A CHANCE LOST
It was the pink of the evening when the cousins drove off in a
four-wheeler with the cats on top. Claude had been in many minds about
their destination, until the Duke had asked him to recommend an hotel.
At that he had hesitated a little, and finally pitched upon the First
Avenue. A variety of feelings guided his choice, chief among them being
a vague impression that his wild kinsman would provoke less attention in
Holborn than in Northumberland Avenue. To Holborn, at all events, they
were now on their way.
Claude sat far back in the cab; he felt thankful it was not a hansom. In
the Mall they met a string of them, taking cloaked women and
white-breasted men out to dinner. Claude saw one or two faces he knew,
but was himself unseen. He saw them stare and smile at the tanned and
bearded visage beneath that villainous wideawake, which was thrust from
one window to the other with the eager and unrestrained excitement of a
child. He felt ashamed of poor Jack. He was sincerely ashamed of this
very feeling.
"What streets!" whispered the Duke in an awestruck whisper. "We've
nothing like 'em in Melbourne. They'd knock spots off Sydney. I've been
in both."
Claude had a sudden thought. "For you," he said, "these streets should
have a special interest."
"How's that?"
"Well, many of them belong to you."
"WHAT?"
"You are the ground landlord of some of the streets and squares we have
already passed."
The brown beard had fallen in dismay; now, however, a mouthful of good
teeth showed themselves in a frankly incredulous grin.
"What are you givin' us?" laughed Jack. "I see, you think you've got a
loan of a new chum! Well, so you have. Go ahead!"
"Not if you don't choose to believe me," replied Claude stiffly. "I
meant what I said; I usually do. The property has been in our family for
hundreds of years."
"And now it's mine?"
"And now it's yours."
The Duke of St. Osmund's took off his monstrous wideawake, and passed
the back of his hairy hand across his forehead. The gesture was eloquent
of a mind appalled.
"Have I no homestead on my own run?" he inquired at length.
"You have several," said Claude, smiling; but he also hesitated.
"Several in London?" cried the Duke, aghast again.
"No--only one in town."
"That's better! I say, though, why aren't we going there?"
"Well, the fact is, they're not quite ready for you; I mean the
servants. They--we were all rather rushed, you know, and they don't
expect you to-night. Do you mind?"
Claude had stated but one fact of many. That morning, when he stopped
his hansom at the house, he had told the servants not to expect his
Grace until he telegraphed. After seeing the Duke, he had resolved not
to telegraph at all; and certainly not to install him in his own house,
as he was, without consulting other members of the family. He still
considered that decision justified. Nevertheless, the Duke's reply came
as a great relief.
"No, I'm just as glad," said Jack contentedly. His contentment was only
comparative, however. The first dim conception of his greatness had
strangely dashed him; he was no longer the man that he had been in the
train.
An athlete in a frayed frock-coat, and no shirt, was sprinting behind
the cab with the customary intent; it was a glimpse of him, as they
turned a corner, that slew the oppressed Duke, and brought Happy Jack
back to life.
"Stop the cab!" he roared; "there's a man on the track of my cats!"
"Nonsense, my dear fellow; it's only a person who'll want sixpence for
not helping with the luggage."
"Are you sure?" asked Jack suspiciously. "How do you know he isn't a
professional cat-stealer? I must ask the cabman if they are all right!"
He did so, and was reassured.
"We're almost at the hotel now," said Claude, with misgivings; he was
bitterly anticipating the sensation to be caused there by the arrival of
such a Duke of St. Osmund's, and wondering whether it would be of any
use suggesting a further period of _incognito_.
"Nearly there, are we? Then see here," said Jack, "I've got something to
insist on. I mean to have my way about one matter."
Claude groaned inwardly.
"What is it?" he asked.
"I'll tell you straight. I'm not going to do the Dook in this hotel. I'm
plain Jack Dillamore, or I don't go in."
The delight of this deliverance nearly overcame the poet.
"I think you're wise," was all he trusted himself to say. "I should be
inclined to take the same course were I in your place. You will escape a
great deal of the sort of adulation which turneth the soul sick. And for
one night, at all events, you will be able, as an alien outsider, to
form an unprejudiced opinion of our unlovely metropolis."
In the bright light of his ineffable relief, Claude's little mannerisms
stood out once more, like shadows when the sun shines fitfully; but it
was a transient gleam. The arrival at the hotel was still embarrassing
enough. The wideawake attracted attention. The attention was neither of
a flattering character in itself nor otherwise desirable from any point
of view. It made Claude miserable. There was also trouble about the
cats.
Jack insisted on having them with him in his room. The management
demurred. Jack threatened to go elsewhere. The management raised no
objection; but Claude did. He handed them his card, and this settled
the matter. There is but one race of Lafonts in England. So Jack had his
way. A room was taken; the cats were put into it; milk was set before
them; and Jack left the hotel in Claude's company, with the key of that
room in his pocket.
Claude would have taken him to his club, but for both their sakes he did
not dare. Yet he was as anxious as ever to show every hospitality to the
Duke. Accordingly he had refused Jack's invitation to dine with him in
the hotel, and was taking him across to the Holborn instead.
The dinner went wonderfully. Jack was delighted with the music, with the
electric lights, with the marble pillars, with the gilded balconies,
with the dinner itself, in fact with everything. There was but one item
which did not appeal to him: he stoutly refused to drink a drop of wine.
"A promise is a promise," said he. "I gave you my colonial in the train,
and I mean to keep it; for a bit, at all events."
Claude protested and tempted him in vain. Jack called for a
lemon-squash, and turned his wine-glasses upside down. He revenged
himself, however, upon the viands.
"Which _entree_, please, sir?" said the waiter.
"Both!" cried Jack. "You may go on, mister, till I tell you to stop!"
After dinner the cousins went aloft, and Claude took out his cigarette
case and ordered cigars for the Duke. He could not smoke them himself,
but neither, it appeared, could Jack. _He_ produced a cutty-pipe, black
and foul with age, and a cake of tobacco like a piece of shoe-leather,
which he began paring with his knife. Claude had soon to sit farther
away from him.
Jack did not fancy a theatre; he was strongly in favour of a quiet
evening and a long talk; and it was he who proposed that they should
return, for this purpose, to the First Avenue. No sooner were they
comfortably settled in the hotel smoking-room, however, than the Duke
announced that he must run upstairs and see to his cats. And he came
down no more that night.
Claude waited patiently for twenty minutes. Then he began a note to Lady
Caroline Sellwood. Then he remembered that he could, if he liked, see
Lady Caroline that night. It was merely a question of driving over to
his rooms in St. James's and putting himself into evening dress. On the
whole, this seemed worth doing. Claude therefore followed Jack upstairs
after an interval of half-an-hour.
The Duke's rooms were on the first floor. Claude surprised a group of
first-floor servants laughing and whispering in the corridor. The little
that he heard as he passed made him hot all over. The exact words were:
"Never see such a man in my life." "Nor me, my dear!" "And yet they call
this 'ere a decent 'otel!"
Claude had no doubt in his own mind as to whom they were talking about.
Already the Duke inspired him with a sort of second-self-consciousness.
Prepared for anything, he hastened to the room and nervously knocked at
the door.
"Come in!" cried Jack's voice.
The door was unlocked; as Claude opened it the heat of the room fairly
staggered him. It was a sufficiently warm summer night, yet an enormous
fire was burning in the grate.
"My _dear_ fellow!" panted Claude.
Jack was in his trousers and shirt; the sleeves were rolled up over his
brawny arms; the open front revealed an estuary of hairy chest; and it
was plain at a glance that the Duke was perspiring at every pore.
"It's all right," he said. "It's for the cats."
"The cats!" said Claude. They were lying round about the fire.
"Yes, poor devils! They had a fire every day in the hut, summer and
winter. They never had a single one at sea. They like to sleep by
it--they always did--all but Livingstone. He sleeps with me when he
isn't on the loose."
"But you'll never be able to sleep in an atmosphere like this!"
Jack was cutting up a pipeful of his black tobacco.
"Well, it _is_ warm," he admitted. "And now you mention it, I may find
it a job to get asleep; but the cats like it, anyhow!" And he swore at
them affectionately as he lit his pipe.
"Did you forget you'd left me downstairs?" asked Claude.
"Clean! I apologise. I took this idea into my head, and I could think of
nothing else."
"May we have another window open? Thank you. I'll smoke one cigarette;
then I must be off."
"Where to?"
"My chambers--to dress."
"To _undress_, you mean!"
"No, to dress. I've got to go out to a--to a party. I had almost
forgotten about it. The truth is, I want to see Lady Caroline Sellwood,
who, although not a near relation, is about the only woman in London
with our blood in her veins. She will want to see you. What's the
matter?"
Jack's pipe had gone out in his hand; and there he stood, a pillar of
perspiring bewilderment.
"A party!" he murmured. "At this time o' night!"
Claude laughed.
"It's not ten o'clock yet; if I'm there before half-past eleven I shall
be too early."
"I give you best," said Jack, shaking his head, and putting another
light to his pipe. "It licks _me_! Who's the madman who gives parties in
the middle of the night?"
"My dear fellow, everybody does! In this case it's a woman: the Countess
of Darlingford."
"A live Countess!"
"Well, but you're a live Duke."
"But--I'm--a live--Dook!"
Jack repeated the words as though the fact had momentarily escaped him.
His pipe went out again. This time he made no attempt to relight it, but
stood staring at Claude with his bare brown arms akimbo, and much
trouble in his rugged, honest face.
"You can't get out of it," laughed Claude.
"I can!" he cried. "I mean to get out of it! I'm not the man for the
billet. I wasn't dragged up to it. And I don't want it! I shall only
make a darned ass of myself and everybody else mixed up with me. I may
be the man by birth, but I'm not the man by anything else; and look
here, I want to back out of it while there's time; and you're the very
man to help me. I wasn't dragged up to it--but you were. I'm not the man
for the billet--but you are. The very man! You go to parties in the
middle of the night, and you think nothing of 'em. They'd be the death
of Happy Jack! The whole thing turns me sick with funk--the life, the
money, the responsibility. I never got a sight of it till to-day; and
now I don't want it at any price. You'd have got it if it hadn't been
for me; so take it now--for God's sake, take it now! If it's mine, it's
mine to give. I give it to you! Claude, old toucher, be the Dook
yourself. Let me and the cats clear back to the bush!"
The poet had listened with amazement, with amusement, with compassion
and concern. He now shook his head.
"You ask an impossibility. Without going into the thing, take my word
for it that what you propose is utterly and hopelessly out of the
question."
"Couldn't I disappear?" said Jack eagerly. "Couldn't I do a bolt in the
night? It's a big chance for you; surely you won't lose it by refusing
to help me clear out?"
Claude again shook his head.
"In a week's time you will be laughing at what you are saying now. You
are one of the richest men in England; everything that money can buy you
can have. You own some of the loveliest seats in the whole country; wait
till I have shown you Maske Towers! You won't want to clear out then.
You won't ask me to be the Duke again!"
He had purposely dwelt upon those material allurements which the
bushman's mind would most readily grasp. And it was obvious that his
arguments had hit the target, although not, perhaps, the bull's-eye.
"Anyhow," said Jack doggedly, "it's an offer! And I repeat it. What's
more, I mean it too!"
"Then I decline it," returned Claude, to humour him; "and there's an end
of the matter. Look here, though. One thing I promise. If you like, I'll
see you through!"
"You will?"
"I will with all my heart."
"And you're quite sure you won't take on the whole show yourself?"
"Quite sure," said Claude, smiling.
"Still, you'll tell me what to do? You'll tell me what not to do? You'll
show me the ropes? You'll have hold of my sleeve?"
"I'll do all that; at least, I'll do all I can. It may not be much.
Still I'll do it."
Jack held out a hot, damp hand; yet, just then, he seemed to be
perspiring most freely under the eyes.
"You're a good sort, Claudy!" said he hoarsely.
"Good-night, old fellow," said Claude Lafont.