He came so near then that she felt his warm breath on her neck.
"Not of me, oh, no. But, all the same, you are frightened, or else you would not hesitate."
He turned away again, and she dropped her hands quickly from her eyes.
"You are not going?"
"Not if you wish me to stay," he said, and folded his arms and waited.
"I do want you to stay--give me time to think, Digby--I--"
A cab rattled past the house outside, and as the sound died away, she rose slowly and with difficulty from her chair and looked at him. And he came and supported her on his arm, and drew his fingers up her throat and round her face to her forehead, and back again to her chin, and so forced her to meet his eyes.
"I will come," she said.
CHAPTER X.
The Squire sat making calculations in his study, as he did nearly every day of his life. There was nothing in his appearance to denote that anything unusual, least of all anything exceedingly pleasant, had occurred to him. And yet, it was only that morning that they had told him Jack was alive and was coming home the same evening. Perhaps it was that, like Digby, he found it hard to revive an affection that had ceased to be part of his life six months ago; or, more likely still, he felt in some vague way or another that Jack had come back to life on purpose to produce some unpaid debts for his father to settle. Sir Marcus never dissimulated, and he made no attempt to conceal the fact that his joy in his son"s resurrection did not wholly compensate for the trouble that was certain to be a consequence of it.
So he sat making calculations as usual, though his wife felt bound to go into hysterics in the drawing-room, and the rest of the family were trying to erect a shaky evergreen arch in the garden, with "Welcome home!" nailed on it in evergreen letters. They were making a good deal of noise over it, too, and the calculations did not get on, in consequence. They related this time to rabbits, to the number imported yearly from abroad, and the inadequate number reared in the home country itself, and Sir Marcus was making them with the object of writing a letter to the county paper, suggesting rabbit culture as a lucrative employment for the British villager. According to Sir Marcus, the British villager had an immense amount of time on his hands. Not that his interest in the duck culture was in any degree on the wane, but the county paper had refused to insert any more of his letters about the Murville ducks and the enormous profits that the Murville laborer was said to realize from breeding them; and so the Squire had been only too glad to take up the question of tame rabbits, which was being tentatively ventilated by a neighboring Squire in another village. Sir Marcus never did anything tentatively, however; so he began by talking rabbits at every man he met in the village street; and as every man he met, owing to his own former persuasions, was a ducker, that worthy generally received his recommendation of this new animal with something like distrust. The duckers of Murville could not understand any article of commerce that did not lay eggs, and although they obediently ate the few samples that the Squire sent round to them for their Sunday dinners, yet they did so with much condescension, and no little suspicion that they were being coaxed into liking a new food that must be inferior because it was cheap. The Murville laborer had retained some of his independence, in spite of being the property of a Radical overlord.
"Tell ye what it is, George," said Tom Clarke, the biggest ducker in the village, as he sat smoking one evening in the newly built club in the main street, "I be altogether fl.u.s.tered along o" them new fancies of the Squire, I be. What be rabbits, hey, man? Can ye tell me that, now? Ye be oop at the Manor all day, along o" the Squire hisself, so ye ought to know for sure."
The handy man shook his head dumbly, which was his usual form of reply, and the one that his hearers generally preferred; and Tom Clarke continued his ruminations for the benefit of any of the members present who might be inclined to listen to him.
"Rabbits beats me altogether, I be bound to own. They bain"t poultry, and they bain"t butcher"s meat neither. What be they, anyhow? The Squire be a proper kind gentleman for sure, but when he takes up with them okkard new fancies what no one can"t explain, it be proper hard to know how to treat "un. Why, George man, when the parson was readin" of the Litany, Sunday past, and come to the "kindly fruits of the earth," I thinks to myself, "that"s rabbits, that is," and I shuts my mouth tight, I does! And me what"s never missed sayin" and singin" all the prayer-book allows "un to do, this forty year that I"ve sat in the choir up agin poor Jack Priest"s tablet. "T ain"t as though I be an unreligious body what sings an" don"t pray, as I"ve known some do; but there"s never a Amen that I don"t take part in, and there bain"t a trap in the service as can catch me now, allays allowin" for the reply to the tenth commandment what were put in by the devil or the chapel people, and caught on by the parsons accidental, so to speak. So you see how a man be upset all along o" them beasts, if ye can call a thing a beast what eats like string."
Mrs. Tom Clarke, in spite of the cookery lectures that had been given in the Club on Wednesday evenings, by an expert from London, who had evolved strange dishes from herring heads and mutton bones with the aid of a patent portable stove, still preferred to cook her husband"s food in her own way, and this generally consisted in putting it into a saucepan from which the duck"s food had just been extracted,--a process which had the effect of making everything taste alike; so it was certainly probable that the Squire"s rabbit had not had a fair chance in that cottage, at all events.
But in spite of the opposition he was receiving from his most faithful adherents, Sir Marcus still sat patiently, and made his calculations for his new letter to the papers. He had already written to two or three members of Parliament for statistics, and had received replies from the House of Commons which he folded on his writing-table with the address uppermost, and in which they mostly referred him to Whitaker; and he had caused a slight disruption at the luncheon table, only that day, by wanting to know the good of the expensive education he had given his children if it turned them out ignorant of rabbits. The children were wishing just then that their father"s new hobby had not happened to possess him in the Christmas holidays, and Lady Raleigh had taken the precaution of telling her cook to jug the hare and make it as unlike a rabbit as possible, so that dinner might pa.s.s off more peaceably than luncheon had done.
"I must have Joan down; _she_ would sympathize," murmured Sir Marcus, laying his pen down, and reading the first sentences he had written of his letter. "Splendid woman, Joan, never laughs at my little ideas, and takes such an interest in them. Shows what intelligence can do for a girl. She"d have made Jack realize the responsibilities of existence, she would. Devil take my head, why is it swimming so this afternoon?"
The letter did not get on very fast, there was too much similarity between its sentiments and those he had so often expressed before; it looked rather as though he were adapting an old letter by scratching out "duck" and subst.i.tuting "rabbit," for he found himself writing that the feathers and eggs alone of one rabbit more than repaid the cost of rearing it.
"Digby used to come down and see me oftener than he does now," said Sir Marcus, laying down his pen again and pa.s.sing his hand across his brow.
"I don"t like his being away so long, and the dear little boy too; why don"t they come and see me? Got a wife? Oh, to be sure, yes; my memory don"t seem so strong as it was, somehow: to be sure, a wife, yes. Nice little thing, very; wonder if she would know how many we get yearly from Holland? My hand gets more tired than it used, though it wouldn"t do to say so; people are so ready to talk about an old man breaking up before he"s out of the sixties. Why, I walked up from the post-office in eight minutes and a half this morning; I can beat the youngsters now, eh? I wish Joan would come and catch hold of this accursed letter, it keeps drifting so far away. I always wonder what made her take Digby; funny fellow, Digby. What am I saying? It"s Jack who is her husband, isn"t it?
I"ve been writing too much to-day, that"s what it is. I"m only a little queer, but--I wish Joan would come and finish my letter for me. Why won"t Digby bring her down now? Let"s get hold of the whiskey; that"s what I want to set me straight, of course. What nonsense they are talking; men don"t fall to pieces when they are sixty-four. I can walk with the best of them, eh, Joan, my dear?"
There were three people destined for Murville Manor in the 6.45 from Euston that evening. Two of them were in separate third-cla.s.s smoking carriages at the end of the train; the other sat in a first-cla.s.s compartment. They were Digby, and Jack, and Lady Joan, all summoned by the same telegram, and all obeying the summons unknown to each other, and with the greatest speed possible. The two brothers, singularly enough, each spent the greater part of the two hours" journey in reading and re-reading a letter, which was written, in both cases, in a thick, rather illegible handwriting. The musician, as he took his from the already opened envelope, gave a half-conscious look round the carriage before he read it. It dated from the day before, and had no heading to it:--
"I think on consideration that the new form of diversion you proposed to me the other night would not work so well as we thought. So I am not going to entertain it any longer. You will probably blame me for my vacillation; but then, you should not have established a precedent for vacillation in the "Relton Arms," four years ago. After all, there is nothing left but the book; and I am going to be away, and alone, until I have written it. Don"t be alarmed. I am not going to soak it with my own experiences.
"JOAN."
His younger brother, in the other carriage, did not look at any one when he took his letter from his breast-pocket and unfolded it. It was very limp, and looked as though it had been unfolded many times before. It was dated two days earlier:--
"MY DEAR BOY,--I am a cad, and I hate myself for what I have done to you. It is quite the meanest thing I have done in my life.
Please believe that I did not authorize Digby to come and tell you for me, last night; he wanted to spare me the unpleasantness, I suppose, of confessing to you that I was a brute. But I am a brute, all the same; I should only be a worse one if I were to marry you now. I haven"t the least right to expect you to grant me a favor, but I shall be glad if you will take this as final.
"JOAN RELTON."
The station for Murville village was two miles away from the Manor House, or from any human habitation of importance; and as the train slowly steamed away from it to-night, the three pa.s.sengers whom it had brought from town, unknown to each other, were the only three whom it had deposited on the platform. They found themselves standing together near the exit, and there was an awkward moment of recognition while they fumbled with cold fingers for their tickets. Digby had apparently lost his altogether; Lady Joan had hers ready, and pa.s.sed out swiftly; and Jack promptly gave up the wrong half of his and pa.s.sed out after her, in spite of the station-master"s expostulations.
"Stupid of George to be late," observed Jack in the road outside. He was clearing his throat a good deal, and looking up the road with a great show of concern.
"It was odd that we should all catch the same train," she said, stamping her feet, and coughing with unnecessary violence; "I suppose you have not been down before?"
"No; they only knew of my arrival in time to cable to me that my father was dying," he said, with a queer mixture of humor and bitterness; "life is very rum sometimes, isn"t it?"
"Always," she said fervently, and shivered among her furs. They both looked up the road then, and prayed for the advent of George and the cart. Digby"s irritated tones could be heard from within, concerning his missing ticket.
"I say, won"t you let fly for the fire in the booking-office till George comes? I reckon you"re cold some," began Jack again, awkwardly.
"Oh, no, please don"t trouble about me," she replied politely, as though she had just been introduced to him for the first time.
Digby came out and joined them.
"He"s always late," he began, in a high-pitched tone, also looking up the road with a great show of interest.
"He is a countryman, you see," said Lady Joan, with gravity.
"And the mother has been at him for six years," added Jack.
They discussed the handy man, without a suspicion of a smile, for some minutes longer, and they continued to look up the road, and back at the clock in the station, and anywhere except at each other, until the welcome sound of wheels at last drew near, when they all flung themselves upon the handy man, without mercy, and robbed him of his few wits at once.
"How is your master, George?"
"Yes, how is Sir Marcus, George?" added Joan, anxiously.
"Aye, how be the Squire, for sure, poor gentleman?" chimed in the solitary porter from behind.
"And what on earth possessed you to bring the luggage cart, George?"
added Digby, wrathfully.
The handy man slowly dismounted from his seat, and made a desperate effort to say what was required of him.
"He be proper bad, he be; leastways so the cook told me when I come by the larder window with the sprouts, or I should say the celery for dinner it was, an" Lady Raleigh, she would have it as it were too slippy to bring the dog-cart, notwithstandin" as it bain"t the cart what falls down, but the animal for sure, an" he won"t last till mornin", poor gentleman, though the best London doctor come down by the five-forty o"
purpose to have a last look of him, what went far towards killin" of "im off in my thinkin". An" the luggage is to be sent on afterwards, if ye please, Mr. Jack; an" Tom Clarke he says as how he means to put off his visit to his sister, what"s married into the grocery business at Reading, till he be sure how things means to turn out, cos he says he bain"t a-goin" of to miss a ch.o.r.eal funeral, what hasn"t been for nigh upon thirty--"
"Go to the horse"s head, George," said Digby, sternly, and he turned to hand Lady Joan into the cart; "it is not very comfortable, I am afraid, but Jack and I will walk on, which will give you more room."
Lady Joan drew back and hesitated a little.
"You had better come too, hadn"t you?" she said; "it would be much quicker, and--"