Only One Love, or Who Was the Heir Part 28

"Why, Skettle, this is worse than ''Twas seven long years ago!'"

exclaimed Jack.

"On that day, Master Jack, I swore that if ever a time came when I'd a chance of serving you, I'd do it. It did not seem very likely then, for we all thought you'd be the next squire; but now, Master Jack, I should be grateful if you'd borrow ten pounds of me."

"Nonsense," cried Jack. "Don't be an idiot, Skettle. _You_ a lawyer!

why, you're too soft for anything but a washerwoman. There, good-bye; remember me to little Ned when you write, and tell him I hope he'll grow up a little harder than his father. Good-bye," and he shook the thin, skinny claw heartily.

Old Skettle stood and looked after him, his right hand fumbling in his waistcoat pocket; and when Jack had got quite out of sight he pulled the hand out, and with it a small sc.r.a.p of paper with a few words written on it, and a seal. It was just such a sc.r.a.p of paper which might have been torn from a letter, and the seal was the Davenant seal, with its griffin and spear plainly stamped.

Old Skettle looked at it a moment curiously, then shook his head.

"No, I was right after all in not giving it to him; it may be nothing--nothing at all. And yet--it's the squire's handwriting, for it's his seal, and what was it lying outside the terrace for? Where's the other part of it, and what was the other part like? I'll keep it. I don't say that there's any good in it, but I'll keep it. Not a mourning-ring or a walking-stick! All--house, lands, money--to Mr.

Stephen, with the sneaking face and the silky tongue. Poor Master Jack!

I--I wish he'd taken that ten-pound note; it burns a hole in my pocket.

Not--a--mourning-ring," he muttered. "It's not like the squire, for he was fond of Master Jack, and if I'm not half the idiot he called me, the old man hated Mr. Stephen. I seem to feel that there's something wrong.

I'll keep this bit of paper;" and he restored the sc.r.a.p to its place and returned to the "Bush" with as much expression on his face as one might expect to see on a blank skin of parchment.

Jack was more moved than he would have liked to admit by old Skettle's sympathy and offer of a.s.sistance, and in a softened mood, produced by the little incident, sat and smoked his pipe with a lighter spirit.

After all he was young, and--and--well, things might turn up; at any rate, if the worst came to the worst, he could earn his living at driving a coach-and-four, or, say, as a navvy.

"I shouldn't make a bad light porter," he mused, "only there are no light porters now. I wonder what will become of me. Anyhow, I'd rather live on an Abernethy biscuit a day than take a penny from Stephen or borrow ten pounds from Skettle. Stephen. Squire of Hurst Leigh! He'll make a funny squire. I don't believe he knows a pheasant from a barn-door fowl, or a Berks.h.i.+re pig from a pump-handle. I should have made a better squire than he. Never mind; it's no use crying over spilt milk!"

Jack was certainly not the man to cry over milk spilt or strewn, and long before the train had reached Arkdale he had forgotten his ill-luck and the mystery attending the will, and all his thoughts were fixed on the beautiful girl who dwelt in a woodman's hut in the midst of Warden Forest.

Forbidden fruit is always the sweetest, and Jack felt that the fruit was forbidden here. What on earth business had he, a ruined man, to be lounging about Warden, or any other forest, in the hope of getting a sight of, or a few words with, a girl, whom, be she as lovely as a peri, could be nothing to him? What good could he do? On the contrary, perhaps, a great deal of harm; for ten to one the woodman would cut up rough, and there would be a row.

But he felt, somehow, that he had made a promise, and promises were sacred things to Jack--excepting always promises to pay--and a row had rather a charm for him.

Nevertheless, when the train drew up at Arkdale Station, he had quite resolved to wait until the London train came up, and as such resolutions generally end, it ended in giving up the idea and starting for Warden.

Jack was not sentimental. Men with good appet.i.tes and digestions seldom are; but his heart beat as he entered the charmed center of the great elms and oaks which fringed the forest, and the whole atmosphere seemed full of a strange fascination.

"I wonder what she will say, how she will look?" he kept asking himself.

"I'd walk a thousand miles to hear her voice, to look into her eyes. Oh, I'm a worse idiot than old Skettle! What can her eyes and her voice be to me? By Jove, though, I might turn woodman and--and----" marry her, he was going to say, but the thought seemed so bold, so--well, so coa.r.s.e in connection with such a beautiful person, that Jack actually blushed and frowned at his effrontery.

He found no difficulty in recognizing the way, and strode along at a good pace, which, however, grew slower as he neared the clearing in which stood Gideon Rolfe's cottage, and just before he emerged from the wood into it he stopped, and felt with a faint wonder that his heart was beating fast.

It was a new sensation for Master Jack, and it upset him.

"This won't do," he said; "I must keep cool. A child would get the better of me while I am like this; and I mustn't forget I've got to face that wooden-faced woodman. Courage, my boy, courage!"

And with a resolute front he stepped into the clearing.

Yes, there was the cottage, but why on earth were the shutters up.

With a strange misgiving he walked up to the door and knocked.

There was no answer. He knocked again and again--still no answer.

Then he stepped back and looked up at the chimney. There was no smoky trail rising through the trees. He listened--there was no sound. His heart sank and sank till he felt as if it had entered his boots.

With a kind of desperate hope he knelt on the window-sill and looked through a hole in the shutter into the room.

It was bare of furniture--empty, desolate.

He got down again and looked about him like one who, having buried a treasure, goes to the spot and finds that it has gone.

Gone--that was the word--and no sign!

It was incredible. Three days--only three days. What had happened?

Was--was anyone dead? And at this thought his face grew as pale as the tan would allow it.

No; that was absurd. People--she--could not have died and been buried in three days! Then, where was she? Was it possible that the old man had actually left the wood--thrown up his livelihood--because of his (Jack's) visit to the cottage?

A great deal more disturbed and upset than he had been over the squire's will, he paced up and down. He sat down on the seat outside the window--the seat where he had drunk his cider and eaten his cake--the seat where Mrs. Davenant sat so patiently--and he lit his pipe and smoked in utter bewilderment.

Disappointment is but a lukewarm word by which to describe his feelings.

He felt that he had looked forward to seeing Una as a sort of set-off against the terrible blow which the squire's will had dealt him, and now she was gone!

I am afraid to say how many hours he sat smoking and musing, in the vain hope that she, or Gideon Rolfe, or someone would come to tell him something about it; but at last he realized that she had indeed flown; that the nest which had contained the beautiful bird was empty and void; and with a heart that felt like lead, he set out for Wermesley.

By chance, more than calculation, he caught the up-train, and was whirled into London.

Weary, exhausted rather, he signaled a hansom, and was driven to Spider Court.

Spider Court is not an easy place to find. It is in the heart of the Temple, and consists of about ten houses, every one of which, like a Chinese puzzle, contains a number of houses within itself.

Barristers--generally briefless--inhabit Spider Court; but it is the refuge of the hard-working literary man, and of the members of that strange cla.s.s which is always waiting for "something to turn up."

Jack ascended the stairs of No. 5, pa.s.sed various doors bearing the names of the occupants on the other side of them, and opened a door which bore the legend:

"Leonard Dagle.

"John Newcombe."

painted in small black letters on its cross-panel.

It was not a large room, and it was plainly furnished; but it looked comfortable. Its contents looked rather incongruous.

At the end of the room, close by the window, which only allowed about four hours of daylight to enter it, stood a table crowded with papers, presenting that appearance which ladies generally call "a litter." The table and book-shelf, filled with heavy-looking volumes, would give one the impression that the room belonged to a barrister or a literary man, if it were not for a set of boxing-gloves and a pair of fencing foils, which hung over the fireplace, and the prints of ballet-girls and famous actresses which adorned the walls.

As Jack entered the room, a man, who was sitting at the table, turned his head, and peering through the gloom which a single candle only served to emphasize, exclaimed:

"Jack, is that you?"

The speaker was the Leonard Dagle whose name appeared conjointly with Jack's on the door of the chambers.

Seen by the light of the single candle, Leonard Dagle looked handsome; it was left for the daylight to reveal the traces which life's battle had cut in his regular features. One had only to glance at the face to be reminded of the old saying of the sword wearing the scabbard. It was the face of a man who had fought the hard fight of one hand against the world, and had not yet won the victory.