The Trespasser, Complete - Gilbert Parker
In this Gaston remained singular. He rode always with Jacques. Perhaps he
wished to preserve one possible relic of the old life, perhaps he liked
this touch of drama; or both. It created notice, criticism, but he was
superior to that. Time and again people asked him to ride, but he always
pleaded another engagement. He would then be seen with Jacques plus
Jacques's earrings and the wonderful hair, riding grandly in the Row.
Jacques's eyes sparkled and a snatch of song came to his lips at these
times.
No figures in the Park were so striking. There was nothing bizarre, but
Gaston had a distinguished look, and women who had felt his hand at their
waists in the dance the night before, now knew him, somehow, at a grave
distance. Though Gaston did not say it to himself, these were the hours
when he really was with the old life--lived it again--prairie, savannah,
ice-plain, alkali desert. When, dismounting, the horses were taken and
they went up the stairs, Gaston would softly lay his whip across
Jacques's shoulders without speaking. This was their only ritual of
camaraderie, and neglect of it would have fretted the half-breed. Never
had man such a servant. No matter at what hour Gaston returned, he found
Jacques waiting; and when he woke he found him ready, as now, on this
morning, after a strange night.
"What is it, Jacques?" he repeated.
The old name! Jacques shivered a little with pleasure. Presently he broke
out with:
"Monsieur, when do we go back?"
"Go back where?"
"To the North, monsieur."
"What's in your noddle now, Brillon?"
The impatient return to "Brillon" cut Jacques like a whip.
"Monsieur," he suddenly said, his face glowing, his hands opening
nervously, "we have eat, we have drunk, we have had the dance and the
great music here: is it enough? Sometimes as you sleep you call out, and
you toss to the strokes of the tower-clock. When we lie on the Plains of
Yath from sunset to sunrise, you never stir then. You remember when we
sleep on the ledge of the Voshti mountain--so narrow that we were tied
together? Well, we were as babes in blankets. In the Prairie of the Ten
Stars your fingers were on the trigger firm as a bolt; here I have watch
them shake with the coffee-cup. Monsieur, you have seen: is it enough?
You have lived here: is it like the old lodge and the long trail?"
Gaston sat up in bed, looked in the mirror opposite, ran his fingers
through his hair, regarded his hands, turning them over, and then, with
sharp impatience, said:
"Go to hell!"
The little man's face flushed to his hair; he sucked in the air with a
gasp. Without a word, he went to the dressing-table, poured out the
shaving-water, threw a towel over his arm, and turned to come to the bed;
but, all at once, he sidled back, put down the water, and furtively drew
a sleeve across his eyes.
Gaston saw, and something suddenly burned in him. He dropped his eyes,
slid out of bed, into his dressing-gown, and sat down.
Jacques made ready. He was not prepared to have Gaston catch him by the
shoulders with a nervous grip, search his eyes, and say:
"You damned little fool, I'm not worth it!" Jacques's face shone.
"Every great man has his fool--alors!" was the happy reply.
"Jacques," Gaston presently said, "what's on your mind?"
"I saw--last night, monsieur," he said.
"You saw what?"
"I saw you in the court-yard with the lady." Gaston was now very grave.
"Did you recognise her?"
"No: she moved all as a spirit."
"Jacques, that matter is between you and me. I'm going to tell you,
though, two things; and--where's your string of beads?"
Jacques drew out his rosary.
"That's all right. Mum as Manitou! She was asleep; she is my sister. And
that is all, till there's need for you to know more."
In this new confidence Jacques was content. The life was a gilded mess,
but he could endure it now. Three days passed. During that time Gaston
was up to town twice; lunched at Lady Dargan's, and dined at Lord
Dunfolly's. For his grandfather, who was indisposed, he was induced to
preside at a political meeting in the interest of a wealthy local brewer,
who confidently expected the seat, and, through gifts to the party, a
knighthood. Before the meeting, in the gush of--as he put it "kindred
aims," he laid a finger familiarly in Gaston's button-hole. Jacques, who
was present, smiled, for he knew every change in his master's face, and
he saw a glitter in his eye. He remembered when they two were in trouble
with a gang of river-drivers, and one did this same thing rudely: how
Gaston looked down, and said, with a devilish softness: "Take it away."
And immediately after the man did so.
Mr. Sylvester Gregory Babbs, in a similar position, heard a voice say
down at him, with a curious obliqueness:
"If you please!"
The keenest edge of it was lost on the flaring brewer, but his fingers
dropped, and he twisted his heavy watchchain uneasily. The meeting began.
Gaston in a few formal words, unconventional in idea, introduced Mr.
Babbs as "a gentleman whose name was a household word in the county, who
would carry into Parliament the civic responsibility shown in his private
life, who would render his party a support likely to fulfil its purpose."
When he sat down, Captain Maudsley said: "That's a trifle vague,
Belward."
"How can one treat him with importance?"
"He's the sort that makes a noise one way or another."
"Yes. Obituary: 'At his residence in Babbslow Square, yesterday, Sir S.
G. Babbs, M. P., member of the London County Council. Sir S. G. Babbs, it
will be remembered, gave L100,000 to build a home for the propagation of
Vice, and--'"
"That's droll!"
"Why not Vice? 'Twould be just the same in his mind. He doesn't give from
a sense of moral duty. Not he; he's a bungowawen!"
"What is that?"
"That's Indian. You buy a lot of Indian or halfbreed loafers with
beaver-skins and rum, go to the Mount of the Burning Arrows, and these
fellows dance round you and call you one of the lost race, the Mighty Men
of the Kimash Hills. And they'll do that while the rum lasts. Meanwhile
you get to think yourself a devil of a swell--you and the gods! . . . And
now we had better listen to this bungowawen, hadn't we?"
The room was full, and on the platform were gentlemen come to support Sir
William Belward. They were interested to see how Gaston would carry it
off.
Mr. Babbs's speech was like a thousand others by the same kind of man.
More speeches--some opposing--followed, and at last came the chairman to
close the meeting. He addressed himself chiefly to a bunch of farmers,
artisans, and labouring-men near. After some good-natured raillery at
political meetings in general, the bigotry of party, the difficulty in
getting the wheat from the chaff, and some incisive thrusts at those who
promised the moon and gave a green cheese, who spent their time in
berating their opponents, he said:
"There's a game that sailors play on board ship--men-o'-war and
sailing-ships mostly. I never could quite understand it, nor could any
officers ever tell me--the fo'castle for the men and the quarter-deck for
the officers, and what's English to one is Greek to the other. Well, this
was all I could see in the game. They sat about, sometimes talking,
sometimes not. All at once a chap would rise and say, 'Allow me to speak,
me noble lord,' and follow this by hitting some one of the party wherever
the blow got in easiest--on the head, anywhere! [Laughter.] Then he would
sit down seriously, and someone else spoke to his noble lordship. Nobody
got angry at the knocks, and Heaven only knows what it was all about.
That is much the way with politics, when it is played fair. But here is
what I want particularly to say: We are not all born the same, nor can we
live the same. One man is born a brute, and another a good sort; one a
liar, and one an honest man; one has brains, and the other hasn't. Now,
I've lived where, as they say, one man is as good as another. But he
isn't, there or here. A weak man can't run with a strong. We have heard
to-night a lot of talk for something and against something. It is over.
Are you sure you have got what was meant clear in your mind? [Laughter,
and 'Blowed if we'ave!'] Very well; do not worry about that. We have been
playing a game of 'Allow me to speak, me noble lord!' And who is going to
help you to get the most out of your country and your life isn't easy to
know. But we can get hold of a few clear ideas, and measure things
against them. I know and have talked with a good many of you here
['That's so! That's so!'], and you know my ideas pretty well--that they
are honest at least, and that I have seen the countries where freedom is
'on the job,' as they say. Now, don't put your faith in men and in a
party that cry, 'We will make all things new,' to the tune of, 'We are a
band of brothers.' Trust in one that says, 'You cannot undo the
centuries. Take off the roof, remove a wall, let in the air, throw out a
wing, but leave the old foundations.' And that is the real difference
between the other party and mine; and these political games of ours come
to that chiefly."
Presently he called for the hands of the meeting. They were given for Mr.
Babbs.
Suddenly a man's strong, arid voice came from the crowd:
"'Allow me to speak, me noble lord!' [Great laughter. Then a pause.]
Where's my old chum, Jock Lawson?"
The audience stilled. Gaston's face went grave. He replied, in a firm,
clear voice.
"In Heaven, my man. You'll never see him more." There was silence for a
moment, a murmur, then a faint burst of applause. Presently John Cawley,
the landlord of "The Whisk o' Barley," made towards Gaston. Gaston
greeted him, and inquired after his wife. He was told that she was very
ill, and had sent her husband to beg Gaston to come. Gaston had dreaded
this hour, though he knew it would come one day. A woman on a death-bed
has a right to ask for and get the truth. He had forborne telling her of
her son; and she, whenever she had seen him, had contented herself with
asking general questions, dreading in her heart that Jock had died a
dreadful or shameful death, or else this gentleman would, voluntarily,
say more. But, herself on her way out of the world, as she feared, wished
the truth, whatever it might be.
Gaston told Cawley that he would drive over at once, and then asked who
it was had called out at him. A drunken, poaching fellow, he was told,
who in all the years since Jock had gone, had never passed the inn
without stopping to say: "Where's my old chum, Jock Lawson?" In the past
he and Jock had been in more than one scrape together. He had learned
from Mrs. Cawley that Gaston had known Jock in Canada.
When Cawley had gone, Gaston turned to the other gentlemen present.
"An original speech, upon my word, Belward," said Captain Maudsley.
Mr. Warren Gasgoyne came.
"You are expected to lunch or something to-morrow, Belward, you remember?
Devil of a speech that! But, if you will 'allow me to speak, me noble
lord,' you are the rankest Conservative of us all."
"Don't you know that the easiest constitutional step is from a republic
to an autocracy, and vice versa?"
"I don't know it, and I don't know how you do it."
"Do what?"
"Make them think as you do."
He waved his hand to the departing crowd.
"I don't. I try to think as they do. I am always in touch with the
primitive mind."
"You ought to do great things here, Belward," said the other seriously.
"You have the trick; and we need wisdom at Westminster."
"Don't be mistaken; I am only adaptable. There's frank confession."
At this point Mr. Babbs came up and said good-night in a large,
self-conscious way. Gaston hoped that his campaign would not be wasted,
and the fluffy gentleman retired. When he got out of earshot in the
shadows, he turned and shook his fist towards Gaston, saying: "Half-breed
upstart!" Then he refreshed his spirits by swearing at his coachman.
Gaston and Jacques drove quickly over to "The Whisk o' Barley." Gaston
was now intent to tell the whole truth. He wished that he had done it
before; but his motives had been good--it was not to save himself. Yet he
shrank. Presently he thought:
"What is the matter with me? Before I came here, if I had an idea I stuck
to it, and didn't have any nonsense when I knew I was right. I am getting
sensitive--the thing I find everywhere in this country: fear of feeling
or giving pain; as though the bad tooth out isn't better than the bad
tooth in. When I really get sentimental I'll fold my Arab tent--so help
me, ye seventy Gods of Yath!"
A little while after he was at Mrs. Cawley's bed, the landlord handing
him a glass of hot grog, Jock's mother eyeing him feverishly from the
quilt. Gaston quietly felt her wrist, counting the pulse-beats; then told
Cawley to wet a cloth and hand it to him. He put it gently on the woman's
head. The eyes of the woman followed him anxiously. He sat down again,
and in response to her questioning gaze, began the story of Jock's life
as he knew it.
Cawley stood leaning on the foot-board; the woman's face was cowled in
the quilt with hungry eyes; and Gaston's voice went on in a low monotone,
to the ticking of the great clock in the next room. Gaston watched her
face, and there came to him like an inspiration little things Jock did,
which would mean more to his mother than large adventures. Her lips moved
now and again, even a smile flickered. At last Gaston came to his
father's own death and the years that followed; then the events in
Labrador.
He approached this with unusual delicacy: it needed bravery to look into
the mother's eyes, and tell the story. He did not know how dramatically
he told it--how he etched it without a waste word. When he came to that
scene in the Fort, the three men sitting, targets for his bullets,--he
softened the details greatly. He did not tell it as he told it at the
Court, but the simpler, sparser language made it tragically clear. There
was no sound from the bed, none from the foot-board, but he heard a door
open and shut without, and footsteps somewhere near.
How he put the body in the tree, and prayed over it and left it there,
was all told; and then he paused. He turned a little sick as he saw the
white face before him. She drew herself up, her fingers caught away the
night-dress at her throat; she stared hard at him for a moment, and then,
with a wild, moaning voice, cried out:
"You killed my boy! You killed my boy! You killed my boy!"
Gaston was about to take her hand, when he heard a shuffle and a rush
behind him. He rose, turned swiftly, saw a bottle swinging, threw up his
hand . . . and fell backwards against the bed.
The woman caught his bleeding head to her breast and hugged it.
"My Jock, my poor boy!" she cried in delirium now. Cawley had thrown his
arms about the struggling, drunken assailant--Jock's poaching friend.
The mother now called out to the pinioned man, as she had done to Gaston:
"You have killed my boy!" She kissed Gaston's bloody face.
A messenger was soon on the way to Ridley Court, and in a little upper
room Jacques was caring for his master.
CHAPTER IX
HE FINDS NEW SPONSORS
Gaston lay for many days at "The Whisk o' Barley." During that time the
inn was not open to customers. The woman also for two days hung at the
point of death, and then rallied. She remembered the events of the
painful night, and often asked after Gaston. Somehow, her horror of her
son's death at his hands was met by the injury done him now. She vaguely
felt that there had been justice and punishment. She knew that in the
room at Labrador Gaston Belward had been scarcely less mad than her son.
Gaston, as soon as he became conscious, said that his assailant must be
got out of the way of the police, and to that end bade Jacques send for
Mr. Warren Gasgoyne. Mr. Gasgoyne and Sir William arrived at the same
time, but Gaston was unconscious again. Jacques, however, told them what
his master's wishes were, and they were carried out; Jock's friend
secretly left England forever. Sir William and Mr. Gasgoyne got the whole
tale from the landlord, whom they asked to say nothing publicly.
Lady Belward drove down each day, and sat beside him for a couple of
hours-silent, solicitous, smoothing his pillow or his wasting hand. The
brain had been injured, and recovery could not be immediate. Hovey the
housekeeper had so begged to be installed as nurse, that her wish was
granted, and she was with him night and day. Now she shook her head at
him sadly, now talked in broken sentences to herself, now bustled about
silently, a tyrant to the other servants sent down from the Court. Every
day also the headgroom and the huntsman came, and in the village Gaston's
humble friends discussed the mystery, stoutly defending him when some one
said it was "more nor gabble, that theer saying o' the poacher at the
meetin.'"
But the landlord and his wife kept silence, the officers of the law took
no action, and the town and country newspapers could do no more than
speak of "A vicious assault upon the heir of Ridley Court." It had become
the custom now to leave Ian out of that question. But the wonder died as
all wonders do, and Gaston made his fight for health.
The day before he was removed to the Court, Mrs. Cawley was helped
up-stairs to see him. She was gaunt and hollow-eyed. Lady Belward and
Mrs. Gasgoyne were present. The woman made her respects, and then stood
at Gaston's bedside. He looked up with a painful smile.
"Do you forgive me?" he asked. "I've almost paid!"
He touched his bandaged head.
"It ain't for mothers to forgi'e the thing," she replied, in a steady
voice, "but I can forgi'e the man. 'Twere done i' madness--there beant
the will workin' i' such. 'Twere a comfort that he'd a prayin' over un."
Gaston took the gnarled fingers in his. It had never struck him how
dreadful a thing it was--so used had he been to death in many forms--till
he had told the story to this mother.
"Mrs. Cawley," he said, "I can't make up to you what Jock would have
been; but I can do for you in one way as much as Jock. This house is
yours from to-day."
He drew a deed from the coverlet, and handed it to her. He had got it
from Sir William that morning. The poor and the crude in mind can only
understand an objective emotion, and the counters for these are this
world's goods. Here was a balm in Gilead. The love of her child was real,
but the consolation was so practical to Mrs. Cawley that the lips which
might have cursed, said:
"Ah, sir, the wind do be fittin' the shore lamb! I' the last Judgen, I'll
no speak agen 'ee. I be sore fretted harm come to 'ee."
At this Mrs. Gasgoyne rose, and in her bustling way dismissed the
grateful peasant, who fondled the deed and called eagerly down the stairs
to her husband as she went.
Mrs. Gasgoyne then came back, sat down, and said: "Now you needn't fret
about that any longer--barbarian!" she added, shaking a finger. "Didn't I
say that you would get into trouble? that you would set the country
talking? Here you were, in the dead of night, telling ghost stories, and
raking up your sins, with no cause whatever, instead of in your bed. You
were to have lunched with us the next day--I had asked Lady Harriet to
meet you, too!--and you didn't; and you have wretched patches where your
hair ought to be. How can you promise that you'll not make a madder
sensation some day?"
Gaston smiled up at her. Her fresh honesty, under the guise of banter,
was always grateful to him. He shook his head, smiled, and said nothing.
She went on.
"I want a promise that you will do what your godfather and godmother will
swear for you."
She acted on him like wine.
"Of course, anything. Who are my godfather and godmother?"
She looked him steadily, warmly in the eyes: "Warren and myself."
Now he understood: his promise to his grandmother and grandfather. So,
they had spoken! He was sure that Mrs. Gasgoyne had objected. He knew
that behind her playful treatment of the subject there was real
scepticism of himself. It put him on his mettle, and yet he knew she read
him deeper than any one else, and flattered him least.
He put out his hand, and took hers.
"You take large responsibilities," he said, "but I will try and justify
you--honestly, yes."
In her hearty way, she kissed him on the cheek. "There," she responded,
"if you and Delia do make up your minds, see that you treat her well. And
you are to come, just as soon as you are able, to stay at Peppingham.
Delia, silly child, is anxious, and can't see why she mustn't call with
me now."
In his room at the Court that night, Gaston inquired of Jacques about
Alice Wingfield, and was told that on the day of the accident she had
left with her grandfather for the Continent. He was not sorry. For his
own sake he could have wished an understanding between them. But now he
was on the way to marriage, and it was as well that there should be no
new situations. The girl could not wish the thing known. There would be
left him, in this case, to befriend her should it ever be needed. He
remembered the spring of pleasure he felt when he first saw other faces
like his father's--his grandfather's, his grandmother's. But this girl's
was so different to him; having the tragedy of the lawless, that
unconscious suffering stamped by the mother upon the child. There was,
however, nothing to be done. He must wait.
Two days later Lady Dargan called to inquire after him. He was lying in
his study with a book, and Lady Belward sent to ask him if he would care
to see her and Lord Dargan's nephew, Cluny Vosse. Lady Belward did not
come; Sir William brought them. Lady Dargan came softly to him, smiled
more with her eyes than her lips, and told him how sorry she had been to
hear of his illness. Some months before Gaston had met Cluny Vosse, who
at once was his admirer. Gaston liked the youth. He was fresh,
high-minded, extravagant, idle; but he had no vices, and no particular
vanity save for his personal appearance. His face was ever radiant with
health, shining with satisfaction. People liked him, and did not discount
it by saying that he had nothing in him. Gaston liked him most because he
was so wholly himself, without guile, beautifully honest.
Now Cluny sat down, tapped the crown of his hat, looked at him cheerily,
and said:
"Got in a cracker, didn't he?"
Gaston nodded, amused.
"The fellows at Brooke's had a talkee-talkee, and they'd twenty different
stories. Of course it was rot. We were all cut up though and hoped you'd
pull through. Of course there couldn't be any doubt of that--you've been
through too many, eh?"
Cluny always assumed that Gaston had had numberless tragical adventures
which, if told, must make Dumas turn in his grave with envy.
Gaston smiled, and laid a hand upon the other's knee. "I'm not
shell-proof, Vosse, and it was rather a narrow squeak, I'm told. But I'm
kept, you see, for a worse fate and a sadder."
"I say, Belward, you don't mean that! Your eyes go so queer sometimes,
that a chap doesn't know what to think. You ought to live to a hundred.
You'll have to. You've got it all--"
"Oh no, my boy, I haven't got anything." He waved his hand pleasantly
towards his grandfather. "I'm on the knees of the gods merely."
Cluny turned on Sir William.
"It isn't any secret, is it, sir? He gets the lot, doesn't he?"
Sir William's occasional smile came.
"I fancy there's some condition about the plate, the pictures, and the
title; but I do not suppose that matters meanwhile."
He spoke half-musingly and with a little unconscious irony, and the boy,
vaguely knowing that there was a cross-current somewhere, drifted.
"No, of course not; he can have fun enough without them, can't he?"
Lady Dargan here soothingly broke in, inquiring about Gaston's illness,
and showing a tactful concern. But the nephew persisted:
"I say, Belward, Aunt Sophie was cut up no end when she heard of it. She
wouldn't go out to dinner that night at Lord Dunfolly's, and, of course,
I didn't go. And I wanted to; for Delia Gasgoyne was to be there, and
she's ripping."
Lady Dargan, in spite of herself, blushed, but without confusion, and
Gaston adroitly led the conversation otherwhere. Presently she said that
they were to be at their villa in France during the late summer, and if
he chanced to be abroad would he come? He said that he intended to visit
his uncle in Paris, but that afterwards he would be glad to visit them
for a short time.
She looked astonished. "With your uncle Ian!"
"Yes. He is to show me art-life, and all that."
She looked troubled. He saw that she wished to say something.
"Yes, Lady Dargan?" he asked.
She spoke with fluttering seriousness.
"I asked you once to come to me if you ever needed a friend. I do not
wait for that. I ask you not to go to your uncle."
"Why?"
He was thinking that, despite social artifice and worldliness, she was
sentimental.
"Because there will be trouble. I can see it. You may trust a woman's
instinct; and I know that man!" He did not reply at once, but presently
said: