Part 26 (1/2)
”After a pound a week in the bus.h.!.+”
”It does sound rummy, doesn't it? After you with the match, sir.”
”It's incredible.”
”Yet it's astonis.h.i.+ng how used you get to it in time--you'd be surprised! At first the whole thing knocked me sideways; it was tucker I couldn't digest. But once you take to the soft tack, there's nothing like it in the world. You may guess who's made me take to it quicker than I might have done!”
Dalrymple shrugged his ma.s.sive shoulders, and raised a contemplative eye to the moon, that lay curled like a silver shaving in the lucid heavens.
”Oh, yes, I can guess,” he said sardonically. ”And mind you I've nothing against the girl--I meant you were lucky there. The girl's all right--if you must marry. I don't dislike a woman who'll show fight; and she looked like showing it when I tried on that cracker-night-cap thing of yours. Oh, certainly! If you were to marry, you couldn't have done better; the girl's worth fifty of her mother, at any rate.”
”Fifty million!” cried Jack, somewhat warmly.
”Fifty million I meant to say,” and the squatter ran his arm through that of his host. ”Come, don't you mind _me_, Jack, my boy! You know what an old heathen I am in those little matters; and we have lots of other things to talk about, in any case.”
Jack was mollified in a moment.
”Lots!” he cried. ”I don't seem to have seen anything of you yet, and I'm sure you haven't seen much of the place. Isn't it a place and a half? Look at the terrace in the moonlight--and the spires--and the windows--hundreds of 'em--and the lawn and the tank! Then there's the inside; you've seen the hall; but I must show you the picture-gallery and the State Apartments. Such pictures! They say it's one of the finest private collections in the world; there's hardly one of them that isn't by some old master or another. I've heard the pictures alone are worth half a million of money!”
”They are,” said Dalrymple.
”You've heard so too?”
”Of course; my good fellow, your possessions are celebrated all the world over; that's what you don't appear to have realised yet.”
”I can't,” said Jack. ”It puts me in a sick funk when I try! So it would you if you were suddenly to come in for a windfall like mine--that is, if you were a chap like me. But you aren't; you'd be the very man for the billet.”
And Jack stepped back to admire his hero, who chuckled softly as he smoked, standing at his full height, with both hands in his pockets, and the moon like limelight on his s.h.i.+rt.
”It's not a billet I should care about,” said the squatter; ”but it's great fun to find you filling it so admirably----”
”I don't; I wish I did,” said Jack, throwing away the cigar which he had lighted to keep his guest company.
”You do, though. And if it isn't a rude question----” Dalrymple hesitated, staring hard--
”I daresay you're very happy in your new life?”
”Of course I'm very happy _now_. None happier!”
”But apart from the girl?”
”You can't get apart from her; that's just it. If I'm to go on being happy in my position, I'll have to learn to fill it without making myself a laughing-stock; and the one person who can teach me will be my wife.”
”I see. Then you begin to like your position for its own sake?”
”That's so,” replied Jack. He was paring a cake of very black tobacco for the pipe which he had stuck between his teeth. Dalrymple watched him with interest.
”And yet,” said the squatter, ”you have neither acquired a taste for your own most excellent cigars, nor conquered your addiction to the vile twist we used to keep on the station!”
”Well, and that's so, too,” laughed Jack. ”You must give a fellow time, Mr. Dalrymple!”
”Do you know what I thought when I met you yesterday?” continued Dalrymple, turning his back to the moon, and looking very hard at Jack while he sucked at his cigar with his thick, strong lips. ”Do you know how you struck me then? I thought you'd neither acquired a taste for your new life nor conquered your affection for the old. That's how you struck me in Devenholme yesterday.”