My Lord Duke Part 26

"After a pound a week in the bus.h.!.+"

"It does sound rummy, doesn't it? After you with the match, sir."

"It's incredible."

"Yet it's astonis.h.i.+ng how used you get to it in time--you'd be surprised! At first the whole thing knocked me sideways; it was tucker I couldn't digest. But once you take to the soft tack, there's nothing like it in the world. You may guess who's made me take to it quicker than I might have done!"

Dalrymple shrugged his ma.s.sive shoulders, and raised a contemplative eye to the moon, that lay curled like a silver shaving in the lucid heavens.

"Oh, yes, I can guess," he said sardonically. "And mind you I've nothing against the girl--I meant you were lucky there. The girl's all right--if you must marry. I don't dislike a woman who'll show fight; and she looked like showing it when I tried on that cracker-night-cap thing of yours. Oh, certainly! If you were to marry, you couldn't have done better; the girl's worth fifty of her mother, at any rate."

"Fifty million!" cried Jack, somewhat warmly.

"Fifty million I meant to say," and the squatter ran his arm through that of his host. "Come, don't you mind _me_, Jack, my boy! You know what an old heathen I am in those little matters; and we have lots of other things to talk about, in any case."

Jack was mollified in a moment.

"Lots!" he cried. "I don't seem to have seen anything of you yet, and I'm sure you haven't seen much of the place. Isn't it a place and a half? Look at the terrace in the moonlight--and the spires--and the windows--hundreds of 'em--and the lawn and the tank! Then there's the inside; you've seen the hall; but I must show you the picture-gallery and the State Apartments. Such pictures! They say it's one of the finest private collections in the world; there's hardly one of them that isn't by some old master or another. I've heard the pictures alone are worth half a million of money!"

"They are," said Dalrymple.

"You've heard so too?"

"Of course; my good fellow, your possessions are celebrated all the world over; that's what you don't appear to have realised yet."

"I can't," said Jack. "It puts me in a sick funk when I try! So it would you if you were suddenly to come in for a windfall like mine--that is, if you were a chap like me. But you aren't; you'd be the very man for the billet."

And Jack stepped back to admire his hero, who chuckled softly as he smoked, standing at his full height, with both hands in his pockets, and the moon like limelight on his s.h.i.+rt.

"It's not a billet I should care about," said the squatter; "but it's great fun to find you filling it so admirably----"

"I don't; I wish I did," said Jack, throwing away the cigar which he had lighted to keep his guest company.

"You do, though. And if it isn't a rude question----" Dalrymple hesitated, staring hard--

"I daresay you're very happy in your new life?"

"Of course I'm very happy _now_. None happier!"

"But apart from the girl?"

"You can't get apart from her; that's just it. If I'm to go on being happy in my position, I'll have to learn to fill it without making myself a laughing-stock; and the one person who can teach me will be my wife."

"I see. Then you begin to like your position for its own sake?"

"That's so," replied Jack. He was paring a cake of very black tobacco for the pipe which he had stuck between his teeth. Dalrymple watched him with interest.

"And yet," said the squatter, "you have neither acquired a taste for your own most excellent cigars, nor conquered your addiction to the vile twist we used to keep on the station!"

"Well, and that's so, too," laughed Jack. "You must give a fellow time, Mr. Dalrymple!"

"Do you know what I thought when I met you yesterday?" continued Dalrymple, turning his back to the moon, and looking very hard at Jack while he sucked at his cigar with his thick, strong lips. "Do you know how you struck me then? I thought you'd neither acquired a taste for your new life nor conquered your affection for the old. That's how you struck me in Devenholme yesterday."

Jack made no haste to reply. He was not at all astonished at the impression he had created the day before. But his old boss was still the one man before whom he was anxious to display a modic.u.m of dignity, even at the expense of a pose. And it is noteworthy that he had neither confided in Dalrymple concerning his dilemma of the previous day, nor yet so much as mentioned in his hearing the model hut among the pines.

"I don't wonder," he said at length; "it was the way I was likely to strike you just then. Don't you see? I hadn't got it out at the time!"

"So it was only the girl that was on your nerves?" said Dalrymple in disgust.

"And wasn't that enough? If I'm a different man to-day, you know the reason why. As for being happy in my position, and all that, I'm simply in paradise at this moment. Think of it! Think of me as I was, and look at me as I am; think of my little hut on Carara, and look behind you at Maske Towers!"

They were on the terrace now, leaning idly against the bal.u.s.trade.

Dalrymple turned and looked: like Melrose Abbey, the grand grey building was at its best in the "pale moonlight"; the lichened embrasures met the soft sky softly; the piercing spires were sheathed in darkness; and the mountainous pile wore one uniform tint, from which the lighted windows stood out like pictures on a wall. Dalrymple looked, and looked again; then his hard eyes fell upon the rude ecstasy of the face beside him; and they were less hard than before.

"You may make yourself easy," said the squatter. "I shan't stay long."

"What the blazes do you mean?" cried Jack. "I want you to stay as long as ever you can."

"You may; your friends do not."

"Hang my friends!"

"I should enjoy nothing better; but it isn't practicable. Besides, they're a good deal more than your friends now; they are--her people.

And they don't like the man who was once your boss; he offends their pride----"

"Mr. Dalrymple----"

"Enough said, my boy. I know my room, and I'm going to turn in. We'll talk it over again in the morning; but my mind is made up. Good-night!"

"I'll come in with you."

"As you like."

They parted at the visitor's door.

"You'll disappoint me cruel if you _do_ go," said Jack, shaking hands.

"I'm quite sure you're mistaken about my friends; Olivia, for one, thinks no end of you. However, as you say, we can talk it over in the morning--when you've got to see the pictures as well, and don't you forget it! So long, sir, till then."

"So long, Jack. I'll be your man in the morning, at all events. And I shall look forward to a great treat in your famous picture-gallery."

But Jack was engaged; and he realised it in the morning as he had not done before. Olivia lured him from the squatter's side; she had every intention of so doing. The pair went for a little stroll. Neither wore a watch; the little stroll lengthened into miles; it carried them beyond the sound of the stable clock; they forgot the world, and were absurdly late for lunch. Lady Caroline Sellwood had taken it upon herself to conduct the meal without them. Dalrymple was in his place; his expression was grimly cynical; he had seen the pictures, under Claude Lafont's skilled escort, and, with the ladies' permission, he would now leave the table, as he had still to put in his things.

His things! Was he going, then? Jack's knife and fork fell with a clatter.

"I thought you knew," said Claude. "He is going up to town by the afternoon train. I have ordered the landau, as I thought you would like him to go as he came."

When Jack heard this he, too, left the table, and bounded upstairs. He found Dalrymple on the point of packing his dress-clothes, with the a.s.sistance of none other than Stebbings. Jack glared at the disrated butler, and ordered him out of the room.

"I wouldn't have done that," remarked the squatter, pausing in his work.