Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  “Not before that child!” he said coolly. He forced his eyes to quit the dark muzzle which threatened him and to glance aside.

  There was no one there, but Woolley turned to look, and in an instant Walton sprang upon him, and, knocking up the pistol with his stick, closed with him. The one loaded barrel exploded in the air, and the men went writhing and stumbling to and fro, Woolley striking savagely at the other’s face with the muzzle of the pistol. The taller man contented himself with parrying these attacks, while he clutched Woolley’s left wrist with his disengaged hand.

  Presently they were down in a heap together. Then they rose and drew apart, breathless and dishevelled, but there remained unnoticed on the ground between them a tiny white object, a small packet about the size of a letter. It was very light, for in the twinkling of an eye the wind turned it over and over, and carried it three or four paces away.

  “You villain!” Walton gasped, trembling with excitement. His nerves were shaken as much by the narrowness of his escape as by the struggle. “You would have murdered me!”

  “I would!” the other said, with vengeful emphasis, and the two men stood a moment glaring at one another. Meanwhile the wind, toying with the white packet, rolled it slowly along the path; then, getting under it at a place where a break in the ridge produced an eddy, it began to hoist it merrily up the slope. At this point Walton’s eye, straying for a second from his opponent, alighted on it.

  Just then Woolley spoke. “You have had a lucky escape!” he said, with a reckless gesture, half menace, half farewell. “Good-bye! Don’t come across my path again, or you will fail to come off so easily. And don’t — don’t, you fool!” he added, returning in a fresh fit of anger when he had already turned his back, “pat a man on the head when you have got him down, or he will — —”

  He stopped short, his hand at his breast pocket. For a moment, while his face underwent a marvellous change, he searched frantically in the pocket, in other pockets. “My notes!” he panted. “They were here! Where are they?” Then a dreadful expression of rage and suspicion distorted his features, and he advanced on Walton, his hands outstretched. “What have you done with them?” he cried, scarcely able to articulate. “Where are they?”

  “There!” the other answered sternly. He pointed to a little space of clear turf halfway up the slope. On this the white packet could be seen fluttering gently over and over. “There! But if you are not pretty quick, you villain, you will pay a heavy price for this business!”

  With an oath Woolley turned and started up the hill, the tall man watching his exertions with grim satisfaction. The pursuer speedily overtook the notes, but to gain possession of them was a different matter. Three times he stooped to clutch them, and three times a mischievous gust swept them away. Then he tripped and fell, and his hat tumbled off, and his oaths flew freely on the breeze.

  Altogether it was not a dignified retreat, but it was a very characteristic one. The last time Walton got a glimpse of him, he was on the crown of the hill. He was still running, bent double with his face to the ground, and his hand outstretched. Walton never saw him again.

  The latter, getting back to the house unnoticed, said nothing for the time of what had happened. But at night before he went to bed he told the doctor. “He ought to go to prison!” the latter said sternly. He was shocked beyond measure.

  “So ought I,” said Walton, “if it is to come to prisons.”

  “Pish!”

  A little word, but it cheered the tall gentleman, who, notwithstanding his escape, stood in need of cheering. He had not seen Pleasance since she had escaped from the room after hearing his explanation. She might have taken his story in many different ways, and he was anxious to know in which way she had taken it. But all day she had not shown herself. Even at dinner the doctor apologised for her absence. “She is not very well,” he said. “She was a little upset this morning.” And of course the tall gentleman accepted the excuse with a heavy heart, and presaged the worst.

  But dressing next morning he caught sight of Pleasance on the lawn. She was walking with her father — talking to him earnestly, as Walton could see. Apparently she was urging him to some course of action, and the doctor, with his hands under his coattails, was assenting with a poor grace.

  When Walton descended, however, they were already seated at breakfast, and nothing was said during the meal either of this prelude or of what was in their minds. But presently, when the doctor rose, he had something to say. It was something which it went against the grain to say; for he walked to the door — they were breakfasting in the hall, and it stood open — and looked out as if he had more mind to fly than speak. But he returned suddenly, and sat down with a bump.

  “Mr. Walton,” he said, his florid face more florid than usual, “I think there is something I ought to tell you. I do not think that I can repay you the money you have advanced. And the place is not worth it. What am I to do?”

  “Do?” the other said, looking up. “Take another cup of tea, as I am doing, and think no more about it.”

  “That is impossible,” Pleasance cried impulsively. She turned red the next instant, under the tall gentleman’s eyes. She had not meant to interfere.

  “Indeed!” he said, rising from his chair. “Then please listen to me. There came to a certain house a man who had been a thief.”

  “No!” she said firmly.

  “A man hopeless and despairing.”

  “No.”

  “Alas! yes,” he answered, shaking his head soberly. “These are facts.”

  “No, no, no!” she cried. There were tears in her eyes. “I do not want to hear. I care nothing for facts!”

  “You will not hear me?”

  “No!”

  Something in her face, her voice, the pose of her figure told him the truth. “If you will not listen to me,” he said, leaning with both hands on the table and speaking in a voice scarcely audible to the doctor, “I will not say what I was going to propose. If I must be repaid, I must. But you must repay me, Pleasance. Will you?”

  The doctor did not wait to hear the answer. He found the open door very convenient. He got away and to horse with a lighter heart than he had carried under his waistcoat for months. He felt no great doubt about the answer; and indeed all that June morning, which was by good luck as fine as the preceding one had been gloomy, while he rode from house to house with an unprofessional smile on his lips and in his eyes, the two left at home walked up and down the lawn in the sunshine, planning the life which lay before them, and of which every day was to be as cloudless as this day. A hundred times they passed and repassed the old sundial, but it was nothing to them. Lovers count only the hours when the sun does not shine.

  THE COLONEL’S BOY

  A stranger, coming upon the Colonel as he sat in the morning-room of the club and read his newspaper with an angelic smile, would have sought for another copy of the paper and searched its columns with pleasant anticipations. But I knew better. I knew that the Colonel, though he had put on his glasses and was pretending to cull the news, was only doing what I believe he did after lunch and after dinner, and after he got into bed, and at every one of those periods when the old campaigner, with a care for his digestion and his conscience, selects some soothing matter for meditation. He was thinking of his boy; and I went up to him and smacked him on the shoulder. “Well, Colonel,” I said, “how is Jim?”

  “Hallo! Why, it’s Jolly Joe Bratton!” he replied, dropping his glasses, and gripping my hand tightly — for we did not ride and tie at Inkerman for nothing. “The very man I wanted to see.”

  “And Jim, Colonel? How is the boy?” I asked.

  “Oh, just as fit as a — a middy on shore!” he answered, speaking cheerfully, yet, it seemed to me, with an effort; so that I wondered whether anything was wrong with the boy — a little bill or some small indiscretion, such as might be pardoned in as fine a lad as ever stepped, with a six-months’-old commission, a new uniform, and a station fifty minut
es from London. “But come,” the Colonel continued before I could make my comment, “you have lunched, Joe? Will you take a turn?”

  “To be sure,” I said; “on one condition — that you let Kitty give you a cup of tea afterwards.”

  “That is a bargain!” he answered. And we went into the hall. Every one knows the “Junior United” hall. I had taken down my hat, and was stepping back from the rack, when some one coming downstairs two at a time — that is the worst of having any one under field rank in a club — hit me sharply with his elbow. Perhaps my coat fits a bit tightly round the waist nowadays, and perhaps not; any way, I particularly object to being poked in the back — it may be a fad, or it may not — and I turned round and cried “Confound — —”

  I did not say any more, for I saw who had done it. My gentleman stammered a confused apology, and taking a letter which it seemed I had knocked out of his hand, from the Colonel, who had politely picked it up, he passed into the morning-room with a red face. “Clumsy scoundrel!” I said, but not so loudly that he could hear.

  “Hallo!” the Colonel exclaimed, standing still, and looking at me.

  “Well?” I said, perhaps rather testily. “What is the matter?”

  “You are not on very good terms with young Farquhar, then?”

  “I am not on any terms at all with him,” I answered grumpily.

  The Colonel whistled. “Indeed!” he said, looking down at me with a kind of wistfulness in his eyes; Dick is tall, and I am — well, I was up to standard once. “I thought — that is, Jim told me — that he was a good deal about your house, Joe. And I rather gathered that he was making up to Kitty, don’t you know.”

  “You did, did you?” I grunted. “Well, perhaps he was, and perhaps he wasn’t. Any way, she is not for him. And he would not take an answer, the young whipper-snapper!” I continued, giving my anger a little vent, and feeling all the better for it. “He came persecuting her, if you want to know. And I had to show him the door.”

  I think I never saw a man — certainly on the steps of the “Junior United” — look more pleased than the Colonel looked at that moment. “Gad!” he said, “Then Jim will have a chance?”

  “Ho! ho!” I answered, chuckling. “The wind sets in that quarter, does it? A chance? I should think he would have a chance, Colonel!”

  “And you would not object?”

  “Object?” I said. “Why, it would make me the happiest man in the world, Dick. Are we not the oldest friends? And I have only Kitty and you have only Jim. Why, it is — it is just Inkerman over again!”

  Really it was, and we stumped down the steps in great delight. Only I felt a little anxious about Kitty’s answer, for though I had a suspicion that her affections were inclined in the right direction, I could not be sure. The young soldier might not have won her heart as he had mine: so that I was still more pleased when the Colonel informed me that he believed Jim intended to put it to the test this very afternoon.

  “She is at home,” I said, standing still.

  “Ha! ha! ha!” he responded, taking my arm to lead me on.

  But I declined to move. “I’ll tell you what,” I said— “it is a quarter to four; if Jim has not popped the question by now, he is not the man I think him. Let us go home, Colonel, and hear the news.”

  He demurred a little, but I had him in a hansom in the time it takes to blow “Lights out,” and we were bowling along Piccadilly in two minutes more. Suddenly he uttered an exclamation, and, following the direction of his hand, I was in time to catch a glimpse of Jim’s face — no other’s — as he shot past us in a cab going eastwards. It left us in no doubt, for the lad’s cheeks were flushed and his eyes shining, and as he swept by and saw us, he raised his hat with a gesture of triumph.

  “Gad!” the Colonel exclaimed, “I’ll bet a guinea he has kissed her! Happy dog!”

  “Tra! la! la!” I answered. “I dare swear we shall not find Kitty in tears.”

  The words were scarcely out of my mouth when the cab swerved to one side, throwing me against my companion. I heard our driver shout, and caught sight of a bareheaded man mixed up with the near shaft. The next moment we gave a lurch and stopped, and a crowd came round us. The Colonel was the first out, but I joined him as quickly as I could. “I do not think he is much hurt, sir,” I heard the policeman say. “He is drunk, I fancy. Come, old chap, pull yourself together,” he continued, giving a shake to the grey-haired man whom he and a bystander were supporting. “There, hold up now. Here is your hat. You are all right.”

  And sure enough the man, whose red nose and shabby attire lent probability to the policeman’s charge, managed when left to himself to keep his balance; but with some wavering. “Hallo!” he muttered, looking uncertainly upon the crowd round him. “Is my son here to take me home? Isaac? Where is Isaac?”

  “He’s one part shaken,” the policeman said, viewing him with an air of experience. “And three parts drunk. He had better go to the station.”

  “Where do you live?” the Colonel asked.

  “Greek Street, Soho, number twenty-seven, top floor” — this was answered glibly enough. “And I’ll tell you what,” the man added with a drunken hiccough and a reel which left him on the policeman’s shoulder— “if any gentleman will take another gentleman home, I will make him rich beyond the dreams of avarice. I’ll present him his weight in gold. That I will. His weight in gold!”

  “I think — —” the Colonel began, turning and meeting my eye.

  “His weight in gold!” murmured the drunken man.

  “Quite so!” I said, accepting the Colonel’s unspoken suggestion. “We will see him home, policeman.” And paying our cabman, I hailed a crawling four-wheeler, into which the officer bundled our man. We got in, and in a moment were jolting eastwards at a snail’s pace.

  “Perhaps we might have sent some one with him,” the Colonel said, looking at me apologetically.

  “Not at all!” I answered. I have no doubt that we both had the same feeling, that, happy ourselves, it behooved us to do a good turn to this poor wretch, whose shaking hands and tattered clothes showed that he had almost reached the bottom of the hill. I have seen more than one brother officer, once as gallant a lad as Jim, brought as low; and, perhaps, but for Providence, old Joe Bratton himself —— But there, it may have been some such thought as this, or it may have been an extra glass of sherry at lunch, made us take the man home. We did it; and the Lord only knows why fellows do things — good or bad.

  Hauling out our charge at the door of twenty-seven, we guided him up the dingy stairs, the gibberish which he never ceased to repeat about the dreams of avarice and our weight in gold sounding ten times as absurd on the common stairs of this dirty tenth-rate lodging-house. The attic gained, he straightened himself, and, winking at us with drunken gravity, he laid his hand upon the latch of one of the doors. “You shall see — what you shall see!” he muttered, and throwing open the door he stumbled into the room. The Colonel raised his eyebrows in a protest against our folly, but entered after him, and I followed.

  We found only one person in the garret, which was as miserable and poverty-stricken as a room could be; and he rose and faced us with an exclamation of anger. He was a young fellow, twenty years old perhaps, of middle size, sallow and dark-eyed; to my thinking half-starved. The drunken man seemed unaware of his feelings, however; for he balanced himself on the floor between us, and waved his hand towards him.

  “Here you are, gentlemen!” he cried. “I’m a man of my word! Let me introduce you! My son, Isaac Gold. Did not I tell you? Present you — your weight in gold — or nearly so!”

  “Father!” the lad said, eyeing him gloomily, “go and lie down.”

  “Great joke! Your weight in gold, gentlemen!”

  “Your father was knocked down by a cab,” the Colonel said quietly, “and finding that he was not able to take care of himself we brought him home.”

  The young man looked at us furtively, but he did not answer. Instead,
he took his father by the arm and forced him gently to a mattress which lay in one corner, half hidden by a towel-rail — the latter bearing a shirt, evidently home-washed and hung out to dry. Twice the old fool started up muttering the same rubbish; but the third time he went off into a heavy sleep. There was something pitiful to my eyes in the boy’s patience with him: so that when the lad turned to us at last, and, with eyes which resented our presence, bade us begone if we had satisfied our curiosity, I was not surprised that the Colonel held his ground. “I am afraid you are badly off,” he said gently.

  “What’s that to you?” was the other’s insolent reply. “Do you want to be paid for your services?”

  “Steady! steady, my lad!” I put in. “You get nothing by that.”

  “I think I know you,” the Colonel continued, regarding him steadily. “There was a charge preferred against you, or some one of your name, a few weeks ago, of personating a candidate at the examination for commissions in the army. The charge failed, I know.”

  The young man’s colour rose as the Colonel spoke. But his manner indicated rather triumph than shame, and his dark eyes sparkled with malice as he retorted: “It failed? Yes, you are right there. You have been in the army yourself, I dare say?”

  “I have,” the Colonel said gravely.

  “An honourable profession, is it not?” the lad continued in a tone of mockery. “How many of your young friends, do you think, pass in honestly? It is a competitive examination, too, mind you. And how many do you think employ me — me — to pass for them?”

  “You should be ashamed to boast of it,” the Colonel replied, “if you are not afraid.”

  “And what should they be? Tell me that!”

  “They are mean fellows, whoever they are.”

  “So! so! You think so!” the young man laughed triumphantly. And then all at once the light seemed to die out of his clever face, and I saw before me only a half-starved lad, with his shabby clerk’s coat buttoned up to his throat to hide the want of a shirt. The same change was visible, I think, to the Colonel’s eye; for he looked at me and muttered something about the cab. Understanding that he wanted a word with the young fellow alone, I went to the window and for a moment or so pretended to gaze through its murky panes. When I turned, the two men were talking by the door; the drunken father was snoring behind his improvised screen; and on a painted deal table beside me I remarked the one and only article of luxury in the room — a small soiled album. With a grunt I threw it open. It disclosed the portraits of two lads, simpering whiskerless faces, surmounting irreproachable dog-collars and sporting pins. I turned a page and came on two more bearing a family resemblance in features, dog-collars, and pins to the others. I turned again with a pish! and a pshaw! and found a vacant place, and opposite it — a portrait of Jim!