CHAPTER X. MISS ROSE AYNTON “COPIES OUT.”
FOR some minutes there was a total silence in the vast apartment, very oppressive to at least one of the two persons present, “How long did this proud girl intend to remain and keep her a prisoner?” thought my Lady. She was rejoiced that Miss Aynton had refused her son, but at the same time angry with her for having done so. Rose must surely have had some motive for it far deeper than the mere revenging herself upon him for fancied slights. And yet Letty, who was in the girl's confidence, seemed certain that she had no accepted lover—no previous engagement, such as alone seemed a sufficient reason for rejecting so advantageous a proposal. Perhaps she was even now repenting with tears the determination which had earned for her so dearly-bought a triumph. My Lady ventured to look forth once more. Yes, the poor girl was doubtless crying bitterly. Her face was hidden in her hands, but there was a convulsive movement of the round white shoulders that told its tale of inward grief. “Poor thing, poor thing!” My Lady's kind heart yearned towards her now that she was sorry for her treatment of her son. Perhaps—not knowing Sir Richard as his mother knew him—she might even now make some hopeless endeavour to win him back to her. If she succeeded, that would be the worst thing that could possibly happen; and if she failed—as was almost certain—then she would have to suffer all this pain over again. Was it not my Lady's duty, then, to do her best to spare this unhappy motherless girl such bitter disappointment and humiliation, and to comfort her all she could under her present trouble? At all events, after some such manner Lady Lisgard reasoned. She did not stop to think of herself at all—of the imputation of eaves-dropping to which she must necessarily expose herself—but stepped forth at once from the recess, and walked quietly to where Rose was standing. Her footsteps made no noise upon the thick matting that was laid down the centre of the polished floor. As she approached the unconscious girl, she was compelled to acknowledge to herself, for the first time, how strikingly attractive a young woman Miss Aynton was. She had certainly not the beauty of my Lady's own daughter Letty, nor was she so tall, or perhaps so graceful; but her figure, although it was one likely to get coarse in time, was really perfect; her head, exquisitely set on well-shaped shoulders, was small, but bore such a profusion of black-brown hair as would have furnished half-a-dozen ordinary young ladies with chignons; her hands and arms were plump and white. Her eyes—Lady Lisgard thought that she had never seen such wondrous eyes as those which flashed upon her now in sudden recognition, then terror, then rage—not a trace of tears in them, and all the white face cold and still, not puckered up with woe, as she had expected to see it.
“So you have been a spectator, Lady Lisgard, of the late love-scene, have you?” said Rose Aynton in a low and suppressed tone. “That was very generous and like a gentlewoman—in one's hostess, too.”
“Hush, Rose; do not say things that you may afterwards be sorry for. I will tell you how it happened.”
“Nay, do not trouble yourself, my Lady; I can guess. You knew Sir Richard had made an appointment with me here, and you wished to hear with what rapturous gratitude the penniless girl would consent to be his bride. I hope you did hear, madam, since you took such trouble.”
“Yes, Rose; I did hear. Your cruel words shall not rob you of my sympathy. I am sorry for my son, of course; but I am sorry for you also. I had been worried, vexed by many things of which it is not necessary to tell you; I came hither for solitude, and wearied out by many a sleepless night—nights of care, girl, such as I trust you may never know—I fell asleep in yonder recess. I never heard you enter the room at all. I woke up while you were speaking, but scarcely knew whether I ought to reveal myself or not. I heard you reject poor Richard; then, when he had gone, I thought that you repented having done so. I was moved at seeing you look so white and still. I felt for you, Rose, with all my heart, and came out, when I might as easily have remained concealed, to try to comfort you. My poor dear girl!”
“That was very kind,” returned Rose quietly. “But if I had behaved otherwise, would you then have welcomed me as your daughter-in-law? Please to tell me that.”
“If I should say 'Yes,' you would not believe me, Rose. So why ask me such a question. Moreover, the matter is settled now for ever. He would be a doting lover, indeed, who would forgive such a repulse; and Richard is the last man in all the world to do so.”
“Do you think so?” answered the young girl with an incredulous smile. “You have forgotten surely your own youth, Lady Lisgard.”
“What know you of my youth, girl?” asked my Lady hastily, her pale face flushing with emotion.
“Nay, do not be angry,” returned the other coldly. “I meant nothing, except, that when a woman is young she is very powerful. You say that I have lost Sir Richard, and therefore you pity me. Now, I will wager by this time to-morrow that I could win him back again.”
Was this the humble and submissive girl who came to Mirk four months ago, almost from school, and whom she had treated as a mother treats her child? The conscious belle of a London season could not have spoken with a greater confidence; the most practised husband-hunter with a cooler calculation. “Come,” continued Rose, “if you really are so sorry for me, Lady Lisgard, and so distressed upon your son's account, have I your permission to do my best to repair this common misfortune?”
My Lady could scarce conceal a shudder at the thought how nearly had this coldblooded scheming girl become her daughter-in-law. Whatever objections she might have had to such a match before—and they were in themselves insuperable—seemed to have grown to twice their former proportions.
The girl's determination and self-confidence alarmed her, too, for that result about which she had before felt so certain. At all hazards, she was resolved to prevent an attempt at reconciliation being made.
“No, Rose; I do not wish you to try to recover the affections of Sir Richard.”
“So, so; then we have the truth at last, Lady Lisgard. You are not willing that I should be daughter-in-law of yours. You grudge me such great good-fortune as to be allied with the race of Lisgards: and yet it fell to your own lot—as I have heard—even in a more unexpected manner.”
“Miss Aynton, what I was is no affair of yours,” replied my Lady with quivering lips. “You have only to remember what I am.”
“I do so, madam, very well. I see you held in honour by all people, and without doubt, justly. Your position is indeed to me an object of admiration, perhaps, I may add, even of envy. Is it not natural that it should be so? And when your son offers to lift me from my present low estate to place me as high, why should I hesitate to take advantage of such a proposal? I have refused him, it is true; but now, being, as you say, repentant, why should I not strive to recover what I have let slip—wealth, honours, title”——
“Rose Aynton,” returned my Lady, clasping the girl's white wrist, and speaking in very earnest but broken tones, “I warn you, do not do it. Even if you succeed, you may not win all you dream of. Strive not, I charge you, for your own sake, to undo what has been done. I have reasons for what I say beyond any that you can guess. If you would be happy, do not endeavour to ally yourself with this family.”
“Lady Lisgard, what can you mean?” ejaculated the girl, her white face flushed at last, her wide flashing eyes no longer hard and cynical, and her every feature impatient for reply.
“I mean simply what I say. Seek not to be Richard's wife. If you want money—and I know from your own lips it is not love which prompts you—you shall have such wealth as is mine to give. I had meant it for a different purpose; but that is no matter. Only do not seek to win back my son; and when you leave us, I will bless you for your forbearance—and for your silence, Rose.”
“Yes, Lady Lisgard, I will say nothing of all this,” returned the girl thoughtfully after a short pause. “I promise you, too, that I will never speak of love to Sir Richard further; and as for your offer of a bribe, though I do not know that I have ever shewn myself so greedy as to deserve it—I will forgive you even that.”
“Thank you, thank you, Rose,” answered my Lady eagerly. “I dare say, in my haste and trouble, I may have said things to offend you, and if so, I am very sorry. You have doubtless your troubles too.”
“Yes, I have,” answered the girl gravely; “and I should like to be alone with them for a little, Lady Lisgard, unless you have anything else to ask of me.”
“Nothing, Rose—nothing; you have granted all I wished. You will be as undisturbed here as in your own apartment; nay, even more so; for Letty will not think of coming here to seek you out. Nobody ever comes into the Library.”
My Lady leaned forward as she spoke, and kissed the girl's smooth brow, cold as a tablet of alabaster, then softly left the room.
Rose Aynton stood for a full minute, listening, eager and motionless as Echo herself, before she stepped to the door, and turned the key.
“No more spying, my Lady!” ejaculated she; “my hostess has her secrets, it seems, as well as I. It would be well if I could discover hers before she found out mine. What could she mean by cautioning me, for my own sake, not to ally myself with the Lisgards? She is not a fool to think to frighten me with a mere gipsy's warning—threatening much, but meaning nothing.”
What reasons can those be against my becoming her daughter-in-law, which are 'beyond any that I can guess?' If I could only get this proud dame beneath my thumb, then, indeed, I might recompense myself somewhat for having missed Sir Richard. To think that I should have lost a prize like that through mere humility of mind! 'Yet even if you succeed,' said she, 'you may not win all you dream of.' Those were her very words. 'Haste and trouble' alone could never have suggested them to her, although they may have made her indiscreet enough to utter them. What has put my Lady in such low spirits of late, and kept her so moped up within the Abbey walls? How came she alone here in this place, whither, as she says, 'No one ever comes?' She must have been hidden in yonder recess in the far corner, or we must needs have seen her, when my love-sick swain and I were walking up and down.
Swift and noiseless, like some beautiful wild beast upon the trail, Rose Aynton crossed the room, and scanned, with a cruel look in her dark eyes, the little study over which was printed Legal.
“I never heard that my Lady was given to law,” muttered she derisively. “True, she said that she had been sent to sleep, a thing which any one of these folios one might think would compass. But why did she come hither to read at all? There must have been something of interest to attract her. The books on this side do not seem to have been touched for ages; but here—yes, some one has been to these quite lately, for the dust has been disturbed, and here, if I mistake not, is the dainty print of my Lady's fingers. We are getting warm, as the children say at Hide-and-Seek. What have we here? A slip of paper for a marker, torn cross-wise from an envelope with Lad upon it. It was surely imprudent of my Lady to use her own address for such a purpose. Wills! Ah, she has been studying the art of making wills, I dare say. Considering Sir Richard is already so well off—and since I am not to be his wife—it is to be hoped she will leave her money to son Walter; and some, too, to poor dear Letty, for she is one who will never learn to help herself in this world. It is well for her that she has not to live by her wits. If she had been in my position, she would have been a governess. Yes, it's all about Wills this book. And why should not my Lady make a will, being of ripe age, and yet not old enough to sniff that smell of the charnel-house, which renders the operation so unpleasant a duty to the aged? I am afraid—unless, indeed, I could find the will itself—that I have but discovered a mare's nest after all. However, here are more book-markers; come, let us combine our information. Succession! That's only the same story. Illegitimacy! Great Heaven, but this is more than I had bargained for!”
The girl stepped swiftly to the open window, and pushed the heavy folds of hair behind her ears. “I feel my blood all rushing to my brain, and roaring 'Ruin!'” murmured she. “If this sudden fear has any real foundation, then indeed am I hoist with my own petard. No wonder she warned me against alliance with her race, if what I here suspect is true. They will need wellborn suitors themselves, she meant, to make up for what is lacking in their blood, and mayhap money too. The will of old Sir Robert may be disputed. The Succession—but no, I had forgotten—there is no one to succeed save her two sons, for they have not a relative beyond themselves in the world, these Lisgards; but the title—that would be lost, of course. That's what she hinted when she said I might not gain the thing I counted on, even though I won Sir Richard. He cannot know of it; he could not be so proud if he had the least suspicion of any blot in his own scutcheon. How he would wither if one said to him: 'Thou Bastard!' And yet I gravely doubt whether this discreet madam, his mother, has not one day tripped. 'What know you of my youth, girl?' cried she a while ago, white, as I thought, with anger; but it was fear, it seems. She comes here alone to find out for herself by study what secret course to follow, or what hidden dangers to avoid, having no counsellor in whom she can confide. That seems so far certain, or she would surely ask her son himself, being a lawyer, or that wise Mr Arthur Haldane, whom I so honestly dislike, for their advice. It may be all this bodes as ill for Walter as for his brother; it may be that it bodes the younger the best of fortune, and the elder the worst. That would be a brave day, indeed, for some one, on which the proud young baronet should sink to plain Mr Richard, and the poor captain rise to be Sir Walter Lisgard! And, again, there may be nothing in all this, after all. Time will doubtless shew, and it shall be my task to hurry Time's footsteps towards the discovery.”
CHAPTER XI. UP EARLY.
IT has been justly observed that one half of the world does not know how the other half lives. The statement is a very safe one, and might have been made a great deal more comprehensive by the philosopher who uttered it without risking his reputation for sagacity. We do not know how our next-door neighbour lives, except in the sense of what he has for dinner, which may indeed be discovered by the curious; nay, we often know not how our own household lives, how our very sons conduct themselves when not at meal-times and under our very eyes, what pursuits they really follow, what hopes, what fears, what ambitions they in secret entertain. It is well, indeed, and should be a matter of congratulation, if we are quite cognizant of the “goings on” of our wives and daughters. It is strange to think what a world in little lies under the roof of any great mansion, such as Mirk Abbey. How interesting would the genuine individual biographies—if one could only get at them—of such a household be, from that of the mistress of the establishment (whose troubles we are endeavouring to portray) down to that of the under kitchen-maid, concerning whom we have “no information,” but who has doubtless her own temptations, wrongs, and troubles also, which concern her with equal nearness, although they may not be so genteel! It is probable that the true history of the second gravedigger in Hamlet would be to the full as interesting as what we know of that philosophic Prince himself, though his father had not been murdered by his uncle, albeit even that may have been the case, for aught we know. But, alas! the novelist has not the power which the Devil on Two Sticks possessed of lifting the tiles off the attics; but has generally to content himself with such glimpses as he can obtain through the keyholes of the first and second floors.
Taking advantage of even this moderate privilege, we are sometimes rewarded with phenomena. Thus, it is little less than a portent to see Captain Walter Lisgard, who is not generally addicted to early rising, up and dressed upon a certain May morning before the clock on the great stairs has sounded three. True, he has been out of bed once or twice at such an hour on other occasions, but then it was because he had not retired to rest the night before. He has done that, however, this time, or, at all events, has exchanged his evening-dress for morning-costume. Some people do get up at the most premature hours, even in winter, and light their own fires, and retrim the midnight lamp to pursue literary or scientific labours; but if Captain Lisgard has got up to study, we will eat him. What can he be about? He gropes his way down the great staircase, where darkness is made visible by streaks of grayish light—which is not yet dawn—struggling through cracks and crannies; and he stumbles over the heavy rug beneath the bottom step, and swears with involuntary emphasis. Then he listens a while, to see what will come of that. The great clock on the hall-table ticks reprovingly: “Don't, don't—shame, shame!” as he never heard it tick before; and hear and there breaks forth an expostulatory creaking, as though from moral furniture, which has no such scruples in the daytime; but his ejaculation has aroused no living being.
Softly he turns the key of the frontdoor, softly withdraws the bolts, and would as softly have slipped out, but that there is suddenly a jar and a whir, and the opening door is held fast by an iron hand. “Confound the chain!” exclaims the captain. “It is as difficult to get out of this house as out of Newgate.” Then, when all is still quiet, he emerges upon the stone steps with an “I wonder, for my part, how burglars are ever discovered,” and takes his way towards the village. The gates are locked at the end of the avenue, and the porter and his wife are doubtless fast asleep, as well as fair-haired Polly—dreaming perhaps of himself, thinks the captain with, a half-contemptuous, half-complacent smile—but Master Walter, who is as active as a cat, climbs the stone pillar by help of the iron hinge, and “drops” noiselessly on to the road. He passes up the humble street, where each cottage is quiet as the grave—two blessed hours intervening yet between its inmates and their toil, and makes for the Lisgard Arms. The inn stands on a slight elevation, so that he sees it some time before he nears it. “Why, the place is on fire!” mutters the captain; and certainly there is some extraordinary illumination taking place in one of the apartments. A flood of light pours from it as from some Pharos, as though to beckon benighted folks whither good ale is to be found; and yet the house is always shut at eleven, in conformity with the squire's orders.
“It's that infernal idiot Derrick himself who has done it,” continues the captain. “That's his room, I know. Just as if he could not have got up in the dark, as I did: a fellow that probably never had more than a farthing-dip to light him any morning, before he went to Cariboo. I wonder, for my part, he can dress without a valet. What a stuck-up, vulgar dog it is! How I hate his pinchbeck ostentation, and still worse, his dreadful familiarity! If it could only be found out immediately after this Derby that he was a returned transport, with five-and-twenty years or so of his sentence still unexpired, how delightful it would be! I really think that he is least objectionable in the evenings, when he is drunk. There is something original in his brute-manner of swilling; a sort of over-driven-ox style about his stagger, which would make his fortune upon any stage—where there was room enough for the magnitude of the exhibition. Certainly, one has to pay for the society of this sort of gentry, and still more for their friendship. Alas, that I should have made this fortunate savage fond of me! I wish I could feel as Valentine did with Orson, instead of being much more like the too ingenious Frankenstein, whose monster became his master. However, that has not come about yet—notwithstanding meddling Mr Arthur Haldane's warnings.—Let me see, it was arranged, I think, that I was to whistle to this animal.” Master Walter drew a silver cab-call from his pocket, and executed upon it the disconsolate cry of one who in London streets between the closing of the night-houses and the rising of the sun desires a Hansom. Instantly the light from the inn began to diminish—once, twice, thrice; and then the casement became blind and rayless like the other windows. “That beggar had four candles lit!” ejaculated the captain with irritation. “It was a mercy that he did not bring out the village fire-engine! Here he comes with his eternal pipe, too. I daresay he had the imprudence to light that before he left the house, and Steve's red nose will smell it.” There are some men who always look the same no matter at what hour you come upon them: fresh, and hearty, and strong, they have but to duck their heads in cold water, and straightway the fatigues of a weary day or a sleepless night are utterly obliterated. They rejoice like giants to run their courses without any sort of preparation in the way of food and sleep, such as the rest of mankind require. Against this healthy animalism we protest, by calling it rude health; and to those who are of a less powerful constitution, it is naturally an offensive spectacle. Walter Lisgard had himself by no means a delicate organisation; his complexion, though pale, was far from sickly; his limbs, though models of grace rather than of strength, were of good proportions and well knit. But he was conscious of looking heavy-eyed and haggard, and he secretly resented the robust and florid appearance of the unconscious individual who now joined him—a man at least twenty-five years his senior.
“I suppose you have been accustomed to get up at these unearthly hours at the gold-diggings, that you look so disagreeably wide-awake, Mr Derrick,” grumbled he. “You would very much oblige me if you would but yawn.”
“Get up! Master Walter; why, I've never been to bed,” answered the bearded man with a great guffaw. “The fact is, that I took a little more than was good for me last night, and I did not dare lie down, knowing that we had this business on hand so early.”
“Why, one would think, by the amount of light, that you had been lying in state, like some deceased king of the Cannibal Islands,” returned the other peevishly. “Was it your habit to use two pair of candles in your bedroom in Cariboo?”
“Well, I never had a bedroom there, that you would call such, as I have told you again and again, Master Walter; but I have burned twenty candles at a time when they were selling at Antler Creek at five dollars a pound. You imagine, I suppose, that it is only you gentlemen who live at home at ease who have money to spend; but let me tell you that is not the case. I will go bail for my part, for example, that I have paid more sovereigns away in twenty-four hours than your brother, Sir Richard, ever did in a week.”
“My dear Mr Derrick, you are boastful this morning,” said the captain quietly: “it is my belief that you have taken a hair of the dog that bit you overnight.”
“Maybe I have, and maybe I haven't, Master Walter; but I shall burn just as many candles as I like. I have worked hard enough for my money, and, dam'me, but I'll enjoy it. Why, when I was at New Westminster, I had my horse shod with gold, sir; and if I choose, I'll do it here.”
“You would have a perfect right so to do, Mr Derrick,” returned the other gravely; “and for my part, if your horse should cast a shoe in my neighbourhood, I should warmly applaud your expensive tastes. But you must have been really very rich, to do such things. Now, how much do you think you were worth when you were at New Westminster?”
“That's tellings, captain,” responded the other with a cunning chuckle; “but when I was on Fraser River, me and my mate Blanquette, we made”———
“Well, now, what did you make?” urged the young man, as the other hesitated.
“Well, we made nothing for the first five days,” answered Derrick drily—“nothing at all.—How far have we got to go to reach the Measured Mile by this road?”
The two men had left the village, and were pursuing a winding chalk-road that led, but not directly, to the Downlands at the back of Mr Chifney's stables.
“It is a very circuitous route,” returned Master Walter frankly; “and I was in hopes it might be shortened to the fancy by hearing you tell something of your own story. But, of course, I have no wish to press you to tell it against your will. You have conferred obligations upon me enough already, I am quite aware.”
This was the first sentence of conciliation, not to say of civility, that the young man had spoken, and heretofore his air had been cross or cynical; yet no sooner did he evince this little of good-will, than the manner of the other softened at once to a degree that was very remarkable in so rough a man.
“Don't talk of obligations, lad, for I like you—ay, so well, that I wish you were son of mine; not that I am fit to be the father of such as you either; I know that well.”
“If I were your son, I am afraid you would have a good deal of trouble with me, Mr Derrick,” replied the young man laughing: “I am not a good boy.”
“That is true, Walter Lisgard; and yet I never saw a face that took my liking as yours does—save once. I could not tell what drew me so towards you, when I first met you up at the Farm yonder; but now I know very well.”
“Then it is to the similarity between myself and some other favoured individual that I am indebted for your regard? That rather robs the compliment of its flavour.”
“Ay, my lad; but you are dear to me for your own sake also, although, indeed, I scarce know why.”
“Thank you, Mr Derrick.”
“True,” continued the other thoughtfully, without noticing his companion's flippant tone, “you are like—ah, Heaven, how like you are to one that's dead and gone! Indeed, I can refuse you nothing while I think upon it. It is not everybody, however, lad, to whom I would humour by telling exactly what I'm worth. While a man is merely known as rich, he may have any sum, and be looked up to accordingly; but when his wealth can be reckoned to a pound, he loses credit. If Manylaws wins at Epsom, I shall be worth—ay, near a hundred thousand pounds.”
“I suppose no one in Cariboo ever made a sum like that by gold-digging, eh?”
“I think no one, Master Walter. There was no claim so rich as my mate's and mine at Snowy Creek, and it did not yield that sum. But, by Heaven, how well I remember what it did yield. It seemed to me then that I should never run risks any more, but live on what I had in content and plenty; and yet here I am, this very morning”——
“My dear sir,” interrupted his companion gaily, “it appears to me that you are taking gloomy views. What is life without excitement?”
“Ay, that is very well for you, lad, who have something to fall back upon, if your little schemes should miscarry. Excitement in your case is only another name for amusement; but in mine”——
“Well, in yours, Mr Derrick?”
“Do not call me Mister; call me Ralph, lad—that is, if you are not ashamed of me altogether.—You are ashamed, I see. Well, never mind.—Let me see, I was speaking of Cariboo, was I not? Well, success or failure there was a question of life and death. One might be a beggar, or one might be the king of the colony. I had known what poverty was—and that is not merely being without money, mind. I have lived among a savage people for months who had neither gold nor silver—nothing to hoard and nothing to spend save shells picked up on the sea-shore, and strung on sea-weed for a purse; and I was as poor as they; but yet it was not poverty. But I had felt the sting of that in many a crowded city, and I came to Cariboo to escape from it. If I should make my thousand pounds or so, I would buy a farm, or a share in a ship, and live a quiet respectable life to the end of my days. While making these good resolutions, my ready money—which was also all I had in the world—was melting fast. With the last ten pounds of it, I bought the half of a small claim at Snowy Creek. Blanquette and I sawed our own lumber and made our own sluices. It was no light work even for me, who had been used to rough it. There was twelve feet of top-stripping to be removed before we could hope to reach the pay-dirt. For the first five days, we made nothing. I would have sold my share in the whole concern for a couple of pounds, and begun life with that afresh; but on the sixth day we found fourteen ounces of gold, and I was worth fifty pounds. Then I would not have sold my chance for scarcely any sum that you could name. I would have shot any man that had jumped into our pit, spade in hand, just as I would have shot a dog. Your brother, Sir Richard, may talk about the rights of property, but he never appreciated them as I did then. On the seventh day, we found forty-five ounces; on the eighth, sixty. The find kept on increasing, till it rose to four hundred ounces daily, when we employed eight hands to clear away the tailings. The whole area of the place out of which I scooped my fortune was not eighty feet by twenty. I found for my share twelve thousand pounds in it.”
“And you brought that safe to England, did you?”
“No, lad, I did not. I spent five hundred pounds of it in champagne—we drank it out of buckets—for one item.”
“And in candles, Ralph,” asked Master Walter smiling—“how much in candles?”
“In one thing and another, dear lad, I spent four thousand pounds before we landed in England. Even what was left would have seemed affluence six months before——But there, what's the good of talking? There's the rubbing-down house, is it not? and I shall soon know whether I am going to get a second fortune, or to lose what I have.”
CHAPTER XII. THE TRIAL
THE sun had risen, and the long waste of Down stretched far and wide on all sides; a broad and level track as smooth as any lawn, with here and there a long but gentle slope, marked the exercising-ground used by Mr Chifney's horses. This glistened in the early rays like a path of silver. But fringing it on one side lay a great patch of gorse, and this quite twinkled with green and gold from the gossamers, whose slender fibres covered it as with a veil. The air was fresh and odorous with a hundred pleasant scents and in the distant vale the morning mists were lifting from field and farm, from tower and town, as at the command of some enchanter. Nothing was heard but the occasional “tink, tink” of a sheep-bell from the still sleeping folds. It was a scene to charm eye and ear; but Captain Walter Lisgard of the 104th Dragoons, and Mr Derrick from Cariboo, were persons upon whom the Dawn and its concomitants were a good deal thrown away.
“You are sure this is the right place?” inquired the Colonist as they reached a long low-shuttered building, half brick half wood, where the horses were wont to be rubbed down after their gallops.
“Ay, this is it right enough,” was the reply. “I dare say they are all inside there waiting for us. It does not do to be seen at this sort of work. Yes, here they are.”
Inside the doorway of the shed in question stood Mr Tite Chifney, in company with a gentleman of advanced years, in a white greatcoat and a new broad-brimmed hat, somewhat resembling a bishop's.
“How are you, Lisgard?”
“How do you do, my Lord?” were the only salutations that passed between the members of the two parties, who had met entirely upon business.
“Come and beat the furze with me, will you, Derrick? the captain has not his gaiters on. It is well to make quite sure that we are all alone before we begin,” said the horse-trainer. The two men accordingly stepped into the gorse, and commenced walking through it in parallel lines, as though in pursuit of game.
When he came to a patch of gorse a little higher and thicker than the rest, Mr Chifney struck it violently with his foot as if for rabbits. All of a sudden, there was a violent ejaculation from Derrick; he threw himself down upon some crouching object, and then came a struggle and a choking scream. “Hollo, don't kill the fellow,” exclaimed Chifney running up. “See, he's black in the face, man.—Master Walter, my Lord—-help, here, help!”
The two men who had been left in the rubbing-house came quickly forward, but it took the combined strength of all three of them to release the poor wretch from the powerful grasp of the Cariboo miner.
“Damn the rogue; I 'll teach him to come spying here,” cried he, nodding with his head towards a shattered telescope, upon which he had just stamped his foot. “I'll squeeze his throat for him.”
“You seem to have done that already, sir,” said the man in the broad-brim coolly; “a very little more of it, and you would probably have had your throat squeezed for you by the hangman. Poor devil, he doesn't seem to have much beside his life belonging to him, so that it would be hard to take that.”
A wretched object, clothed in ragged black, and with wisps of straw for shoes, wet with the dew amid which he had been lying, and shivering with pain and fear, hear crawled to the last speaker's feet.
“Don't let 'em murder me, my Lord. They will if you don't interfere,” screamed the wretched “tout,” whose mission it was to procure racing intelligence under difficulties of this sort, but who had been fairly cowed by Derrick's rage and violence. “I swear to you that I will never tell a soul that I have seen your lordship”——
“Quiet, fool!” interrupted the other sternly, “unless you want to have your lying tongue cut out.—It's bad enough,” whispered he to the trainer, “that he should have seen me hear; but do you think he has seen the horses?”
“That's quite certain, my Lord,” returned the trainer coolly; “and this is a mouth as can't be shut about that matter. But he shall see nothing more of this morning's work.—Come here, you sir.”
Taking the trembling wretch by the collar, he led him to the edge of the furze, and, having securely tied his arms and legs, enveloped his head in a horse-cloth which he brought out of the rubbing-house. From the same building there now emerged two horses, not in the clothes in which exercise was generally taken, but ready in all respects for racing, and ridden not by stable-boys as usual, but by regular jockeys.
“There is no question about it but the bay is the best-looking, my Lord,” said the trainer, in answer to something that had been addressed to him; “but handsome is as handsome does. You would not thank me for praising The King on Epsom Downs, after he had been beaten by an outsider such as yonder horse.”
“Who rides the creature?” inquired the other sharply, and looking contemptuously towards the clumsy black, who was no other than our old friend Menelaus. “Dam'me if he don't look more fit for a hearse than a race-course.
“Jack Withers, my Lord—a man that was with him in France, and thoroughly understands what the horse can do; and, indeed, there is no other that can ride him as should be. That's the worst of these foreign horses—they are so full of tricks. I've known that black stand stock-still in his gallops, and shoot his boy off just like a rocket. He can't abide a strange seat.”
“Of course Withers rides him in the great race,” observed the other thoughtfully.
“Certainly, my Lord, just as Tom Uxbridge here will mount The King. What's the good of having a trial-race unless with the same jocks as is to ride them afterwards?—Starting from that white post, up the rise yonder, round the fir clump, and so back again, is the Derby course to a yard.—Master Walter and Mr Derrick, will you be so good-as to bear a hand, and help me out with the steps?”
“Ain't the gentleman in the broad-brim going to use them as well as me?” observed the Colonist insolently, and keeping his hands resolutely in his pockets. “I never engaged myself to be his body-servant, as I know on.”
There being no answer to this appeal, Captain Lisgard and the trainer once more entered the rubbing-house, and reappeared dragging with them a movable platform upon wheels, and furnished with a flight of steps after the manner of a pulpit. From the top of this, one might see the whole course from end to end, and upon it the four spectators took their station close to the starting-post.
“Now, my lads, are you both ready?” inquired the trainer of the jockeys, who were getting their fuming horses into line. “This handkerchief will serve for a flag, and when I drop it, let there he no false starts. One, two, three—now off!”
As the handkerchief left his fingers, the bay and black leaped forward as with a single impulse; the next moment each had got into his stride, and was away like the wind.
“It is amazing how they keep together,” muttered his Lordship in an uneasy tone: “I should not have thought the Frenchman had had such speed in him.”
“It is the hill which will decide the matter, my Lord,” returned the trainer in a low tone; “the ground is rising already. There! and see, the black draws ahead.”
“Ay, the black has it!” cried Derrick with a frightful imprecation. “I will lay fifty-pounds to ten on Manylaws.”
“I take you, sir,” said the man in the broad-brim coolly, as with race-glass in hand he watched every movement of the horses who were now nearing the fir-clump: “there has something happened to that big-boned animal of yours, I fear. What is it, Chifney?”
He was about to pass the glass to the trainer, but Derrick roughly tore it from his grasp, and applied it to his own eyes. “It's one of his infernal jibs,” exclaimed he; “and yet—— Well done, Jack Withers; that's a five-pound note in your pocket.—Perhaps you'd like to look again, my Lord, for their position is a little altered.”
“The black is gaining fast,” ejaculated Captain Lisgard, his pale face aglow with excitement. “He has recovered all he lost by that false step. What a pace they are coming down the hill! By Heaven, The King is beaten! Tom is using the whip.”
“Just what I expected,” murmured the trainer.
There was a thunder of hoofs, the smack of a whip again and again, a flash of colour—first black, then bay—and the trial-race was over.
“In a second and a half less time than the last Derby,” said his Lordship drily, after consulting his stop-watch.
“I think I did not bring you here for nothing, my Lord,” said the trainer confidentially.
“Certainly not, Mr Chifney,” returned the other bitterly: “I find myself a poorer man than I had thought to be three minutes ago by fifty thousand pounds. Moreover, I have made the acquaintance of one of the greatest ruffians that I have ever met even upon a race-course. It is altogether an excellent morning's work.”
“It would have been worse for you, my Lord, if you had not come,” answered the trainer with some stiffness; “you would not have thanked me if you had seen this for the first time on Epsom Downs.”
“Very true—very true, Mr Chifney. But you must excuse my feeling a little annoyed by the results of this gallop. And as for this gentleman with the beard—when he has done shaking his hands with his jockey—— Here are two five-pound notes for you, sir—the amount of my bet.”
“Keep it yourself, my Lord,” exclaimed Derrick, waving his hat round and round in frantic joy. “Or stay, if you're too proud.—Here, Jack, is a fiver for you; and here, you poor devil in the horse-cloth, here's another for you, to heal your windpipe, which, I believe, I squeezed a little too hard a while ago. If the race had gone agen me, you'd never have got a shilling of compensation, so you may thank Manylaws.”
The trainer's hand was clapped upon the incautious gold-digger's mouth with considerable emphasis, but it arrived too late. “The cat was out of the bag.” The tout had learned the very piece of intelligence to obtain which he had gone through so much.
Bound and bruised, and in evil plight as he was, the fellow could not help indulging in a sly chuckle, while his four enemies (for the jockeys were already in the rubbing-down house attending to their panting steeds) regarded one another with looks of blank dismay.
“You have done it now, Mr Derrick,” observed the trainer lugubriously. “We shall never get thirty to one—no, nor ten to one—against Menelaus again.—Great Heaven! why, you wouldn't kill the man!”
The gold-digger had drawn a clasp-knife, half dagger, half cutting-tool, from his pocket, and was quietly feeling the point of it with his thumb. “I have done wrong,” said he, “but it is a wrong which is not without remedy. No, I am not going to murder this gentleman—at least not now; but I have something of importance to tell him.—Look you here, Mr Tout. I am not a respectable person any more than yourself, in a general way; but there is probably this difference between us—I am a man of my word. What I say, I will do, I always do do, at all hazards. If a man robs another of his gold in the place where I come from, we shoot him: it mayn't be right, but that is the principle on which we act. You will rob me of all I have in the world if you tell what you have seen to-day; consequently, mark me, if you do tell, I will kill you. Of this you may be well assured. That is the only satisfaction which will be left me. You have felt my fingers, but you will in that case feel this knife. I hope I make myself well understood—— No, Master Walter, this is not your business, but a private matter between this person and myself. I want to take a good look at him, so that I may know him again anywhere; alone or in company, in England or across seas; let him be sure I shall find him out; and I want him to take a good look at me. Mine is not the face of a man who falters in his purpose, or who, having suffered a wrong, puts up with it, I think, and does not revenge himself.”
He knelt down, and set his bearded cheek quite close to the luckless tout. Each looked into the other's eyes—one inquiringly, with a half-timid, half-cunning glance; the other sternly, vengefully, like a judge and executioner in one.
“I will never tell!” quavered the miserable wretch—“s'help me, Heaven, I never will!”
“Yes, you will,” returned Derrick coolly; “I can see that you are a babbler born; and I don't ask impossibilities. Moreover, it is but just that you should derive some advantage from my folly. In a week's time, you may tell your employer what you please. In the meanwhile, there is your five pounds. I wish to act as fairly by you as I can; but if the odds rise or fall respecting these two horses within seven days—as they can only do if the result of this trial gets wind—then I shall know where to find a sheath for this knife.” With these words he cut the rope that bound the man's arms and legs, pushed the five-pound note into his hands, and bade him be off; whereupon off he shambled.
Neither the trainer nor the man addressed as “my Lord” had stirred or spoken a word during this interview, and Captain Lisgard had only once made a movement as though to interrupt it. All three were well enough pleased that the gold-digger had taken the task of imposing silence into his own hands. In all likelihood, he was merely threatening the fellow; and if not, they did not wish to be accessories before the fact to—to any vengeance he might choose to inflict upon the offending tout.
“Well, gentlemen, we have now six clear days wherein to make our arrangements,” said Derrick, “and a good deal may be done in that time. True, but for my stupid conduct, we might have had more time before us; but I have made what amends lies in my power.”
“You believe, then, that yonder rascal will keep his word, do you?” inquired the trainer incredulously.
“I think so, Mr Chifney. I shall certainly keep mine,” returned the other gravely.—
“Master Walter, we had better be moving home.”
At these words, the party separated—like men who have each their work to do, and are glad to be quit of their companions, in order that they may set about it—with no more ceremony than a parting nod. The man in the broad-brim rode away upon a shooting-pony, which awaited him in the rubbing-down house. The jockeys paced slowly towards their stables, each horse now clothed and visored as though it had been merely out for early exercise; while Mr Chifney walked briskly homeward by another route.
Derrick and Captain Lisgard returned together by the way they came, and plodded on for some time in total silence.
“You will put all your money upon the black un now, I fancy, Master Walter?” observed the gold-digger at last, as they drew near the village.
“I have done that already,” replied the young man frankly. “I was thinking rather of hedging when the odds fall.”
“Nay, do not do that, lad,” rejoined the other earnestly; “the thing is a certainty. The King was the only horse that we had to fear. On the contrary, my advice is, 'Put the Pot on.'”
“The Pot is on, with all I have to put in it, Mr Derrick. You forget that I am not an eldest son, and nobody lends money to a younger.”
“Ay, true; there's that confounded stuck-up coxcomb, Sir Richard. But look here, my lad. In this pocket-book I carry all I am worth in the world, for in Cariboo there are no banks, and a man at my time of life does not readily change his habits. Here are five hundred pounds entirely at your service. Nay, I told you that I had taken a liking to you, and I would give them to you right-away, only I suppose you are too proud to accept them, save as a loan.”
“Mr Derrick—Ralph—you are very, very kind,” said the young man hesitatingly; “but this is a large sum.”
“At the present prices, it is ten thousand pounds if Manylaws wins,” replied the gold-digger, rubbing his hands; “and if Manylaws does not win—well, I shall not, I hope, be an importunate creditor. I do not say: 'Do not thank me,' lad, or I like you to smile like that. You are very, very welcome. But here we part; you to your home and friends, and I—well, I am used to be alone. I shall not see a friend's face again till I see yours. Good-bye, dear lad, good-bye.”
With a hearty hand-shake and more thanks, Master Walter strode gaily away through the still slumbering village, reclimbed the avenue gate, and let himself noiselessly in at the front-door. As he passed on tiptoe along a gallery, on one side of which lay his sister's apartment, and on the other that of Miss Rose Aynton's, a door opened, and an anxious voice whispered: “What news, Walter?”
“Good news,” replied he in the same cautious tone, and glided on to his own room.