The Weavers Part 63

She felt Hylda's hands turn cold. A kind of mist filled the dark eyes, and the slim, beautiful figure swayed slightly. An instant only, and then the lips smiled, and Hylda said in a quavering voice: "They will be so glad in England."

"Yes, yes, my darling, that is what Nahoum said." She gave Nahoum's message to her. "Now they'll make him a peer, I suppose, after having deserted him. So Englis.h.!.+"

She did not understand why Hylda's hands trembled so, why so strange a look came into her face, but, in an instant, the rare and appealing eyes shone again with a light of agitated joy, and suddenly Hylda leaned over and kissed her cheek.

"Smell the coffee," she said with a.s.sumed gaiety. "Doesn't fair-and-sixty want her breakfast? Sunrise is a splendid tonic." She laughed feverishly.

"My darling, I hadn't seen the sun rise in thirty years, not since the night I first met Windlehurst at a Foreign Office ball."

"You have always been great friends?" Hylda stole a look at her.

"That's the queer part of it; I was so stupid, and he so clever. But Windlehurst has a way of letting himself down to your level. He always called me Betty after my boy died, just as if I was his equal. La, la, but I was proud when he first called me that--the Prime Minister of England. I'm going to watch the sun rise again to-morrow, my darling.

I didn't know it was so beautiful, and gave one such an appet.i.te." She broke a piece of bread, and, not waiting to b.u.t.ter it, almost stuffed it into her mouth.

Hylda leaned over and pressed her arm. "What a good mother Betty it is!"

she said tenderly.

Presently they were startled by the shrill screaming of a steamer whistle, followed by the churning of the paddles, as she drove past and drew to the bank near them.

"It is a steamer from Cairo, with letters, no doubt," said Hylda; and the d.u.c.h.ess nodded a.s.sent, and covertly noted her look, for she knew that no letters had arrived from Eglington since Hylda had left England.

A half-hour later, as the d.u.c.h.ess sat on deck, a great straw hat tied under her chin with pale-blue ribbons, like a child of twelve, she was startled by seeing the figure of a farmer-looking person with a shock of grey-red hair, a red face, and with great blue eyes, appear before her in the charge of Hylda's dragoman.

"This has come to speak with my lady," the dragoman said, "but my lady is riding into the desert there." He pointed to the sands.

The d.u.c.h.ess motioned the dragoman away, and scanned the face of the new-comer shrewdly. Where had she seen this strange-looking English peasant, with the rolling walk of a sailor?

"What is your name, and where do you come from?" she asked, not without anxiety, for there was something ominous and suggestive in the old man's face.

"I come from Hamley, in England, and my name is Soolsby, your grace. I come to see my Lady Eglington."

Now she remembered him. She had seen him in Hamley more than once.

"You have come far; have you important news for her ladys.h.i.+p? Is there anything wrong?" she asked with apparent composure, but with heavy premonition.

"Ay, news that counts, I bring," answered Soolsby, "or I hadn't come this long way. 'Tis a long way at sixty-five."

"Well, yes, at our age it is a long way," rejoined the d.u.c.h.ess in a friendly voice, suddenly waving away the intervening air of cla.s.s, for she was half a peasant at heart.

"Ay, and we both come for the same end, I suppose," Soolsby added; "and a costly business it is. But what matters, so be that you help her ladys.h.i.+p and I help Our Man."

"And who is 'Our Man'?" was the rejoinder. "Him that's coming safe here from the South--David Claridge," he answered. "Ay, 'twas the first thing I heard when I landed here, me that he come all these thousand miles to see him, if so be he was alive." Just then he caught sight of Kate Heaver climbing the stair to the deck where they were. His face flushed; he hurried forward and gripped her by the arm, as her feet touched the upper deck. "Kate-ay, 'tis Kate!" he cried. Then he let go her arm and caught a hand in both of his and fondled it. "Ay, ay, 'tis Kate!" "What is it brings you, Soolsby?" Kate asked anxiously.

"'Tis not Jasper, and 'tis not the drink-ay, I've been sober since, ever since, Kate, la.s.s," he answered stoutly. "Quick, quick, tell me what it is!" she said, frowning. "You've not come here for naught, Soolsby."

Still holding her hand, he leaned over and whispered in her ear. For an instant she stood as though transfixed, and then, with a curious m.u.f.fled cry, broke away from him and turned to go below.

"Keep your mouth shut, la.s.s, till proper time," he called after her, as she descended the steps hastily again. Then he came slowly back to the d.u.c.h.ess.

He looked her in the face--he was so little like a peasant, so much more like a sailor here with his feet on the deck of a floating thing. "Your grace is a good friend to her ladys.h.i.+p," he said at last deliberately, "and 'tis well that you tell her ladys.h.i.+p. As good a friend to her you've been, I doubt not, as that I've been to him that's coming from beyond and away."

"Go on, man, go on. I want to know what startled Heaver yonder, what you have come to say."

"I beg pardon, your grace. One doesn't keep good news waiting, and 'tis not good news for her ladys.h.i.+p I bring, even if it be for Claridge Pasha, for there was no love lost 'twixt him and second-best lords.h.i.+p that's gone."

"Speak, man, speak it out, and no more riddles," she interrupted sharply.

"Then, he that was my Lord Eglington is gone foreign--he is dead," he said slowly.

The d.u.c.h.ess fell back in her chair. For an instant the desert, the temples, the palms, the Nile waters faded, and she was in some middle world, in which Soolsby's voice seemed coming m.u.f.fled and deep across a dark flood; then she recovered herself, and gave a little cry, not unlike that which Kate gave a few moments before, partly of pain, partly of relief.

"Ay, he's dead and buried, too, and in the Quaker churchyard. Miss Claridge would have it so. And none in Hamley said nay, not one."

The d.u.c.h.ess murmured to herself. Eglington was dead--Eglington was dead--Eglington was dead! And David Claridge was coming out of the desert, was coming to-day-now!

"How did it happen?" she asked, faintly, at last.

"Things went wrong wi' him--bad wrong in Parliament and everywhere, and he didn't take it well. He stood the world off like-ay, he had no temper for black days. He shut himself up at Hamley in his chemical place, like his father, like his father before him. When the week-end came, there he was all day and night among his bottles and jars and wires. He was after summat big in experiment for explosives, so the papers said, and so he said himself before he died, to Miss Claridge--ay, 'twas her he deceived and treated cruel, that come to him when he was shattered by his experimenting. No patience, he had at last--and reckless in his chemical place, and didn't realise what his hands was doing. 'Twas so he told her, that forgave him all his deceit, and held him in her arms when he died. Not many words he had to speak; but he did say that he had never done any good to any one--ay, I was standing near behind his bed and heard all, for I was thinking of her alone with him, and so I would be with her, and she would have it so. Ay, and he said that he had misused cruel her that had loved him, her ladys.h.i.+p, that's here. He said he had misused her because he had never loved her truly, only pride and vainglory being in his heart. Then he spoke summat to her that was there to forgive him and help him over the stile 'twixt this field and it that's Beyond and Away, which made her cry out in pain and say that he must fix his thoughts on other things. And she prayed out loud for him, for he would have no parson there. She prayed and prayed as never priest or parson prayed, and at last he got quiet and still, and, when she stopped praying, he did not speak or open his eyes for a longish while.

But when the old clock on the stable was striking twelve, he opened his eyes wide, and when it had stopped, he said: 'It is always twelve by the clock that stops at noon. I've done no good. I've earned my end.'

He looked as though he was waiting for the clock to go on striking, half raising himself up in bed, with Miss Faith's arm under his head.

He whispered to her then--he couldn't speak by this time. 'It's twelve o'clock,' he said. Then there came some words I've heard the priest say at Ma.s.s, 'Vanitas, Vanitatum,'--that was what he said. And her he'd lied to, there with him, laying his head down on the pillow, as if he was her child going to sleep. So, too, she had him buried by her father, in the Quaker burying-ground--ay, she is a saint on earth, I warrant."

For a moment after he had stopped the d.u.c.h.ess did not speak, but kept untying and tying the blue ribbons under her chin, her faded eyes still fastened on him, burning with the flame of an emotion which made them dark and young again.

"So, it's all over," she said, as though to herself. "They were all alike, from old Broadbrim, the grandfather, down to this one, and back to William the Conqueror."

"Like as peas in a pod," exclaimed Soolsby--"all but one, all but one, and never satisfied with what was in their own garden, but peeking, peeking beyond the hedge, and climbing and getting a fall. That's what they've always been evermore."

His words aroused the d.u.c.h.ess, and the air became a little colder about her-after all, the division between the cla.s.ses and the ma.s.ses must be kept, and the Eglingtons were no upstarts. "You will say nothing about this till I give you leave to speak," she commanded. "I must tell her ladys.h.i.+p."

Soolsby drew himself up a little, nettled at her tone. "It is your grace's place to tell her ladys.h.i.+p," he responded; "but I've taken ten years' savings to come to Egypt, and not to do any one harm, but good, if so be I might."

The d.u.c.h.ess relented at once. She got to her feet as quickly as she could, and held out her hand to him. "You are a good man, and a friend worth having, I know, and I shall like you to be my friend, Mr.

Soolsby," she said impulsively.

He took her hand and shook it awkwardly, his lips working. "Your grace, I understand. I've got naught to live for except my friends. Money's naught, naught's naught, if there isn't a friend to feel a crunch at his heart when summat bad happens to you. I'd take my affydavy that there's no better friend in the world than your grace."

She smiled at him. "And so we are friends, aren't we? And I am to tell her ladys.h.i.+p, and you are to say 'naught.'

"But to the Egyptian, to him, your grace, it is my place to speak--to Claridge Pasha, when he comes." The d.u.c.h.ess looked at him quizzically.

"How does Lord Eglington's death concern Claridge Pasha?" she asked rather anxiously. Had there been gossip about Hylda? Had the public got a hint of the true story of her flight, in spite of all Windlehurst had done? Was Hylda's name smirched, now, when all would be set right? Had everything come too late, as it were?

"There's two ways that his lords.h.i.+p's death concerns Claridge Pasha,"

answered Soolsby shrewdly, for though he guessed the truth concerning Hylda and David, his was not a leaking tongue. "There's two ways it touches him. There'll be a new man in the Foreign Office--Lord Eglington was always against Claridge Pasha; and there's matters of land betwixt the two estates--matters of land that's got to be settled now," he continued, with determined and successful evasion.

The d.u.c.h.ess was deceived. "But you will not tell Claridge Pasha until I have told her ladys.h.i.+p and I give you leave? Promise that," she urged.

"I will not tell him until then," he answered. "Look, look, your grace,"

he added, suddenly pointing towards the southern horizon, "there he comes! Ay, 'tis Our Man, I doubt not--Our Man evermore!"