He thought of Everard, afire with the idea of vengence and to such an extent that he had succeeded in infecting Justin himself with a spark of it. He thought of him with pity almost; pity that a man should obsess his life by such a phantasm as this same vengeance must have been to him. Was it worth while? Was anything worth while, he wondered.
Lord Rotherby approached the table, and took up the garments upon which Mr. Green had finished. He turned them over and supplemented Mr. Green’s search.
“Ye’re welcome to all that ye can find,” sneered Mr. Green, and turned to Mr. Caryll. “Let us have your shoes, sir.”
Mr. Caryll removed his shoes, in silence, and Mr. Green proceeded to examine them in a manner that provoked Mr. Caryll’s profound admiration. He separated the lining from the Spanish leather, and probed slowly and carefully in the space between. He examined the heels very closely, going over to the window for the purpose. That done, he dropped them.
“Your breeches now,” said he laconically.
Meanwhile Leduc had taken up the coat, and with a needle and thread wherewith he had equipped himself he was industriously restoring the stitches that Mr. Green had taken out.
Mr. Caryll surrendered his breeches. His fine Holland shirt went next, his stockings and what other trifles he wore, until he stood as naked as Adam before the fall. Yet all in vain.
His garments were restored to him, one by one, and one by one, with Leduc’s aid, he resumed them. Mr. Green was looking crestfallen.
“Are you satisfied?” inquired Mr. Caryll pleasantly, his good temper inexhaustible.
The spy looked at him with a moody eye, plucking thoughtfully at his lip with thumb and forefinger. Then he brightened suddenly. “There’s your man,” said he, flashing a quick eye upon Leduc, who looked up with a quiet smile.
“True,” said Mr. Caryll, “and there’s my portmantle above-stairs, and my saddle on my horse in the stables. It is even possible, for aught you know, that there may be a hollow tooth or two in my head. Pray let your search be thorough.”
Mr. Green considered him again. “If you had it, it would be upon your person.”
“Yet consider,” Mr. Caryll begged him, holding out his foot that Leduc might put on his shoe again, “I might have supposed that you would suppose that, and disposed accordingly. You had better investigate to the bitter end.”
Mr. Green’s small eyes continued to scrutinize Leduc at intervals. The valet was a silent, serious-faced fellow. “I’ll search your servant, leastways,” the spy announced.
“By all means. Leduc, I beg that you will place yourself at this interesting gentleman’s disposal.”
What time Mr. Caryll, unaided now, completed the resumption of his garments, Leduc, silent and expressionless, submitted to being searched.
“You will observe, Leduc,” said Mr. Caryll, “that we have not come to this country in vain. We are undergoing experiences that would be interesting if they were not quite so dull, amusing if they entailed less discomfort to ourselves. Assuredly, it was worth while to cross to England to study manners. And there are sights for you that you will never see in France. You would not, for instance, had you not come hither, have had an opportunity of observing a member of the noblesse seconding and assisting a tipstaff in the discharge of his duty. And doing it just as a hog wallows in foulness — for the love of it.
“The gentlemen in your country, Leduc, are too fastidious to enjoy life as it should be enjoyed; they are too prone to adhere to the amusements of their class. You have here an opportunity of perceiving how deeply they are mistaken, what relish may lie in setting one’s rank on one side, in forgetting at times that by an accident — a sheer, incredible accident, I assure you, Leduc — one may have been born to a gentleman’s estate.”
Rotherby had drawn himself up, his dark face crimsoning.
“D’ye talk at me, sir?” he demanded. “D’ye dare discuss me with your lackey?”
“But why not, since you search me with my tipstaff! If you can perceive a difference, you are too subtle for me, sir.”
Rotherby advanced a step; then checked. He inherited mental sluggishness from his father. “You are insolent!” he charged Caryll. “You insult me.”
“Indeed! Ha! I am working miracles.”
Rotherby governed his anger by an effort. “There was enough between us without this,” said he.
“There could not be too much between us — too much space, I mean.”
The viscount looked at him furiously. “I shall discuss this further with you,” said he. “The present is not the time nor place. But I shall know where to look for you.”
“Leduc, I am sure, will always be pleased to see you. He, too, is studying manners.”
Rotherby ignored the insult. “We shall see, then, whether you can do anything more than talk.”
“I hope that your lordship, too, is master of other accomplishments. As a talker, I do not find you very gifted. But perhaps Leduc will be less exigent than I.”
“Bah!” his lordship flung at him, and went out, cursing him profusely, Gaskell following at his master’s heels.
CHAPTER V. MOONSHINE
My Lord Ostermore, though puzzled, entertained no tormenting anxiety on the score of the search to which Mr. Caryll was to be submitted. He assured himself from that gentleman’s confident, easy manner — being a man who always drew from things the inference that was obvious — that either he carried no such letter as my lord expected, or else he had so disposed of it as to baffle search.
So, for the moment, he dismissed the subject from his mind. With Hortensia he entered the parlor across the stone-flagged passage, to which the landlady ushered them, and turned whole-heartedly to the matter of his ward’s elopement with his son.
“Hortensia,” said he, when they were alone. “You have been foolish; very foolish.” He had a trick of repeating himself, conceiving, no doubt, that the commonplace achieves distinction by repetition.
Hortensia sat in an arm-chair by the window, and sighed, looking out over the downs. “Do I not know it?” she cried, and the eyes which were averted from his lordship were charred with tears — tears of hot anger, shame and mortification. “God help all women!” she added bitterly, after a moment, as many another woman under similar and worse circumstances has cried before and since.
A more feeling man might have conceived that this was a moment in which to leave her to herself and her own thoughts, and in that it is possible that a more feeling man had been mistaken. Ostermore, stolid and unimaginative, but not altogether without sympathy for his ward, of whom he was reasonably fond — as fond, no doubt, as it was his capacity to be for any other than himself — approached her and set a plump hand upon the back of her chair.
“What was it drove you to this?”
She turned upon him almost fiercely. “My Lady Ostermore,” she answered him.
His lordship frowned, and his eyes shifted uneasily from her face. In his heart he disliked his wife excessively, disliked her because she was the one person in the world who governed him, who rode rough-shod over his feelings and desires; because, perhaps, she was the mother of his unfeeling, detestable son. She may not have been the only person living to despise Lord Ostermore; but she was certainly the only one with the courage to manifest her contempt, and that in no circumscribed terms. And yet, disliking her as he did, returning with interest her contempt of him, he veiled it, and was loyal to his termagant, never suffering himself to utter a complaint of her to others, never suffering others to censure her within his hearing. This loyalty may have had its roots in pride — indeed, no other soil can be assigned to them — a pride that would allow no strangers to pry into the sore places of his being. He frowned now to hear Hortensia’s angry mention of her ladyship’s name; and if his blue eyes moved uneasily under his beetling brows, it was because the situation irked him. How should he stand as judge between Mistress Winthrop — towards whom, as we have seen, he had a kindness — and his wife, whom he hated
, yet towards whom he would not be disloyal?
He wished the subject dropped, since, did he ask the obvious question — in what my Lady Ostermore could have been the cause of Hortensia’s flight — he would provoke, he knew, a storm of censure from his wife. Therefore he fell silent.
Hortensia, however, felt that she had said too much not to say more.
“Her ladyship has never failed to make me feel my position — my — my poverty,” she pursued. “There is no slight her ladyship has not put upon me, until not even your servants use me with the respect that is due to my father’s daughter. And my father,” she added, with a reproachful glance, “was your friend, my lord.”
He shifted uncomfortably on his feet, deploring now the question with which he had fired the train of feminine complaint. “Pish, pish!” he deprecated, “’tis fancy, child — pure fancy!”
“So her Ladyship would say, did you tax her with it. Yet your lordship knows I am not fanciful in other things. Should I, then, be fanciful in this?”
“But what has her ladyship ever done, child?” he demanded, thinking thus to baffle her — since he was acquainted with the subtlety of her ladyship’s methods.
“A thousand things,” replied Hortensia hotly, “and yet not one upon which I may fasten. ’Tis thus she works: by words, half-words, looks, sneers, shrugs, and sometimes foul abuse entirely disproportionate to the little cause I may unwittingly have given.”
“Her ladyship is a little hot,” the earl admitted, “but a good heart; ’tis an excellent heart, Hortensia.”
“For hating-ay, my lord.”
“Nay, plague on’t! That’s womanish in you. ‘Pon honor it is! Womanish!”
“What else would you have a woman? Mannish and raffish, like my Lady Ostermore?”
“I’ll not listen to you,” he said. “Ye’re not just, Hortensia. Ye’re heated; heated! I’ll not listen to you. Besides, when all is said, what reasons be these for the folly ye’ve committed?”
“Reasons?” she echoed scornfully. “Reasons and to spare! Her ladyship has made my life so hard, has so shamed and crushed me, put such indignities upon me, that existence grew unbearable under your roof. It could not continue, my lord,” she pursued, rising under the sway of her indignation. “It could not continue. I am not of the stuff that goes to making martyrs. I am weak, and — and — as your lordship has said — womanish.”
“Indeed, you talk a deal,” said his lordship peevishly. But she did not heed the sarcasm.
“Lord Rotherby,” she continued, “offered me the means to escape. He urged me to elope with him. His reason was that you would never consent to our marriage; but that if we took the matter into our hands, and were married first, we might depend upon your sanction afterwards; that you had too great a kindness for me to withhold your pardon. I was weak, my lord — womanish,” (she threw the word at him again) “and it happened — God help me for a fool! — that I thought I loved Lord Rotherby. And so — and so—”
She sat down again, weakly, miserably, averting her face that she might hide her tears. He was touched, and he even went so far as to show something of his sympathy. He approached her again, and laid a benign hand lightly upon her shoulder.
“But — but — in that case — Oh, the damned villain! — why this mock-parson?”
“Does your lordship not perceive? Must I die of shame? Do you not see?”
“See? No!” He was thoughtful a second; then repeated, “No!”
“I understood,” she informed him, a smile — a cruelly bitter smile — lifting and steadying the corner of her lately quivering lip, “when he alluded to your lordship’s straitened circumstances. He has no disinheritance to fear because he has no inheritance to look for beyond the entail, of which you cannot disinherit him. My Lord Rotherby sets a high value upon himself. He may — I do not know — he may have been in love with me — though not as I know love, which is all sacrifice, all self-denial. But by his lights he may have cared for me; he must have done, by his lights. Had I been a lady of fortune, not a doubt but he would have made me his wife; as it was, he must aim at a more profitable marriage, and meanwhile, to gratify his love for me — base as it was — he would — he would — O God! I cannot say it. You understand, my lord.”
My lord swore strenuously. “There is a punishment for such a crime as this.”
“Ay, my lord — and a way to avoid punishment for a gentleman in your son’s position, even did I flaunt my shame in some vain endeavor to have justice — a thing he knew I never could have done.”
My lord swore again. “He shall be punished,” he declared emphatically.
“No doubt. God will see to that,” she said, a world of faith in her quivering voice.
My lord’s eyes expressed his doubt of divine intervention. He preferred to speak for himself. “I’ll disown the dog. He shall not enter my house again. You shall not be reminded of what has happened here. Gad! You were shrewd to have smoked his motives so!” he cried in a burst of admiration for her insight. “Gad, child! Shouldst have been a lawyer! A lawyer!”
“If it had not been for Mr. Caryll—” she began, but to what else she said he lent no ear, being suddenly brought back to his fears at the mention of that gentleman’s name.
“Mr. Caryll! Save us! What is keeping him?” he cried. “Can they — can they—”
The door opened, and Mr. Caryll walked in, ushered by the hostess. Both turned to confront him, Hortensia’s eyes swollen from her weeping.
“Well?” quoth his lordship. “Did they find nothing?”
Mr. Caryll advanced with the easy, graceful carriage that was one of his main charms, his clothes so skilfully restored by Leduc that none could have guessed the severity of the examination they had undergone.
“Since I am here, and alone, your lordship may conclude such to be the case. Mr. Green is preparing for departure. He is very abject; very chap-fallen. I am almost sorry for Mr. Green. I am by nature sympathetic. I have promised to make my complaint to my Lord Carteret. And so, I trust there is an end to a tiresome matter.”
“But then, sir?” quoth his lordship. “But then — are you the bearer of no letter?”
Mr. Caryll shot a swift glance over his shoulder at the door. He deliberately winked at the earl. “Did your lordship expect letters?” he inquired. “That was scarcely reason enough to suppose me a courier. There is some mistake, I imagine.”
Between the wink and the words his lordship was bewildered.
Mr. Caryll turned to the lady, bowing. Then he waved a hand over the downs. “A fine view,” said he airily, and she stared at him. “I shall treasure sweet memories of Maidstone.” Her stare grew stonier. Did he mean the landscape or some other matter? His tone was difficult to read — a feature peculiar to his tone.
“Not so shall I, sir,” she made answer. “I shall never think of it other than with burning cheeks — unless it be with gratitude to your shrewdness which saved me.”
“No more, I beg. It is a matter painful to you to dwell on. Let me exhort you to forget it. I have already done so.”
“That is a sweet courtesy in you.”
“I am compounded of sweet courtesy,” he informed her modestly.
His lordship spoke of departure, renewing his offer to carry Mr. Caryll to town in his chaise. Meanwhile, Mr. Caryll was behaving curiously. He was tiptoeing towards the door, along the wall, where he was out of line with the keyhole. He reached it suddenly, and abruptly pulled it open. There was a squeal, and Mr. Green rolled forward into the room. Mr. Caryll kicked him out again before he could rise, and called Leduc to throw him outside. And that was the last they saw of Mr. Green at Maidstone.
They set out soon afterwards, Mr. Caryll travelling in his lordship’s chaise, and Leduc following in his master’s.
It was an hour or so after candle-lighting time when they reached Croydon, the country lying all white under a full moon that sailed in a clear, calm sky. His lordship swore that he would go no farther that
night. The travelling fatigued him; indeed, for the last few miles of the journey he had been dozing in his corner of the carriage, conversation having long since been abandoned as too great an effort on so bad a road, which shook and jolted them beyond endurance. His lordship’s chaise was of an old-fashioned pattern, and the springs far from what might have been desired or expected in a nobleman’s conveyance.
They alighted at the “Bells.” His lordship bespoke supper, invited Mr. Caryll to join them, and, what time the meal was preparing, went into a noisy doze in the parlor’s best chair.
Mistress Winthrop sauntered out into the garden. The calm and fragrance of the night invited her. Alone with her thoughts, she paced the lawn a while, until her solitude was disturbed by the advent of Mr. Caryll. He, too, had need to think, and he had come out into the peace of the night to indulge his need. Seeing her, he made as if to withdraw again; but she perceived him, and called him to her side. He went most readily. Yet when he stood before her in an attitude of courteous deference, she was at a loss what she should say to him, or, rather, what words she should employ. At last, with a half-laugh of nervousness, “I am by nature very inquisitive, sir,” she prefaced.
“I had already judged you to be an exceptional woman,” Mr. Caryll commented softly.
She mused an instant. “Are you never serious?” she asked him.
“Is it worth while?” he counter-questioned, and, whether intent or accident, he let her see something of himself. “Is it even amusing — to be serious?”
“Is there in life nothing but amusement?”
“Oh, yes — but nothing so vital. I speak with knowledge. The gift of laughter has been my salvation.”
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 193