, I hope so; though my grandfather does not much care to have me go."
"I suppose it is dull for him."
"I am not sure it is that."
"No? What then?"
She shook her head.
"The affair is in your honour, Mr. Belward, isn't it?
"Does that answer my question?" he asked genially.
She blushed.
"No, no, no! That is not what I meant."
"I was unfair. Yes, I believe the matter does take that colour;
though why, I don't know."
She looked at him with simple earnestness.
"You ought to be proud of it; and you ought to be glad of such a high
position where you can do so much good, if you will."
He smiled, and ran his hand down his horse's leg musingly before he
replied:
"I've not thought much of doing good, I tell you frankly. I wasn't
brought up to think about it; I don't know that I ever did any good in my
life. I supposed it was only missionaries and women who did that sort of
thing."
"But you wrong yourself. You have done good in this village. Why, we
all have talked of it; and though it wasn't done in the usual way--rather
irregularly--still it was doing good."
He looked down at her astonished.
"Well, here's a pretty libel! Doing good 'irregularly'? Why, where have
I done good at all?"
She ran over the names of several sick people in the village whose bills
he had paid, the personal help and interest he had given to many, and,
last of all, she mentioned the case of the village postmaster.
Since Gaston had come, postmasters had been changed. The little pale-
faced man who had first held the position disappeared one night, and in
another twenty-four hours a new one was in his place. Many stories had
gone about. It was rumoured that the little man was short in his
accounts, and had been got out of the way by Gaston Belward.
Archdeacon Varcoe knew the truth, and had said that Gaston's sin was not
unpardonable, in spite of a few squires and their dames who declared it
was shocking that a man should have such loose ideas, that no good could
come to the county from it, and that he would put nonsense into the heads
of the common people. Alice Wingfield was now to hear Gaston's view of
the matter.
"So that's it, eh? Live and let live is doing good? In that case it
is easy to be a saint. What else could a man do? You say that I am
generous--How? What have I spent out of my income on these little
things? My income--how did I get it? I didn't earn it; neither did my
father. Not a stroke have I done for it. I sit high and dry there in
the Court, they sit low there in the village; and you know how they live.
Well, I give away a little money which these people and their fathers
earned for my father and me; and for that you say I am doing good, and
some other people say I am doing harm--'dangerous charity,' and all that!
I say that the little I have done is what is always done where man is
most primitive, by people who never heard 'doing good' preached."
"We must have names for things, you know," she said.
"I suppose so, where morality and humanity have to be taught as Christian
duty, and not as common manhood."
"Tell me," she presently said, "about Sproule, the postmaster."
"Oh, that? Well, I will. The first time I entered the post-office I saw
there was something on the man's mind. A youth of twenty-three oughtn't
to look as he did--married only a year or two also, with a pretty wife
and child. I used to talk to them a good deal, and one day I said to
him: 'You look seedy; what's the matter?' He flushed, and got nervous.
I made up my mind it was money. If I had been here longer, I should have
taken him aside and talked to him like a father. As it was, things slid
along. I was up in town, and here and there. One evening as I came back
from town I saw a nasty-looking Jew arrive. The little postmaster met
him, and they went away together. He was in the scoundrel's hands;
had been betting, and had borrowed first from the Jew, then from the
Government. The next evening I was just starting down to have a talk
with him, when an official came to my grandfather to swear out a warrant.
I lost no time; got my horse and trap, went down to the office, gave
the boy three minutes to tell me the truth, and then I sent him away.
I fixed it up with the authorities, and the wife and child follow the
youth to America next week. That's all."
"He deserved to get free, then?"
"He deserved to be punished, but not as he would have been. There wasn't
really a vicious spot in the man. And the wife and child--what was a
little justice to the possible happiness of those three? Discretion is a
part of justice, and I used it, as it is used every day in business and
judicial life, only we don't see it. When it gets public, why, some one
gets blamed. In this case I was the target; but I don't mind in the
least--not in the least. . . . Do you think me very startling or
lawless?"
"Never lawless; but one could not be quite sure what you would do in any
particular case." She looked up at him admiringly.
They had not noticed the approach of Archdeacon Varcoe till he was very
near them. His face was troubled. He had seen how earnest was their
conversation, and for some reason it made him uneasy. The girl saw him
first, and ran to meet him. He saw her bright delighted look, and he
sighed involuntarily. "Something has worried you," she said caressingly.
Then she told him of the accident, and they all turned and went back
towards the Court, Gaston walking his horse. Near the church they met
Sir William and Lady Belward. There were salutations, and presently
Gaston slowly followed his grandfather and grandmother into the
courtyard.
Sir William, looking back, said to his wife: "Do you think that Gaston
should be told?"
"No, no, there is no danger. Gaston, my dear, shall marry Delia
Gasgoyne."
"Shall marry? wherefore 'shall'? Really, I do not see."
"She likes him, she is quite what we would have her, and he is interested
in her. My dear, I have seen--I have watched for a year."
He put his hand on hers.
"My wife, you are a goodly prophet."
When Archdeacon Varcoe entered his study on returning, he sat down in a
chair, and brooded long. "She must be told," he said at last, aloud.
"Yes, yes, at once. God help us both!"
CHAPTER VII
WHEREIN THE SEAL OF HIS HERITAGE IS SET
"Sophie, when you talk with the man, remember that you are near fifty,
and faded. Don't be sentimental." So said Mrs. Gasgoyne to Lady Dargan,
as they saw Gaston coming down the ballroom with Captain Maudsley.
"Reine, you try one's patience. People would say you were not quite
disinterested."
"You mean Delia! Now, listen. I haven't any wish but that Gaston
Belward shall see Delia very seldom indeed. He will inherit the property
no doubt, and Sir William told me that he had settled a decent fortune on
him; but for Delia--no--no--no. Strange, isn't it, when Lady Harriet
over there aches for him, Indian blood and all? And why? Because this
is a good property, and the fellow is distinguished and romantic-looking:
but he is impossible--perfectly impossible. Every line of his face says
shipwreck."
"You are not usually so prophetic."
"Of course. But I am prophetic now, for Delia is more than interested,
silly chuck! Did you ever read the story of the other Gaston--Sir
Gaston--whom this one resembles? No? Well, you will find it thinly
disguised in The Knight of Five Joys. He was killed at Naseby, my dear;
killed, not by the enemy, but by a page in Rupert's cavalry. The page
was a woman! It's in this one too. Indian and French blood is a sad
tincture. He is not wicked at heart, not at all; but he will do mad
things yet, my dear. For he'll tire of all this, and then--half-mourning
for some one!"
Gaston enjoyed talking with Mrs. Gasgoyne as to no one else. Other women
often flattered him, she never did. Frankly, crisply, she told him
strange truths, and, without mercy, crumbled his wrong opinions. He had
a sense of humour, and he enjoyed her keen chastening raillery. Besides,
her talk was always an education in the fine lights and shadows of this
social life. He came to her now with a smile, greeted her heartily, and
then turned to Lady Dargan. Captain Maudsley carried off Mrs. Gasgoyne,
and the two were left together--the second time since the evening of
Gaston's arrival, so many months before. Lady Dargan had been abroad,
and was just returned.
They talked a little on unimportant things, and presently Lady Dargan
said:
"Pardon my asking, but will you tell me why you wore a red ribbon in your
button-hole the first night you came?"
He smiled, and then looked at her a little curiously. "My luggage had
not come, and I wore an old suit of my father's."
Lady Dargan sighed deeply.
"The last night he was in England he wore that coat at dinner," she
murmured.
"Pardon me, Lady Dargan--you put that ribbon there?"
"Yes."
Her eyes were on him with a candid interest and regard.
"I suppose," he went on, "that his going was abrupt to you?"
"Very--very!" she answered.
She longed to ask if his father ever mentioned her name, but she dared
not. Besides, as she said to herself, to what good now? But she asked
him to tell her something about his father. He did so quietly, picking
out main incidents, and setting them forth, as he had the ability, with
quiet dramatic strength. He had just finished when Delia Gasgoyne came
up with Lord Dargan.
Presently Lord Dargan asked Gaston if he would bring Lady Dargan to the
other end of the room, where Miss Gasgoyne was to join her mother. As
they went, Lady Dargan said a little breathlessly:
"Will you do something for me?"
"I would do much for you," was his reply, for he understood!
"If ever you need a friend, if ever you are in trouble, will you let me
know? I wish to take an interest in you. Promise me."
"I cannot promise, Lady Dargan," he answered, "for such trouble as I have
had before I have had to bear alone, and the habit is fixed, I fear.
Still, I am grateful to you just the same, and I shall never forget it.
But will you tell me why people regard me from so tragical a stand-
point?"
"Do they?"
"Well, there's yourself, and there's Mrs. Gasgoyne, and there's my uncle
Ian."
"Perhaps we think you may have trouble because of your uncle Ian."
Gaston shook his head enigmatically, and then said ironically:
"As they would put it in the North, Lady Dargan, he'll cut no figure in
that matter. I remember for two."
"That is right--that is right. Always think that Ian Belward is bad--bad
at heart. He is as fascinating as--"
"As the Snake?"
"--as the Snake, and as cruel! It is the cruelty of wicked selfishness.
Somehow, I forget that I am talking to his nephew. But we all know Ian
Belward--at least, all women do."
"And at least one man does," he answered gravely. The next minute Gaston
walked down the room with Delia Gasgoyne on his arm. The girl delicately
showed her preference, and he was aware of it. It pleased him--pleased
his unconscious egoism. The early part of his life had been spent among
Indian women, half-breeds, and a few dull French or English folk, whose
chief charm was their interest in that wild, free life, now so distant.
He had met Delia many times since his coming; and there was that in her
manner--a fine high-bred quality, a sweet speaking reserve--which
interested him. He saw her as the best product of this convention.
She was no mere sentimental girl, for she had known at least six seasons,
and had refused at least six lovers. She had a proud mind, not wide,
suited to her position. Most men had flattered her, had yielded to her;
this man, either with art or instinctively, mastered her, secured her
interest by his personality. Every woman worth the having, down in her
heart, loves to be mastered: it gives her a sense of security, and she
likes to lean; for, strong as she may be at times, she is often
singularly weak. She knew that her mother deprecated "that Belward
enigma," but this only sent her on the dangerous way.
To-night she questioned him about his life, and how he should spend the
summer. Idling in France, he said. And she? She was not sure; but she
thought that she also would be idling about France in her father's yacht.
So they might happen to meet. Meanwhile? Well, meanwhile, there were
people coming to stay at Peppingham, their home. August would see that
over. Then freedom.
Was it freedom, to get away from all this--from England and rule and
measure? No, she did not mean quite that. She loved the life with all
its rules; she could not live without it. She had been brought up to
expect and to do certain things. She liked her comforts, her luxuries,
many pretty things about her, and days without friction. To travel?
Yes, with all modern comforts, no long stages, a really good maid, and
some fresh interesting books.
What kind of books? Well, Walter Pater's essays; "The Light of Asia";
a novel of that wicked man Thomas Hardy; and something light--"The
Innocents Abroad"--with, possibly, a struggle through De Musset,
to keep up her French.
It did not seem exciting to Gaston, but it did sound honest, and it was
in the picture. He much preferred Meredith, and Swinburne, and Dumas,
and Hugo; but with her he did also like the whimsical Mark Twain.
He thought of suggestions that Lady Belward had often thrown out; of
those many talks with Sir William, excellent friends as they were, in
which the baronet hinted at the security he would feel if there was a
second family of Belwards. What if he--? He smiled strangely, and
shrank.
Marriage? There was the touchstone.
After the dance, when he was taking her to her mother, he saw a pale
intense face looking out to him from a row of others. He smiled, and the
smile that came in return was unlike any he had ever seen Alice Wingfield
wear. He was puzzled. It flashed to him strange pathos, affection, and
entreaty. He took Delia Gasgoyne to her mother, talked to Lady Belward
a little, and then went quietly back to where he had seen Alice. She was
gone. Just then some people from town came to speak to him, and he was
detained. When he was free he searched, but she was nowhere to be found.
He went to Lady Belward. Yes, Miss Wingfield had gone. Lady Belward
looked at Gaston anxiously, and asked him why he was curious. "Because
she's a lonely-looking little maid," he said, "and I wanted to be kind to
her. She didn't seem happy a while ago."
Lady Belward was reassured.
"Yes, she is a sweet creature, Gaston," she said, and added: "You are a
good boy to-night, a very good host indeed. It is worth the doing," she
went on, looking out on the guests proudly. "I did not think I should
ever come to it again with any heart, but I do it for you gladly. Now,
away to your duty," she added, tapping his breast affectionately with her
fan, "and when everything is done, come and take me to my room."
Ian Belward passed Gaston as he went. He had seen the affectionate
passages.
"'For a good boy!' 'God bless our Home!"' he said, ironically.
Gaston saw the mark of his hand on his uncle's chin, and he forbore
ironical reply.
"The home is worth the blessing," he rejoined quietly, and passed on.
Three hours later the guests had all gone, and Lady Belward, leaning on
her grandson's arm, went to her boudoir, while Ian and his father sought
the library. Ian was going next morning. The conference was not likely
to be cheerful.
Inside her boudoir, Lady Belward sank into a large chair, and let her
head fall back and her eyes close. She motioned Gaston to a seat.
Taking one near, he waited. After a time she opened her eyes and drew
herself up.
"My dear," she said, "I wish to talk with you."
"I shall be very glad; but isn't it late? and aren't you tired,
grandmother?"
"I shall sleep better after," she responded, gently. She then began
to review the past; her own long unhappiness, Robert's silence, her
uncertainty as to his fate, and the after hopelessness, made greater
by Ian's conduct. In low, kind words she spoke of his coming and the
renewal of her hopes, coupled with fear also that he might not fit in
with his new life, and--she could say it now--do something unbearable.
Well, he had done nothing unworthy of their name; had acted, on the
whole, sensibly; and she had not been greatly surprised at certain little
oddnesses, such as the tent in the grounds, an impossible deer-hunt, and
some unusual village charities and innovations on the estate. Nor did
she object to Brillon, though he had sometimes thrown servants'-hall into
disorder, and had caused the stablemen and the footmen to fight. His
ear-rings and hair were startling, but they were not important. Gaston
had been admired by the hunting-field--of which they were glad, for it
was a test of popularity. She saw that most people liked him. Lord
Dunfolly and Admiral Highburn were enthusiastic. For her own part, she
was proud and grateful. She could enjoy every grain of comfort he gave
them; and she was thankful to make up to Robert's son what Robert himself
had lost--poor boy--poor boy!
Her feelings were deep, strong, and sincere. Her grandson had come,
strong, individual, considerate, and had moved the tender courses of her
nature. At this moment Gaston had his first deep feeling of
responsibility.
"My dear," she said at last, "people in our position have important
duties. Here is a large estate. Am I not clear? You will never be
quite part of this life till you bring a wife here. That will give you a
sense of responsibility. You will wake up to many things then. Will you
not marry? There is Delia Gasgoyne. Your grandfather and I would be so
glad. She is worthy in every way, and she likes you. She is a good
girl. She has never frittered her heart away; and she would make you
proud of her."
She reached out an anxious hand, and touched his shoulder. His eyes were
playing with the pattern of the carpet; but he slowly raised them to
hers, and looked for a moment without speaking. Suddenly, in spite of
himself, he laughed--laughed outright, but not loudly.
Marriage? Yes, here was the touchstone. Marry a girl whose family had
been notable for hundreds of years? For the moment he did not remember
his own family. This was one of the times when he was only conscious
that he had savage blood, together with a strain of New World French,
and that his life had mostly been a range of adventure and common toil.
This new position was his right, but there were times when it seemed to
him that he was an impostor; others, when he felt himself master of it
all, when he even had a sense of superiority--why he could not tell;
but life in this old land of tradition and history had not its due
picturesqueness. With his grandmother's proposal there shot up in him
the thought that for him this was absurd. He to pace the world beside
this fine queenly creature--Delia Gasgoyne--carrying on the traditions
of the Belwards! Was it, was it possible?
"Pardon me," he said at last gently, as he saw Lady Belward shrink and
then look curiously at him, "something struck me, and I couldn't help
it."
"Was what I said at all ludicrous?"
"Of course not; you said what was natural for you to say, and I thought
what was natural for me to think, at first blush."
"There is something wrong," she urged fearfully. "Is there any reason
why you cannot marry? Gaston,"--she trembled towards him,--"you have not
deceived us--you are not married?"
"My wife is dead, as I told you," he answered gravely, musingly.
"Tell me: there is no woman who has a claim on you?"
"None that I know of--not one. My follies have not run that way."
"Thank God! Then there is no reason why you should not marry. Oh, when
I look at you I am proud, I am glad that I live! You bring my youth, my
son back; and I long for a time when I may clasp your child in my arms,
and know that Robert's heritage will go on and on, and that there will be
made up to him, somehow, all that he lost. Listen: I am an old,
crippled, suffering woman; I shall soon have done with all this coming
and going, and I speak to you out of the wisdom of sorrow. Had Robert
married, all would have gone well. He did not: he got into trouble,
then came Ian's hand in it all; and you know the end. I fear for you,
I do indeed. You will have sore temptations. Marry--marry soon,
and make us happy."
He was quiet enough now. He had seen the grotesque image, now he was
facing the thing behind it. "Would it please you so very much?" he
said, resting a hand gently on hers.
"I wish to see a child of yours in my arms, dear."
"And the woman you have chosen is Delia Gasgoyne?"
"The choice is for you; but you seem to like each other, and we care for
her."
He sat thinking for a time, then he got up, and said slowly:
"It shall be so, if Miss Gasgoyne will have me. And I hope it may turn
out as you wish."
Then he stooped and kissed her on the cheek. The proud woman, who had
unbent little in her lifetime, whose eyes had looked out so coldly on the
world, who felt for her son Ian an almost impossible aversion, drew down
his head and kissed it.
"Indian and all?" he asked, with a quaint bitterness.
"Everything, my dear," she answered. "God bless you! Good-night."
A few moments after, Gaston went to the library. He heard the voices
of Sir William and his uncle. He knocked and entered. Ian, with
exaggerated courtesy, rose. Gaston, with easy coolness, begged him
to sit, lit a cigar, and himself sat.
"My father has been feeding me with raw truths, Cadet," said his uncle;
"and I've been eating them unseasoned. We have not been, nor are likely
to be, a happy family, unless in your saturnian reign we learn to say,
pax vobiscum--do you know Latin? For I'm told the money-bags and the
stately pile are for you. You are to beget children before the Lord,
and sit in the seat of Justice: 'tis for me to confer honour on you all
by my genius!"
Gaston sat very still, and, when the speech was ended, said tentatively:
"Why rob yourself?"
"In honouring you all?"
"No, sir; in not yourself having 'a saturnian reign'."
"You are generous."
"No: I came here to ask for a home, for what was mine through my father.
I ask, and want, nothing more--not even to beget children before the
Lord!"
"How mellow the tongue! Well, Cadet, I am not going to quarrel. Here
we are with my father. See, I am willing to be friends. But you mustn't
expect that I will not chasten your proud spirit now and then. That you
need it, this morning bears witness."
Sir William glanced from one to the other curiously. He was cold and
calm, and looked worn. He had had a trying half-hour with his son, and
it had told on him.
Gaston at once said to his grandfather: "Of this morning, sir, I will
tell you. I--"
Ian interrupted him.
"No, no; that is between us. Let us not worry my father."
Sir William smiled ironically.
"Your solicitude is refreshing, Ian."
"Late fruit is the sweetest, sir."
Presently Sir William asked Gaston the result of the talk with Lady
Belward. Gaston frankly said that he was ready to do as they wished.
Sir William then said they had chosen this time because Ian was there,
and it was better to have all open and understood.
Ian laughed.
"Taming the barbarian! How seriously you all take it. I am the jester
for the King. In the days of the flood I'll bring the olive leaf. You
are all in the wash of sentiment: you'll come to the wicked uncle one day
for common-sense. But, never mind, Cadet; we are to be friends. Yes,
really. I do not fear for my heritage, and you'll need a helping hand
one of these days. Besides, you are an interesting fellow. So, if you
will put up with my acid tongue, there's no reason why we shouldn't hit
it off."
To Sir William's great astonishment, Ian held out his hand with a
genial smile, which was tolerably honest, for his indulgent nature was
as capable of great geniality as incapable of high moral conceptions.
Then, he had before his eye, "Monmouth" and "The King of Ys."
Gaston took his hand, and said: "I have no wish to be an enemy."
Sir William rose, looking at them both. He could not understand Ian's
attitude, and he distrusted. Yet peace was better than war. Ian's truce
was also based on a belief that Gaston would make skittles of things.
A little while afterwards Gaston sat in his room, turning over events
in his mind. Time and again his thoughts returned to the one thing--
marriage. That marriage with his Esquimaux wife had been in one sense
none at all, for the end was sure from the beginning. It was in keeping
with his youth, the circumstances, the life, it had no responsibilities.
But this? To become an integral part of the life--the English country
gentleman; to be reduced, diluted, to the needs of the convention, and no
more? Let him think of the details:--a justice of the peace: to sit on a
board of directors; to be, perhaps, Master of the Hounds; to unite with
the Bishop in restoring the cathedral; to make an address at the annual
flower show. His wife to open bazaars, give tennis-parties, and be
patron to the clergy; himself at last, no doubt, to go into Parliament;
to feel the petty, or serious, responsibilities of a husband and a
landlord. Monotony, extreme decorum, civility to the world; endless
politeness to his wife; with boys at Eton and girls somewhere else; and
the kind of man he must be to do his duty in all and to all!
It seemed impossible. He rose and paced the floor. Never till this
moment had the full picture of his new life come close. He felt stifled.
He put on a cap, and, descending the stairs, went out into the court-yard
and walked about, the cool air refreshing him. Gradually there settled
upon him a stoic acceptance of the conditions. But would it last?
He stood still and looked at the pile of buildings before him; then he
turned towards the little church close by, whose spire and roof could be
seen above the wall. He waved his hand, as when within it on the day of
his coming, and said with irony:
"Now for the marriage-linen, Sir Gaston!"
He heard a low knocking at the gate. He listened. Yes, there was no
mistake. He went to it, and asked quietly:
"Who is there?"
There was no reply. Still the knocking went on. He quietly opened the
gate, and threw it back. A figure in white stepped through and slowly
passed him. It was Alice Wingfield. He spoke to her. She did not
answer. He went close to her and saw that she was asleep!
She was making for the entrance door. He took her hand gently, and led
her into a side door, and on into the ballroom. She moved towards a
window through which the moonlight streamed, and sat on a cushioned bench
beneath it. It was the spot where he had seen her at the dance. She
leaned forward, looking into space, as she did at him then. He moved
and got in her line of vision.
The picture was weird. She wore a soft white chamber-gown, her hair
hung loose on her shoulders, her pale face cowled it in. The look was
inexpressibly sad. Over her fell dim, coloured lights from the stained-
glass windows; and shadowy ancestors looked silently down from the
armour-hung walls.
To Gaston, collected as he was, it gave an ominous feeling. Why did she
come here even in her sleep? What did that look mean? He gazed intently
into her eyes.
All at once her voice came low and broken, and a sob followed the words:
"Gaston, my brother, my brother!"
He stood for a moment stunned, gazing helplessly at her passive figure.
"Gaston, my brother!" he repeated to himself. Then the painful matter
dawned upon him. This girl, the granddaughter of the rector of the
parish, was his father's daughter--his own sister. He had a sudden
spring of new affection--unfelt for those other relations, his by the
rights of the law and the gospel. The pathos of the thing caught him in
the throat--for her how pitiful, how unhappy! He was sure that, somehow,
she had only come to know of it since the afternoon. Then there had been
so different a look in her face!
One thing was clear: he had no right to this secret, and it must be for
now as if it had never been. He came to her, and took her hand. She
rose. He led her from the room, out into the court-yard, and from there
through the gate into the road.
All was still. They passed over to the rectory. Just inside the gate,
Gaston saw a figure issue from the house, and come quickly towards them.
It was the rector, excited, anxious.
Gaston motioned silence, and pointed to her. Then he briefly whispered
how she had come. The clergyman said that he had felt uneasy about her,
had gone to her room, and was just issuing in search of her. Gaston
resigned her, softly advised not waking her, and bade the clergyman good-
night.
But presently he turned, touched the arm of the old man, and said
meaningly:
"I know."
The rector's voice shook as he replied: "You have not spoken to her?"
"No."
"You will not speak of it?"
"No."
"Unless I should die, and she should wish it?"
"Always as she wishes."
They parted, and Gaston returned to the Court.
CHAPTER VIII
HE ANSWERS AN AWKWARD QUESTION
The next morning Brillon brought a note from Ian Belward, which said that
he was starting, and asked Gaston to be sure and come to Paris. The note
was carelessly friendly. After reading it, he lay thinking. Presently
he chanced to see Jacques look intently at him.
"Well, Brillon, what is it?" he asked genially. Jacques had come on
better than Gaston had hoped for, but the light play of his nature was
gone--he was grave, almost melancholy; and, in his way, as notable as his
master. Their life in London had changed him much. A valet in St.
James's Street was not a hunting comrade on the Coppermine River. Often
when Jacques was left alone he stood at the window looking out on the gay
traffic, scarcely stirring; his eyes slow, brooding. Occasionally,
standing so, he would make the sacred gesture. One who heard him swear
now and then, in a calm, deliberate way,--at the cook and the porter,--
would have thought the matters in strange contrast. But his religion
was a central habit, followed as mechanically as his appetite or the
folding of his master's clothes. Besides, like most woodsmen, he was
superstitious. Gaston was kind with him, keeping, however, a firm hand
till his manner had become informed by the new duties. Jacques's
greatest pleasure was his early morning visits to the stables. Here were
Saracen and Jim the broncho-sleek, savage, playful. But he touched the
highest point of his London experience when they rode in the Park.
In this Gaston remained singular. He rode always with Jacques. Perhaps
he wished to preserve one possible relic of the old life, perhaps he
liked this touch of drama; or both. It created notice, criticism, but he
was superior to that. Time and again people asked him to ride, but he
always pleaded another engagement. He would then be seen with Jacques
plus Jacques's earrings and the wonderful hair, riding grandly in the
Row. Jacques's eyes sparkled and a snatch of song came to his lips at
these times.
No figures in the Park were so striking. There was nothing bizarre, but
Gaston had a distinguished look, and women who had felt his hand at their
waists in the dance the night before, now knew him, somehow, at a grave
distance. Though Gaston did not say it to himself, these were the hours
when he really was with the old life--lived it again--prairie, savannah,
ice-plain, alkali desert. When, dismounting, the horses were taken and
they went up the stairs, Gaston would softly lay his whip across
Jacques's shoulders without speaking. This was their only ritual of
camaraderie, and neglect of it would have fretted the half-breed. Never
had man such a servant. No matter at what hour Gaston returned, he found
Jacques waiting; and when he woke he found him ready, as now, on this
morning, after a strange night.
"What is it, Jacques?" he repeated.
The old name! Jacques shivered a little with pleasure. Presently he
broke out with:
"Monsieur, when do we go back?"
"Go back where?"
"To the North, monsieur."
"What's in your noddle now, Brillon?"
The impatient return to "Brillon" cut Jacques like a whip.
"Monsieur," he suddenly said, his face glowing, his hands opening
nervously, "we have eat, we have drunk, we have had the dance and the
great music here: is it enough? Sometimes as you sleep you call out, and
you toss to the strokes of the tower-clock. When we lie on the Plains of
Yath from sunset to sunrise, you never stir then. You remember when we
sleep on the ledge of the Voshti mountain--so narrow that we were tied
together? Well, we were as babes in blankets. In the Prairie of the Ten
Stars your fingers were on the trigger firm as a bolt; here I have watch
them shake with the coffee-cup. Monsieur, you have seen: is it enough?
You have lived here: is it like the old lodge and the long trail?"
Gaston sat up in bed, looked in the mirror opposite, ran his fingers
through his hair, regarded his hands, turning them over, and then, with
sharp impatience, said:
"Go to hell!"
The little man's face flushed to his hair; he sucked in the air with a
gasp. Without a word, he went to the dressing-table, poured out the
shaving-water, threw a towel over his arm, and turned to come to the bed;
but, all at once, he sidled back, put down the water, and furtively drew
a sleeve across his eyes.
Gaston saw, and something suddenly burned in him. He dropped his eyes,
slid out of bed, into his dressing-gown, and sat down.
Jacques made ready. He was not prepared to have Gaston catch him by the
shoulders with a nervous grip, search his eyes, and say:
"You damned little fool, I'm not worth it!" Jacques's face shone.
"Every great man has his fool--alors!" was the happy reply.
"Jacques," Gaston presently said, "what's on your mind?"
"I saw--last night, monsieur," he said.
"You saw what?"
"I saw you in the court-yard with the lady." Gaston was now very grave.
"Did you recognise her?"
"No: she moved all as a spirit."
"Jacques, that matter is between you and me. I'm going to tell you,
though, two things; and--where's your string of beads?"
Jacques drew out his rosary.
"That's all right. Mum as Manitou! She was asleep; she is my sister.
And that is all, till there's need for you to know more."
In this new confidence Jacques was content. The life was a gilded mess,
but he could endure it now. Three days passed. During that time Gaston
was up to town twice; lunched at Lady Dargan's, and dined at Lord
Dunfolly's. For his grandfather, who was indisposed, he was induced to
preside at a political meeting in the interest of a wealthy local brewer,
who confidently expected the seat, and, through gifts to the party,
a knighthood. Before the meeting, in the gush of--as he put it "kindred
aims," he laid a finger familiarly in Gaston's button-hole. Jacques, who
was present, smiled, for he knew every change in his master's face, and
he saw a glitter in his eye. He remembered when they two were in trouble
with a gang of river-drivers, and one did this same thing rudely: how
Gaston looked down, and said, with a devilish softness: "Take it away."
And immediately after the man did so.
Mr. Sylvester Gregory Babbs, in a similar position, heard a voice say
down at him, with a curious obliqueness:
"If you please!"
The keenest edge of it was lost on the flaring brewer, but his fingers
dropped, and he twisted his heavy watchchain uneasily. The meeting
began. Gaston in a few formal words, unconventional in idea, introduced
Mr. Babbs as "a gentleman whose name was a household word in the county,
who would carry into Parliament the civic responsibility shown in his
private life, who would render his party a support likely to fulfil its
purpose."
When he sat down, Captain Maudsley said: "That's a trifle vague,
Belward."
"How can one treat him with importance?"
"He's the sort that makes a noise one way or another."
"Yes. Obituary: 'At his residence in Babbslow Square, yesterday, Sir S.
G. Babbs, M. P., member of the London County Council. Sir S. G. Babbs,
it will be remembered, gave L100,000 to build a home for the propagation
of Vice, and--'"
"That's droll!"
"Why not Vice? 'Twould be just the same in his mind. He doesn't give
from a sense of moral duty. Not he; he's a bungowawen!"
"What is that?"
"That's Indian. You buy a lot of Indian or halfbreed loafers with
beaver-skins and rum, go to the Mount of the Burning Arrows, and these
fellows dance round you and call you one of the lost race, the Mighty Men
of the Kimash Hills. And they'll do that while the rum lasts. Meanwhile
you get to think yourself a devil of a swell--you and the gods! . . .
And now we had better listen to this bungowawen, hadn't we?"
The room was full, and on the platform were gentlemen come to support
Sir William Belward. They were interested to see how Gaston would
carry it off.
Mr. Babbs's speech was like a thousand others by the same kind of man.
More speeches--some opposing--followed, and at last came the chairman to
close the meeting. He addressed himself chiefly to a bunch of farmers,
artisans, and labouring-men near. After some good-natured raillery at
political meetings in general, the bigotry of party, the difficulty in
getting the wheat from the chaff, and some incisive thrusts at those who
promised the moon and gave a green cheese, who spent their time in
berating their opponents, he said:
"There's a game that sailors play on board ship--men-o'-war and sailing-
ships mostly. I never could quite understand it, nor could any officers
ever tell me--the fo'castle for the men and the quarter-deck for the
officers, and what's English to one is Greek to the other. Well, this
was all I could see in the game. They sat about, sometimes talking,
sometimes not. All at once a chap would rise and say, 'Allow me to
speak, me noble lord,' and follow this by hitting some one of the party
wherever the blow got in easiest--on the head, anywhere! [Laughter.]
Then he would sit down seriously, and someone else spoke to his noble
lordship. Nobody got angry at the knocks, and Heaven only knows what it
was all about. That is much the way with politics, when it is played
fair. But here is what I want particularly to say: We are not all born
the same, nor can we live the same. One man is born a brute, and another
a good sort; one a liar, and one an honest man; one has brains, and the
other hasn't. Now, I've lived where, as they say, one man is as good as
another. But he isn't, there or here. A weak man can't run with a
strong. We have heard to-night a lot of talk for something and against
something. It is over. Are you sure you have got what was meant clear
in your mind? [Laughter, and 'Blowed if we'ave!'] Very well; do not
worry about that. We have been playing a game of 'Allow me to speak, me
noble lord!' And who is going to help you to get the most out of your
country and your life isn't easy to know. But we can get hold of a few
clear ideas, and measure things against them. I know and have talked
with a good many of you here ['That's so! That's so!'], and you know my
ideas pretty well--that they are honest at least, and that I have seen
the countries where freedom is 'on the job,' as they say. Now, don't put
your faith in men and in a party that cry, 'We will make all things new,'
to the tune of, 'We are a band of brothers.' Trust in one that says,
'You cannot undo the centuries. Take off the roof, remove a wall, let in
the air, throw out a wing, but leave the old foundations.' And that is
the real difference between the other party and mine; and these political
games of ours come to that chiefly."
Presently he called for the hands of the meeting. They were given for
Mr. Babbs.
Suddenly a man's strong, arid voice came from the crowd:
"'Allow me to speak, me noble lord!' [Great laughter. Then a pause.]
Where's my old chum, Jock Lawson?"
The audience stilled. Gaston's face went grave. He replied, in a firm,
clear voice.
"In Heaven, my man. You'll never see him more." There was silence for a
moment, a murmur, then a faint burst of applause. Presently John Cawley,
the landlord of "The Whisk o' Barley," made towards Gaston. Gaston
greeted him, and inquired after his wife. He was told that she was very
ill, and had sent her husband to beg Gaston to come. Gaston had dreaded
this hour, though he knew it would come one day. A woman on a death-bed
has a right to ask for and get the truth. He had forborne telling her of
her son; and she, whenever she had seen him, had contented herself with
asking general questions, dreading in her heart that Jock had died a
dreadful or shameful death, or else this gentleman would, voluntarily,
say more. But, herself on her way out of the world, as she feared,
wished the truth, whatever it might be.
Gaston told Cawley that he would drive over at once, and then asked who
it was had called out at him. A drunken, poaching fellow, he was told,
who in all the years since Jock had gone, had never passed the inn
without stopping to say: "Where's my old chum, Jock Lawson?" In the past
he and Jock had been in more than one scrape together. He had learned
from Mrs. Cawley that Gaston had known Jock in Canada.
When Cawley had gone, Gaston turned to the other gentlemen present.
"An original speech, upon my word, Belward," said Captain Maudsley.
Mr. Warren Gasgoyne came.
"You are expected to lunch or something to-morrow, Belward, you remember?
Devil of a speech that! But, if you will 'allow me to speak, me noble
lord,' you are the rankest Conservative of us all."
"Don't you know that the easiest constitutional step is from a republic
to an autocracy, and vice versa?"
"I don't know it, and I don't know how you do it."
"Do what?"
"Make them think as you do."
He waved his hand to the departing crowd.
"I don't. I try to think as they do. I am always in touch with the
primitive mind."
"You ought to do great things here, Belward," said the other seriously.
"You have the trick; and we need wisdom at Westminster."
"Don't be mistaken; I am only adaptable. There's frank confession."
At this point Mr. Babbs came up and said good-night in a large, self-
conscious way. Gaston hoped that his campaign would not be wasted, and
the fluffy gentleman retired. When he got out of earshot in the shadows,
he turned and shook his fist towards Gaston, saying: "Half-breed
upstart!" Then he refreshed his spirits by swearing at his coachman.
Gaston and Jacques drove quickly over to "The Whisk o' Barley." Gaston
was now intent to tell the whole truth. He wished that he had done it
before; but his motives had been good--it was not to save himself. Yet
he shrank. Presently he thought:
"What is the matter with me? Before I came here, if I had an idea I
stuck to it, and didn't have any nonsense when I knew I was right. I am
getting sensitive--the thing I find everywhere in this country: fear of
feeling or giving pain; as though the bad tooth out isn't better than the
bad tooth in. When I really get sentimental I'll fold my Arab tent--so
help me, ye seventy Gods of Yath!"
A little while after he was at Mrs. Cawley's bed, the landlord handing
him a glass of hot grog, Jock's mother eyeing him feverishly from the
quilt. Gaston quietly felt her wrist, counting the pulse-beats; then
told Cawley to wet a cloth and hand it to him. He put it gently on the
woman's head. The eyes of the woman followed him anxiously. He sat down
again, and in response to her questioning gaze, began the story of Jock's
life as he knew it.
Cawley stood leaning on the foot-board; the woman's face was cowled in
the quilt with hungry eyes; and Gaston's voice went on in a low monotone,
to the ticking of the great clock in the next room. Gaston watched her
face, and there came to him like an inspiration little things Jock did,
which would mean more to his mother than large adventures. Her lips
moved now and again, even a smile flickered. At last Gaston came to his
father's own death and the years that followed; then the events in
Labrador.
He approached this with unusual delicacy: it needed bravery to look into
the mother's eyes, and tell the story. He did not know how dramatically
he told it--how he etched it without a waste word. When he came to that
scene in the Fort, the three men sitting, targets for his bullets,--he
softened the details greatly. He did not tell it as he told it at the
Court, but the simpler, sparser language made it tragically clear. There
was no sound from the bed, none from the foot-board, but he heard a door
open and shut without, and footsteps somewhere near.
How he put the body in the tree, and prayed over it and left it there,
was all told; and then he paused. He turned a little sick as he saw the
white face before him. She drew herself up, her fingers caught away the
night-dress at her throat; she stared hard at him for a moment, and then,
with a wild, moaning voice, cried out:
"You killed my boy! You killed my boy! You killed my boy!"
Gaston was about to take her hand, when he heard a shuffle and a rush
behind him. He rose, turned swiftly, saw a bottle swinging, threw up his
hand . . . and fell backwards against the bed.
The woman caught his bleeding head to her breast and hugged it.
"My Jock, my poor boy!" she cried in delirium now. Cawley had thrown
his arms about the struggling, drunken assailant--Jock's poaching friend.
The mother now called out to the pinioned man, as she had done to Gaston:
"You have killed my boy!" She kissed Gaston's bloody face.
A messenger was soon on the way to Ridley Court, and in a little upper
room Jacques was caring for his master.
CHAPTER IX
HE FINDS NEW SPONSORS
Gaston lay for many days at "The Whisk o' Barley." During that time the
inn was not open to customers. The woman also for two days hung at the
point of death, and then rallied. She remembered the events of the
painful night, and often asked after Gaston. Somehow, her horror of her
son's death at his hands was met by the injury done him now. She vaguely
felt that there had been justice and punishment. She knew that in the
room at Labrador Gaston Belward had been scarcely less mad than her son.
Gaston, as soon as he became conscious, said that his assailant must be
got out of the way of the police, and to that end bade Jacques send for
Mr. Warren Gasgoyne. Mr. Gasgoyne and Sir William arrived at the same
time, but Gaston was unconscious again. Jacques, however, told them what
his master's wishes were, and they were carried out; Jock's friend
secretly left England forever. Sir William and Mr. Gasgoyne got the
whole tale from the landlord, whom they asked to say nothing publicly.
Lady Belward drove down each day, and sat beside him for a couple of
hours-silent, solicitous, smoothing his pillow or his wasting hand. The
brain had been injured, and recovery could not be immediate. Hovey the
housekeeper had so begged to be installed as nurse, that her wish was
granted, and she was with him night and day. Now she shook her head at
him sadly, now talked in broken sentences to herself, now bustled about
silently, a tyrant to the other servants sent down from the Court. Every
day also the headgroom and the huntsman came, and in the village Gaston's
humble friends discussed the mystery, stoutly defending him when some one
said it was "more nor gabble, that theer saying o' the poacher at the
meetin.'"
But the landlord and his wife kept silence, the officers of the law took
no action, and the town and country newspapers could do no more than
speak of "A vicious assault upon the heir of Ridley Court." It had
become the custom now to leave Ian out of that question. But the wonder
died as all wonders do, and Gaston made his fight for health.
The day before he was removed to the Court, Mrs. Cawley was helped up-
stairs to see him. She was gaunt and hollow-eyed. Lady Belward and Mrs.
Gasgoyne were present. The woman made her respects, and then stood at
Gaston's bedside. He looked up with a painful smile.
"Do you forgive me?" he asked. "I've almost paid!"
He touched his bandaged head.
"It ain't for mothers to forgi'e the thing," she replied, in a steady
voice, "but I can forgi'e the man. 'Twere done i' madness--there beant
the will workin' i' such. 'Twere a comfort that he'd a prayin' over un."
Gaston took the gnarled fingers in his. It had never struck him how
dreadful a thing it was--so used had he been to death in many forms--till
he had told the story to this mother.
"Mrs. Cawley," he said, "I can't make up to you what Jock would have
been; but I can do for you in one way as much as Jock. This house is
yours from to-day."
He drew a deed from the coverlet, and handed it to her. He had got it
from Sir William that morning. The poor and the crude in mind can only
understand an objective emotion, and the counters for these are this
world's goods. Here was a balm in Gilead. The love of her child was
real, but the consolation was so practical to Mrs. Cawley that the lips
which might have cursed, said:
"Ah, sir, the wind do be fittin' the shore lamb! I' the last Judgen,
I'll no speak agen 'ee. I be sore fretted harm come to 'ee."
At this Mrs. Gasgoyne rose, and in her bustling way dismissed the
grateful peasant, who fondled the deed and called eagerly down the stairs
to her husband as she went.
Mrs. Gasgoyne then came back, sat down, and said: "Now you needn't fret
about that any longer--barbarian!" she added, shaking a finger. "Didn't
I say that you would get into trouble? that you would set the country
talking? Here you were, in the dead of night, telling ghost stories,
and raking up your sins, with no cause whatever, instead of in your bed.
You were to have lunched with us the next day--I had asked Lady Harriet
to meet you, too!--and you didn't; and you have wretched patches where
your hair ought to be. How can you promise that you'll not make a madder
sensation some day?"
Gaston smiled up at her. Her fresh honesty, under the guise of banter,
was always grateful to him. He shook his head, smiled, and said nothing.
She went on.
"I want a promise that you will do what your godfather and godmother
will swear for you."
She acted on him like wine.
"Of course, anything. Who are my godfather and godmother?"
She looked him steadily, warmly in the eyes: "Warren and myself."
Now he understood: his promise to his grandmother and grandfather.
So, they had spoken! He was sure that Mrs. Gasgoyne had objected.
He knew that behind her playful treatment of the subject there was real
scepticism of himself. It put him on his mettle, and yet he knew she
read him deeper than any one else, and flattered him least.
He put out his hand, and took hers.
"You take large responsibilities," he said, "but I will try and justify
you--honestly, yes."
In her hearty way, she kissed him on the cheek. "There," she responded,
"if you and Delia do make up your minds, see that you treat her well.
And you are to come, just as soon as you are able, to stay at Peppingham.
Delia, silly child, is anxious, and can't see why she mustn't call with
me now."
In his room at the Court that night, Gaston inquired of Jacques about
Alice Wingfield, and was told that on the day of the accident she had
left with her grandfather for the Continent. He was not sorry. For his
own sake he could have wished an understanding between them. But now he
was on the way to marriage, and it was as well that there should be no
new situations. The girl could not wish the thing known. There would be
left him, in this case, to befriend her should it ever be needed. He
remembered the spring of pleasure he felt when he first saw other faces
like his father's--his grandfather's, his grandmother's. But this girl's
was so different to him; having the tragedy of the lawless, that
unconscious suffering stamped by the mother upon the child. There was,
however, nothing to be done. He must wait.
Two days later Lady Dargan called to inquire after him. He was lying in
his study with a book, and Lady Belward sent to ask him if he would care
to see her and Lord Dargan's nephew, Cluny Vosse. Lady Belward did not
come; Sir William brought them. Lady Dargan came softly to him, smiled
more with her eyes than her lips, and told him how sorry she had been to
hear of his illness. Some months before Gaston had met Cluny Vosse, who
at once was his admirer. Gaston liked the youth. He was fresh, high-
minded, extravagant, idle; but he had no vices, and no particular vanity
save for his personal appearance. His face was ever radiant with health,
shining with satisfaction. People liked him, and did not discount it by
saying that he had nothing in him. Gaston liked him most because he was
so wholly himself, without guile, beautifully honest.
Now Cluny sat down, tapped the crown of his hat, looked at him cheerily,
and said:
"Got in a cracker, didn't he?"
Gaston nodded, amused.
"The fellows at Brooke's had a talkee-talkee, and they'd twenty different
stories. Of course it was rot. We were all cut up though and hoped
you'd pull through. Of course there couldn't be any doubt of that--
you've been through too many, eh?"
Cluny always assumed that Gaston had had numberless tragical adventures
which, if told, must make Dumas turn in his grave with envy.
Gaston smiled, and laid a hand upon the other's knee. "I'm not shell-
proof, Vosse, and it was rather a narrow squeak, I'm told. But I'm kept,
you see, for a worse fate and a sadder."
"I say, Belward, you don't mean that! Your eyes go so queer sometimes,
that a chap doesn't know what to think. You ought to live to a hundred.
You'll have to. You've got it all--"
"Oh no, my boy, I haven't got anything." He waved his hand pleasantly
towards his grandfather. "I'm on the knees of the gods merely."
Cluny turned on Sir William.
"It isn't any secret, is it, sir? He gets the lot, doesn't he?"
Sir William's occasional smile came.
"I fancy there's some condition about the plate, the pictures, and the
title; but I do not suppose that matters meanwhile."
He spoke half-musingly and with a little unconscious irony, and the boy,
vaguely knowing that there was a cross-current somewhere, drifted.
"No, of course not; he can have fun enough without them, can't he?"
Lady Dargan here soothingly broke in, inquiring about Gaston's illness,
and showing a tactful concern. But the nephew persisted:
"I say, Belward, Aunt Sophie was cut up no end when she heard of it. She
wouldn't go out to dinner that night at Lord Dunfolly's, and, of course,
I didn't go. And I wanted to; for Delia Gasgoyne was to be there, and
she's ripping."
Lady Dargan, in spite of herself, blushed, but without confusion, and
Gaston adroitly led the conversation otherwhere. Presently she said that
they were to be at their villa in France during the late summer, and if
he chanced to be abroad would he come? He said that he intended to visit
his uncle in Paris, but that afterwards he would be glad to visit them
for a short time.
She looked astonished. "With your uncle Ian!"
"Yes. He is to show me art-life, and all that."
She looked troubled. He saw that she wished to say something.
"Yes, Lady Dargan?" he asked.
She spoke with fluttering seriousness.
"I asked you once to come to me if you ever needed a friend. I do not
wait for that. I ask you not to go to your uncle."
"Why?"
He was thinking that, despite social artifice and worldliness, she was
sentimental.
"Because there will be trouble. I can see it. You may trust a woman's
instinct; and I know that man!" He did not reply at once, but presently
said:
"I fancy I must keep my promise."
"What is the book you are reading?" she said, changing the subject, for
Sir William was listening.
He opened it, and smiled musingly.
"It is called Affairs of Some Consequence in the Reign of Charles I.
In reading it I seemed to feel that it was incorrect, and my mind kept
wandering away into patches of things--incidents, scenes, bits of talk
--as I fancied they really were, not apocryphal or 'edited' as here."
"I say," said Cluny, "that's rum, isn't it?"
"For instance," Gaston continued, "this tale of King Charles and
Buckingham." He read it. "Now here is the scene as I picture it." In
quick elliptical phrases he gave the tale from a different stand-point.
Sir William stared curiously at Gaston, then felt for some keys in his
pocket. He got up and rang the bell. Gaston was still talking. He gave
the keys to Falby with a whispered word. In a few moments Falby placed a
small leather box beside Sir William, and retired at a nod. Sir William
presently said: "Where did you read those things?"
"I do not know that I ever read them."
"Did your father tell you them?"
"I do not remember so, though he may have."
"Did you ever see this box?"
"Never before."
"You do not know what is in it?"
"Not in the least."
"And you have never seen this key?"
"Not to my knowledge."
"It is very strange." He opened the box. "Now, here are private papers
of Sir Gaston Belward, more than two hundred years old, found almost
fifty years ago by myself in the office of our family solicitor.
Listen."
He then began to read from the faded manuscript. A mysterious feeling
pervaded the room. Once or twice Cluny gave a dry nervous kind of laugh.
Much of what Gaston had said was here in stately old-fashioned language.
At a certain point the MS. ran:
"I drew back and said, 'As your grace will have it, then--"'
Here Gaston came to a sitting posture, and interrupted.
"Wait, wait!"
He rose, caught one of two swords that were crossed on the wall, and
stood out.
"This is how it was. 'As your grace will have it, then, to no waste of
time!' We fell to. First he came carefully and made strange feints,
learned at King Louis's Court, to try my temper. But I had had these
tricks of my cousin Secord, and I returned his sport upon him. Then he
came swiftly, and forced me back upon the garden wall. I gave to him
foot by foot, for he was uncommon swift and dexterous. He pinched me
sorely once under the knee, and I returned him one upon the wrist, which
sent a devilish fire into his eyes. At that his play became so delicate
and confusing that I felt I should go dizzy if it stayed; so I tried the
one great trick cousin Secord taught me, making to run him through, as a
last effort. The thing went wrong, but checking off my blunder he
blundered too,--out of sheer wonder, perhaps, at my bungling,--and I
disarmed him. So droll was it that I laughed outright, and he, as quick
in humour as in temper, stood hand on hip, and presently came to a smile.
With that my cousin Secord cried: 'The king! the king!' I got me up
quickly--"
Here Gaston, who had in a kind of dream acted the whole scene, swayed
with faintness, and Cluny caught him, saving him from a fall. Cluny's
colour was all gone. Lady Dargan had sat dazed, and Sir William's face
was anxious, puzzled.
A few hours later Sir William was alone with Gaston, who was recovered
and cool.
"Gaston," he said, "I really do not understand this faculty of memory, or
whatever it is. Have you any idea how you come by it?"
"Have we any idea how life comes and goes, sir?"
"I confess not. I confess not, really."
"Well, I'm in the dark about it too; but I sometimes fancy that I'm mixed
up with that other Gaston."
"It sounds fantastic."
"It is fantastic. Now, here is this manuscript, and here is a letter I
wrote this morning. Put them together."
Sir William did so.
"The handwriting is singularly like."
"Well," continued Gaston, smiling whimsically, "suppose that I am Sir
Gaston Belward, Baronet, who is thought to lie in the church yonder, the
title is mine, isn't it?"
Sir William smiled also.
"The evidence is scarce enough to establish succession."
"But there would be no succession. A previous holder of the title isn't
dead: ergo, the present holder, has no right."
Gaston had shaded his eyes with his hand, and he was watching Sir
William's face closely, out of curiosity chiefly. Sir William regarded
the thing with hesitating humour.
"Well, well, suppose so. The property was in the hands of a younger
branch of the family then. There was no entail, as now."
"Wasn't there?" said Gaston enigmatically.
He was thinking of some phrases in a manuscript which he had found in
this box.
"Perhaps where these papers came from there are others," he added.
Sir William lifted his eyebrows ironically. "I hardly think so."
Gaston laughed, not wishing him to take the thing at all seriously. He
continued airily:
"It would be amusing if the property went with the title after all,
wouldn't it, sir?"
Sir William got to his feet and said testily: "That should never be while
I lived!"
"Of course not, sir."
Sir William saw the bull, and laughed, heartily for him.
They bade each other good-night.
"I'll have a look in the solicitor's office all the same," said Gaston to
himself.
CHAPTER X
HE COMES TO "THE WAKING OF THE FIRE"
A few days afterwards Gaston joined a small party at Peppingham. Without
any accent life was made easy for him. He was alone much, and yet, to
himself, he seemed to have enough of company.
The situation did not impose itself conspicuously. Delia gave him no
especial reason to be vain. She had not an exceeding wit, but she had
charm, and her talk was interesting to Gaston, who had come, for the
first time, into somewhat intimate relations with an English girl. He
was struck with her conventional delicacy and honour on one side, and
the limitation of her ideas on the other. But with it all she had some
slight touch of temperament which lifted her from the usual level. And
just now her sprightliness was more marked than it had ever been.
Her great hour seemed come to her. She knew that there had been talk
among the elders, and what was meant by Gaston's visit. Still, they were
not much alone together. Gaston saw her mostly with others. Even a
woman with a tender strain for a man knows what will serve for her
ascendancy: the graciousness of her disposition, the occasional flash of
her mother's temper, and her sense of being superior to a situation--the
gift of every well-bred English girl.
Cluny Vosse was also at the house, and his devotion was divided between
Delia and Gaston. Cluny was a great favourite, and Agatha Gasgoyne, who
had a wild sense of humour, egged him on with her sister, which gave
Delia enough to do. At last Cluny, in a burst of confidence, declared
that he meant to propose to Delia. Agatha then became serious, and said
that Delia was at least four years older than himself, that he was just
her--Agatha's--age, and that the other match would be very unsuitable.
This put Cluny on Delia's defence, and he praised her youth, and hinted
at his own elderliness. He had lived, he had seen It (Cluny called the
world and all therein "It"), he was aged; he was in the large eye of
experience; he had outlived the vices and the virtues of his time, which,
told in his own naive staccato phrases, made Agatha hug herself. She
advised him to go and ask Mr. Belward's advice; begged him not to act
until he had done so. And Cluny, who was blind as a bat when a woman
mocked him, went to Gaston and said:
"See, old chap,--I know you don't mind my calling you that--I've come for
advice. Agatha said I'd better. A fellow comes to a time when he says,
'Here, I want a shop of my own,' doesn't he? He's seen It, he's had It
all colours, he's ready for family duties, and the rest. That's so,
isn't it?"
Gaston choked back a laugh, and, purposely putting himself on the wrong
scent, said:
"And does Agatha agree?"
"Agatha? Come, Belward, that youngster! Agatha's only in on a sisterly-
brotherly basis. Now, see I've got a little load of L s. d., and I'm to
get more, especially if Uncle Dick keeps on thinking I am artless. Well,
why shouldn't I marry?"
"No reason against it, if husband and father in you yearn for bibs and
petticoats."
"I say, Belward, don't laugh!"
"I never was more serious. Who is the girl?"
"She looks up to you as I do-of course that's natural; and if it comes
off, no one'll have a jollier corner chez nous. It's Delia."
"Delia? Delia who?"
"Why, Delia Gasgoyne. I haven't done the thing quite regular, I know.
I ought to have gone to her people first; but they know all about me,
and so does Delia, and I'm on the spot, and it wouldn't look well to be
taking advantage of that with her father and mother-they'd feel bound to
be hospitable. So I've just gone on my own tack, and I've come to Agatha
and you. Agatha said to ask you if I'd better speak to Delia now."
"My dear Cluny, are you very much in love?"
"That sounds religious, doesn't it--a kind of Nonconformist business?
I think she's the very finest. A fellow'd hold himself up, 'd be a deuce
of a swell--and, hang it all, I hate breakfasting alone!"
"Yes, yes, Cluny; but what about a pew in church, with regular
attendance, and a justice of the peace, and little Cluny Vosses on the
carpet?"
Cluny's face went crimson.
"I say, Belward, I've seen It all, of course; I know It backwards, and
I'm not squeamish, but that sounds--flippant-that, with her."
Gaston reached out and caught the boy's shoulder. "Don't do it, Cluny.
Spare yourself. It couldn't come off. Agatha knows that, I fancy. She
is a little sportsman. I might let you go and speak; but I think my
chances are better than yours, Cluny. Hadn't you better let me try
first? Then, if I fail, your chances are still the same, eh?"
Cluny gasped. His warm face went pale, then shot to purple, and finally
settled into a grey ruddiness. "Belward," he said at last, "I didn't
know; upon my soul, I didn't know, or I'd have cut off my head first."
"My dear Cluny, you shall have your chance; but let me go first, I'm
older."
"Belward, don't take me for a fool. Why, my trying what you go to do is
like--is like--"
Cluny's similes failed to come.
"Like a fox and a deer on the same trail?"
"I don't understand that. Like a yeomanry steeplechase to Sandown--is
that it? Belward, I'm sorry. Playing it so low on a chap you like!"
"Don't say a word, Cluny; and, believe me, you haven't yet seen all of
It. There's plenty of time. When you really have had It, you will learn
to say of a woman, not that she's the very finest, and that you hate
breakfasting alone, but something that'll turn your hair white, or keep
you looking forty when you're sixty."
That evening Gaston dressed with unusual care. When he entered the
drawing-room, he looked as handsome as a man need in this world.
His illness had refined his features and form, and touched off his
cheerfulness with a fine melancholy. Delia glowed as she saw the
admiring glances sent his way, but burned with anger when she also saw
that he was to take in Lady Gravesend to dinner; for Lady Gravesend had
spoken slightingly of Gaston--had, indeed, referred to his "nigger
blood!" And now her mother had sent her in to dinner on his arm, she
affable, too affable by a great deal. Had she heard the dry and subtle
suggestion of Gaston's talk, she would, however, have justified her
mother.
About half past nine Delia was in the doorway, talking to one of the
guests, who, at the call of some one else, suddenly left her. She heard
a voice behind her. "Will you not sing?"
She thrilled, and turned to say: "What shall I sing, Mr. Belward?"
"The song I taught you the other day--'The Waking of the Fire.'"
"But I've never sung it before anybody."
"Do I not count?--But, there, that's unfair! Believe me, you sing it
very well."
She lifted her eyes to his:
"You do not pay compliments, and I believe you. Your 'very well' means
much. If you say so, I will do my best."
"I say so. You are amenable. Is that your mood to-night?" He smiled
brightly.
Her eyes flashed with a sweet malice.
"I am not at all sure. It depends on how your command to sing is
justified."
"You cannot help but sing well."
"Why?"
"Because I will help you--make you."
This startled her ever so little. Was there some fibre of cruelty in
him, some evil in this influence he had over her? She shrank, and yet
again she said that she would rather have his cruelty than another man's
tenderness, so long as she knew that she had his-- She paused, and did
not say the word. She met his eyes steadily--their concentration dazed
her--then she said almost coldly, her voice sounding far away:
"How, make me?"
"How fine, how proud!" he said to himself, then added:
"I meant 'make' in the helpful sense. I know the song: I've heard it
sung, I've sung it; I've taught you; my mind will act on yours, and you
will sing it well."
"Won't you sing it yourself? Do, please."
"No; to-night I wish to hear you."
"Why?"
"I will tell you later. Can you play the accompaniment? If not, I--"
"Oh, will you? I could sing it then, I think. You played it so
beautifully the other day--with all those strange chords."
He smiled.
"It is one of the few things that I can play. I always had a taste for
music; and up in one of the forts there was an old melodeon, so I
hammered away for years. I had to learn difficult things at the start,
or none at all, or else those I improvised; and that's how I can play one
or two of Beethoven's symphonies pretty well, and this song, and a few
others, and go a cropper with a waltz. Will you come?"
They moved to the piano. No one at first noticed them. When he sat
down, he said:
"You remember the words?"
"Yes, I learned them by heart."
"Good!"
He gently struck the chords. His gentleness had, however, a firmness, a
deep persuasiveness, which drew every face like a call. A few chords
waving, as it were, over the piano, and then he whispered:
"Now."
"Please go on for a minute longer," she begged.
"My throat feels dry all at once."
"Face away from the rest, towards me," he said gently.
She did so. His voice took a note softly, and held it. Presently her
voice as softly joined it, his stopped, and hers went on:
"In the lodge of the Mother of Men,
In the land of Desire,
Are the embers of fire,
Are the ashes of those who return,
Who return to the world:
Who flame at the breath
Of the Mockers of Death.
O Sweet, we will voyage again
To the camp of Love's fire,
Nevermore to return!"
"How am I doing?" she said at the end of this verse. She really did not
know--her voice seemed an endless distance away. But she felt the
stillness in the drawing-room.
"Well," he said. "Now for the other. Don't be afraid; let your voice,
let yourself, go."
"I can't let myself go."
"Yes, you can: just swim with the music."
She did swim with it. Never before had Peppingham drawing-room heard a
song like this; never before, never after, did any of Delia Gasgoyne's
friends hear her sing as she did that night. And Lady Gravesend
whispered for a week afterwards that Delia Gasgoyne sang a wild love song
in the most abandoned way with that colonial Belward. Really a song of
the most violent sentiment!
There had been witchery in it all. For Gaston lifted the girl on the
waves of his music, and did what he pleased with her, as she sang:
"O love, by the light of thine eye
We will fare oversea,
We will be
As the silver-winged herons that rest
By the shallows,
The shallows of sapphire stone;
No more shall we wander alone.
As the foam to the shore
Is my spirit to thine;
And God's serfs as they fly,--
The Mockers of Death
They will breathe on the embers of fire:
We shall live by that breath,--
Sweet, thy heart to my heart,
As we journey afar,
No more, nevermore, to return!"
When the song was ended there was silence, then an eager murmur, and
requests for more; but Gaston, still lengthening the close of the
accompaniment, said quietly:
"No more. I wanted to hear you sing that song only."
He rose.
"I am so very hot," she said.
"Come into the hall."
They passed into the long corridor, and walked up and down, for a time in
silence.
"You felt that music?" he asked at last.
"As I never felt music before," she replied.
"Do you know why I asked you to sing it?"
"How should I know?"
"To see how far you could go with it."
"How far did I go?"
"As far as I expected."
"It was satisfactory?"
"Perfectly."
"But why--experiment--on me?"
"That I might see if you were not, after all, as much a barbarian as I."
"Am I?"
"No. That was myself singing as well as you. You did not enjoy it
altogether, did you?"
"In a way, yes. But--shall I be honest? I felt, too, as if, somehow,
it wasn't quite right; so much--what shall I call it?"
"So much of old Adam and the Garden? Sit down here for a moment, will
you?"
She trembled a little, and sat.
"I want to speak plainly and honestly to you," he said, looking earnestly
at her. "You know my history--about my wife who died in Labrador, and
all the rest?"
"Yes, they have told me."
"Well, I have nothing to hide, I think; nothing more that you ought to
know: though I've been a scamp one way and another."
"'That I ought to know'?" she repeated.
"Yes: for when a man asks a woman to be his wife, he should be prepared
to open the cupboard of skeletons." She was silent; her heart was
beating so hard that it hurt her.
"I am going to ask you to be my wife, Delia."
She was silent, and sat motionless, her hands clasped in her lap.
He went on
"I don't know that you will be wise to accept me, but if you will take
the risk--"
"Oh, Gaston, Gaston!" she said, and her hands fluttered towards his.
An hour later, he said to her, as they parted for the night:
"I hope, with all my heart, that you will never repent of it, Delia."
"You can make me not repent of it. It rests with you, Gaston; indeed,
indeed, all with you."
"Poor girl!" he said, unconsciously, as he entered his room. He could
not have told why he said it. "Why will you always sit up for me,
Brillon?" he asked a moment afterwards.
Jacques saw that something had occurred. "I have nothing else to do,
sir," he replied. "Brillon," Gaston added presently, "we're in a devil
of a scrape now."
"What shall we do, monsieur?"
"Did we ever turn tail?"
"Yes, from a prairie fire."
"Not always. I've ridden through."
"Alors, it's one chance in ten thousand!"
"There's a woman to be thought of--Jacques."
"There was that other time."
"Well, then?"
Presently Jacques said: "Who is she, monsieur?"
Gaston did not answer. He was thinking hard. Jacques said no more. The
next morning early the guests knew who the woman was, and by noon Jacques
also.
CHAPTER XI
HE MAKES A GALLANT CONQUEST
Gaston let himself drift. The game of love and marriage is exciting, the
girl was affectionate and admiring, the world was genial, and all things
came his way. Towards the end of the hunting season Captain Maudsley had
an accident. It would prevent him riding to hounds again, and at his
suggestion, backed by Lord Dunfolly and Lord Dargan, Gaston became Master
of the Hounds. His grandfather and great-grandfather had been Master of
the Hounds before him. Hunting was a keen enjoyment--one outlet for wild
life in him--and at the last meet of the year he rode in Captain
Maudsley's place. They had a good run, and the taste of it remained with
Gaston for many a day; he thought of it sometimes as he rode in the Park
now every morning--with Delia and her mother.
Jacques and his broncho came no more, or if they did it was at
unseasonable hours, and then to be often reprimanded (and twice arrested)
for furious riding. Gaston had a bad moment when he told Jacques that he
need not come with him again. He did it casually, but, cool as he was,
a cold sweat came on his cheek. He had to take a little brandy to steady
himself--yet he had looked into menacing rifle-barrels more than once
without a tremor. It was clear, on the face of it, that Delia and her
mother should be his companions in the Park, and not this grave little
half-breed; but, somehow, it got on his nerves. He hesitated for days
before he could cast the die against Jacques. It had been the one open
bond of the old life; yet the man was but a servant, and to be treated as
such, and was, indeed, except on rarest occasions. If Delia had known
that Gaston balanced the matter between her and Jacques, her indignation
might perhaps have sent matters to a crisis. But Gaston did the only
possible thing; and the weeks drifted on.
Happy? It was inexplicable even to himself that at times, when he left
Delia, he said unconsciously: "Well, it's a pity!"
But she was happy in her way. His dark, mysterious face with its
background of abstraction, his unusual life, distinguished presence,
and the fact that people of great note sought his conversation, all
strengthened the bonds, and deepened her imagination; and imagination is
at the root of much that passes for love. Gaston was approached at Lord
Dargan's house by the Premier himself. It was suggested that he should
stand for a constituency in the Conservative interest. Lord Faramond,
himself picturesque, acute, with a keen knowledge of character and a
taste for originality, saw material for a useful supporter--fearless,
independent, with a gift for saying ironical things, and some primitive
and fundamental principles well digested.
Gaston, smiling, said that he would only be a buffalo fretting on a
chain.
Lord Faramond replied:
"And why the chain?" He followed this up by saying: "It is but a case of
playing lion-tamer down there. Have one little gift all your own, know
when to impose it, and you have the pleasure of feeling that your fingers
move a great machine, the greatest in the world--yes the very greatest.
There is Little Grapnel just vacant: the faithful Glynn is gone. Come:
if you will, I'll send my secretary to-morrow morning-eh?"
"You are not afraid of the buffalo, sir?"
Lord Faramond's fingers touched his arm, drummed it "My greatest need--
one to roar as gently as the sucking-dove."
"But what if I, not knowing the rules of the game, should think myself
on the corner of the veldt or in an Indian's tepee, and hit out?"
"You do not carry derringers?"
He smiled. "No; but--"
He glanced down at his arms.
"Well, well; that will come one day, perhaps!" Lord Faramond paused,
abstracted, then added: "But not through you. Good-bye, then, good-bye.
Little Grapnel in ten days!"
And it was so. Little Grapnel was Conservative. It was mostly a matter
of nomination, and in two weeks Gaston, in a kind of dream, went down to
Westminster, lunched with Lord Faramond, and was introduced to the House.
The Ladies Gallery was full, for the matter was in all the papers, and a
pretty sensation had been worked up one way and another.
That night, after dinner, Gaston rose to make his maiden speech on a bill
dealing with an imminent social question. He was not an amateur. Time
upon time he had addressed gatherings in the North, and had once stood at
the bar of the Canadian Commons to plead the cause of the half-breeds.
He was pale, but firm, and looked striking. His eyes went slowly round
the House, and he began in a low, clear, deliberate voice, which got
attention at once. The first sentence was, however, a surprise to every
one, and not the least to his own party, excepting Lord Faramond. He
disclaimed detailed and accurate knowledge of the subject. He said this
with an honesty which took away the breath of the House. In a quiet,
easy tone he then referred to what had been previously said in the
debate.
The first thing he did was to crumble away with a regretful kind of
superiority the arguments of two Conservative speakers, to the sudden
amusement of the Opposition, who presently cheered him. He looked up as
though a little surprised, waited patiently, and went on. The iconoclasm
proceeded. He had one or two fixed ideas in his mind, simple principles
on social questions of which he had spoken to his leader, and he never
wavered from the sight of them, though he had yet to state them. The
Premier sat, head cocked, with an ironical smile at the cheering, but he
was wondering whether, after all, his man was sure; whether he could
stand this fire, and reverse his engine quite as he intended. One of the
previous speakers was furious, came over and appealed to Lord Faramond,
who merely said, "Wait."
Gaston kept on. The flippant amusement of the Opposition continued.
Something, however, in his grim steadiness began to impress his own party
as the other, while from more than one quarter of the House there came a
murmur of sympathy. His courage, his stone-cold strength, the disdain
which was coming into his voice, impressed them, apart from his argument
or its bearing on the previous debate. Lord Faramond heard the
occasional murmurs of approval and smiled. Then there came a striking
silence, for Gaston paused. He looked towards the Ladies Gallery. As if
in a dream--for his brain was working with clear, painful power--he saw,
not Delia nor her mother, nor Lady Dargan, but Alice Wingfield! He had a
sting, a rush in his blood. He felt that none had an interest in him
such as she: shamed, sorrowful, denied the compensating comfort which his
brother's love might give her. Her face, looking through the barriers,
pale, glowing, anxious, almost weird, seemed set to the bars of a cage.
Gaston turned upon the House, and flashed a glance towards Lord Faramond,
who, turned round on the Treasury Bench, was looking up at him. He began
slowly to pit against his former startling admissions the testimony of
his few principles, and to buttress them on every side with apposite
observations, naive, pungent. Presently there came a poignant edge to
his trailing tones. After giving the subject new points of view, showing
him to have studied Whitechapel as well as Kicking Horse Pass, he
contended that no social problem could be solved by a bill so crudely
radical, so impractical.
He was saying: "In the history of the British Parliament--" when some
angry member cried out, "Who coached you?"
Gaston's quick eye found the man.
"Once," he answered instantly, "one honourable gentleman asked that of
another in King Charles's Parliament, and the reply then is mine now--
'You, sir!'"
"How?" returned the puzzled member.
Gaston smiled:
"The nakedness of the honourable gentleman's mind!"
The game was in his hands. Lord Faramond twisted a shoulder with
satisfaction, tossed a whimsical look down the line of the Treasury
Bench, and from that Bench came unusual applause.
"Where the devil did he get it?" queried a Minister.
"Out on the buffalo-trail," replied Lord Faramond. "Good fellow!"
In the Ladies Gallery, Delia clasped her mother's hand with delight; in
the Strangers Gallery, a man said softly, "Not so bad, Cadet."
Alice Wingfield's face had a light of aching pleasure. "Gaston, Gaston!"
she said, in a whisper heard only by the woman sitting next to her, who
though a stranger gave a murmur of sympathy.
Gaston made his last effort in a comparison of the state of the English
people now and before she became Cromwell's Commonwealth, and then
incisively traced the social development onwards. It was the work of a
man with a dramatic nature and a mathematical turn. He put the time,
the manners, the movements, the men, as in a picture.
Presently he grew scornful. His words came hotly, like whip-lashes.
He rose to force and power, though his voice was never loud, rather
concentrated, resonant. It dropped suddenly to a tone of persuasiveness
and conciliation, and declaring that the bill would be merely vicious
where it meant to be virtuous, ended with the question:
"Shall we burn the house to roast the pig?"
"That sounds American," said the member for Burton-Halsey, "but he hasn't
an accent. Pig is vulgar though--vulgar."
"Make it Lamb--make it Lamb!" urged his neighbour.
Meanwhile both sides applauded. Maiden speeches like this were not
common. Lord Faramond turned round to him. Another member made way
and Gaston leaned towards the Premier, who nodded and smiled. "Most
excellent buffalo!" he said.
"One day we will chain you--to the Treasury Bench."
Gaston smiled.
"You are thought prudent, sir!"
"Ah! an enemy hath said this."
Gaston looked towards the Ladies Gallery. Delia's eyes were on him;
Alice was gone.
A half-hour later he stood in the lobby, waiting for Mrs. Gasgoyne, Lady
Dargan, and Delia to come. He had had congratulations in the House; he
was having them now. Presently some one touched him on the arm.
"Not so bad, Cadet."
Gaston turned and saw his uncle. They shook hands. "You've a gift that
way," Ian Belward continued, "but to what good? Bless you, the pot on
the crackling thorns! Don't you find it all pretty hollow?"
Gaston was feeling reaction from the nervous work. "It is exciting."
"Yes, but you'll never have it again as to-night. The place reeks with
smugness, vanity, and drudgery. It's only the swells--Derby, Gladstone,
and the few--who get any real sport out of it. I can show you much more
amusing things."
"For instance?"
"'Hast thou forgotten me?' You hungered for Paris and Art and the joyous
life. Well, I'm ready. I want you. Paris, too, is waiting, and a good
cuisine in a cheery menage. Sup with me at the Garrick, and I'll tell you.
Come along. Quis separabit?"
"I have to wait for Mrs. Gasgoyne--and Delia."
"Delia! Delia! Goddess of proprieties, has it come to that!"
He saw a sudden glitter in Gaston's eyes, and changed his tone.
"Well, an' a man will he will, and he must be wished good-luck. So,
good-luck to you! I'm sorry, though, for that cuisine in Paris, and the
grand picnic at Fontainebleau, and Moban and Cerise. But it can't be
helped."
He eyed Gaston curiously. Gaston was not in the least deceived. His
uncle added presently, "But you will have supper with me just the same?"
Gaston consented, and at this point the ladies appeared. He had a thrill
of pleasure at hearing their praises, but, somehow, of all the fresh
experiences he had had in England, this, the weightiest, left him least
elated. He had now had it all: the reaction was begun, and he knew it.
"Well, Ian Belward, what mischief are you at now?" said Mrs. Gasgoyne.
"A picture merely, and to offer homage. How have you tamed our lion,
and how sweetly does he roar! I feed him at my Club to-night."
"Ian Belward, you are never so wicked as when you ought most to be
decent.--I wish I knew your place in this picture," she added brusquely.
"Merely a little corner at their fireside." He nodded towards Delia and
Gaston.
"The man has sense, and Delia is my daughter!"
"Precisely why I wish a place in their affections."
"Why don't you marry one of the women you have--spoiled, and spend the
rest of your time in living yourself down? You are getting old."
"For their own sakes, I don't. Put that to my credit. I'll have but
one mistress only as the sand gets low. I've been true to her."
"You, true to anything!"
"The world has said so."
"Nonsense! You couldn't be."
"Visit my new picture in three months--my biggest thing. You will say
my mistress fares well at my hands."
"Mere talk. I have seen your mistress, and before every picture I have
thought of those women! A thing cannot be good at your price: so don't
talk that sentimental stuff to me."
"Be original; you said that to me thirty years ago."
"I remember perfectly: that did not require much sense."
"No; you tossed it off, as it were. Yet I'd have made you a good
husband. You are the most interesting woman I've ever met."
"The compliment is not remarkable. Now, Ian Belward, don't try to say
clever things. And remember that I will have no mischief-making."
"At thy command--"
"Oh, cease acting, and take Sophie to her carriage." Two hours later,
Delia Gasgoyne sat in her bedroom wondering at Gaston's abstraction
during the drive home. Yet she had a proud elation at his success,
and a happy tear came to her eye.
Meanwhile Gaston was supping with his uncle. Ian was in excellent
spirits: brilliant, caustic, genial, suggestive. After a little while
Gaston rose to the temper of his host. Already the scene in the Commons
was fading from him, and when Ian proposed Paris immediately, he did not
demur. The season was nearly over,
Ian said; very well, why remain? His attendance at the House? Well, it
would soon be up for the session. Besides, the most effective thing he
could do was to disappear for the time. Be unexpected--that was the key
to notoriety. Delia Gasgoyne? Well, as Gaston had said, they were to
meet in the Mediterranean in September; meanwhile a brief separation
would be good for both. Last of all--he did not wish to press it--but
there was a promise!
Gaston answered quietly, at last: "I will redeem the promise."
"When?"
"Within thirty-six hours."
"That is, you will be at my studio in Paris within thirty-six hours from
now?"
"That is it."
"Good! I shall start at eight to-morrow morning. You will bring your
horse, Cadet?"
"Yes, and Brillon."
"He isn't necessary." Ian's brow clouded slightly.
"Absolutely necessary."
"A fantastic little beggar. You can get a better valet in France. Why
have one at all?"
"I shall not decline from Brillon on a Parisian valet. Besides, he comes
as my camarade."
"Goth! Goth! My friend the valet! Cadet, you're a wonderful fellow,
but you'll never fit in quite."
"I don't wish to fit in; things must fit me." Ian smiled to himself.
"He has tasted it all--it's not quite satisfying--revolution next! What
a smash-up there'll be! The romantic, the barbaric overlaps. Well, I
shall get my picture out of it, and the estate too."
Gaston toyed with his wine-glass, and was deep in thought. Strange to
say, he was seeing two pictures. The tomb of Sir Gaston in the little
church at Ridley: A gipsy's van on the crest of a common, and a girl
standing in the doorway.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
Down in her heart, loves to be mastered
I don't wish to fit in; things must fit me
Imagination is at the root of much that passes for love
Live and let live is doing good
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