Complete Works of a E W Mason

by A. E. W. Mason

  And Sir James Elliot was freed from his speculations.

  Henry Scoble was pressing hard, breathing hard. His lips were drawn back from his teeth in a grin, but a grin of surprise, of uneasiness. He wasn’t fighting an Italian opera singer ready to sink on a silken knee and bleat for mercy. He was fighting one of his own blood and there was no bearing him down by a show of ferocity. Julian might look fragile as a girl with a face to match, but the face was white and dry in the moonlight and his breath came easily. He was defending himself so far, on the watch for his moment, with a dexterity and suppleness given to him by months of practice intended for this one hour. He had no doubts, no qualms. He might have been in a fencing-school, but that his purpose was as an aura about him and his eyes had the blue steel of his sword. The end came swiftly. Julian’s blade seemed to twine like a snake round Henry Scoble’s, hold it in a lock and bear it down. Julian disengaged, lunged at his opponent’s heart and the point of the sword shone beyond the back below the shoulder-blades. Henry Scoble’s sword rattled upon the stone floor of the porch, a fraction of a second before his body crashed. Julian wrenched out his rapier and stood back. Henry Scoble’s body was convulsed, the knees drawn up to the chin in a spasm — could death be so ungainly, Elliot asked himself? — then it relaxed and lay still. For a few moments the surgeon bent over him, then he sat back on his heels and closed the dead man’s eyes.

  It was no longer Brute Bellingham who took control.

  “Will you wait with him, Dr. Conway?” said Julian. It was an order rather than a request. “I will send you help to carry him upstairs.”

  He turned upon his heel and with the other men behind him he walked back through the open window into the lighted drawing-room. As he reached the glass doors there was a flash of pale blue behind them. As he strode into the room he saw Frances Scoble leaning for support against the corner, her right arm outstretched against the wall to keep herself from falling, the other hanging at her side, rigid, with the palm of her hand pressed against the wall behind her. Her mouth was open, her face working in a spasm of grins, and every now and then a dreadful little laugh broke from her throat. Her eyes were bright with the madness of fear. Hatred and courage and disdain — there was no room in her now for any of these feelings. Fear possessed her from the soles of her feet to the hair which stirred upon her head. And indeed Julian, with his eyes blazing, his sword arm bare to the shoulder and his sword straight at his side dripping blood upon the carpet, made a figure pitiless enough.

  But he was not aware of the sword which he held and there was no satisfaction in his voice.

  “Frances, I have thought and thought and thought, how I could make you pay for your crime,” he said, and he spoke as though there had been no answer to his thoughts but weariness. “But the crime was irreparable and there was no way. You have won, my good sister,” and he made a movement with his sword, dismissing her. For a moment she did not understand. She stood clinging to the wall, awaiting the sword’s red point. Then with the speed of an animal she ran, her shoulders bent, her hands clutching at her skirts. To the men who had seen her moving always with a high carriage, there was something shockingly ignoble in her panic. They could hear her sobbing in her terror as she ran. She tore the door open and left it open. They heard some cries of alarm and astonishment — for by this time all the servants were clustered in the hall — and then, as those noises ceased, the hurried tapping of her heels upon the stairs.

  Bellingham puffed out his cheeks with a great sigh of relief.

  “She has gone to her room.”

  Julian shook his head.

  “To her boy’s room, Brute,” he corrected, with a queer smile on his face. “Listen!”

  It was not long before the others heard for what Julian was listening — a key turned in a lock. Julian had a picture of Frances Scoble standing behind the locked door in her child’s room, defending him — against no one. It is not to be wondered at if, with recollections of a hut above the Bay of Naples, where there were no doors to be locked, and no one to lock them, his smile was bitter.

  He went out into the hall and called Gurton to him.

  “Take four of the men and a cloak. Go out by the door to the south porch. You will find Dr. Conway there. You will carry Mr. Scoble up to his room. Meanwhile, send the rest of the servants to their beds. You will bring Dr. Conway to me when all is done.”

  “Very well, my Lord,” Gurton answered, and Julian went back into the drawing-room and shut the door.

  “I shall ask you gentlemen to be patient for a little while,” he said, and only then did he become aware that he was still holding by the hilt his naked sword. The sheath lay upon the table by Henry Scoble’s.

  He sheathed the sword and handed it with Scoble’s sheath to Bellingham. “I shall ask Lady Fritton to join us. So we will observe the courtesies.”

  Bellingham carried the sheath and the sheathed sword into the Library. Julian rolled down his right sleeve and smoothed out the lace ruffle. He carefully straightened his cravat before a mirror, put on his white satin waistcoat and buttoned it, slipped on his embroidered velvet coat and carefully lifted the bag in which his hair was tied clear of it. In the mirror he saw the eyes of Sir James Elliot watching him with amazement. He turned round to him savagely: “Have you forgotten Ferrara, Sir James?” he cried. “And the one reward for the students of my class?” Actually it was policy and not coxcombry which set him to the careful arrangement of his dress before the mirror. He had his plan worked out and clear to the last letter, but before he could inscribe the first letter, he must have the help of the ladies of the house. He was the more likely to get that if he presented himself to them with the customary deference of an ordered attire. Spick and span might win the day where the evidence of violence might lose it. He had hardly finished before Dr. Conway and Gurton came down the stairs again.

  “Will you sit down, Dr. Conway? Gurton, I shall want you too,” said Julian.

  He passed through the hall which was empty now into the smaller drawing-room where the ladies were huddled and talking in whispers. They stopped as he came in and shrank even closer together. It was clear that already they knew of the dead body stretched on its bed in the darkness of the room upstairs.

  “I ask for your counsel, Lady Fritton,” he said with a bow. And to the others, “Her Ladyship will return to you in a little while.”

  The old lady had courage and knowledge born of her years and her keen intelligence. Reasonableness was never more needed than in these unreasonable and desperate surroundings. She had to calm the terrors of her younger companions. Therefore she must tread carefully the ways of the world.

  “I shall be glad of your arm, my Lord,” she said to Julian as she rose, and she laid her hand without a tremor in the crook of his elbow. There was a little movement of repulsion amongst the ladies she was leaving, but she turned to them at once with a quick reproof. “If you will wait, I will come back to you. Now,” and after a moment’s pause, “Julian.”

  Julian led her to a chair in the drawing-room and took his stand in front of them all. But there was no penitence nor appeal in either his attitude or his voice.

  “There is one of two ways to be taken,” he said gravely. “Each with its own consequences. I have thought of them both for years and I see no other. I have no doubt which I should choose, but the decision rests with you.”

  “Let us hear!” said Elliot.

  “We can publish the truth — all of it. From the day of San Januarius in Naples eight years ago, until this minute, when Henry Scoble lies punished for his crime. What would happen to Frances Scoble beyond the universal horror and detestation in which she would be held, whether she could or would be tried in England for a crime for which the penalty is death in the country where it was committed, I don’t know. What would happen to me, I do know,” and his voice strengthened with just a hint of menace. “I should establish my tide before my peers, I should plead my clergy, and I should go scot-free and j
ustified.”

  A murmur of agreement, warm and hearty, followed upon his words.

  “But there’s Grest,” he continued, and suddenly his voice broke upon the name, so that for a few seconds he must needs be silent; so deep was the love he bore to his home, so intolerable the renunciation which he had forced himself to the brink of making. “There’s Grest,” he resumed, and he spread out his hands as though with that gesture he embraced it all. “This big house should be noisy with children, its lands want young successors growing up on them amongst its people and its farms, with the love of them, the care for them sinking deeper and deeper in their bones with every hour of every day. Therefore,” — and again he paused, and again he spoke, but in a louder voice so that all might take note and hold it against him if he went back upon his word—” Therefore, Grest is not for me. By a woman’s hatred for a child who never did her conscious wrong, I am for life an outcast.”

  No one spoke at all. They were country people, moved by just the same deep, shy love of the soil as he was. They could understand his renunciation of it for the sake of it.

  But how was it to be done? How was the secret to be kept? Julian turned to that unspoken question. He looked at Conway, the doctor.

  “It depends upon you, Sir. Men die quickly, suddenly. A pleurisy, a fever, a heart unequal to its owner’s ambitions — it is not for me to choose the malady.”

  Dr. Conway sat, rather white and very still, with all the eyes of that small company upon him. He was an honest, competent, respectable man who had never till now swerved an inch from the code of his profession. But he was of that country. His father had doctored the villagers and the people at the great house before him, and his father’s father before that. Better than them all, he understood the harm which would be done if the truth were known, the upset of all the traditions of the countryside, the arraignment, whether there was a criminal trial or no, of a great house. So many men saw only the worst. They would forget all that Grest had done to better the welfare of its tenants and improve its lands. In every alehouse, and farm, and cottage, the malicious, the cynic, the man or woman who knows that the world has gone out of its way to spite him, would have right of speech. The county would buzz, there would be mud thrown and not merely muddy words, as the young Linchcombe rode out in his red coat to the meet, or his mother drove past in her carriage. If this boy could forego so much, even to the punishment of Frances Scoble, how could he stand upon the nice letter of his calling? He nodded his head.

  “I run with the pack, Lord Linchcombe.”

  “I thank you,” said Julian, and now he turned his eyes towards Lady Fritton, and his face softened. The tears were running down her cheeks and she made no effort to check them. She lifted her head and tried to dry her eyes with a wisp of handkerchief.

  “Can you answer for the ladies, do you think?” Julian asked.

  She too was slow in answering.

  “I never thought an old, dried-up woman could have so much water at the back of her eyes. Aye, boy, the women’ll not talk. They have too much to lose if they do. I am much more afraid of the gentlemen in their cups.” The old lady glared at Brute Bellingham and his friends. “These young sparks, with the port decanter swinging round the table, — no wonder they send the ladies out of the room lest we should learn the real art of gossiping — aye, and the proper round language to practise it.” The young gentlemen looked duly chastened and contrite. They understood that Lady Fritton had got to be angry with someone and they were content to be her whipping-boy. Moreover, there was a great deal of truth in what she said.

  “But in this case,” said Brute Bellingham, “we pledge our word and will keep it,” and he added with the awkward manner of his kind when moved by a sentiment beyond the ordinary depth. “We shall none of us forget Lord Linchcombe for his own sake, apart from the debt we shall owe to him.”

  Charles Bassett gave a gruff assent. Robert Joyce actually clapped his hands and Julian turned to Gurton. But Gurton was flustered. Some of the house-servants knew, of course, that Mr. Henry Scoble had been killed in a duel, and some of them that his young Lordship had returned from his grave. But they were in a confusion. It was the affair of the gentlemen and had better be left to them. They were for the most part sons and daughters of old servants and their loyalty could be trusted. In time, of course, there would be a little talk, but if nothing happened to bear it out, it would die away. He would do his best, as in duty bound, to carry out his Lordship’s orders. Thus it was arranged.

  Lady Fritton went off to the ladies and thence to Frances Scoble’s room. There would be no shooting party in the morning and both Bassett and Joyce would return to their houses with the news of Henry Scoble’s sudden illness. The doctor would come in the morning, and on the day after, Henry Scoble, Earl of Linchcombe, would die. Meanwhile, Frances and her son would keep their rooms.

  “I shall sleep in my old room to-night,” Julian said to the butler.

  “My Lord, a fire is lit and your clothes laid out,” Gurton replied. “I carried your portmanteau to that room as soon as your Lordship’s chaise arrived.”

  “Thank you,” said Julian, laying a hand upon the older man’s shoulder with a smile. “I wondered how it was that you were so quick in bringing me that roll of papers.”

  “Ah! I had forgotten them!” Bellingham exclaimed and he went over to the corner of the room where he had laid them down. But Julian stopped him before he reached them.

  “Brute, I shall be obliged if you will stay at Grest and dine with me to-morrow. Just you and Sir James.”

  “Of course — if you wish.”

  “I should like to spend the day quite alone,” Julian continued in a quiet, even voice. “But at dinner I shall be very glad of your company. Will you keep the papers until then?”

  Brute Bellingham carried the papers away to his bedroom and Sir James and Julian were left together in the big drawing-room. Of the two, Sir James Elliot looked the more troubled and unhappy. Julian watched him without a word for a minute or two, and then what Elliot had come to know as his impish grin broke over the boy’s face.

  “I know what you want, old friend,” he cried, “but I can’t give it you.”

  “And what’s that?” asked the bewildered Sir James.

  “A great big goblet of ratafia,” said Julian.

  XXX. A DAY IN THE COUNTRY

  JULIAN WENT AWAY to that big room on the ground floor where he had slept as a boy. The same dark green curtains draped the windows, the same pictures hung upon the walls. A bright wood fire was burning on the hearth. The candles were lit. Gurton was waiting for him. Nothing had been changed except that now it was full of memories, whereas before it had been rich with hopes — hopes for a fine day, hopes of a new pony, hopes of a wooden leg and an admiral’s epaulets. But there had been grim moments, even in those days, when a woman had bent over him and willed his dreams. He sat down upon the side of the bed and Gurton kneeled in front of him and unbuckled his shoes as he had done a hundred times.

  “Gurton!”

  “My Lord.”

  “Who has slept in my room since I went away?”

  “No one, my Lord. Your Lordship slept here last.”

  “I am glad,” said Julian and he uttered a little laugh of great pleasure as he stretched out the other foot. He was silent for a few moments and then again:

  “Gurton.”

  “My Lord.”

  “Is Wates still here?”

  “The head keeper?”

  “Yes.”

  Gurton thrust out a lower lip.

  “He’s here, my Lord, and just as hoity-toity and Lord of the Manor and damn-those-foxhounds as ever.”

  Julian laughed.

  “I liked Wates, old friend.”

  Gurton admitted grudgingly.

  “I’ll not deny but what he had a proper respect for your Lordship.”

  “He was going to teach me to shoot flying the next year,” said Julian.

  But the nex
t year Julian was in the warm upper room of the Conservatory of St. Onofrio and he was being taught to aim at high notes instead of high birds.

  “’Tis all the fashion now, my Lord.”

  Again there was a pause and again Julian broke it.

  “Wates shall give me a lesson to-morrow, Gurton.” Gurton lifted a face eager with hope, but before he could speak Julian shook his head gently:

  “Only one lesson, old friend. I told you that I had come back to Grest for a night and a day. I was wrong. It’s for two nights and a day, but that’s all.” Gurton’s head drooped and his fingers trembled over a very refractory buckle.

  “I want Wates at eight o’clock, Gurton. My one day shall be a long one;” and as he turned on his side in his bed, he wondered whether, when he slept in this room as a boy, he had ever longed for a fine day on the morrow more eagerly than he did to-night.

  Wates was ready at eight o’clock by the gun room door with a brown setter at his heels, a powder horn slung across his shoulder and a gun in his hand.

  “It’s a new gun, my Lord,” he said as he touched his hat. “I thought as you might like as it were a gun that nobody had used.”

  Behind that gruff voice and weather-beaten face, there was a delicacy of thought which went to Julian’s heart.

  “That was kind of you, Wates.”

  “Just in the way of my dooty, my Lord. We’ll take the home farm. We’ll find a covey or two by the hedges.”

  The day was as fine a September morning as an Englishman abroad ever ached for. The sun was warm and there was a freshness in the air, and where there was shade the dew was still a veil of grey upon the grass. In the wheat fields the sheaves were golden and the apples were red on the orchard trees. Julian made no great figure in his first attempt at “shooting flying,” firing for the most part under the birds as they went away and behind them as they went across him. But as the morning grew, he began under Wates’ tuition to swing his gun and by mid-day he had eight to his bag.