The Trespasser, Complete - Gilbert Parker
"I was quiet, and did what I could. After that I insisted on her going
with me wherever I went, but she had changed, and I saw that, in spite of
herself, the thing grew. One day we went on an excursion down the St.
Lawrence. We were merry, and I was telling yarns. We were just nearing a
landing-stage, when a pretty girl, with more gush than sense, caught me
by the arm and begged some ridiculous thing of me--an autograph, or what
not. A minute afterwards I saw my wife spring from the bulwarks down on
the landing-stage, and rush up the shore into the woods. . . . We were
two days finding her. That settled it. I was sick enough at heart, and I
determined to go back to Labrador. We did so. Every thing had gone on the
rocks. My wife was not, never would be, the same again. She taunted me
and worried me, and because I would not quarrel, seemed to have a greater
grievance--jealousy is a kind of madness. One night she was most galling,
and I sat still and said nothing. My life seemed gone of a heap: I was
sick--sick to the teeth; hopeless, looking forward to nothing. I imagine
my hard quietness roused her. She said something hateful--something about
having married her, and not a woman from Quebec. I smiled--I couldn't
help it; then I laughed, a bit wild, I suppose. I saw the flash of steel.
. . . I believe I laughed in her face as I fell. When I came to she was
lying with her head on my breast--dead--stone dead."
Lady Belward sat with closed eyes, her fingers clasping and unclasping on
the top of her cane; but Sir William wore a look half-satisfied,
half-excited.
He now hurried his story.
"I got well, and after that stayed in the North for a year. Then I passed
down the continent to Mexico and South America. There I got a commission
to go to New Zealand and Australia to sell a lot of horses. I did so, and
spent some time in the South Sea Islands. Again I drifted back to the
Rockies and over into the plains; found Jacques Brillon, my servant, had
a couple of years' work and play, gathered together some money, as good a
horse and outfit as the North could give, and started with Brillon and
his broncho--having got both sense and experience, I hope--for Ridley
Court. And here I am. There's a lot of my life that I haven't told you
of, but it doesn't matter, because it's adventure mostly, and it can be
told at any time; but these are essential facts, and it is better that
you should hear them. And that is all, grandfather and grandmother."
After a minute Lady Belward rose, leaned on her crutch, and looked at him
wistfully. Sir William said: "Are you sure that you will suit this life,
or it you?"
"It is the only idea I have at present; and, anyhow, it is my rightful
home, sir."
"I was not thinking of your rights, but of the happiness of us all."
Lady Belward limped to him, and laid a hand on his shoulder.
"You have had one great tragedy, so have we: neither could bear another.
Try to be worthy--of your home."
Then she solemnly kissed him on the cheek. Soon afterwards they went to
their rooms.
CHAPTER IV
AN HOUR WITH HIS FATHER'S PAST
In his bedroom Gaston made a discovery. He chanced to place his hand in
the tail-pocket of the coat he had worn. He drew forth a letter. The ink
was faded, and the lines were scrawled. It ran:
It's no good. Mr. Ian's been! It's face the musik now. If you
want me, say so. I'm for kicks or ha'pence--no diffrense.
Yours, J.
He knew the writing very well--Jock Lawson's. There had been some
trouble, and Mr. Ian had "been," bringing peril. What was it? His father
and Jock had kept the secret from him.
He put his hand in the pocket again. There was another note--this time in
a woman's handwriting:
Oh, come to me, if you would save us both! Do not fail. God help
us! Oh, Robert!
It was signed "Agnes."
Well, here was something of mystery; but he did not trouble himself about
that. He was not at Ridley Court to solve mysteries, to probe into the
past, to set his father's wrongs right; but to serve himself, to reap for
all those years wherein his father had not reaped. He enjoyed life, and
he would search this one to the full of his desires. Before he retired he
studied the room, handling things that lay where his father placed them
so many years before. He was not without emotions in this, but he held
himself firm.
As he stood ready to get into bed, his eyes chanced upon a portrait of
his uncle Ian.
"There's where the tug comes!" he said, nodding at it. "Shake hands, and
ten paces, Uncle Ian?"
Then he blew out the candle, and in five minutes was sound asleep.
He was out at six o'clock. He made for the stables, and found Jacques
pacing the yard. He smiled at Jacques's dazed look.
"What about the horse, Brillon?" he said, nodding as he came up.
"Saracen's had a slice of the stable-boy's shoulder--sir."
Amusement loitered in Gaston's eyes. The "sir" had stuck in Jacques's
throat.
"Saracen has established himself, then? Good! And the broncho?"
"Bien, a trifle only. They laugh much in the kitchen--"
"The hall, Brillon."
"--in the hall last night. That hired man over there--"
"That groom, Brillon."
"--that groom, he was a fool, and fat. He was the worst. This morning he
laugh at my broncho. He say a horse like that is nothing: no pace, no
travel. I say the broncho was not so ver' bad, and I tell him try the
paces. I whisper soft, and the broncho stand like a lamb. He mount, and
sneer, and grin at the high pommel, and start. For a minute it was
pretty; and then I give a little soft call, and in a minute there was the
broncho bucking--doubling like a hoop, and dropping same as lead. Once
that--groom--come down on the pommel, then over on the ground like a
ball, all muck and blood."
The half-breed paused, looking innocently before him. Gaston's mouth
quirked.
"A solid success, Brillon. Teach them all the tricks you can. At ten
o'clock come to my room. The campaign begins then."
Jacques ran a hand through his long black hair, and fingered his sash.
Gaston understood.
"The hair and ear-rings may remain, Brillon; but the beard and clothes
must go--except for occasions. Come along."
For the next two hours Gaston explored the stables and the grounds.
Nothing escaped him. He gathered every incident of the surroundings, and
talked to the servants freely, softly, and easily, yet with a
superiority, which suddenly was imposed in the case of the huntsman at
the kennels--for the Whipshire hounds were here. Gaston had never ridden
to hounds. It was not, however, his cue to pretend knowledge. He was
strong enough to admit ignorance. He stood leaning against the door of
the kennels, arms folded, eyes half-closed, with the sense of a painter,
before the turning bunch of brown and white, getting the charm of
distance and soft tones. His blood beat hard, for suddenly he felt as if
he had been behind just such a pack one day, one clear desirable day of
spring. He saw people gathering at the kennels; saw men drink beer and
eat sandwiches at the door of the huntsman's house,--a long, low
dwelling, with crumbling arched doorways like those of a monastery,
watched them get away from the top of the moor, he among them; heard the
horn, the whips; and saw the fox break cover.
Then came a rare run for five sweet miles--down a long valley--over
quick-set hedges, with stiffish streams--another hill--a great combe--a
lovely valley stretching out--a swerve to the right--over a gate--and the
brush got at a farmhouse door.
Surely, he had seen it all; but what kink of the brain was it that the
men wore flowing wigs and immense boot-legs, and sported lace in the
hunting-field? And why did he see within that picture another of two
ladies and a gentleman hawking?
He was roused from his dream by hearing the huntsman say in a quizzical
voice:
"How do you like the dogs, sir?"
To his last day Lugley, the huntsman, remembered the slow look of cold
surprise, of masterful malice, scathing him from head to foot. The words
that followed the look, simple as they were, drove home the naked
reproof:
"What is your name, my man?"
"Lugley, sir."
"Lugley! Lugley! H'm! Well, Lugley, I like the hounds better than I like
you. Who is Master of the Hounds, Lugley?"
"Captain Maudsley, sir."
"Just so. You are satisfied with your place, Lugley?"
"Yes, sir," said the man in a humble voice, now cowed.
The news of the arrival of the strangers had come to him late at night,
and, with Whipshire stupidity, he had thought that any one coming from
the wilds of British America must be but a savage after all.
"Very well; I wouldn't throw myself out of a place, if I were you."
"Oh, no, sir! Beg pardon, sir, I--"
"Attend to your hounds there, Lugley."
So saying, Gaston nodded Jacques away with him, leaving the huntsman sick
with apprehension.
"You see how it is to be done, Brillon?" said Gaston. Jacques's brown
eyes twinkled.
"You have the grand trick, sir."
"I enjoy the game; and so shall you, if you will. You've begun well. I
don't know much of this life yet; but it seems to me that they are all
part of a machine, not the idea behind the machine. They have no
invention. Their machine is easy to learn. Do not pretend; but for every
bit you learn show something better, something to make them dizzy now and
then."
He paused on a knoll and looked down. The castle, the stables, the
cottages of labourers and villagers lay before them. In a certain
highly-cultivated field, men were working. It was cut off in squares and
patches. It had an air which struck Gaston as unusual; why, he could not
tell. But he had a strange divining instinct, or whatever it may be
called. He made for the field and questioned the workmen.
The field was cut up into allotment gardens. Here, at a nominal rent, the
cottager could grow his vegetables; a little spot of the great acre of
England, which gave the labourer a tiny sense of ownership, of manhood.
Gaston was interested. More, he was determined to carry that experiment
further, if he ever got the chance. There was no socialism in him. The
true barbarian is like the true aristocrat: more a giver of gifts than a
lover of co-operation; conserving ownership by right of power and
superior independence, hereditary or otherwise. Gaston was both barbarian
and aristocrat.
"Brillon," he said, as they walked on, "do you think they would be
happier on the prairies with a hundred acres of land, horses, cows, and a
pen of pigs?"
"Can I be happy here all at once, sir?"
"That's just it. It's too late for them. They couldn't grasp it unless
they went when they were youngsters. They'd long for 'Home and Old
England' and this grub-and-grind life. Gracious heaven, look at
them--crumpled-up creatures! And I'll stake my life, they were as pretty
children as you'd care to see. They are out of place in the landscape,
Brillon; for it is all luxury and lush, and they are crumples--crumples!
But yet there isn't any use being sorry for them, for they don't grasp
anything outside the life they are living. Can't you guess how they live?
Look at the doors of the houses shut, and the windows sealed; yet they've
been up these three hours! And they'll suck in bad air, and bad food; and
they'll get cancer, and all that; and they'll die and be trotted away to
the graveyard for 'passun' to hurry them into their little dark cots, in
the blessed hope of everlasting life! I'm going to know this thing,
Brillon, from tooth to ham-string; and, however it goes, we'll have lived
up and down the whole scale; and that's something."
He suddenly stopped, and then added:
"I'm likely to go pretty far in this. I can't tell how or why, but it's
so. Now, once more, as yesterday afternoon, for good or for bad, for long
or for short, for the gods or for the devil, are you with me? There's
time to turn back even yet, and I'll say no word to your going."
"But no, no! a vow is a vow. When I cannot run I will walk, when I cannot
walk I will crawl after you--comme ca!"
Lady Belward did not appear at breakfast. Sir William and Gaston
breakfasted alone at half past nine o'clock. The talk was of the stables
and the estate generally.
The breakfast-room looked out on a soft lawn, stretching away into a
broad park, through which a stream ran; and beyond was a green hillside.
The quiet, the perfect order and discipline, gave a pleasant tingle to
Gaston's veins. It was all so easy, and yet so admirable--elegance
without weight. He felt at home. He was not certain of some trifles of
etiquette; but he and Sir William were alone, and he followed his
instincts. Once he frankly asked his grandfather of a matter of form, of
which he was uncertain the evening before. The thing was done so
naturally that the conventional mind of the baronet was not disturbed.
The Belwards were notable for their brains, and Sir William saw that the
young man had an unusual share. He also felt that this startling
individuality might make a hazardous future; but he liked the fellow, and
he had a debt to pay to the son of his own dead son. Of course, if their
wills came into conflict, there could be but one thing--the young man
must yield; or, if he played the fool, there must be an end. Still, he
hoped the best. When breakfast was finished, he proposed going to the
library.
There Sir William talked of the future, asked what Gaston's ideas were,
and questioned him as to his present affairs. Gaston frankly said that he
wanted to live as his father would have done, and that he had no
property, and no money beyond a hundred pounds, which would last him a
couple of years on the prairies, but would be fleeting here.
Sir William at once said that he would give him a liberal allowance,
with, of course, the run of his own stables and their house in town: and
when he married acceptably, his allowance would be doubled.
"And I wish to say, Gaston," he added, "that your uncle Ian, though heir
to the title, does not necessarily get the property, which is not
entailed. Upon that point I need hardly say more. He has disappointed us.
"Through him Robert left us. Of his character I need not speak. Of his
ability the world speaks variably: he is an artist. Of his morals I need
only say that they are scarcely those of an English gentleman, though
whether that is because he is an artist, I cannot say--I really cannot
say. I remember meeting a painter at Lord Dunfolly's,--Dunfolly is a
singular fellow--and he struck me chiefly as harmless, distinctly
harmless. I could not understand why he was at Dunfolly's, he seemed of
so little use, though Lady Malfire, who writes or something, mooned with
him a good deal. I believe there was some scandal or something
afterwards. I really do not know. But you are not a painter, and I
believe you have character--I fancy so."
"If you mean that I don't play fast and loose, sir, you are right. What I
do, I do as straight as a needle." The old man sighed carefully.
"You are very like Robert, and yet there is something else. I don't know,
I really don't know what!"
"I ought to have more in me than the rest of the family, sir."
This was somewhat startling. Sir William's fingers stroked his beardless
cheek uncertainly. "Possibly--possibly."
"I've lived a broader life, I've got wider standards, and there are three
races at work in me."
"Quite so, quite so;" and Sir William fumbled among his papers nervously.
"Sir," said Gaston suddenly, "I told you last night the honest story of
my life. I want to start fair and square. I want the honest story of my
father's life here; how and why he left, and what these letters mean."
He took from his pocket the notes he had found the night before, and
handed them. Sir William read them with a disturbed look, and turned them
over and over. Gaston told where he had found them.
Sir William spoke at last.
"The main story is simple enough. Robert was extravagant, and Ian was
vicious and extravagant also. Both got into trouble. I was younger then,
and severe. Robert hid nothing, Ian all he could. One day things came to
a climax. In his wild way, Robert--with Jock Lawson--determined to rescue
a young man from the officers of justice, and to get him out of the
country. There were reasons. He was the son of a gentleman; and, as we
discovered afterwards, Robert had been too intimate with the wife--his
one sin of the kind, I believe. Ian came to know, and prevented the
rescue. Meanwhile, Robert was liable to the law for the attempt. There
was a bitter scene here, and I fear that my wife and I said hard things
to Robert."
Gaston's eyes were on Lady Belward's portrait. "What did my grandmother
say?"
There was a pause, then:
"That she would never call him son again, I believe; that the shadow of
his life would be hateful to her always. I tell you this because I see
you look at that portrait. What I said, I think, was no less. So, Robert,
after a wild burst of anger, flung away from us out of the house. His
mother, suddenly repenting, ran to follow him, but fell on the stone
steps at the door, and became a cripple for life. At first she remained
bitter against Robert, and at that time Ian painted that portrait. It is
clever, as you may see, and weird. But there came a time when she kept it
as a reproach to herself, not Robert. She is a good woman--a very good
woman. I know none better, really no one."
"What became of the arrested man?" Gaston asked quietly, with the
oblique suggestiveness of a counsel.
"He died of a broken blood-vessel on the night of the intended rescue,
and the matter was hushed up."
"What became of the wife?"
"She died also within a year."
"Were there any children?"
"One--a girl."
"Whose was the child?"
"You mean--?"
"The husband's or the lover's?" There was a pause.
"I cannot tell you."
"Where is the girl?"
"My son, do not ask that. It can do no good--really no good."
"Is it not my due?"
"Do not impose your due. Believe me, I know best. If ever there is need
to tell you, you shall be told. Trust me. Has not the girl her due also?"
Gaston's eyes held Sir William's a moment. "You are right, sir," he said,
"quite right. I shall not try to know. But if--" He paused.
Sir William spoke:
"There is but one person in the world who knows the child's father; and I
could not ask him, though I have known him long and well--indeed, no."
"I do not ask to understand more," Gaston replied. "I almost wish I had
known nothing. And yet I will ask one thing: is the girl in comfort and
good surroundings?"
"The best--ah, yes, the very best."
There was a pause, in which both sat thinking; then Sir William wrote out
a cheque and offered it, with a hint of emotion. He was recalling how he
had done the same with this boy's father.
Gaston understood. He got up, and said: "Honestly, sir, I don't know how
I shall turn out here; for, if I didn't like it, it couldn't hold me, or,
if it did, I should probably make things uncomfortable. But I think I
shall like it, and I will do my best to make things go well.
Good-morning, sir."
With courteous attention Sir William let his grandson out of the room.
And thus did a young man begin his career as Gaston Belward, gentleman.
CHAPTER V.
WHEREIN HE FINDS HIS ENEMY
How that career was continued there are many histories: Jock Lawson's
mother tells of it in her way, Mrs. Gasgoyne in hers, Hovey in hers,
Captain Maudsley in his; and so on. Each looks at it from an individual
stand-point. But all agree on two matters: that he did things hitherto
unknown in the countryside; and that he was free and affable, but could
pull one up smartly if necessary.
He would sit by the hour and talk with Bimley, the cottager; with Rosher,
the hotel-keeper, who when young had travelled far; with a sailorman,
home for a holiday, who said he could spin a tidy yarn; and with Pogan,
the groom, who had at last won Saracen's heart. But one day when the
meagre village chemist saw him cracking jokes with Beard, the carpenter,
and sidled in with a silly air of equality, which was merely insolence,
Gaston softly dismissed him, with his ears tingling. The carpenter proved
his right to be a friend of Gaston's by not changing countenance and by
never speaking of the thing afterwards.
His career was interesting during the eighteen months wherein society
papers chatted of him amiably and romantically. He had entered into the
joys of hunting with enthusiasm and success, and had made a fast and
admiring friend of Captain Maudsley; while Saracen held his own grandly.
He had dined with country people, and had dined them; had entered upon
the fag-end of the London season with keen, amused enjoyment; and had
engrafted every little use of the convention. The art was learned, but
the man was always apart from it; using it as a toy, yet not despising
it; for, as he said, it had its points, it was necessary. There was
yachting in the summer; but he was keener to know the life of England and
his heritage than to roam afar, and most of the year was spent on the
estate and thereabouts: with the steward, with the justices of the peace,
in the fields, in the kennels, among the accounts.
To-day he was in London, haunting Tattersall's, the East End, the docks,
his club, the London Library--he had a taste for English history,
especially for that of the seventeenth century; he saturated himself with
it: to-morrow he would present to his grandfather a scheme for improving
the estate and benefiting the cottagers. Or he would suddenly enter the
village school, and daze and charm the children by asking them strange
yet simple questions, which sent a shiver of interest to their faces.
One day at the close of his second hunting-season there was to be a ball
at the Court, the first public declaration of acceptance by his people;
for, at his wish, they did not entertain for him in town the previous
season--Lady Belward had not lived in town for years. But all had gone so
well, if not with absolute smoothness, and with some strangeness,--that
Gaston had become an integral part of their life, and they had ceased to
look for anything sensational.
This ball was to be the seal of their approval. It had been mentioned in
'Truth' with that freshness and point all its own. What character than
Gaston's could more appeal to his naive imagination? It said in a piquant
note that he did not wear a dagger and sombrero.
Everything was ready. Decorations were up, the cook and the butler had
done their parts. At eleven in the morning Gaston had time on his hands.
Walking out, he saw two or three children peeping in at the gateway.
He would visit the village school. He found the junior curate troubling
the youthful mind with what their godfathers and godmothers did for them,
and begging them to do their duty "in that state of life," etc. He
listened, wondering at the pious opacity, and presently asked the
children to sing. With inimitable melancholy they sang: "Oh, the Roast
Beef of Old England!"
Gaston sat back and laughed softly till the curate felt uneasy, till the
children, waking to his humour, gurgled a little in the song. With his
thumbs caught lightly in his waistcoat pockets, he presently began to
talk with the children in an easy, quiet voice. He asked them little
out-of-the-way questions, he lifted the school-room from their minds, and
then he told them a story, showing them on the map where the place was,
giving them distances, the kind of climate, and a dozen other matters of
information, without the nature of a lesson. Then he taught them the
chorus--the Board forbade it afterwards--of a negro song, which told how
those who behaved themselves well in this world should ultimately:
"Blow on, blow on, blow on dat silver horn!"
It was on this day that, as he left the school, he saw Ian Belward
driving past. He had not met his uncle since his arrival,--the artist had
been in Morocco,--nor had he heard of him save through a note in a
newspaper which said that he was giving no powerful work to the world,
nor, indeed, had done so for several years; and that he preferred the
purlieus of Montparnasse to Holland Park.
They recognised each other. Ian looked his nephew up and down with a cool
kind of insolence as he passed, but did not make any salutation. Gaston
went straight to the castle. He asked for his uncle, and was told that he
had gone to Lady Belward. He wandered to the library: it was empty. He
lit a cigar, took down a copy of Matthew Arnold's poems, opening at
"Sohrab and Rustum," read it with a quick-beating heart, and then came to
"Tristram and Iseult." He knew little of "that Arthur" and his knights of
the Round Table, and Iseult of Brittany was a new figure of romance to
him. In Tennyson, he had got no further than "Locksley Hall," which, he
said, had a right tune and wrong words; and "Maud," which "was big in
pathos." The story and the metre of "Tristram and Iseult" beat in his
veins. He got to his feet, and, standing before the window, repeated a
verse aloud:
"Cheer, cheer thy dogs into the brake,
O hunter! and without a fear
Thy golden-tassell'd bugle blow,
And through the glades thy pasture take
For thou wilt rouse no sleepers here!
For these thou seest are unmoved;
Cold, cold as those who lived and loved
A thousand years ago."