THE MAN FROM BRODNEY"S
It was quite forty-eight hours before the Deppinghams surrendered to the Brownes. They were obliged to humbly admit, in the seclusion of their own councils, that it was to the obnoxious but energetic Britt that they owed their present and ever-growing comfort.
It is said that Mr. Saunders learned more law of a useful and purposeful character during his first week of consultation with Britt than he could have dreamed that the statutes of England contained. Britt"s brain was a whirlpool of suggestions, tricks, subterfuges and--yes, witticisms--that Saunders never even pretended to appreciate, although he was obliging enough to laugh at the right time quite as often as at the wrong. "He talks about what Dan Webster said, how Dan Voorhees could handle a jury, why Abe Lincoln and Andy Jackson were so--" Saunders would begin in a dazzled sort of way.
"Mr. Saunders, will you be good enough to ask Bromley to take Pong out for a walk?" her ladyship would interrupt languidly, and Saunders would descend to the requirements of his position.
Late in the afternoon of the day following the advent of the Brownes, Lord and Lady Deppingham were laboriously fanning themselves in the midst of their stifling Marie Antoinette elegance.
"By Jove, Aggie, it"s too beastly hot here for words," growled he for the hundredth time. "I think we"d better move into your grandfather"s rooms."
"Now, Deppy, don"t let the Brownes talk you into everything they suggest," she complained, determined to be stubborn to the end. "They know entirely too much about the place already; please don"t let them know you as intimately."
"That"s all very good, my dear, but you know quite as well as I that we made a frightful mistake in choosing these rooms. It _is_ cooler on that side of the house. I"m not too proud to be comfortable, don"t you know.
Have you had a look at your grandfather"s rooms?"
She was silent for a long time, pondering. "No, I haven"t, Deppy, but I don"t mind going over there now with you--just for a look. We can do it without letting them see us, you know."
Just as they were ready to depart stealthily for the distant wing, a servant came up to their rooms with a note from Mrs. Browne. It was an invitation to join the Americans at dinner that evening in the grand banquet hall. Across the bottom of Mrs. Browne"s formal little note, her husband had jauntily scrawled: "_Just to see how small we"ll feel in a ninety by seventy dining-room_" Lady Deppingham flushed and her eyes glittered as she handed the note to her husband.
"Rubbish!" she exclaimed. Paying no heed to the wistful look in his eyes or to the appealing shuffle of his foot, she sent back a dignified little reply to the effect that "A previous engagement would prevent, etc." The polite lie made it necessary for them to venture forth at dinner time to eat their solitary meal of sardines and wafers in the grove below. The menu was limited to almost nothing because Deppy refused to fill his pockets with "tinned things and biscuit."
The next day they moved into the west wing, and that evening they had the Brownes to dine with them in the banquet hall. Deppingham awoke in the middle of the night with violent cramps in his stomach. He suffered in silence for a long time, but, the pain growing steadily worse, his stoicism gave way to alarm. A sudden thought broke in upon him, and with a shout that was almost a shriek he called for Antoine. The valet found him groaning and in a cold perspiration.
"Don"t say a word to Lady Deppingham," he grunted, sitting up in bed and gazing wildly at the ceiling, "but I"ve been poisoned. The demmed servants--ouch!--don"t you know! Might have known. Silly a.s.s! See what I mean? Get something for me--quick!"
For two hours Antoine applied hot water bags and soothing syrups, and his master, far from dying as he continually prophesied, dropped off into a peaceful sleep.
The next morning Deppingham, fully convinced that the native servants had tried to poison _him_, inquired of his wife if _she_ had felt the alarming symptoms. She confessed to a violent headache, but laid it to the champagne. Later on, the rather haggard victim approached Browne with subtle inquiries. Browne also had a headache, but said he wasn"t surprised. Fifteen minutes later, Deppingham, taking the bit in his quivering mouth, unconditionally discharged the entire force of native servants. He was still in a cold perspiration when he sent Saunders to tell his wife what he had done and what a narrow escape all of them had had from the treacherous Moslems.
Of course, there was a great upheaval. Lady Agnes came tearing down to the servants" hall, followed directly by the Brownes and Mr. Britt. The natives were ready to depart, considerably nonplussed, but not a little relieved.
"Stop!" she cried. "Deppy, what are you doing? Discharging them after we"ve had such a time getting them? Are you crazy?"
"They"re a pack of snakes--I mean sneaks. They"re a.s.sa.s.sins. They tried to poison every one of us last--"
"Nonsense! You ate too much. Besides, what"s the odds between being poisoned and being starved to death? Where is Mr. Britt?" She gave a sharp cry of relief as Britt came dashing down the corridor. "We must engage them all over again," she lamented, after explaining the situation. "Stand in the door, Deppy, and don"t let them out until Mr.
Britt has talked with them," she called to the disgraced n.o.bleman.
"They won"t stop for me," he muttered, looking at the half-dozen krises that were visible.
Britt smoothed the troubled waters with astonishing ease; the servants returned to their duties, but not without grumbling and no end of savage glances, all of which were levelled at the luckless Deppingham.
"By Jove, you"ll see, sooner or later," he protested, like the schoolboy, almost ready to hope that the servants would bear him out by doling out ample quant.i.ties of strychnine that very night.
"Why poison?" demanded Britt. "They"ve got knives and guns, haven"t they?"
"My dear man, that would put them to no end of trouble, cleaning up after us," said Deppingham, loftily.
The next day the horses were brought in from the valley, and the traps were put to immediate use. A half-dozen excursions were planned by the now friendly beneficiaries; life on the island, aside from certain legal restraints, began to take on the colour of a real holiday.
Two lawyers, each clever in his own way, were watching every move with the faithfulness of brooding hens. Both realised, of course, that the great fight would take place in England; they were simply active as outposts in the battle of wits. They posed amiably as common allies in the fight to keep the islanders from securing a single point of vantage during the year.
"If they hadn"t been in such a hurry to get married," Britt would lament.
"Do you know, I don"t believe a man should marry before he"s thirty, a woman twenty-six," Saunders would observe in return.
"You"re right, Saunders. I agree with you. I was married twice before I was thirty," reflected Britt on one occasion.
"Ah," sympathised Saunders. "You left a wife at home, then?"
"Two of "em," said Britt, puffing dreamily. "But they are other men"s wives now." Saunders was half an hour grasping the fact that Britt had been twice divorced.
Meanwhile, it may be well to depict the situation from the enemy"s point of view--the enemy being the islanders as a unit. They were prepared to abide by the terms of the will so long as it remained clear to them that fair treatment came from the opposing interests. Rasula, the Aratat lawyer, in ma.s.s meeting, had discussed the doc.u.ment. They understood its requirements and its restrictions; they knew, by this time, that there was small chance of the original beneficiaries coming into the property under the provisions. Moreover, they knew that a bitter effort would be made to break this remarkable instrument in the English courts. Their att.i.tude, in consequence, toward the grandchildren of their former lords was inimical, to say the least.
"We can afford to wait a year," Rasula had said in another ma.s.s meeting after the two months of suspense which preceded the discovery that grandchildren really existed. "There is the bare possibility that they may never marry each other," he added sententiously. Later came the news that marriage between the heirs was out of the question. Then the islanders laughed as they toiled. But they were not to be caught napping. Jacob von Blitz, the superintendent, stolid German that he was, saw far into the future. It was he who set the native lawyer unceremoniously aside and urged competent representation in London. The great law firm headed by Sir John Brodney was chosen; a wide-awake representative of the distinguished solicitors was now on his way to the island with the swarthy committee which had created so much interest in the metropolis during its brief stay.
Jacob von Blitz came to the island when he was twenty years old. That was twenty years before the death of Taswell Skaggs. He had worked in the South African diamond fields and had no difficulty in securing employment with Skaggs and Wyckholme. Those were the days when the two Englishmen slaved night and day in the mines; they needed white men to stand beside them, for they looked ahead and saw what the growing discontent among the islanders was sure to mean in the end.
Von Blitz gradually lifted labour and responsibility from their shoulders; he became a valued man, not alone because of his ability as an overseer, but on account of the influence he had gained over the natives. It was he who acted as intermediary at the time of the revolt, many years before the opening of this tale. Through him the two issues were pooled; the present co-operative plan was the result. For this he was promptly accepted by both sides as deserving of a share corresponding to that of each native. From that day, he cast his lot with the islanders; it was to him that they turned in every hour of difficulty.
Von Blitz was shrewd enough to see that the grandchildren were not coming to the island for the mere pleasure of sojourning there; their motive was plain. It was he who advised--even commanded--the horde of servants to desert the chateau. If they had been able to follow his advice, the new residents would have been without "help" to the end of their stay. The end of their stay, he figured, would not be many weeks from its beginning if they were compelled to dwell there without the luxury of servants. Bowles often related the story of Von Blitz"s rage when he found that the recalcitrants had been persuaded to resume work by the American lawyer.
He lived, with his three wives, in the hills just above and south of the town itself. The Englishmen who worked in the bank, and the three Boer foremen also, had houses up there where it was cooler, but Von Blitz was the only one who practised polygamy. His wives were Persian women and handsome after the Persian fashion.
There were many Persian, Turkish and Arabian women on the island, wives of the more potential men. It was no secret that they had been purchased from avaricious masters on the mainland, in Bagdad and Damascus and the Persian gulf ports--sapphires pa.s.sing in exchange. Marriages were performed by the local priests. There were no divorces. Perhaps there may have been a few more wife murders than necessary, but, if one a.s.sumes to call wife murder a crime, he must be reminded that the natives of j.a.pat were fatalists. In contradiction to this belief, however, it is related that one night a wife took it upon herself to reverse the lever of destiny: she slew her husband. That, of course, was a phase of fatalism that was not to be tolerated. The populace burned her at a stake before morning.
One hot, dry afternoon about a week after the reopening of the chateau, the siesta of a swarthy population was disturbed by the shouts of those who kept impatient watch of the sea. Five minutes later the whole town of Aratat knew that the smoke of a steamer lay low on the horizon. No one doubted that it came from the stack of the boat that was bringing Rasula and the English solicitor. Joy turned to exultation when the word came down from Von Blitz that it was the long-looked-for steamship, the _Sir Joshua_.
Just before dusk the steamer, flying the British colours, hove to off the town of Aratat and signalled for the company"s tug. There was no one in Aratat too old, too young or too ill to stay away from the pier and its vicinity. Bowles telephoned the news to the chateau, and the occupants, in no little excitement, had their tea served on the grand colonnade overlooking the town.
Von Blitz stood at the landing place to welcome Rasula and his comrades, and to be the first to clasp the hand of the man from London. For the first time in his life his stolidity gave way to something resembling exhilaration. He cast more than one meaning glance at the chateau, and those near by him heard him chuckle from time to time. The horde of natives seethed back and forth as the tug came running in; every eye was strained to catch the first glimpse of--Rasula? No! Of the man from Brodney"s!
At last his figure could be made out on the forward deck. His straw hat was at least a head higher than the turban of Rasula, who was indicating to him the interesting spots in the hills.
"He"s big," commented Von Blitz, comfortably, more to himself than to his neighbour. "And young," he added a few minutes later. Bowles, standing at his side, offered the single comment:
"Good-looking."
As the tall stranger stepped from the boat to the pier, Von Blitz suddenly started back, a look of wonder in his soggy eyes. Then, a thrill of satisfaction shot through his brain. He turned a look of triumph upon Britt, who had elbowed through the crowd a moment before and was standing close by.
The newcomer was an American!