CHAPTER VI
A NEW LEAF
"The Duke of St. Osmund's and Mr. Claude Lafont left town yesterday for Maske Towers, the family seat near Devenholme." So ran the announcement in the morning papers of the next day but one. And the Duke was actually exploring his inheritance when it appeared.
Overnight the pair had arrived too late to see much more than the lofty, antique hall and the respective rooms in which they were to sup and sleep; but the birds awoke Jack in the early morning, and he was up and out before seven o'clock.
As yet he had seen little that attracted him within, and at this hour he felt a childish horror of the dark colossal canvases overhanging the grand staircase and the hall; like the sightless suits of armour standing blind sentinel below, they froze him with the look of lifeless life about the grim, gigantic figures. He was thankful to see one of the great double doors standing open to the sun; it let him out into a portico loftier than the hall; and folding his arms across a stone balustrade, the whilom bushman looked forth between Corinthian columns like the masts of a ship, and was monarch of all he beheld.
A broad and stately terrace ran right and left below; beyond and below this, acres of the smoothest, greenest sward were relieved by a few fine elms, with the deer still in clusters about their trunks. The lawn sloped quietly to the verdant shores of a noble lake; sun and dew had dusted the grass with silver; sun and wind were rippling the lake with flakes of flame like leaping gold-fish; and across the water, on the rising ground, a plantation of young pines ran their points into the radiant sky. These trees appealed to the Duke more than anything he had seen yet. His last bush hut had been built among pines; and such is the sentimental attraction of the human heart towards a former condition – better or worse, if it be but beyond recall – that the Duke of St. Osmund's had to inspect that plantation before anything else. Leaving the Towers behind him, unnoticed and indeed forgotten, he crossed the lawn, skirted the lake, and plunged amid the pine-trees as his impulse spurred him. But on his way back, a little later, the mellow grandeur of that ancient pile broke in upon him at last, and he stood astounded in the wet grass, the blood of possession running hot in his veins.
The historic building stretched on this side for something like a quarter of a mile from end to end. Here the blue sky sank deep between turret and spire, and there it picked out a line of crumbling battlements, or backed the upper branches of an elm that (from this point) cut the expanse of stone in two. It had grown out of many attempts in as many ages; thus, besides architectural discrepancies for the eyes of the few, the shading of the walls was as finely graduated as that of an aging beard, but the prevailing tint was a pearly gray, now washed with purple, and exquisitely softened by the tender haze still lingering in the dewy air. And from every window that Jack could see, flashed a morning sun; for as he stood and looked, his shadow lay in front of him along the milky grass.
To one extremity of the building clung an enormous conservatory, likewise ablaze from dome to masonry; at the other, the dark hues of a shrubbery rested the eye; but that of the Duke was used to the sunlit desert, and not readily dazzled. His quick glance went like a bullet through the trees to a red gable and the gilt hands of a clock just visible beyond. On the instant he recovered from his enchantment, and set off for the shrubbery at a brisk walk; for he had heard much of the Maske stables, and evidently there they were.
As he was in the shrubbery, the stable clock struck eight after a melodious chime sadly spoilt by the incessant barking of some small dog; the last stroke reverberated as he emerged, and the dog had the morning air to itself, to murder with its hideous clamour. But the Duke now saw the exciting cause, and it excited him; for he had come out opposite the stable-yard gates, which were shut, but from the top of which, with its lame paw lifted, a vertical tail, and a back like a hedgehog asleep, his own yellow cat spat defiance at an unseen foe. And between the barks came the voice of a man inciting the dog with a filthy relish.
"Set him off, Pickle! Now's your time. Try again. Oh, blow me, if you can't you can't, and I'll have to lend you a hand."
And one showed over the gate with the word, but the fingers grabbed the air, for Jack had snatched his pet in the nick of time. He was now busy with the ring of the latch, fumbling it in his fury. The breath came in gusts through his set teeth and bristling beard. One hand clasped the yellow cat in a fierce caress; the other knotted into a fist as the gate flew open.
In the yard a hulking, smooth-faced fellow, whose pendulous under-lip had dropped in dismay, changed his stare for a grin when he saw the Duke, who was the smaller as well as the rougher-looking man of the two; for he had not only come out without his collar, which he discarded whenever he could; but he had clapped on the old bush wideawake because Claude was not up to stop him.
"Well, and who are you?" began the other cheerfully.
"You take off your coat and I'll show you," replied Jack, with a blood-thirsty indistinctness. "I'm a better man than you are, whoever I am; at least we'll have a see!"
"Oh, will we?" said the fellow. "And you're the better man, are you? What do you think?" he added, turning to a stable-boy who stood handy with thin brown arms akimbo, and thumbs in his belt.
"I wonder 'oo 'e thinks 'e is w'en 'e's at 'ome?" said the lad.
Jack never heard him. He had spied the saddle-room door standing open. In an instant he was there, with the small dog yelping at his heels; in another, he had locked the door between cat and dog, pocketed the key, and returned to his man, stripping off his own coat and waistcoat as he came. He flung them into a corner, and after them his bush hat.
"Now let's see you take off yours! If you don't," added Jack, with a big bush oath, "I'll have to hide you with it on!"
But man and boy had been consulting while his back was turned, and Jack now found himself between the two of them; not that he gave the lad a thought.
"Look you here; I'll tell you who I am," said the man. "My name's Matt Hunt, and Matt can fight, as you wouldn't need telling if you belonged to these parts. But he don't take on stray tramps like you; so, unless you hook it slippy, we're just going to run you out o' this yard quicker than you come in."
"Not till I've shown you how to treat dumb animals – "
"Then here goes!"
And with that the man Hunt seized one of Jack's arms, while the stable-boy nipped the other from behind, and made a dive at Jack's pocket for the saddle-room key. But a flat-footed kick sent the lad sprawling without harming him; and the man was driven so hard under the nose that he too fell back, bearded with blood.
"Come on!" roared Jack. "And you, my boy, keep out of the light unless you want a whipping yourself!"
He was rolling up the sleeves from his tanned and furry arms. Hunt followed suit, a cascade of curses flowing with his blood; he had torn off his coat, and a wrist-button tinkled on the cement as he caught up Jack in his preparations. His arms were thicker than the bushman's, though white and fleshy. Hunt was also the heavier weight, besides standing fully six feet, as against the Duke's five-feet-nine when he held himself up. Nor was there any lack of confidence in the dripping, hairless, sinister face, when the two men finally squared up.
They fell to work without niggling, for Jack rushed in like a bull, leading most violently with his left. It was an inartistic start; the big man was not touched; but neither did he touch Jack, who displayed, at all events, a quick pair of legs. Yet it was this start that steadied the Duke. It showed him that Hunt was by no means unskilled in the use of his hands; and it put out of his head everything but the fight itself, so that he heard no more the small tike barking outside the saddle-room door, hitherto his angriest goad. Some cool sparring ensued. Then Hunt let out from the shoulder, but the blow was avoided with great agility; then Jack led off again, but with a lighter touch, and this time he drew his man. The blows of the next minute it was impossible to follow. They were given and returned with enormous virulence. And there was no end to them until the big man tripped and fell.
"See here," said Jack, standing over him; "that was my cat, and I'd got to go for you. But if you've had enough of this game, so have I, and we'll cry quits."
He was sucking a cut lip as he spoke. The other spat out a tooth and blundered to his feet.
"Quits, you scum? Wait a bit!"
And they were at hotter work than ever.
Meanwhile the yard was filling with stable-men and gardeners, who were in time to see Hunt striding down on his unknown adversary, and the latter retreating in good order; but the stride quickened, ending in a rush, which the Duke eluded so successfully that he was able to hit Hunt hard on the ear as he passed.
It was afterwards a relief to the spectators to remember how they had applauded this effort. To the Duke their sympathy was a comfort at the time; though he no more suspected that his adversary was also his most unpopular tenant, than the latter dreamt of his being the Duke.
Hunt let out a bellow of pain, staggered, and resumed his infuriate rush; but his punishment was now heavier than before. He had lost both wind and head, and he was losing pluck. One of his eyes was already retiring behind folds of livid flesh; and a final blow under the nose, where the first of all had been delivered, knocked him howling into the arms of a new-comer, who disengaged himself as Hunt fell.
"What, Claude, is that you?" cried the Duke; and a flood of new sensations so changed his voice, that Hunt looked up from where he lay, a beaten, bleeding, blubbering mass. But in the silent revelation of that moment there was at first no sound save the barking of the fox-terrier outside the saddle-room door. This had never ceased. Then the coachman's pipe fell from his mouth and was smashed.
"My God!" said he. "It's his Grace himself!"
He had driven the Duke from Devenholme the night before.
"The Duke of St. Osmund's!" exclaimed Hunt from the ground. He had been shedding blood and tears indifferently, and now he sat up with a slimy stare in his uninjured eye.
"Yes, that's right," said Jack, with a nod to the company. "So now you all know what to expect for cruelty to cats, or any other dumb animals; and don't you forget it!"
He put on his coat and went over to the saddle-room. Claude followed him, still at a loss for words. And Hunt's dog went into a wild ecstasy as the key was put into the lock.
"Hold him," said Jack. "The dog's all right; and I lay his master'll think twice before he sets him on another cat o' mine."
"Come away," said Claude hoarsely; "for all our sakes, come away before you make bad worse!"
"Well, I will. Only hold him tight. That's it. Poor little puss, then – poor old Livingstone! Now I'm ready; come along."
But Hunt was in their path; and Jack's heart smote him for the mischief he had done, though his own lower lip was swollen like a sausage.
"So you're the new Duke of St. Osmund's," said Hunt, with a singular deliberation. "I wasn't to know that, of course; no, by gosh, not likely!"
"Well, you know it now," was the reply. "And – and I'm sorry I had to hit you so hard, Hunt!"
"Oh, don't apologise," said Hunt, with a sneer that showed a front tooth missing. "Stop a bit, though; I'm not so sure," he added, with a glance of evil insight.
"Sure of what?"
"Whether you oughtn't to apologise for not hitting a man of your own age!"
"Take no notice of him," whispered Claude strenuously; but he obtained none himself.
"Nonsense," said the Duke; "you're the younger man, at all events."
"Am I? I was born in '59, I was."
"Then according to all accounts you're the younger man by four years."
"By – four – years," repeated Hunt slowly. "So you was born in '55! Thank you; I shall make a note of that, you may be sure – your Grace!"
And Hunt was gone; they heard him whistling for his tike when he was himself out of sight, and the dog went at last. Then the coachman stepped forward, cap in hand.
"If you please, your Grace, that man was here without my knowledge. He's always putting in his nose where he isn't wanted; I've shifted him out of this before to-day; and with your Grace's permission, I'll give orders not to have him admitted again."
"Who is he?" said Jack. "A tenant or what?"
"Only a tenant, your Grace. Matt Hunt, they call him, of the Lower Farm; but it might be of Maske Towers, by the way he goes on!"
"He took a mighty interest in my age," remarked the Duke. "I never asked to look at his fangs – but I think you'll find one of them somewhere about the yard. No; I'm not fond of fighting, my lads. Don't you run away with that idea. But there's one thing I can't and won't suffer, and that's cruelty to animals. You chaps in the stables recollect that! And so good-morning to you all."
Claude led the way through the shrubbery in a deep depression. The guilty Duke took his arm with one hand, while with the other he hugged the yellow cat that was eying the shrubbery birds over its master's shoulder, much as the terrier had eyed it.
"My dear old boy," said Jack, "I'm as sorry as sorry for what's happened. But I couldn't help myself. Look at Livingstone; he'd have been a stiff 'un by this time if I hadn't turned up when I did; so naturally there was a row. Still I'm sorry. I know it's a bad beginning; and I remember saying in the train that I'd turn over a new leaf down here. Well, and so I will if you give me time. Don't judge me by this morning, Claude. Give me another chance; and for God's sake don't look like that!"
"I can't help it, Jack," replied Claude, with a weary candour. "I'm prepared for anything now. You make me a year older every day. How do I know what you'll do next? I think the best thing I can do is to give you up as a bad job."
CHAPTER VII
THE DUKE'S PROGRESS
Claude's somewhat premature despair was not justified by the event; nevertheless it did good. Excusable enough at the time, that little human outbreak was also more effective than the longest lecture or the most mellifluous reproof. Jack liked his cousin. The liking was by no means unconnected with gratitude. And now Jack saw that he could best show his gratitude by adopting a more suitable course of conduct than he could claim to have pursued hitherto. He determined to make an effort. He had everything to learn; it was a mountainous task that lay before him; but he faced it with spirit, and made considerable progress in a little space.
He learnt how to treat the servants. The footmen had misbehaved when he addressed them as "my boy" and "old toucher" from his place at table. He consulted Claude, and dropped these familiarities as well as the painfully respectful tone which he had at first employed towards old Stebbings, the butler. Stebbings had been very many years in the family. The deference inspired by his venerable presence was natural enough in the new Duke of St. Osmund's; but it shocked and distressed Stebbings's feudal soul. He complained to Claude, and he had not to complain twice. For Jack discovered a special and a touching eagerness to master the rudiments of etiquette; though in other respects (which certainly mattered less) he was still incorrigible.
His social "crammer" could no more cure him of his hatred of a collar than of his liking for his cats. The latter were always with him; the former, unhappily, was not. In these things the Duke was hopelessly unregenerate; he was a stockman still at heart, and a stockman he threatened to remain. The soft summer nights were nothing to the nights in the bush; the fleecy English sky was not blue at all after the skies of Riverina; and the Duke's ideal of a man was "my old boss." Claude heard of "my old boss" until he was sick of the words, which constituted a gratuitous reminder of a position most men would have been glad to forget. Yet there was much to be thankful for. There were no more scenes such as the Duke's set-to in his own stable-yard with one of his own tenants. At least nothing of the sort happened again until Jack's next collision with Matthew Hunt. And that was not yet.
Matthew was from home when the Duke, making a round of the estate, with his agent, visited the Lower Farm in its turn. Old Hunt, Matthew's besotted father, received them in the kitchen with a bloodshot stare and little else, for drink had long dimmed his forces. Not so the old man's daughter-in-law, Matthew's wife, who showed the visitors all over the farm in a noiseless manner that made Jack feel uneasy, because he never knew when she was or was not at his elbow. Besides, he could not forget the thrashing he had given her husband, nor yet suppose that she had forgotten it either. The woman was of a gross type strangely accentuated by her feline quietude. She had a continual smile, and sly eyes that dropped when they encountered those of the Duke, whom they followed sedulously at all other moments. Jack seemed to know it, too; at all events he was not sorry to turn his back upon the Lower Farm.
"A rum lot, the Hunts!" he said at lunch. "They're about the only folks here that I haven't cottoned to on the spot. I shall get on fine with all the others. But I can't suffer those Hunts!"
"There's no reason why you should suffer them," observed the agent, in his well-bred drawl; for he had a more aristocratic manner than Claude himself. "They have the best farm on the property, and they pay the smallest rent. You should think over my suggestion of this morning."
"No, no," said the Duke. "He wants me to double the rent, Claude, and clear them out if they won't pay. I can't do it."
"Well, no; I hardly think you can," assented Claude. "Oddly enough, my grandfather had quite a weakness for the Hunts; and then they are very old tenants. That hoary-headed Silenus, whom you saw, was once in the stables here; so was his son after him, in my time; and the old man's sister was my grandmother's maid. You can't turn out people like that ex itinere, so to speak – I mean to say in a hurry. It's too old a connection altogether."
"Exactly what they trade upon," said the agent. "They have been spoilt for years, and they expect his Grace to go on spoiling them. I should certainly get rid of the whole gang."
"No, mister – no!" declared the Duke. "Claude is right. I can't do it. I might if I hadn't given that fellow a hiding. After that I simply can't; it would look too bad."
The agent said no more, but his look and shrug were perhaps neither politic nor polite. A strapping sportsman himself, and a person of some polish into the bargain, he was in a position, as it were, to look down on Claude with one eye, and on the Duke with the other. And he did so with a freedom extraordinary in one of his wisdom and understanding.
"One of these days," said Jack, "I shall give that joker his cheque. He's not my notion of an overseer at all; if he's too good for the billet let him roll up his swag and clear out; if he isn't, let him treat the bosses as a blooming overseer should."
"Why, what's the head and chief of his offending now?" asked Claude; for this was one night in the billiard-room, when the agent had been making an example of both cousins at pyramids; it was after he was gone, and while the Duke was still tearing off his collar.
"What has he said to-night?" continued the poet, less poetically. "I heard nothing offensive."
"You wouldn't," said the Duke; "you're such a good sort yourself. You'd never see when a chap was pulling your leg, but I see fast enough, and I won't have it. What did he say to-night? He talked through his neck when we missed our shots. That about billiards in the bush I didn't mind; me and the bush, we're fair game; but when he got on to your poetry, old man, I felt inclined to run my cue through his gizzard. 'A poet's shot,' he says, when you put yourself down; and 'you should write a sonnet about that,' when you got them three balls in together. I don't say it wasn't a fluke. That has nothing at all to do with it. The way the fellow spoke is what I weaken on. He wouldn't have done for my old boss, and I'm blowed if he'll do for me. One of these days I shall tell him to come outside and take his coat off; and, by the looks of him, I shouldn't be a bit surprised to see him put me through."
Claude's anxiety overcame every other feeling. He implored the Duke not to make another scene, least of all with such a man as the agent, whose chaff, he truly protested, did not offend him in the least. Jack shook his head, and was next accused of being more sensitive about the "wretched poems" than was the poet himself. This could not have been. But Claude was not so very far wrong.
His slender book was being widely reviewed, or rather "noticed," for the two things are not quite the same. The "notices," on the whole, were good and kind, but "uninstructed," so Claude said with a sigh; nevertheless, he appeared to obtain a sneaking satisfaction from their perusal; and as for Jack, he would read them aloud, capering round the room and shaking Claude by both hands in his delighted enthusiasm. To him every printed compliment was a loud note blown from the trumpet of fame into the ears of all the world. He would hear not a word against the paper in which it appeared, but attributed every qualifying remark of Claude's to the latter's modesty, and each favourable paragraph to some great responsible critic voicing the feeling of the country in the matter of these poems. Claude himself, however, though frequently gratified, was not deceived; for the sweetest nothings came invariably from the provincial press; and he at least knew too much to mistake a "notice" for a "real review."
The real reviews were a sadly different matter. There were very few of them, in the first place; their scarcity was worse than their severity. And they were generally very severe indeed; or they did not take the book seriously, which, as Claude said, was the unkindest cut of all.
"Only show me the skunk who wrote that," exclaimed Jack one morning, looking over Claude's shoulder as he opened his press-cuttings, "and I'll give him the biggest hiding ever he had in his life!"
Another critic, the writer of a really sympathetic and exhaustive review, the Duke desired to invite to Maske Towers by the next post, "because," said Jack, "he must be a real good sort, and we ought to know him."
"I do know him," said Claude, with a groan, for he had thought of keeping the fact to himself; "I know him to my cost. He owes me money. This is payment on account. Oh, I am no good! I must give it up! Ignorance and interest alone are at my back! Genuine enthusiasm there is none!"
There was Jack's. But was that genuine? The Duke himself was not sure. He meant it to ring true, but then he meant to appreciate the poems, and of many of them he could make little enough in his secret soul.
All this, however, was but one side of the quiet life led by the cousins at Maske Towers; and it had but one important effect – that of sowing in Claude's heart a loyalty to Jack not unworthy of Jack's loyalty to him.
There were other subjects of discussion upon which the pair were by no means at one. There was Jack's open failure to appreciate the marble halls, the resonant galleries, the darkling pictures of his princely home; and there was the scatter-brained scheme by which he ultimately sought to counteract the oppressive grandeur of his new surroundings.
It was extremely irritating, especially to a man like Claude; but the proudest possessions of their ancestors (whose superlative taste and inferior morals had been the byword of so many ages) were those which appealed least to that blameless Goth, the ninth Duke of St. Osmund's. The most glaring case in point was that of the pictures, which alone would make the worldwide fame of a less essentially noble seat than Maske Towers. But Titian, Rembrandt, Rubens, Leonardo da Vinci, Andrea del Sarto, Angeletti Vernet, and Claude Lorrain – all these were mere names, and new ones, to Happy Jack. Claude Lafont, pointing to magnificent examples of the work of one One Master after another, made his observations with bated breath, as well he might, for where is there such another private collection? Jack, however, was not impressed; he was merely amazed at Claude, and his remarks in the picture-gallery are entirely unworthy of reproduction. In the State Apartments he was still more trying. He spoke of having the ancient tapestries (after Raphael's Cartoons) taken out and "well shaken," which, as Claude said, would have reduced them to immediate atoms. And he threatened to have the painted ceilings whitewashed without delay.
"Aurora Banishing Night, eh?" he cried, with horizontal beard and upturned eyes. "She'd jolly soon banish my night, certainly; it should be, banishing sleep! And all those naked little nippers! They ought to be papered over, for decency's sake; and that brute of a bed, who would sleep in it, I should like to know? Not me. Not much! It must be twenty-foot high and ten-foot wide; it gives me the hump to look at it, and the ceilings give it me worse. See here, Claude, we'll lock up these State Apartments, as you call them, and you shall keep the key. I'm full of 'em; they'll give me bad dreams as it is."
They were not, however, the only apartments of which the Duke disapproved; the suite which had been done up entirely for his own use, under Claude's direction, did not long commend itself to the ex-stockman. Everything was far too good for him and his cats; they were not accustomed to such splendour; it made them all four uncomfortable – so Jack declared after taking Claude's breath away with the eccentric plan on which he had set his heart. And for the remainder of their solitary companionship each man had his own occupation; the Duke preparing more congenial quarters for himself and the cats; and Claude, with Jack's permission and the agent's skilled advice, superintending the making of private golf-links for Mr. Sellwood's peculiar behoof. For the Home Secretary had promised to join the Maske party, for the week-ends at any rate, until (as he expressed it) the Government "holed out."
That party was now finally arranged. The Frekes were coming with the Sellwoods, and the latter family were to have the luxurious suite which the Duke himself disdained. This was his Grace's own idea. Moreover, he interested himself personally in the right ordering of the rooms during the last few days; but this he kept to himself until the eleventh hour; in fact, until he was waiting for the drag to come round, which he was himself going to tool over to Devenholme to meet his guests. It was then that certain unexpected misgivings led Jack to seek out his cousin, in order to take him to see what he had done.
For Claude had shown him what he was doing. He was producing a set of exceedingly harmless verses, "To Olivia released from Mayfair," of which the Duke had already heard the rough draft. The fair copy was in the making even now; in the comparatively small room, at one end of the library, that Jack had already christened the Poet's Corner.
Claude wiped his pen with characteristic care, and then rose readily enough. He followed Jack down the immensely long, galleried, book-lined library, through a cross-fire of coloured lights from the stained-glass windows, and so to the stairs. Overhead there was another long walk, through corridor after corridor, which had always reminded Jack of the hotel in town. But at last, in the newly decorated wing, the Duke took a key from his pocket and put it in a certain door. And now it was Claude who was reminded of the hotel; for a most striking atmospheric change greeted him on the threshold; only this time it was not a gust of heat, but the united perfume of many flowers, that came from within.
The room was fairly flooded with fresh roses. It was as though they had either blown through the open window, or fallen in a miraculous shower from the dainty blue ceiling. They pranked the floor in a fine disorder. They studded the table in tiny vases. They hid the mantelpiece, embedded in moss; from the very grate below, they peeped like fairy flames, breathing fragrance instead of warmth; and some in falling seemed to have caught in the pictures on the walls, so artfully had they been arranged. Only the white narrow bed had escaped the shower. And in the midst of this, his handiwork, stood the Duke, and blushed like the roses themselves.
"Whose room is this?" asked Claude, though he knew so well.
"Olivia's – I should say Miss Sellwood's. You see, old man, you were writing these awfully clever verses for her; so I felt I should like to have something ready too."
"Your poem is the best!" exclaimed Claude, with envious, sparkling eyes. And then he sighed.
"Oh, rot!" said Jack, who was only too thankful for his offering to receive the cachet of Claude's approval. "All I wanted was to keep my end up, too. Look here. What do you think of this?"
And he took from a vase on the dressing-table an enormous white bouquet, that opened Claude's eyes wider than before.
"This is for her, too; I wanted to consult you about it," pursued Jack. "Should I leave it here for her, or should I take it down to the station and present it to her there? Or at dinner to-night? I want to know just what you think."
"No, not at dinner," replied Claude; "nor yet at the station."
"Not at all, you mean! I see it in your face!" cried the Duke so that Claude could not answer him. "But why not?" he added vehemently. "Where does the harm come in? It's only a blooming nosegay. What's wrong with it?"
"Nothing," was the reply, "only it might embarrass Olivia."