Part 10 (1/2)

And then came voices calling from the house. They had missed her.

”I am so sorry, Richard. I shall tell no one.”

She laid her hand ever so lightly upon mine and was gone. I stood staring after her until she disappeared in the door. All the way home I marvelled, my thoughts tumultuous, my hopes rising and falling.

But when next I saw her, I thought she had forgotten.

We had little company at the Hall that year, on account of Mr. Carvel.

And I had been busy indeed. I sought with all my might to master a business for which I had but little taste, and my grandfather complimented me, before the season was done, upon my management. I was wont to ride that summer at four of a morning to canter beside Mr. Starkie afield, and I came to know the yield of every patch to a hogshead and the pound price to a farthing. I grew to understand as well as another the methods of curing the leaf. And the wheat pest appearing that year, I had the good fortune to discover some of the cl.u.s.ters in the sheaves, and ground our oyster-sh.e.l.ls in time to save the crop. Many a long evening I spent on the wharves with old Stanwix, now toothless and living on his pension, with my eye on the glow of his pipe and my ear bent to his stories of the sea. It was his fancy that the gift of prophecy had come to him with the years; and at times, when his look would wander to the black rigging in the twilight, he would speak strangely enough.

”Faith, Mr. Richard,” he would say; ”tho' your father was a soldier afore ye, ye were born to the deck of a s.h.i.+p-o'-war. Mark an old man's words, sir.”

”Can you see the frigate, Stanwix?” I laughed once, when he had repeated this with more than common solemnity.

His reply rose above the singing of the locusts.

”Ay, sir, that I can. But she's no frigate, sir. Devil knows what she is. She looks like a big merchantman to me, such as I've seed in the Injy trade, with a high p.o.o.p in the old style. And her piercin's be not like a frigate.” He said this with a readiness to startle me, and little enough superst.i.tion I had. A light was on his seared face, and his pipe lay neglected on the boards. ”Ay, sir, and there be a flag astern of her never yet seed on earth, nor on the waters under the earth. The tide is settin' in, the tide is settin' in.”

These were words to set me thinking. And many a time they came back to me when the old man was laid away in the spot reserved for those who sailed the seas for Mr. Carvel.

Every week I drew up a report for my grandfather, and thus I strove by shouldering labour and responsibility to ease my conscience of that load which troubled it. For often, as we walked together through the yellow fields of an evening, it had been on my tongue to confess the lie Mr.

Allen had led me into. But the sight of the old man, trembling and tremulous, aged by a single stroke, his childlike trust in my strength and beliefs, and above all his faith in a political creed which he nigh deemed needful for the soul's salvation,--these things still held me back. Was it worth while now, I asked myself, to disturb the peace of that mind?

Thus the summer wore on to early autumn. And one day I was standing booted and spurred in the stables, Harvey putting the bridle upon Firefly, when my boy Hugo comes running in.

”Ma.r.s.e d.i.c.k!” he cries, ”Ma.r.s.e Satan he come in the pinnace, and young Ma.r.s.e Satan and Missis Satan, and Ma.r.s.e Satan's pastor!”

”What the devil do you mean, Hugo?”

”Young ebony's right, sir,” chuckled Harvey; ”'tis the devil and his following.”

”Do you mean Mr. Grafton, fellow?” I demanded, the unwelcome truth coming over me.

”That he does,” remarked Harvey, laconically. ”You won't be wanting her now, your honour?”

”Hold my stirrup,” I cried, for the news had put me in anger. ”Hold my stirrup, sirrah!”

I believe I took Firefly the best of thirty miles that afternoon and brought her back in the half-light, my saddle discoloured with her sweat. I clanked into the hall like a captain of horse. The night was sharp with the first touch of autumn, and a huge backlog lay on the irons. Around it, in a comfortable half-circle sat our guests, Grafton and Mr. Allen and Philip smoking and drinking for a whet against supper, and Mrs. Grafton in my grandfather's chair. There was an easy air of possession about the party of them that they had never before a.s.sumed, and the sight made me rattle again, the big door behind me.

”A surprise for you, my dear nephew,” Grafton said gayly, ”I'll, lay a puncheon you did, not, expect us.”

Mr. Carvel woke with a start at the sound of the door and said querulously, ”Guests, my lord, and I have done my poor best to make them welcome in your absence.”

The sense of change in him stung me. How different would his tone have been a year ago!

He tattooed with his cane, which was the sign he generally made when he was ready for bed. Toward night his speech would hurt him. I a.s.sisted him up, the stairs, my uncle taking his arm on the other side. And together, with Diomedes help; we undressed him, Grafton talking in low tomes the while: Since this was, an office I was wont to perform, my temper was now overwhelming me. But I kept my month closed. At last he had had the simple meal Dr. Leiden allowed him, his candles were snuffed, and my uncle and I made our way to the hall together: There my aunt and Mr. Allen were at picquet.

”Supper is insupportably late,” says she; with a yawn, and rings the hand-bell. ”Scipio,” she cries, ”why are we not served?”