train of the day came in. It also deposited a single passenger--another
sportsman, for he too carried a gun-case; moreover, he went through the
same performance as the last arrival: looked first for a conveyance and
then for the station-master, to whom he put the same question about a
trap and Gateby, and from whom he received the same direction. But the
official was struck with the coincidence, and dropped a word or two
about "the other gentleman;" at which this one, whose name was
Edmonstone, started, though he walked off to the inn, a porter following
with his baggage, without putting further questions.
The inn had a great square parlour, scrupulously clean and flagged with
red tiles, where Dick entered, and clattered on the well-scoured table.
The person of the landlady, who presently appeared, was in the nicest
harmony with floor and furniture, so neat and spotless, and in hand and
face so very red. Her speech, however, as she asked what was wanted, was
by way of being rough.
"In the first place," said Edmonstone, "two glasses of beer"; and
presently handed one to the porter, who tendered his respects, received
sixpence, repeated his respects with emphasis, and withdrew. "In the
next place a horse and trap."
"We've no hosses an' traps here, yooung man."
"Come now!" said Dick. "They told me at the station this was just the
place where there was one."
"Mebbe it is, but it's out now. Where is't ye want to be?"
"Gateby."
"Gaaetby! Why, that's where it's gone with t'other gentleman!"
"Indeed? To Colonel Bristo's, do you know?"
"That was it."
"It's a pity I didn't come by the other train!" His tone puzzled the
woman. "We might have travelled together, by Jove! What was the
gentleman like?"
"Very tall."
"Taller than I am, I suppose?"
"Yes--easy."
"A fair beard?"
"To be sure. You know him, then?"
"Very well indeed. We ought to have travelled together. Has the trap
that took him come back yet?"
"Not it. It hasn't had time."
"It must go back with me when it does. Don't look like that, woman;
here's a sovereign for the job!"
He flung the coin on the table. The woman stared at him and at it,
seemed doubtful whether to take or leave the sovereign, but eventually
overcame her scruples, honestly determining to throw in a good square
meal for the money.
"The trap won't be back yet a bit, sir. You'll be wanting----"
"Nothing, except to be left alone," broke in the strange guest. "That's
all the trouble I shall put you to--that, and to tell me when the trap's
ready."
There was no use in saying more to the gentleman. He might not be quite
right--he might fly at a body. The good woman left him gazing
abstractedly out of the window; yet she had scarcely closed the door
when she heard him clattering to and fro over the tiled floor like a
caged beast.
His thoughts were in a tumult. He calmed them by a strenuous effort. He
strove to look the matter in the face. What was the matter?
Ned Ryan, the Australian outlaw, who had been screened on condition that
he came near the Bristos no more, had broken that condition; had somehow
heard that Edmonstone was not to be one of the shooting-party in
Yorkshire, and was even now the Colonel's newly-arrived guest.
After all, perhaps this was no more than Dick had been prepared for,
since his journey from Teddington to Waterloo in the same compartment
with Jem Pound and Elizabeth Ryan; he had listened to a villain's
suspicions of a brother villain; from that moment he had shared those
suspicions. Dick realised then, and only then, that while he was not
near the Bristos they were not safe from the advances of "Mr. Miles," if
he was bold enough to make them. But the sudden realisation of his fears
took Dick's breath away; he had not bargained to find Miles already at
Gateby--he had no definite plan for the defeat of Miles, and he was
certain that the man described to him by the mistress of the inn was
Miles--as certain as if he had seen him himself.
Then how was he to act? Was he to show no quarter, since this villain
had played false? That course presented difficulties--dangers as well;
and at the least it involved a violent scene under Colonel Bristo's
roof. Must he, then, parley a second time with the villain--let him off
again, trust him again, go on shielding a known desperado? No. Ned Ryan
could be trusted no further, shielded no more. There were more things
than one to be considered--more people than one. The man must receive
his deserts.
And to accomplish this--to deliver to justice a criminal of the first
water--this young Edmonstone went blindly forward, with thoughts of
doing it without fuss and all but single-handed.
There was little daylight left when Dick was driven out of Inglesby;
night fell long before he saw the lights of Gateby; it was fully nine
when they reached the little square stone house behind the hedge. The
dogs in the kennel not far from the house barked an alarm. The front
door opened, and Dick saw a well-known figure outlined against the light
of the passage. It was the Colonel himself, and his greeting was most
cordial. Yet how hard it was to put any heart into the answer! Dick
tried, failed miserably, and knew it. Before there was time for many
sentences, Dick found himself hustled into a room--a long, faded,
unlovely room--in which sat two ladies, Miss Bristo and Mrs. Parish.
The meeting between Alice and Dick--who had not seen each other since
that fateful second evening of July--was perfectly careless without
being conspicuously cold. It may be assumed that neither was wholly free
from some sort of agitation; but it is to be suspected that each had
prepared for the same, and masked accordingly. The mummery on both sides
was excellently well managed.
Observations the most natural in the world, as well as the most
commonplace, were the order of the minute.
"How rude," said Alice, "you must have thought us not to send to meet
you! But we have actually only one pony, and he had gone to
Melmerbridge, which is in the opposite direction."
"We thought," said Mrs. Parish, "that as you had not telegraphed, and
did not come by the usual train, you could not be coming to-night."
"Pray don't name it," Dick answered to the one lady; and to the other:
"I really must apologise for forgetting to wire."
The window was wide open, for the night was warm: and through the window
came the voices of men chatting, and the faint scent of cigars. Among
the voices Dick immediately distinguished one that he was prepared for,
and listened for--the soft, deep voice of Miles. Strangely enough, he
only caught the well-known tones on the moment of entering the room;
speaking himself, and being spoken to by those in the room, he could
hear no more than a hum outside; and when he listened again, during the
first pause, he could no longer hear Miles.
Very soon the conversation outside ceased altogether, and a moment later
the men appeared in the room. There were but two of them, and Miles was
not one. As for Mr. Oliver and Captain Awdry, they had only come for the
first three days, and had both gone on the Saturday evening.
Dick remembered one of the two men; a heavy-jawed, squarely-built young
man, whose eyes were of pale green, whose chin never by any chance
appeared to have been shaved since the day before yesterday, whose
expression in repose was too demure for a man. This was Philip Robson,
and Dick shook hands with him. The dapper little dark man Dick had never
seen before. Whoever he was, he seemed to know Alice pretty well, by the
way he promptly pestered her for a song.
"So you have only recently returned from Australia, I understand,"
Robson said to Dick. "I, too, am fresh from those parts. And I am told
you came by sailing-ship--so did I--as surgeon."
The dapper young gentleman at the other side of the room here made an
inane remark in a loud tone about both being in the same boat, which was
ignored by the worthy doctor and Dick, who stared. If they were
listening they must have heard this wag informing Miss Bristo that she
ought to laugh, and vowing that he would throw away no more good things
in mere perishable words of mouth.
"No," said Alice, "write them. It is far the best. The point is so much
more easily seen in print; and then, instead of pearls wasted on us poor
things, the whole world roars at them."
"Sixty thousand people have the chance," Laurence Pinckney answered--in
allusion, it was believed, to the circulation of "his" weekly paper.
But he seemed to have nothing smart ready just then, for he went back to
begging for a song.
"Mr. Miles was somewhat tired, I presume, Dr. Robson?" Mrs. Parish was
saying. "You see he had a great rush to come to-day. We only knew this
morning, when we got his telegram--so thoughtful of him to send
one!--that he had found it possible to come at all."
"Yes. He appeared to me to be considerably fatigued--indeed, when he
left us I thought him looking pale. I offered to mix him a little
something that would fit him for to-morrow. But he wouldn't let me."
Cousin Philip became professional on the slightest provocation.
Dick was asking the Colonel about the sport so far.
"Forty-eight brace the first day, forty-two the second; five guns; over
dogs. But," added the Colonel, whispering, "my young friend over there
hits nothing at all. Philip is fair; but as for me, I don't see as I
used to. Awdry was the crack shot. But you and Miles will be a better
pair than Awdry and Oliver."
Dick and Miles--coupled! That silenced Dick. He felt his very skin
bristle at the thoughts that poured in upon his mind.
"Do you know Mr. Miles?"
The question was put in a solemn undertone by Cousin Philip. Considering
Dick's thoughts at that moment, it was almost a startling question. He
waited a moment before replying.
"Yes," he then said slowly, "I know him."
"An interesting man," said the doctor, "a profoundly interesting man;
that I can see, and I congratulate myself on making his acquaintance. I
shall enjoy his society, I know. And a Colonial, too."
"My dear fellow, Colonials are as good as any other people."
Dick had often to tell people that; but the words were scarcely spoken
before it struck him that, in this connection, they were a little
incongruous.
"They may be; they may be. But when I travelled for an insurance company
in New Zealand, I know I didn't think so. We went round the
stations--the agent and I--insuring people, you know."
Dick did know. He had himself met with many such professional Samaritans
in Riverina. They were not popular there.
"Well," continued the young doctor, "I don't think we were always well
treated. In some places they actually seemed to regard us with
suspicion. We didn't meet with the least respect, I can assure you. Once
or twice we were downright insulted. Now in England----"
"Let us listen to this song," said Dick. Robson was really too
ponderous.
Alice had at last yielded to the importunities of Laurence Pinckney, and
was singing something in French. That young gentleman turned over the
leaves, but he did not look entirely appreciative. When the song was
over, he complained of the French words. He wanted something in English;
though he could not refrain from a trenchant and sweeping criticism of
all the words of all the ballads and songs foisted on the musical world
during this last decade of a degenerate age.
There was no more singing, however; and presently the small party broke
up.
"Early hours for the moors," the Colonel said. "Philip, will you show
Dick his room? I'm sorry we've had to put you outside, Dick; but there
are more of us out than in, and there's really no choice. We all rough
it when we go a-shooting."
Dick laughed, and mentioned that the last few years had not made him
luxurious. The Colonel was on the stairs, candle in hand. Dick would
have liked to speak to him then and there, and tell him everything--but
Robson was there too: an inquisitive fellow, unless Dick's memory was at
fault; a man who would prick up his ears if he heard a private interview
asked for in his presence. So Dick merely said:
"I must be up early and look round. Shall I see you, sir, then?"
"See me? Why, you'll find I've been about for a good hour before you
dream of awaking! Take it easy, boy; you've been travelling all day. I'm
different. I never slept longer than six hours in my life. Good-night,
Dick; good-night, Philip;" and Colonel Bristo went off to bed.
Edmonstone followed Robson out into the dark, comforting himself with
the determination to tell Colonel Bristo everything before breakfast
next morning. They walked for some moments, then stopped before a door
that opened upon a flight of deal stairs. A candle and matches were on
the bottom step. The good doctor discharged his duty to the full by
lighting the candle and handing it to Dick.
"It is the room on the left," said Robson.
"Anyone in the room on the right?"
"No, I think not--I'm sure not. You are over the stable and that;
Pinckney and I are a few yards away, over the laundry. Good-night."
"Good-night, Robson. I say, Robson!"
"Well?"
"Who is Pinckney?"
"Son of a brother officer of the Colonel's. Comes from town, I fancy."
"What does he do--besides making an ass of himself?"
"He writes, I think."
"I'm not surprised; he's got cheek enough for anything! Good-night,
Robson."
XX
STRANGE HUMILITY
Dick found his room plainly and scantily furnished but delightfully
fresh, clean, and comfortable. There was but one narrow strip of carpet
by the bedside, but the boards were as snowy as an admiral's poop; the
narrow bed stood out into the middle of the room, to the left as you
came in at the door. The ceiling, and the walls, and the blind, and the
bed, and the tall new candles, and the dressing-table on which they
stood, were all very white indeed. At the foot of the bed Dick found his
portmanteau and gun-case, and the first thing he did was to put together
his gun, and stand it in one corner of the room, ready for next day. He
happened to stand it in the corner nearest the bed head, and farthest
from the door; but there was no design in that: the whole action was
mechanical.
He undressed slowly, or rather he was long in beginning. He stood,
resting his elbows on the chest of drawers, and his chin in his palms,
and watched the candle burn half-way down before he so much as wound his
watch. It was only the wick's last throes that reminded him to put an
end to its flickering and get into bed. But by that time Dick's mind was
made up. When he lay down to sleep he knew precisely what he was going
to do first thing in the morning, and more or less what he meant to
say. He fell quickly into a dreamless slumber.
After sleeping like an infant for two or three hours he experienced
something very like a dream, and that about the very man of whom he
would certainly have dreamt sooner or later. But this was no dream. Dick
was awakened: he lay still for a moment, peering through the darkness,
and listening with all his ears. Then he started up in his bed, and
called sternly:
"Who is there? Who are you?"
At the foot of the bed a tall figure loomed through the darkness. The
challenge was answered: first with a short, soft laugh, then in the
mildest tones of the man who had passed himself off as Miles the
squatter.
"Hush! I have come to explain."
"Oh, it is you!" though Dick had known who it was from the moment the
light, stealthy step disturbed him.
"Yes; it isn't a burglar, so lie down again. I tell you I come with a
frank explanation. I suppose you will listen to a man?"
"Why should I? You have broken faith with me!"
"It amounts to that, I own. It must seem to you that I deserve no
further consideration at your hands. Very well; all I ask is a hearing."
The tones were so unlike anything that could have been expected from the
lips of this man that Edmonstone was taken aback; they were so low as to
be scarcely audible; they were humble, and they were sad. It was this
very humility that at first excited Dick's suspicion.
"I will listen to you now," said he, after a moment's thought, "but it
is the last thing I shall do for you. You might first strike a light.
There are matches on the dressing-table behind you, and two candles, I
think."
Miles complied unsuspectingly with this reasonable request. He was some
time, however, in finding the matches. Yet he heard no sound (Dick's arm
was so long, so lithe his movement) until the candles were alight; when
two loud clicks caused him to wheel suddenly round, throwing one
candlestick with a crash to the floor.
Dick was sitting up quietly in his bed, as he had been sitting a moment
before; but in his hands was a double-barrelled gun--cocked--the butt
not six inches from his shoulder, the muzzle not three feet from Miles's
breast. It could be brought to the shoulder in a small fraction of a
second. It could be fired with sufficient deadliness without being
brought to the shoulder at all. A finger was upon each of the triggers.
The light of the single candle glittered upon the barrels.
"Now, my friend," said Dick, "I am ready to listen to you as long as you
like."
Miles stared fixedly at the hammers of the gun. He did not speak, he did
not draw back. He stood there, in his shirt and trousers, motionless and
silent. This was not, as we know, his first interview under arms, but it
was the first in which the arms had been in the hands of the other side;
moreover, he had once pressed a pistol to the head of this Edmonstone
whose gun covered him now. The reversal of things was complete--the
tables were turned to the last inch. The strange part of it was that the
outwitted bushranger's face showed no trace of cunning baffled, or the
fury of an animal at bay, which might have been expected of him. On the
contrary, his countenance gradually filled with quite another
expression--one of reproach.
"I am not a fool," he said, speaking at last. "I was never yet fool
enough to tackle a forlorn hope. Therefore, even if I had come into this
room armed to the teeth to offer you violence, I should not dream of
competing against those double-barrels. But as I came empty-handed, and
in peace, I, for my part, can say all I have to say comfortably into
their muzzles--they can make no difference to me, unless you press too
hard on those triggers in your anxiety; and if you did, perhaps it would
be the best turn you or any man could do me! At the same time you are
treating me like a dog. The only words that have left my lips were as
submissive as any victor need want; I turned my back on you without the
smallest suspicion, yet turn round again to find you pointing a gun at
me!"
"You call that bad treatment!" Edmonstone sneered. "You forget, perhaps,
that you have no business to be loose in the world; you forget that I
found you out and shielded you, wrongly enough, on certain terms, which
you have broken! Well, I am reminding you; but I am not likely to give
you a second chance of playing me false. That is why I keep the sight of
my gun in a line with your stud--so; that is why, if you come a step
nearer, I won't answer for consequences."
"Considering," said Miles, "how I treated you a few years ago, and what
you owe to that treatment, I should have thought you might behave rather
differently to-night; you might have shown a little generosity, outlaw
as I am."
"You remind me," said Dick, "that in '82, in the scrub near Balranald,
you stuck up me and my mate, and took almost everything we had--except
our money. I didn't require to be reminded of that forbearance of yours.
I haven't forgotten it, and I know pretty well its worth by now, though
hitherto I have overvalued it. But that old account--supposing it to be
one, for argument's sake--was squared last month; you have been fool
enough to open a new one."
"It is a pity," said Miles, bitterly, "that I didn't let Jem Pound knife
you!"
"On the contrary, through saving me then you found one man in England
actually ready to screen you from justice. If you had not broken faith
with him that man would screen you still; but as it is--Steady! don't
move! I am pressing the trigger."
"Do you mean that you are going to betray me after all?" cried Miles, in
a quick gasp of dismay, yet drawing back--he had taken a step forward in
his agitation.
"What else would you have me do? Give you another chance? Honestly,"
cried Dick, with honesty in his tone, "I wish that I could! But can you
expect it?"
"Listen to me!" cried Miles, in a deep faltering voice. "Listen to me!"
"I am listening."
"The other day, then--I mean the night you found me out, you and those
blood-suckers--I was on the brink of a new life! You smile--but before
Heaven it is the truth! I had lived for weeks as I never lived
before--among good people. Bad as I was, they influenced me, at first
without my knowing it. It was a new side of life to me. I found it was
the best side. I grew--well, call it happy. Then I looked back and
loathed the old days. I began to map out a better life for myself. I was
a new man, starting afresh. I thanked God for my escape, for it seemed
like His act."
"If the fellow isn't in earnest," thought Dick, "this is the worst
blasphemy I ever heard. I half think he means what he says, poor
wretch."
"It was you that blotted out that new existence--just as it opened out
before me! It was you that drove me from my haven! It was you that
turned me adrift in a city full of foes! So much for your side of the
balance between us!"
Dick was half-carried away by the man's rough eloquence, and the note of
pathos in his deep tones. But he was only half-carried away; he was a
man hard to shift when his stand was once taken. His answer was shrewd:
"That city is the safest place in the world for such as you--safer even
than the bush. As to your friends, did you expect to live on them
forever?"
The other's vehemence was checked.
"Perhaps you intended to become one of the family!" said Edmonstone
scornfully, pursuing his advantage.
Miles pulled himself together, and dismissed this keen question with a
smile and a wave of the hand; but the smile faded quickly; nor had it
been anything better than a ghastly mockery.
"You do not appreciate my position," said Miles presently, fetching a
deep sigh; "you cannot put yourself in my place. No honest man could, I
suppose! And you shut me off from all decent living; you made me bid
good-bye to the people who had befriended me, and somehow--well, made me
wish I was a little less the ruffian! I became an outcast! I tried to
make new friends, but failed. I had lost my nerve somehow--that was the
worst of it! I resolved to throw it up, and quit England. I took my
passage for New York, and--"
"Do you mean what you say? Have you actually done that?"
"Yes. The ticket is in my room, which is opposite this room." He pointed
to the door. "I can bring it to show you."
"No; stay where you are; I believe you. When do you sail?"
"In a week--next Tuesday."
Dick breathed more freely. Here was an extenuating circumstance of the
broken compact. On the whole, Dick was glad to find one.
"Go on," said Dick, in a slightly less hostile tone: "tell me the rest,
and what it was that induced you to come up here."
"Surely you can see the rest for yourself? Surely you can put yourself
in my place at this point? I own that hearing you were not to be of the
party finally induced me to come--I thought you would not hear of it
till afterwards; but I came to bid my friends good-bye! to get one more
glimpse of a kind of life I had never seen before and shall never see
again! for one more week in a pure atmosphere."
"Oh! not to make up to Miss Bristo, then?"
Blunt though the words were, each one was a self-inflicted stab to the
heart of the man that spoke them.
"No!" cried Miles, and his voice was turned suddenly hoarse; "no, before
Heaven!"
"If I believed it was that, I think I should pull this trigger on the
spot."
"It is not," cried Miles; "I swear it is not," he whispered.
And Dick believed him then.