THE INTERREGNUM
Lady Caroline Sellwood was delighted to find Jack in the hall on making
her descent next morning. He appeared lost, however, in a gloomy
admiration of the ghostly guard in armour. The attitude and the
expression were alike so foreign to him that Lady Caroline halted on the
stairs. But only for a moment; the next, Jack was overwhelmed by the
soft tempest of her good-will, and making prodigious efforts to return
her smiles.
Suddenly she became severe.
"You're knocked up! You look as if you hadn't had a wink of sleep. Oh, I
knew how it would be after all that racket; you dear, naughty Duke, you
should have spared yourself more!"
"I was a fool," admitted Jack. "But--but I say, Lady Caroline, I do wish
you wouldn't Duke me!"
"How sweet of you," murmured Lady Caroline.
"You know you didn't last night!" he hastily reminded her.
"But that was an occasion."
"So is this!" exclaimed Jack, and his tone struck the other more than
she showed.
"Where is Claude?" inquired Lady Caroline suddenly.
"On his way to Devenholme."
"Devenholme!"
"And London, for the day. He had to catch the 9.40."
"So he has gone up to town! Odd that one never heard anything about
it--I mean to say he could have made himself so useful to one. May I ask
when he decided to go?"
Jack hesitated. He had been charged to keep a discreet tongue during
Claude's absence; he had been supplied with a number of reasons and
excuses ready-made; but perfect frankness was an instinctive need of
this primitive soul, whose present thoughts stood out in easy print upon
his face, even as he resolved to resist his instincts for once.
"He decided--this morning," said Jack at last; and he took from his
pocket a lengthy newspaper cutting attached to a pale green slip: "This
is an article on him and his books, that has just appeared in the
_Parthenon_. What wouldn't I give to lay a hold of the brute who wrote
it! I call it the sort of thing to answer with a hiding. It's one of a
series headed 'Our Minor Poets,' which Claude says has been bad enough
all through; but this article on him is the worst and most brutal of the
lot. And--and--and old Claude took it to heart, of course; and--and he's
run up to town for the day."
"Because of a severe criticism! I should have thought he was used to
them by now. Poor dear Claude, he can string a pretty rhyme, but he
never was a poet. And you, Jack--since you insist--you never were an
actor--until to-day!"
Jack hung his head.
"You don't do it well enough, you dear fellow," continued Lady Caroline
caressingly. "As if you could impose upon me! You must first come to me
for lessons. Candidly now: what has taken him up to town in such a
hurry? The same thing that--kept you awake all night?"
"Candidly, then," said Jack, raising his haggard face doggedly, "it was!
And if you'll come out upon the terrace for five minutes I'll tell you
exactly what's wrong. You have a right to know; and I can trust _you_
not to let it go any further for the moment. Even if I couldn't, I'd
have to tell you straight! I hate keeping things up my sleeve; I can't
do it; so let me make a clean breast of the whole shoot, Lady Caroline,
and be done with it till Claude comes back."
Lady Caroline took a discouraging view of the situation. The Red Marquis
had been capable of anything; related though they had been, she could
not help telling Jack that her parents had forbidden her to dance with
his father as a young girl. This might be painful hearing, but in such a
crisis it was necessary to face the possibilities; and Lady Caroline,
drawing a little away from her companion in order to see how he was
facing them, forgot to take his arm any more as they sauntered in the
sun. She undertook, however, to keep the matter to herself until
Claude's return, at the mention of whose name she begged to look at the
cutting from the _Parthenon_.
"A most repulsive article," her mother informed Olivia after breakfast,
but not until she had repeated to the girl the entire substance of the
late conversation on the terrace. "I never read anything more venomously
ill-bred in my life; and so untrue! To say he is no poet--our Claude!
But we who know him, thank goodness we know better. It is the true
poetry, not only in but between every line, that distinguishes dear
Claude from the mere stringers of pretty rhymes of whom the papers
sicken one in these latter days. But where are you going, my love?"
"To get ready to go with--Jack."
"To go where, pray?"
"Why, to Devenholme, as we arranged last night," replied Olivia, with
spirit. "He said he would drive me over; and _you_ said 'how sweet of
him,' and beamed upon us both!"
Lady Caroline winced. "You impertinent chit!" she cried viciously; "you
know as well as I do that what I have told you alters everything. Once
and for all, Olivia, I forbid you to drive into Devenholme
with--with--with--that common man!"
"Very well; the drive's off," said the girl with swift decision; and she
left her mother without another word.
She put on her habit and went straight to Jack.
"Do you mind if we _ride_ into Devenholme instead of driving?"
"Mind! I should like it even better."
"Then suppose we go to the stable-yard and see about our horses
ourselves; and while we are there, we may as well stay and start by the
back road, which will save at least a quarter of a mile."
"My oath," said Jack without further provocation, "you might have been
dragged up in the bush!"
"I wish I had been!" exclaimed Olivia bitterly. He could not understand
her tone. Nor did he ever know the meaning of the momentary fighting
glitter in the brave brown eyes of the girl.
He rode as an inveterate bushman, entirely on the snaffle, with
inelegantly short stirrups and a regrettable example of the back-block
bend; nor did his well-broken hack give him a chance of exhibiting any
of the finer qualities of the rough-riding school. But indeed for the
most part the couple sat at ease in their saddles, while the horses
dawdled with loose reins and lazy necks in the cool shadows of the
roadside trees. By mutual consent they had dispensed with an attendant
groom. And Olivia had never been so kind to Jack, as on this day when he
was under so black a cloud, with so heavy a seal upon his lips.
For once she talked to him; as a rule she liked better to listen, with
large eyes intent and sympathetic lips apart--ever ready with the
helpful word. But to-day she was wishful to entertain, to take him out
of himself, to console without letting him suspect that she knew as much
as he had told her mother. In a sense she knew more, for Lady Caroline
had duly exaggerated his frank confession; and the girl's heart bled for
her friend, on the brink of a disillusion without parallel in her
knowledge. So she told him of her life in town and elsewhere; of the
treadmill round of toilsome pleasure; of the penance of dressing and
smiling with unflagging prettiness; of the hollow friendships and
hollower loves of that garish life, and the unutterable staleness of the
whole conventional routine. No doubt she overstated her case; and
certainly her strictures were themselves conventional; but she was
perfectly aware of both facts, and would have been exceedingly sorry to
have had this conversation recorded against her. Olivia had a healthy
horror of superiority, either of the moral or the intellectual order.
But she was conducting a conversation with an obvious purpose; and it
was only when he told her again, and more earnestly than before, how
suited she was for the bush, that she proposed the canter which brought
them a mile nearer Devenholme.
"Now it's you to play," she told him as they drew rein; "and I want to
hear some of your adventures. You've never told us any, yet you must
have had heaps. So far I've only heard about the hut, the sheep, the
homestead, and your old boss."
"A white man!" cried Jack. "I wish you knew him."
"So do I; but I can quite picture him, and just now I would much rather
hear about some of your own adventures. So begin."
Jack laughed.
"Really, Miss Sellwood, I never had one in my life!"
"Then really, my Lord Duke, I can't believe a word----"
Jack was laughing no more.
"Don't call me that," he said. "It would be so much kinder to call me
Jack!"
She had forgotten. Her heart smote her now, and the difficulty was to
conceal her unsuspected sympathy. So she insisted on his calling her
Olivia, to conclude the bargain. And the double innovation made them
both so self-conscious, that she forgot her thirst for his adventures,
while he brooded heavily upon his bitter-sweet advancement won loo late.
So they came into Devenholme as the sun was shining fore and aft along
the quaint old English streets. And in the town, where he was well
enough known by this time, poor Jack was received with a cruel
consideration that would have hurt him even more than it did had he
dreamt how it affected his companion. The tender-hearted girl was
inexpressibly grieved, and never more than when the jeweller mentioned a
hundred guineas as the price of the ring to be changed; indeed, the
situation in the jeweller's shop was perilously charged with hidden
emotions. In this terribly equivocal position, Jack could not press upon
Olivia things for which he might never be able to pay; neither could
Olivia now refuse any present at all, nor yet lead him as low as she
would have liked in the price, for fear of revealing her illicit
knowledge. So at last they hit upon a curb-bracelet that fastened with a
tiny padlock. It cost but forty-five shillings. And when he had locked
it upon her right wrist, he pocketed the key without a remark, then paid
ready money and left the shop in a throbbing agony of shame. The poor
jeweller stood bowing them out with the hundred-guinea ring still in his
hand.