SUB JUDICE
Well, I made a belated attempt to earn my young friend's good opinion. I
kept out of his way after dinner, and went in search of Quinby instead.
I felt I had a crow of my own to pluck with this gentleman, who owed to
my timely intervention a far greater immunity than he deserved. It was
in the little billiard-room I found him, pachydermatously applauding the
creditable attempts of Sir John Sankey at the cannon game, and as
studiously ignoring the excellent shots of an undistinguished clergyman
who was beating the judge. Quinby made room for me beside him, with a
civility which might have caused me some compunction, but I repaid him
by coming promptly to my point.
"What's this report about Mrs. Lascelles?" I asked, not angrily at all,
for naturally my feeling in the matter was not so strong as Bob's, but
with a certain contemptuous interest, if a man can judge of his own
outward manner from his inner temper at the time.
Quinby favoured me with a narrow though a sidelong look; the room was
very full, and in the general chit-chat, punctuated by the constant
clicking of the heavy balls, there was very little danger of our being
overheard. But Quinby was careful to lower his voice.
"It's perfectly true," said he, "if you mean about her being divorced."
"Yes, that was what I heard; but who started the report?"
"Who started it. You may well ask! Who starts anything in a place like
this? Ah, good shot, Sir John, good shot!"
"Never mind the good shots, Quinby. I really rather want to talk to you
about this. I sha'n't keep you long."
"Talk away, then. I am listening."
"Mrs. Lascelles and I are rather friends."
"So I can see."
"Very well, then, I want to know who started all this. It may be
perfectly true, as you say, but who found it out? If you can't tell me
I must ask somebody else."
The ruddy Alpine colouring had suddenly become accentuated in the case
of Quinby.
"As a matter of fact," said he, "it was I who first heard of it, quite
by chance. You can't blame me for that, Clephane."
"Of course not," said I encouragingly.
"Well, unfortunately I let it out; and you know how things get about in
an hotel."
"It was unfortunate," I agreed. "But how on earth did you come to hear?"
Quinby hummed and hawed; he had heard from a soldier friend, a man who
had known her in India, a man whom I knew myself, in fact Hamilton the
sapper, who had telegraphed to Quinby to secure me my room. I ought to
have been disarmed by the coincidence; but I recalled our initial
conversation, about India and Hamilton and Mrs. Lascelles, and I could
not consider it a coincidence at all.
"You don't mean to tell me," said I, aping the surprise I might have
felt, "that our friend wrote and gave Mrs. Lascelles away to you of his
own accord?"
But Quinby did not vouchsafe an answer. "Hard luck, Sir John!" cried
he, as the judge missed an easy cannon, leaving his opponent a still
easier one, which lost him the game. I proceeded to press my question in
a somewhat stronger form, though still with all the suavity at my
command.
"Surely," I urged, "you must have written to ask him about her first?"
"That's my business, I fancy," said Quinby, with a peculiarly aggressive
specimen of the nasal snigger of which enough was made in a previous
chapter, but of which Quinby himself never tired.
"Quite," I agreed; "but do you also consider it your business to inquire
deliberately into the past life of a lady whom I believe you only know
by sight, and to spread the result of your inquiries broadcast in the
hotel? Is that your idea of chivalry? I shall ask Sir John Sankey
whether it is his," I added, as the judge joined us with genial
condescension, and I recollected that his proverbial harshness toward
the male offender was redeemed by an extraordinary sympathy with the
women. Thereupon I laid a general case before Sir John, asking him
point-blank whether he considered such conduct as Quinby's (but I did
not say whose the conduct was) either justifiable in itself or conducive
to the enjoyment of a holiday community like ours.
"It depends," said the judge, cocking a critical eye on the now furious
Quinby. "I am afraid we most of us enjoy our scandal, and for my part I
always like to see a humbug catch it hot. But if the scandal's about a
woman, and if it's an old scandal, and if she's a lonely woman, that
quite alters the case, and in my opinion the author of it deserves all
he gets."
At this Quinby burst out, with an unrestrained heat that did not lower
him in my estimation, though the whole of his tirade was directed
exclusively against me. I had been talking "at" him, he declared. I
might as well have been straightforward while I was about it. He, for
his part, was not afraid to take the responsibility for anything he
might have said. It was perfectly true, to begin with. The so-called
Mrs. Lascelles, who was such a friend of mine, had been the wife of a
German Jew in Lahore, who had divorced her on her elopement with a
Major Lascelles, whom she had left in his turn, and whose name she had
not the smallest right to bear. Quinby exercised some restraint in the
utterances of these calumnies, or the whole room must have heard them,
but even as it was we had more listeners than the judge when my turn
came.
"I won't give you the lie, Quinby, because I am quite sure you don't
know you are telling one," said I; "but as a matter of fact you are
giving currency to two. In the first place, this lady is Mrs. Lascelles,
for the major did marry her; in the second place, Major Lascelles is
dead."
"And how do you know?" inquired Quinby, with a touch of genuine surprise
to mitigate an insolent disbelief.
"You forget," said I, "that it was in India I knew your own informant. I
can only say that my information in all this matter is a good deal
better than his. I knew Mrs. Lascelles herself quite well out there; I
knew the other side of her case. It doesn't seem to have struck you,
Quinby, that such a woman must have suffered a good deal before, and
after, taking such a step. Or I don't suppose you would have spread
yourself to make her suffer a little more,"
And I still consider that a charitable view of his behaviour; but Quinby
was of another opinion, which he expressed with his offensive little
laugh as he lifted his long body from the settee.
"This is what one gets for securing a room for a man one doesn't know!"
said he.
"On the contrary," I retorted, "I haven't forgotten that, and I have
saved you something because of it. I happen to have saved you no less
than a severe thrashing from a stronger man than myself, who is even
more indignant with you than I am, and who wanted to borrow one of my
sticks for the purpose!"
"And it would have served him perfectly right," was the old judge's
comment, when the mischief-maker had departed without returning my
parting shot. "I suppose you meant young Evers, Captain Clephane?"
"I did indeed, Sir John. I had to tell him the truth in order to
restrain him."
The old judge raised his eyebrows.
"Then you hadn't to tell him it before? You are certainly consistent,
and I rather admire your position as regards the lady. But I am not so
sure that it was altogether fair toward the lad. It is one thing to
stand up for the poor soul, my dear sir, but it would be another thing
to let a nice boy like that go and marry her!"
So that was the opinion of this ripe old citizen of the world! It ought
not to have irritated me as it did. It would be Catherine's opinion, of
course; but a dispassionate view was not to be expected from her. I had
not hitherto thought otherwise, myself; but now I experienced a perverse
inclination to take the opposite side. Was it so utterly impossible for
a woman with this woman's record to make a good wife to some man yet? I
did not admit it for an instant; he would be a lucky man who won so
healthy and so good a heart; thus I argued to myself with Mrs. Lascelles
in my mind, and nobody else. But Bob Evers was not a man, I was not sure
that he was out of his teens, and to think of him was to think at once
with Sir John Sankey and all the rest. Yes, yes, it would be madness and
suicide in such a youth; there could be no two opinions about that; and
yet I felt indignant at the mildest expression of that which I myself
could not deny.
Such was my somewhat chaotic state of mind when I had fled the
billiard-room in my turn, and put on my overcoat and cap to commune with
myself outside. Nobody did justice to Mrs. Lascelles; it was terribly
hard to do her justice; those were perhaps the ideas that were oftenest
uppermost. I did not see how I was to be the exception and prove the
rule; my brief was for Bob, and there was an end of it. It was foolish
to worry, especially on such a night. The moon had waxed since my
arrival, and now hung almost round and altogether dazzling in the little
sky the mountains left us. Yet I had the terrace all to myself; the
magnificent voice of our latest celebrity had drawn everybody else in
doors, or under the open drawing-room windows through which it poured
out into the glorious night. And in the vivid moonlight the very
mountains seemed to have gathered about the little human hive upon their
heights, to be listening to the grand rich notes that had some right to
break their ancient silence.
"If doughty deeds my lady please,
Right soon I'll mount my steed;
And strong his arm, and fast his seat,
That bears frae me the meed.
I'll wear thy colours in my cap,
Thy picture at my heart;
And he that bends not to thine eye
Shall rue it to his smart!"
It was a brave new setting to brave old lines, as simple and direct as
themselves, studiously in keeping, passionate, virile, almost inspired;
and the whole so justly given that the great notes did not drown the
words as they often will, but all came clean to the ear. No wonder the
hotel held its breath! I was standing entranced myself, an outpost of
the audience underneath the windows, whose fringe I could just see round
the uttermost angle of the hotel, when Bob Evers ran down the steps, and
came toward me in such guise that I could not swear to him till the last
yard.
"Don't say a word," he whispered excitedly. "I'm just off!"
"Off where?" I gasped, for he had changed into full mountaineering garb,
and there was his greased face beaming in the moonlight, and the blue
spectacles twinkling about his hat-band, at half-past nine at night.
"Up the Matterhorn!"
"At this time of night?"
"It is a bit late, and that's why I want it kept quiet. I don't want any
fuss or advice. I've got a couple of excellent guides waiting for me
just below by the shoemaker's hut. I told you I was on their tracks.
Well, it was to-night or never as far as they were concerned, they are
so tremendously full up. So to-night it is, and don't you remind me of
my mother!"
I was thinking of her when he spoke; for the song had swung through a
worthy refrain into another verse, and now I knew it better. It was
Catherine who had introduced me to all my lyrics; it was to Catherine I
had once hymned this one in my unformed heart.
"But I thought," said I, as I forced myself to think, "that everybody
went up to the _Cabane_ overnight, and started fresh from there in the
morning?"
"Most people do, but it's as broad as it's long," declared Bob, airily,
rapidly, and with the same unwonted excitement, born as I thought of
his unwonted enterprise. "You have a ripping moonlight walk instead of a
so-called night's rest in a frowsy hut. We shall get our breakfast there
instead, and I expect to start fresher than if I had slept there and
been knocked up at two o'clock in the morning. That's all settled,
anyhow, and you can look for me on top through the telescope after
breakfast. I shall be back before dark, and then--"
"Well, what then?" I asked, for Bob had made a significant and yet
irresolute pause, as though he could not quite bring himself to tell me
something that was on his mind.
"Well," he echoed nonchalantly at last, as though he had not hesitated
at all, "as a matter of fact, to-morrow night I am to know my fate. I
have asked Mrs. Lascelles to marry me, and she hasn't said no, but I am
giving her till to-morrow night. That's all, Clephane. I thought it a
fair thing to let you know. If you want to waltz in and try your luck
while I'm gone, there's nothing on earth to prevent you, and it might be
most satisfactory to everybody. As a matter of fact, I'm only going so
as to get over the time and keep out of the way."
"As a matter of fact?" I queried, waving a little stick toward the
lighted windows. "Listen a minute, and then tell me!"
And we listened together to the last and clearest rendering of the
refrain--
"Then tell me how to woo thee, Love;
O tell me how to woo thee!
For thy dear sake, nae care I'll take,
Tho' ne'er another trow me!"
"What tosh!" shouted Bob (his mother should have heard him) through the
applause. "Of course I'm going to take care of myself, and of course I
meant to rush the Matterhorn while I'm here, but between ourselves
that's my only reason for rushing it to-night."
Yet had he no boyish vision of quick promotion in the lady's heart, no
primitive desire to show his mettle out of hand, to set her trembling
while he did or died? He had, I thought, and he had not; that shining
face could only have reflected a single and candid heart. But it is
these very natures, so simple and sweet-hearted and transparent, that
are least to be trusted on the subject of their own motives and
emotions, for they are the soonest deceived, not only by others but in
themselves. Or so I venture to think, and even then reflected, as I
shook my dear lad's hand by the side parapet of the moonlit terrace, and
watched him run down into the shadows of the fir-trees and so out of my
sight with two dark and stalwart figures that promptly detached
themselves from the shadows of the shoemaker's hut. A third figure
mounted to where I now sat listening to the easy, swinging, confident
steps, as they fell fainter and fainter upon the ear; it was the
shoemaker himself who had shod my two sticks with spikes and my boots
with formidable nails; and we exchanged a few words in a mixture of
languages which I should be very sorry to reproduce.
"Do you know those two guides?" is what I first asked in effect.
"Very well, monsieur."
"Are they good guides?"
"The very best, monsieur."