What could it mean? The child was strangely dependable for his years;
indeed, it was impossible to look in those great and candid eyes and to
doubt the testimony of the equally candid little tongue. Then what could
it mean? Had Musk relented? Was he relenting? Carlton's heart leapt at
the thought, and with his heart his eyes; and in the same second he had
his answer.
Close at hand in the sunlight, where Georgie had stood last, brimming
over with delight, there now stood Jasper Musk himself, huge with hate,
livid with rage, vindictive, remorseless--but not surprised. Carlton saw
this at the first glance, in the triumphant lightning flashing from the
fixed eyes, and playing over the heavy, grim, inexorable face. And that
was his answer; furthermore it prepared him for all, and more than all,
that was to come.
"Put the boy down," said Jasper Musk, with sinister self-control.
Instinctively the child slipped to the ground; but there his courage
failed him, so that he turned his back upon the terrible old man, and
hid his face in the lap that he had left.
"Come here, George!"
But Carlton held him firmly with both hands.
Musk bore down on them in a series of little shuffling steps, his great
face wincing with the pain of each. His voice had already risen; now it
was so terrible to hear, so hoarse and high with passion, that in an
instant Carlton had his thumbs in the small boy's ears.
"Snivelling hypocrite! Whited sepulchre! Do you hand the child over to
me, or I'll break this stick across your back. So I've caught ye,
temptun him here to make up to him behind my back! But you don't--no,
you don't--not while I'm alive to stop that. He's nothun to you and
you're nothun to him, and do you meddle with him again at your peril.
I've taken the trouble to learn the law of it, so I know. God damn ye!
will you take your hands off him, or am I to break your blasted head?"
"You can do what you like," said Carlton; "but the boy shall not hear
you using that language to me. So you will never get a better
opportunity than you have." And his nostrils curled as he bent his
defenceless head over that of the boy, and pressed a little harder with
his thumbs.
The other gnashed his teeth, and his great hand tightened on his stick.
But he could not strike like that. And his enemy knew it; trust him to
know when he was safe!
"I'm not going to prison for ye," said Musk, "if that's what you want. I
daresay you'd think that worth a crack on the head to get me locked up
for a bit; well, then, you shan't. Do you leave go o' the kid, and I
won't swear no more."
The effort at self-control was plain enough, as Carlton looked up,
without complying all at once.
"One moment," he said. "You sent him here yourself, I think?"
"What, the child?"
"Yes."
"I didn't send him. He was pestering me to come. So at last I gave him
leave to do as he liked."
"In order that you might follow and abuse me in front of him!"
"I'll tell no lies," said Musk, sturdily. "I meant to let him hear what
I thought of you, and I won't deny it."
Carlton looked a little longer upon the broad face between the steely
bristles and the silvery hair; it had aged nothing in these years which
had been as twenty to himself; and for the moment there was all the old
rugged dignity in its independent purpose and honest unrelenting hate. A
bargain had been in Carlton's mind, but at the last he decided to trust
his enemy instead.
"It's all right, Georgie," he whispered: "we are not really angry with
each other. Run away and play."
"But I don't want to!"
"You must," said Carlton, and rose without taking further notice of the
child. "Mr. Musk," he said, in a low voice but firm, "is it to be like
this between us to the bitter end?"
"That is."
"I do not ask your forgiveness----"
"Glad to hear it."
"I only ask--in pity's name--to be allowed to do something for the boy!"
Musk moved a muscle at last, and his eyes came close together with a
gleam. "I daresay you do," said he.
"But will you not listen----"
"I'm listening now, ain't I?"
"Ah, but not to my prayer! I see it in your face; you have no pity. God
knows how little I deserve! Yet it's little enough that I ask: only to
see him sometimes, and not even to see him if you set your face against
it. I would be content--at least I would try to be--if I knew he was
going to good schools, if--if I might have hand or voice in his life.
You say I have no rights. That is my punishment; a new one, that I never
felt until I saw the boy for the first time the other day; but if you
knew how I have felt it since! If you knew what it would be to me to do
anything--give anything----"
"I knew that were comun," said Musk, nodding to himself . . . "So you'd
like to do the handsome, would you?" His whole face became suddenly
suffused, as with walnut-juice; the very whites of his eyes seemed white
no longer, while the pupils shrank to steel points in their midst. "I
know you!" he cried, beside himself again; "but don't you try them games
with me. That's your line, that is--buy your way back! You'd buy it with
the parish, by making them a church; and you'd buy it with the boy, by
making things for him; but that's what you never shall do, not while I
live to prevent it . . . What you got there, George? You give that
here!"
It was the sandstone head with the sunken eyes, and Georgie was clinging
to it in his trouble underneath the scaffolding; in an instant Musk had
seized it from him, and dashed it with all his might against the wall,
so that the soft stone flew into a dozen pieces. It was like blood to a
wild beast: the demon of destruction broke loose in Jasper Musk.
"And that's how I'd treat the rest of your damned handiwork," he roared,
"if I was the village! I'd have no church of your building; I'd bring
that down about your ears right quick!" His wild eye lit upon the wooden
centre of the unfinished arch, and "This is what I'd do," he shouted,
lunging at the woodwork with his heavy stick. "Hypocrite! Pharisee!
Disgrace to God and man! Leper as----"
But the centre had been dealt a heavy thrust, as from a battering ram,
with each expression; with each it had bulged a little; but the last
lunge drove the whole framework from under the unfinished arch, which
came crashing down amid a yellow cloud. Musk shuffled backward in time
to save his toes; for an instant then both he and Carlton stood aghast.
Robbed of his latest treasure, and moreover having seen it smashed to
atoms before his eyes, Georgie had been howling lustily when the crash
came: when the yellow cloud lifted he lay silent enough, in a little
brown heap below the scaffolding, and already the blood was through his
hair.
Carlton had him in his arms that instant.
"He's insensible," he said quietly. "A nasty scalp wound, and may be
more. What day is this?"
"Wednesday."
Musk did not know what he was saying, but the cool question had elicited
a correct though unconscious reply.
"Wednesday used to be the doctor's day at the dispensary----"
"And is still," cried Musk, coming to his senses.
"Then one of us must run for him."
"I can't run!"
"Then you must hold him while I do. Stop! I'll take him to the house;
you must bathe his head while I'm gone."
Another minute and the boy lay in the rectory study, upon the little bed
in which Carlton had fought death and won three years before; yet
another, and up limped Jasper, crooked with pain, out of breath, but
gasping for news of Georgie as though he had been a week on the way.
"Has he come to yet?"
"No, and there's a lot of blood. We must stop it if we can. Wait till I
get a sponge and some water."
Jasper Musk was bending over the boy, looking huger than ever upon his
knees, when Carlton returned to the room.
"What have I done?" he was muttering. "What have I done? What have I
done?"
"Nothing that you could help," replied Carlton, briskly. "Now you keep
squeezing this sponge out over his head--never mind the bed--till I get
back."
Georgie lay insensible for hours. It was not the loss of blood, which
looked much worse than it was, and ceased altogether with the dressing
of the wound. There was, however, somewhat serious concussion
underneath; and Dr. Marigold bluntly refused to guarantee the event.
"The pity is to move him," he grumbled towards night. "But is there
anybody here who could nurse the boy?"
"Only myself," said Carlton, who had been quiet and quick to help all
the afternoon.
The doctor shot an upward glance through his shaggy white eyebrows.
"Well, you're handy enough, I must say; and, as we know, the very devil
to do things single-handed; but this you couldn't do. No, I'd like to
take him straight to the infirmary, only I'm on horseback."
"There are traps in the village."
"They would jolt too much."
"Then let me carry him."
"It's five miles."
"Never mind. I could do it. And he shouldn't jolt--he shouldn't jolt!"
The mellow voice that had charmed the countryside in bygone years, it
fell and quivered with infinite tenderness and love, and it sped to the
heart of the gaunt old doctor. So this time Marigold raised his whole
head, and his look was open, prolonged, and penetrating.
"No, no, Mr. Carlton," he said at length, and in the tone of old times.
"It might do no good, after all. But I'll tell you what you shall do:
you shall carry him to the Flint House, and I'll spend the night there
if I must."
All this while Jasper Musk was sitting stunned and staring in the
rector's chair. He had not moved for an hour, nor did he now until
Carlton touched him on the shoulder.
"We are going, Mr. Musk. I am carrying Georgie to your house."
Musk raised a ghastly face.
"He isn't dead?"
"No."
"Nor going to die?"
"God forbid! But the danger is great. The doctor is going to stay with
him all night."
And there was a touch of jealousy in his tone, lost upon Jasper Musk,
but not on him who inspired it. Silently they left the house, and stole
down the drive in the blue twilight. Carlton led, treading almost on
tip-toe, as if not to wake a child that only slept in his arms. And so
they came to the Flint House, its master limping on the doctor's arm.
"Go in, Mr. Carlton," said Marigold. "There's no one else to carry him
upstairs."
And he detained Jasper below.
"You must let that man stay till he is out of danger," the doctor said.
"Why must I?"
"Because I am not justified in staying all night; and he will look after
the boy as you and your wife cannot, and as no one else will, now that
Miss Gleed is away."
Jasper bowed sullenly to his fate. But the doctor was not done.
"Besides," said he, his kind hand on the other's arm; "besides, he feels
this as much as you do, and God knows he's gone through enough! To-day,
I tell you candidly, but for him your little lad would be in a worse way
than he is. Now don't you think after this that all of us--even
you--might begin to be just a little less hard--even on him?"
XXIV
GLAMOUR AND RUE
Georgie's lady was meanwhile enjoying her life in Leipzig, and the more
keenly since she had gone abroad without any thought of pleasure, but
only to work. This was characteristic of Gwynneth Gleed. She was not
light-hearted enough for a young girl; there had been too much sorrow in
her early years, too little sympathy in those that came after; natural
joy she had never known. A born delight in books, a blind appreciation
of the country, a passion for music, and the love of one little child;
these were the pleasures of Gwynneth in her twentieth year; nor as yet
did they include that zest in the present, that joy of merely living,
that healthy appetite for admiration, that proper pride in one's own
person, that catholicity of liking for one's fellow-creatures, which are
of the very spirit and essence of youth. And to youth Gwynneth added
something at least akin to beauty; but never knew it until she came to
live among strangers in a strange land.
These strangers, who were mostly English, and many of them young
students like herself at the Conservatoire, were singularly kind to
Gwynneth from the first. In some ways they were the best friends the
girl ever had. They taught her the duty of gaiety at her time of life,
and the absolute necessity of a certain amount of vanity in every human
being. Gwynneth was given to understand that she had more to be vain
about than most. Attracted themselves by the uncommon girl with the fine
eyes and the shy manner, her new friends did much to mitigate the latter
by making the very most of her looks and accomplishments, and seeing to
it that Gwynneth did the same. She was not allowed to dress as she liked
in Leipzig, nor to spend the whole of a fine afternoon at her piano, nor
to be out of anything that was going on. The gaieties of the English
colony were of a simple character in themselves, but they were
Gwynneth's high-water-mark in dissipation, and ere long she was throwing
herself into them with that enthusiasm which she brought to every
pursuit. She had learnt to waltz remarkably well, and to talk brightly
about nothing in particular to the acquaintance of a minute's standing.
She was none the less assiduous at her practising and her harmony, and
was still capable of immediate and immense excitement over this poet or
that composer; but these were no longer her only topics. Nor was a
holland pinafore and the small urchin it contained entirely forgotten in
these days. Gwynneth wrote to Georgie oftener than to anybody else in
England. And yet it was to the theatres and a real ball or so that she
first looked forward upon her return.
Lady Gleed was much more than agreeably disappointed in the new
Gwynneth; herself incapable of seeing beneath the thinnest surface, she
could scarcely believe it was the same girl. Gwynneth was better-looking
and had more to say for herself than had ever appeared possible to Lady
Gleed, who decided to keep her niece in town for the rest of the season,
if not to present so creditable a _débutante_ at the next drawing-room.
And a much more critical person, her son Sidney, coming up from
Cambridge for a night, was not less favourably impressed.
Gleed of Trinity, a third-year man, was in his turn a vast improvement
upon the private scholar who had seldom addressed a syllable to Gwynneth
in his holidays, but had gone past whistling with his dogs. He was now a
really handsome little man, with a clear brown skin and a moustache as
mature as his manner; looked and spoke like a man of thirty; and could
be amusing enough with his sly satire and his ready repartee. Cynical
this youth must always be, but the cynicism was more good-humoured and
less ill-natured than formerly, and not abhorrent in the man as it had
been in the boy. At all events it amused Gwynneth, who was furthermore
surprised and excited to find that Sidney had read quite a number of
great books, and rather entertained than otherwise by his blasphemous
opinions of many of them. So they had something in common after all; and
Sidney was certainly very attentive and gay and nice-looking.
It was in the drawing-room in Hyde Park Place, during an hour which went
very quickly, that Gwynneth made these discoveries; she was still too
simple to remark, much less read, the calculating droop of Sidney's
eyelids or the veiled preoccupation of the hereditary stare.
"I wonder if you'd care to have a look at Cambridge," at last said
Sidney, in the purely speculative tone.
"Like to? I'd love it!" cried Gwynneth at once.
Sidney paused, without relaxing his stare. She was certainly very
animated. Sidney was not sure that he cared for quite so much animation
with so little cause.
"I shouldn't wonder if you did rather like it," he proceeded, "in
May-week--which never is in May, you know."
"Oh? When is it?"
"The week after next. There'll be heaps going on. Races every
afternoon----"
"And don't you steer your boat?" interrupted Gwynneth, a partisan on the
spot.
Sidney smiled.
"I cox it, Gwynneth; and if we aren't head of the river we shall not be
very far off. But it isn't only the races; there are all sorts of other
things, a good match, garden-parties galore, and a dance every night."
"You dance there!"
"Yes," said Sidney; "do you?"
"Rather!"
"Get some in Leipzig?"
"All that there was to get."
"They dance well out there?"
"I don't know."
"But you do, of course?"
Gwynneth saw the drift of this examination, and showed that she saw it,
but Sidney liked her the better for her dry reply:
"You'd better try me."
"You'd better try _me_," he rejoined adroitly.
"Very well," said Gwynneth. "Here?"
"Come on," said Sidney, his eyes sparkling, his brown skin a warmer hue;
and in an instant they were threading their way between the cumbrous
chairs and tiny tables of the big room, ploughing through its heavy
pile, he in patent leather boots, she in her walking shoes, and not so
much as a piano-organ in the street to set the time. Yet, even under
these conditions, a turn was enough for Sidney, though he did not want
to stop, and was very quick in asking whether he would do.
"You know you will," said Gwynneth, forgetting everything in the
prospect of so excellent a partner.
"And you dance rippingly," declared her cousin; "by Jove, I wish we
could have you at the First Trinity ball!"
So did Gwynneth; but, instead of betraying further eagerness, sat down
at the piano, and, saying it was nothing without the music, forthwith
treated Sidney to snatch after snatch of the waltzes of the hour,
rendering each with a brilliance of touch and a delicacy of execution
alike worthy of a better cause. A year ago Gwynneth would not have done
this.
Sidney, his hands in his pockets, but a sparkle still in his eyes, stood
watching her without a word until the end.
"Look here," he then announced, "you've simply got to come, and that's
all about it. Of course the mater couldn't get away, but Lydia isn't so
full up, and I should think she'd jump at it. I'll write to her and fix
it up. There's a piano in our rooms, and we'll have it tuned for you;
no, we'll get a grand in for the week; and the whole court will be full
of men listening."
"Who are 'we'?" inquired Gwynneth.
"Oh, I share rooms with another fellow; an Eton man; you'll like him."
And once more Sidney looked a little critically at his cousin, as though
he wanted to be quite sure that the Eton man would like her. But at this
moment the dressing-gong threw him into consternation. It appeared that
he was dining out at some club, had come up for this dinner, was only
sleeping in the house, and would be gone first thing in the morning. So
he had better say good-bye; and did so with rather unnecessary warmth,
Gwynneth thought; nevertheless, it was the dullest evening she had yet
spent in Hyde Park Place, though there was a little dinner-party there
also, after which the inevitable performance by Gwynneth was received
with the customary acclamation.
It may be supposed that the girl was not enchanted with the prospect of
Lydia for chaperone; but she determined thus early to allow nothing to
interfere with her enjoyment of the Cambridge festivities. So when Mrs.
Goldstein came in her carriage on the next day but one, to say that she
supposed they must go, not that she was keen upon it herself, but to
please Sidney, and also because she thought it only right for young
girls like Gwynneth to have a good time while they could, the latter
tried to seem as grateful as though every word of Lydia's did not
irritate or repel her. She there and then received dictatorial
instructions as to dresses requisite for the week, and undertook to
follow them to the letter. It was not a congenial attitude for Gwynneth
to assume, but she also was at present bent upon that "good time" which
her cousin recommended. Lydia, on the other hand, cultivated the air of
one who is personally past all that. She seldom smiled, but yet had a
certain secret fondness for excitement. Gwynneth feared that she was far
from happy; she seemed dissatisfied with her position in society, and
spoke disrespectfully (when she did speak) of the dark, dapper, capable
man of business, her indulgent husband.
There came a time when Gwynneth Gleed would have given much to forget
the merriest week of her life, but the memory of the next few days was
not to be destroyed. The girl never forgot the narrow streets teeming
with exuberant youth, the narrow river in similar case, the crush and
rush and uproar on the banks, the procession of boats flashing past,
each with an eight in which Gwynneth took no interest, but a ninth who
had always the same calm, brown, clean-cut face in her mind's eye. How
well he looked, swinging with his crew, he in his blazer, cool and
malicious, doing his part with splendid precision if only they did
theirs! One night they made their bump right opposite the boat in which
Gwynneth stood on tiptoe; and Sidney's smile at the supreme moment was
one of her vivid recollections; and her little scene with Lydia another,
which she brought upon herself by cheering as loud as any of the men.
Sidney seemed very popular. Gwynneth was so proud to be seen with him,
especially when he wore his battered mortar-board and blue gown, which
appealed in some foolish way to her own vague intellectual aspirations.
And she looked down upon all the gowns that were not blue.
But everything in Cambridge did appeal to Gwynneth, from the anthem and
the chancel-roof in King's Chapel to luncheon with Sidney and the Eton
man in Old Court. Lydia was for ever reproving her cousin's enthusiasm;
but Gwynneth was enjoying herself too much to resent anything that Mrs.
Goldstein could say. At the outset, however, a close observer might have
caught even Sidney with a cocked eyebrow, and the eye beneath upon the
Eton man; the girl was so frank and unsophisticated in the display of
her delight; but the Eton man seemed to admire it in her, and Sidney
gave up looking like that. The Eton man was twice his height, could
sing, and swore that nobody had ever played his accompaniments as
Gwynneth did; but he was not in any boat, and he could not compare with
Sidney as a partner. Nevertheless, his attentions and attractions had
more to answer for than anybody knew.
Gwynneth had thought Sidney very nice in town, but at Cambridge he was
perfect. He was a thorough little man of the world, unconscious,
unconcerned, whereas many of the men whom Gwynneth met were scarcely
worthy of the name. Sidney did things like a prince, having an enviable
allowance, and a very good idea of the way in which things should be
done. And his arrangements were masterly; no day like the last, or
next; and the whole a whirl of gaiety and excitement literally
intoxicating to one whose experience of this kind was so limited as poor
Gwynneth's. It all ended with the First Trinity ball. There is no need
to dilate on the astonishing magnificence of this revel; it was the most
memorable and splendid of them all; and the Backs by night, with a moon
in the heaven above and another in the water below, and grey old gables
salient in its light, and the Guards' Band in the faint distance, that
ought to have been so loud and near; all this was even more entrancing
than the ball itself, and Gwynneth moved as in a dream. She had had the
audacity to divide her dances between Sidney and the Eton man; but one
of them was given cause to complain towards the end, and the more so
since the girl had never looked so radiant in her life. The next day
Gwynneth and Lydia (who would not speak to her) were to return to town.
It had never been arranged that Sidney was to accompany them; yet he
did; and before evening there was trouble in Hyde Park Place.
Sir Wilton would not hear of it at first; he was soon obliged to do
that. But he stood firm in refusing his consent to a formal engagement
between Sidney and his first cousin, and found an unexpected ally in
Gwynneth herself. The girl was paying for her week's delirium by a
deeper depression than her face betrayed or her heart admitted. Already
she was beginning to disappoint her cousin. But this was too much.
"You agree with him?" gasped Sidney. "You'd rather _not_ be engaged?
Then why, my darling, did you ever say 'yes'?"
"It wasn't to that question, dear," said Gwynneth, colouring.
"It amounted to the same thing."
"It will amount to the same thing," Gwynneth said earnestly; "at least I
hope and pray that it may. But, of course, it's quite true that we're
both very young; and at least it's within the bounds of possibility
that--one or other of us might--some day--change."