The Yeoman Adventurer 25I Settle My Account with My Lord Brocton
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Literature · Historical Fiction
The Yeoman Adventurer 25
I Settle My Account with My Lord Brocton
GoughEnglish
Of how I fared the seas with Jonadab Kilroot, master of the stolid barque, "Merchant of London," I say nothing, or as good as nothing. Master Kilroot was a noisy, bulky man, with a whiff of the tar-barrel ever about him and a heart as stout as a ship's biscuit. He feared God always, and drubbed his men whenever it was necessary; in his estimation the office of sea-captain was the most important under heaven, and Master John Freake the greatest man on earth.
The ship remained at anchor in Dublin harbour while tailors and tradesmen of all sorts fitted me out, for Master Freake had given me guineas enough for a horse-load. I did very well, for Dublin is a vice-regal city, with a Parliament of its own and reasonable society, so that the modes and fashions are not more than a year or so behind London, which did not matter to a man going to the Americas.
From Dublin I wrote home. I had laid one strict injunction on Margaret. She was not to go to the Hanyards, or write there, or allow anyone else to do either. I would not suffer her to know, or to run any chance of knowing, about Jack. She was greatly troubled over the matter, but I was so decided that she consented to my demand. It cost me a world of pains to write. I wrote, rewrote, and tore up scores of letters. Finally I merely sent them word that I was going to America to wait till the trouble was blown over, and that I should be with them again as soon as possible. I gave them no address. It was cowardly, but I could not bring myself to it. The nightmare that haunted me was my going home, home to our Kate, the sweetest sister man ever had, with her young heart wrapped for ever in widow's weeds. I used to dream that I rode up to the yard-gate on Sultan, and every time, in my dream, the Hanyards looked so desolate and woebegone, as if the very barns and byres were mourning for the dear dead lad who had played amongst them, that I pulled Sultan round and spurred him away till he flew like the wind, and I woke up in a cold sweat.
On a Wednesday morning in the middle of February the "Merchant of London" swung into Boston Harbour on a full tide and was moored fast by the Long Wharf. Master Kilroot hurried me ashore to the house of the great Boston merchant, Mr. Peter Faneuil, to whom I carried a letter from Master Freake. It was enough. My friend's protecting arm reached across the Atlantic, and if it were part of my plan to tell at length of my doings in the New World, I should have much to say about this worthy merchant of Boston. He was earnest and assiduous in his kindness, and so far as my exile was pleasant he made it so.
Mr. Faneuil was urgent that I should take up my abode with him, but this I gratefully declined, and he thereon recommended me to lodge with the widow of a ship-captain who had been drowned in his service. So I took lodging with her at her house in Brattles Street, and she made me very comfortable. She had a daughter, a pretty frolic lass of nine, who promoted me uncle the first day, and one negro slave, who was the autocrat of the establishment till my coming put his nose out of joint, as we say in Staffordshire.
Master Kilroot unshipped most of his inward cargo and sailed away for Carolina and Virginia to get rice and tobacco. Then he would come back here to make up his return cargo with dried fish, to be exchanged at Lisbon for wine for England. This was his ordinary round of trade, and a very profitable traffic it was.
When he had left, I settled down to make my exile profitable. By a great slice of luck there was at this time in Boston an Italian, one Signor Zandra, who gave lessons in his native tongue openly and in the art of dancing secretly. The wealth of the town was growing apace; there was a leisured class, and, speaking generally, the Bostonians were alert of mind and desirous of knowledge above any other set of men I have ever lived among. In the near-by town of Cambridge there was a vigorous little university with more than a hundred students. Moreover, there was a rising political spirit which gave me a keen interest in the men who breathed the quick vital air of this vigorous new England. In many respects I found myself back in the times of Smite-and-spare-not Wheatman, captain of horse in the army of the Lord-General. The genuine, if somewhat narrow, piety of the Bostoneers reminded me of him, and still more their healthy critical attitude towards rulers in general and kings in particular. They had the old Puritan stuff in them too, for some eight months before they had captured Louisberg from the French, a famous military exploit which the great Lord-General would have gloried in.
My days were all twins to each other. Every morning, after breakfast, I went abroad and always the same way: past the quaint Town House, down King Street, and so on to the Long Wharf to see if a ship had come in from England, and to ask the captain thereof if he had brought a letter for one Oliver Wheatman at Mr. Peter Faneuil's. I got no letter and no news. Then, always a little sad in heart, I strolled back, and looked in at Wilkins' book-shop, where some of the town notables were always to be found, and where, one May morning, as I was higgling over the purchase of a fine Virgil, I made the acquaintance of a remarkable young gentleman, Mr. Sam Adams, a genius by birth, a maltster by trade, and a politician by choice. We would discuss books together in Master Wilkins', or slip out to a retired inn called "The Two Palaverers" and discuss politics over a glass of wine and a pipe of tobacco. I liked him so much that I was afraid to tell him I had been fighting for the Stuarts, and was content to pass in the role Mr. Faneuil had assigned to me of an ingenuous young English gentleman who had come out to study colonial matters on the spot before entering Parliament. Our talk over, I went on to Signor Zandra's and worked at Italian for two hours. Most days I took him back to my lodging for dinner and read and talked Italian with him for another hour or two. The rest of the day I gave to reading, exercising, and, thanks to the good merchant, to the best society in Boston.
Occasionally, when I knew for certain that no ship would clear for home for two or three days, I made little shooting journeys inland, but in the main this is how I spent my days, filling them with work and distraction so as not to have idle hours for idler thinking. Spring passed, summer came and went, and the leaves were turning from gold to brown when one morning, as I was at breakfast, Mr. Faneuil's man came in with a letter. It was from Master Freake, summoning me home as all was put right. It contained a few lines from Margaret, written in Italian. A ship was sailing for London that day, and I went on her.
Jonadab Kilroot had found his way across the Atlantic into Boston Harbour much more easily than I was finding mine across London to Master Freake's house in Queen Anne's Gate. It was after nine at night, at which late hour, of course, I did not intend to arouse the inmates, but I meant to find the place so that I could stand outside and imagine Margaret within, perchance dreaming of me. At last I observed that men with torches were clearly being used as guides through this black maze of streets, and I stopped one such and offered him a guinea to do his office for me. He was a lean, shabby, hungry-looking man, who might be forty by the look of him. He stared vacantly at me for a few seconds, and then hurriedly led the way, holding his link high over his head.
This trouble over, another began, which put me in a towering rage. A gaudy young gentleman bumped into me and, though it was clearly his fault, I apologized and passed on, leaving him hopping about on one foot and nursing the other, which I had trodden on. He swore at me worse than a boatswain at a lubber, and but for the exquisite pain I had caused him I should have gone into the matter with him. I found my linkman leaning against a post and laughing heartily.
"Never you mind, sir. He'll not take the wall of you again in a hurry."
"Take the wall?" I said.
"Done on purpose, sir, to pick a quarrel with you. The young sparks do it for a game."
Not much farther on, we met a sedan, with an elegant young lady in it, and an elegant gentleman walking along by her close up to the chains, she being in the roadway. There was ample room for me to pass between him and the wall, which was also the courteous thing to do; but as soon as my linkman had passed him, he shot clean in my way. I gave him all the wall he wanted and more, bumping his head against it till he apologized humbly through his rattling teeth. The lady shrieked viciously at me, and one of her chairmen, my back being turned, pulled out his pole and came to attack me. My man, however, very dexterously pushed the link in his face as he was straddling over the chains, and he dropped the pole and spat and spluttered tremendously. I stepped across to the lady and apologized for detaining her, and then my man and I went on, easy victors.
Arrived at Queen Anne's Gate, another surprise awaited me. Master Freake's windows were ablaze with light, and the door was being held open by a man in handsome livery to admit an exquisite gentleman and a more exquisite lady who had just arrived there in chairs. I gave my man his guinea, and after dousing his link in a great iron extinguisher at the side of the door, he sped happily away. After watching the arrival of three or four more chairs and one carriage, I summoned up all my resolution and gave a feeble rat-tat with the massive iron lion's-head which served as knocker.
The man in livery opened to me, and I was inside before he could observe that I was an intruder. True, I was in my best clothes--my Sunday clothes, as I should have called them at home--and they were none so bad; but they had been made in Boston, where fashions ranged on the sober side. Here I looked like a sparrow in a flight of bull-finches.
"Can I see Master Freake?" said I.
"No," said he, with uncompromising promptness.
"Is he at home?"
"No," he retorted.
"This is his house, I think?"
"It is," he assented.
"Then I suppose all these people are coming to see you--and cook," said I gravely.
The sarcasm might have got through his thick skin perhaps but for the intervention of another liveried gentleman, who briefly asserted that I was "off my head," and proposed a muster of forces to throw me out. My own feeling distinctly was that I was on my head, not off it; but his suggestion interested me, as I do not take readily to being thrown out of anything or anywhere. Luckily, a fresh arrival took their attention off me for a minute or two, and while I was standing aside to admire the lady, who should come statelily down the grand staircase into the hall but Dot Gibson. He too was in livery, but of a grave, genteel sort.
"Hello, Dot," said I, accosting him quietly.
It bounced all the gravity out of him. He shook my outstretched hand vigorously, and then apologized for doing so, saying he was so glad to see me. "Jorkins, you great ass," cried he to the first servant, "what do you mean by keeping his honour waiting?"
Jorkins looked apprehensively at Dot and the suggester of violence looked apprehensively at Jorkins; but Dot was too full to bother with them, and went on: "Mr. Freake will be delighted, sir, and so will Miss Waynflete. They're always talking of you. Come along, sir! Allow me to precede you."
He took me upstairs into the library, and left me there alone. In a few seconds Master Freake burst in on me.
"My dear lad," he cried, wringing my hand heartily, "welcome--a thousand times welcome!"
"Thank you, sir. I'm glad to be back," was all I could say.
He put a hand on each shoulder and stood at arm's length to examine me.
"And we're glad to have you back, looking as fit and brown as a bronze gladiator. Come along to your room! It's been ready for you this three months, for that silly Margaret set to work on it the very day we sent off your letter."
"How is Mistress Waynflete, sir?"
"You'll see in five minutes if you'll only bestir yourself. The wits say that there's no need for George to furnish the town with a new queen as I have provided it with an empress."
He hurried me off to my room, as he called it, and it was so grand that I crept about it on tiptoe for fear of damaging something. There was everything a young man could want except clothes, and Master Freake laughingly assured me that they (meaning Margaret and himself) had puzzled for hours to see if they could manage them, but had given it up in despair.
"I declared you'd pine and get thin," he said, "and she vowed you'd get lazy and fat."
I felt very doltish and unready as I followed him to the drawing-room. It was very clear to me that no meeting on level terms was in front of me, and when I got into a large, brilliant room where some dozen splendid ladies and as many elegant, easy-mannered gentlemen were assembled, I felt inclined to turn tail.
"Empress." It was the exact word. Master Freake put his arm in mine and led me towards her. She was sitting throned in one corner of a roomy, cushioned sofa, with half a dozen young men--the least of them an earl, I thought bitterly--bending round her as the brethren's sheaves bent round Joseph's. And, as if she were not overpowering enough of herself, everything that consummate skill and the nicest artistry could do to enhance her beauty had been done. Juno banqueting with the gods had not looked more superb. "On level terms," I whispered to myself mockingly, as Master Freake led me on, for one of the circling sheaves, with whom she was exchanging easy, lightsome banter, was my finely chiselled acquaintance, the Marquess of Tiverton.
Except that she cut a quip in two when she saw who it was that Master Freake was bringing, Margaret gave no sign of surprise. She neither paled nor reddened, nor gushed nor faltered. Empress-like she simply added me to her train.
"I bring you an old friend, Margaret," said Master Freake, for whom, as I saw, the worshippers round the idol made way respectfully.
"And my old friend is very welcome, sir," she answered, holding out her hand. I bowed over it and kissed it. I thought that it trembled a little as it lay in mine, but it is at least probable that I was the source of what fluttering there was.
"I trust you have had a good voyage, Mr. Wheatman?" she questioned easily.
"Excellent, madam," I replied, with imitative lightness of tone. "It was like rowing on a river."
For a moment her eyes steadied and darkened, then she said with a smile, "That being so, even I, who am no sailor, should have enjoyed it along with you."
This was how we met. Whether on level terms or not, who shall decide?
"I say, Mr. Wheatman," broke in the pleasant voice of the Marquess, "you don't happen to have any venison-pasty on you, I suppose? I've got some rattling good snuff, and I'll give you a pinch for a plateful, as I did up in Staffordshire. I vow, Miss Waynflete, it makes me hungry to see him."
This speech caused much laughter, and Margaret said it was fortunate supper was ready. She then introduced me to the company around, and when this was done, Master Freake fetched me to renew the acquaintance of Sir James Blount and his lady, so that I was soon full of talk and merriment.
Supper and talk, wine and talk, basset and talk--so the time went by till long after midnight. Then one by one the guests dropped off. The Marquess lingered longest, and on going, pledged me to call on him next morning.
"At last," said Margaret. "Beauty sleep is out of the question to-night, Oliver, so tell us everything about everything. It's glorious to have you back."
It is not my purpose to dwell on my life in London. After a few days it became one long agony because of, but not by means of, Margaret. She did her best for me, and was all patience, kindness, and graciousness, and was plainly bent on living on level terms with me according to her promise and prophecy. It only required a day or two to show me that she had many a man of rank and wealth in thrall. As wealth went then, the Marquess of Tiverton was, by his own fault and foolishness, a poorish man, but he was lost in love of her, and he was only one of the many exquisites who were for ever in and out of Master Freake's fine mansion. It did not become a Wheatman of the Hanyards to cringe or be abashed in any company, and with the best of them I kept on terms of ease and intimacy. I dressed as well, and perchance looked as well, as they did, and if my accomplishments differed from theirs they differed for the better in Margaret's eyes, which were the only eyes that mattered.
Brief as I intend to be, I must set down a few jottings on things that belong to the texture of my story. To begin with, the Colonel, though pardoned, was still in France, looking after his affairs there, for before starting to join the Prince he had wisely shifted all his fortune over to Paris.
Davie Ogilvie had got clear away after Culloden, and his sweet Ishbel, though taken after the battle, had been permitted to join him there. It was a great comfort to know they were safe, for there were sad relics of my escapade in London--the row of ghastly, grinning heads over Temple Bar.
Soon after my arrival, Master Freake had sent for his lawyers and delivered to me in full possession the Upper Hanyards and the huge tale of guineas which the rascal old earl had disgorged as the price of the letter. Master Freake kept a rigid silence over the contents of that famous document "about lands," and I had no wish to know. It was worth a thousand acres and near ten thousand guineas to the Earl. I was satisfied if he was. I put my guineas in a bank of Master Freake's choosing. What a dowry I could have given Kate if--
My Lord Brocton was in town. I saw him several times, in the street or at the play, but took no notice of him. He was said to be eagerly hunting after a lady of meagre attractions but enormous fortune. Twice when I saw him he had with him the fellow I had bumped against the wall, a notorious shark and swashbuckler, by name and rank Sir Patrick Gee. Tiverton, who had his own reasons for being interested in Brocton, told me they were hand and glove together.
In a little while a month may be, a change came over the relation in which Margaret and I stood to each other. We both fought against it but in vain. We could not travel on parallel lines, we two. We must either converge or diverge, and fate had given me no choice.
I used to pretend I was going out, to ride or lounge with the Marquess or some other acquaintance, and then slip upstairs to the quiet old library, bury myself in a windowed recess cut off by curtains, and try to forget it all in a book. Fool-like I thought I could solve my problem so. The Hanyards was calling me and I dared not go. I should leave Margaret, and I could not leave her.
Why, I asked myself a thousand times, was I so poor a cur compared with Donald? He had done what I had done, and he had seen his way at once and followed it. He would not live, having, in all innocence and with the most urgent of all reasons, killed his friend. Not that I felt that his solution was my solution. My duty was to leave Margaret and to go to Kate, to help her, to the best of my ability, to live down her sorrow, and to show by my life and conduct that I would pay the price. And here I was, hovering moth-like round the flame.
Then again I would say that I would wait till the inevitable had happened, and Margaret was married to Tiverton. Anything to put it off, that was really all I was capable of.
To me, in my recess, Margaret came one morning.
"I thought you'd gone out, Oliver," she began.
"No," said I. "I altered my mind, and thought I'd like reading better."
"You puzzle me. Are you quite well?"
"As fit as a fiddle," said I cheerily, and rose to give her my seat, for the recess would only hold one.
"You're not to move, sir."
She fetched a couple of cushions, flung them by the window, and curled up on them. I wished she wouldn't, for she made a glorious picture.
"Now, sir, I am going to have it out with you," she said severely and smilingly. I smiled back, and pulled myself together.
"I hope 'it' is not a very serious 'it,' madam," I replied.
"It may be. Does your head ever trouble you?"
"My head ever trouble me?" I gasped, taken aback.
"Yes, your head, sir. When you fell down those stairs you received a very serious wound on the head. It gaped open so that I could have laid a finger in the hole. Are you sure it doesn't trouble you, Oliver? Blows on the head are dreadful things, you know."
"Look at it," said I, popping my head down, and very glad of the chance.
Her beautiful fingers parted my thick, short, bristly hair and found the spot.
"There's nothing wrong with the skull, is there?" I asked.
"No," very doubtfully. "It's healed splendidly."
"Now, madam," said I, "talk to me in Italian!"
It was the first time, by chance, that I had thought of it.
For ten minutes she questioned and cross-questioned me in Italian on all sorts of subjects, and I came out of the ordeal pretty well--thanks to Signor Zandra.
"Point one," said I in English. "The outside of my head is all right. Point two: are you satisfied with the inside?"
For a full minute she gazed in silence at her feet, twisting them about swiftly and somewhat forgetfully. It was trying, almost merciless, for she was very beautiful.
"Yes," she said at length, but without looking at me. "You've done marvellously well."
"In the only language one can love in," I said bitterly.
The words had no apparent effect. She still stared at her twinkling feet. Suddenly she lifted her eyes up to mine and said, almost sharply, "Then what did happen to you between the Hanyards and Leek to change you?"
It was clean, swift hitting, and made me gasp, but I managed to escape.
"Madam," said I, "I set out with you from the Hanyards to serve you and for no other purpose whatsoever. In my opinion, speaking in all modesty, I served you as well after Leek as before it. At least, I tried to."
She leaped up, and, with great sweeps of her arm, flung the cushions into the library. She said briefly, "And you succeeded, sir!" Then she left me. swiftly and passionately, without another word or look.
After this, the gap between us became obvious.
Meanwhile the Marquess of Tiverton was doing his best to give me a competent knowledge of the Court-end of the town. He had a spacious mansion in Bloomsbury Square, but this was now let to a great nabob, and he himself lived in close-shorn splendour in a small house in St. James's. Here I saw much of him, for commonly I would stroll round late in the forenoon and rout him out of bed. By an odd turn we took to each other greatly, and while he drank chocolate in bed or trifled with his breakfast we had many talks on the few subjects that mattered to him.
Our favourite theme was Margaret, whom he outspokenly worshipped. He rhapsodized over her in great stretches, calling me to testify with him to her divineness, and rating me soundly if, in the bitterness of my heart, I was a little laggard in my devotions. And, at irregular intervals, like Selah in the Psalms, he would intone dolefully, "And I can't marry her!"
It was no use my protesting that an unmarried man could marry any woman he liked if she would have him.
"A man can," he would reply, "but a bankrupt marquess can't. I've got to marry that jade. Pah! She's as lank as a hop-pole and as yellow as a guinea. But what's a marquess to do, Noll? They say she could tie up the neck and armholes of her shift and fill it with diamonds. Damn her! I wish Brocton would snap her up, but he can't. He'll never be more than an earl and I'm a marquess. Curse my luck! Fancy me a marquess! I'm a disgrace to my order and as poor as a crow."
The 'jade' referred to was the nabob's only daughter and heiress, who was, as all the town knew, to make a great match. My Lord Brocton was keenly in pursuit of her, but she inclined to the Marquess, who could have had her and her vast fortune any day for the asking. She was certainly not overdone with charms, but Tiverton in his anger had made her out worse than she was.
The morning after my encounter with Margaret in the recess, Tiverton was more than usually talkative, the fact being not unconnected, I imagine, with an unsuccessful bout at White's the night previous. We got through our usual talk about Margaret and the nabobess, and then he struck out a new line.
"Now if the divine Margaret," he said, "rightly so named as the pearl of great price among women, were only Freake's daughter and heiress, I'd be on my knees before her in a jiffy. They say he made cartfuls of money over that Jacobite business. Everybody here was selling at any price the stocks would fetch, and he was buying right and left on his own terms. He was back here, knowing of the retreat from Derby, over twenty-four hours before the courier came, and the old fox kept the news to himself. He's the first man out of the city to set up house in the Court-end. Old Borrowdell shifted his tabernacle as far west as Hatton Gardens in my father's time, and that was thought pretty big and bold, but here's Freake right in the thick of it, and holds his own like a lion among jackals. Fact is, he's a right-down good fellow. Being a marquess, I ought to despise him, 'stead of which I feel like a worm whenever he comes near me, and that, mark ye, Noll, not because I owe him close on ten thousand. I used to owe a rascal named Blayton quite as much, and every time he came whining round here I either wanted to kick him out or did it. Heigh-ho! I'm in the very devil of a mess but I'll cheat scraggy-neck yet. I'll reform outright, Noll. I'll never touch a card again as long as I live."
"That's the talk!" said I heartily. "Eat something and let's have the horses out for a gallop across Putney Heath."
Next evening, early, being very miserable, I went round to the Blounts, with whom I was very friendly. I forgot myself for a time, it being impossible to think of anything while lying on my back on the hearth, with baby Blount trying to pull my hair out by the roots and cutting a stubborn tooth on my nose. He was a delightful, pitiless, young rascal and would leave anything and anybody to maul me about.
I had, however, for once mistaken my billet, for while thus engaged who should come in with his mother but Margaret?
"Aren't you afraid to trust baby with such an inexperienced nurse?" asked Margaret, smiling at my discomfiture, for I had to lie there till I was rescued from the young dog's clutches.
"Not at all. When he's with a baby, he becomes a baby, which is what they want. He'll make an ideal father, don't you think?" said her ladyship happily.
"I think he will," said Margaret in a very judicial tone, but she coloured as she said it.
While Lady Blount disposed of baby, Margaret beckoned me aside. "Oliver, you'll do me a favour, won't you?" she asked.
"Certainly," said I.
"As I came here in a chair, I saw the Marquess going into White's. I fear he may be gambling again. He easily yields to the temptation, and soon becomes reckless. Will you call in, as if by chance, and coax him out? I would have him saved from himself, and you have great influence over him."
"If he won't come out," said I, smiling, "I'll lug him out!"
I excused myself to Lady Blount and set forth on my errand, willingly enough, since she desired it and I liked him, but all the way I thought of her anxious face as she asked me.
At White's I found Tiverton playing piquet with Brocton. A heap of guineas was by his side, and he was flushed and excited with success. The bout had attracted some attention, for the stakes were running high, and eight or nine men were gathered round the players, among them Sir Patrick Gee. I waited while the hand was played out. Tiverton repiqued his opponent, and joyously raked over to his side of the table four tall piles of guineas.
It was my first meeting with Brocton. Chance and Margaret had brought us together again.
"Egad, Tiverton," said I to the Marquess, who now first observed me, "you had the cards that time with a vengeance. Are you playing on? What about your engagement with me?"
The Marquess coloured slightly at my veiled rebuke. He looked doubtfully at his watch, then at me, and finally at Brocton.
"Have you had enough?" he asked.
"Enough?" cried Brocton. "Since you took up with farmers you've got chicken-hearted at cards. Play on, my lord!"
"I have told you," said I quietly to Brocton, "that his lordship has an engagement with me. That should be enough. If you want your revenge, which is natural, there are other nights available."
"I want my revenge now, and will have it," he said meaningly, "and this is how I serve men who come between me and my revenge." He was shuffling a pack of cards as he spoke, and, with the words, he flung them in my face.
At most of the tables play stopped, and the players there became silently intent on this new game where the stakes ran highest of all. It meant a fight, a fight between an expert swordsman and a man who knew nothing of the craft. To such a fight there could be but one end.
Tiverton was beside himself. "She'll never forgive me!" he muttered, and I looked amusedly at him and whispered, "Who? The nabobess?"
He was the highest in rank there, and as such a court of appeal and a sort of master of the ceremonies.
"My Lord Tiverton," said I aloud, "I am, as you know, a recent arrival in town from the Americas and other outlandish places, and, naturally enough under these circumstances, I am not clear on some points."
"It's clear you've been swiped across the face," broke in Sir Patrick Gee.
"Hold your tongue, sir!" said Tiverton, looking quietly at him. "Proceed, Mr. Wheatman!"
It made me smile again, tight as the corner was, to see the play-acting spirit creeping over him. He was beginning to enjoy himself.
"Therefore, my lord, I should like to ask you a few questions," I continued.
"Certainly, sir," he replied, with great impressiveness, taking snuff in great style while he awaited my questioning.
"Is there any doubt that I am the insulted person?"
"None whatever," he replied. "My Lord Brocton insulted you wantonly and deliberately."
"Then, my lord Marquess, I may be wrong, but I think I have the right of choosing the place, the time, and the weapons."
"Certainly, Mr. Wheatman," he answered.
"Then if I choose to say, 'On the banks of the Susquehanna, ten years hence, with tomahawks,' so it must be?"
A wave of scornful laughter went round the room as the question passed from mouth to mouth. Even the most ardent gamblers left their play to join the circle around us. English even in their vices, they took a fight for granted, but were up in a moment to see some fun.
The Marquess was disconcerted. He obviously felt that I was about to reflect on him in the gravest way; that, in short, I was backing out. He would be tarnished by the dishonour that had driven me out of the world of gentlemen.
"I think," said he, "that would be overstraining the privileges of an insulted gentleman."
"Run away, farmer!" bellowed Sir Patrick raucously.
Tiverton looked disdainfully at him. "You may like to know, my lords and gentlemen," he said, as grandly as if he were reciting a set piece from the stage, "that on the night of his arrival from Boston my friend was rudely insulted in the Strand by a certain person." Here he stopped, whirled round on the hulking scoundrel, and added grimly to him, "I shall finish the story unless you leave the room at once."
Gee thought better of it and slipped off like a disturbed night-prowler.
"Thank you, my lord," said I very humbly, "for your decision. I hope my unavoidable ignorance entitles me to try again."
"Certainly," said he, but with unmistakable uncertainty.
I looked round the intent curious circle of faces and then at Brocton. On his face and in his cruel eyes there were the same gloating anticipations that were there when, in Marry-me-quick's cottage, he thought he was bending Margaret to his foul will. You could have heard a card drop in that crowded room.
My time had come to the tick. Stretching myself taut, I said slowly and distinctly, "Here. Now. Fists."
Brocton went limp and ghastly. I strode up to him, took him, unresisted, by the scruff of the neck, and then said curtly, "Open the door, Tiverton."
The willing little Marquess ran delightedly to do my bidding, and I kicked my lord Brocton into the kennel and out of my life.
Next morning I went round to Tiverton's as usual, and while he was at breakfast, and we were starting our usual round of talk, in came Sir James Blount, a stranger at such an hour.
"Have you heard the news?" he asked abruptly.
"What news?" asked Tiverton, rather sour at being cheated out of his morning's consolatory grumble with me.
"Mr. Freake has declared that Miss Waynflete is to be his sole heiress," he replied.
I had to thump Tiverton to prevent him being choked by something that went the wrong way. We had an excited talk about the news, which Sir James had received direct from Master Freake, which settled it as a fact beyond dispute or change. Margaret was now the most desirable match in London from every point of view. Blount went away quite pleased with the stir he had made.
"Henry! Henry!" yelled Tiverton as soon as we were alone, and in came his man hastily. "Henry! What the devil do you mean by putting me into these old rags? Damme! I look like a chairman. Go and get some decent things out, you old rascal! I'm to call on the greatest lady in London town."
He hurried off after his servant, and I heard him singing and shouting over his second toilet. I crept miserably out of the house and made my way to the mews. The ostler saddled my horse, a beautiful chestnut mare which Master Freake had given me, and I rode out of town, deep in thought. Mechanically, I went the way we had intended to go, and found myself at last on the heights that overlook London from the north. Then I pulled up.
The towers of the Abbey stood out nobly against the steel-blue sky. Within their shadow was Master Freake's house where, by now, Tiverton would not have pleaded his love in vain. I saw her there, in the splendid room she always dimmed with her greater splendour, the exquisite Marquess at her feet, happy in possession of the pearl of great price. Over this vision a shadow came, and I saw the house-place at the Hanyards, with our widowed Kate alone in her sorrow. Her flame-red hair was white as snow and tears of blood were on her cheeks. Donald's farewell, Weird mun hae way, boomed in my ears like a dirge. With a sigh that was near of kin to a sob, I pulled the mare round and urged her northwards, northwards and homewards.
In my fear and trembling I shirked everything, doing childishly and more than childishly. I was not on Sultan, and when I rode out of Lichfield I hugged that simple fact to my heart. So much of my dream had at least not come true, and I gave the lie to more of it by leaving the high road and wandering devious ways till, within four or five miles of home, I left even the by-ways and kept to the fields. So keen was I on my little stratagems that I rode over the Upper Hanyards without once recalling the fact that it was now mine as it had been my father's before me. About four o'clock on a December day, just over a year since leaving home, I leaped the mare over a hedge and was at the old gate.
More of the dream was untrue. The winter sun was dropping down to the hill-tops like a great carbuncle set in gold, and the Hanyards was all aglow in its flaming rays. The gate was open, so that I could at least begin by pitching into Joe Braggs for his negligence, and the windows of the house-place shimmered a welcome because of the cheerful blaze within.
Not a soul stirred. I jumped down, threw the reins over the gate-post, and walked stealthily into the yard and up to the window. Still not a soul stirred.
I peeped in.
There was our Kate, leaning lovingly over my chair, pillowed as she had never pillowed it for me, and in the chair was clearly a man, for I could see his stockings and breeches stretching comfortably past her skirts. She laughed merrily at something said, and then stooped and kissed the person in the chair.
This was woman's faith! With a great clatter, I strode into the porch, thrust open the door, and stepped in. There was a shout of delight, a babble of, "It's our Noll! It's our Noll!" and Kate leaped into my arms and rained kisses on me.
The man followed her, slowly and feebly, leaning heavily on a stick. When he turned his face so that the firelight showed him up, my legs sank beneath me and my knees knocked together. It was Jack, dear old Jack, nothing but the shadow of himself, but still Jack right enough, and his hand was in mine.
"Run, Kit!" he cried. "Get some wine! The lad's overcome. God bless you, old Noll, how are you?"
Kate ran off into the parlour, where our wine was stored.
"Jack!"
"Hello, Noll!"
"I thought I'd killed you."
"Was it you?" he asked, all amazed at my self-accusation.
"Yes," I faltered.
"By gom, Noll, you did give me a sock!"
He heard Kate tripping back with the wine, and put his finger on his lips for a warning. And that was the first and last remark Jack Dobson made on the subject.
