sir david blythewood had a particularly infectious laugh, and like all men who make a plaything of their own dignity, he was wont to find his risibilities tickled consumedly before the solemnity of another’s self-importance. sooner or later the humorous side of any situation would find him, and then, perhaps, it was only those at whom his mischief of merriment was directed who failed to appreciate his sense of the comical.
now the history of the “lake of wine,” as he knew it, had been almost a life-long tradition with him, and a very seriously romantic one, too; but this latest phase of it was destined to quite suddenly make its appeal to him—after some weighty and respectful consideration—from a quarter that, it appeared, his gravity had left unguarded. that it did so is mentioned in this connection for the reason that a certain explosion of mirth on his part was fruitful of consequences.
he and tuke had ridden over to winchester to acquaint luvaine of the progress of events. perhaps they had not thought to do more than discuss the matter, according to promise, with this melancholy monomaniac. he, however, had relieved them of any hospitable embarrassment they might have felt by at once without any attempt at apology, inviting himself to return with them, with the intimation that it would go nearer to satisfy him if they could thresh out the question on the spot. in order to this, therefore, tuke—stifling a certain natural antipathy he felt to the man—had prevailed upon him to become for awhile his guest at “delsrop”; and now the three, slowly trotting by way of a harshly white and iron-bound country, were making, chill and rather silent, for that lonely dwelling-place.
riding down into stockbridge with little concern for anything but the dangerous road, tuke had the tail of his eye, nevertheless, for the “first inn,” and for betty standing at the door thereof, serving a mug of ale to a solitary traveller. the girl dropped a curtsey, as in duty bound, to the gentlemen, two of whom saluted her in reply—blythewood, smilingly; tuke, gravely; but the wench’s fair soft figure, standing there in bravery of the bitter cold, and her sad mouth and lowered eyelids, dwelt with him by many an after mile, and his heart throbbed out to the forlorn passion he was so hopeless to comfort.
by and by, sir david turned to his friend a face that struggled with some tickling convulsion.
“what the deuce is the matter with you?” said the latter.
“eh? oh! nothin’—nothin’ whatever, tuke. i say, did you note the gentleman in the jumper?”
“gentleman? where?”
“him that was drinkin’ the ale?”
“no, i don’t think i did.”
“didn’t you? well, you mark my word, we’ve some more of these misbegotten rooks flown into the neighbourhood, and it’ll behoove us to keep the salt ready for their tails.”
“oh! did he look that sort?”
“that he did.”
“and it made you laugh, eh?”
for answer, all the little man’s features swelled to a ripe colour, and he seemed on the verge of an explosion. tuke shook his head with a grin, repudiating responsibility in the matter, and they rode on a mile further without a word exchanged amongst them. then suddenly blythewood was rolling in his saddle, shrieking with laughter, and they all drew rein beside a little copse.
“what inspires this?” said luvaine, amazed and haughty.
his baneful expression set the young man off again.
“i can’t help it!” he gasped. “i’m sorry, luvaine—but, but——”
“well, sir! if you’ll condescend to speak, perhaps we shall be quick to share in your merriment.”
it was so extremely unlikely as far as he was concerned, that the mere suggestion brought a fresh paroxysm from the delinquent.
“oh!” he cried at last—“to think of all these years of a grievance like yours—of the solemn counsels and the wise heads waggin’—and then to learn that the gashly eye of the creature that we turned from lookin’ at should ha’ been the very stone itself!”
tuke caught himself grinning again, but luvaine, furiously red in a moment, drew up stiff in his saddle.
“and you find this food for laughter?” he said, in a high voice. “a grievance, quotha!—only a grievance that hath wrought the ruin of two souls, and for me, in the prime of life, a childless and haunted old age!”
“oh, luvaine!” said sir david, struggling for gravity, “i didn’t mean to cheapen you, man, or to withhold my sympathy from the problematic mrs. l., who—who ‘very imprudently married the barber’”—he added, with a shout of merriment.
tuke saw fit to put in a hasty word.
“he has earned a laugh. let it be at you or me, captain luvaine; for though i take no loss of the robbery, i swear the knowledge of it has ridden me like a nightmare.”
the soldier waved his hand.
“bah!” he said—“the crackling of thorns!”
he dismounted to tighten his saddle-girth.
“david,” he said over the straps, “has had his phases of idiotcy from my first knowledge of him.”
at this the culprit went into a fresh fit.
“no, but,” he said, when he could recover his voice—“on your honour d’you believe the girl’s statement, tuke?”
“why not? if i’m credulous, i’m happy; and there’s the true philosophy of life in a nutshell.”
he was struggling with his own imp of merriment. the other had set it squiggling; so that he was fain to look upon all this portentous business from a new irreverent point of view.
“and that cutwater kept the jewel in his eye-hole,” persisted sir david, “for all the world to see? and did he sacrifice the sound article to accommodate it?”
“that i cannot account for. he was blind on one side before ever you saw him.”
“you’ve got him to the life, i perceive. and he wore a dummy optic, no doubt, and substituted t’other, all ingeniously painted, for it when he conceived the resplendent idea?”
“i confess i never thought it out! but you’ve done it masterly.”
“ain’t i? what a genius i am!—almost as good a one as cutwater (eh, luvaine?), that was strung up on the downs and a fortune in his head for any crow to peck at. you’d have given an eye for an eye to know that, wouldn’t you? but it needed a crazed girl to see into the creature’s methods, and bag the prize when it fell, while all the rest of us were hunting counter.”
“are you taunting me, sir? let me tell you your jesting is ill-timed. i would have known better, at least, than to have ordered away the skull without first examining it.”
“on my honour, sir,” said tuke, much amused, “i am not a coroner nor even a j. p.”
“oh! well,” muttered the soldier—“i am ready, gentlemen.”
as he was preparing to mount:
“tuke,” said sir david, “now i think on’t—wasn’t it that girl at the inn first gave you warning of mr. breeds and his gang?”
“betty pollack? yes.”
he answered brusquely, and touched his horse with his heel.
“the women, it seems, give us the lead in this business.”
“betty,” said tuke, with a little fierce glow of emotion, “is gold to the inside of her heart. now, gentlemen—and keep your eyes alert, by your favour, as we pass the ‘dog and duck.’”
a creaking, and pounding of the frozen snow, and the three were on their way once more. the long white stretches of road behind them returned to the sombreness of quiet that their human voices had interrupted. the very dun sky, that seemed to have withdrawn in high offence at their careless chatter, drooped down again, frowning and austere, to resume its ward of the imprisoned forces of life. no movement was in the stiff spurs of grass or in the petrified hedgerows; no least cry of bird or insect in all the wastes of air.
yet something there was that gave out a stealthy sound by and by—something that all the time they talked had held its panic breath in the copse, and sweated with terror lest the little snap of some twig under its feet should reveal its hiding-place—something with a puffed, leaden face and coward eyes—the unlovely mr. breeds, in fact.
he would not come out into the road, even after the last echo of the horsemen’s retreat had died away. but he crept to his little windy house on the hill by the way he had come—and mr. breeds’s way was always a backstairs one. once only he paused, and his weak, evil features gathered all the definite expression of scoundrelism they could master.
“betty pollack!” he muttered. “so it was you, my girl, that set your dirty little torch to the beacon! now ain’t it dangerous to play with fire, betty? and what should you say if it came to burn your own fingers?”
he mused a moment; then brought his hand softly down on his thigh.
“but the skull comes first,” he murmured. “what’ll they give me for that piece of news, i wonder?”
