Sir David Blythewood had a particularly infectious laugh, and like
all men who make a plaything of their own dignity, he was wont to find
his risibilities tickled consumedly before the solemnity of another’s
self-importance. Sooner or later the humorous side of any situation
would find him, and then, perhaps, it was only those at whom his
mischief of merriment was directed who failed to appreciate his sense
of the comical.
Now the history of the “Lake of Wine,” as he knew it, had been almost
a life-long tradition with him, and a very seriously romantic one,
too; but this latest phase of it was destined to quite suddenly make
its appeal to him--after some weighty and respectful
consideration--from a quarter that, it appeared, his gravity had left
unguarded. That it did so is mentioned in this connection for the
reason that a certain explosion of mirth on his part was fruitful of
consequences.
He and Tuke had ridden over to Winchester to acquaint Luvaine of the
progress of events. Perhaps they had not thought to do more than
discuss the matter, according to promise, with this melancholy
monomaniac. He, however, had relieved them of any hospitable
embarrassment they might have felt by at once without any attempt at
apology, inviting himself to return with them, with the intimation
that it would go nearer to satisfy him if they could thresh out the
question on the spot. In order to this, therefore, Tuke--stifling a
certain natural antipathy he felt to the man--had prevailed upon him
to become for awhile his guest at “Delsrop”; and now the three, slowly
trotting by way of a harshly white and iron-bound country, were
making, chill and rather silent, for that lonely dwelling-place.
Riding down into Stockbridge with little concern for anything but the
dangerous road, Tuke had the tail of his eye, nevertheless, for the
“First Inn,” and for Betty standing at the door thereof, serving a mug
of ale to a solitary traveller. The girl dropped a curtsey, as in duty
bound, to the gentlemen, two of whom saluted her in reply--Blythewood,
smilingly; Tuke, gravely; but the wench’s fair soft figure, standing
there in bravery of the bitter cold, and her sad mouth and lowered
eyelids, dwelt with him by many an after mile, and his heart throbbed
out to the forlorn passion he was so hopeless to comfort.
By and by, Sir David turned to his friend a face that struggled with
some tickling convulsion.
“What the deuce is the matter with you?” said the latter.
“Eh? Oh! nothin’--nothin’ whatever, Tuke. I say, did you note the
gentleman in the jumper?”
“Gentleman? Where?”
“Him that was drinkin’ the ale?”
“No, I don’t think I did.”
“Didn’t you? Well, you mark my word, we’ve some more of these
misbegotten rooks flown into the neighbourhood, and it’ll behoove us
to keep the salt ready for their tails.”
“Oh! did he look that sort?”
“That he did.”
“And it made you laugh, eh?”
For answer, all the little man’s features swelled to a ripe colour,
and he seemed on the verge of an explosion. Tuke shook his head with a
grin, repudiating responsibility in the matter, and they rode on a
mile further without a word exchanged amongst them. Then suddenly
Blythewood was rolling in his saddle, shrieking with laughter, and
they all drew rein beside a little copse.
“What inspires this?” said Luvaine, amazed and haughty.
His baneful expression set the young man off again.
“I can’t help it!” he gasped. “I’m sorry, Luvaine--but, but----”
“Well, sir! if you’ll condescend to speak, perhaps we shall be quick
to share in your merriment.”
It was so extremely unlikely as far as he was concerned, that the mere
suggestion brought a fresh paroxysm from the delinquent.
“Oh!” he cried at last--“to think of all these years of a grievance
like yours--of the solemn counsels and the wise heads waggin’--and
then to learn that the gashly eye of the creature that we turned from
lookin’ at should ha’ been the very stone itself!”
Tuke caught himself grinning again, but Luvaine, furiously red in a
moment, drew up stiff in his saddle.
“And you find this food for laughter?” he said, in a high voice. “A
grievance, quotha!--only a grievance that hath wrought the ruin of two
souls, and for me, in the prime of life, a childless and haunted old
age!”
“Oh, Luvaine!” said Sir David, struggling for gravity, “I didn’t mean
to cheapen you, man, or to withhold my sympathy from the problematic
Mrs. L., who--who ‘very imprudently married the barber’”--he added,
with a shout of merriment.
Tuke saw fit to put in a hasty word.
“He has earned a laugh. Let it be at you or me, Captain Luvaine; for
though I take no loss of the robbery, I swear the knowledge of it has
ridden me like a nightmare.”
The soldier waved his hand.
“Bah!” he said--“the crackling of thorns!”
He dismounted to tighten his saddle-girth.
“David,” he said over the straps, “has had his phases of idiotcy from
my first knowledge of him.”
At this the culprit went into a fresh fit.
“No, but,” he said, when he could recover his voice--“on your honour
d’you believe the girl’s statement, Tuke?”
“Why not? If I’m credulous, I’m happy; and there’s the true philosophy
of life in a nutshell.”
He was struggling with his own imp of merriment. The other had set it
squiggling; so that he was fain to look upon all this portentous
business from a new irreverent point of view.
“And that Cutwater kept the jewel in his eye-hole,” persisted Sir
David, “for all the world to see? And did he sacrifice the sound
article to accommodate it?”
“That I cannot account for. He was blind on one side before ever you
saw him.”
“You’ve got him to the life, I perceive. And he wore a dummy optic, no
doubt, and substituted t’other, all ingeniously painted, for it when
he conceived the resplendent idea?”
“I confess I never thought it out! But you’ve done it masterly.”
“Ain’t I? What a genius I am!--almost as good a one as Cutwater (eh,
Luvaine?), that was strung up on the downs and a fortune in his head
for any crow to peck at. You’d have given an eye for an eye to know
that, wouldn’t you? But it needed a crazed girl to see into the
creature’s methods, and bag the prize when it fell, while all the rest
of us were hunting counter.”
“Are you taunting me, sir? Let me tell you your jesting is ill-timed.
I would have known better, at least, than to have ordered away the
skull without first examining it.”
“On my honour, sir,” said Tuke, much amused, “I am not a coroner nor
even a J. P.”
“Oh! well,” muttered the soldier--“I am ready, gentlemen.”
As he was preparing to mount:
“Tuke,” said Sir David, “now I think on’t--wasn’t it that girl at the
inn first gave you warning of Mr. Breeds and his gang?”
“Betty Pollack? Yes.”
He answered brusquely, and touched his horse with his heel.
“The women, it seems, give us the lead in this business.”
“Betty,” said Tuke, with a little fierce glow of emotion, “is gold to
the inside of her heart. Now, gentlemen--and keep your eyes alert, by
your favour, as we pass the ‘Dog and Duck.’”
A creaking, and pounding of the frozen snow, and the three were on
their way once more. The long white stretches of road behind them
returned to the sombreness of quiet that their human voices had
interrupted. The very dun sky, that seemed to have withdrawn in high
offence at their careless chatter, drooped down again, frowning and
austere, to resume its ward of the imprisoned forces of life. No
movement was in the stiff spurs of grass or in the petrified
Hedgerows; no least cry of bird or insect in all the wastes of air.
Yet something there was that gave out a stealthy sound by and
by--something that all the time they talked had held its panic breath
in the copse, and sweated with terror lest the little snap of some
twig under its feet should reveal its hiding-place--something with a
puffed, leaden face and coward eyes--the unlovely Mr. Breeds, in fact.
He would not come out into the road, even after the last echo of the
horsemen’s retreat had died away. But he crept to his little windy
house on the hill by the way he had come--and Mr. Breeds’s way was
always a backstairs one. Once only he paused, and his weak, evil
features gathered all the definite expression of scoundrelism they
could master.
“Betty Pollack!” he muttered. “So it was you, my girl, that set your
dirty little torch to the beacon! Now ain’t it dangerous to play with
fire, Betty? And what should you say if it came to burn your own
fingers?”
He mused a moment; then brought his hand softly down on his thigh.
“But the skull comes first,” he murmured. “What’ll they give me for
that piece of news, I wonder?”