Part 20

It was the butler. The figure admitted it in a curt word. Le Shore had already, on the occasions of his two dinners at “Tregarthen,” noticed this man, and had taken a quite violent exception in his own conscience to his manner and appearance. He thought he had never known a leading trust bestowed upon one whose face so expressed the very moral of acquisitiveness, whose conduct was marked by such an uncouth inurbanity. Here, if there was any value in biology, was Bill Sikes in broadcloth.

The tone of the fellow’s answer grated confoundedly on him—he hardly knew why.

“Are you locked out, like me?” he said, putting violence on himself to speak civilly.

“Yes, sir,” answered the man; “but for a better reason.”

“What do you mean by that?”

The creature was as thick-set as a bull. He could have broken this elegant like a stick across his knee. He commanded the situation, massive and impassive, from his own standpoint.

“Look’ee here, sir,” he said, speaking through a grip of little strong teeth in a square jaw, “I’m going to tell you what I mean. I’m going to make no bones about it. You meet Miss Molly fair and open, or you don’t meet her at all. Do I know what I’m saying? Yes, I do know. She didn’t come to you to-night—because why? Because _I_ interdicted of her. That’s it. She might have thought better—or worse—of it, bein’ a woman, and soft; and that’s why I laid by, watchin’ that no harm should come of it if she did. But she was wise, and didn’t. I seen you all the time in the wood, and I tell you this. A word’s got to be enough. You meet her by fair means, or not at all. Never mind the Squire there. It’s me that says it. If she admires you, nine stun ten—which there’s no accounting for tastes—I’m not the one to make difficulties. But you go like a honest man and ask her straight of her father. That’s the ticket, and don’t you make no error. Don’t you flatter your fancy no more with randy-voos in the moonshine. Why, if ever there’s a light calc’lated to lead a gentleman astray, it’s that. I say it, and I know. You go to the girl’s father; and, after, we’ll see what we’ll see.”

He cleared his throat with a quarrelling sound, and came out of the shadow.

“Now,” said he, “here’s a house you’ve been locked out of, and you want to get in without disturbin’ of the family—is that it? Very well, sir; now we understand everything; and step this way, if _you_ please.”

Almost with the words, he had clawed himself up to a window-sill of the ground-floor, and was very softly manipulating the sash. Mr. Le Shore, voiceless, hardly gasping, stood, just conscious of himself, in an absolute rigor of fury and astonishment. He was “stound,” as Spenser would have put it. Presently he snapped his eyelids, and woke aware that Mr. Hissey, standing on the grass, was loweringly inviting him to enter by way of an opened window. With a shock, he recovered his nerves of motion, and, stalking to the place, vaulted stiffly to the sill, and sat thereon like a cavalryman.

“I’ve just a word or two for you, before I—I avail myself of this,” he said. “You’ve been gadding, and got drunk, I suppose; and this is your way of trying to make capital of a belated guest. Perhaps the means you’ve adopted ’ll appear less excellent to you in the sober morning. As to your method of entry, there’s nothing in it incompatible with the character I’d already formed of you. But that, and your quite outrageous insolence, will be made matters for your master’s consideration to-morrow. I mention this in honour, before I——” He waved his hand towards the room.

“I could twist your neck with two fingers, here and now,” said the man.

“Exactly,” said Dicky. “And that’s why I decline to make use of this window except on the plain understanding.”

The butler cleared his throat again, even with a strange note of approval in the unseemly sound.

“Mayhap you’ll do,” he said. “Now go to bed, and don’t forgit your prayers in your disappyntment.”

Mr. Le Shore hissed in a breath, as though the rain had suddenly become boiling spray, then tiptoed rigidly to his room.

The opening of the window, framed with creepers, whose shadows shrank or dilated softly in the muslin curtains, gave on to a soothful picture of lawn and herbaceous border which, withdrawing to cool caverns of leafiness under a remote cedar tree, seemed to gather themselves to a head of prettiest expression in the person of little Miss Mollinda swinging there in a hammock. Within, at the luncheon-table, Tregarthen poured himself out a glass of Madeira with a hand so limp and white in appearance that one would have thought it incapable of the task of poising the heavy decanter. Here was delicate seeming only, however. The perpetual sybarite reads an incorruptible constitution. The white hand held the bottle horizontal, as steady as a rock, during the minute the indolent, good-humoured eyes of its owner were directed to those of his visitor.

“My dear good Richard, the man _is_ a burglar.”

He laughed at the other’s expression, filled his glass, sipped at it, and, hooking his thumbs in his arm-holes, lolled back in his chair.

“I am not justified in the confidence, perhaps. I don’t know. Anyhow, it is the short way out of a fatiguing explanation. The man _is_ a burglar—not figuratively, but actually, by breeding, education, profession—_appelez-le comme vous voudrez_. He has the stamp of it so distinctly on him that one need not ask him to produce his skeleton key.”

“Then I have nothing more to say.”

“Ah! the devil take the honest thief! Your obvious grievance forces me to the explanation, after all. My dear boy, I imply nothing, argue from no premises but such as a long experience of this capital, troublesome fellow suggest to me. Speaking from these (I may be wrong), I should conclude that he is somehow in process of safeguarding, as he thinks, the interests of my girl, to whom he is quite romantically attached. Honestly, I don’t know to whom I would rather commit them. Poor motherless child!”

He had, it seemed, no thought of himself as pledged to the task. ‘Himself’ should be a fair one-man’s burden.

“He is very right to be attached to Miss Tregarthen,” muttered Le Shore dryly, and a little sullenly.

“He is very right indeed,” answered his host; “righter (pardon the solecism) than you might think. In this excellent rogue is provided such an illustration of the ‘harmony not understood’ of discords, as circumstance has ever given to an _ennuyé_ world. The dear creature has decided to stultify his every instinct for a sentiment. It is the most interesting psychological phenomenon you can imagine. He has conceded nothing of his nature but the means to its practical achievement. Conceive a wolf of his own determination forgoing blood. Such is this dear, admirable brute. _Perfossor parietum nascitur._ He cannot change his spots. To this day, I think, he will always of choice enter by a window rather than a door; to this day he regards plate with a most _melting_ look. But for all that, I think I may swear that at the present moment the tally of my spoons is to an ounce what it was when he took service with me eighteen years ago.”

“Your servant for eighteen years!”

“My servant—titularly: in reality, my mentor, my vizier. Dog Trust is a rather sweetly demoralizing acquisition. He takes the burden of conscience from one—steals it, in this case, I may say. But then, after all, he may use his vicegerency to ends so far beyond the moral grasp of the master he represents, as more than to vindicate that master in his withdrawal from the vexatious problems of duty. Through sheer force of affection this admirable George has mastered himself, and bettered his master in the parental ethics.”

“Indeed, sir?” (Mr. Dicky spoke very dryly.) “And how does Miss Tregarthen approve the viziership?”

“As she loves and respects the vizier, Richard. I do not think she would willingly run counter to his dictates, which, by the way, he never imposes in a manner to alarm one’s pride. Ah! did you catch that whiff of scabious? There is a bush of it under the window there. It always seems to me to embody in itself the whole warmth and fragrance of summer. My dear fellow, your eyes are relentless inquisitors. No more wine? Well, I suppose I shall have to tell you how it came about.”

He sighed, drained his glass, laughed slightly, and smoothed a stray wisp of hair from his forehead.

“Once,” he said—“it was particularly disagreeable to a person of my temperament—I was called upon by Fate to suffer the ugly and sordid experience of a conflagration in my house. You, who are also a little inclined, I believe, to create for yourself an atmosphere of romance, to regard the great world only as a quarry, from which to gather materials most exquisite and most apt to the enrichment of the hermitage, which it is your design and your delight to build apart for your soul, will appreciate what were my feelings upon seeing my fairy fabric doomed to destruction, to positive annihilation, by the flames. I have never spoken to you of the disaster before. You will know that I do so now under the mere stress of fitness, as a means to your proper understanding of George Hissey’s conduct. The recollection is painful and horrible to a degree.

“The alarm, the escape, the catastrophe were all accomplished in the dark hours of a winter’s morning. My dear wife (she sleeps, awaiting my coming, in Elysium) followed me down the stairs and out of the house at a short interval. She found me devoted to a frantic endeavour to secure from destruction such of my poor treasures as were accessible—few enough, alas! though the tears I shed should have quenched the hate of a Hecla. What had I done with her child? she cried to me—with our sweet Molly, our little three-year-old babe? Richard, I felt as stunned as if she, the pretty, gentle mother, had struck me across the mouth. I could only stare and gasp. She uttered a heart-shaking scream, and turned to where the servants stood huddled together in the garden. They were all there, and the two nurses were crying and moaning and accusing one another. My God! mad with terror, they had deserted their charge to perish by itself in the burning house!”

He paused. “Don’t go on, sir, if it distresses you,” said Le Shore quietly.

“No,” answered Tregarthen. “Like the Ancient Mariner, I must be quit of it now I have begun. But I will have a glass of wine.”

He poured himself out one, daintily as to the drop on the decanter lip.

“There followed a fearful scene,” he said. “It was all I could do to prevent my angel from precipitating herself through the blazing doorway. The whole building seemed by now a furnace—no possibility of further salvage from those priceless accumulations—not, of course, that at such a pass it was to be thought of. I mingled my tears with my wife’s. I offered half my fortune to any one of the crowd who would save, and a large reward to any one who would venture to save, our darling. But it was in vain; and in my heart I knew it.

“Now, in this extremity of despair, a sudden roar went up from a hundred throats, and passed on the instant. Richard, a man, shedding flakes of fire as Venus cast her birth-slough of spray, had emerged overhead from the sea of flame, and in his arms was our child. Who was he? Whence did he come? No one knew. Our house was isolated. The engine from the neighbouring town had not arrived. He was not a friend, nor a neighbour, nor an employé. It was only evident that innocence had somehow evolved its champion.

“We watched, stricken, as castaways watch the glimmer of a remote sail. The figure had broken its way through the skylight in the roof, only, it might be, to symbolize in the burden it bore the leaping of a little flame heavenward. The situation was the very sublimity of tragedy. Beneath those two the roof, sown with a very garden of fire, dropped at a sickening angle.

“Suddenly, shutting, as it seemed, upon his charge, the man rolled himself up like a hedgehog, and came bowling down the slope. It was a terrible and gasping moment. His body, as it whirled, reeled out a hiss of sparks. The next instant it had bounded over the edge, and plunged among the smoking bushes beneath.

“They broke his fall; but it was the verandah awning which in the first instance saved his life—his, and our dear devoted cherub’s. But he had never once, through all the stunning vertigo of his descent, failed to shield the little body which his own enwrapped.

“Now, my dear Richard, comes the strange part. When I was sufficiently recovered to seek our preserver, I found him sitting handcuffed, in charge of the local policeman. He was very white, with two or three ribs broken; but he took it all unconcerned, as being in the day’s, or the night’s, business. Who was he? Well, here is the explanation. He was a renowned cracksman, as I think they call it, who had been operating in the neighbourhood for some weeks past—the hero of many a shuddering midnight adventure. Without doubt he had taken his toll of _my_ ‘crib,’ had not circumstance dropped him ripe into the gaping mouth of the law. He had entered, and was actually at work, when fire cut the ground, as it were, from under his feet. Almost before, intensely occupied, he realized his position, escape by the lower rooms was debarred him. Was ever situation so dramatic? It was to be compared only with that of a huntsman who, entering some cave to steal bear cubs, turns to find the dam blocking his outlet. Still, Mr. Hissey _might_ have escaped, and without detection, by dropping to the lawn from a back window, had his burglarious ears not pricked suddenly to the wailing of a child.

“My dear fellow, need I explain further? The child he risked his own life to rescue was our—I may almost say, at this day, was _his_ Molly. It was the strangest thing. I did not, as a consequence, quite see my way to holding him altogether absolved; but my dear, emotional partner was of a different opinion. We had quite a little scene about it. In the end she prevailed—with the whole boiling of the law, too; and the man was sentenced to come up for judgment if called upon. Then straightway, and by his own desire, she took the disinfected burglar into her service. It was one of those daring psychologic essays which may once and again be carried to a successful issue through the white-hot faith of the experimenter; but which must not be given authority as a precedent. My wife fairly redeemed this burglar, by committing, without hesitation, to his loyal trust the little waif of fire whose destinies he had earned the right to a voice in. From that day to this, I will say, he has never abused the faith we reposed in him. On her deathbed, my dear girl (pardon me a moment, Le Shore), my dear wife most solemnly recommitted her child to his care. I did not complain, I do not complain now. I, who make no pretence of competence in the paternal rôle, thank the gods only for my vizier, who is quite willing to accord me the ritual of authority, while taking its practical business on his own shoulders. With a man of my temperament it works; and I am satisfied, if Molly gives me her respect, that she should give Hissey her duty.”

He ceased, with a little smiling sigh, and lifted a cigarette from a silver case which lay on the table. Le Shore regarded him steadily.

“Mr. Tregarthen,” said he, “Molly and I are engaged. I should have told you before.”

The older man did not pause in the act of lighting his cigarette; but enjoyed an inhalation of smoke before he answered—

“I plead guilty to a suspicion, Richard. I am confident our vizier has been safeguarding the proprieties. You remember what I said to you in his excuse just now?”

“I have your sanction, sir?”

“Certainly, as a form. But I am afraid, from the practical side, you will have to satisfy that same inquisitor.”

“Mr. George Hissey,” said Dicky, “I have papa’s authority to marry Miss Molly. Now, with your permission, I will relieve you of your trust.”

“Dicky!” cried the girl reproachfully; and she put her kind young arms round the ex-burglar’s neck.

“Unless,” said Le Shore, “you care to transfer that to my ‘crib,’ Mr. Hissey.”

The butler cleared his throat.

“Well, I do care, sir,” he said, hoarsely, nevertheless, “since you seen fit to cut that moonshinin’ lay, And as to cribs——”

“Molly” said Richard, “there’s papa calling.”

A MARTYR TO CONSCIENCE

“I have nothing to do with your scruples,” said the magistrate; “the law is the law, and I am here to administer it.”

Mr. Plumley licked his hand, and stolidly smoothing down his black hair with it, answered, as if at a distance, being a well-fed, unctuous man, “too full for sound and foam,” “I’m a conscientious objector.”

“Passive resister!” corrected a friend, a little eager man, among the audience near him.

“Eh?” said Mr. Plumley immovably, and without a glance in the direction of the voice, “I said passive resister, didn’t I?”

“Whether you said it or not,” answered the magistrate sharply, “you look it. I make an order against you for the amount.”

“As man to man——” began Mr. Plumley.

“Not in the least,” said the magistrate; “as debtor to creditor. Stand down.”

“I shan’t pay it,” said Mr. Plumley, preparing to obey.

“If you say another word, I’ll commit you for contempt,” said the magistrate. “Stand down, sir!”

Mr. Plumley stood down, with an unspeakable expression—it might have been of satisfaction—on his huge, stolid face. Arrived at the floor, he beckoned his little friend to follow him, and heavily left the court.

He steered—the other acting as his rudder, as it were, and keeping his position behind—straight for his own domestic shrine, hight Primrose Villa, semi-detached. It was a beautiful little home for a widower unencumbered, calculated, like an india-rubber collar, to afford the maximum of display at a minimum of cost in washing. The doorsteps were laid with a flaming pattern in tiles; red-aspinalled flower pots, embellished with little dull glazed shrubs, stood on the lowest window-sill; the bell-knob was of handsome porcelain, painted with the gaudiest flowers in miniature. Within, too, it was all furnished on a like hard principle of lustre—red and yellow oilcloth in the hall, with marbled paper to match; earthenware-panned mahogany hat-rack and umbrella stand combined, as red as rhubarb, and as acrid in suggestion to one’s feelings; more oilcloth in the parlour; more mahogany, also, with a pert disposition in its doors and drawers to resent being shut up; glass bead mats and charity bazaar photograph frames on the whatnots, all so clean and pungent with sharp furniture stain that the rudder—Gardener by name—felt, as usual, the necessity of a humble apology for bringing his five feet four of shabbiness into the midst of so much splendour and selectness.

Mr. Plumley rumbled condescendingly in reply—

“You’d get used to it, Robert, you’d get used to it, if you’d lived familiar with it all your life, as I have.”

“Ah!” said Gardener, “but I wasn’t born like you, sir, to shine.”

If he meant that the other was a light in his way—a little tallowy, perhaps—his own dry, hungry cheeks certainly justified him in the self-depreciation. They justified him, moreover—or he fancied they did, which was all the same as to the moral—in continuing to act jackal to this social lion, who had once been his employer in the cheap furniture-removal line. He lived—hung, it would seem more apposite to say—on his traditions of the great man’s business capacities, capacities whose fruits were here to witness, for evidence of the competence upon which his principal had retired. He got, in fact, little else than his traditions out of his former master at this date; yet it was strange how they served to delude him into a belief in his continued profit at the hands of the old patronage. The moral benefit he acquired from stealing into the local chapel to hear Mr. Plumley take a Sunday-school class, was at least worth as much to him as the occasional pipe of tobacco, or glass of whisky and water, which his idol vouchsafed him. For Mr. Gardener, as a true ‘poor relation’ of the gods, was humbly thankful for their cheapest condescensions.

“You stuck to your principles, sir,” he said, standing on one leg and the toe of the other, in humble deprecation of his right to any but the smallest possible allowance of oilcloth. Perhaps he would have brought his foot down, even he, could he have guessed the true significance of his own remark.

“I did, Robert,” said Mr. Plumley, placidly sleeking his hair. “I always do. Have a pipe, Robert?”

“Thank you kindly, sir,” said the man. “That was a mistake you made, sir.”

“Mistakes,” said Mr. Plumley, “will occur. Have some whisky, Robert?”

“You’re very good, sir.”

“You don’t like it too strong, I think, Robert? And how’s the world treating you, my friend?”

“Much as usual, sir. From hand to mouth’s my motto.”

“Sad, sad to be sure. They’ll distrain upon me, I suppose.”

“I’m afraid so, sir.”

“The inhumanity of the world, Robert! You do pretty reg’lar porter’s work for Bull and Hacker, the auctioneers, don’t you, Robert?”

“That’s so, Mr. Plumley,” said the man, wondering. “But the work’s heavier than the wages.”

“They’ll be commissioned to seize the necessary goods. I wish you’d manage to give ’em a hint, Robert—over the left, you know, without any reference to me—that there’s a picture I prize (and that I’ve reason to believe a dealer is after), what would more than pay the two pun odd of the distraint if put up first. O’ course, I can’t appear to favour the matter myself, being a con——”

“Passive resister, sir.”

“Thank you, Robert; being the one most concerned in disputin’ the justice of the law. But a hint from you might settle the question at once. We aren’t very good friends, Bull and me; and, if he thought I prized the article, he’d be moral sure to seize it, slap away, to spite me.”

“The picter?”

“The picture, Robert. There it is.”

It hung in an obscure corner, a dingy enough article, in an old damaged frame.

“It don’t look the price,” said Gardener doubtfully.

“It cost me more in a bad debt,” said the ex-remover, busying himself with the whisky in his heavy, observant way.

“Very like, sir,” answered the other, and coughed behind his hand.

“I know what you mean,” said his patron; “that I was took in. Well, I’ve reason to think not, my man. I’ve reason to think that picture’s worth a deal—say, fifty pun. Anyhow, I mean to try.”

“A dealer’s after it, you say?”

“Yes, I do say.”

“Then why—with deference, sir—don’t you sell direct to him?”

“Why don’t I? Am I a man of business, Robert? Look about you. Have I learned, do you think, to take a hexpert’s word as to the precise vally of a article that I see his heye’s on, or to argy by induction that a good private offer means a better public one? When it comes to overreaching—hem!—a connoyser’s a man like myself; so we’ll just, by your leave, put the picture up to auction.”

He carried the decanter back to its place in one of the shiny cupboards.

“Besides, my friend,” said he, talking over his shoulder, “don’t you see as how my conscience demands this seizure?”

“Not quite, sir, _with_ humility, if so be as——”

“You’re dense, Robert. Look here, I’m a conscientious resister, ain’t I? Law ain’t necessarily equity because the devil and Mr. Chamberlain frames it. There’s some lawgivers that are Vicars of Jehovah, and some of——but perhaps you’ve never heard of Abaddon?”

“_Haven’t_ I?” said Mr. Gardener ruefully. “I was near run in once for tendering one as had been passed on me.”