THE BOWL ON THE BIAS
It was Sir Marmaduke’s maxim, as he boasted it had been his father’s and
grandfather’s, to sleep on a resolution before putting it in practice.
He secured, therefore, a good night’s rest and a substantial breakfast
ere he mounted his best horse to wait upon his neighbour at Hamilton
Hill, ordering the grey to be saddled, because Sir George had sometimes
expressed his approval of that animal. The lord of Brentwood was
sufficiently a Yorkshireman to seize the opportunity of “a deal,” even
while more important matters were under consideration.
“He was getting on,” he meant to tell Sir George. “His nerve was
beginning to fail. The grey was as good as gold, but _a little too much
of a horse_ for him now. He was scarce able to do the animal justice like
a younger man.”
And as this suggestion could not but be flattering to the _younger man_,
he thought it not improbable his friend might be tempted to purchase on
the spot.
So he rode the horse quietly and carefully, avoiding the high road, which
would have taken him past the “Hamilton Arms,” and, threading a labyrinth
of bridleways through the moor, very easy to find for those who were
familiar with them, but exceedingly puzzling to those who were not.
The grey looked fresh and sleek, as if just out of the stable, when Sir
Marmaduke rode into the courtyard at Hamilton Hill, whence he was ushered
by Slap-Jack, who had a great respect for him as a “True Blue, without
any gammon,” to the terrace where Sir George, her ladyship, and Monsieur
de St. Croix were engaged in a game of bowls.
Sir Marmaduke followed boldly, although, finding he had to confront Lady
Hamilton, he was at some pains to adjust his neckcloth and tie-wig,
wishing, at the same time, he had got on his flowing “Steinkirk” cravat
and a certain scarlet waistcoat with gold-lace, now under repair.
The game was proceeding with much noise and hilarity, especially from
Sir George. Florian, an adept at every pastime demanding bodily skill,
had already acquired a proficiency not inferior to his host’s, who was
no mean performer. They were a capital match, particularly without
lookers-on; but the baronet remarked, with prim inward sarcasm, that he
could generally beat his adversary in the presence of Cerise. The very
sound of Lady Hamilton’s voice seemed to take Florian’s attention off the
game.
She was watching the players now with affected interest—smiling
encouragement to her husband with every successful rub—bringing all her
artless charms to bear on the man whom she had resolved to win back if
she could. She was very humble to-day, but no less determined to make a
desperate struggle for her lost dominion, feeling how precious it was
now, and that her heart would break if it was really gone for ever.
And Sir George saw everything through the distorted glass of his own
misgivings.
“All these caressing ways—all these smiles and glances,” thought
he, bitterly, “only prove her the most fickle of women, or the most
hypocritical of wives!”
He could not but acknowledge their power, and hated himself for the
weakness. He could not prevent their thrilling to his heart, but he
steeled it against her all the more. The better he loved her, the deeper
was her treachery, the blacker was her crime. There should be no haste,
no prejudice, no violence, and—no forgiveness!
All the while he poised his bowl with a frank brow and a loud laugh. He
sipped from a tankard on the rustic table with a good-humoured jest. With
a success which surprised him, and for which he hated himself while he
admired, he acted the part of a confiding, indulgent husband towards
Cerise—of a hearty, unsuspicious friend towards St. Croix.
And the latter was miserable, utterly and confessedly miserable! Every
caress lavished on her husband by the wife, was a shaft that pierced
him to the marrow. Every kind word addressed by the latter to himself,
steeped that shaft in venom, and sent the evil curdling through his blood.
“Penance,” he murmured inwardly. “They talk of penance—of punishment for
sin—of purgatory—of hell! Why, _this_ is hell! I am in hell already!”
The arrival of Sir Marmaduke, therefore, with his broad brown face, his
old-fashioned dress, and his ungainly manners, was felt as a relief to
the whole party; and, probably, not one of them separately would have
given him half so gratifying a reception as was now accorded him by all
three.
Nevertheless, his greeting to Lady Hamilton was so ludicrous in its
ceremonious awkwardness, that she could scarcely repress a laugh.
Catching Florian’s eye, she did, indeed, indulge in a smile, which she
hoped might be unobserved. So it was by Sir Marmaduke, whose faculties
were completely absorbed in his bow; but her husband noted the glance of
intelligence exchanged, and scored it up as an additional proof against
the pair.
“Good-morrow, Sir George,” continued the new arrival, completing his
salutations, as he flattered himself, in the newest mode; “and to you
sir,” he added, turning rather sternly upon Florian, whom he was even
then mentally committing, under a magistrate’s warrant, to take his trial
for high treason. “I made shift to ride over thus early in order to be
sure of finding my host before he went abroad. Harbouring our stag, as we
say, my lady, before he rouses; for if I had come across his blemish in
the rack as I rode up the park, it would have been a disappointment to
myself, and a disgrace to my reputation as a woodsman.”
Cerise did not in the least understand, but she bowed her pretty head and
answered—
“Yes, of course—clearly—so it would.”
[Illustration: “THE ARRIVAL OF SIR MARMADUKE WAS A RELIEF.”
(_Page 460._)]
“Therefore,” continued Sir Marmaduke, somewhat inconsequently, for the
sweet foreign accent rang in his ears and heated his brain, as if he had
been a younger man. “Therefore St. George, I thought you might like to
have another look at Grey Plover before I send him to Catterick fair. He
stands ready saddled at this present speaking in your own stable, and if
you would condescend to mount and try his paces in the park, I think you
must allow that you have seldom ridden a more gallant goer.”
Sir Marmaduke was pleased with his own diplomacy. Casting his eyes on
her ladyship’s pretty feet, he had quite satisfied himself she was
too lightly shod to accompany her husband through the most luxuriant
herbage of the park. The priest, too, being a Frenchman, would be safe
to know little, and care less, about a horse. He could thus secure an
uninterrupted interview with his friend, and might, possibly, make an
advantageous sale into the bargain.
“Oh, go with him, George!” exclaimed Cerise, thinking to please her
husband, who was, as she knew, still boy enough dearly to love a gallop.
“Go with him, and ride round by the end of the garden into the park. We
can watch you from here. I do so like to see you on horseback!”
He laughed and assented, leaving her again alone with Florian. Always
alone with Florian! He ground a curse between his teeth, as he strode
off to the stable, and, trying Grey Plover’s speed over the undulating
surface of the home-park, took that animal in a grasp of iron that made
it exert its utmost powers, in sheer astonishment.
Sir Marmaduke scanning from underneath a clump of trees, thought he had
never seen his horse go so fast.
Once round the home-park—once across the lower end at speed—a leap
over a ditch and bank—a breather up the hill—and Sir George trotted
Grey Plover back to his owner, in an easy, self-satisfied manner that
denoted the horse was sold. Never once had he turned his head towards
the terrace where Cerise stood watching. She knew it as well as he did,
but made excuses for him to herself. He was so fond of horses—he rode
so beautifully—nobody could ride so well unless his whole attention was
fixed on his employment. But she sighed nevertheless, and Florian, at her
side, heard the sigh, and echoed it in his heart.
“Fifty broad pieces,” said Sir George, drawing up to the owner’s side,
and sliding lightly to the ground.
“He’s worth more than that,” answered the other, loosening the horse’s
girths and turning his distended nostrils to the wind. “But we’ll talk
about the price afterwards. We are not likely to differ on that point.
You never rode behind such shoulders, Sir George; and did you remark how
he breasted the hill? Like a lion, Ah! If I was twenty years younger, or
even ten! But it’s no matter for that. I want your advice, Sir George.
You carry a grey lining, as we say, to a green doublet. Give me the
benefit. There’s something brewing here between your house and mine that
will come to hell-broth anon, if we take not some order with it in the
meantime!”
The other turned his back resolutely on the terrace where his wife was
standing, and shot a penetrating glance at the speaker.
“Let it brew!” said he. “If it’s hot from the devil’s caldron, I think
you and I can make shift to drink it out between us.”
Sir Marmaduke laughed.
“I don’t like the smell of it,” he answered, “not to speak of the taste.
Seriously, my friend, I’ve lit on a nest of Jacobites, here, on your own
property, at the ‘Hamilton Arms’! They’ve got another of their cursed
plots hatching in the chimney-corner, about fit to chip the shell by now.
There’s a couple of priests in it, of course; a lad, I know well enough,
with a good bay mare, that has saved his neck in more ways than one, for
a twelvemonth past. He’s only put to the dirty work, you may be sure, and
I can guess, though on this point I have no certain information, there
are two or three more honest gentlemen, friends of yours and mine, whom
I had rather meet at Otterdale Head with the hounds than see badgered by
an attorney-general at the Exchequer Bar or the Old Bailey, with as many
witnesses arrayed against them, at half a guinea an oath, as would swear
away the nine lives of a cat! A murrain of their plots! say I; there’s
neither pleasure nor profit in ’em, try ’em which side you will, and I’ve
had _my_ experience o’ both!”
Sir George’s brow went down, and his lips closed. In his frank, manly
face came the pitiless expression of a duellist who spies the weakness of
his adversary’s sword, and braces his muscles to dash in. He had got the
Jesuit, he told himself, “on the hip”!
It was all over with the scheme, he felt. Ere such intelligence could
have reached his thick-witted neighbour, he argued, it must be known in
other, and more dangerous quarters. If he had ever suffered the promised
earldom to dazzle him for an instant, his eyes were opened now; that
bit of parchment was but a patent for the gallows. He could hang the
tempter who had offered it him, within a week! At this reflection the
whole current of his passions turned—the man’s nature was of the true
conquering type—stern, fierce, almost savage, while confronted with his
adversary; generous, forbearing, even tender, when the foe was at his
feet.
The noblest instincts of chivalry were at work within his bosom; they
found expression in the simple energy with which he inwardly ejaculated,
“No! D―n it! I’ll fight fair!”
“My advice,” said he, quietly, “is easily followed. Do nothing in a
hurry—this country is not like France; these cancers often die out of
themselves, because the whole body is healthy and full of life, but, for
that very reason, if you eradicate them with the knife, your loss of
blood, is more injurious than the sore itself. Get all the information
you can, Sir Marmaduke, and when the time arrives, act with your usual
vigour and good sense. Come! Fifty pieces for the grey horse? my man
shall fetch him from Brentwood to-morrow.”
Sir Marmaduke was well pleased. He flattered himself that he had
fulfilled his delicate mission with extraordinary dexterity, and sold
Grey Plover very fairly, besides. His friends were warned now, and if
they chose to persist in thrusting their heads through a halter, why he
could do no more. He was satisfied Sir George had taken the hint he meant
to offer. Very likely the conspiracy would come to nothing after all,
but, at any rate, it was time to hang Captain Bold. He must see about
it that afternoon, so he would take his leave at once, and return to
Brentwood by the way he came.
Conscious of the disadvantage under which he laboured for want of the red
waistcoat, Sir Marmaduke sturdily refused his host’s hospitable offer
of refreshment, and was steering Grey Plover through the oaks at the end
of the avenue by the time George had rejoined his wife and Florian on
the terrace. Walking back, the latter smiled and shook his head. He was
thinking, perhaps, how his neighbour’s loyalty was leavened with a strong
disinclination to exertion, and no little indulgence for those whose
political opinions differed from his own.
But the smile clouded over as he approached the terrace. Together
again—always together! and in such earnest conversation. He could see his
wife’s white hands waving with the pretty trick of gesticulation he loved
so dearly. What could they have to say? what could _she_ have to say that
demanded so much energy? If he might only have heard. She was talking
about himself; praising his horsemanship, his strength, his courage,
his manly character, in the fond, deprecatory way that a woman affects
when speaking of the man she loves. Every word the sweet lips uttered
made Florian wince and quiver, yet her husband, striding heavily up the
terrace-steps, almost wished that he could change places with the Jesuit
priest.
The latter left her side when Sir George approached; and Cerise, who was
conscious of something in her husband’s manner that wounded her feelings
and jarred upon her pride, assumed a colder air and a reserved bearing,
not the least natural to her character, but of late becoming habitual.
Everything conspired to increase the distance between two hearts that
ought to have been knit together by bonds no misunderstanding nor want of
confidence should ever have been able to divide.
Sir George, watching his wife closely, addressed himself to Florian—
“Bad news!” said he, whereat she started and changed colour. “But not
so bad as it might have been. The hounds are on the scent, my friend. I
told you I expected it long ago, and if the fox breaks cover now, as Sir
Marmaduke would say, they will run into him as sure as fate. Halloa, man!
what ails you? You never used to hoist the white ensign thus, when we
cleared for action!”
The Jesuit’s discomposure was so obvious as to justify his host’s
astonishment. Florian felt, indeed, like a man who, having known an
earthquake was coming, and wilfully kept it out of his mind, sees the
earth at last sliding from beneath his feet. His face grew livid, and the
drops stood on his brow. In proportion to his paleness, Lady Hamilton’s
colour rose. Sir George looked from one to the other with a curling lip.
“There is no occasion for all this alarm,” he observed, rather
contemptuously. “The fox can lie at earth till the worst danger of the
chase is over. Perhaps his safest refuge is the very hen-roost he has
skulked in to rob! Cheer up, Florian,” he added, in a kinder tone. “You
don’t suppose I would give up a comrade so long as the old house can
cover him! I must only make you a prisoner, that is all, with my lady,
here, for your gaoler. Keep close for a week or two, and the fiercest of
the storm will have blown over. It will be time enough then to smuggle
you back to St. Omer, or wherever you have to furnish your report. Don’t
be afraid, man. Why, you used to be made of sterner stuff than this!”
Florian could not answer. A host of conflicting feelings filled his
breast to suffocation, but at that moment how cheerfully, how gladly,
would he have laid down his life for the husband of the woman he so madly
loved! Covering his face in his hands he sobbed aloud.
Cerise raised her eyes with a look of enthusiastic approval; but they
sank terrified and disheartened by the hard, inscrutable expression of
Sir George’s countenance. Her gratitude, he thought, was only for the
preservation of Florian. They might congratulate each other, when his
back was turned, on the strange infatuation that befriended them, and
perhaps laugh at his blind stupidity; but he would fight fair. Yes,
however hard it seemed, he was a gentleman, and he would fight fair!