“Because of a severe criticism! I should have thought he was used to them by now. Poor dear Claude, he can string a pretty rhyme, but he never was a poet. And you, Jack — since you insist — you never were an actor — until to-day!”
Jack hung his head.
“You don’t do it well enough, you dear fellow,” continued Lady Caroline caressingly. “As if you could impose upon me! You must first come to me for lessons. Candidly now: what has taken him up to town in such a hurry? The same thing that — kept you awake all night?”
“Candidly, then,” said Jack, raising his haggard face doggedly, “it was! And if you’ll come out upon the terrace for five minutes I’ll tell you exactly what’s wrong. You have a right to know; and I can trust you not to let it go any further for the moment. Even if I couldn’t, I’d have to tell you straight! I hate keeping things up my sleeve; I can’t do it; so let me make a clean breast of the whole shoot, Lady Caroline, and be done with it till Claude comes back.”
Lady Caroline took a discouraging view of the situation. The Red Marquis had been capable of anything; related though they had been, she could not help telling Jack that her parents had forbidden her to dance with his father as a young girl. This might be painful hearing, but in such a crisis it was necessary to face the possibilities; and Lady Caroline, drawing a little away from her companion in order to see how he was facing them, forgot to take his arm any more as they sauntered in the sun. She undertook, however, to keep the matter to herself until Claude’s return, at the mention of whose name she begged to look at the cutting from the Parthenon.
“A most repulsive article,” her mother informed Olivia after breakfast, but not until she had repeated to the girl the entire substance of the late conversation on the terrace. “I never read anything more venomously ill-bred in my life; and so untrue! To say he is no poet — our Claude! But we who know him, thank goodness we know better. It is the true poetry, not only in but between every line, that distinguishes dear Claude from the mere stringers of pretty rhymes of whom the papers sicken one in these latter days. But where are you going, my love?”
“To get ready to go with — Jack.”
“To go where, pray?”
“Why, to Devenholme, as we arranged last night,” replied Olivia, with spirit. “He said he would drive me over; and you said ‘how sweet of him,’ and beamed upon us both!”
Lady Caroline winced. “You impertinent chit!” she cried viciously; “you know as well as I do that what I have told you alters everything. Once and for all, Olivia, I forbid you to drive into Devenholme with — with — with — that common man!”
“Very well; the drive’s off,” said the girl with swift decision; and she left her mother without another word.
She put on her habit and went straight to Jack.
“Do you mind if we ride into Devenholme instead of driving?”
“Mind! I should like it even better.”
“Then suppose we go to the stable-yard and see about our horses ourselves; and while we are there, we may as well stay and start by the back road, which will save at least a quarter of a mile.”
“My oath,” said Jack without further provocation, “you might have been dragged up in the bush!”
“I wish I had been!” exclaimed Olivia bitterly. He could not understand her tone. Nor did he ever know the meaning of the momentary fighting glitter in the brave brown eyes of the girl.
He rode as an inveterate bushman, entirely on the snaffle, with inelegantly short stirrups and a regrettable example of the back-block bend; nor did his well-broken hack give him a chance of exhibiting any of the finer qualities of the rough-riding school. But indeed for the most part the couple sat at ease in their saddles, while the horses dawdled with loose reins and lazy necks in the cool shadows of the roadside trees. By mutual consent they had dispensed with an attendant groom. And Olivia had never been so kind to Jack, as on this day when he was under so black a cloud, with so heavy a seal upon his lips.
For once she talked to him; as a rule she liked better to listen, with large eyes intent and sympathetic lips apart — ever ready with the helpful word. But to-day she was wishful to entertain, to take him out of himself, to console without letting him suspect that she knew as much as he had told her mother. In a sense she knew more, for Lady Caroline had duly exaggerated his frank confession; and the girl’s heart bled for her friend, on the brink of a disillusion without parallel in her knowledge. So she told him of her life in town and elsewhere; of the treadmill round of toilsome pleasure; of the penance of dressing and smiling with unflagging prettiness; of the hollow friendships and hollower loves of that garish life, and the unutterable staleness of the whole conventional routine. No doubt she overstated her case; and certainly her strictures were themselves conventional; but she was perfectly aware of both facts, and would have been exceedingly sorry to have had this conversation recorded against her. Olivia had a healthy horror of superiority, either of the moral or the intellectual order. But she was conducting a conversation with an obvious purpose; and it was only when he told her again, and more earnestly than before, how suited she was for the bush, that she proposed the canter which brought them a mile nearer Devenholme.
“Now it’s you to play,” she told him as they drew rein; “and I want to hear some of your adventures. You’ve never told us any, yet you must have had heaps. So far I’ve only heard about the hut, the sheep, the homestead, and your old boss.”
“A white man!” cried Jack. “I wish you knew him.”
“So do I; but I can quite picture him, and just now I would much rather hear about some of your own adventures. So begin.”
Jack laughed.
“Really, Miss Sellwood, I never had one in my life!”
“Then really, my Lord Duke, I can’t believe a word — —”
Jack was laughing no more.
“Don’t call me that,” he said. “It would be so much kinder to call me Jack!”
She had forgotten. Her heart smote her now, and the difficulty was to conceal her unsuspected sympathy. So she insisted on his calling her Olivia, to conclude the bargain. And the double innovation made them both so self-conscious, that she forgot her thirst for his adventures, while he brooded heavily upon his bitter-sweet advancement won loo late.
So they came into Devenholme as the sun was shining fore and aft along the quaint old English streets. And in the town, where he was well enough known by this time, poor Jack was received with a cruel consideration that would have hurt him even more than it did had he dreamt how it affected his companion. The tender-hearted girl was inexpressibly grieved, and never more than when the jeweller mentioned a hundred guineas as the price of the ring to be changed; indeed, the situation in the jeweller’s shop was perilously charged with hidden emotions. In this terribly equivocal position, Jack could not press upon Olivia things for which he might never be able to pay; neither could Olivia now refuse any present at all, nor yet lead him as low as she would have liked in the price, for fear of revealing her illicit knowledge. So at last they hit upon a curb-bracelet that fastened with a tiny padlock. It cost but forty-five shillings. And when he had locked it upon her right wrist, he pocketed the key without a remark, then paid ready money and left the shop in a throbbing agony of shame. The poor jeweller stood bowing them out with the hundred-guinea ring still in his hand.
CHAPTER XIV
JACK AND HIS MASTER
It was necessary to bait the horses; it was equally essential for the pair themselves to have something to eat. So they rode under the olden arch of the oak-lined Falcon, and it was “your Grace” at every step, with ironic iteration very hard for either of them to bear without a word to the other. They dismounted therefore with the less delay; and Olivia turned her back upon the coffee-room window, and on an elderly, bald, well-dressed man, whose cool fixed stare made the girl extremely angry, when Jack at her side gave a shout of delight.
“So help me never! it’s the boss himself!”
/> Olivia turned, and there was the objectionable old fellow in the window smiling and waving to her enchanted companion. And this was the man of whom she had heard so often! She did not stop to consider how he came to be here; the back-blockers were already at explanations, but Olivia was not listening. She was thinking of the bearded, jovial, hearty squatter of her imagination; and she was glancing askance at the massive chin and forehead, and at the white moustache cropped close over the bad mouth of the real man.
“Mr. Dalrymple — my old boss — Miss Sellwood!” shouted Jack, introducing them with a wealth of pantomime. “We’re coming up to lunch with you, sir; that is, you’re to lunch with me; it’s my shout!”
And poor Olivia found herself swept off her feet, as it were, into the presence of a man whom all her instincts had pronounced odious at sight.
But the higher court of the girl’s intellect reversed this judgment on the appeal of her trained perceptions. The elderly squatter was not after all a man to be summed up at a glance or in a word: his undoubted assurance was tempered and redeemed by so many graces of manner and address as to upset entirely the girl’s preconceptions of his class. At table he treated her with a princely courtesy, imperceptibly including her in a conversation which poor Jack would have conducted very differently if left to himself. After the first few minutes, indeed, Olivia could see but two faults in the squatter; the first was the fierce light his charming manners reflected on those of Jack; and the second was a mouth which made the girl regret the austere cut of his moustache whenever she looked at Mr. Dalrymple.
“So you left before shearing, sir!” cried Jack, who was grossly eager for all station news. “I wonder you did that. They must be in the thick of it now!”
“They were to begin on the fifth of this month. The shearing, Miss Sellwood, is the one divine, far-off event towards which the whole sheep-station moves,” added Mr. Dalrymple, with a glibness worthy of Claude Lafont.
“And don’t you forget the lamb-marking,” chimed in Jack. “I hope it was a good lambing this year, sir?”
“Seventy-nine per cent.,” replied Dalrymple. “I’m afraid that’s Greek to you, Miss Sellwood — and perhaps better so.”
“You see, I’m as keen as ever on the old blocks!” cried Jack. It was a superfluous boast.
“So I do see; and I must say, Jack, you surprise me. Do you notice how he ‘sirs’ me, Miss Sellwood? I was on my way to pay homage to the Duke of St. Osmund’s, not to receive it from Happy Jack of Carara!”
“Do you often come over to England, Mr. Dalrymple?” asked Olivia quickly. For the girl had seen the spasm in Jack’s face, and she knew how the anæsthetic of this happy encounter had exhaled with the squatter’s last speech.
“No, indeed!” was the reply. “I haven’t been home for more years than I care to count; and the chances are that I shouldn’t be here now but for our friend the Duke. He unsettled me. You see, Miss Sellwood, how jealous are the hearts of men! I had no inheritance to come home to; but I had my native land, and here I am.”
“And you have friends in Devenholme?”
“I have one friend; I wish that I dared say two,” replied the squatter, looking from Jack to Olivia in his most engaging manner. “No, to tell you frankly, I was on a little inquisitive pilgrimage to Maske Towers. I did not wait for an invitation, for I knew that I should bring my own welcome with me.”
“Of course, of course; come out to-morrow!” exclaimed Jack nervously. “I’ll send in for you, and you must stay as long as ever you can. If only I’d driven in, as I meant to, we’d have taken you back with us. Yet on the whole to-morrow will be best; you must give us time to do you well, you know, Mr. Dalrymple. It’ll be a proud day for me! I little expected to live to entertain my own boss!”
Indeed, his pride was genuine enough, and truly characteristic of the man; but at the back of it there was a great uneasiness which did not escape the clear, light eye of Dalrymple. Not that the squatter betrayed his prescience by word or sign; on the contrary, he drank Jack’s health in the champagne provided by him, and included Olivia’s name in a very graceful speech. But Jack drank nothing at all; and having reduced his roll to a heap of crumbs, he was now employed in converting the crumbs into a pile of pellets.
Olivia pitied his condition; that tremulous brown hand, with the great bush freckles still showing at the gnarled finger-roots, touched her inexpressibly as it lay fidgeting on the white table-cloth. She strained every nerve to keep the squatter engaged and unobservant; and she found herself fluctuating, in a rather irritating manner, between her first instinctive antipathy and her later liking for the man. He was extremely nice to her; he had an obvious kindness for poor Jack; and she apprehended a personal magnetism, a unique individuality, quite powerful enough to account for Jack’s devotion to him. She felt the influence herself. Yet there was something — she could not say what.
The way in which her last vague prejudice was removed, however, made a deep impression upon Olivia, besides giving her a startling glimpse of her own feelings. And it all came of a casual remark of Dalrymple’s, in elucidation of his prompt expedition to the district, to the effect that the Duke of St. Osmund’s had once saved his life.
“Your life!” cried Olivia, while Jack ceased meddling with his bread.
“To be sure. Is it possible he has never told you the story?”
“Not a word of it! And only this morning, as we rode in, I asked him if he had never had any adventures!”
Her face was a flushed reproach.
“I’d forgotten that one,” said Jack sheepishly. “I really had. It’s so long ago; and it wasn’t much when you come — —”
“Not much!” interjected Dalrymple. “I should be very sorry to find myself in such a tight place again! It’s some thirteen years ago, Miss Sellwood. I was thinking of taking up some cattle country in the unfenced part of Queensland. I had gone up to have a look at the place, and the blacks attacked us while I was there. We were three strong in an iron store: the owner, a stray shearer, and myself. The shearer had his horse hung up outside; he could have got away quite easily in the beginning; but our horses were all turned out, and he wouldn’t leave us. So we dragged his horse inside, and we set to work to defend the store.”
“I know that shearer!” cried Olivia proudly. “Yet he hangs his head! Oh, go on, Mr. Dalrymple, go on!”
“From daybreak to sundown,” continued the squatter, “we defended ourselves with a Winchester, a double-barrelled shot-gun, and an old muzzle-loading rifle. The blacks came on by the score, but they couldn’t get in, and they couldn’t set fire to the corrugated iron. It was riddled like a sieve, and each of us three had a hole in him too; but there was a wall of dead blacks up against the iron outside, and they were as good as sandbags. We should have beaten the fellows off before midnight if our powder had held out. It didn’t; so I assure you we shook hands, and were going to blow up the place with a twenty-gallon tin of petroleum, that was luckily inside, when our friend the shearer came out with an idea. His horse had a ball in its body and was screaming like a woman, so that it was no use. I recollect we put it out of its pain with our last charge. But there was long dry grass all round up to within some fifteen yards of the store; and after dark the shearer ran out three or four times with a bucket of petroleum, and once with a box of matches. The last time but one the blacks saw him. They had surrounded the place at a pretty respectful radius, and they were having what we call a spell; but they saw him the last time but one. And when he went out again and struck his matches they had something to aim at. Well, his first match went out, and there was a sheaf of spears sticking in the sand and three new holes through the house. We waited; not another thing could we see. We didn’t know whether he was dead or alive, and we heard the blacks starting to rush us. But we also heard the scratch of a second match; in another instant the thing flared up like a circular lamp — and us in the middle of the burner! The country was burnt black for miles all round, and we ourselves h
ad a hot time of it, Miss Sellwood; but here are two of us, at all events, to tell the tale.”
Olivia bowed to him; she could not speak. Then for a little she turned her wet eyes, wet with enthusiasm, upon the awkward hero of the tale. And without more words the party broke up.
Jack was still remonstrating with Dalrymple when the girl rejoined them outside.
“Come now!” she said. “Was it true, or wasn’t it?”
“More or less,” admitted Jack.
“Was it true about the horse and the petroleum and the spears?”
He confessed that it was, but discredited his memory as a clumsy qualification. Olivia turned away from him, and said no more until she was in her saddle; then while Jack was mounting she rode up to the squatter.
“I am truly grateful to you, Mr. Dalrymple,” she said; “and all the others will be as grateful as I am, and will look forward to your visit. But for you, we might all have gone on being entertained by a hero unawares. You must tell us more. Meanwhile I for one can thank you most heartily!”
And she leant over and frankly pressed his hand; but said very little all the long ride home. Jack assured her, however, that he had never thought of his wound for years, although he must have a bullet in him somewhere to that day; he also told her that the fight with the blacks had been the beginning of his connection with his old boss, whose service he had never left until the end. And for miles he spoke of no one else; he was so grateful to Olivia for liking his friend, and he had so many stories of Dalrymple to set as well as he could against that one of himself. So the ride drew to an end in the golden afternoon, with never a tender word between the pair, though his heart was as full as hers; but she could not speak; and the great seal lay yet upon his lips.
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 121
