Her ladyship stood a moment, leaning upon her cane, her head thrown
back, her thin lip curling, and her eyes playing over Mr. Caryll with a
look of dislike that she made no attempt to dissemble.
Mr. Caryll found the situation redolent with comedy. He had a quick
eye for such matters; so quick an eye that he deplored on the present
occasion her ladyship's entire lack of a sense of humor. But for
that lamentable shortcoming, she might have enjoyed with him
the grotesqueness of her having--she, who disliked him so
exceedingly--toiled and anguished, robbed herself of sleep, and hoped
and prayed with more fervor, perhaps, than she had ever yet hoped and
prayed for anything, that his life might be spared.
Her glance shifted presently from him to Hortensia, who had risen and
who stood in deep confusion at having been so found by her ladyship,
and in deep agitation still arising from the things he had said and
from those which he had been hindered from adding by the coming of the
countess.
The explanations that had been interrupted might never be renewed; she
felt they never would be; he would account that he had said enough;
since he was determined to ask for nothing. And unless the matter were
broached again, what chance had she of combatting his foolish scruples;
for foolish she accounted them; they were of no weight with her, unless,
indeed, to heighten the warm feeling that already she had conceived for
him.
Her ladyship moved forward a step or two, her fan going gently to and
fro, stirring the barbs of the white plume that formed part of her tall
head-dress.
“What were you doing here, child?” she inquired, very coldly.
Mistress Winthrop looked up--a sudden, almost scared glance it was.
“I, madam? Why--I was walking in the garden, and seeing Mr. Caryll here,
I came to ask him how he did; to offer to read to him if he would have
me.”
“And the Maidstone matter not yet cold in its grave!” commented her
ladyship sourly. “As I'm a woman, it is monstrous I should be inflicted
with the care of you that have no care for yourself.”
Hortensia bit her lip, controlling herself bravely, a spot of red in
either cheek. Mr. Caryll came promptly to her rescue.
“Your ladyship must confess that Mistress Winthrop has assisted nobly in
the care of me, and so, has placed your ladyship in her debt.”
“In my debt?” shrilled the countess, eyebrows aloft, head-dress nodding.
“And what of yours?”
“In my clumsy way, ma'am, I have already attempted to convey my thanks
to her. It might be graceful in your ladyship to follow my example.”
Mentally Mr. Caryll observed that it is unwise to rouge so heavily as
did Lady Ostermore when prone to anger and to paling under it. The false
color looks so very false on such occasions.
Her ladyship struck the ground with her cane. “For what have I to thank
her, sir? Will you tell me that, you who seem so very well informed.”
“Why, for her part in saving your son's life, ma'am, if you must have
it. Heaven knows,” he continued in his characteristic, half-bantering
manner, under which it was so difficult to catch a glimpse of his real
feelings, “I am not one to throw services done in the face of folk, but
here have Mistress Winthrop and I been doing our best for your son in
this matter; she by so diligently nursing me; I by responding to her
nursing--and your ladyship's--and so, recovering from my wound. I do
not think that your ladyship shows us a becoming gratitude. It is but
natural that we fellow-workers in your ladyship's and Lord Rotherby's
interests, should have a word to say to each other on the score of those
labors which have made us colleagues.”
Her ladyship measured him with a malignant eye. “Are you quite mad,
sir?” she asked him.
He shrugged and smiled. “It has been alleged against me on occasion. But
I think it was pure spite.” Then he waved his hand towards the long seat
that stood at the back of the arbor. “Will your ladyship not sit? You
will forgive that I urge it in my own interest. They tell me that it is
not good for me to stand too long just yet.”
It was his hope that she would depart. Not so. “I cry you mercy!” said
she acidly, and rustled to the bench. “Be seated, pray.” She continued
to watch them with her baleful glance. “We have heard fine things from
you, sir, of what you have both done for my Lord Rotherby,” she gibed,
mocking him with the spirit of his half-jest. “Shall I tell you more
precisely what 'tis he owes you?”
“Can there be more?” quoth Mr. Caryll, smiling so amiably that he must
have disarmed a Gorgon.
Her ladyship ignored him. “He owes it to you both that you have
estranged him from his father, set up a breach between them that is
never like to be healed. 'Tis what he owes you.”
“Does he not owe it, rather, to his abandoned ways?” asked Hortensia, in
a calm, clear voice, bravely giving back her ladyship look for look.
“Abandoned ways?” screamed the countess. “Is't you that speak of
abandoned ways, ye shameless baggage? Faith, ye may be some judge of
them. Ye fooled him into running off with you. 'Twas that began all
this. Just as with your airs and simpers, and prettily-played innocences
you fooled this other, here, into being your champion.”
“Madam, you insult me!” Hortensia was on her feet, eyes flashing, cheeks
aflame.
“I am witness to that,” said Lord Ostermore, coming in through the
side-entrance.
Mr. Caryll was the only one who had seen him approach. The earl's face
that had wont to be so florid, was now pale and careworn, and he seemed
to have lost flesh during the past month. He turned to her ladyship.
“Out on you!” he said testily, “to chide the poor child so!”
“Poor child!” sneered her ladyship, eyes raised to heaven to invoke its
testimony to this absurdity. “Poor child.”
“Let there be an end to it, madam,” he said with attempted sternness.
“It is unjust and unreasonable in you.”
“If it were that--which it is not--it would be but following the example
that you set me. What are you but unreasonable and unjust--to treat your
son as you are treating him?”
His lordship crimsoned. On the subject of his son he could be angry in
earnest, even with her ladyship, as already we have seen.
“I have no son,” he declared, “there is a lewd, drunken, bullying
profligate who bears my name, and who will be Lord Ostermore some day. I
can't strip him of that. But I'll strip him of all else that's mine, God
helping me. I beg, my lady, that you'll let me hear no more of this,
I beg it. Lord Rotherby leaves my house to-day--now that Mr. Caryll is
restored to health. Indeed, he has stayed longer than was necessary. He
leaves to-day. He has my orders, and my servants have orders to see that
he obeys them. I do not wish to see him again--never. Let him go, and
let him be thankful--and be your ladyship thankful, too, since it seems
you must have a kindness for him in spite of all he has done to disgrace
and discredit us--that he goes not by way of Holborn Hill and Tyburn.”
She looked at him, very white from suppressed fury. “I do believe you
had been glad had it been so.”
“Nay,” he answered, “I had been sorry for Mr. Caryll's sake.”
“And for his own?”
“Pshaw!”
“Are you a father?” she wondered contemptuously.
“To my eternal shame, ma'am!” he flung back at her. He seemed, indeed,
a changed man in more than body since Mr. Caryll's duel with Lord
Rotherby. “No more, ma'am--no more!” he cried, seeming suddenly to
remember the presence of Mr. Caryll, who sat languidly drawing figures
on the ground with the ferrule of his cane. He turned to ask the
convalescent how he did. Her ladyship rose to withdraw, and at that
moment Leduc made his appearance with a salver, on which was a bowl of
soup, a flask of Hock, and a letter. Setting this down in such a manner
that the letter was immediately under his master's eyes, he further
proceeded to draw Mr. Caryll's attention to it. It was addressed in
Sir Richard Everard's hand. Mr. Caryll took it, and slipped it into his
pocket. Her ladyship's eyebrows went up.
“Will you not read your letter, Mr. Caryll?” she invited him, with an
amazingly sudden change to amiability.
“It will keep, ma'am, to while away an hour that is less pleasantly
engaged.” And he took the napkin Leduc was proffering.
“You pay your correspondent a poor compliment,” said she.
“My correspondent is not one to look for them or need them,” he answered
lightly, and dipped his spoon in the broth.
“Is she not?” quoth her ladyship.
Mr. Caryll laughed. “So feminine!” said he. “Ha, ha! So very
feminine--to assume the sex so readily.”
“'Tis an easy assumption when the superscription is writ in a woman's
hand.”
Mr. Caryll, the picture of amiability, smiled between spoonfuls. “Your
ladyship's eyes preserve not only their beauty but a keenness beyond
belief.”
“How could you have seen it from that distance, Sylvia?” inquired his
practical lordship.
“Then again,” said her ladyship, ignoring both remarks, “there is the
assiduity of this fair writer since Mr. Caryll has been in case to
receive letters. Five billets in six days! Deny it if you can, Mr.
Caryll.”
Her playfulness, so ill-assumed, sat more awkwardly upon her than her
usual and more overt malice towards him.
“To what end should I deny it?” he replied, and added in his most
ingratiating manner another of his two-edged compliments. “Your ladyship
is the model chatelaine. No happening in your household can escape your
knowledge. His lordship is greatly to be envied.”
“Yet, you see,” she cried, appealing to her husband, and even to
Hortensia, who sat apart, scarce heeding this trivial matter of which so
much was being made, “you see that he evades the point, avoids a direct
answer to the question that is raised.”
“Since your ladyship perceives it, it were more merciful to spare my
invention the labor of fashioning further subterfuges. I am a sick man
still, and my wits are far from brisk.” He took up the glass of wine
Leduc had poured for him.
The countess looked at him again through narrowing eyelids, the
playfulness all vanished. “You do yourself injustice, sir, as I am a
woman. Your wits want nothing more in briskness.” She rose, and looked
down upon him engrossed in his broth. “For a dissembler, sir,” she
pronounced upon him acidly, “I think it would be difficult to meet your
match.”
He dropped his spoon into the bowl with a clatter. He looked up, the
very picture of amazement and consternation.
“A dissembler, I?” quoth he in earnest protest; then laughed and quoted,
adapting,
“'Tis not my talent to conceal my thoughts
Or carry smiles and sunshine in my face
Should discontent sit heavy at my heart.”
She looked him over, pursing her lips. “I've often thought you might
have been a player,” said she contemptuously.
“I'faith,” he laughed, “I'd sooner play than toil.”
“Ay; but you make a toil of play, sir.”
“Compassionate me, ma'am,” he implored in the best of humors. “I am but
a sick man. Your ladyship's too keen for me.”
She moved across to the exit without answering him. “Come, child,” she
said to Hortensia. “We are tiring Mr. Caryll, I fear. Let us leave him
to his letter, ere it sets his pocket afire.”
Hortensia rose. Loath though she might be to depart, there was no reason
she could urge for lingering.
“Is not your lordship coming?” said she.
“Of course he is,” her ladyship commanded. “I need to speak with you yet
concerning Rotherby,” she informed him.
“Hem!” His lordship coughed. Plainly he was not at his ease. “I will
follow soon. Do not stay for me. I have a word to say to Mr. Caryll.”
“Will it not keep? What can you have to say to him that is so pressing?”
“But a word--no more.”
“Why, then, we'll stay for you,” said her ladyship, and threw him into
confusion, hopeless dissembler that he was.
“Nay, nay! I beg that you will not.”
Her ladyship's brows went up; her eyes narrowed again, and a frown came
between them. “You are mighty mysterious,” said she, looking from one to
the other of the men, and bethinking her that it was not the first time
she had found them so; bethinking her, too--jumping, woman-like, to rash
conclusions--that in this mystery that linked them might lie the true
secret of her husband's aversion to his son and of his oath a month ago
to see that same son hang if Mr. Caryll succumbed to the wound he had
taken. With some women, to suspect a thing is to believe that thing. Her
ladyship was of these. She set too high value upon her acumen, upon the
keenness of her instincts.
And if aught were needed to cement her present suspicions, Mr. Caryll
himself afforded that cement, by seeming to betray the same eagerness to
be alone with his lordship that his lordship was betraying to be alone
with him; though, in truth, he no more than desired to lend assistance
to the earl out of curiosity to learn what it was his lordship might
have to say.
“Indeed,” said he, “if you could give his lordship leave, ma'am, for a
few moments, I should myself be glad on't.”
“Come, Hortensia,” said her ladyship shortly, and swept out, Mistress
Winthrop following.
In silence they crossed the lawn together. Once only ere they reached
the house, her ladyship looked back. “I would I knew what they are
plotting,” she said through her teeth.
“Plotting?” echoed Hortensia.
“Ay--plotting, simpleton. I said plotting. I mind me 'tis not the first
time I have seen them so mysterious together. It began on the day that
first Mr. Caryll set foot at Stretton House. There's a deal of mystery
about that man--too much for honesty. And then these letters touching
which he is so close--one a day--and his French lackey always at hand to
pounce upon them the moment they arrive. I wonder what's at bottom on't!
I wonder! And I'd give these ears to know,” she snapped in conclusion as
they went indoors.
In the arbor, meanwhile, his lordship had taken the rustic seat her
ladyship had vacated. He sat down heavily, like a man who is weary in
body and in mind, like a man who is bearing a load too heavy for his
shoulders. Mr. Caryll, watching him, observed all this.
“A glass of Hock?” he suggested, waving his hand towards the flask. “Let
me play host to you out of the contents of your own cellar.”
His lordship's eye brightened at the suggestion, which confirmed the
impression Mr. Caryll had formed that all was far from well with his
lordship. Leduc brimmed a glass, and handed it to my lord, who emptied
it at a draught. Mr. Caryll waved an impatient hand. “Away with you,
Leduc. Go watch the goldfish in the pond. I'll call you if I need you.”
After Leduc had departed a silence fell between them, and endured some
moments. His lordship was leaning forward, elbows on knees, his face in
shadow. At length he sat back, and looked at his companion across the
little intervening space.
“I have hesitated to speak to you before, Mr. Caryll, upon the matter
that you know of, lest your recovery should not be so far advanced that
you might bear the strain and fatigue of conversing upon serious topics.
I trust that that cause is now so far removed that I may put aside my
scruples.”
“Assuredly--I am glad to say--thanks to the great care you have had of
me here at Stretton House.”
“There is no debt between us on that score,” answered his lordship
shortly, brusquely almost. “Well, then--” He checked, and looked about
him. “We might be approached without hearing any one,” he said.
Mr. Caryll smiled, and shook his head. “I am not wont to neglect such
details,” he observed. “The eyes of Argus were not so vigilant as my
Leduc's; and he understands that we are private. He will give us
warning should any attempt to approach. Be assured of that, and believe,
therefore, that we are more snug here than we should be even in your
lordship's closet.”
“That being so, sir--hem! You are receiving letters daily. Do they
concern the business of King James?”
“In a measure; or, rather, they are from one concerned in it.”
Ostermore's eyes were on the ground again. There fell a pause, Mr.
Caryll frowning slightly and full of curiosity as to what might be
coming.
“How soon, think you,” asked his lordship presently, “you will be in
case to travel?”
“In a week, I hope,” was the reply.
“Good.” The earl nodded thoughtfully. “That may be in time. I pray it
may be. 'Tis now the best that we can do. You'll bear a letter for me to
the king?”
Mr. Caryll passed a hand across his chin, his face very grave. “Your
answer to the letter that I brought you?”
“My answer. My acceptance of his majesty's proposals.”
“Ha!” Mr. Caryll seemed to be breathing hard.
“Your letters, sir--the letters that you have been receiving will have
told you, perhaps, something of how his majesty's affairs are speeding
here?”
“Very little; and from that little I fear that they speed none too well.
I would counsel your lordship,” he continued slowly--he was thinking
as he went--“to wait a while before you burn your boats. From what I
gather, matters are in the air just now.”
The earl made a gesture, brusque and impatient. “Your information is
very scant, then,” said he.
Mr. Caryll looked askance at him.
“Pho, sir! While you have been abed, I have been up and doing; up and
doing. Matters are being pushed forward rapidly. I have seen Atterbury.
He knows my mind. There lately came an agent from the king, it seems, to
enjoin the bishop to abandon this conspiracy, telling him that the time
was not yet ripe. Atterbury scorns to act upon that order. He will work
in the king's interests against the king's own commands even.”
“Then, 'tis possible he may work to his own undoing,” said Mr. Caryll,
to whom this was, after all, no news.
“Nay, nay; you have been sick; you do not know how things have sped
in this past month. Atterbury holds, and he is right, I dare swear--he
holds that never will there be such another opportunity. The finances
of the country are still in chaos, in spite of all Walpole's efforts
and fine promises. The South Sea bubble has sapped the confidence in the
government of all men of weight. The very Whigs themselves are shaken.
'Tis to King James, England begins to look for salvation from this
topsy-turveydom. The tide runs strongly in our favor. Strongly, sir!
If we stay for the ebb, we may stay for good; for there may never be
another flow within our lifetime.”
“Your lordship is grown strangely hot upon this question,” said Caryll,
very full of wonder.
As he understood Ostermore, the earl was scarcely the sentimentalist
to give way to such a passion of loyalty for a weaker side. Yet his
lordship had spoken, not with the cold calm of the practical man who
seeks advantage, but with all the fervor of the enthusiast.
“Such is my interest,” answered his lordship. “Even as the fortunes of
the country are beggared by the South Sea Company, so are my own; even
as the country must look to King James for its salvation, so must I. At
best 'tis but a forlorn hope, I confess; yet 'tis the only hope I see.”
Mr. Caryll looked at him, smiled to himself, and nodded. So! All this
fire and enthusiasm was about the mending of his personal fortunes--the
grubbing of riches for himself. Well, well! It was good matter wasted on
a paltry cause. But it sorted excellently with what Mr. Caryll knew
of the nature of this father of his. It never could transcend the
practical; there was no imagination to carry it beyond those narrow
sordid confines, and Mr. Caryll had been a fool to have supposed that
any other springs were pushing here. Egotism, egotism, egotism! Its
name, he thought, was surely Ostermore. And again, as once before, under
the like circumstances, he found more pity than scorn awaking in his
heart. The whole wasted, sterile life that lay behind this man; the
unhappy, loveless home that stood about him now in his declining years
were the fruits he had garnered from that consuming love of self with
which the gods had cursed him.
The only ray to illumine the black desert of Ostermore's existence
was the affection of his ward, Hortensia Winthrop, because in that one
instance he had sunk his egotism a little, sparing a crumb of pity--for
once in his life--for the child's orphanhood. Had Ostermore been other
than the man he was, his existence must have proved a burden beyond his
strength. It was so barren of good deeds, so sterile of affection.
Yet encrusted as he was in that egotism of his--like the limpet in
its shell--my lord perceived nothing of this, suffered nothing of it,
understanding nothing. He was all-sufficient to himself. Giving nothing,
he looked for nothing, and sought his happiness--without knowing the
quest vain--in what he had. The fear of losing this had now in his
declining years cast, at length, a shadow upon his existence.
Mr. Caryll looked at him almost sorrowfully. Then he put by his
thoughts, and broke the silence. “All this I had understood when first I
sought you out,” said he. “Yet your lordship did not seem to realize it
quite so keenly. Is it that Atterbury and his friends--?”
“No, no,” Ostermore broke in. “Look'ee! I will be frank--quite frank and
open with you, Mr. Caryll. Things were bad when first you came to
me. Yet not so bad that I was driven to a choice of evils. I had lost
heavily. But enough remained to bear me through my time, though Rotherby
might have found little enough left after I had gone. While that was so,
I hesitated to take a risk. I am an old man. It had been different had I
been young with ambitions that craved satisfying. I am an old man; and
I desired peace and my comforts. Deeming these assured, I paused ere I
risked their loss against the stake which in King James's name you set
upon the board. But it happens to-day that these are assured no longer,”
he ended, his voice breaking almost, his eyes haggard. “They are assured
no longer.”
“You mean?” inquired Caryll.
“I mean that I am confronted by the danger of beggary, ruin, shame, and
the sponging-house, at best.”
Mr. Caryll was stirred out of his calm. “My lord!” he cried. “How is
this possible? What can have come to pass?”
The earl was silent for a long while. It was as if he pondered how he
should answer, or whether he should answer at all. At last, in a low
voice, a faint tinge reddening his face, his eyes averted, he explained.
It shamed him so to do, yet must he satisfy that craving of weak minds
to unburden, to seek relief in confession. “Mine is the case of Craggs,
the secretary of state,” he said. “And Craggs, you'll remember, shot
himself.”
“My God,” said Mr. Caryll, and opened wide his eyes. “Did you-?” He
paused, not knowing what euphemism to supply for the thing his lordship
must have done.
His lordship looked up, sneering almost in self-derision. “I did,” he
answered. “To tell you all--I accepted twenty thousand pounds' worth of
South Sea stock when the company was first formed, for which I did not
pay other than by lending the scheme the support of my name at a time
when such support was needed. I was of the ministry, then, you will
remember.”
Mr. Caryll considered him again, and wondered a moment at the
confession, till he understood by intuition that the matter and its
consequences were so deeply preying upon the man's mind that he could
not refrain from giving vent to his fears.
“And now you know,” his lordship added, “why my hopes are all in King
James. Ruin stares me in the face. Ruin and shame. This forlorn Stuart
hope is the only hope remaining me. Therefore, am I eager to embrace it.
I have made all plain to you. You should understand now.”
“Yet not quite all. You did this thing. But the inspection of the
company's books is past. The danger of discovery, at least, is averted.
Or is it that your conscience compels you to make restitution?”
His lordship stared and gaped. “Do you suppose me mad?” he inquired,
quite seriously. “Pho! Others were overlooked at the time. We did
not all go the way of Craggs and Aislabie and their fellow-sufferers.
Stanhope was assailed afterward, though he was innocent. That filthy
fellow, the Duke of Wharton, from being an empty fop turned himself on a
sudden into a Crown attorney to prosecute the peculators. It was an easy
road to fame for him, and the fool had a gift of eloquence. Stanhope's
death is on his conscience--or would be if he had one. That was six
months ago. When he discovered his error in the case of Stanhope and saw
the fatal consequences it had, he ceased his dirty lawyer's work. But
he had good grounds upon which to suspect others as highly placed as
Stanhope, and had he followed his suspicions he might have turned them
into certainties and discovered evidence. As it was, he let the matter
lie, content with the execution he had done, and the esteem into which
he had so suddenly hoisted himself--the damned profligate!”
Mr. Caryll let pass, as typical, the ludicrous want of logic in
Ostermore's strictures of his Grace of Wharton, and the application by
him to the duke of opprobrious terms that were no whit less applicable
to himself.
“Then, that being so, what cause for these alarms some six months
later?”
“Because,” answered his lordship in a sudden burst of passion that
brought him to his feet, empurpled his face and swelled the veins of his
forehead, “because I am cursed with the filthiest fellow in England for
my son.”
He said it with the air of one who throws a flood of light where
darkness has been hitherto, who supplies the key that must resolve at a
turn a whole situation. But Mr. Caryll blinked foolishly.
“My wits are very dull, I fear,” said he. “I still cannot understand.”
“Then I'll make it all clear to you,” said his lordship.
Leduc appeared at the arbor entrance.
“What now?” asked Mr. Caryll.
“Her ladyship is approaching, sir,” answered Leduc the vigilant.