mr. tuke, as a result of his grudging sop to respectability, had brought about nothing more definite than some unprofitable temporizing. no doubt this served him well right, and was a lesson to him to be more particular for the future in his dealings with his own conscience. for that same usurer will think nothing of charging a hundred per cent. on the least little matter of “accommodation.”
to choose the lesser of two advantages is thought a virtue by some; but then to be held kicking one’s heels between them both becomes a grievous injustice. this hardship our friend thought himself to suffer, and was very morose and discontented in consequence.
does any one think meanly of this gentleman that he could fly for comfort of a legitimate suit gone awry to a humbler breast than it was his temptation to use and bruise? i can only offer the defence that pure-hearted betty thought none the less of him for doing so, and that to no sweeter mentor could any foundering soul submit its ethological perplexities. for the question of “taste”—let him decide who is the best authority on the right cut of a coat. but passion, i believe, is not grounded on any conventional knowledge of what is fitting.
now, for some weeks, the master of “delsrop” led a very solitary and rather crabbed life. debarred, by the simplest honour, from going whither his heart would have conducted him, he yet resented the necessity of a self-denial that would probably in the end prove itself futile. miss royston might, he had some ground for believing, favour his suit eventually, could he submit to her his sufficient credentials. yet, though he had committed himself to a rather negative declaration; though he perceived his most honest and most reasonable course would be to set himself right in that lady’s eyes; though he felt no umbrage at her caution, which was certainly under the circumstances justifiable, he could not altogether whip himself away from the temptation to solve the problem of an explanation by—doing nothing at all.
he succeeded in at least scotching that snake. but he dared not let his thoughts run on betty, or on the sweetness and innocence that, to the beast in man, are such lures to brutality. it is only when the blood runs aged that we can look on any extreme beauty of nature without wishing to obscure it, so unbearable to our diseased perceptions is the flawless.
at length he made up his mind to the right course. christmas was over and done with—a somewhat dismal hermit-time to him—and early in the new year blythewood and his sister were to journey to london. he would ride with them; would spend a few days in town, and while there, would endeavour to induce the lawyer creel to some explanation of that enigma of his inheritance. surely, with such an object in view as a union with a lady of a certain rank and position, he would not be refused those credentials he desired.
he was further urged to this decision by the fact that his house was now properly served, and that since that night of his furniture’s arrival, there had been no evidence but that mr. breeds’s unhonoured guests had withdrawn finally from the neighbourhood. dennis he would leave in general charge, with strict orders as to the protection of the premises during his absence.
so matters were ordered; and about the second week in january the party set forth. the baronet and his sister posted; but their neighbour, to whom a saddle was the most sans souci of conveyances, rode his own horse.
the weather was bitterly cold, with a perpetual menacing look in all the stony vault of the sky, and the journey, till near its termination, quite uneventful.
they did not start by way of stockbridge; but, to mr. tuke’s relief, took cross-tracks for a number of miles, and struck the london road at basinstoke, where they dined. he rode at their wheel, or not, as circumstance permitted, and angela was gracious or peevish with him according to her mood.
perhaps his own varied. after dinner his heart would sing jocundly: “she unites sense with beauty, and hath a hundred charms of wit and winsomeness. i am a fool to doubt.”
then he would murmur: “am i frighted by the shadow of my own past? i will carry her in the teeth of it all. none but the brave deserve the fair.”
and so presently to the reaction—the fall of enthusiasm’s temperature in the chill of some icy response when digestion needed a stimulus.
“none but the brave deserve immunity from the fair,” thought he. “these old saws want mending.”
and maybe he was right; for even an axiom will not endure for ever, but will wear out like a book-block, and come to leave a faint impression.
they slept at the “white hart” at hook—whither an outrider had preceded them to bespeak beds—and were to make an end of their journey by the evening of the morrow.
on that following day all went awry. the little baronet had been free with his bottle overnight, and was, for him, in a very sour and cross-grained condition. the water they had found frozen in the ewers; the soap curdled—as it will in very cold weather—in the dishes. the chimney had, and the venison had been, smoked. the waiters received vails proportionate with the mood of the party, and showed some consequent surliness in bidding it on its way.
for half the morning mr. tuke jogged in the rear of the chaise, cursing the ice-bound road and the ringing cold. angela sat amongst her furs pink-eyed, like a ferret looking out of straw; and sir david nursed his sick head, and exclaimed spasmodically over the infernal jolting; for the sludgy track—some eighteen inches deep in mud during the most of the winter—that was the exeter road, was now petrified into furrows like those in a bed of larva.
often a horse would slip and fall, flinging its stiffened postillion; and then there would be bitter delay, and the unbuckling of straps with blue ineffectual hands, and much breathing of oaths and stamping of deadened feet; while low in the desolate welkin the sun looked on with dim unconcerned eye, as if it were some senile monarch, conscious only of private cosiness while gazing through a frosted window on a little township of suffering.
and so on again presently, crashing and pounding, the boys towelling their cattle for mere exercise of their own numbed fingers, the cat-ice splintering in the ruts, the chaise dancing wildly in its straps.
fortunately there was no snow; though the sky bore evidence in its appearance of such garnered stores of it as could, at a nod, sow the world with winter.
it was an hour past noon when our party drew up, in no very sweet temper, at the door of the “catherine wheel” at egham, where they were to stop for dinner.
they thawed a little during the meal, and were even amiable, one with the other, after a guarded fashion. sir david was the victim of nothing more than some physical discomfort; but his two companions suffered yet under a species of misunderstanding that circumstance only could put an end to; and in the meanwhile it was inevitable that their mutual relations should be marked by some coldness and embarrassment.
the “regulator” coach, from exeter to london, clattered up in the frost and stopped to change horses while they were at table. they heard the half-dead “outsides” stumping about in the bar and calling for mulled port and nantes brandy to warm them on to the next stage; and had a glimpse, through the lattice, of the vehicle itself—chocolate in hue and traced all over with gilt lettering like a christmas calendar; of a happy-faced young woman who sat, hugging a little boy in her lap, on the “gammon-board” of the roof; and of a kit-kat presentment of an arrogant-visaged young gentleman, with a brown silk handkerchief tied about his head, who leaned out of the drag window, to the huge discomfort of the other “insides,” and amused himself by endeavouring to scrape with a tooth-pick the paint off the bull’s head on the panel of the door.
this latter sight sent mr. tuke back in his chair with an involuntary start—which miss royston noticed.
“do you know the gentleman?” she said, jumping to a conclusion.
“i? yes—i recognize him, i think.”
“oh, indeed! and who is he, may i ask?”
“’tis dunlone—lord dunlone. i have met him. we were in the way of being friends, in fact.”
he thought to himself: “the fellow goes townwards from his cornish place. ’tis in sort with his cursed parsimony to stage it like a provident cit.”
“i will excuse you, if you wish to go speak with him,” said miss angela.
“not in the least. i should poorly requite myself for the loss of your society.”
she laughed, with a faint insolence of inflection. only one reason, it seemed to her, could be for his refusing to act upon the acquaintanceship he claimed—that he feared to put it to the test. was it possible he was the nobleman’s valet? she mused, recalling that other case.
he sat on, unwitting of her meditations; but he felt a degree of relief, nevertheless, when the guard of the “regulator”—a confident, red-faced young fellow, in a bottle-green coat and with a sprig of mistletoe in his hat—sounded his horn, disposed his reluctant passengers, swung himself up over the hind-boot, chucked the rosy young woman, to the gazer’s high approval, under the chin, and gave the signal to start; and it was without regret that he saw that straining vehicle draw away with a rumbling of wheels, and the unwelcome vision pass from his ken. for he had no mind to recall a certain phase of his life, from which he could have sworn, years of reformation bridged him.
by two o’clock they were on their way again, and, as the dusk gathered, so did their gloom and reserve seem to deepen. indeed, the horseman felt it a positive relief when dark shut in upon them still urging onwards, for so the perils of the road were his sufficient excuse for keeping himself apart and without the influence of that depressing atmosphere.
driving on desperately, in a struggling flurry to escape being benighted on some impassable waste, they struck the track by and by across hounslow heath, and put on what additional speed they durst over that open and historic ground.
a crimson spot of light that, upon their first issuing on to the flats, had seemed the low-down radiance of some far cottage-window, grew in lustre as they advanced, until it flared before them, a leaping flame. thereupon they slackened speed somewhat, moving with caution; and the horseman dropped a hand towards his holster.
a hundred yards further, and the flame became a fire dancing redly by the roadside; and there were shadows flitting about it, and, close by, a looming mass that threw back little spars and runlets of reflection to the spouting blaze.
clipping indecision with a jerk of his rowels, mr. tuke uttered a shout and rode down upon the group. there was an answering cry; and he saw a figure or two throw up its hands, dramatically entreating him to a halt. something he noticed in time to respond, and pulled up his horse with so great a suddenness upon the icy road, that the brute sank upon its haunches and half-tumbled him out of the saddle.
he was on the ground in a moment, and, whipping the frightened animal to its feet, moved towards the fire and was made way for by those about it.
he looked down. the body of a man lay uncouthly flung beside the glow—that had been built up hastily of brushwood and dead sticks in a hopeless effort to rekindle a late-extinguished spark of life. the flame painted the waxen face and fallen jaw with a hectic mockery of vitality, and glinted on a dribbling splash in the forehead where something had crushed in through the very ring of a cherished love-lock.
a woman was down upon the grass by the figure—moaning to it, caressing it, with some piteous shame of the awful publicity of her conduct; for she would not believe in the impotence of her agony to rouse that silent shape to any responsive gesture; and, in the background of her thoughts, was some insane speculation as to how, when all was right again, she should hold her terror an apology for her emotion.
close behind her stood a little crying boy, his fingers in his eyes; and it was moving to see how, in the youngling’s cap and in the breast of the kneeling woman, were merry knots of christmas—earnests of a thoughtless time.
“the guard?” murmured the new-comer.
he grasped the situation with only too sure an intuition. the glooming mass in the road was nothing less than that same lusty vehicle they had seen but an hour or two before rumble away from the inn-door, its jovial horn answering to the lips of that formless thing by the fire.
“aye,” grunted the coachman, from the covert of his preposterous neckcloth. he had come up on the moment, from the task of slowly manipulating his cut traces.
“that’s the last of charlie,” he said, with some thickness of fury in his tone.
“no, no!” moaned up the woman. “not the last—my god, no!”
“don’t take on, my dear,” he said. “charlie done his dooty like a man; and there’s not a coach vheel ’ll go over that there patch on the road but ’ll roll up a bloody account agen his murderers.”
she only sighed miserably in answer. the deep apathy of grief was in her veins like a drug.
“how many?” said tuke.
“six, if there was vun, sir. six cursed ruffians to dance agen the sky and serve the crows for black pudden, so be there’s any vally in the fellowship of the road.”
he shook his pillow of an arm aloft—finely, for all the heavy oddity of his appearance.
“aye,” he murmured, in response to a gesture—“the man’s wife and his youngster.”
at the word a woman—one from the huddled group of robbed and terrified passengers—came out into the glow, and snatching up the child, forced it whimpering into its mother’s arms. the act was well conceived. the desolate creature caught at the hope, and held it convulsively against her breast; and in a moment her burdened heart found relief.
mr. tuke backed silently. “no,” the coachman had growled to him—“he wanted no help. he could get on well enough now. there was nothing for it but to complete his crippled stage, and as quickly as possible set the law in motion.”
the chaise, with its occupants, was drawn up at a little distance from the tragic scene. as the horseman made for it, eager to reassure his friends that any cause for present alarm was passed, he was aware of a figure standing by the door and addressing those within in exceedingly tremulous tones.
“i’ve had enough of it, curse me!” it was saying. “’twould be a sick thing to travel with that dead rascal banging on the roof; and the cursed coachman refuses to go without him. i’ve been robbed of fifty pound, by god! and i’ll take it exceeding civil of you to give me a lift over the last stages.”
“indeed,” said miss angela’s clear voice—“we shall be very happy, lord dunlone.”
“who the deuce told you my name—who, now?”
he could hardly stand still in his fear and excitement; but kept pulling at the handle of the door in a nervous effort to turn it.
“who told you?” he said. “curse it! can’t some one help me?”
“go steady at it,” came sir david’s voice. “we’re not tryin’ to overreach you, sir. ’twas a friend—common to both of us, i understand—mr. tuke, who saw you in the coach at egham.”
“tuke—tuke! i don’t know any one of the name. here—give me a hand, will you?”
he plunged into the vehicle, and the door snapped on him. the listener retreated softly into the rearward shadows. he had forgotten that this undesirable acquaintance was amongst the passengers; and it was some amelioration of the tragedy to hear that he had been stripped clean. he waited silent while the chaise kept its place—which it did only a few minutes before the nobleman’s peevish voice sounded, cursing the postillions to a move.
then he went to the help of the coach-driver; and, later, cantered out the rest of his journey in the tail of that gingerbread conveyance, that was become a mere hearse of death and sorrow.
“ah!” he thought—“how, in all her after-days, will she love the memory of that chin-chuck, poor soul.”
