If he had only made a secret of him, the whole thing would have been complete. There was of course in the situation a discouraging suggestion that Temple Barholm MIGHT turn out to be merely the ordinary n.o.ble character bestowing boons.
"I will burn a little candle to the Virgin and offer up prayers that he may NOT. That sort of thing would have no cachet whatever, and would only depress me," thought his still sufficiently sinful Grace.
"When, Braddle, do you think I shall be able to take a drive again?"
he asked his nurse.
Braddle was not prepared to say upon her own responsibility, but the doctor would tell him when he came in that afternoon.
"I feel astonishingly well, considering the sharpness of the attack,"
her patient said. "Our little talk has quite stimulated me. When I go out,"--there was a gleam in the eye he raised to hers,--" I am going to call at Temple Barholm."
"I knowed tha would," she commented with maternal familiarity. "I dunnot believe tha could keep away."
And through the rest of the morning, as he sat and gazed into the fire, she observed that he several times chuckled gently and rubbed his delicate, chill, swollen knuckled hands together.
A few weeks later there were some warm days, and his Grace chose to go out in his pony carriage. Much as he detested the suggestion of "the aunt in the Bath chair," he had decided that he found the low, informal vehicle more entertaining than a more imposing one, and the desperation of his desire to be entertained can be comprehended only by those who have known its parallel. If he was not in some way amused, he found himself whirling, with rheumatic gout and seventy years, among recollections of vivid pictures better hung in galleries with closed doors. It was always possible to stop the pony carriage to look at views--bits of landscape caught at by vision through trees or under their spreading branches, or at the end of little green-hedged lanes apparently adorned with cottages, or farm-houses with ricks and barn-yards and pig-pens designed for the benefit of Morland and other painters of rusticity. He could also slacken the pony"s pace and draw up by roadsides where solitary men sat by piles of stone, which they broke at leisure with hammers as though they were cracking nuts. He had spent many an agreeable half-hour in talk with a road-mender who could be led into conversation and was left elated by an extra shilling. As in years long past he had sat under chestnut-trees in the Apennines and shared the black bread and sour wine of a peasant, so in these days he frequently would have been glad to sit under a hedge and eat bread and cheese with a good fellow who did not know him and whose summing up of the domestic habits and needs of "th" workin" mon" or the amiabilities or degeneracies of the gentry would be expressed, figuratively speaking, in thoughts and words of one syllable. The pony, however, could not take him very far afield, and one could not lunch on the gra.s.s with a stone-breaker well within reach of one"s own castle without an air of eccentricity which he no more chose to a.s.sume than he would have chosen to wear long hair and a flowing necktie.
Also, rheumatic gout had not hovered about the days in the Apennines.
He did not, it might be remarked, desire to enter into conversation with his humble fellow-man from altruistic motives. He did it because there was always a chance more or less that he would be amused. He might hear of little tragedies or comedies,-- he much preferred the comedies,--and he often learned new words or phrases of dialect interestingly allied to pure Anglo-Saxon. When this last occurred, he entered them in a notebook he kept in his library. He sometimes pretended to himself that he was going to write a book on dialects; but he knew that he was a dilettante sort of creature and would really never do it. The pretense, however, was a sort of a.s.set. In dire moments during rains or foggy weather when he felt twinges and had read till his head ached, he had wished that he had not eaten all his cake at the first course of life"s feast, that he had formed a habit or so which might have survived and helped him to eke out even an easy-chair existence through the last courses. He did not find consolation in the use of the palliative adjective as applied to himself. A neatly cynical sense of humor prevented it. He knew he had always been an entirely selfish man and that he was entirely selfish still, and was not revoltingly fretful and domineering only because he was const.i.tutionally unirritable.
He was, however, amiably obstinate, and was accustomed to getting his own way in most things. On this day of his outing he insisted on driving himself in the face of arguments to the contrary. He was so fixed in his intention that his daughters and Mrs. Braddle were obliged to admit themselves overpowered.
"Nonsense! Nonsense!" he protested when they besought him to allow himself to be driven by a groom. "The pony is a fat thing only suited to a Bath chair. He does not need driving. He doesn"t go when he is driven. He frequently lies down and puts his cheek on his hand and goes to sleep, and I am obliged to wait until he wakes up."
"But, papa, dear," Lady Edith said, "your poor hands are not very strong. And he might run away and kill you. Please do be reasonable!"
"My dear girl," he answered, "if he runs, I shall run after him and kill him when I catch him. George," he called to the groom holding the plump pony"s head, "tell her ladyship what this little beast"s name is."
"The Indolent Apprentice, your Grace," the groom answered, touching his hat and suppressing a grin.
"I called him that a month ago," said the duke. "Hogarth would have depicted all sorts of evil ends for him. Three weeks since, when I was in bed being fed by Braddle with a spoon, I could have outrun him myself. Let George follow me on a horse if you like, but he must keep out of my sight. Half a mile behind will do."
He got into the phaeton, concealing his twinges with determination, and drove down the avenue with a fine air, sitting erect and smiling.
Indoor existence had become unendurable, and the spring was filling the woods.
"I love the spring," he murmured to himself. "I am sentimental about it. I love sentimentality, in myself, when I am quite alone. If I had been a writing person, I should have made verses every year in April and sent them to magazines-- and they would have been returned to me."
The Indolent Apprentice was, it is true, fat, though comely, and he was also entirely deserving of his name. Like his Grace of Stone, however, he had seen other and livelier days, and now and then he was beset by recollections. He was still a rather high, though slow, stepper--the latter from fixed preference. He had once stepped fast, as well as with a spirited gait. During his master"s indisposition he had stood in his loose box and professed such harmlessness that he had not been annoyed by being taken out for exercise as regularly as he might have been. He had champed his oats and listened to the repartee of the stable-boys, and he had, perhaps, felt the coming of the spring when the cuckoo insisted upon it with thrilling mellowness across the green sweeps of the park land. Sometimes it made him sentimental, as it made his master, sometimes it made him stamp his small hoofs restlessly in his straw and want to go out. He did not intend, when he was taken out, to emulate the Industrious Apprentice by hastening his pace unduly and raising false hopes for the future, but he sniffed in the air the moist green of leaf.a.ge and damp moss, ma.s.sed with yellow primroses cuddling in it as though for warmth, and he thought of other fresh scents and the feel of the road under a pony"s feet.
Therefore, when he found himself out in the world again, he shook his head now and then and even tossed it with the recurring sensations of a pony who was a mere boy and still slight in the waist.
"You feel it too, do you? " said the duke. "I won"t remind you of your years."
The drive from Stone Hover to the village of Temple Barholm was an easy one, of many charms of leaf-arched lanes and green- edged road.
The duke had always had a partiality for it, and he took it this morning. He would probably have taken it in any case, but Mrs.
Braddle"s anecdotes had been floating through his mind when he set forth and perhaps inclined him in its direction.
The groom was a young man of three and twenty, and he felt the spring also. The horse he rode was a handsome animal, and he himself was not devoid of a healthy young man"s good looks. He knew his belted livery was becoming to him, and when on horseback he prided himself on what he considered an almost military bearing. Sarah Hibson, farmer Hibson"s dimple-chinned and saucy-eyed daughter, had been "carryin" on a good bit" with a soldier who was a smart, well-set-up, impudent fellow, and it was the manifest duty of any other young fellow who had considered himself to be "walking out with her" to look after his charges. His Grace had been most particular about George"s keeping far enough behind him; and as half a mile had been mentioned as near enough, certainly one was absolved from the necessity of keeping in sight. Why should not one turn into the lane which ended at Hibson"s farm-yard, and drop into the dairy, and "have it out wi" Sarah?"
Dimpled chins and saucy eyes, and bare, dimpled arms and hands patting b.u.t.ter while heads are tossed in coquettishly alluring defiance, made even "having it out" an attractive and memory-obscuring process. Sarah was a plump and sparkling imp of prettiness, and knew the power of every sly glance and every dimple and every golden freckle she possessed. George did not know it so well, and in ten minutes had lost his head and entirely forgotten even the half-mile behind.
He was lover-like, he was masterful, he brought the spring with him; he "carried on," as Sarah put it, until he had actually out-distanced the soldier, and had her in his arms, kissing her as she laughed and prettily struggled.
"Shame o" tha face! Shame o" tha face, George!" she scolded and dimpled and blushed. "Wilt tha be done now? Wilt tha be done? I"ll call mother."
And at that very moment mother came without being called, running, red of face, heavy-footed, and panting, with her cap all on one side.
"Th" duke"s run away! Th" duke"s run away!" she shouted. "Jo seed him.
Pony got freetened at summat-- an" what art doin" here, George Bind?
Get o" thy horse an" gallop. If he"s killed, tha "rt a ruined man."
There was an odd turn of chance in it, the duke thought afterward.
Though friskier than usual, the Indolent Apprentice had behaved perfectly well until they neared the gates of Temple Barholm, which chanced to be open because a cart had just pa.s.sed through. And it was not the cart"s fault, for the Indolent Apprentice regarded it with friendly interest. It happened, however, that perhaps being absorbed in the cart, which might have been drawn by a friend or even a distant relative, the Indolent Apprentice was horribly startled by a large rabbit which leaped out of the hedge almost under his nose, and, worse still, was followed the next instant by another rabbit even larger and more sudden and unexpected in its movements. The Indolent Apprentice snorted, pawed, whirled, dashed through the open gateway,--the duke"s hands were even less strong than his daughter had thought,--and galloped, head in air and bit between teeth, up the avenue, the low carriage rocking from side to side.
"d.a.m.n! d.a.m.n!" cried the duke, rocking also. "Oh, d.a.m.n! I shall be killed in a runaway perambulator!"
And ridiculous as it was, things surged through his brain, and once, though he laughed at himself bitterly afterward, he gasped "Ah, Heloise;" as he almost whirled over a jagged tree-stump; gallop and gallop and gallop, off the road and through trees, and back again on to the sward, and gallop and gallop and jerk and jolt and jerk, and he was nearing the house, and a long-legged young man ran down the steps, pushing aside footmen, and was ahead of the drunken little beast of a pony, and caught him just as the phaeton overturned and shot his grace safely though not comfortably in a heap upon the gra.s.s.
It was of course no trifle of a shock, but its victim"s sensations gave him strong reason to hope, as he rolled over, that no bones were broken. The following servants were on the spot almost at once, and took the pony"s head.
The young man helped the duke to his feet and dusted him with masterly dexterity. He did not know he was dusting a duke, and he would not have cared if he had.
"h.e.l.lo," he said, "you"re not hurt. I can see that. Thank the Lord! I don"t believe you"ve got a scratch."
His grace felt a shade shaky, and he was slightly pale, but he smiled in a way which had been celebrated forty years earlier, and the charm of which had survived even rheumatic gout.
"Thank you. I"m not hurt in the least. I am the Duke of Stone. This isn"t really a call. It isn"t my custom to arrive in this way. May I address you as my preserver, Mr. Temple Barholm?"
CHAPTER XXIV
Upon the terrace, when he was led up the steps, stood a most perfect little elderly lady in a state of agitation much greater than his own or his rescuer"s. It was an agitation as perfect in its femininity as she herself was. It expressed its kind tremors in the fashion which belonged to the puce silk dress and fine bits of collar and undersleeve the belated gracefulness of which caused her to present herself to him rather as a figure cut neatly from a book of the styles he had admired in his young manhood. It was of course Miss Alicia, who having, with Tembarom, seen the galloping pony from a window, had followed him when he darted from the room. She came forward, looking pale with charming solicitude.
"I do so hope you are not hurt," she exclaimed. "It really seemed that only divine Providence could prevent a terrible accident."
"I am afraid that it was more grotesque than terrible," he answered a shade breathlessly.
"Let me make you acquainted with the Duke of Stone, Miss Alicia,"
Tembarom said in the formula of Mrs. Bowse"s boarders on state occasions of introduction. "Duke, let me make you acquainted, sir, with my--relation--Miss Alicia Temple Barholm."
The duke"s bow had a remote suggestion of almost including a kissed hand in its gallant courtesy. Not, however, that Early Victorian ladies had been accustomed to the kissing of hands; but at the period when he had best known the type he had daily bent over white fingers in Continental capitals.
"A gla.s.s of wine," Miss Alicia implored. "Pray let me give you a gla.s.s of wine. I am sure you need it very much."
He was taken into the library and made to sit in a most comfortable easy-chair. Miss Alicia fluttered about him with sympathy still delicately tinged with alarm. How long, how long, it had been since he had been fluttered over! Nearly forty years. Ladies did not flutter now, and he remembered that it was no longer the fashion to call them "ladies." Only the lower-middle cla.s.ses spoke of "ladies." But he found himself mentally using the word again as he watched Miss Alicia.