My Lord Duke Part 27

"The fellow came to know if he could do anything for me, with tears in his eyes, and he has made me a handsome apology. He didn't ask me to beg him off, but I mean to try my luck in that way before I go."

"You mustn't go!"

"I must. Will you forgive the old man?"

"Not if you clear."

"My good fellow, this is unreasonable----"

"So it is, Mr. Dalrymple, on _your_ part," rejoined Jack warmly. "It's too bad of you. Bother Stebbings! I shan't be hard on him, you may be sure; and you mustn't be hard on me. Surely you can make allowances for a chap who's engaged to a girl like mine? I _did_ want to speak to you this morning; but she came first. I want to speak to you now--more than you suppose. Mr. Dalrymple, I wasn't straight with you last night; not altogether. But I can't suffer steering crooked; it gives me the hump; and as sure as I do it I've got to go over the ground again. You are the man I owe my all to; I can't end up crooked with _you_!"

Dalrymple sat on the bedside in his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves; he had turned up the cuffs; his strong and shapely wrists lay along his thighs; and his grey eyebrows, but not his lips, asked for more.

"I mean," continued Jack, "about what was bothering me that day I ran against you in Devenholme. It was only the day before yesterday, but Lord! it seems like the week before last."

And with that he unfolded, with much rapid detail, the whole episode of Matthew Hunt, from the morning in the stable-yard to the midnight at the hut. The story within that story was also told with particular care and circ.u.mstance; but long before the end was reached Dalrymple had emptied his bag upon the bed, and had himself rung to countermand the carriage.

He was interested; he would stay another day.

Downstairs in the drawing-room the Sellwood family and Claude Lafont were even then congratulating themselves upon the imminent departure of the unpopular guest. Their faces were so many sights when Jack entered in the highest spirits to tell them of his successful appeal to the better feelings of "good old Dalrymple," who after all was not going to leave them just yet. Jack was out again in an instant; and they next saw him, from the drawing-room windows, going in the direction of the hut with his odious old friend at his side. Whereupon Claude Lafont said a strong thing, for him; and the most sensible of engaged young women retired in tears to her room.

"There's one thing you must let me do," Dalrymple was saying; "if you don't, I shall insist. You must let me have the privilege of sorting that scoundrel, Mark Hunt."

"Matthew," said Jack.

"Matthew, then. I knew it was one of you evangelists."

"What would you do?" asked the Duke.

"See that he annoyed you no more. And I'll guarantee that he doesn't if you'll leave him to me."

"I didn't want to clear them out----"

"I think you must."

"Or to prosecute; it's so public, and a bit revengeful too."

"There I agree with you. I'm not even sure that you'd get a conviction.

It would be difficult, in any case, and would make a public scandal of it, as you say."

"Then I will leave him to you. You're the smartest man I know, Mr.

Dalrymple, and always have been. What you do will be right. I'll bother my head no more about it. Besides, anything to keep you with us a few days longer!"

Dalrymple shrugged his shoulders, but Jack did not see the gesture, for he was leading the way through the pines. A moment later they were at the hut.

The hut amused the squatter. He called it a colourable imitation. But it did not delight him as it had delighted Jack; the master bushman failed to share his old hand's sentimental regard for all that pertained to the bush. Dalrymple sat on the bunk and smoked a cigar, a cynical spectator of some simple pa.s.sages between Jack and his cats. Livingstone was exhibited with great pride; he had put on flesh in the old country; at which the squatter remarked that had he stayed on Carara, he would have put on an ounce of lead.

"You're a wonderful man, Jack!" he exclaimed at length. "I wouldn't have believed a fellow _could_ take a windfall as you have done, if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. I used to think of you a good deal after you had gone. I thought of you playing the deuce to any extent, but I must say I little dreamt of your building a bush hut to get back to your old way of life! I pictured the town crimson and the country carmine--both painted by you--but I never imagined _this_!"

And he looked round the hut in his amused, sardonic way; but there was a ring--or perhaps it was only a suspicion--of disappointment in his tone.

The next words were merely perplexed.

"And yet," added Dalrymple, "you profess yourself well pleased with your lot!"

"So I am--now."

"I begin to wish I hadn't changed my mind about going this afternoon."

"Why, on earth?"

"Because I also begin--to envy you! Come, let's make tracks for the house; I shall have huts enough to look at when I go back to the place that you need never see again."

"But I mean to see it again," said Jack as he locked up. "I intend to take my wife out, one of these days; we shall expect to come on a long visit to Carara; and the greatest treat you could give me would be to let me ride my old boundaries and camp in my old hut for a week!"

"Nonsense; you stay where you are," was the squatter's only comment. He seemed depressed; his cynical aplomb had quite deserted him. They returned in silence to the house.

A shabby-looking vehicle stood in front of the porch; the man said that he had brought a gentleman from Devenholme, and was to wait. The Duke and Dalrymple mounted the steps together. The first person they encountered in the hall was Claude Lafont, looking strangely scared; but a new-comer was in the act of taking off his coat; and, as he turned his face, Dalrymple and Jack started simultaneously. Both knew the man. It was Cripps the lawyer. And he, too, looked pale, nervous, and alarmed.

CHAPTER XX

"LOVE THE DEBT"

Olivia was not a little tired; this was the true explanation of the tears which had driven her upstairs. It was also the one excuse she saw for herself when she thought the matter over in her own room. Jack had devoted the whole morning to her; it was the squatter's turn; and, of course, Jack must invite whom he liked to stay as long as he pleased. To think of limiting his freedom in any such matter at the very outset of their engagement! Yet she had been guilty of that thought; but she was tired; she would lie down for an hour.

She lay down for two or three. Excitement had worn her out. It was after five when she awoke and went downstairs. As she did so Claude and Cripps crossed the hall and put on their hats. She hailed Claude.

"What have you done with Jack?"

"I think you'll find him in the little study at the end of the library."

"Thanks."

Olivia glanced at Cripps. She had never met him. She wondered who he was, and why Claude did not introduce him to her, and what made both of them so glum. They hurried out of the house as though they were afraid of her. What could it mean? She would find out from Jack; she felt a renewed right to him now, and thought of hints, as she went, for Mr.

Dalrymple, if they were still together. But Jack was alone; he was sitting in the dejected att.i.tude engendered by a peculiarly long and low arm-chair.

"Well?" said Olivia briskly.

"Well?" responded Jack; but he looked at her without rising and without a smile; and both omissions were unlike the lover and the man.

"I half expected to find Mr. Dalrymple with you. I'm so glad he isn't!

I--it's my turn, I think!"

"I haven't seen Dalrymple for over an hour," said Jack, with his heavy, absent eyes upon her all the time. "I wonder where he is?"

Olivia would not ask him what the matter was; she preferred to find out for herself, and then tell _him_. She looked about her. On a salver were a decanter and three wine-gla.s.ses; one was unused; and on the floor there lay an end of pink tape. She picked and held it up between finger and thumb.