The Palliser Novels Part 281

"Have you ever said that nothing could alter that love?"

"Indeed I have."

"But it is altered. It has all gone. It has been transferred to one who has more advantages of beauty, youth, wealth, and position."

"Oh Mabel, Mabel!"

"But it is so."

"When you say this do you not think of yourself?"

"Yes. But I have never been false to any one. You are false to me."

"Have I not offered to face all the world with you?"

"You would not offer it now?"

"No," he said, after a pause, - "not now. Were I to do so, I should be false. You bade me take my love elsewhere, and I did so."

"With the greatest ease."

"We agreed it should be so; and you have done the same."

"That is false. Look me in the face and tell me whether you do not know it to be false!"

"And yet I am told that I am injuring you with Silverbridge."

"Oh, - so unmanly again! Of course I have to marry. Who does not know it? Do you want to see me begging my bread about the streets? You have bread; or if not, you might earn it. If you marry for money - "

"The accusation is altogether unjustifiable."

"Allow me to finish what I have to say. If you marry for money you will do that which is in itself bad, and which is also unnecessary. What other course would you recommend me to take? No one goes into the gutter while there is a clean path open. If there be no escape but through the gutter, one has to take it."

"You mean that my duty to you should have kept me from marrying all my life."

"Not that; - but a little while, Frank; just a little while. Your bloom is not fading; your charms are not running from you. Have you not a strength which I cannot have? Do you not feel that you are a tree, standing firm in the ground, while I am a bit of ivy that will be trodden in the dirt unless it can be made to cling to something? You should not liken yourself to me, Frank."

"If I could do you any good!"

"Good! What is the meaning of good? If you love, it is good to be loved again. It is good not to have your heart torn in pieces. You know that I love you." He was standing close to her, and put out his hand as though he would twine his arm round her waist. "Not for worlds," she said. "It belongs to that Palliser girl. And as I have taught myself to think that what there is left of me may perhaps belong to some other one, worthless as it is, I will keep it for him. I love you, - but there can be none of that softness of love between us." Then there was a pause, but as he did not speak she went on. "But remember, Frank, - our position is not equal. You have got over your little complaint. It probably did not go deep with you, and you have found a cure. Perhaps there is a satisfaction in finding that two young women love you."

"You are trying to be cruel to me."

"Why else should you be here? You know I love you, - with all my heart, with all my strength, and that I would give the world to cure myself. Knowing this, you come and talk to me of your pa.s.sion for this other girl."

"I had hoped we might both talk rationally as friends."

"Friends! Frank Tregear, I have been bold enough to tell you I love you; but you are not my friend, and cannot be my friend. If I have before asked you to help me in this mean catastrophe of mine, in my attack upon that poor boy, I withdraw my request. I think I will go back to the house now."

"I will walk back to Ledburgh if you wish it without going to the house again."

"No; I will have nothing that looks like being ashamed. You ought not to have come, but you need not run away." Then they walked back to the house together and found Miss Ca.s.sewary on the terrace. "We have been to the lake," said Mabel, "and have been talking of old days. I have but one ambition now in the world." Of course Miss Ca.s.sewary asked what the remaining ambition was. "To get money enough to purchase this place from the ruins of the Grex property. If I could own the house and the lake, and the paddocks about, and had enough income to keep one servant and bread for us to eat - of course including you, Miss Ca.s.s - "

"Thank'ee, my dear; but I am not sure I should like it."

"Yes; you would. Frank would come and see us perhaps once a year. I don't suppose anybody else cares about the place, but to me it is the dearest spot in the world." So she went on in almost high spirits, though alluding to the general decadence of the Grex family, till Tregear took his leave.

"I wish he had not come," said Miss Ca.s.sewary when he was gone.

"Why should you wish that? There is not so much here to amuse me that you should begrudge me a stray visitor."

"I don't think that I grudge you anything in the way of pleasure, my dear; but still he should not have come. My Lord, if he knew it, would be angry."

"Then let him be angry. Papa does not do so much for me that I am bound to think of him at every turn."

"But I am, - or rather I am bound to think of myself, if I take his bread."

"Bread!"

"Well; - I do take his bread, and I take it on the understanding that I will be to you what a mother might be, - or an aunt."

"Well, - and if so! Had I a mother living would not Frank Tregear have come to visit her, and in visiting her, would he not have seen me, - and should we not have walked out together?"

"Not after all that has come and gone."

"But you are not a mother nor yet an aunt, and you have to do just what I tell you. And don't I know that you trust me in all things? And am I not trustworthy?"

"I think you are trustworthy."

"I know what my duty is and I mean to do it. No one shall ever have to say of me that I have given way to self-indulgence. I couldn't help his coming, you know."

That same night, after Miss Ca.s.sewary had gone to bed, when the moon was high in the heavens and the world around her was all asleep, Lady Mabel again wandered out to the lake, and again seated herself on the same rock, and there she sat thinking of her past life and trying to think of that before her. It is so much easier to think of the past than of the future, - to remember what has been than to resolve what shall be! She had reminded him of the offer which he had made and repeated to her more than once, - to share with her all his chances in life. There would have been almost no income for them. All the world would have been against her. She would have caused his ruin. Her light on the matter had been so clear that it had not taken her very long to decide that such a thing must not be thought of. She had at last been quite stern in her decision.

Now she was broken-hearted because she found that he had left her in very truth. Oh yes; - she would marry the boy, if she could so arrange. Since that meeting at Richmond he had sent her the ring reset. She was to meet him down in Scotland within a week or two from the present time. Mrs. Montacute Jones had managed that. He had all but offered to her a second time at Richmond. But all that would not serve to make her happy. She declared to herself that she did not wish to see Frank Tregear again; but still it was a misery to her that his heart should in truth be given to another woman.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

Crummie-Toddie Almost at the last moment Silverbridge and his brother Gerald were induced to join Lord Popplecourt's shooting-party in Scotland. The party perhaps might more properly be called the party of Reginald Dobbes, who was a man knowing in such matters. It was he who made the party up. Popplecourt and Silverbridge were to share the expense between them, each bringing three guns. Silverbridge brought his brother and Frank Tregear, - having refused a most piteous pet.i.tion on the subject from Major Tifto. With Popplecourt of course came Reginald Dobbes, who was, in truth, to manage everything, and Lord Nidderdale, whose wife had generously permitted him this recreation. The shooting was in the west of Perthshire, known as Crummie-Toddie, and comprised an enormous acreage of so-called forest and moor. Mr. Dobbes declared that nothing like it had as yet been produced in Scotland. Everything had been made to give way to deer and grouse. The thing had been managed so well that the tourist nuisance had been considerably abated. There was hardly a potato patch left in the district, nor a head of cattle to be seen. There were no inhabitants remaining, or so few that they could be absorbed in game-preserving or cognate duties. Reginald Dobbes, who was very great at grouse, and supposed to be capable of outwitting a deer by venatical wiles more perfectly than any other sportsman in Great Britain, regarded Crummie-Toddie as the nearest thing there was to a Paradise on earth. Could he have been allowed to pa.s.s one or two special laws for his own protection, there might still have been improvement. He would like the right to have all intruders thrashed by the gillies within an inch of their lives; and he would have had a clause in his lease against the making of any new roads, opening of footpaths, or building of bridges. He had seen somewhere in print a plan for running a railway from Callender to Fort Augustus right through Crummie-Toddie! If this were done in his time the beauty of the world would be over. Reginald Dobbes was a man of about forty, strong, active, well-made, about five feet ten in height, with broad shoulders and greatly-developed legs. He was not a handsome man, having a protrusive nose, high cheek-bones, and long upper lip; but there was a manliness about his face which redeemed it. Sport was the business of his life, and he thoroughly despised all who were not sportsmen. He fished and shot and hunted during nine or ten months of the year, filling up his time as best he might with coaching polo, and pigeon-shooting. He regarded it as a great duty to keep his body in the firmest possible condition. All his eating and all his drinking was done upon a system, and he would consider himself to be guilty of weak self-indulgence were he to allow himself to break through sanitary rules. But it never occurred to him that his whole life was one of self-indulgence. He could walk his thirty miles with his gun on his shoulder as well now as he could ten years ago; and being sure of this, was thoroughly contented with himself. He had a patrimony amounting to perhaps 1000 a year, which he husbanded so as to enjoy all his amus.e.m.e.nts to perfection. No one had ever heard of his sponging on his friends. Of money he rarely spoke, sport being in his estimation the only subject worthy of a man's words. Such was Reginald Dobbes, who was now to be the master of the shooting at Crummie-Toddie.

Crummie-Toddie was but twelve miles from Killancodlem, Mrs. Montacute Jones's highland seat; and it was this vicinity which first induced Lord Silverbridge to join the party. Mabel Grex was to be at Killancodlem, and, determined as he still was to ask her to be his wife, he would make this his opportunity. Of real opportunity there had been none at Richmond. Since he had had his ring altered and had sent it to her there had come but a word or two of answer. "What am I to say? You unkindest of men! To keep it or to send it back would make me equally miserable. I shall keep it till you are married, and then give it to your wife." This affair of the ring had made him more intent than ever. After that he heard that Isabel Bonca.s.sen would also be at Killancodlem, having been induced to join Mrs. Montacute Jones's swarm of visitors. Though he was dangerously devoid of experience, still he felt that this was unfortunate. He intended to marry Mabel Grex. And he could a.s.sure himself that he thoroughly loved her. Nevertheless he liked making love to Isabel Bonca.s.sen. He was quite willing to marry and settle down, and looked forward with satisfaction to having Mabel Grex for his wife. But it would be pleasant to have a six-months run of flirting and love-making before this settlement, and he had certainly never seen any one with whom this would be so delightful as with Miss Bonca.s.sen. But that the two ladies should be at the same house was unfortunate.

He and Gerald reached Crummie-Toddie late on the evening of August 11th, and found Reginald Dobbes alone. That was on Wednesday. Popplecourt and Nidderdale ought to have made their appearance on that morning, but had telegraphed to say that they would be detained two days on their route. Tregear, whom hitherto Dobbes had never seen, had left his arrival uncertain. This carelessness on such matters was very offensive to Mr. Dobbes, who loved discipline and exact.i.tude. He ought to have received the two young men with open arms because they were punctual; but he had been somewhat angered by what he considered the extreme youth of Lord Gerald. Boys who could not shoot were, he thought, putting themselves forward before their time. And Silverbridge himself was by no means a first-rate shot. Such a one as Silverbridge had to be endured because from his position and wealth he could facilitate such arrangements as these. It was much to have to do with a man who would not complain if an extra fifty pounds were wanted. But he ought to have understood that he was bound in honour to bring down competent friends. Of Tregear's shooting Dobbes had been able to learn nothing. Lord Gerald was a lad from the Universities; and Dobbes hated University lads. Popplecourt and Nidderdale were known to be efficient. They were men who could work hard and do their part of the required slaughter. Dobbes proudly knew that he could make up for some deficiency by his own prowess; but he could not struggle against three bad guns. What was the use of so perfecting Crummie-Toddie as to make it the best bit of ground for grouse and deer in Scotland, if the men who came there failed by their own incapacity to bring up the grand total of killed to a figure which would render Dobbes and Crummie-Toddie famous throughout the whole shooting world? He had been hard at work on other matters. Dogs had gone amiss, - or guns, and he had been made angry by the champagne which Popplecourt caused to be sent down. He knew what champagne meant. Whisky-and-water, and not much of it, was the liquor which Reginald Dobbes loved in the mountains.

"Don't you call this a very ugly country?" Silverbridge asked as soon as he arrived. Now it is the case that the traveller who travels into Argyllshire, Perthshire, and Inverness, expects to find lovely scenery; and it was also true that the country through which they had pa.s.sed for the last twenty miles had been not only bleak and barren, but uninteresting and ugly. It was all rough open moorland, never rising into mountains, and graced by no running streams, by no forest scenery, almost by no foliage. The lodge itself did indeed stand close upon a little river, and was reached by a bridge that crossed it; but there was nothing pretty either in the river or the bridge. It was a placid black little streamlet, which in that portion of its course was hurried by no steepness, had no broken rocks in its bed, no trees on its low banks, and played none of those gambols which make running water beautiful. The bridge was a simple low construction with a low parapet, carrying an ordinary roadway up to the hall door. The lodge itself was as ugly as a house could be, white, of two stories, with the door in the middle and windows on each side, with a slate roof, and without a tree near it. It was in the middle of the shooting, and did not create a town around itself as do sumptuous mansions, to the great detriment of that seclusion which is favourable to game. "Look at Killancodlem," Dobbes had been heard to say - "a very fine house for ladies to flirt in; but if you find a deer within six miles of it I will eat him first and shoot him afterwards." There was a Spartan simplicity about Crummie-Toddie which pleased the Spartan mind of Reginald Dobbes.

"Ugly, do you call it?"

"Infernally ugly," said Lord Gerald.

"What did you expect to find? A big hotel, and a lot of c.o.c.kneys? If you come after grouse, you must come to what the grouse thinks pretty."

"Nevertheless, it is ugly," said Silverbridge, who did not choose to be "sat upon." "I have been at shootings in Scotland before, and sometimes they are not ugly. This I call beastly." Whereupon Reginald Dobbes turned upon his heel and walked away.

"Can you shoot?" he said afterwards to Lord Gerald.

"I can fire off a gun, if you mean that," said Gerald.

"You have never shot much?"

"Not what you call very much. I'm not so old as you are, you know. Everything must have a beginning." Mr. Dobbes wished "the beginning" might have taken place elsewhere; but there had been some truth in the remark.

"What on earth made you tell him crammers like that?" asked Silverbridge, as the brothers sat together afterwards smoking on the wall of the bridge.

"Because he made an a.s.s of himself; asking me whether I could shoot."

On the next morning they started at seven. Dobbes had determined to be cross, because, as he thought, the young men would certainly keep him waiting; and was cross because by their punctuality they robbed him of any just cause for offence. During the morning on the moor they were hardly ever near enough each other for much conversation, and very little was said. According to arrangement made they returned to the house for lunch, it being their purpose not to go far from home till their numbers were complete. As they came over the bridge and put down their guns near the door, Mr. Dobbes spoke the first good-humoured word they had heard from his lips. "Why did you tell me such an infernal - , I would say lie, only perhaps you mightn't like it?"

"I told you no lie," said Gerald.

"You've only missed two birds all the morning, and you have shot forty-two. That's uncommonly good sport."

"What have you done?"

"Only forty," and Mr. Dobbes seemed for the moment to be gratified by his own inferiority. "You are a deuced sight better than your brother."

"Gerald's about the best shot I know," said Silverbridge.

"Why didn't he tell?"

"Because you were angry when we said the place was ugly."

"I see all about it," said Dobbes. "Nevertheless when a fellow comes to shoot he shouldn't complain because a place isn't pretty. What you want is a decent house as near as you can have it to your ground. If there is anything in Scotland to beat Crummie-Toddie I don't know where to find it. Shooting is shooting you know, and touring is touring."

Upon that he took very kindly to Lord Gerald, who, even after the arrival of the other men, was second only in skill to Dobbes himself. With Nidderdale, who was an old companion, he got on very well. Nidderdale ate and drank too much, and refused to be driven beyond a certain amount of labour, but was in other respects obedient and knew what he was about. Popplecourt was disagreeable, but he was a fairly good shot and understood what was expected of him. Silverbridge was so good-humoured, that even his manifest faults, - shooting carelessly, lying in bed and wanting his dinner, - were, if not forgiven, at least endured. But Tregear was an abomination. He could shoot well enough and was active, and when he was at the work seemed to like it; - but he would stay away whole days by himself, and when spoken to would answer in a manner which seemed to Dobbes to be flat mutiny. "We are not doing it for our bread," said Tregear.

"I don't know what you mean."

"There's no duty in killing a certain number of these animals." They had been driving deer on the day before and were to continue the work on the day in question. "I'm not paid fifteen shillings a week for doing it."

"I suppose if you undertake to do a thing you mean to do it. Of course you're not wanted. We can make the double party without you."

"Then why the mischief should you growl at me?"

"Because I think a man should do what he undertakes to do. A man who gets tired after three days' work of this kind would become tired if he were earning his bread."

"Who says I am tired? I came here to amuse myself."

"Amuse yourself!"

"And as long as it amuses me I shall shoot, and when it does not I shall give it up."

This vexed the governor of Crummie-Toddie much. He had learned to regard himself as the arbiter of the fate of men while they were sojourning under the same autumnal roof as himself. But a defalcation which occurred immediately afterwards was worse. Silverbridge declared his intention of going over one morning to Killancodlem. Reginald Dobbes muttered a curse between his teeth, which was visible by the anger on his brow to all the party. "I shall be back to-night, you know," said Silverbridge.

"A lot of men and women who pretend to come there for shooting," said Dobbes angrily, "but do all the mischief they can."

"One must go and see one's friends, you know."

"Some girl!" said Dobbes.

But worse happened than the evil so lightly mentioned. Silverbridge did go over to Killancodlem; and presently there came back a man with a cart, who was to return with a certain not small proportion of his luggage.

"It's hardly honest, you know," said Reginald Dobbes.

CHAPTER x.x.xIX.

Killancodlem Mr. Dobbes was probably right in his opinion that hotels, tourists, and congregations of men are detrimental to shooting. Crummie-Toddie was in all respects suited for sport. Killancodlem, though it had the name of a shooting-place, certainly was not so. Men going there took their guns. Gamekeepers were provided and gillies, - and, in a moderate quant.i.ty, game. On certain grand days a deer or two might be shot, - and would be very much talked about afterwards. But a glance at the place would suffice to show that Killancodlem was not intended for sport. It was a fine castellated mansion, with beautiful though narrow grounds, standing in the valley of the Archay River, with a mountain behind and the river in front. Between the gates and the river there was a public road on which a stage-coach ran, with loud-blown horns and the noise of many tourists. A mile beyond the Castle was the famous Killancodlem hotel which made up a hundred and twenty beds, and at which half as many more guests would sleep on occasions under the tables. And there was the Killancodlem post-office halfway between the two. At Crummie-Toddie they had to send nine miles for their letters and newspapers. At Killancodlem there was lawn-tennis and a billiard-room and dancing every night. The costumes of the ladies were lovely, and those of the gentlemen, who were wonderful in knickerbockers, picturesque hats and variegated stockings, hardly less so. And then there were carriages and saddle-horses, and paths had been made hither and thither through the rocks and hills for the sake of the scenery. Scenery! To hear Mr. Dobbes utter the single word was as good as a play. Was it for such c.o.c.kney purposes as those that Scotland had been created, fit mother for grouse and deer?

Silverbridge arrived just before lunch, and was soon made to understand that it was impossible that he should go back that day. Mrs. Jones was very great on that occasion. "You are afraid of Reginald Dobbes," she said severely.

"I think I am rather."

"Of course you are. How came it to pa.s.s that you of all men should submit yourself to such a tyrant?"

"Good shooting, you know," said Silverbridge.

"But you dare not call an hour your own - or your soul. Mr. Dobbes and I are sworn enemies. We both like Scotland, and unfortunately we have fallen into the same neighbourhood. He looks upon me as the genius of sloth. I regard him as the incarnation of tyranny. He once said there should be no women in Scotland, - just an old one here and there, who would know how to cook grouse. I offered to go and cook his grouse!

"Any friend of mine," continued Mrs. Jones, "who comes down to Crummie-Toddie without staying a day or two with me, - will never be my friend any more. I do not hesitate to tell you, Lord Silverbridge, that I call for your surrender, in order that I may show my power over Reginald Dobbes. Are you a Dobbite?"

"Not thorough-going," said Silverbridge.

"Then be a Montacute Jones-ite; or a Bonca.s.senite, if, as is possible, you prefer a young woman to an old one." At this moment Isabel Bonca.s.sen was standing close to them.

"Killancodlem against Crummie-Toddie for ever!" said Miss Bonca.s.sen, waving her handkerchief. As a matter of course a messenger was sent back to Crummie-Toddie for the young lord's wearing apparel.

The whole of that afternoon he spent playing lawn-tennis with Miss Bonca.s.sen. Lady Mabel was asked to join the party, but she refused, having promised to take a walk to a distant waterfall where the Codlem falls into the Archay. A gentleman in knickerbockers was to have gone with her, and two other young ladies; but when the time came she was weary, she said, - and she sat almost the entire afternoon looking at the game from a distance. Silverbridge played well, but not so well as the pretty American. With them were joined two others somewhat inferior, so that Silverbridge and Miss Bonca.s.sen were on different sides. They played game after game, and Miss Bonca.s.sen's side always won.