Cashel Byron's Profession Part 35

"I am dead certain that now is my time or never. I always know by instinct when to go in and finish. Here's your mantle."

"In such a hurry to get rid of your poor old mother, Cashel?"

"Oh, bother! you're not old. You won't mind my wanting you to go for this once, will you?"

She smiled affectionately, put on her mantle, and turned her cheek towards him to be kissed. The unaccustomed gesture alarmed him; he retreated a step, and involuntary a.s.sumed an att.i.tude of self-defence, as if the problem before him were a pugilistic one. Recovering himself immediately, he kissed her, and impatiently accompanied her to the house door, which he closed softly behind her, leaving her to walk in search of her carriage alone. Then he stole up-stairs to the library, where he found Lydia reading.

"She's gone," he said.

Lydia put down her book, looked up at him, saw what was coming, looked down again to hide a spasm of terror, and said, with a steady severity that cost her a great effort, "I hope you have not quarrelled."

"Lord bless you, no! We kissed one another like turtle-doves. At odd moments she wheedles me into feeling fond of her in spite of myself. She went away because I asked her to."

"And why do you ask my guests to go away?"

"Because I wanted to be alone with you. Don't look as if you didn't understand. She's told me a whole heap of things about myself that alter our affairs completely. My birth is all right; I'm heir to a county family that came over with the Conqueror, and I shall have a decent income. I can afford to give away weight to old Webber now."

"Well," said Lydia, sternly.

"Well," said Cashel, unabashed, "the only use of all that to me is that I may marry if I like. No more fighting or teaching now."

"And when you are married, will you be as tender to your wife as you are to your mother?"

Cashel's elation vanished. "I knew you'd think that," he said. "I am always the same with her; I can't help it. She makes me look like a fool, or like a brute. Have I ever been so with you?"

"Yes," said Lydia. "Except," she added, "that you have never shown absolute dislike to me."

"Ah! EXCEPT! That's a very big except. But I don't dislike her. Blood is thicker than water, and I have a softness for her; only I won't put up with her nonsense. But it's different with you. I don't know how to say it; I'm not good at sentiment--not that there's any sentiment about it.

At least, I don't mean that; but--You're fond of me in a sort of way, ain't you?"

"Yes; I'm fond of you in a sort of way."

"Well, then," he said, uneasily, "won't you marry me? I'm not such a fool as you think; and you'll like me better after a while."

Lydia became very pale. "Have you considered," she said, "that henceforth you will be an idle man, and that I shall always be a busy woman, preoccupied with the work that may seem very dull to you?"

"I won't be idle. There's lots of things I can do besides boxing. We'll get on together, never fear. People that are fond of one another never have any difficulty; and people that hate each other never have any comfort. I'll be on the lookout to make you happy. You needn't fear my interrupting your Latin and Greek: I won't expect you to give up your whole life to me. Why should I? There's reason in everything. So long as you are mine, and n.o.body else's, I'll be content. And I'll be yours and n.o.body else's. What's the use of supposing half a dozen accidents that may never happen? Let's sign reasonable articles, and then take our chance. You have too much good-nature ever to be nasty."

"It would be a hard bargain," she said, doubtfully; "for you would have to give up your occupation; and I should give up nothing but my unfruitful liberty."

"I will swear never to fight again; and you needn't swear anything. If that is not an easy bargain, I don't know what is."

"Easy for me, yes. But for you?"

"Never mind me. You do whatever you like; and I'll do whatever you like.

You have a conscience; so I know that whatever you like will be the best thing. I have the most science; but you have the most sense. Come!"

Lydia looked around, as if for a means of escape. Cashel waited anxiously. There was a long pause.

"It can't be," he said, pathetically, "that you are afraid of me because I was a prize-fighter."

"Afraid of you! No: I am afraid of myself; afraid of the future; afraid FOR you. But my mind is already made up on this subject. When I brought about this meeting between you and your mother I determined to marry you if you asked me again."

She stood up, quietly, and waited. The rough hardihood of the ring fell from him like a garment: he blushed deeply, and did not know what to do.

Nor did she; but without willing it she came a step closer to him, and turned up her face towards his. He, nearly blind with confusion, put his arms about her and kissed her. Suddenly she broke loose from his arms, seized the lapels of his coat tightly in her hands, and leaned back until she nearly hung from him with all her weight.

"Cashel," she said, "we are the silliest lovers in the world, I believe--we know nothing about it. Are you really fond of me?"

She recovered herself immediately, and made no further demonstration of the kind. He remained shy, and was so evidently anxious to go, that she presently asked him to leave her for a while, though she was surprised to feel a faint pang of disappointment when he consented.

On leaving the house he hurried to the address which his mother had given him: a prodigious building in Westminster, divided into residential flats, to the seventh floor of which he ascended in a lift.

As he stepped from it he saw Lucian Webber walking away from him along a corridor. Obeying a sudden impulse, he followed, and overtook him just as he was entering a room. Lucian, finding that some one was resisting his attempt to close the door, looked out, recognized Cashel, turned white, and hastily retreated into the apartment, where, getting behind a writing-table, he s.n.a.t.c.hed a revolver from a drawer. Cashel recoiled, amazed and frightened, with his right arm up as if to ward off a blow.

"Hullo!" he cried. "Drop that d--d thing, will you? If you don't, I'll shout for help."

"If you approach me I will fire," said Lucian, excitedly. "I will teach you that your obsolete brutality is powerless against the weapons science has put into the hands of civilized men. Leave my apartments.

I am not afraid of you; but I do not choose to be disturbed by your presence."

"Confound your cheek," said Cashel, indignantly; "is that the way you receive a man who comes to make a friendly call on you?"

"Friendly NOW, doubtless, when you see that I am well protected."

Cashel gave a long whistle. "Oh," he said, "you thought I came to pitch into you. Ha! ha! And you call that science--to draw a pistol on a man.

But you daren't fire it, and well you know it. You'd better put it up, or you may let it off without intending to: I never feel comfortable when I see a fool meddling with firearms. I came to tell you that I'm going to be married to your cousin. Ain't you glad?"

Lucian's face changed. He believed; but he said, obstinately, "I don't credit that statement. It is a lie."

This outraged Cashel. "I tell you again," he said, in a menacing tone, "that your cousin is engaged to me. Now call me a liar, and hit me in the face, if you dare. Look here," he added, taking a leather case from his pocket, and extracting from it a bank note, "I'll give you that twenty-pound note if you will hit me one blow."

Lucian, sick with fury, and half paralyzed by a sensation which he would not acknowledge as fear, forced himself to come forward. Cashel thrust out his jaw invitingly, and said, with a sinister grin, "Put it in straight, governor. Twenty pounds, remember."

At that moment Lucian would have given all his political and social chances for the courage and skill of a prize-fighter. He could see only one way to escape the torment of Cashel's jeering and the self-reproach of a coward. He desperately clenched his fist and struck out. The blow wasted itself on s.p.a.ce; and he stumbled forward against his adversary, who laughed uproariously, grasped his hand, clapped him on the back, and exclaimed,

"Well done, my boy. I thought you were going to be mean; but you've been game, and you're welcome to the stakes. I'll tell Lydia that you have fought me for twenty pounds and won on your merits. Ain't you proud of yourself for having had a go at the champion?"

"Sir--" began Lucian. But nothing coherent followed.

"You just sit down for a quarter of an hour, and don't drink anything, and you'll be all right. When you recover you'll be glad you showed pluck. So, good-night, for the present--I know how you feel, and I'll be off. Be sure not to try to settle yourself with wine; it'll only make you worse. Ta-ta!"

As Cashel withdrew, Lucian collapsed into a chair, shaken by the revival of pa.s.sions and jealousies which he had thought as completely outgrown as the school-boy jackets in which he had formerly experienced them. He tried to think of some justification of his anger--some better reason for it than the vulgar taunt of a bully. He told himself presently that the idea of Lydia marrying such a man had maddened him to strike. As Cashel had predicted, he was beginning to plume himself on his pluck.

This vein of reflection, warring with his inner knowledge that he had been driven by fear and hatred into a paroxysm of wrath against a man to whom he should have set an example of dignified self-control, produced an exhausting whirl in his thoughts, which were at once quickened and confused by the nervous shock of bodily violence, to which he was quite unused. Unable to sit still, he rose, put on his hat, went out, and drove to the house in Regent's Park.

Lydia was in her boudoir, occupied with a book, when he entered. He was not an acute observer; he could see no change in her. She was as calm as ever; her eyes were not even fully open, and the touch of her hand subdued him as it had always done. Though he had never entertained any hope of possessing her since the day when she had refused him in Bedford Square, a sense of intolerable loss came upon him as he saw her for the first time pledged to another--and such another!

"Lydia," he said, trying to speak vehemently, but failing to shake off the conventional address of which he had made a second nature, "I have heard something that has filled me with inexpressible dismay. Is it true?"

"The news has travelled fast," she said. "Yes; it is true." She spoke composedly, and so kindly that he choked in trying to reply.

"Then, Lydia, you are the chief actor in a greater tragedy than I have ever witnessed on the stage."