There was no reason why Richard Le Shore should not have made a
straightforward appeal for the hand of Miss Molly Tregarthen to her
papa. His credentials—of fortune, condition, and character—were
unexceptionable; the girl’s kind inclinations were confessed; the
father himself was an unexacting, indulgent, and ease-loving
Democritus. It was but a question of those two and of Mr. Dicky, their
favoured, their intimately favoured, guest.
There was no reason, and for the reason that the spirit of Romance
abhors reason; and that was why, without any reason, Richard persuaded
Mollinda to a clandestine engagement, to stolen interviews, to a
belief that love franked by authority was only the skim-milk of human
kindness. At least he chose to persuade himself that he persuaded her,
at all times when he could coax a certain bewildered honesty in her
eyes from dumbly questioning the necessity of such tactics. In reality
he loved that look, as the sweetest earnest of a sweet quality. It was
not her he studied to deceive, but himself. Incurably eligible, he
could never taste but through make-believe, like the “Marchioness,”
the sweet stimulant of paternal interdiction.
At the end of the season he accompanied father and child to
“Tregarthen.” Here, you may be sure, he had not been twenty-four hours
without making choice for his love’s rendezvous of a little wood
which, approached through a tangled shrubbery, covered the slopes
which ran up from the back of the house to the high beeches above.
Now Dicky would himself have allowed that everything (desirable) had
shone upon his suit save moonlight. That only, of all poetic glamours,
was yet lacking. And so he prevailed with Molly Tregarthen to consent
to a postprandial trysting among the trees, on the very evening
subsequent to that of his arrival.
He had no difficulty in escaping from papa, the imperturbable
sybarite. Seated in an open window over against shrouded lawns, and a
moon which rose like a bubble in liquid darkness; dreaming betwixt
decanter and cigar-case, papa would not have had his luminous coma
disturbed for anything less than a serious fire. So Dicky left him,
and going up alone to the woods, leaned his back against a tree and
smoked placidly.
It was very quiet, and fragrant, and beautiful there; and presently
the young gentleman lost himself somewhat in reflections. The
moonlight, penetrating the leaves, made of the sward a ghostly Tom
Tiddler’s Ground, which was all mottled with disks of faint gold. What
a soft, fine shower to fall upon the head of his Danae, as she should
come stealing up the alleys of light! Stealing—stealing! There was a
little thrill of ecstasy in the word. How wide her eyes would be, and
how would her bosom rise and fall in the breathlessness of some
phantom guilt!
Quite a nice little debauch of expectation, only—she did not come. He
waited on, desirous, impatient, hungry; and at last, it must be said,
cross. The touch of her hand, her lips, had never seemed so
indispensable to him; but he would not cheapen the virtues of his own
by carrying them back to market to a coquette. If she wanted them, she
knew where to find them. As for him, he was quite placid and content;
in proof of which he threw away his cigar-butt, and began pacing with
a noisy recklessness up and down.
That did not conjure her to him, but it seemed to evoke occasional
responsive rustlings, or the fancy of them, which would bring his
heart into his throat. They were only the stirring of woodland things,
it seemed. He got very angry, resentful, cruel in his thoughts. The
moon, the bubble of light, rose higher and higher—to the very surface
of night, where it floated a little, and then burst. At least, so it
seemed; for, all of a sudden, where it had been was a black cloud, and
drops began to patter on the leaves. Then Richard realized all in a
moment that his tryst had failed, that the moonlight was quenched, and
that it was beginning to rain. With a naughty word or two, he braced
up his loins, left the wood, and descended towards the house.
As he went down, he heard the stable clock strike twelve. He startled,
and strode faster, faster, until he was fairly scuttling. It was in
vain. The Tregarthens were early people, and, even before he reached
the house, he knew that its every window was blind and black. The
whole family was abed, and he was shut out into the night.
Twice, and vainly, he made the entire round of the building, seeking
for any loophole to enter by. The rain by then was pelting, yet he did
not dare raise a clatter on the front door, for fear he should be
pistolled from a window. The inmates knew nothing of his absence, and
the Squire held, for a Democritus, strong views on the subject of
undisturbed repose.
Coming to the porch again from his second circuit, and putting a hand
to rest upon one of its columns, he jumped, as if he had touched a
charged battery, to see a figure standing motionless in the shadow.
“Hullo!” he gasped, in the sudden shock; then rallying, muttered out
in a fury at his own weakness, “Who the devil are you?”
Some faint gleam of moonshine, weltering through the flood,
enlightened him even as he spoke.
“Why, if it ain’t the butler!” he said.
It was the butler. The figure admitted it in a curt word. Le Shore had
already, on the occasions of his two dinners at “Tregarthen,” noticed
this man, and had taken a quite violent exception in his own
conscience to his manner and appearance. He thought he had never known
a leading trust bestowed upon one whose face so expressed the very
moral of acquisitiveness, whose conduct was marked by such an uncouth
inurbanity. Here, if there was any value in biology, was Bill Sikes in
broadcloth.
The tone of the fellow’s answer grated confoundedly on him—he hardly
knew why.
“Are you locked out, like me?” he said, putting violence on himself to
speak civilly.
“Yes, sir,” answered the man; “but for a better reason.”
“What do you mean by that?”
The creature was as thick-set as a bull. He could have broken this
elegant like a stick across his knee. He commanded the situation,
massive and impassive, from his own standpoint.
“Look’ee here, sir,” he said, speaking through a grip of little strong
teeth in a square jaw, “I’m going to tell you what I mean. I’m going
to make no bones about it. You meet Miss Molly fair and open, or you
don’t meet her at all. Do I know what I’m saying? Yes, I do know. She
didn’t come to you to-night—because why? Because _I_ interdicted of
her. That’s it. She might have thought better—or worse—of it, bein’
a woman, and soft; and that’s why I laid by, watchin’ that no harm
should come of it if she did. But she was wise, and didn’t. I seen you
all the time in the wood, and I tell you this. A word’s got to be
enough. You meet her by fair means, or not at all. Never mind the
Squire there. It’s me that says it. If she admires you, nine stun
ten—which there’s no accounting for tastes—I’m not the one to make
difficulties. But you go like a honest man and ask her straight of her
father. That’s the ticket, and don’t you make no error. Don’t you
flatter your fancy no more with randy-voos in the moonshine. Why, if
ever there’s a light calc’lated to lead a gentleman astray, it’s that.
I say it, and I know. You go to the girl’s father; and, after, we’ll
see what we’ll see.”
He cleared his throat with a quarrelling sound, and came out of the
shadow.
“Now,” said he, “here’s a house you’ve been locked out of, and you
want to get in without disturbin’ of the family—is that it? Very
well, sir; now we understand everything; and step this way, if _you_
please.”
Almost with the words, he had clawed himself up to a window-sill of
the ground-floor, and was very softly manipulating the sash. Mr. Le
Shore, voiceless, hardly gasping, stood, just conscious of himself, in
an absolute rigor of fury and astonishment. He was “stound,” as
Spenser would have put it. Presently he snapped his eyelids, and woke
aware that Mr. Hissey, standing on the grass, was loweringly inviting
him to enter by way of an opened window. With a shock, he recovered
his nerves of motion, and, stalking to the place, vaulted stiffly to
the sill, and sat thereon like a cavalryman.
“I’ve just a word or two for you, before I—I avail myself of this,”
he said. “You’ve been gadding, and got drunk, I suppose; and this is
your way of trying to make capital of a belated guest. Perhaps the
means you’ve adopted ’ll appear less excellent to you in the sober
morning. As to your method of entry, there’s nothing in it
incompatible with the character I’d already formed of you. But that,
and your quite outrageous insolence, will be made matters for your
master’s consideration to-morrow. I mention this in honour, before
I——” He waved his hand towards the room.
“I could twist your neck with two fingers, here and now,” said the
man.
“Exactly,” said Dicky. “And that’s why I decline to make use of this
window except on the plain understanding.”
The butler cleared his throat again, even with a strange note of
approval in the unseemly sound.
“Mayhap you’ll do,” he said. “Now go to bed, and don’t forgit your
prayers in your disappyntment.”
Mr. Le Shore hissed in a breath, as though the rain had suddenly
become boiling spray, then tiptoed rigidly to his room.
The opening of the window, framed with creepers, whose shadows shrank
or dilated softly in the muslin curtains, gave on to a soothful
picture of lawn and herbaceous border which, withdrawing to cool
caverns of leafiness under a remote cedar tree, seemed to gather
themselves to a head of prettiest expression in the person of little
Miss Mollinda swinging there in a hammock. Within, at the
luncheon-table, Tregarthen poured himself out a glass of Madeira with
a hand so limp and white in appearance that one would have thought it
incapable of the task of poising the heavy decanter. Here was delicate
seeming only, however. The perpetual sybarite reads an incorruptible
constitution. The white hand held the bottle horizontal, as steady as
a rock, during the minute the indolent, good-humoured eyes of its
owner were directed to those of his visitor.
“My dear good Richard, the man _is_ a burglar.”
He laughed at the other’s expression, filled his glass, sipped at it,
and, hooking his thumbs in his arm-holes, lolled back in his chair.
“I am not justified in the confidence, perhaps. I don’t know. Anyhow,
it is the short way out of a fatiguing explanation. The man _is_ a
burglar—not figuratively, but actually, by breeding, education,
profession—_appelez-le comme vous voudrez_. He has the stamp of it so
distinctly on him that one need not ask him to produce his skeleton
key.”
“Then I have nothing more to say.”
“Ah! the devil take the honest thief! Your obvious grievance forces me
to the explanation, after all. My dear boy, I imply nothing, argue
from no premises but such as a long experience of this capital,
troublesome fellow suggest to me. Speaking from these (I may be
wrong), I should conclude that he is somehow in process of
safeguarding, as he thinks, the interests of my girl, to whom he is
quite romantically attached. Honestly, I don’t know to whom I would
rather commit them. Poor motherless child!”
He had, it seemed, no thought of himself as pledged to the task.
‘Himself’ should be a fair one-man’s burden.
“He is very right to be attached to Miss Tregarthen,” muttered Le
Shore dryly, and a little sullenly.
“He is very right indeed,” answered his host; “righter (pardon the
solecism) than you might think. In this excellent rogue is provided
such an illustration of the ‘harmony not understood’ of discords, as
circumstance has ever given to an _ennuyé_ world. The dear creature
has decided to stultify his every instinct for a sentiment. It is the
most interesting psychological phenomenon you can imagine. He has
conceded nothing of his nature but the means to its practical
achievement. Conceive a wolf of his own determination forgoing blood.
Such is this dear, admirable brute. _Perfossor parietum nascitur._ He
cannot change his spots. To this day, I think, he will always of
choice enter by a window rather than a door; to this day he regards
plate with a most _melting_ look. But for all that, I think I may
swear that at the present moment the tally of my spoons is to an ounce
what it was when he took service with me eighteen years ago.”
“Your servant for eighteen years!”
“My servant—titularly: in reality, my mentor, my vizier. Dog Trust is
a rather sweetly demoralizing acquisition. He takes the burden of
conscience from one—steals it, in this case, I may say. But then,
after all, he may use his vicegerency to ends so far beyond the moral
grasp of the master he represents, as more than to vindicate that
master in his withdrawal from the vexatious problems of duty. Through
sheer force of affection this admirable George has mastered himself,
and bettered his master in the parental ethics.”
“Indeed, sir?” (Mr. Dicky spoke very dryly.) “And how does Miss
Tregarthen approve the viziership?”
“As she loves and respects the vizier, Richard. I do not think she
would willingly run counter to his dictates, which, by the way, he
never imposes in a manner to alarm one’s pride. Ah! did you catch that
whiff of scabious? There is a bush of it under the window there. It
always seems to me to embody in itself the whole warmth and fragrance
of summer. My dear fellow, your eyes are relentless inquisitors. No
more wine? Well, I suppose I shall have to tell you how it came
about.”
He sighed, drained his glass, laughed slightly, and smoothed a stray
wisp of hair from his forehead.
“Once,” he said—“it was particularly disagreeable to a person of my
temperament—I was called upon by Fate to suffer the ugly and sordid
experience of a conflagration in my house. You, who are also a little
inclined, I believe, to create for yourself an atmosphere of romance,
to regard the great world only as a quarry, from which to gather
materials most exquisite and most apt to the enrichment of the
hermitage, which it is your design and your delight to build apart for
your soul, will appreciate what were my feelings upon seeing my fairy
fabric doomed to destruction, to positive annihilation, by the flames.
I have never spoken to you of the disaster before. You will know that
I do so now under the mere stress of fitness, as a means to your
proper understanding of George Hissey’s conduct. The recollection is
painful and horrible to a degree.
“The alarm, the escape, the catastrophe were all accomplished in the
dark hours of a winter’s morning. My dear wife (she sleeps, awaiting
my coming, in Elysium) followed me down the stairs and out of the
house at a short interval. She found me devoted to a frantic endeavour
to secure from destruction such of my poor treasures as were
accessible—few enough, alas! though the tears I shed should have
quenched the hate of a Hecla. What had I done with her child? she
cried to me—with our sweet Molly, our little three-year-old babe?
Richard, I felt as stunned as if she, the pretty, gentle mother, had
struck me across the mouth. I could only stare and gasp. She uttered a
heart-shaking scream, and turned to where the servants stood huddled
together in the garden. They were all there, and the two nurses were
crying and moaning and accusing one another. My God! mad with terror,
they had deserted their charge to perish by itself in the burning
house!”
He paused. “Don’t go on, sir, if it distresses you,” said Le Shore
quietly.
“No,” answered Tregarthen. “Like the Ancient Mariner, I must be quit
of it now I have begun. But I will have a glass of wine.”
He poured himself out one, daintily as to the drop on the decanter
lip.
“There followed a fearful scene,” he said. “It was all I could do to
prevent my angel from precipitating herself through the blazing
doorway. The whole building seemed by now a furnace—no possibility of
further salvage from those priceless accumulations—not, of course,
that at such a pass it was to be thought of. I mingled my tears with
my wife’s. I offered half my fortune to any one of the crowd who would
save, and a large reward to any one who would venture to save, our
darling. But it was in vain; and in my heart I knew it.
“Now, in this extremity of despair, a sudden roar went up from a
hundred throats, and passed on the instant. Richard, a man, shedding
flakes of fire as Venus cast her birth-slough of spray, had emerged
overhead from the sea of flame, and in his arms was our child. Who was
he? Whence did he come? No one knew. Our house was isolated. The
engine from the neighbouring town had not arrived. He was not a
friend, nor a neighbour, nor an employé. It was only evident that
innocence had somehow evolved its champion.
“We watched, stricken, as castaways watch the glimmer of a remote
sail. The figure had broken its way through the skylight in the roof,
only, it might be, to symbolize in the burden it bore the leaping of a
little flame heavenward. The situation was the very sublimity of
tragedy. Beneath those two the roof, sown with a very garden of fire,
dropped at a sickening angle.
“Suddenly, shutting, as it seemed, upon his charge, the man rolled
himself up like a hedgehog, and came bowling down the slope. It was a
terrible and gasping moment. His body, as it whirled, reeled out a
hiss of sparks. The next instant it had bounded over the edge, and
plunged among the smoking bushes beneath.
“They broke his fall; but it was the verandah awning which in the
first instance saved his life—his, and our dear devoted cherub’s. But
he had never once, through all the stunning vertigo of his descent,
failed to shield the little body which his own enwrapped.
“Now, my dear Richard, comes the strange part. When I was sufficiently
recovered to seek our preserver, I found him sitting handcuffed, in
charge of the local policeman. He was very white, with two or three
ribs broken; but he took it all unconcerned, as being in the day’s, or
the night’s, business. Who was he? Well, here is the explanation. He
was a renowned cracksman, as I think they call it, who had been
operating in the neighbourhood for some weeks past—the hero of many a
shuddering midnight adventure. Without doubt he had taken his toll of
_my_ ‘crib,’ had not circumstance dropped him ripe into the gaping
mouth of the law. He had entered, and was actually at work, when fire
cut the ground, as it were, from under his feet. Almost before,
intensely occupied, he realized his position, escape by the lower
rooms was debarred him. Was ever situation so dramatic? It was to be
compared only with that of a huntsman who, entering some cave to steal
bear cubs, turns to find the dam blocking his outlet. Still, Mr.
Hissey _might_ have escaped, and without detection, by dropping to the
lawn from a back window, had his burglarious ears not pricked suddenly
to the wailing of a child.
“My dear fellow, need I explain further? The child he risked his own
life to rescue was our—I may almost say, at this day, was _his_
Molly. It was the strangest thing. I did not, as a consequence, quite
see my way to holding him altogether absolved; but my dear, emotional
partner was of a different opinion. We had quite a little scene about
it. In the end she prevailed—with the whole boiling of the law, too;
and the man was sentenced to come up for judgment if called upon. Then
straightway, and by his own desire, she took the disinfected burglar
into her service. It was one of those daring psychologic essays which
may once and again be carried to a successful issue through the
white-hot faith of the experimenter; but which must not be given
authority as a precedent. My wife fairly redeemed this burglar, by
committing, without hesitation, to his loyal trust the little waif of
fire whose destinies he had earned the right to a voice in. From that
day to this, I will say, he has never abused the faith we reposed in
him. On her deathbed, my dear girl (pardon me a moment, Le Shore), my
dear wife most solemnly recommitted her child to his care. I did not
complain, I do not complain now. I, who make no pretence of competence
in the paternal rôle, thank the gods only for my vizier, who is quite
willing to accord me the ritual of authority, while taking its
practical business on his own shoulders. With a man of my temperament
it works; and I am satisfied, if Molly gives me her respect, that she
should give Hissey her duty.”
He ceased, with a little smiling sigh, and lifted a cigarette from a
silver case which lay on the table. Le Shore regarded him steadily.
“Mr. Tregarthen,” said he, “Molly and I are engaged. I should have
told you before.”
The older man did not pause in the act of lighting his cigarette; but
enjoyed an inhalation of smoke before he answered—
“I plead guilty to a suspicion, Richard. I am confident our vizier has
been safeguarding the proprieties. You remember what I said to you in
his excuse just now?”
“I have your sanction, sir?”
“Certainly, as a form. But I am afraid, from the practical side, you
will have to satisfy that same inquisitor.”
“Mr. George Hissey,” said Dicky, “I have papa’s authority to marry
Miss Molly. Now, with your permission, I will relieve you of your
trust.”
“Dicky!” cried the girl reproachfully; and she put her kind young arms
round the ex-burglar’s neck.
“Unless,” said Le Shore, “you care to transfer that to my ‘crib,’ Mr.
Hissey.”
The butler cleared his throat.
“Well, I do care, sir,” he said, hoarsely, nevertheless, “since you
seen fit to cut that moonshinin’ lay, And as to cribs——”
“Molly” said Richard, “there’s papa calling.”