Palethorpe declared that it “was an awfully jolly boat,” smiled a feeble smile, and waved a feeble hand at me, then, happening to catch a glimpse of the man in the whiff —
“Boat ahead!” he yelled in terror.
“Look out!” I shouted from the bank.
The next instant there was a crash, followed by an oath from the man in the whiff, a cry of alarm from Tommy, a terrified gurgle from Palethorpe, and a terrific splash from all three. I beheld a vision of Palethorpe’s white face and straw-coloured hair, then that of a pair of black trouser legs, as he disappeared. He came up again and clutching wildly at the capsized canoe, spluttered and gasped for a moment, then set up a lusty yell for help.
I plucked off my shoes and was on the point of going in to render assistance, when suddenly a glimpse of the face of him who had brought about the disaster — the man in the whiff — brought me to a standstill. It was Uncle Harry!
All idea of rescuing anybody left me forthwith. With visions of Jamaica surging up before me, and forgetful of all else, I crawled behind the bushes, and thence I watched the strugglers in the water.
Uncle Harry, who was a good swimmer, took in the situation at a glance, and naturally turned his first attention to the lady. But Tommy called him to look after Palethorpe, who was drowning, and struck out for land unaided.
From behind the bush I watched her undignified struggles as she crawled up the bank, but I didn’t venture out to assist her. She must have been puzzled to account for my abrupt disappearance, and presently as she stood up — looking as a mermaid might look, if mermaids wore twentieth century gowns and twentieth century millinery, and crawled up banks of twentieth century mud — she glanced about her with an expression of surprise that I could easily account for.
“Tommy,” I whispered from my shelter, “Tommy — hush!” I added raising my forefinger to my lips as she caught sight of me. “Awfully sorry for you, but I must be off. Send someone to get the canoe out. I’ll come back in an hour or so and explain. Run in and get dry things on. Hush!”
She gave me a long puzzled stare as if doubting my sanity, whilst I — keeping the bush between myself and my uncle’s range of sight — retreated on all fours until I reached the hedge; then, stooping, I sped along under its protecting cover. At another clump of bushes at about a hundred yards from the scene of the disaster, I halted, and set myself to watch Uncle Harry’s rescue of the wretched Palethorpe.
I saw Mrs. Learoyd come hurrying down the lawn, followed by Miss Learoyd, the butler and the gardener. Tommy spoke to the latter pointing to the canoe and the whiff which were floating down stream, and forthwith the man got into the dinghy, which was moored by the steps, and gave chase.
Palethorpe and Tommy proceeded disconsolately and inelegantly towards the house, leaving Uncle Harry on the lawn with Mrs. Learoyd who was talking with great vigour — yet keeping a fair distance from her dripping companion. I didn’t know whether she was treating him to a lecture on careless sculling or inviting him to go inside and make an exhibition of himself in some of Papa Learoyd’s clothes. Presently however, when the gardener returned with the two boats in tow, the whiff must have been found unfit for use, for after examining it and further talking with Mrs. Learoyd, Uncle Harry got into the dinghy, and taking the sculls, he set out to return to Stollbridge, wet as he was.
When he was quite gone I came out of my ambush and retraced my steps.
But my mind was singularly barren that evening, and when presently Tommy did reappear wearing dry clothes and a face that was serious to the point of anger, I was still without the shadow of an idea.
“So you are there yet, are you?” was her greeting.
“I certainly am here,” I answered, seeking refuge in banter, “and it only shows the lack of confidence you have in your own eyesight when you ask the question.”
“Dear me! Well, to tell you the truth, I find it hard to believe my eyes after what they showed me this afternoon. You said that you would explain.”
“That, my dear Tom, is precisely what I can’t do.”
She looked down at me as I lay on the grass at her feet, and her eyes were full of surprise and severity.
“You can’t? Do you mean to say that you had no motive for acting as you did — for behaving like a coward? Hiding yourself when people were struggling in the water, in danger of drowning?”
“You were not in danger.”
“You didn’t know that. Anyway, poor Mr. Palethorpe was. What if he had been drowned?”
“I should say from what little I have seen of Mr. Palethorpe that such a contingency might have given rise to considerable rejoicing,” I answered, adopting Uncle Harry’s best style of satire.
“How very witty!” she commented in scathing accents. Then, after a pause: “It’s a good thing,” she said, “that there are a few such men as Mr. Pomeroy.”
“I don’t at all agree with you. If it were not for such men as Mr. Pomeroy who fancy that they can scull, there would have been no accident.”
“Oh! You are insufferable! Instead of feeling shame for being a coward, you actually have the audacity to speak slightingly of a brave man.”
“I’m not a coward.”
“Then what are you? Why did you behave like one?”
“Clearly she was ignorant of the fact that Mr. Pomeroy was my uncle and guardian. How then could I confess to her — to her whom I had that day intended to ask to become my wife — that I had hidden because I was afraid of Uncle Harry?”
“Well?” she inquired presently. “Are you going to explain?”
“But, my dear Tommy—”
“Will you explain, or will you not?”
She was very pretty, and while her beauty almost drew the explanation from me, yet at the same time, the knowledge that she would only laugh at me, made me withhold it.
“Good-bye, Mr. Burton,” she said, seeing that I did not answer. “I am very disappointed in you, and I don’t wish to ever see you again.”
And with that she turned on her heel and hurried off towards the house. In an instant I was upon my feet. At all costs I must pocket my pride and tell her what there was to be told, sooner than allow myself to be dismissed in this fashion.
“Tommy!” I cried as I started to follow. But she didn’t answer, and at that moment the infernal Palethorpe appeared on the scene. My chance was gone.
When I reached home, I found my uncle walking about the garden, and looking none the worse for his immersion.
“Where the blazes have you been, sir?” was his greeting.
“Been?” I echoed. “Been boating.”
“You are not to go boating any more.”
“Oh I say, Uncle Harry—”
“Hold your tongue.” He stood before me in the most bellicose attitude that I ever saw him assume. “This afternoon I went up the river in a whiff to look for you. I wished to ascertain whether you still followed the undesirable pursuit in which I surprised you some days ago.”
“Well, sir,” I answered hotly, “I hope you were satisfied with your investigations.”
There was an unfortunate inflection in my voice that awakened Uncle Harry’s suspicions.
“What do you mean, Charles?”
“That I hope you consider yourself becomingly repaid for your trouble by the bathe you enjoyed.”
Uncle Harry winced.
“Charles, you forget yourself. You are impertinent. Did you see the accident?”
“See it? Good Heavens, no,” I answered without a blush.
“Then how do you know about it?”
“How? Why the whole river is talking of nothing but Mr. Pomeroy’s ducking. I heard about it at Widenham ferry. Pooh. I expect it’s all over Stollbridge by now, and you’ll probably find a highly coloured paragraph on the subject in to-morrow’s ‘Chronicle.’”
Uncle Harry flushed for once in his life. He could not endure ridicule.
“It amuses you, does it?” he said savagely. “It amuses you that
your uncle is to become the laughing-stock of the place, and that a rag of a provincial newspaper shall advertise his misadventure? But why does this take place? Because I have a jackanapes of a nephew who is not to be trusted, who contracts undesirable acquaintances, with idiotic views of matrimony, and on whom I have, out of a sense of duty to his deceased mother, to keep a sharp eye, so that he shall not make a fool of himself. Very well, sir. Stollbridge may laugh till its sides ache. But it shan’t laugh a second time, for I shall pack you off to town next week for good — for good, do you understand?
“Oh, very well,” I answered indifferently. I felt indifferent. What did it matter whether I remained in Stollbridge or not? As a matter of fact, I was glad to leave the place. It had ceased to attract me.
Uncle Harry kept his word, and next morning he busied himself making arrangements with some distant relative of ours in London for my removal thither. He went out in the dinghy after lunch, and I naturally supposed that he was taking it back to Holt House. When he returned (afoot) he was late for dinner, and I fully expected that at Holt House he had learned all there was to learn. As, however, he had nothing to say when he returned, I saw that I was mistaken, and that the Learoyds had never thought of connecting Mr. Pomeroy with Charlie Burton.
On the following day, which was Friday, he surprised me by going out in the canoe after lunch. Possibly because he wished to make sure that I didn’t use it, and possibly because he wanted to get away from me, as our somewhat strained relations made association painful. Again he was late for dinner. On the Saturday the same programme was observed, and yet again on Sunday.
On the Monday I left for town. My uncle relented somewhat at parting, and whilst giving me the usual valedictory advice, he forebore — I imagined out of delicate consideration for my feelings to caution me in the usual manner against the insidious wiles of woman.
Three days before Christmas — six months after my departure from Stollbridge — there were two letters beside my plate at breakfast that drew my most particular attention.
The first one that I opened was from Uncle Harry and contained a generous cheque for a Christmas card. Its contents amazed me.
My dear Charlie, — I want you to come and spend Christmas with me at Stollbridge. It will be my last bachelor Christmas, for even your uncle has fallen a victim to those snares against which he took such pains to warn you. This may surprise you, but not half so much as will the letter your future aunt is writing to you. — Your fond Uncle — HARRY.
The other letter which I tore open with trembling fingers ran:
My dear Charlie, — Will you be very much astonished to hear that I am going to marry your Uncle Harry next spring? Isn’t it funny? I only learned the other day that he was your uncle, and I was amazed. It all began that day he upset us and saved Mr. Palethorpe’s life. He became a constant visitor after that. He happened to speak of you the other day, and of course I was very inquisitive, and — well I understood at last why you acted so curiously on the day of the accident. My poor Charlie, I was very horrid with you that day, and I haven’t seen you since. Never mind, I’ll make you a splendid aunt.
Your uncle tells me that you are coming to Stollbridge for Christmas. You must come and see me. — Yours affectionately, TOMMY LEAROYD.
THE END
THE RISEN DEAD
Sir Geoffrey Swayne was hanged at Tyburn.
A merry, reckless, roaring soul had been Sir Geoffrey, and if it was said of him that in ten years he had never gone sober to bed, yet was it confessed that he was a pleasant, humorous gentleman in his cups, just as he was a pleasant, humorous gentleman in all the other traffics that made up his rascally life. If he lost his money at the tables, he did so with an amiable smile in his handsome eyes and a jest on his lips. If at intervals, more or less regular, he would beat his wife, periodically kick his servants down stairs, and systematically grind the faces of his tenants, yet all these things he did, at least, with an engaging joviality of demeanour.
In short, he was a very affable, charming scoundrel, and all England was agreed that he richly deserved his end. And yet, the humour of the thing — and it was just such a jest as Sir Geoffrey would have relished had it been less against himself — lay in the fact that although none of the rascally things he had done could be considered by the law of England reason enough for hanging him, the crime for which he was hanged — that of highway robbery — was the one crime it had never occurred to him to commit.
The thing had fallen out in this wise:
Sir Geoffrey, riding Londonwards, from his home near Guildford, one evening in late March, had been held up on Wandsworth Common by a cloaked figure on a huge grey mare. The failing light had gleamed from the barrel of a pistol, and the highwayman’s tone had been one that asked no arguments, admitted of no compromise. But Sir Geoffrey in the course of his blustering career had become a useful man of his hands. One blow of his heavy riding-crop had knocked aside the highwayman’s pistol, another had knocked in the highwayman’s head and tumbled him headlong from his saddle.
Sir Geoffrey was master of the situation, and, mightily pleased by it, he bethought him of the spoils of war, which were his by right of conquest. Without a qualm — nay, with a laugh and the lilt of a song on his lips — Sir Geoffrey had dragged the stricken tobyman into the shelter of a clump of trees, and exchanged his own spavined horse for the fellow’s splendid mare, on which he had blithely pursued his road.
But before he had gone a couple of miles he had caught the sounds of a numerous party galloping behind and rapidly gaining on him. Now Sir Geoffrey’s conscience — if so be he owned one — was at rest. He had done no wrong, leastways no wrong that should make him fear the law, and so he rode easily, never thinking of attempting to outdistance the party which came on behind — a thing he might easily have done had he been so inclined, bravely mounted as he was.
So the others came on, hailed him, and when he paused to ask them what they craved, came up with and surrounded him.
‘We have you this time, “Scudding Tom,”’ they cried, and fell to ill-using him, pulling him down from his horse, and bestowing upon him epithets for which he was utterly at a loss to account. But he was not a patient man. He had been assaulted, and it was a thing he would not suffer, although, as he plainly saw, they were sheriff’s men that had set upon him. So he blithely laid about him, and contrived to crack a couple of heads before they had bound him and flung him, helpless, down upon the road, livid, blasphemant, and vastly furious.
A stout rubicund gentleman, in black with silver lace, who had stood well apart whilst the fighting had been in train, came forward now, swelling to bursting point with his own importance, and denounced Sir Geoffrey for the tobyman who had robbed him an hour ago. He was, he said, Sir Henry Talbury of Hurlingston, in the County of Kent, one of his Majesty’s Justices of the Peace. He had been to collect certain sums of money in London, and was returning with a leather bag containing a hundred guineas, of which this ruffian had relieved him.
Sir Geoffrey heard him, and having heard him realized the situation, spat from his mouth the filthy rags with which he had been gagged, and spoke —
‘You pot-bodied fool,’ said he, for he had a rare virulence of tongue upon occasion. ‘You gross, beer-fattened hodman, let me free of these bonds, and get you back to your pigs at Hurlingston ere I have you flayed for this business. I am Sir Geoffrey Swayne, of Guildford, as you shall learn more fully to your bitter sorrow.’
The little man’s fat face lost some of its plethoric colour, but it was in rage that he paled, and not in any fear that Sir Geoffrey — being tightly bound and helpless — might inspire him.
‘Are ye so, indeed,’ he snapped, and his little eyes looked evil as a rat’s. ‘I have heard of ye, for a gaming, dissolute scoundrel.’
‘Oh ‘sblood!’ panted Sir Geoffrey, writhing in his bonds. ‘You shall be spitted for this, like the Christmas goose you are.’
‘And so, ’tis to highway robbery
that your debaucheries have brought ye?’ The little man sniffed contemptuously. ‘I’m nowise surprised, and ye shall hang as a warning to other scapegraces.’
And hang he did as Sir Henry promised him. Under the flap of his saddle they had found a bag with Sir Henry Talbury’s name upon it and the hundred guineas he had mentioned contained in it. It was in vain that Sir Geoffrey told the true story of his meeting with the tobyman, thus explaining how he had come by the grey mare — which had proved his undoing, for it was the mare, not the man, that had been recognized. The fellow who rode that great, grey beast was known to the countryside as ‘Scudding Tom’, and nothing more, his identity never having been revealed. The court, whilst praising his ingenuity, laughed at his tale. They realized that he was Sir Geoffrey Swayne — he had brought a regiment of witnesses to swear it — but they were no less satisfied that Sir Geoffrey and ‘Scudding Tom’ were one and the same person. It sorted well with his general reputation, and besides Sir Henry swore to him as being the man who had robbed him, and whether he swore in good faith or out of revenge for the things Sir Geoffrey had said to him when he was overpowered, it might be difficult to say.
But Sir Geoffrey was hanged, and the world was done with him, although Sir Geoffrey was nowise done with the world, as you shall hear. His lands — or what was left of them out of all that he had gamed away — were forfeit to the Crown, and his widow stood thus in peril of destitution. Not even his handsome body did they leave. For when it was cut down, still warm, from the gallows, it was sold to Dr. Blizzard, a ready purchaser of such commodities for dissecting purposes.
But the old doctor had bought more than he knew of this time, for upon the insertion of the knife into one of Sir Geoffrey’s legs — the point at which the doctor had elected to start his work — Sir Geoffrey had suddenly sat upright on the slate table, stretching his limbs, and letting forth a volley of blood-curdling imprecations, which all but slew the doctor by the fright they gave him.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 519
