THE CAT AND THE MOUSE
"You're a lucky fellow," said the squatter as they sauntered down the
drive. "Give me another of those cigars; they are better than mine,
after all."
"They ought to be," replied Jack complacently. "I told old Claude to pay
all he could for 'em."
"He seems to have done so. What an income you must have!"
"About fifteen bob a minute, so they tell me."
"After a pound a week in the bush!"
"It does sound rummy, doesn't it? After you with the match, sir."
"It's incredible."
"Yet it's astonishing how used you get to it in time--you'd be
surprised! At first the whole thing knocked me sideways; it was tucker I
couldn't digest. But once you take to the soft tack, there's nothing
like it in the world. You may guess who's made me take to it quicker
than I might have done!"
Dalrymple shrugged his massive shoulders, and raised a contemplative eye
to the moon, that lay curled like a silver shaving in the lucid heavens.
"Oh, yes, I can guess," he said sardonically. "And mind you I've nothing
against the girl--I meant you were lucky there. The girl's all right--if
you must marry. I don't dislike a woman who'll show fight; and she
looked like showing it when I tried on that cracker-night-cap thing of
yours. Oh, certainly! If you were to marry, you couldn't have done
better; the girl's worth fifty of her mother, at any rate."
"Fifty million!" cried Jack, somewhat warmly.
"Fifty million I meant to say," and the squatter ran his arm through
that of his host. "Come, don't you mind _me_, Jack, my boy! You know
what an old heathen I am in those little matters; and we have lots of
other things to talk about, in any case."
Jack was mollified in a moment.
"Lots!" he cried. "I don't seem to have seen anything of you yet, and
I'm sure you haven't seen much of the place. Isn't it a place and a
half? Look at the terrace in the moonlight--and the spires--and the
windows--hundreds of 'em--and the lawn and the tank! Then there's the
inside; you've seen the hall; but I must show you the picture-gallery
and the State Apartments. Such pictures! They say it's one of the finest
private collections in the world; there's hardly one of them that isn't
by some old master or another. I've heard the pictures alone are worth
half a million of money!"
"They are," said Dalrymple.
"You've heard so too?"
"Of course; my good fellow, your possessions are celebrated all the
world over; that's what you don't appear to have realised yet."
"I can't," said Jack. "It puts me in a sick funk when I try! So it would
you if you were suddenly to come in for a windfall like mine--that is,
if you were a chap like me. But you aren't; you'd be the very man for
the billet."
And Jack stepped back to admire his hero, who chuckled softly as he
smoked, standing at his full height, with both hands in his pockets, and
the moon like limelight on his shirt.
"It's not a billet I should care about," said the squatter; "but it's
great fun to find you filling it so admirably----"
"I don't; I wish I did," said Jack, throwing away the cigar which he had
lighted to keep his guest company.
"You do, though. And if it isn't a rude question----" Dalrymple
hesitated, staring hard--
"I daresay you're very happy in your new life?"
"Of course I'm very happy _now_. None happier!"
"But apart from the girl?"
"You can't get apart from her; that's just it. If I'm to go on being
happy in my position, I'll have to learn to fill it without making
myself a laughing-stock; and the one person who can teach me will be my
wife."
"I see. Then you begin to like your position for its own sake?"
"That's so," replied Jack. He was paring a cake of very black tobacco
for the pipe which he had stuck between his teeth. Dalrymple watched him
with interest.
"And yet," said the squatter, "you have neither acquired a taste for
your own most excellent cigars, nor conquered your addiction to the vile
twist we used to keep on the station!"
"Well, and that's so, too," laughed Jack. "You must give a fellow time,
Mr. Dalrymple!"
"Do you know what I thought when I met you yesterday?" continued
Dalrymple, turning his back to the moon, and looking very hard at Jack
while he sucked at his cigar with his thick, strong lips. "Do you know
how you struck me then? I thought you'd neither acquired a taste for
your new life nor conquered your affection for the old. That's how you
struck me in Devenholme yesterday."
Jack made no haste to reply. He was not at all astonished at the
impression he had created the day before. But his old boss was still the
one man before whom he was anxious to display a modicum of dignity, even
at the expense of a pose. And it is noteworthy that he had neither
confided in Dalrymple concerning his dilemma of the previous day, nor
yet so much as mentioned in his hearing the model hut among the pines.
"I don't wonder," he said at length; "it was the way I was likely to
strike you just then. Don't you see? I hadn't got it out at the time!"
"So it was only the girl that was on your nerves?" said Dalrymple in
disgust.
"And wasn't that enough? If I'm a different man to-day, you know the
reason why. As for being happy in my position, and all that, I'm simply
in paradise at this moment. Think of it! Think of me as I was, and look
at me as I am; think of my little hut on Carara, and look behind you at
Maske Towers!"
They were on the terrace now, leaning idly against the balustrade.
Dalrymple turned and looked: like Melrose Abbey, the grand grey building
was at its best in the "pale moonlight"; the lichened embrasures met the
soft sky softly; the piercing spires were sheathed in darkness; and the
mountainous pile wore one uniform tint, from which the lighted windows
stood out like pictures on a wall. Dalrymple looked, and looked again;
then his hard eyes fell upon the rude ecstasy of the face beside him;
and they were less hard than before.
"You may make yourself easy," said the squatter. "I shan't stay long."
"What the blazes do you mean?" cried Jack. "I want you to stay as long
as ever you can."
"You may; your friends do not."
"Hang my friends!"
"I should enjoy nothing better; but it isn't practicable. Besides,
they're a good deal more than your friends now; they are--her people.
And they don't like the man who was once your boss; he offends their
pride----"
"Mr. Dalrymple----"
"Enough said, my boy. I know my room, and I'm going to turn in. We'll
talk it over again in the morning; but my mind is made up. Good-night!"
"I'll come in with you."
"As you like."
They parted at the visitor's door.
"You'll disappoint me cruel if you _do_ go," said Jack, shaking hands.
"I'm quite sure you're mistaken about my friends; Olivia, for one,
thinks no end of you. However, as you say, we can talk it over in the
morning--when you've got to see the pictures as well, and don't you
forget it! So long, sir, till then."
"So long, Jack. I'll be your man in the morning, at all events. And I
shall look forward to a great treat in your famous picture-gallery."
But Jack was engaged; and he realised it in the morning as he had not
done before. Olivia lured him from the squatter's side; she had every
intention of so doing. The pair went for a little stroll. Neither wore a
watch; the little stroll lengthened into miles; it carried them beyond
the sound of the stable clock; they forgot the world, and were absurdly
late for lunch. Lady Caroline Sellwood had taken it upon herself to
conduct the meal without them. Dalrymple was in his place; his
expression was grimly cynical; he had seen the pictures, under Claude
Lafont's skilled escort, and, with the ladies' permission, he would now
leave the table, as he had still to put in his things.
His things! Was he going, then? Jack's knife and fork fell with a
clatter.
"I thought you knew," said Claude. "He is going up to town by the
afternoon train. I have ordered the landau, as I thought you would like
him to go as he came."
When Jack heard this he, too, left the table, and bounded upstairs. He
found Dalrymple on the point of packing his dress-clothes, with the
assistance of none other than Stebbings. Jack glared at the disrated
butler, and ordered him out of the room.
"I wouldn't have done that," remarked the squatter, pausing in his work.
"The fellow came to know if he could do anything for me, with tears in
his eyes, and he has made me a handsome apology. He didn't ask me to beg
him off, but I mean to try my luck in that way before I go."
"You mustn't go!"
"I must. Will you forgive the old man?"
"Not if you clear."
"My good fellow, this is unreasonable----"
"So it is, Mr. Dalrymple, on _your_ part," rejoined Jack warmly. "It's
too bad of you. Bother Stebbings! I shan't be hard on him, you may be
sure; and you mustn't be hard on me. Surely you can make allowances for
a chap who's engaged to a girl like mine? I _did_ want to speak to you
this morning; but she came first. I want to speak to you now--more than
you suppose. Mr. Dalrymple, I wasn't straight with you last night; not
altogether. But I can't suffer steering crooked; it gives me the hump;
and as sure as I do it I've got to go over the ground again. You are the
man I owe my all to; I can't end up crooked with _you_!"
Dalrymple sat on the bedside in his shirt-sleeves; he had turned up the
cuffs; his strong and shapely wrists lay along his thighs; and his grey
eyebrows, but not his lips, asked for more.
"I mean," continued Jack, "about what was bothering me that day I ran
against you in Devenholme. It was only the day before yesterday, but
Lord! it seems like the week before last."
And with that he unfolded, with much rapid detail, the whole episode of
Matthew Hunt, from the morning in the stable-yard to the midnight at the
hut. The story within that story was also told with particular care and
circumstance; but long before the end was reached Dalrymple had emptied
his bag upon the bed, and had himself rung to countermand the carriage.
He was interested; he would stay another day.
Downstairs in the drawing-room the Sellwood family and Claude Lafont
were even then congratulating themselves upon the imminent departure of
the unpopular guest. Their faces were so many sights when Jack entered
in the highest spirits to tell them of his successful appeal to the
better feelings of "good old Dalrymple," who after all was not going to
leave them just yet. Jack was out again in an instant; and they next saw
him, from the drawing-room windows, going in the direction of the hut
with his odious old friend at his side. Whereupon Claude Lafont said a
strong thing, for him; and the most sensible of engaged young women
retired in tears to her room.
"There's one thing you must let me do," Dalrymple was saying; "if you
don't, I shall insist. You must let me have the privilege of sorting
that scoundrel, Mark Hunt."
"Matthew," said Jack.
"Matthew, then. I knew it was one of you evangelists."
"What would you do?" asked the Duke.
"See that he annoyed you no more. And I'll guarantee that he doesn't if
you'll leave him to me."
"I didn't want to clear them out----"
"I think you must."
"Or to prosecute; it's so public, and a bit revengeful too."
"There I agree with you. I'm not even sure that you'd get a conviction.
It would be difficult, in any case, and would make a public scandal of
it, as you say."
"Then I will leave him to you. You're the smartest man I know, Mr.
Dalrymple, and always have been. What you do will be right. I'll bother
my head no more about it. Besides, anything to keep you with us a few
days longer!"
Dalrymple shrugged his shoulders, but Jack did not see the gesture, for
he was leading the way through the pines. A moment later they were at
the hut.
The hut amused the squatter. He called it a colourable imitation. But it
did not delight him as it had delighted Jack; the master bushman failed
to share his old hand's sentimental regard for all that pertained to the
bush. Dalrymple sat on the bunk and smoked a cigar, a cynical spectator
of some simple passages between Jack and his cats. Livingstone was
exhibited with great pride; he had put on flesh in the old country; at
which the squatter remarked that had he stayed on Carara, he would have
put on an ounce of lead.
"You're a wonderful man, Jack!" he exclaimed at length. "I wouldn't have
believed a fellow _could_ take a windfall as you have done, if I hadn't
seen it with my own eyes. I used to think of you a good deal after you
had gone. I thought of you playing the deuce to any extent, but I must
say I little dreamt of your building a bush hut to get back to your old
way of life! I pictured the town crimson and the country carmine--both
painted by you--but I never imagined _this_!"
And he looked round the hut in his amused, sardonic way; but there was a
ring--or perhaps it was only a suspicion--of disappointment in his tone.
The next words were merely perplexed.
"And yet," added Dalrymple, "you profess yourself well pleased with your
lot!"
"So I am--now."
"I begin to wish I hadn't changed my mind about going this afternoon."
"Why, on earth?"
"Because I also begin--to envy you! Come, let's make tracks for the
house; I shall have huts enough to look at when I go back to the place
that you need never see again."
"But I mean to see it again," said Jack as he locked up. "I intend to
take my wife out, one of these days; we shall expect to come on a long
visit to Carara; and the greatest treat you could give me would be to
let me ride my old boundaries and camp in my old hut for a week!"
"Nonsense; you stay where you are," was the squatter's only comment. He
seemed depressed; his cynical aplomb had quite deserted him. They
returned in silence to the house.
A shabby-looking vehicle stood in front of the porch; the man said that
he had brought a gentleman from Devenholme, and was to wait. The Duke
and Dalrymple mounted the steps together. The first person they
encountered in the hall was Claude Lafont, looking strangely scared; but
a new-comer was in the act of taking off his coat; and, as he turned his
face, Dalrymple and Jack started simultaneously. Both knew the man. It
was Cripps the lawyer. And he, too, looked pale, nervous, and alarmed.