After this, the effect of the last extract was at least startling. The words in this case were few, and cruelly to the point. They simply told of the escape of the prisoner Ryan during a violent dust-storm that enveloped the township of Mount Clarence, and afterwards rendered tracking (when the bird was discovered to have flown) most difficult. No details of the escape were given, but the message ended with the confident assurance (which read humourously now) that the re-capture of Sundown, alive or dead, could be but a matter of hours.
There was a curious smile upon Dick’s face as he folded up the cuttings. “I wonder how on earth he did it?” he asked himself as he slowly knocked the ashes from his pipe.
The sunlight was peeping in where it could through blind and curtains. Dick raised the first, drew back the second, and stood in the broad light of day. Then, throwing up the sash, he plunged head and shoulders into the fresh, fragrant morning air. The effect upon him was magical. His forehead seemed pressed by a cool, soothing hand; his throat drank down a deep draught of wizard’s wine; he caught at his breath, as though actually splashing in the dewy air, and yet in a very little while the man’s baser nature asserted itself. Dick yawned, not once or twice, but repeatedly; then he shivered and shut the window. Five minutes later the lively sparrows — if they took more than a passing interest in their early guest, as they should, since such very early guests were rare among them — the sprightly sparrows that visited the window-ledge might have seen for themselves that he was sound, sound asleep.
For some hours this sleep was profound, until, in fact, Dick began to dream. Then, indeed, he was soon awake, but not before his soul had been poisoned by a very vivid and full vision. This dream was not strange under the circumstances, but it was plausible, disturbing, and less bizarre than most — in fact, terribly realistic. He had gone to Graysbrooke and found Miles — Sundown the bushranger — still there. At once and openly he had denounced the villain, shown him in his true colours, and at once he had been disbelieved — laughed at by the enemy, pitied by his friends, treated as the victim of a delusion. With Miles’s mocking defiant laugh in his ears, Dick awoke.
It was the dread, the chance of something like this actually happening, that hurried him to Graysbrooke with unbroken fast. He found Colonel Bristo plainly worried, yet glad to see him, eager to tell him what was the matter.
“We have lost our guest.”
Dick felt the blood rushing back to his face at the words.
“Miles has gone,” the Colonel pursued in a tone of annoyance; “gone this morning — a summons to Australia, he fears — a thing he had never dreamt of until last night.”
“Dear me!” said Dick, with surprise that was partly genuine. For his plan had worked out better — he had been followed more strictly to the letter than he could have dared to hope; the misgivings of the last hour were turned to supreme satisfaction.
“Yes,” sighed the soldier, “it was most unexpected. And I need not tell you how disappointed we all are.”
Dick murmured that he was sure of it, with all the awkwardness of an honest tongue driven into hypocrisy.
“For my own part, I feel confoundedly put out about it. I shall be as dull as ditch-water for days. As for the ladies, they’ll miss him horribly.”
Dick’s reply was monosyllabic, and its tone fell distinctly short of sympathy.
“He was such a good fellow!”
The Colonel said this regretfully, and waited for some echo. But Dick could have said nothing without the whole truth bursting out, so he merely asked:
“When did he go?”
“About nine — as soon as he could pack up his things, in fact. Alice was not down to say good-bye to him.”
Dick’s eyes glittered.
“He will be back to say it, though?” he asked suspiciously.
“No, I fear not; he will probably have to start at once; at least, so his agent told him — the fellow who came down last night, and robbed us of him for half the evening. By-the-bye, we missed you too; did you go home?”
“Yes.” Dick faltered a little.
“Have you and Alice been quarrelling?” asked Alice’s father abruptly.
Dick answered simply that they had. Colonel Bristo silently paced the carpet. When he spoke again it was to revert to the subject of Miles.
“Yes, I am sorry enough to lose him; for we had become great friends, intimate friends, and we understood one another thoroughly, he and I. But the worst of it is, we shan’t have him with us in Yorkshire. What a man for the moors! And how he would have enjoyed it! But there; it’s no use talking; we’re all disappointed, and there’s an end of it.”
The Colonel laid his hand on Dick’s shoulder, and added:
“You won’t disappoint us, my boy?”
“For the moors, sir?”
“Why, of course.”
“I cannot go — I am very sorry” — hastily— “but — —”
“Nonsense, Dick!”
“I really cannot — I cannot, indeed,” with lame repetition.
“And why?” asked Colonel Bristo, mildly. “Why — when you promised us weeks ago?”
Dick raised his eyes from the ground, and the answer was given and understood without words; yet he felt impelled to speak. He began in a low voice, nervously:
“Without disrespect, sir, I think I may beg of you not to insist on an explanation — either from me, or from — anyone else. It could do no good. It might do — I mean it might cause — additional pain. You have guessed the reason? Yes, you see it clearly — you understand. And — and you seem sorry. Don’t let it trouble you, sir. There are lots better than I.” He paused, then added uncertainly: “Colonel Bristo, you have been more, far more, than kind and good to me. If you treated me like a son before it was time — well — well, it will all be a pleasant memory to — to take away with me.”
“Away?”
“Yes, away; back to Australia,” said Dick, expressing his newest thought as though it were his oldest. “Before you get back from the north, I shall probably be on my way.”
“Don’t do that, Dick — don’t do that,” said Colonel Bristo, with some feeling.
Personal liking for Dick apart, it was not a pleasant reflection that his daughter had jilted the man who had come from Australia to marry her, and was sending him back there.
Dick answered him sadly.
“It can’t be helped, sir. It is all over. It is decent that I should go.”
“I don’t understand ‘em — never understood ‘em,” muttered the old man vaguely, and half to himself. “Still, there is no one but Dick, I dare swear; who should there be but Dick?”
Dick stepped forward, as though to push the scales from the eyes of this unseeing man; but he checked his impulse, and cried huskily, holding the thin hand in his own great strong one:
“Good-bye, Colonel Bristo. God bless you, sir! Good-bye!”
And the young man was gone.
XVI
MILITARY MANŒUVRES
“Well!” exclaimed Colonel Bristo, after some minutes. He leant back in his chair and stared sternly at his book-shelves. “It’s a nice look-out for the moors; that’s all.”
His reflections were dispiriting. He was thinking that the only two men whom he had really wanted down in Yorkshire had this morning, almost in the same breath, declared that they could not go. They were, in fact, both going back to Australia — independently, from widely different reasons. With Miles the necessity was pressing enough, no doubt; and then he had only been visiting England, and never contemplated a long stay. But Dick’s case was very different. He had come home for good, with his “pile” and his prospects. Could he possibly have been made so miserable during these few weeks that he would be glad to bury himself again in the bush? Could his case be really so hopeless as he himself believed it?
“If so,” said Colonel Bristo with irritation, “then Alice has played the deuce with the best young fellow in England!”
But how cou
ld he tell? How was he, the father, to get at the facts of the case? Alice was all the world to him: but for all the world he would not have sought her confidence in such a matter. Then what was he to do?
He got up from his chair, and paced the floor with the stride of a skipper on his poop. He had liked young Edmonstone always — respected him as a mere stripling. Love-sick boys were, as a rule, selfish, if not sly, young fools — that was his experience; but this one had shown himself upright and fearless — had, in fact, behaved uncommonly well, once the mischief was done. But that liking had developed into affection since the night of Dick’s arrival. Poor fellow! how grateful he had been! how hopeful! Who could have discouraged him? The Colonel, for his part, had no reason to do so now. What was there against him? what against “it”? In a word, he had soon — as he saw more of him — set his heart upon Dick for his son. Secretly, he had already formed certain projects of parental ingenuity. He had already, in his walks, held stealthy intercourse with house and estate agents, and otherwise dipped into the future of other people, further than he had any business. And here was the death-blow to it all! The pair had quarrelled so violently that the prospective son-in-law was on the point of taking himself back to Australia! One thing was certain: it could be no ordinary disagreement — she must have jilted him. But if so, for whom? She had seen nobody for months — nobody but Miles! And Miles — the Colonel smiled indulgently — with all his good points, with all his fine qualities, Miles was no marrying man. Then who could it be? Once more he, her father, was unable to tell, for the life of him.
He sat down, rose again in a moment, and rang the bell. Then he sent a polite message to Mrs. Parish, requesting her kind attendance, if not in any way inconvenient.
“She can at least put me right on one or two points. That is, if she doesn’t go off at a tangent, down some blind-alley of a side issue!”
The lady appeared after the regulation delay, by which she was in the habit of italicising the dignity of her office.
By her greeting, one would have thought the appointment was of her making. She observed that she would have come before to inquire how the Colonel felt after it all, but understood that he was engaged.
The Colonel explained with a sigh.
“He is gone.”
“Ah!” There was unprecedented sympathy in the lady’s look and tone.
“You saw him go?” asked the Colonel, looking up in surprise.
“I did,” sadly; “I did.”
“He said good-bye to you, perhaps?”
“To be sure he did! He was hardly likely to—”
“He didn’t ask to see Alice, I suppose?”
“Oh, yes, he did.”
“Dear me!” said the Colonel to himself.
“But she could not see him, I grieve to say; it was a thousand pities, seeing that he’s going straight back to Australia.”
“Oh, he told you that too, did he?”
“Of course, Colonel Bristo, when he said good-bye.”
“Dear me! But why wouldn’t Alice see him?”
“It was too early.”
“A mere excuse,” exclaimed the Colonel angrily, looking at his watch. “Too early! It is plain that she has thrown him over. If so, then the best young fellow in England has been —— But perhaps you can tell me whether it really is so?”
Mrs. Parish began to feel mystified.
“A young fellow?” she began doubtfully.
“Well, young in years; older than his age, I know. But that’s not my point.”
“Then I really don’t know, Colonel Bristo. Alice seldom honors me with her confidence nowadays. Indeed, for the last year—”
“The point — my dear madam; the point!”
“Well, then,” snapped Mrs. Parish, “to judge by their dances together, last night, I should say you are certainly wrong!”
“Ah, you thought that at the time, I know. Do you remember my disagreeing with you when you declared Alice had never been more brilliant, and so on? Why she only danced with the lad once!”
Only once! “The lad!” Colonel Bristo must certainly be joking; and jokes at the expense of the lady who had controlled his household for twenty years were not to be tolerated.
“Colonel Bristo, I fail to understand you. If it were not preposterous, I should imagine you had stooped to ridicule. Allow me, please, to state that your daughter danced three times, if not four, with Mr. Miles — I see nothing to smile at, Colonel Bristo!”
“My good — my dear Mrs. Parish,” said he, correcting himself hastily, and rising urbanely from his chair, “we are at cross purposes. I mean young Edmonstone; you mean, I suppose, Mr. Miles. A thousand apologies.”
Mrs. Parish was only partially appeased.
“Oh, if you mean that young gentleman, I can assure you he has absolutely no chance. Has he said good-bye, too, then?”
“Yes. He says he is going back to Australia.”
“I said he would!” exclaimed Mrs. Parish with gusto.
“But — I say! You surely don’t mean that it is Mr. Miles Alice cares for?”
Mrs. Parish smiled superior.
“Has it not been patent?”
“Not to me, madam!” said Colonel Bristo warmly.
“Love on both sides; I might say at first sight. I watched it dawn, and last night I thought it had reached high noon,” the old lady declared with emotion. “But this unfortunate summons! Still, I think we shall see him again before he sails, and I think he will come back to England for good before long.”
“You mean you hope so, Mrs. Parish,” said the Colonel dryly. He seated himself at his desk with unmistakable meaning. “Confound her!” he muttered when the door closed; “the thing is plausible enough. Yet I don’t believe it. What’s more, much as I like Miles, I don’t wish it! No. Now what am I to do about Dick?”
This question occupied his thoughts for the rest of the morning. He could not answer it to his satisfaction. In the afternoon he sent word to Iris Lodge, begging Dick to come over in the evening for an hour. The messenger brought back the news that Mr. Edmonstone was from home — had, in fact, left for abroad that afternoon.
“Abroad!” thought Colonel Bristo. “He has lost no time! But ‘abroad’ only means the Continent — it is ‘out’ when you go farther. And yet that is one way out — the quickest! Is he capable of such madness at a moment’s notice? Never; impossible. But I had better look into the matter myself.”
And this the Colonel did in the course of a few days, by himself calling at Iris Lodge. There was a little coldness, or it may have been merely self-consciousness, in his reception. But when, after a few preliminaries, the visitor began to speak of Dick, this soon wore off; for his regard was too warmly expressed, and his praise too obviously genuine, not to win and melt hearts half as loving as those of Mrs. Edmonstone and her daughter. The Colonel, for his part, was sufficiently rewarded when he learnt that Dick had merely joined an old Australian friend in Italy, and would be back at the beginning of August.
“I was half afraid,” he observed tentatively, “that he was tired of England already, and was on his way out again.”
The horror with which this notion was instantly demolished caused the old gentleman to smile with unconcealed satisfaction; for it assured him that Dick’s intention (if it was an intention, and not merely the wild idea of a heated moment) had at least not yet been breathed to his family. He took up his hat and cane with a light heart. And he stopped to add a rider to his gracious adieu:
“We shall be tramping the moors when your son returns, Mrs. Edmonstone, so I beg you will forward him on to us. And pray, Miss Fanny, use your influence as well, for we have lost our other Australian, and I don’t see how we can get on without Dick.”
He went out in good spirits.
Thereafter, as far as the Colonel was concerned, young Edmonstone might bake himself to his heart’s content — until the Twelfth — abroad. As it happened, Colonel Bristo found a far more immediate cause for anxiety
at home. This was the appearance of Alice.
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 224
