The Yeoman Adventurer
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