MASTER AND MAN.
“Shall I shut the window, sir? The evening is rather cold.”
It was Pierre Janvard, the body-servant of Mr. Kester St. George, who
spoke. The place was a room at Park Newton, for Kester had come there
on his promised visit. The same suite of rooms had been allotted to him
that had been his during his uncle’s lifetime—the same furniture was
still in them: everything seemed unchanged. “Do you hear the bells,
sir?” continued Pierre. “The village ringers are having their Wednesday
evening practice. They always used to practise on Wednesday evenings,
sir, if you remember. It seems only like yesterday since you left Park
Newton.”
To all this Mr. St. George vouchsafed no reply. He was dressing for
dinner, a process to which he always attached much importance, and was
just at that moment engaged with the knot of his white tie. He was
evidently in anything but an amiable mood—a fact of which Pierre was
perfectly aware, but did not seem to mind in the least.
“Do you remember, sir, talking to me one evening when you were dressing
for dinner, just as it might be now, of what you would do, sir, and
what alterations you would make, when Park Newton was all your own? You
would build a new wing, and a new entrance-hall, and cut a fresh
carriage-drive through the park. And then the stables were to be
rebuilt, and the gardens altered and improved, and——”
“Pierre, you are a fool,” said Mr. St. George, with emphasis.
The ghost of a smile flickered across the valet’s staid features, but
he did not answer.
Mr. St. George looked at his watch. It still wanted half an hour to
dinner-time. He felt in no humour for seeing either Osmond or his
cousin till they should all meet at table. He would stroll as far as
the little summerhouse on the Knoll, and look once more on a scene that
he remembered so well. He put on a light overcoat and a soft hat, and,
going leisurely downstairs, he went slowly through the picture-gallery
and the conservatory, and let himself out by a side door into the
grounds at the back of the house. Every step that he took was haunted
for him with memories of the past. His heart was full of bitterness and
resentment that Fate, as he called it, should have played with him at
such a terrible game of cross purposes, and have ended by winning
everything from him. “If I had never been brought up to look upon it as
sure to be one day my own,” he said, “I could have borne to see it
another man’s without regret. Pierre is right: I did dream and plan and
say to myself that I would do this thing and that thing when the time
came for me to be master here. And now I, Kester St. George, am nothing
better than a pauper and a blackleg, and am here on sufferance—an
invited guest under the very roof that ought in justice to be mine!”
He took the winding path through the plantation that led to the summit
of the Knoll. The summerhouse was unlocked as usual. He went in and sat
down. The scene before him and around him was very pleasant to look
upon, lighted up, as it was just then, by the fading splendours of an
April sunset. The Hall itself, clasped tenderly round with shrubberies
of softest green, lay close at his feet. Far and wide on either side
stretched the Park, with its clumps of noble old trees that had seen
generation after generation of the St. Georges come and go like
creatures of a day, and still flourished unchanged. Away in the
distance could be seen Highworth and other prosperous farms, all part
and parcel of the Park Newton estate.
“All this belongs of right to me,” muttered Kester to himself, as his
eyes took in the whole pleasant picture; “and it would have been mine
but for——”
He did not finish the sentence even to himself, but the gloom on his
face deepened, and for a few moments the unhappy man sat with drooping
head, seeing nothing but some terrible picture which his own words had
conjured up.
He roused himself from his reverie with a sigh. The sun was nearly lost
to view. Eastward the glooms of evening were beginning to enfold the
landscape in their dusky wings. Blue curls of smoke wound slowly upward
from the twisted chimneys of the Hall. A few belated rooks came flying
over the Knoll on their way to their nests in the wood. The picture was
redolent of homelike beauty and repose. “Only one life stands between
me and all this,” he muttered, as his eyes drank in the scene greedily.
“Only one life. If Lionel Dering were to die to-night, I should be
master to-morrow of all that I see before me.”
He rose and left the summerhouse. He could hear the clanging of the
dinner-bell. It was time to go.
“Only one life. And what is the value of any one particular life among
the thousands that are born and die every day? Who would miss him—who
would regret him? No one. He is an isolated link in the great chain of
humanity. He might die to-night, or to-morrow, or next day. Stranger
things than that have happened before now.”
He pulled his hat over his brows and went slowly down the pathway, and
was presently lost to view among the gloomy depths of the plantation.
Left alone, Pierre Janvard settled himself comfortably in an easy chair
to enjoy the perusal of one of Mr. St. George’s yellow-backed French
novels. He was a thin, staid-looking man of fifty, decidedly more
English than French in appearance. He was partially bald, and was
closely shaven, except for two small whiskers of the kind known as
“mutton chop.” What hair he had was thickly sprinkled with gray, and
was carefully trained and attended to. He had a good forehead, a rather
large aquiline nose, and thin, firmly-cut lips. In his suit of
well-brushed black, and his spotless white tie, he looked the model of
a respectable and thoroughly trustworthy servant. He looked more than
that. Had he been set down at a public dinner among a miscellaneous
assemblage of guests, a stranger would probably have picked him out as
a banker or a rich merchant, or might even have asked, and have been
pardoned for asking, whether he were not some celebrated lawyer, or
member of the Lower House. He spoke English with a French accent as a
matter of course, but he could express himself as readily in one
language as the other. He had a particularly quiet, noiseless way of
going about his duties that many people might have liked, but which
would have been intolerable to others. You never seemed to know that he
was near you till you found him at your elbow.
Such as he was—this smug, respectable-looking valet—his antecedents
were somewhat peculiar. His grandfather had been one of the
sub-executioners of Paris during the terrible days of the Great
Revolution. Later on, his father had for many years held the post of
public executioner in one of the large towns in the south of France.
Pierre himself had been intended for the same profession, and had, when
a youth, assisted his father on more than one occasion in the
performance of his ghastly duties. But the death of Janvard père
brought a change of prospects. The widow was persuaded to come over to
England and invest the family savings in the purchase of a small
blanchisserie at the West End of London; and from that date Pierre’s
connection with his native country was a broken one.
Kester St. George’s tastes were all luxurious ones. One of the first
things he did after he came of age was to look out for a valet. Pierre
Janvard was recommended to him by a friend, and he engaged him at once.
The Frenchman had served him faithfully and well, had travelled with
him, and had lived with him at Park Newton up to the date of Kester’s
quarrel with his uncle. But when the whole of Kester’s income was swept
away at one blow, and he was thrown on the world without a sovereign
that he could call his own, then Janvard and he of necessity parted.
Their coming together again was quite a matter of accident. It so
happened that, a few days after Kester had won heavily on a certain
race, he encountered Janvard in the street. The Frenchman touched his
hat, and Kester stopped and spoke to him. The result was that Janvard,
who was out of a situation at that time, was re-engaged by St. George,
whose old, luxurious tastes cropped up the moment he found himself in
abundant funds. Those funds could not last for ever, and a season of
impecuniosity had again set in; but the bond between master and man had
not again been broken.
Janvard stayed on with Mr. St. George. He was thoroughly trustworthy,
or so Kester believed; and he probably knew more of his master’s
secrets—more of certain shady transactions that were never intended to
bear the light of day—than any other man living.
Janvard had one relation in England—a sister—with whom he was on terms
of close and affectionate intercourse. Both he and his sister were
unmarried, and they both intended to remain so. Madame Janvard—she was
called madame out of compliment to her age, which was nearer fifty than
forty—kept a small boarding-house for her countrymen in a narrow street
no great distance from Leicester Square. She had saved money, had
madame. So had her brother. And the secret ambition of the two was to
unite their fortunes, and start together as proprietors of a
first-class hotel.
Pierre’s holidays and leisure time, when he was in town, were always
spent with his sister, in whose house one little cockloft of a room was
set specially apart for him, and was full of his property. Here he kept
a few boxes of choice cigars for his own private smoking, and a varied
assortment of French novels and plays, together with sundry articles of
bric-à-brac which he had picked up during his travels. But, in addition
to these articles, the room contained several remarkable mementoes of
the Great Revolution, which had come down to Pierre from his
grandfather. In one corner hung the veritable pair of shoes worn by
Charlotte Corday on the day that she stabbed Marat. In a little glass
box on the chimney-piece was a lock of hair shorn from the head of
Marie Antoinette after execution. Near it was a handkerchief that had
belonged to the Princess de Lamballe. On a bracket opposite the window
stood a life-size bust of Marat himself, the hideous head crowned with
the bonnet rouge, and inscribed below, _Le Génie de la Révolution_.
Near at hand was a working model of the guillotine, made by the
redoubtable hands of old Martin Janvard, and close by it a model of one
of the tumbrils in which the condemned were conveyed to the Place de la
Grève. In this room Pierre and his sister had many pleasant little
banquets all to themselves, and many a long chat on matters past,
present, and to come. Not having her to talk to to-night, he was going
to write to her, which was the next best thing he could do. So when he
had yawned through a couple of chapters of the novel, he took pen and
paper, and sat down at Mr. St. George’s table, being perfectly aware
that he was safe from interruption for another hour at the least.
Judging by what Pierre Janvard wrote, there would seem, this evening,
to have been a strange similarity in the trains of thought at work in
the minds of master and man.
“We are once again back in the old place, chère Margot,” wrote the
Frenchman. “Was it only yesterday, or is it more than a year ago, since
we were in these rooms last? Everything seems as it used to be, except
that the old master’s voice is heard no longer. He lies cold and quiet
in the churchyard. Nothing else seems changed, and yet how changed is
all! For a new master now reigns at Park Newton, and that master is not
Monsieur Kester St. George. Of course we have known of this all along,
but not till we came here did we seem to realize all that it means. One
man, and one man only, stands between my master and all this vast
property. That man, as you know already, is his own cousin. He is not
married, but he may be before long. If he were only to catch a fever
and die—if he were only to commit suicide—if he were only to fall into
the river and be drowned—ah, my faith! what luck would then be ours!
“And yet, somehow, little one, I feel as if I should hardly like to
change places with this Monsieur Dering. I don’t know why I feel so,
but there the feeling is, and I tell you of it. Life is so strangely
uncertain, you know; and it seems to me more uncertain still when you
stand so terribly in the light of another man. Perhaps you will say
that I am superstitious. So be it. But can any man say where
superstition begins and where it ends, even in his own mind? I can’t.
All I know is this: that if I were Monsieur Dering, the last man in the
world whom I would ask to cross my threshold would be Monsieur Kester
St. George.”
A fortnight had come and gone since the arrival of Kester St. George
and Percy Osmond at Park Newton. Another week would bring their visit
to an end, and Lionel Dering was fain to confess to himself that he
should not be sorry when that time had arrived. This was more
particularly the case as regards Osmond, of whose company he had grown
heartily tired. There was, indeed, about Osmond little or nothing that
could have any attraction for a man like Lionel Dering. The points of
difference between them were too great for any hope to exist that they
could ever be bridged over. Friendship between two such men was an
impossibility.
With Kester St. George the case was somewhat different. Lionel would
gladly have clasped his cousin’s hand in friendship, but he had begun
to find out that beneath all Kester’s geniality, and easy laughing way
of dealing with everything that came before him, there existed a nature
cold, hard, and cynical, against which the white wings of Friendship or
of Love might beat in vain for ever. He was always pleasant, always
smiling, always good-tempered: yet it seemed impossible to get near
him, or to feel sure that you knew him better at the end of a year than
on the first day you met him. Then, too, Lionel was not without an
uneasy sense that not only the servants at the hall, but his own social
equals in the neighbourhood, looked upon him in some measure as an
interloper, and seemed to think that he must, in some inscrutable way,
have defrauded his cousin out of his birthright. No wonder Lionel felt
that it would be a relief when the visit should have come to an end.
He took an opportunity one day, when Kester seemed in a more
confidential mood than usual, of again hinting at the pleasure it would
give him if his cousin would only accept that three thousand a-year out
of the estate which it had been his grandfather’s manifest wish should
be Kester’s share of the property. But Kester froze the moment the
subject was broached, and Lionel saw plainly how utterly useless any
further persistence in it would be.
Both Squire Culpepper and Mr. Cope had called at Park Newton as soon as
they heard that Kester St. George was down there on a visit, and a day
or two later Lionel invited those gentlemen, together with several
other old friends of his cousin, to a dinner at the hall, in honour of
the occasion. Three or four return dinners had been given by different
people, and now the day was come when they were all to go and dine with
the squire at Pincote—Lionel, Kester, and Mr. Percy Osmond.
The afternoon was cold and gloomy, with frequent showers of rain.
Luncheon was just over, and Kester St. George, who had been out riding
all the morning, was sitting alone before a cozy fire in his
dressing-room, keeping the unwelcome company of his own thoughts. In
his hands was a cheque, which Osmond, who had just left him, had given
him, in settlement of a long-standing debt at cards.
“The greedy hound!” he muttered to himself. “It was like drawing blood
from a stone to get even this paltry strip of paper from him. And yet
if this were made out for eight thousand pounds instead of for eight
only, it would be honoured. Ay, if it were for six times eight thousand
pounds, and there would then be a little fortune left. One thing’s very
certain. I must raise a couple of thousand somewhere before I’m many
hours older, or else I shall have to make a bolt of it—have to put salt
water between myself and the hounds that are for ever baying at my
heels. If Nantucket had only pulled off the Chester Cup, I should have
landed three thousand at the very least. Just like my luck that she
should fall lame twelve hours before the race. I must have two
thousand,” he went on as he rose and began to pace the room, “or else
submit to be outlawed. Osmond could lend it to me and never feel the
loss of it. Shall I ask him? As well try to move a rock. He knows that
I’m poor already. If he knew that I was a pauper he’d cut me dead. No
great loss as things go; still, I can’t afford to lose him. Shall I ask
Dering to help me out of my difficulties? No, never! never! Let
ruin—outlawry—suicide itself come, rather than that!”
He sat down again, still twisting and turning the cheque absently
between his fingers. “Only a miserable eight pounds! It’s like offering
a quarter of a biscuit to a man who is dying of starvation. Mr. Percy
Osmond doesn’t seem to have paid much attention to the art of
calligraphy when he was young. Upon my word I never saw a signature
that it would be easier to imitate. All that a clever fellow wants is a
blank cheque on the same bank. With that, what wonders might be
wrought! I’ve heard Osmond say that he always sleeps with his keys
under his pillow. Once obtain possession of them, the rest would be
easy. But how to get them? Suppose he gets drunk to-night at Pincote,
as he is nearly sure to do—why then——”
His pale face flushed, and a strange light came into his eyes. He mused
for a minute or two, then he got up and rang the bell. Pierre answered
it.
“Ascertain at what hour the next train starts for London.”
In a couple of minutes Pierre came back. “The train for London passes
Duxley station at four thirty-six,” he said.
“Good. You will just have time to catch it,” said Mr. St. George. “You
will reach London in two hours and a quarter after you leave Duxley.
Take a cab. Find out Boucher. Tell him to telegraph me first thing
to-morrow morning, so that the message will reach me here not later
than eight o’clock. His telegram must be to this effect: _You are
wanted in town immediately on most important business_. Do you
understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“An hour in London will be enough for you. You will be able to catch
the eight o’clock down train, and ought to be back in this room by
eleven at the latest. In fact, I shall expect to find you here when I
return from Pincote.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And don’t say a word to any one about your journey.”
Pierre bowed and left the room.
“Invaluable fellow, that,” said Kester aloud.
The excitement that had stirred his blood so strangely a few minutes
before was still upon him. He was like a man who had screwed himself up
to some desperate resolve which he was determined to go through with at
every cost.
He began slowly and deliberately to dress himself for dinner.
“There’s an old saying, ‘Nothing risk, nothing have,’” he muttered to
himself. “The risk, in this case, seems to be nothing very desperate.
If I fail, I shall be no worse off than I am now. If I succeed——” His
face blanched as suddenly as if he had seen a ghost.
“I forgot that!” he whispered. “Dering sleeps in the next room to
Osmond. What if he should be awake? Even when he does sleep, I’ve heard
him say that the noise of a strange footstep is enough to rouse him.
That is a difficulty I never thought of—the biggest difficulty of all.”
He was still pondering over this difficulty, whatever it might be, when
Osmond burst suddenly into the room.
“Not ready yet?” he said. “What a dilatory fellow you are! We shall
have Dering in a devil of a temper if you don’t make haste. I’ll wait
for you, if you don’t mind my having a whiff meanwhile.”