THE WINNER
Even during the bewildering whirl of those days which had passed so
swiftly since she had escaped from the _Olive Branch_, Sallie had
thought very often of Justin Carthew and the strange situation in which
circumstances had all conspired to place them toward each other.
Since she had found out what her rehabilitation, as Lady Josceline
Justice, was going to cost him, she had been very anxious to see him
again and make everything clear between him and her. But she could
scarcely disclose to the others that she had met him before. Neither
Captain Dove nor Jasper Slyne knew anything about him beyond what they
had heard from Mr. Jobling. And Mr. Jobling could or would tell her
nothing, in reply to a timid question or two she had put to him, beyond
the bare fact that she had nothing to fear from the young American's
ill-founded claim to her rightful place in the world.
She had been very anxious to see him again. But it had startled and
confused her at first to find him, so evidently at home, on the Warder's
Tower of Loquhariot. For she could not then, before the others, say
anything at all of what was in her mind; and she was afraid that he
might unguardedly, on the spur of the moment, reveal their unavoidable
joint secret.
She could see that he had recognised her at last and that he was no
less at a loss than herself. Mr. Jobling's gratuitous rudeness to him
vexed her very much. The old housekeeper's half-hysterical outbreak
surprised her beyond expression. And then he was gone, before she could
make up her mind that it was her own proper part to have bidden him stay
till something could have been settled.
But when she suggested that to Slyne he pooh-poohed the idea as absurd,
and told her she ought to be very glad to have got rid of her rival so
easily.
He himself was in high glee over that unexpected outcome of Mr.
Jobling's brusquely peremptory method with the interloper, and Captain
Dove's face wore a triumphant grin. Mr. Jobling himself seemed inclined
to be sulky with her, but the other two only laughed at his petulance.
"We've got possession!" said Slyne exultantly, "and that's nine points
of the law, as _you_ ought to know. If she hadn't taken the fellow's
part he might have been more inclined to stand his ground. But now--up
drawbridge and down portcullis! We'll hold the fort here, till that old
Chancery Court of yours comes away with its final decision."
Captain Dove poked the portly lawyer in the short ribs. "Buck up, old
rarebit!" he begged. "Don't look so glum. This is home, sweet home now.
Come on down below and I'll get you some sort of a bracer from that
sour-faced old Scotch hag with the keys. My mouth feels just as if it
were made of blotting-paper, too."
"But you must go very slow yet, Dove," Slyne cautioned the elated seaman
as he turned toward the stairway. "Don't go too fast. We aren't safely
enough settled yet to--"
Captain Dove paused to look him between the eyes with a mirthless,
meaning laugh.
"This is my adopted daughter's castle now, Mister Slyne," said he. "When
we want any advice from you about how we're to behave in it--or anything
else--we'll let you know. D'ye see?"
Slyne's lips parted and closed again. He had evidently thought better of
giving voice to any retort, however effective.
"After you," he remarked politely, since Captain Dove still stood
blocking the stairway and grinning fixedly back at him. "I must send
down to the inn for Ambrizette and our baggage at once. It will soon be
quite dark."
Sallie followed them slowly, like one in a dream, and Mr. Jobling came
last. As they reached the circular hall below, Mrs. M'Kissock, still
much perturbed, came hurrying in from the corridor.
"Mr. Carthew has gone, my lady," she said, dropping Sallie another deep
curtsey, "and if your ladyship will be pleased to rest here for a
little, it will not be long till the West Wing is all in order. I have
only two maids to help me, with the castle empty so long, but I have
sent down to the village for more, and maybe your ladyship will
excuse--"
Sallie went up to her and took hold of the two trembling hands clasped
tightly together against a jingling silver chatelaine.
"Janet," she said softly, and the agitated old woman looked gratefully
up into her grave, wistful eyes, "I think you and I are going to be good
friends, Janet," she said, "because--we have both been so lonely. And I
want you not to worry yourself about anything. There's no hurry, and
we'll be quite content here till you have everything arranged as you
wish."
"I thank you kindly, my lady," answered Mrs. M'Kissock, and curtsied
again, and was going off about her business, when Slyne signed to her to
wait a moment and drew Sallie toward the door.
"I'll have to go into a number of matters with you," said he
condescendingly to the old housekeeper. "To save Lady Josceline trouble,
you'll get all your instructions from me."
Mrs. M'Kissock looked mutely to her new mistress for refutation or
confirmation of his right to claim her services so; and Sallie could not
but nod as she recalled with a strange, new pang the promise she had
made in Genoa, and the lengthy document she had signed in the Hotel de
Paris.
"This is Mr. Jasper Slyne, Janet," said she, "and--"
"Her ladyship's future--" Slyne was about to explain the importance of
his position there when Captain Dove interposed.
"Slyne!" he called across the hall. "If there's nothing to drink in the
house, whoever goes down to the inn for our baggage had better bring
up--"
But Slyne had already got Mrs. M'Kissock out into the corridor.
"I'll send something in at once. Try to keep him quiet for a little," he
said to Sallie, and she, having carefully closed the door, went back
toward the fireplace to pacify the old man.
A few minutes later a pink-complexioned, flaxen-haired maid came
tripping demurely in, with a great silver salver on which was set such
an array of decanters that Captain Dove at once became most amiable
again.
"And I will bring tea for your ladyship now," said the maid in her
quaint Highland accent. "It was the other gentleman that told me to
bring this first."
"That was quite right," Sallie reassured her, and asked her name.
"It is Mairi, my lady," the girl answered with a shy, gratified smile,
and was very soon back with a beautiful service of Sevres and a steaming
urn.
Mr. Jobling virtuously declined Captain Dove's cordial invitation to
help himself to a decanter, and asked Sallie for a cup of weak tea. At
which the old man was still cackling discordantly when Slyne came in
again a few minutes later.
"That's an obstinate old baggage!" said he, obviously incensed. "You
must tell her, Sal--Lady Josceline, that she's to attend to my orders
without any more back-talk."
Captain Dove turned in his armchair before the fire.
"That woman's my adopted daughter's housekeeper now, Mister Slyne," said
he, frowning darkly. "And I'll trouble you not to interfere in what's no
concern of yours. You're only a visitor here, you know."
Slyne darted a black glance at him, but did not answer him otherwise. "I
told her to get your mother's rooms ready for you," he mentioned to
Sallie. "And Ambrizette will be there by the time you'll want her.
"That fellow Carthew has gone off to the inn," he remarked to Mr.
Jobling. "I expect he'll be busy by now wiring Bolder & Bolder the
news."
"That won't do him any good," Mr. Jobling returned. "And, even if he had
any case to go on with, there's nothing more they could do for him until
the Hilary Sittings come on--very nearly a fortnight yet. As it is, he
hasn't a leg left to stand on. You heard what old Gaunt said to her
ladyship."
"There's no fear of anything getting into the newspapers prematurely, is
there?" asked Slyne.
"I told Spettigrew to keep everything quiet," the lawyer answered
complacently. "And, besides, they're all full to overflowing about the
election that's coming on."
"I wonder if anyone ever wades through all the lurid twaddle they print
at such times?" said Slyne, apparently pleased. And they two maintained
a desultory conversation, to which Sallie only listened when it now and
then veered back to matters which might affect Carthew or herself, until
a sonorous gong began to sound in the corridor.
As its increasing thunder suddenly disturbed the cloistral quiet,
Captain Dove, comfortably settled in his armchair beside the fire with a
black clay pipe, started up in alarm and spilled the contents of the
glass in his hand.
"What the devil are they about out there!" he ejaculated irascibly.
"I'll blow a hole through that infernal tom-tom if they don't drop it."
"Time to dress for dinner," Slyne explained with a tolerant smile, and,
rising, rang the bell. "Our rooms will be ready by now, I expect. But
there's no hurry. All you need to change is your waistcoat."
"Damn nonsense!" snorted Captain Dove, and reaching for a decanter, was
liberally refilling his glass when the girl Mairi answered the bell.
"Show her ladyship to her own rooms," Slyne directed. And Sallie
followed the demure, flaxen-haired maid very eagerly.
On her way to the West Wing she could not but notice the change which
had come over the place. A pleasant atmosphere of ordered activity
seemed to pervade the vast building. There were men as well as
women-servants busy everywhere. Light and warmth and life had put to
flight the darkness and desolation which had come down with the dusk on
its emptiness. She gave herself up for the moment to a delicious,
childish sensation of snugness and safety there. And when she at length
reached the open door of the splendid suite which, Mrs. M'Kissock had
told her, had once been her mother's, she felt that she could not, after
all, grudge the price she must pay by and by for her glimpse of home.
Ambrizette, with rolling eyes and open mouth, had everything in
readiness for her in her dressing-room, for the hideous dwarf was indeed
a very efficient _femme de chambre_. Within half an hour Sallie had had
her bath and was dressed again, in the same frock that she had worn at
the Savoy. She patted the dumb black creature on the head before turning
away from the glass, and paused on the threshold to glance back into the
cosy, fire-lit room with eyes which had grown unaccountably dim.
She found Mairi in the main hall, demurely flirting with one of the
footmen whom Mrs. M'Kissock had conjured up, and Mairi showed her into a
luxurious drawing-room where Slyne was standing, hands in pockets,
before a cavernous, marble-faced fireplace in which a veritable bonfire
of logs was cheerily crackling.
His eyes lighted up as she entered. The mirrors about the walls seemed
to frame innumerable pictures of her as she crossed the slippery,
age-blackened floor toward the big bearskin rug which made an oasis
before the fire. He held out his hands to her, dumbly. And just at that
moment Mr. Jobling appeared in the doorway, trumpeting into his
handkerchief.
Captain Dove arrived shortly after him, under convoy of a scared
housemaid who, it seemed, had found him astray in some far corner of the
castle and whom he had impressed into his service as guide. The gongs
resounded again, just in time to drown his added denunciation of the oak
floor, on which he had all but come to grief as soon as he set foot on
it. The folding-doors at one end of the long room were pulled apart and
a resonant voice announced ceremoniously that dinner was served. Slyne
offered Sallie an arm a second or two in advance of the slower Jobling,
and, as she laid a light hand on his sleeve, led her into the
banquet-hall.
"I told them we'd dine here to-night, although there are lots of more
modern rooms," he mentioned to her, and frowned in helpless annoyance as
Captain Dove, following, gave vent to a very audible whistle.
A butler and four tall footmen, all in tartan kilts and full-dress
doublets, were at their places about a table resplendent with silver
displayed with old-fashioned profusion. Rare crystal and fine foreign
glassware flashed and sparkled under the shaded lights standing on
damask like snow, to which hot-house fruit and flowers added an
exquisite note of colour. In the dim background, barely visible in the
faint firelight, hung faded tapestries with, here and there, some
portrait or pair of horns. There seemed to be a small gallery at the
farther end of the hall. The unceiled rafters overhead were also almost
in darkness.
Sallie, glancing about her with eager, delighted eyes, paused on the way
to the table to peer through a pane of plate-glass let into the
panelling over one mantel.
"That's the famous Fairy Horn, Lady Josceline," said Mr. Jobling
officiously. "But--you haven't heard the old Jura legend yet, I
suppose?" He coughed in his most important manner.
"Well,--the Fairy Horn is said to have been presented to one of your
ancestors a very long time ago by the White Lady--the family ghost;
every real old Scots family, you know, has a private ghost of its own.
And the horn carried with it the privilege, to him or any succeeding
chief of the clan, of summoning the White Lady, on three occasions, to
fulfil any wish so urgent as to be worth the price of her help. For,
every time she does show up, the head of the family dies. So that--the
Fairy Horn has only been sounded twice, I've been told, during the
centuries which have passed since then; and--on each occasion the wish
expressed has been duly fulfilled, at the price of the chieftain's
life."
Captain Dove turned restlessly in the chair on which he had scarcely sat
down. Sallie knew that he was intensely superstitious, as so many seamen
are, and that that shadowed hall would be the last place in which he
would be willing to hear ghost-stories.
"Huh!" said he, irritably. "I don't believe a word of it, anyhow. What
are we waiting for now? Gimme some soup, or something, you!"
He was still scowling over his shoulder at a surprised servant when, in
an instant, there rose from behind the tapestry in a dark corner a low,
moaning wail which swelled and sank and swelled again to a bitter,
blood-curdling shriek. Captain Dove's face blanched as he pushed his
chair from under him and sprang to his feet, armed with the nearest
available weapon, a table-knife. The servant behind him had stepped
back, in obvious alarm.
A man came striding out of the dusk in the distant corner, and, as he
marched proudly up the room, the blare of the bagpipes over his shoulder
seemed to make the very rafters ring. Twice he encircled the table, and
then passed out of sight by the farther door.
Captain Dove had sat down again, grinding his teeth audibly. To cover
his confusion, Sallie turned to the butler behind her chair, and, "What
tune was that?" she asked, pleasantly.
Her face flushed as the Highlandman answered, in careful English, "It
will be none other than the _Welcome to Jura_ that your ladyship's
head-piper would play this night."
She would have been even happier in her wonderful new home if she had
not thought of Justin Carthew again at that moment, and of the
difference her coming had made to him. She wished that she had been able
to tell him at once, on the Warder's Tower, what was once more in her
mind as she looked lovingly round the banquet-hall of Loquhariot--from
which she had ousted him. She could not forget how gallantly he had
faced fate at every turn, always making little of his own share in the
tragic happenings which had involved them both.
She felt that she could not rest until she had set herself right with
him, and made up her mind that as soon as dinner was over, she would ask
Mairi or Mrs. M'Kissock to send a message down to the inn for her.
But dinner, under such conditions, was a long business. And, although
both Mr. Jobling and Jasper Slyne did their best to make the time pass
pleasantly for her, she was very glad when a message the butler brought
her gave her an excuse for leaving the table a little before she would
otherwise have got away.
She had hoped to escape alone, but Slyne had overheard what the man had
said and accompanied her to the hall, where the old housekeeper was
awaiting her.
"What's all this, Mrs. M'Kissock?" he asked, somewhat sharply.
"And--who's Mr. Herries?"
"Mr. Herries is the factor in charge of the estates, sir," she answered,
"and some of her ladyship's tenantry have come up from the village with
him to offer her welcome. It was not my place to turn them away from the
door without word from her ladyship's self."
"Oh, no," said Sallie, her eyes aglow and a sudden lump in her throat to
think that her own folk were making her welcome. "I must see them,
Janet. I must thank them--"
Slyne frowned, but made no further demur as Mrs. M'Kissock gave orders
to open the doors.
The glare of the torches half-blinded Sallie as she stepped out; and she
halted beneath the portcullis. But she saw an old man alone on the
drawbridge and went on alone toward him. He doffed his Highland bonnet
to her and bowed with old-fashioned deference. Then he looked her in the
face for a moment or two, very keenly, while she returned his searching
glance with happily smiling eyes which had nothing to hide from him. And
all the time the pipers in the background were blowing their best.
He held up a trembling hand to them, and the shrill music ceased. The
sputter of the torches was the only sound that broke the stillness until
he spoke.
"Lady Josceline Justice?" he asked, and, as Sallie nodded, still
smiling, "I am Ian Herries," he told her, "factor of Loquhariot and your
ladyship's humble servant. I had no news of your ladyship's coming or I
would have been here in time to say welcome home on behalf of your
ladyship's tenantry and myself."
"Oh, thank you, Mr. Herries," said Sallie, in a shy and very tremulous
voice whose tone changed suddenly to one of urgent alarm. "But--you're
ill. You must come in and rest.
"Oh, Jasper--"
The old man had almost collapsed, but Slyne hurried forward in time to
save him from falling.
"I'll see to Mr. Herries," said he, with a great air of sympathy, and
helped the sick man indoors.
Sallie looked a little uncertainly after him, and then faced the
flickering torches alone again. The silent scrutiny of all the eyes
regarding her was something of an ordeal, but she went bravely on across
the drawbridge.
She did not notice the nip in the air, but some one among the assemblage
had wrapped her about in a heavy plaid and drawn back before she could
see who it was.
"Your ladyship will find the Jura tartan as warm as the welcome we all
wish your ladyship," said a stalwart, bearded mountaineer, who had
stepped to the front to speak for his fellows; and, as she smiled shy
but very contentedly up into his scarlet face, he bent his head above
the hand she had held out to him.
One after another the hill-men and fisherfolk of the village filed past
her then, each with some stammered salutation, in difficult English or
guttural Gaelic. And for each she had a shy, grateful smile and a word
of thanks, until at the last came Justin Carthew and had also stooped
and kissed her hand before she could prevent him.
He would have passed on like the others but that she, blushing hotly,
begged him to wait. For Janet M'Kissock had come to her shoulder to say
that at the Jura Arms in the village would be provided a loving-cup in
which all might drink her ladyship's health, as was proper on such an
occasion, and had brought out the big, silver-mounted hunting-quaich in
which every new Earl of Jura had pledged his people on his accession.
The butts of the torches had been flung in a heap on the ground before
the girl, and formed a fiery pyramid between her and the waiting throng.
She lifted up the drinking-horn, her eyes very bright, and cried at the
pitch of her clear, sweet voice a single, strangely-sounding word in the
Gaelic, that Janet M'Kissock had whispered to her once or twice. And the
sudden, thunderous roar of response that rang out in answer, as if from
a single throat, awoke wild echoes among the surrounding hills.
"Your ladyship will come inbye now," begged Mrs. M'Kissock, as the pipes
struck up again at the head of the gathering on its way back to the
village.
But, "Just in a minute, Janet," said Sallie, "I'm quite warm. And--you
needn't wait."
The bonfire before her was burning low in spite of the wind which had
just begun to blow and promised to freshen. She stayed beside it,
watching, until all but Carthew were gone. And then she turned to him,
the tears very near her eyes and her starved heart almost satisfied.
"Oh, Mr. Carthew," she said timidly, "I wanted to tell you at once how
sorry I am about--everything. I had no idea at all, when you told me on
the _Olive Branch_--"
"Of course not," said Justin Carthew concisely.
"And Mr. Jobling was so--abrupt; and--I didn't know what to do. Won't
you please forgive me; I had no idea--"
"I was pretty much taken aback myself," said Justin Carthew, and laughed
a little, though not very merrily. "But--I'm all right again now. And
you mustn't worry about me, please. I'm all right, again, and--"
"You'll wait for a little?" she interrupted, she was so eager to
reassure him. "I can't help being who I am, but--if you will only wait
for a little, everything will turn out all right for you, too."
She could see that he was puzzled.
"I can't explain," she went on hurriedly, afraid that he would demand
explanation. "But I want you to give me a little time, if you will. I
want you not to go away. If you will just wait--for only three
months--everything will turn out all right for you in the end."
"But--how--" he was beginning, when she cut him short again.
"I can't explain," she repeated. "Only--you once promised that I might
ask you to do anything I wanted. Will you not just wait here, and trust
me--for only three months? And then you'll understand."
He looked helplessly about him.
"I'll wait here--and trust you--all the rest of my life," he said, "if
you say so. And then I'll still be in your debt."
"All I ask is my three months," she told him gravely. "And then--"
He looked his utter perplexity.
"You don't mean that you're Lady Josceline Justice only for the time
being?" he asked, his forehead wrinkled.
"Oh, no," she answered assuredly. "I'll be Lady Josceline Justice all
my life. And--you'll keep your promise?"
"I'll keep my promise," he affirmed. "I'll wait here and trust you for
three months--and for the rest of my life, if you say so."
She smiled at him, very contentedly. "I'm going to be very happy here
now," she said, and looked round. She had heard Slyne's voice, calling
her. She could see him beyond the drawbridge gazing blindly out into the
darkness.
"Good night," she said to Carthew. But she did not go in until he had
swung himself into the saddle and ridden away, always looking back.