There remained Evelyn’s future to concern him. Being as she was, he foresaw an ocean of trouble in her married life unless he could contrive for her a husband at once tender and dominant, a tried man whose patience and strength would mould her perhaps as he, himself, had failed to do so, and at the same time cherish and shelter her and steer her clear of those shoals of life upon which, without strong guidance, she seemed foredoomed to suffer shipwreck.
In Harry Gaynor he believed that he had found the very man for his purpose, and if at times he deemed it impossible that Harry Gaynor, being as he was, should bestow so much as a thought upon Evelyn, yet at others — being a philosopher, as I have said — he would reflect that in Nature’s inscrutably admirable way it was often ordained that precisely such men should be attracted by just such women. Upon this slender foundation, then, he would build his hope what time he waited.
When so much is understood some notion is formed of the affectionate quality of the welcome which Sir John extended to his guest and of the concern for his guest’s welfare which inspired him. Being, as he was, in some haste to depart, and as some days might elapse ere he returned, he was yet anxious to know how fared with Captain Gaynor the dangerous matters which had occasioned his visit to England.
So with little more than a word of explanation and apology, he at once carried off his guest to the seclusion of the library. There, having again expressed his regrets at this urgent need for departure in the very hour of his guest’s arrival, and having satisfied himself, as indeed any might do at a glance, of Harry’s physical well-being, he questioned him solicitously on the score of his mission. For however urgent the unfortunate circumstance that called Sir John away, he esteemed scarcely less urgent the thing he had to say to Captain Gaynor.
In the golden candle-light from a silver cluster that stood upon the library table, the Captain’s bronzed face showed overcast. He confessed that so far he had no reason to be satisfied with the progress of his master’s Cause in England.
Sir John nodded slowly, his own face thoughtful. “There,” he said, “you do not surprise me. There are moments when—” He paused, and looked at the young man with eyes of the very kindliest concern. “Has no doubt ever crossed your mind, Harry?” he inquired gently. “Have you never asked yourself whether you may not have wedded your young life, your energies and enthusiasms to a dream — to the fruitless service of a company of dreamers?”
“Sir John!” exclaimed the other sharply, the faintest flush stirring under the tan of his cheeks. Then, almost sadly, he asked: “Are you, too, failing him?”
Sir John smiled; his blue eyes were steadfast. “I was speaking of you, Harry; not of myself. You are young, full of enthusiasm, ability and energy. Life lies before you. The world’s your very oyster. I am an old hulk who matter nothing — or very little. Being this, I am content to abide where I am, and to continue to hold by what I have held. But were I you — had I my youth and all my life before me — I am not sure that my loyalty would stand the strain of its fruitless sacrifice.”
“Fruitless?” cried the young man hotly. “Have you lost faith in us? Do you think that we shall not prevail?”
Sir John sighed. Slowly and thoughtfully he shook his head. “I hope it, I pray for it, as every decent man must hope and pray for right and justice. But what you have just perceived has been under my eyes for some time. It fills me with despondency. It might well cause me to turn aside if I were younger and mattered more.”
“It is that you see this and nothing else,” the Captain argued. “If I saw no more than this I might share your fears. As it is, I confess, that gathering at Pauncefort’s house three nights ago was a saddening spectacle. There we assembled most of those upon whom his Majesty depends — a round dozen of the men he believes to be his most stalwart and energetic supporters. I was his accredited agent, coming amongst them for the first time, adventuring my neck to bring them news and receive theirs. Yet they had naught for me. The night was spent in gaming, and I saw such sums staked and won and lost, that when I considered the plight of our gracious king, his urgent need of funds, I could have broken that table into slivers under their eyes as some small protest against their foul supineness.”
“Ah?” said Sir John. He was profoundly interested. “And the play ran high?”
“Myself I won and lost again upwards of ten thousand guineas,” said the Captain coldly.
The baronet gasped. He raised his hands — in one of which he held his hat and riding-crop — to let them fall again to his sides. He laughed softly, sadly contemptuous. “Ay!” he said. “Ay! And yet, Harry, when such is the attitude of those whose very interest it should be to support and encompass the return of our exiled king, what hope can remain that the Cause will ultimately prevail?”
“None if we could not look farther than this. But we can.” His eyes glowed, and his voice rang with a sudden confidence. “Scotland will rise again.”
“Scotland!” said the baronet. “Build not overmuch on Scotland. It rose before. You were in the rising yourself. It is not so very long since. You were there; you saw, and yet—” He smiled. “Oh, to be young and have youth’s eternal faith in the fulfilment of its desires!”
“Things shall be better planned another time,” was the Captain’s confident assurance. “And, after all, perhaps we despond too soon concerning the conditions of things here. London is not England when all is said.”
“It is the heart, at least; and from the movements of the heart you may gauge the liveliness of the body.”
But Captain Gaynor disregarded this. “I must to Rochester and talk with Atterbury one of these days. I have messages for him from his Majesty And on this night week I am to confer with a party of our friends again in London. Pauncefort is sending word to them.”
Sir John’s brows came thoughtfully together. He turned aside, and with hands clasped behind him he paced the room to the window and back until again he was standing before his guest. Then he placed hat and whip upon the table and set his hands upon the young man’s shoulders.
“I speak to you as a child of my own,” he said. “Consider well ere you go further. You owe it to yourself. Did I see any reasonable hope I were indeed the very last to dissuade you. But here I see you wasting yourself upon a dream.”
“Have not you done the same, Sir John?”
“It is out of that very experience that I warn you. I have been fortunate and come scatheless through so far. But were it all to do again — who knows? I am old, I say,” the baronet repeated, smiling— “too old to change, and of too little consequence.”
“And of what consequence am I?” cried Gaynor. “I am a soldier of fortune without kith or kin in all the world.”
“If you had these?” quoth the baronet quickly, a sudden gleam in those clear, youthful eyes of his— “if you had these?”
“It were different, perhaps. But I have them not, nor want them — which is as well, for I have no right to them while this duty stands before me. You speak to me as a father, Sir John—”
“I do, my dear boy.”
“And yet you know that my father would not have spoken so.” It was said in a sad tone of remonstrance, of argument, that contained no offence.
The answer startled Harry Gaynor.
“I am not sure.” Sir John’s voice was calm and steady. “I try to speak to you as I believe your father would speak were he alive today. You see, I knew him very well, Harry; better far than ever you knew him. But there! We will talk no more tonight. I have far to ride.” He took up hat and whip once more. “Use this house as your own home till I return, and — and go warily, lad.” He patted the Captain’s shoulder affectionately. “Go warily.”
“I shall go warily, never fear,” was the easy answer; “the more so since the Government is already acquainted with my presence in England.”
Sir John threw up his head in alarm, the habitual joviality fading from his countenance.
“Oh, not in my own name,” the Cap
tain reassured him. “They dream of no connection between ‘Captain Jenkyn’ and Captain Gaynor, and Mr Templeton is seeking to find for Captain Gaynor a post in the Colonies. But he knows that Captain Jenkyn is in England, and his spies are searching for that Jacobite agent very diligently.”
“You are sure — you are quite sure that Mr Templeton does not connect you with—”
“Nay,” laughed the Captain. “I should be laid by the heels already were that the case.” And, further to reassure his host, he related the friendly entertainment he had received from the Second Secretary. “It is not fear that concerns me,” he ended. “‘What concerns me is to discover this traitor who is so singularly well informed.”
“Well, well!” sighed the baronet, and upon that he seemed to dismiss the subject. He held out his hand in farewell.
“I devoutly hope,” said the Captain, “that you will find your brother’s condition improved when you arrive at Bath.”
“I trust so, indeed, Harry. I shall return as soon as may be.”
He had reached the door when he paused again. He turned once more, and his face was very grave, his clear eyes oddly troubled. He came slowly back.
“A last word, Harry my boy,” he said, in a low voice. “Be wary how far you trust my Lord Pauncefort. I do not.”
The Captain’s surprise stared from his eyes.
“How?” he cried. “What is’t you imply?”
“Ah, don’t ask me,” returned the other, shaking his head. “I have no clear cause, perhaps, for saying so much. Yet I say it urgently — beware of Pauncefort. Good night.”
But the Captain would not let him go on that. He caught the baronet’s sleeve. “Sir John!” he cried. “You cannot leave it there.”
Gaynor’s every instinct was to brush the warning aside. But he was never a man to obey his instincts. He required reasons ere he judged, and for reasons he now pressed Sir John. He put it that his life might be hanging in the balance, which rendered him irresistible.
Sir John sighed and frowned. He flicked his boots abstractedly with his whip, and looked the very picture of reluctance.
“God knows,” he said at last, “it is against my nature to heap up molehills into mountains that will entomb a man’s honour, and it is what you are asking of me, Harry.”
“Nay. What I ask you is to produce your reasons that I may combat them. If there are but molehills I shall recognise them and kick them over, never fear. I cannot credit what you imply; but neither can I credit that you would imply it without good grounds — or grounds that you consider good. I beg you to let me have a sight of these that I may judge them for myself.”
“Why, then,” said Sir John, though still with obvious reluctance, “to be quite frank, first and foremost — indeed, first and last — Pauncefort is a desperate gamester, a gamester rendered desperate by disastrous speculation. There are excellent reasons why I should have informed myself of his affairs, and I know that he totters upon the very brink of ruin, that he is in the clutches of a moneylender named Israel Suarez, who never yet spared any man, and who certainly will not spare his lordship. Now add to this that I dislike him by instinct and by reason — and you should understand why I mistrust him.”
“Not quite,” said Captain Gaynor slowly.
“You are determined not to spare me, Harry,” said the baronet with a sad smile. “My knowledge of human nature has taught me that a broken gamester is never a man to be trusted. When in addition the man is one in whose character I have found the gravest shortcomings, you will understand that I would have you be as wary of my Lord Pauncefort as I am myself.”
“As you are yourself?” cried the Captain in amazement. “But, then, how come you to have consented that he shall marry your niece?”
“I have not consented that he shall marry her,” answered Sir John. “Had I done so they would have been married months ago.”
“But their betrothal? Surely it has your sanction?”
“Their betrothal, yes. I have not the power to withstand it. But as far as goes the power conferred upon me by my brother-in-law, the late Geoffrey Hollinstone, I have exerted it and I shall continue to exert it to oppose this union. Let me explain, Harry.
“Damaris Hollinstone, as all the world knows, is heiress to as stout a fortune as any in England. But by the terms of her father’s will she does not enter into the enjoyment and control of it until she shall have reached the age of one and twenty, or until” — he added, with slow emphasis— “she shall marry, provided that she does so with my consent and approval of her choice. Should she marry against my wishes before she attains that age, she receives under her father’s will rather less than a tenth of his estate — a modest fortune still, but negligible when compared with the colossal total. The rest of it is to be divided amongst a parcel of cousins.
“It is now six months since Pauncefort first wooed her. She was a child of little more than nineteen, with no worldly knowledge, dazzled by so imposing a personality, and so she fell an easy conquest. But when the question of her marriage arose I deemed it my duty to oppose it, knowing his lordship’s ways of life, as all the world knows them. I told them, however, that the matter was not one that need drive them to despair. If my Lord Pauncefort and the lady were of the same mind in a year and a half’s time from then — a year from now — I should have no power to oppose their union.
“Damaris was content to wait. Pauncefort, however, attempted to hector me in private, and thus betrayed something of his real aims — aims concerning which I had never entertained a delusion. In the end, however, he was forced to take me strictly at my word. He asked me did I, meanwhile, consent to their betrothal. I answered that I had not the power to oppose it.
“I was content, you see, to leave it to time to reveal his lordship’s true character to Damaris, and,” he added slowly, “I think that at last she has discovered it.
“Something happened a week ago,” the baronet continued, smiling rather grimly, “to open her eyes, and also to open mine. It is this more than aught else that has led me to utter my warning to you.
“His lordship sought me here. He was a little wild and not quite master of himself, and being informed as I was of the state of his affairs, I did not marvel at his condition or his visit or the object of it. He desired me to consent that the marriage should take place at once. Oh he was very vehement, and even very plausible in all that he urged. I answered him that I did not account it my duty to Damaris and to her late father, in whose place I stand, to modify the determination taken six months ago. Thereupon he demanded haughtily and angrily to know upon what grounds I opposed a marriage that all the world accounted eminently suitable. I begged him not to press me, but I was not sorry that he insisted. Knowing what I knew of his affairs, I knew also that I could hold him in a cleft stick did I so choose.
“‘Be it so, then,’ I answered him. ‘I will tell you, but in the presence of Damaris.’
“I summoned her; and when she came I told her upon what manner of errand his lordship had visited me. In answer she assured me that it had her entire concurrence, and she all but taxed me with abusing the power which her father’s will conferred upon me.
“‘Wait, Damaris,’ I said. ‘My Lord Pauncefort has desired me to state my reasons for opposing this wedding, and I have desired your presence that you may hear my answer.’
“He was standing by that window, yonder, and as if to mark her indifference to any arguments of mine, she crossed to his side, whilst he put his arm about her as if to guard her from me. Oh, it was vastly touching, I assure you; but there was something more to follow.
“‘Of the reasons that move me,’ said I, ‘I need to state but two — the two most tangible and irrefutable ones. The first is the unsuitability of my Lord Pauncefort on the score of his age. He is, by almost fifteen years, your elder, Damaris. The other is that I am persuaded that the main object of your suit, my lord, is not my niece herself, but my niece’s fortune.’
“They cried o
ut upon me together at that denunciation.
“‘It is a foul untruth,’ thundered my lord in a great passion.
“‘I shall rejoice to be convinced of that,’ said I. ‘I am to understand, then, that my niece’s fortune weighs for nothing in your calculations?’
“‘No single jot — I swear it,’ he answers me, mighty hot.
“‘That your love for Damaris is entirely disinterested? That you would make her your viscountess were she penniless?’ I pursued.
“‘Yes,’ he answered me fiercely, ‘‘pon honour.’
“‘You swear it glibly enough,’ said I. ‘But will you prove it?’
“‘Prove it?’ quoth he, and I saw a change creep over his face. He was quick enough to discern the trap into which I had lured him.
“‘It is within your power to do so,’ I assured him. ‘You know the terms of her father’s will. I have no power to withstand the marriage if you are both set on’t. All that I have power to do is to withhold and disperse the inheritance. But since that counts for nothing with you, since it is Damaris you want and nothing more, since your love for her knows naught of interest, why, take and marry her in spite of me, and God give you joy of each other.’”
Sir John paused a moment, and shook his head in melancholy retrospection.
“Poor Damaris!” he sighed. “You should have seen her at that moment, Harry — her eyes aglow with confidence in herself and her lover, with gladness at the prospect upon which I had opened that crafty window. What cared she for her fortune, poor child? Gladly would she forfeit it to prove her love. I was turned almost sick with pity at the sight of that joyous transfiguration, what time she waited for that swift, ardent answer upon which so confidently she counted from her lover.
“Alas! It never came. He stood stricken there, a little pale, staring at me in anger and dismay, until at last she raised her eyes in inquiry to his face, wondering why the answer was delayed. Before what she saw written on that countenance she blenched, and with a little cry of pain she drew away from his arm, which had grown as limp as all the rest of him.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 254
