Complete Works of E W Hornung

by E. W. Hornung

  “You have performed a public service, my dear Mr. Dalrymple,” said she. “Dear Jack will, I know, forgive me when I say that those two young men have never been in their element here. They are all right in a London drawing-room, as representatives of a certain type. In a country house they are impossible; and, for my part, I shall certainly never send them another card.”

  Jack also was ceasing to disapprove of the humiliation of Edmund Stubbs, whose remarks overnight in the Poet’s Corner had suddenly recurred to his mind.

  “Did you know it was the same man?” said he, pushing back his chair.

  “I’m afraid I did,” replied the squatter, as he rose. “They told me he was staying down here, and I could hardly avoid exposing the fellow. I hope, my dear Jack, that you will forgive the liberty I undoubtedly took in doing so. I am the germ that expels the other germs — a sort of anti-toxine in cuffs. Similia similibus, if my memory serves me, Mr. Lafont. Before long you may have to inject a fresh bacillus to expel me! Meantime, my dear Jack, let me offer you a cigar to show there’s no ill-feeling.”

  “No, thanks,” said Jack, for once rather shortly; “you’ve got to smoke one of mine. It’s my house!” he added, with a grin.

  And the remark was much appreciated by those to whom it was not addressed; on Dalrymple it produced no effect at all.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  HECKLING A MINISTER

  The engagement became known in the course of the afternoon, and the news was received in a manner after all very gratifying to the happy pair. Lady Caroline Sellwood did indeed insist on kissing her future son-in-law, but the obvious attitude she now assumed did not impose upon him for a moment. He had seen through her the night before; he could never believe in the woman again. In any case, however, her affectation of blank surprise, and her motherly qualms concerning the prospective loss of her ewe lamb, were a little over-acted, even for so inexperienced an observer as the Duke of St. Osmund’s. She knew it, too, and hated Jack with all her hollow heart for having found her out; to him, it was, after this, a relief to listen to the somewhat guarded observations of Mr. Sellwood, whose feelings in the matter were just a little mixed.

  Of the rest, Francis Freke volunteered his services for the great event, and both he and his wife (who brought down her entire speaking family to say good-night to “Uncle Jack”) were consumed with that genuine delight in the happiness of others which was their strongest point. Claude, too, was not only “very nice about it,” as Olivia said, but his behaviour, in what was for him a rather delicate situation, showed both tact and self-control. Never for a moment did look or word of his suggest the unsuccessful suitor: though to be sure he had scarcely qualified for such a rôle. Olivia and he had never been more than friends. On her side, at least, the friendship had been of that perfectly frank and chronic character which is least likely to develop into love. And no one knew this better than Claude himself, who, moreover, was not even yet absolutely sure that his own undoubted affections were inspired by the divine impulse for which his poet’s heart had so often yearned. At all events he had thought upon the one maiden for very many months; and putting it no higher than this, his present conduct was that of a tolerably magnanimous man.

  The one person who raised an unsympathetic eyebrow was Dalrymple the squatter. He seemed surprised at the news and, for the moment, rather annoyed; but Jack recalled the deplorably cynical view of women for which the owner of Carara had been quite notorious in the back-blocks, and the squatter’s displeasure did not rankle. Nor was it expressed a second time. Either the sight of the pair together, who made no secret of their happiness; either this pretty spectacle, or the dictates of good taste, moved Dalrymple, ultimately, to the most graceful congratulations they had yet received. And it was characteristic of the man that his remarks took the form of an unsolicited speech at the dinner-table.

  He had been only a few hours in the house, yet to all but Mr. Sellwood (who did not meet him until evening) the hours seemed days. For the squatter was one of those men who carry with them the weight of their own presence, the breath of an intrinsic power, subtly felt from the first; thus the little house-party had taken more notice of him in one afternoon than the normal stranger would have attracted in a week; and to them it already seemed inevitable that he should lead and that they should follow whether they would or no. Accordingly, they were not in the least surprised to see Dalrymple on his legs when the crumb-cloth had been removed; though all but Jack deemed the act a liberty; and the squatter still adopted the tone of a master felicitating his men, rather than that of a guest congratulating his host.

  Yet the speech was fluent and full of point; and the speaker himself made a sufficiently taking figure, leaning slightly forward, with the tips of his well-shaped fingers just resting on the black oak board that dimly reflected them. An unexceptionable shirt-front sat perfectly on his full, deep chest, a single pearl glistening in its centre; and there was a gleam of even teeth between the close-cropped, white moustache and the ugly, mobile, nether lip, whence every word fell distinct and clear of its predecessor. The Home Secretary had heard a worse delivery from his own front bench; and he was certainly interested in the story of the iron hut and the savages of Northern Queensland, which Dalrymple repeated with the happiest effect. Olivia forgave him certain earlier passages on the strength of these; her heart was full; only she could not lift her eyes from the simple chain about her wrist, for they were dim. The speech closed with the dramatic climax of the tale; there had been but one interruption to the flow of well-chosen words, and that was when the speaker stopped to blow out a smoking candle without appealing to his host.

  The health of the pair was then drunk with appropriate enthusiasm; poor Jack blurted out a few honest words, hardly intelligible from his emotion; and the three ladies left the room.

  “There’s one more point to that yarn,” said Dalrymple, closing the door he had held open, “that I don’t think you yourself are aware of, Jack. It was when you got back to the store, with your shirt burnt off your back, and the country in a blaze all round, that I first noticed the legend on your chest. As you probably know, Mr. Sellwood, the Duke has one of his own eagles tattooed upon his chest. I saw it that day for the first time. I felt sure it meant something. And years afterwards, when I heard that a London solicitor was scouring the Colonies for the unknown Duke of St. Osmund’s, it was the sudden recollection of that mark which made me to some extent the happy instrument of his discovery.”

  “To every extent!” cried Jack, wringing his benefactor’s hand. “I’ve always said so. Mr. Sellwood, I owe him everything, and yet he makes a song about my scaring away a few blackfellows with a bush-fire! By the hokey, I’ve a good mind to have him live happily with us ever after for his pains!”

  The Home Secretary bent his snowy head: his rosy face was the seat of that peculiarly grim expression with which political caricaturists have familiarised the world. Dalrymple’s light eyes twinkled like polished flints; here was high game worthy of his gun. He took the empty chair on Mr. Sellwood’s left.

  “I understand, sir, that you are fatally bitten with golf?” began the squatter in his airiest manner. The other lit a cigarette with insolent deliberation before replying.

  “I’m fond of the game,” he said at length, “if that’s what you mean.”

  “That was precisely what I did mean. Pardon me if I used an unparliamentary expression. I have read a great deal in your English papers — with which I never permit myself to lose touch — of the far-reaching ravages of the game. Certainly the disease must be widespread when one finds a Cabinet Minister down with the — golf!”

  “We don’t pronounce the l,” Mr. Sellwood observed. “We call it goff.” For though in political life an imperturbable temper was one of his most salient virtues, the Home Secretary was notoriously touchy on the subject of his only game.

  Dalrymple laughed outright.

  “A sure symptom, my dear sir, of a thoroughly dangerous case! But pra
y excuse my levity; I fear we become a little too addicted to chaff in the uncivilised wilds. I am honestly most curious about the game. I’m an old fogey myself, and I might like to take it up if it really has any merits — —”

  “It has many,” put in Claude cheerily, to divert an attack which Mr. Sell wood was quite certain to resent.

  “Has it?” said the squatter incredulously. “For the life of one I can’t see where those merits come in. To lay yourself out to hit a sitting ball! I’d as soon shoot a roosting hen!”

  “Hear, hear!” cried Jack. “That’s exactly what I say, Mr. Dalrymple.”

  The discussion had in fact assumed the constituent elements of a “foursome,” which may have been the reason why the Home Secretary was unable any longer to maintain the silence of dignified disdain.

  “I should like to take you out, the two of you,” he said, “with a driver and a ball between you. I should like to see which of you would hit that sitting ball first, and how far!”

  “We’ll take you on to-morrow!” exclaimed Jack.

  But the Home Secretary made no reply.

  “I’m not keen,” remarked Dalrymple. “It can’t be a first-class game.”

  “You’re hardly qualified to judge,” snapped Sellwood, “since you’ve never played.”

  “Exactly why I am qualified. I’m not down with the disease.”

  “Then pray let us adopt the Duke’s suggestion, and play a foursome to-morrow — like as we sit. Eh, Mr. — I beg your pardon, but I quite forget your name?”

  “Dalrymple,” replied the squatter; “and yours, once more?”

  “Look in Whitaker,” growled the Home Secretary, rising; and he left the table doubly angered by the weakness of his retort, where indeed it was weak to have replied at all.

  Decidedly the squatter was no comfortable guest. Apart from his monstrous freedom of speech and action, which might pass perhaps on a bush station, but certainly not in an English country house, he was continually falling foul of somebody. Now it was the butler, now a fellow guest, and lastly a connection of his host, and one of Her Majesty’s Ministers into the bargain. In each case, to be sure, the other side was primarily in the wrong. The butler was the worse for drink; the Parthenon man had indulged in gratuitous abuse of his friend; even Mr. Sellwood had taken amiss what was meant as pure chaff, and had been the first to begin the game of downright rudeness at which the old Australian had soon beaten him. Yet the fact remained that Dalrymple was the moving spirit in each unpleasantness; he had been a moving spirit since the moment he set foot in the house, and this was exactly what the other guests resented. But it was becoming painfully apparent that Jack himself would take nothing amiss; that he was constitutionally unable to regard Dalrymple in any other light than that of his old king, who could still do no wrong. And this being so, it was impossible for another to complain.

  Indeed, when Mr. Sellwood joined the ladies, who happened to be in the conservatory, with savage words upon his lips, his wife stuck up for the maligned Colonist. That, however, was partly from the instinct of conjugal opposition, and partly because Lady Caroline was herself afraid of “this fellow Dalrymple,” as her husband could call him fluently enough behind his back. The other men were not long in joining the indignant Minister. They had finished their cigarettes, but Jack had donned his gorgeous smoking-cap by special request of Lady Caroline, who beamed upon him and it from her chair.

  “Hallo! have you come in for that thing?” exclaimed Mr. Sellwood, who was in the mood to hail with delight any target for hostile criticism. “I always thought you intended it for Claude, my dear Caroline?”

  “It turned out to be a little too small for Claude,” replied her Ladyship sweetly.

  “Claude, you’ve had an escape,” said the Home Secretary. “Jack, my boy, you have my sympathy.”

  “I don’t require it, thank you, sir,” laughed the Duke. “I’m proud of myself, I tell you! This’d knock ‘em up at Jumping Sandhills, wouldn’t it, Mr. Dalrymple?”

  “It would indeed: so the cap goes with the coronet, does it?” added the squatter, but with such good-humour that it was impossible to take open umbrage at his words. “I wonder how it would fit me?” And he lifted the thing off Jack’s head by the golden tassel, and dropped it upon his own.

  “Too small again,” said Jack: indeed the purple monstrosity sat upon the massive hairless head like a thimble on a billiard-ball.

  “And it doesn’t suit you a bit,” added Olivia, who was once more in a simmer of indignation with her lover’s exasperating friend.

  “No more would the coronet,” replied Dalrymple, replacing the smoking-cap on its owner’s head. “By the way, Jack, where do you keep your coronet?”

  “Where do I keep my coronet?” asked the Duke of his major-domo. “I’ve never set eyes on it.”

  “I fancy they have it at the bank,” said Claude.

  “And much good it does you there!” exclaimed Dalrymple. “Shall I tell you what I’d do with it if it were mine?”

  “Yes, do,” said Jack, smiling in advance.

  “Then come outside and you shall hear. I am afraid I have shocked your friends sufficiently for one night. And there’s a very fascinating moon.”

  CHAPTER XIX

  THE CAT AND THE MOUSE

  “You’re a lucky fellow,” said the squatter as they sauntered down the drive. “Give me another of those cigars; they are better than mine, after all.”

  “They ought to be,” replied Jack complacently. “I told old Claude to pay all he could for ‘em.”

  “He seems to have done so. What an income you must have!”

  “About fifteen bob a minute, so they tell me.”

  “After a pound a week in the bush!”

  “It does sound rummy, doesn’t it? After you with the match, sir.”

  “It’s incredible.”

  “Yet it’s astonishing how used you get to it in time — you’d be surprised! At first the whole thing knocked me sideways; it was tucker I couldn’t digest. But once you take to the soft tack, there’s nothing like it in the world. You may guess who’s made me take to it quicker than I might have done!”

  Dalrymple shrugged his massive shoulders, and raised a contemplative eye to the moon, that lay curled like a silver shaving in the lucid heavens.

  “Oh, yes, I can guess,” he said sardonically. “And mind you I’ve nothing against the girl — I meant you were lucky there. The girl’s all right — if you must marry. I don’t dislike a woman who’ll show fight; and she looked like showing it when I tried on that cracker-night-cap thing of yours. Oh, certainly! If you were to marry, you couldn’t have done better; the girl’s worth fifty of her mother, at any rate.”

  “Fifty million!” cried Jack, somewhat warmly.

  “Fifty million I meant to say,” and the squatter ran his arm through that of his host. “Come, don’t you mind me, Jack, my boy! You know what an old heathen I am in those little matters; and we have lots of other things to talk about, in any case.”

  Jack was mollified in a moment.

  “Lots!” he cried. “I don’t seem to have seen anything of you yet, and I’m sure you haven’t seen much of the place. Isn’t it a place and a half? Look at the terrace in the moonlight — and the spires — and the windows — hundreds of ‘em — and the lawn and the tank! Then there’s the inside; you’ve seen the hall; but I must show you the picture-gallery and the State Apartments. Such pictures! They say it’s one of the finest private collections in the world; there’s hardly one of them that isn’t by some old master or another. I’ve heard the pictures alone are worth half a million of money!”

  “They are,” said Dalrymple.

  “You’ve heard so too?”

  “Of course; my good fellow, your possessions are celebrated all the world over; that’s what you don’t appear to have realised yet.”

  “I can’t,” said Jack. “It puts me in a sick funk when I try! So it would you if you were suddenly to come in f
or a windfall like mine — that is, if you were a chap like me. But you aren’t; you’d be the very man for the billet.”

  And Jack stepped back to admire his hero, who chuckled softly as he smoked, standing at his full height, with both hands in his pockets, and the moon like limelight on his shirt.

  “It’s not a billet I should care about,” said the squatter; “but it’s great fun to find you filling it so admirably — —”

  “I don’t; I wish I did,” said Jack, throwing away the cigar which he had lighted to keep his guest company.

  “You do, though. And if it isn’t a rude question — —” Dalrymple hesitated, staring hard —

  “I daresay you’re very happy in your new life?”

  “Of course I’m very happy now. None happier!”

  “But apart from the girl?”

  “You can’t get apart from her; that’s just it. If I’m to go on being happy in my position, I’ll have to learn to fill it without making myself a laughing-stock; and the one person who can teach me will be my wife.”

  “I see. Then you begin to like your position for its own sake?”

  “That’s so,” replied Jack. He was paring a cake of very black tobacco for the pipe which he had stuck between his teeth. Dalrymple watched him with interest.

  “And yet,” said the squatter, “you have neither acquired a taste for your own most excellent cigars, nor conquered your addiction to the vile twist we used to keep on the station!”

  “Well, and that’s so, too,” laughed Jack. “You must give a fellow time, Mr. Dalrymple!”

  “Do you know what I thought when I met you yesterday?” continued Dalrymple, turning his back to the moon, and looking very hard at Jack while he sucked at his cigar with his thick, strong lips. “Do you know how you struck me then? I thought you’d neither acquired a taste for your new life nor conquered your affection for the old. That’s how you struck me in Devenholme yesterday.”