The night was well advanced when Charteris stepped noiselessly into the
room. The colonel was then sedately writing amid a host of motionless
mute watchers, for at Matocton most of the portraits hang in the East
Drawing-room.
Thus, above the great marble mantel,--carved with thyrsi, and supported
by proud deep-bosomed caryatides,--you will find burly Sebastian
Musgrave, "the Speaker," an all-overbearing man even on canvas. "Paint
me among dukes and earls with my hat on, to show I am in all things a
Republican, and the finest diamond in the Colony shall be yours," he had
directed the painter, and this was done. Then there is frail Wilhelmina
Musgrave--that famed beauty whose two-hundred-year-old story all
Lichfield knows, and no genealogist has ever cared to detail--eternally
weaving flowers about her shepherd hat. There, too, is Evelyn Ramsay,
before whose roguish loveliness, as you may remember, the colonel had
snapped his fingers in those roseate days when he so joyously considered
his profound unworthiness to be Patricia's husband. There is also the
colonial governor of Albemarle--a Van Dyck this--two Knellers, and
Lely's portrait of Thomas Musgrave, "the poet," with serious blue eyes
and flaxen hair. The painting of Captain George Musgrave, who
distinguished himself at the siege of Cartagena, is admittedly an
inferior piece of work, but it has vigor, none the less; and below it
hangs the sword which was presented to him by the Lord High Admiral.
So quietly did Charteris come that the colonel was not aware of his
entrance until the novelist had coughed gently. He was in a
dressing-gown, and looked unusually wizened.
"I saw your light," he said. "I don't seem to be able to sleep, somehow.
It is so infernally hot and still. I suppose there is going to be a
thunderstorm. I hate thunderstorms. They frighten me." The little man
was speaking like a peevish child.
"Oh, well--! it will at least clear the air," said Rudolph Musgrave.
"Sit down and have a smoke, won't you?"
"No, thanks." Charteris had gone to the bookshelves and was gently
pushing and pulling at the books so as to arrange their backs in a
mathematically straight line. "I thought I would borrow something to
read--Why, this is the Tennyson you had at college, isn't it? Yes, I
remember it perfectly."
These two had roomed together through their college days.
"Yes; it is the old Tennyson. And yonder is the identical Swinburne you
used to spout from, too. Lord, Jack, it seems a century since I used to
listen by the hour to _The Triumph of Time and Dolores!_"
"Ah, but you didn't really care for them--not even then." Charteris
reached up, his back still turned, and moved a candlestick the fraction
of an inch. "There is something so disgustingly wholesome about you,
Rudolph. And it appears to be ineradicable. I can't imagine how I ever
came to be fond of you."
The colonel was twirling his pen, his eyes intent upon it. "And yet--we
_were_ fond of each other, weren't we, Jack?"
"Why, I positively adored you. You were such a strong and healthy
animal. Upon my word, I don't believe I ever missed a single football
game you played in. In fact, I almost learned to understand the game on
your account. You see--it was so good to watch you raging about with
touzled hair, like the only original bull of Bashan, and the others
tumbling like ninepins. It used to make me quite inordinately proud."