END OF THE INTERREGNUM
Nobody was about when they dismounted, so Jack himself led the horses
back to the stables, while Olivia gathered up her habit and scaled the
steps. The stable clock struck five as the former was returning by way
of the shrubbery; another seven hours, and Claude would come home with
the news. For such an issue, it was still an eternity to wait. But Jack
felt that the suspense would be easily endurable so long as he could
have sight and speech of Olivia Sellwood; without her, even for these
few minutes, it was hardly to be borne.
Yet this stage of his ordeal was made up of such minutes. He returned to
desolate rooms. Olivia had disappeared; nor could he pitch upon a soul
to tell him where she was. Door after door was thrown open in vain; each
presented an empty void to his exacting eyes. He ran outside and stood
listening on the terrace. And there, through an open upper window he
heard a raised voice railing, which he could not but recognise as that
of Lady Caroline. Her words were indistinguishable. But as Jack looked
aloft for the window, one was passionately shut, and he neither heard
nor saw any more.
The first persons he ultimately encountered were Mr. Sellwood and the
agent. They had golf-clubs in their hands and wholesome sweat upon their
brows. The agent treated Jack as usual; the Home Secretary did not. He
stated that he had at last won a round; but his manner was singularly
free from exultation; indeed, it was quite awkward, as though perfect
cordiality had suddenly become a difficult matter, and he was ashamed to
find it so. Certainly there had been no difficulty of the kind before.
And Jack noted the change, but was too honourable himself to suspect the
cause.
He next fell in with the Frekes. This excellent couple loved Jack for
his goodness to their children, who were not universally popular. They
now carried him off to tea in the nursery, where he stayed until it was
time to dress for dinner. Jack liked the children; it was not his fault
that they were so seldom in evidence. They were obviously spoilt; but
Jack thought they were taken too seriously by all but their parents,
who certainly did not take them seriously enough. So he had many a romp
with the little outcasts, but never a wilder one than this afternoon,
for the children took him out of himself. Their society, had he but
known it, was even better for him in the circumstances than that of
Olivia herself; it was almost as good as another meeting with Dalrymple
of Carara. He rose at length from under his oppressors, dusty,
dishevelled and perspiring, but for the moment as light-hearted as
themselves. And there were the grave, sympathetic eyes of the parents
resting sadly upon him to recall his trouble. Why should they look sad
or sympathetic? Everybody had changed towards him; this was the
difference in the Frekes. Could they have divined the truth? No
suspicion of a broken confidence entered his head; yet it was
sufficiently puzzled as he dressed, with unusual care, to make a
creditable last appearance at the head of the table which would prove
never to have been his at all. He had quite made up his mind to that; he
found it appreciably harder to reconcile himself to the keen
disappointment which awaited him in the dining-room.
Olivia was not coming down.
"She has knocked herself up," explained Lady Caroline tersely. "So would
any girl--not an Australian--who rode so far on such a day. Your Grace
might have known better!"
Jack stared at her like a wounded stag; then he uttered an abject
apology, for which, however, he obtained no sort of a receipt. Lady
Caroline had turned and was talking to some one else. But it was not
this that cut him to the heart; it was her mode of addressing him, after
their conversation of the early morning.
Later in the evening he remembered that railing voice and the shutting
of the window upstairs; and with a burning indignation he divined, all
at once, who it was that had been so spoken to, and why, with the true
cause of Olivia's indisposition.
This was in the darkness of his hut, with Livingstone asleep in his lap.
In another minute Jack was striding through the pines, on his way to the
drawing-room for a few plain words with Lady Caroline Sellwood. He never
had them. Lady Caroline was gone to bed. It was almost eleven; within an
hour Claude would be back, and a moral certainty become an absolute
fact. Hunt's tale was true. Had it been otherwise, Claude would have
telegraphed. He had left, indeed, on the distinct understanding that he
should do no such thing; his mission was to be kept a secret, and a
telegram might excite suspicion; yet even so he would have sent one had
all been well. Jack was sure of it; his exhausted spirit had surrendered
utterly to an ineluctable despair.
In this humour he sought the Poet's Corner, and found its two _habitues_
furtively chuckling over some newspaper. Their gaiety cut him to the
quick. Yet he longed to enter into it.
"What's the joke?" he asked. "I want something to make me laugh!"
"This wouldn't," replied Edmund Stubbs. "It's not benign enough for
you."
"It's only a piece of smart scribbling," explained Llewellyn, lighting a
fresh cigarette with the stump of the last.
Jack was behind them; quite innocently he put his head between theirs
and looked for himself. The paper was the _Parthenon_. There was but one
article on the open page. It was headed--
OUR MINOR POETS.
XXVIII. MR. CLAUDE LAFONT.
"So that amuses you?" said Jack at last.
"Quite," said Llewellyn.
"You think it just, eh?"
"Oh, hang justice! It's awfully nice copy. That's all it has any right
to be. Justice doesn't matter a hang; the _Parthenon's_ not written for
the virtuous shopkeeper; it isn't meant to appeal to the Nonconformist
Conscience."
"Besides, the article _is_ just," protested Stubbs. "We know what Lafont
is, between ourselves; he's an excellent chap, but his poetry--save the
mark!--would hardly impose on Clapham and Wandsworth. His manner's cheap
enough, but his matter goes one cheaper; it's the sort of thing for
which there should be no charge." Stubbs drained his glass.
Jack was blazing.
"I don't know what you mean by 'cheap,'" he cried; "but from reading
that article, which I happen to have seen before, I should call it a
jolly 'cheap' word. I don't set up to be a clever man. I only know what
I like, and I like everything of Claude's that--that I can understand.
But even if I didn't I should be sorry to go about saying so in his own
house!"
"_His_ own house!" exclaimed the Impressionist.
"We didn't know it was his," said Stubbs.
"What's mine is Claude's," replied Jack, colouring. "It was before I
turned up, and it will be again when--whenever I peg out."
With that he was gone.
"Sounds suicidal," remarked Llewellyn.
"Or celibate," said Stubbs, replenishing his glass.
"Poor beast!" concluded the artist.
Here their host returned.
"I'm very sorry, you fellows," said he, with absurd humility. "I'm all
off colour to-night, and I know I've made a rude ruffian of myself. Some
of these days you'll understand; meantime will you forgive me?"
"_I_ have nothing to forgive," replied Llewellyn.
"We'll say no more about it," said Stubbs.
And Jack shook hands with them both before leaving them for good; then
he hurried through the length of the building to the great conservatory,
where Stebbings was putting out the lights. The conservatory was at that
extreme of the Towers which the dogcart would pass first. Here, too, was
room and air for a man distraught. So Jack called out to Stebbings to
leave the lights on longer.
"And light some more," he added suddenly. "Light up every lamp in the
place! I shall stay here until Mr. Lafont returns."
"Yes, your Grace."
"Stebbings!"
"Your Grace?"
"For God's sake don't call me that again! I--I'm not used to it,
Stebbings--any more than you're used to me," added Jack inconsequently;
and he fled into the grounds until the old man should be gone.
The night was very dark and heavy; clouds obscured the moon, shedding a
fine rain softly upon drive and terrace. Jack raised his face, and a
grateful sprinkling cooled its fever. He longed for a far heavier fall,
with the ancient longing of those prehistoric days when a grey sky and
an honest wetting were the rarest joys in life. Could he indeed return
to that rough routine after all these weeks of aristocratic ease? The
bushman might exchange his wideawake for a coronet, but could the peer
go back to the bush? Time must show. The only question was whether Hunt
had lied or told the truth; and the answer could not be much longer
delayed. Already it was half-past eleven; there was the clang creeping
lazily through the night, round quarter of a mile of intervening wall,
and half a hundred angles.
He would have gone down the drive to meet the dogcart; but the night was
too dark; and beside him blazed the great conservatory like a palace of
fire. He entered it again, and now he had it to himself; the statues
among the tree-ferns were his only companions. But in his absence old
Stebbings had placed a little table with brandy and soda-water set out
upon it; even the butler had seen and pitied his condition.
The third quarter struck. The sound just carried to the conservatory,
for now the rain was heavier, and the rattle overheard warred
successfully against all other noises. The dogcart might drive by
without Jack's hearing it. The suspense was horrible, but a surprise
would be more horrible still. He was becoming unstrung; why should he
not tune himself up with the brandy? His voluntary teetotalism was too
absurd; he had made no promise, taken no pledge, but only a private
pride in his self-discipline as it had gone on from day to day. Not a
drop had he touched since that afternoon at Dover so long, so long ago!
As he reckoned up the time, the forgotten lust possessed him; it had
been even so on Carara, when the periodical need of a cheque would first
steal over his lonely spirit. He thought now of those occasions and
their results; he knew himself of old; but he was no longer the same
man--resistance would be ridiculous now. He took another look at the
night; then he filled a wine-glass with raw brandy--raised it--and
impulsively dashed the whole upon the marble flags. The brandy widened
in a shallow amber flood; the broken glass lay glittering under the
lamps; and in Jack's ears the patter of the rain (which had never
abated) broke out anew.
He could not account for his act; he did not know it for the culmination
of a highly nervous condition induced by the twenty-four sleepless hours
of unrelieved suspense. It was neither more nor less, and yet it enabled
him to hold up his head once more. And as he did so, there--through the
swimming crystal walls--between a palm-tree and a Norfolk Island
pine--were the two red eyes of the dogcart dilating in the dark.
The great moment had come, and it was not so great after all. Jack's
little outburst had left him strangely calm. He went to the door and
hailed the dogcart in a loud, cheery voice. The lamps stopped. Claude
came within range of those in the conservatory, and shook himself on the
steps. Then he entered, looking unusually healthy, but dripping still.
"A brute of a night for you," said Jack apologetically. "Take off that
coat, and have some brandy. Mind where you go. I've had a spill."
This was the reaction. Claude understood.
"Then you don't want to hear the news?"
"I know it. I've known it for hours."
"That I can see you haven't. Listen to me. There was no English
marriage. Give me your hand!"
It was limp and cold.
"You don't believe me!" said Claude severely.
Jack subsided in a chair.
"I can't," he whispered. "I can't."
"You soon will. I wish to goodness I'd taken you with me to-day. Now
listen: there was some truth in Hunt's story, but more lies. The
marriage was a lie. There never was a marriage. There was something
rather worse at the time, but a good deal better now. My grandfather
patched it up, exactly as I thought. He packed my uncle out to
Australia, and he settled two hundred a year on the Hunts, on the single
condition of 'perpetual silence as to the connection between the two
families.' I've seen the covenant, and those are the very words. The
condition has been broken after all these years. And the Hunts' income
stops to-day."
Jack had roused himself a little; he was no longer apathetic, but
neither was he yet convinced.
"It seems a lot of money to hush up so small a matter," he objected.
"Are they sure there was no more in it than that?"
"Maitland and Cripps? Perfectly sure; they've been paying that money for
nearly forty years, and there's never been a hint at a marriage until
now. Certainly there's none in the settlement. But to make assurance
surer, young Maitland took a cab and drove off to see his father--who
was a partner in '53, but has since retired--about the whole matter. And
I took another cab, and drove straight to the old parish church facing
the river at Chelsea. I found the clerk, and he showed me the marriage
register, but there was no such marriage on that date (or any other) in
_that_ church; so why in any? One lie means dozens. Surely you'll agree
with me there?"
"I must; it's only the money that sticks with me. It seems such a case
of paying through the nose. But what had old Maitland to say?"
"Everything," cried Claude. "He remembered the whole business perfectly,
and even saying to my grandfather much what you're saying to me now. But
I've told you the kind of man the old Duke was; he was a purist of the
purists, besides being as proud as Lucifer, and a scandal so near home
hit him, as you would say, in both eyes at once. He considered he got
good value for his money when he hushed it up. They showed me a letter
in which he said as much. Young Maitland unearthed it after he had seen
his father, and with it others of a later date, in which the Duke
refused to revoke or even to curtail the allowance on the woman's death.
That's all; but surely it's conclusive enough! Here we have a
first-class firm of solicitors on the one hand, and a clumsy scoundrel
on the other. Which do you believe? By the way, they're anxious to
prosecute Hunt on all sorts of grounds if you'll let them."
"I won't."
"I think you ought to," said Claude.
"No, no; too much mud has been stirred up already; we'll let it rest for
a bit."
"But surely you'll get rid of the Hunts after this?"
"I'll see."
Claude was disappointed; he had looked for a different reception of his
news.
"Do you mean to say you're not convinced yet?" he cried.
"No," said Jack, "I'm quite satisfied now; you hem the thing in on every
side. But I wish to goodness all this had never happened!"
"So do we all; but if there was a doubt, surely it was best to set it at
rest? If I were you, I should feel as one does after a bad dream."
Jack was on his feet.
"My dear old mate," he cried, "and so I do! But I'm only half woke up;
that's what's the matter with me, and you must give me time to pull
myself together. You don't know what a day I've had; you never will
know. And you--my meat's your poison, and yet you've been doing all this
for me just as if it was the other way round; and not a word of thanks
at the end of it. Claude--old man--forgive me! Thanks won't do. They're
no good at all in a case like this. What can a fellow say? If it was
you, you'd say plenty----"
"I hope not," interrupted Claude, laughing. "Wait till you do me a good
turn. You've done me many a one already, and I've never said a word."
But Jack would shake hands, and even Claude's face was shining with a
tender light as a soft step fell upon the marble, and Lady Caroline
Sellwood entered from the drawing-room. The door had been left open. But
it was instantly evident that her Ladyship had not been eavesdropping,
or at least not to any useful purpose; for she planted herself before
the two men in obvious ignorance as to which was the man for her. She
was still in the handsome dress that she had worn all the evening; and
between her plump, white, glittering fingers she nursed the purple
smoking-cap that had always been--and was still--intended for the Duke
of St. Osmund's.
"It was no good," she cried tragically, looking from Claude to Jack and
back again at Claude. "I simply couldn't go to bed until I knew. And
now--and now I'm torn two ways; for pity's sake, put me out of _one_
misery."
"It's all up," said Jack deliberately. He owed Lady Caroline a grudge
for the shrill scolding he had heard upstairs, and another for Olivia's
absence from the dinner-table. He was also curious to see what Lady
Caroline would do.
She sailed straight to Claude, holding the smoking-cap at arm's length.
"My dear, dear Claude! _How_ I congratulate you! I find, after all, that
the smoking-cap, which was originally intended----"
"Dear Lady Caroline," interposed Claude hastily, "everything is as it
was. Hunt's story is a complete fabrication; I'd no idea that you knew
anything about it."
"I couldn't help telling Lady Caroline," said Jack. Lady Caroline turned
upon him with hot suspicion.
"You said it was all----"
He interrupted her.
"I was _going_ to say that it was all up with Hunt. He loses two hundred
a year for his pains."
"Is that possible?" cried her Ladyship.
"It's the case," said Claude; "so everything is as it was, and as it
should be."
Lady Caroline exhibited no further trace of her discomfiture.
"I wish we hadn't all interrupted each other," she laughed. "_I_ was
about to remark that the smoking-cap, which was originally intended to
have what one may term a frieze, as well as a dado, of gold lace, will
look much better without the frieze, so there's really no more to do to
it. Take it, my dear, dear Jack, and wear it sometimes for my sake. And
forgive a mother for what one said about Olivia's ride. Claude, I shall
make another cap for you; meanwhile, let me congratulate you--again--on
your noble conduct of to-day. Ah, you neither of you congratulate me on
mine! Yet I am a woman, and I've kept your joint secret--most
religiously--from nine in the morning to this very hour!"