AFTER TEN YEARS.
"I have said it, and I mean it; they ought to know me well enough by
this time, Godsoe. I'd transport every man of them, the poaching
scoundrels, if I could! Tell that villain Dick Darkly that the first
time I catch him at his old tricks he shall follow the brother he makes
such a howling about, and share his fate."
Sir Everard Kingsland was the speaker. He stood with one hand, white
and shapely as a lady's, resting on the glossy neck of his bay horse,
his fair, handsome face, flushed with anger, turned upon his gamekeeper.
Peter Godsoe, the sturdy gamekeeper, standing before his young master,
hat in hand, looked up deprecatingly.
"He takes it very hard, Sir Everard, that you sent his brother to
Worrel Jail. His missis was sick, and two of the children had the
measles, and Will Darkly he'd been out o' work, and they was poor as
poor. So he turns to and snares the rabbits, and--"
"Godsoe, are you trying to excuse this convicted poacher? Is that what
you stopped me here to say?"
"I beg your pardon, Sir Everard; I only wanted to warn you--to put you
on your guard--"
"To warn me--to put me on my guard? What do you mean? Has that
villainous poacher dared to threaten me?"
"Not in my hearing, sir; but others say so. And he's a dark,
vindictive brute; and he swore a solemn oath, they say, when his
brother went to Worrel Jail, to be revenged upon you. And so, Sir
Everard, begging your pardon for the freedom, I thought as how you was
likely to be out late to-night, coming home from my lord's, and as
Brithlow Wood is lonesome and dark--"
"That will do, Godsoe!" the young baronet interrupted, haughtily. "You
mean well, I dare say, and I overlook your presumption this time; but
never proffer advice to me again. As for Darkly, he had better keep
out of my way. I'll horsewhip him the first time I see him, and send
him to make acquaintance with the horse-pond afterward."
He vaulted lightly into the saddle as he spoke.
The brawny gamekeeper stood gazing after him as he ambled down the
leafy avenue.
"His father's son," he said; "the proudest gentleman in Devonshire, and
the most headstrong. You'll horsewhip Dick Darkly, Sir Everard! Why,
he could take you with one hand by the waist-band, and lay you low in
the kennel any day he liked! And he'll do it, too!" muttered Godsoe,
turning slowly away. "You won't be warned, and you won't take
precaution, and you won't condescend to be afeard, and you'll come to
grief afore you know it."
The misty autumn twilight lay like a veil of silver blue over the
peaceful English landscape; a cool breeze swept up from the sea over
the golden downs and distant hills, and as Sir Everard rode along
through the village, the cloud left his face, and a tender, dreamy look
came in its place.
"She will be present, of course," he thought. "I wonder if I shall
find her as I left her last? She is not the kind that play fast and
loose, my stately, uplifted Lady Louise. How queenly she looked at the
reception last night in those velvet robes and the Carteret
diamonds!--'queen rose of the rose-bud garden of girls.' She is my
elder by three round years at least, but she is stately as a princess,
and at twenty-five preserves the ripe bloom of eighteen. She is all
that is gracious when we meet, and my mother has set her heart upon the
match. I have half a mind to propose this very night."
She was an earl's daughter, this stately Lady Louise, but so very
impoverished an earl that the young Devonshire baronet, with his
ancient name and his long rent-roll, was a most desirably brilliant
match.
She was down on a visit to her brother, Lord Carteret, and had made a
dead set at Sir Everard Kingsland from the hour she had met him first.
He was on his way to Lord Carteret's now. There was a dinner-party,
and he was an honored guest; and Lady Louise was brilliant, in the
family diamonds and old point lace, once more.
She was in the drawing-room when he entered--her stately head regally
uplifted in the midst of a group of less magnificent demoiselles--a
statuesque blonde, with abundant ringlets of flaxen lightness, eyes of
turquoise blue, and a determined mouth and chin.
Sir Everard paid his respects to his host and hostess, and sought her
side at once.
"Almost late," she said, with a brilliant, welcoming smile, giving him
her dainty little hand; "and George Grosvenor has been looking this
way, and pulling his mustache and blushing redder than the carnations
in his button-hole. He wants to take me in to dinner, poor fellow, and
he hasn't the courage to do it."
"With your kind permission, Lady Louise, I will save him the trouble,"
answered Sir Everard Kingsland. "Grosvenor is not singular in his
wish, but I never gave him credit for so much good taste before."
"Mr. Grosvenor is more at home in the hunting-field than the
drawing-room, I fancy. Apropos, Sir Everard, I ride to the meet
to-morrow. Of course you will be present on your 'bonny bay' to
display your prowess?"
"Of course--a fox-hunt is to me a foretaste of celestial bliss. With a
first-rate horse, a crack pack of hounds, a 'good scent,' and a fine
morning, a man is tempted to wish life could last forever. And you are
only going to ride to the meet, then, Lady Louise?"
"Yes; I never followed the hounds, I don't know the country and I can't
ride to points. Besides, I am not really Amazonian enough to fancy a
scamper across the country, flying fences and risking my precious neck."
"I must own that, to me, a lady never looks less attractive than in a
hunting-field, among yelping hounds, and shouts, and cheers, and cords
and tops, and scarlet coats."
"That comes of being a poet and an artist; and Sir Everard Kingsland is
accused of being both. You want to fancy us all angels, and you can
not reconcile an angelic being with a side-saddle and a hard gallop.
Now, I don't own to being anything in the Di Vernon line myself, and I
don't wish to be; but I do think a pretty girl never looks half so
pretty as when well mounted. You should have seen Harrie Hunsden, as I
saw her the other day, and you would surely recant your heresy about
ladies and horse-flesh."
"Is Harrie Hunsden a lady?"
"Certainly. Don't you know her? She is Captain Hunsden's only
daughter--Hunsden, of Hunsden Hall, one of your oldest Devon families.
You'll find them duly chronicled in Burke and Debrett. Miss Hunsden is
scarcely eighteen, but she has been over the world--from Quebec to
Gibraltar--from Halifax to Calcutta. Two years of her life she passed
at a New York boarding-school, of which city her mother was a native."
"Indeed!" Sir Everard said, just lifting his eyebrows. "And Miss
Hunsden rides well?"
"Like Di Vernon's self."
"Is your Miss Hunsden pretty? and shall we see her at the meet
to-morrow?"
"Yes to both questions; and more than at the meet, I fancy. She and
her thorough-bred, Whirlwind, will lead you all. Her scarlet habit and
'red roan steed' are as well known in the country as the duke's hounds,
and her bright eyes and dashing style have taken by storm the hearts of
half the fox-hunting squires of Devonshire."
She laughed a little maliciously. Truth to tell, not being quite sure
that her game was safely wired, and dreading this Amazonian Miss
Hunsden as a prospective rival, she was nothing loath to prejudice the
fastidious young baronet beforehand, even while seeming to praise her.
"I am surprised that you have not heard of her," she said. "Sir
Harcourt Helford and Mr. Cholmondeley actually fought a duel about her,
and it ended in her telling them to their faces they were a pair of
idiots, and flatly refusing both. 'The Hunsden' is the toast of the
country."
Sir Everard shuddered.
"From all such the gods deliver us! You honor Miss Hunsden with your
deepest interest, I think, Lady Louise?
"Yes, she is such an oddity. Her wandering life, I presume, accounts
for it; but she is altogether unlike any girl I ever know. I am
certain," with a little malicious glance, "she will be your style, Sir
Everard."
"And as I don't in the least know what my style is, perhaps you may be
right."
Lady Louise bit her lip--it was a rebuff, she fancied, for her
detraction. And then Lady Carteret gave that mysterious signal, and
the ladies rose and swept away in billows of silk to the drawing-room,
and the gentlemen had the talk to themselves "across the walnuts and
the wine."
To one gentleman present the interim before rejoining the ladies was
unmitigatedly dull, even though the talk ran on his favorite
topics---horse-flesh and hunting. He was in love, he thought
complacently, and Lady Louise's eyes had sparkled to-day and her smiles
had flashed their bewildering brightness upon him more radiantly than
ever before.
"How pleased my mother will be!" Sir Everard thought. "I will ask Lady
Louise this very night. An earl's daughter--though a bankrupt--is a
fitting mate for a Kingsland."
Lady Louise sat at the piano, the soft light falling full on her pale,
statuesque face, and making an aureole around her fair, shapely head.
Sir Everard Kingsland crossed over and stood beside her, and Lord and
Lady Carteret exchanged significant glances, and smiled.
It was a very desirable thing, indeed; they had brought Louise down for
no other earthly reason; and Louise was playing her cards, and playing
them well.
If Sir Everard had one taste stronger than another it was his taste for
music, and Lady Louise held him spell-bound now. She played, and her
fingers seemed inspired; she sung, and few non-professionals sung like
that.
The chain of brittle glass that bound the captive beside her grew
stronger. A wife who could bewitch the hours away with such music as
this would be no undesirable possession for a _blasé_ man. He stooped
over her as she arose from the piano at last.
"Come out on the balcony," he said. "The night is lovely, and the good
people yonder are altogether engrossed in their cards and their
small-talk."
Without a word she stepped with him from the open French window out
into the starlit night.
What is it that Byron says about solitude, and moonlight, and youth? A
dangerous combination, truly; and so Sir Everard Kingsland found,
standing side by side with this pale daughter of a hundred earls. But
the irrevocable words were not destined to be spoken, for just then
George Grosvenor, goaded to jealous desperation, stalked out through
the open casement and joined them.
The midnight moon was sailing up to the zenith as Sir Everard rode
home. His road was a lonely one through Brithlow Wood, which shortened
his journey by over a mile; but his thoughts were pleasant ones, and he
hummed, as he rode, the songs Lady Louise had sung.
"Confound that muff, Grosvenor!" he thought. "If it had not been for
his impertinent intrusion, the matter would have been safely settled by
this time--and settled pleasantly too, I take it; for, without being a
conceited noodle, I really think Lady Louise will say yes. Ah! what's
this?"
For out of the starlit darkness, from among the trees, started up a
giant black figure, and his horse was grasped by the bridle and hurled
back upon his haunches.
"You villain," the young man dauntlessly cried, "let go my bridle-rein!
Who are you? What do you want?"
"I'm Dick Darkly," answered a deep, gruff voice, "and I want your
heart's blood!"
"You poaching scoundrel!" exclaimed Sir Everard, quick as lightning
raising his riding-whip and slashing the aggressor across the face.
"Let go my horse's head."
With a cry that was like the roar of a wild beast the man sprung hack.
The next instant, with a horrible oath, he had seized the young man and
torn him out of the saddle.
"I'll tear you limb from limb for that blow, by heavens!" Dick Darkly
shouted. "If I hadn't meant to kill you before, I would kill you for
that cut of your whip. I've waited for you, Sir Everard Kingsland! I
swore revenge, and revenge I'll have! I'll kill you this night, if
they hang me for it to-morrow!"
He held his victim in a grip of iron, from which he struggled madly to
get free, while the horse, with a shrill neigh of terror, started off
riderless.
"I swore I'd kill you, Sir Everard Kingsland," Dick Darkly growled,
"when you put my poor brother in Worrel Jail for snaring the miserable
rabbits to keep his sick wife and children from starving. I swore it,
and I'll keep my oath. You told your gamekeeper this very day you
would lash me like a dog, and duck me after. Aha, Sir Everard!
Where's the horse-whip and the horse-pond now?"
"Here!" shouted the young baronet; and with a mighty effort he freed
his arms, and raising the whip, slashed Dick Darkly for the second time
across the face. "You murdering villain, you shall swing for this!"
With a blind roar of pain and rage, the murderer closed with his
victim. They grappled, and rolled over and over in each other's arms.
Panting and speechless, the death-struggle went on; but Sir Everard was
no match for the burly giant. With a savage cry, the huge poacher
thrust his hand into his belt, and a long, blue-bladed knife gleamed in
the moon's rays.
"At last!" he panted. "I'll have your heart's blood, as I swore I'd
have it!"
He lifted the knife. Sir Everard Kingsland tried to gasp one last
brief prayer in that supreme moment.
"Help!" he cried, with a last wild struggle--"help! help! murder!"
There was a rustling in the trees and some one sprung out. The last
word was lost in the sharp report of a pistol, and with a scream of
agony, Dick Darkly dropped his knife and fell backward on the grass.