My Lord Duke Part 21

"She has knocked herself up," explained Lady Caroline tersely. "So would any girl--not an Australian--who rode so far on such a day. Your Grace might have known better!"

Jack stared at her like a wounded stag; then he uttered an abject apology, for which, however, he obtained no sort of a receipt. Lady Caroline had turned and was talking to some one else. But it was not this that cut him to the heart; it was her mode of addressing him, after their conversation of the early morning.

Later in the evening he remembered that railing voice and the shutting of the window upstairs; and with a burning indignation he divined, all at once, who it was that had been so spoken to, and why, with the true cause of Olivia's indisposition.

This was in the darkness of his hut, with Livingstone asleep in his lap.

In another minute Jack was striding through the pines, on his way to the drawing-room for a few plain words with Lady Caroline Sellwood. He never had them. Lady Caroline was gone to bed. It was almost eleven; within an hour Claude would be back, and a moral certainty become an absolute fact. Hunt's tale was true. Had it been otherwise, Claude would have telegraphed. He had left, indeed, on the distinct understanding that he should do no such thing; his mission was to be kept a secret, and a telegram might excite suspicion; yet even so he would have sent one had all been well. Jack was sure of it; his exhausted spirit had surrendered utterly to an ineluctable despair.

In this humour he sought the Poet's Corner, and found its two _habitues_ furtively chuckling over some newspaper. Their gaiety cut him to the quick. Yet he longed to enter into it.

"What's the joke?" he asked. "I want something to make me laugh!"

"This wouldn't," replied Edmund Stubbs. "It's not benign enough for you."

"It's only a piece of smart scribbling," explained Llewellyn, lighting a fresh cigarette with the stump of the last.

Jack was behind them; quite innocently he put his head between theirs and looked for himself. The paper was the _Parthenon_. There was but one article on the open page. It was headed--

OUR MINOR POETS.

XXVIII. MR. CLAUDE LAFONT.

"So that amuses you?" said Jack at last.

"Quite," said Llewellyn.

"You think it just, eh?"

"Oh, hang justice! It's awfully nice copy. That's all it has any right to be. Justice doesn't matter a hang; the _Parthenon's_ not written for the virtuous shopkeeper; it isn't meant to appeal to the Nonconformist Conscience."

"Besides, the article _is_ just," protested Stubbs. "We know what Lafont is, between ourselves; he's an excellent chap, but his poetry--save the mark!--would hardly impose on Clapham and Wandsworth. His manner's cheap enough, but his matter goes one cheaper; it's the sort of thing for which there should be no charge." Stubbs drained his gla.s.s.

Jack was blazing.

"I don't know what you mean by 'cheap,'" he cried; "but from reading that article, which I happen to have seen before, I should call it a jolly 'cheap' word. I don't set up to be a clever man. I only know what I like, and I like everything of Claude's that--that I can understand.

But even if I didn't I should be sorry to go about saying so in his own house!"

"_His_ own house!" exclaimed the Impressionist.

"We didn't know it was his," said Stubbs.

"What's mine is Claude's," replied Jack, colouring. "It was before I turned up, and it will be again when--whenever I peg out."

With that he was gone.

"Sounds suicidal," remarked Llewellyn.

"Or celibate," said Stubbs, replenishing his gla.s.s.

"Poor beast!" concluded the artist.

Here their host returned.

"I'm very sorry, you fellows," said he, with absurd humility. "I'm all off colour to-night, and I know I've made a rude ruffian of myself. Some of these days you'll understand; meantime will you forgive me?"

"_I_ have nothing to forgive," replied Llewellyn.

"We'll say no more about it," said Stubbs.

And Jack shook hands with them both before leaving them for good; then he hurried through the length of the building to the great conservatory, where Stebbings was putting out the lights. The conservatory was at that extreme of the Towers which the dogcart would pa.s.s first. Here, too, was room and air for a man distraught. So Jack called out to Stebbings to leave the lights on longer.

"And light some more," he added suddenly. "Light up every lamp in the place! I shall stay here until Mr. Lafont returns."

"Yes, your Grace."

"Stebbings!"

"Your Grace?"

"For G.o.d's sake don't call me that again! I--I'm not used to it, Stebbings--any more than you're used to me," added Jack inconsequently; and he fled into the grounds until the old man should be gone.

The night was very dark and heavy; clouds obscured the moon, shedding a fine rain softly upon drive and terrace. Jack raised his face, and a grateful sprinkling cooled its fever. He longed for a far heavier fall, with the ancient longing of those prehistoric days when a grey sky and an honest wetting were the rarest joys in life. Could he indeed return to that rough routine after all these weeks of aristocratic ease? The bushman might exchange his wideawake for a coronet, but could the peer go back to the bush? Time must show. The only question was whether Hunt had lied or told the truth; and the answer could not be much longer delayed. Already it was half-past eleven; there was the clang creeping lazily through the night, round quarter of a mile of intervening wall, and half a hundred angles.

He would have gone down the drive to meet the dogcart; but the night was too dark; and beside him blazed the great conservatory like a palace of fire. He entered it again, and now he had it to himself; the statues among the tree-ferns were his only companions. But in his absence old Stebbings had placed a little table with brandy and soda-water set out upon it; even the butler had seen and pitied his condition.

The third quarter struck. The sound just carried to the conservatory, for now the rain was heavier, and the rattle overheard warred successfully against all other noises. The dogcart might drive by without Jack's hearing it. The suspense was horrible, but a surprise would be more horrible still. He was becoming unstrung; why should he not tune himself up with the brandy? His voluntary teetotalism was too absurd; he had made no promise, taken no pledge, but only a private pride in his self-discipline as it had gone on from day to day. Not a drop had he touched since that afternoon at Dover so long, so long ago!

As he reckoned up the time, the forgotten l.u.s.t possessed him; it had been even so on Carara, when the periodical need of a cheque would first steal over his lonely spirit. He thought now of those occasions and their results; he knew himself of old; but he was no longer the same man--resistance would be ridiculous now. He took another look at the night; then he filled a wine-gla.s.s with raw brandy--raised it--and impulsively dashed the whole upon the marble flags. The brandy widened in a shallow amber flood; the broken gla.s.s lay glittering under the lamps; and in Jack's ears the patter of the rain (which had never abated) broke out anew.

He could not account for his act; he did not know it for the culmination of a highly nervous condition induced by the twenty-four sleepless hours of unrelieved suspense. It was neither more nor less, and yet it enabled him to hold up his head once more. And as he did so, there--through the swimming crystal walls--between a palm-tree and a Norfolk Island pine--were the two red eyes of the dogcart dilating in the dark.

The great moment had come, and it was not so great after all. Jack's little outburst had left him strangely calm. He went to the door and hailed the dogcart in a loud, cheery voice. The lamps stopped. Claude came within range of those in the conservatory, and shook himself on the steps. Then he entered, looking unusually healthy, but dripping still.

"A brute of a night for you," said Jack apologetically. "Take off that coat, and have some brandy. Mind where you go. I've had a spill."

This was the reaction. Claude understood.

"Then you don't want to hear the news?"

"I know it. I've known it for hours."

"That I can see you haven't. Listen to me. There was no English marriage. Give me your hand!"

It was limp and cold.

"You don't believe me!" said Claude severely.

Jack subsided in a chair.

"I can't," he whispered. "I can't."