Читать книгу A Son of Ishmael - L. T. Meade - Страница 8

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When an hour later Rowton returned to the Bungalow, Samson met him in the porch.

“Scrivener has come,” he said.

“Scrivener! I did not expect him to-day,” said Rowton, a frown gathering between his thick brows.

“He has come, sir, and he wants to see you; he is waiting in the dining-room. There is a good bit of excitement about him—I cannot tell what the news can be.”

“Well, I’ll go to him,” said Rowton; “don’t keep me, Samson.”

“When will you want the horse saddled, sir? You are going to catch the two o’clock train, are you not?”

“No, I have changed my mind. I shall not leave here before night or early to-morrow morning; get back to your work now, don’t keep me.”

The man favoured Rowton with a keen glance; he then turned softly on his heel, whistling as he did so.

“Gone out in his best clothes,” he remarked to himself; “come back again with the airs of a lord; changes his plans when there is danger in the wind. Now, what does this mean? Seems to me it ain’t far to guess—sweethearting, and marrying, and giving in marriage. Good Heaven! if this sort of thing goes on we are all lost.”

Samson returned to some mysterious carpentering that was engaging his attention in the stable, and Rowton went into the dining-room.

A little man, with sandy hair and a thin face, was standing by one of the windows. He was vulgarly dressed and had somewhat the appearance of a fifth-rate commercial traveller. He had large bushy whiskers, a shade redder than his hair, but his small eyes were light and set far back in his head. With the exception of his whiskers the little man had a clean-shaven face, which revealed the lines of remarkably thin and somewhat crooked lips. The lips alone marked the face with the stamp of originality—they were cruel and repulsive in their expression.

When he saw Rowton enter he turned and came up to him with a quick, alert tread.

“You have kept me waiting for over an hour,” he said.

“Well, I am sorry, Scrivener. You see I did not expect you,” said Rowton. He flung himself into a chair as he spoke, and favoured his unprepossessing visitor with a quizzical glance.

“Come, no nonsense of that sort,” said Scrivener. “You were bound to be here. I thought the boxes would be packed and ready to be sent off; Samson tells me there is nothing done.”

“Everything that is necessary is done,” said Rowton. “I don’t choose to be called over the coals by Samson.”

“Come, come, Rowton,” said Scrivener, giving his tall host another lightning glance, “there is no good in your getting into a temper. You are all very well, and of course a great help to us, and your manners and your ways are no end of a blind, and we are awfully obliged to you, but all the same, business is business, and you have no call to neglect any of our interests.”

“I do not do so,” said Rowton. He stood up as he spoke. “By Heaven!” he exclaimed, “I give up my life to your cursed interests. I have wrecked my soul for them. You have no right to twit me with want of zeal. Where would any of you be without me?”

“I know that, Silver, I know it,” said the man in a servile tone. He walked again to the window and looked out. “All the same,” he added after a pause, “the boxes are not ready and they must be moved to-night.”

“You have the afternoon to get them ready in,” said Rowton.

“Well, let us have something to eat and set to work,” answered Scrivener.

Rowton crossed the room and rang the bell. Samson appeared after a moment.

“Get something to eat for yourself and this man in the kitchen,” he said.

“In the kitchen!” said Scrivener; “do you think I will eat in the kitchen with your serving man!”

“You won’t eat with me,” replied Rowton. “I am sick of the whole concern and have a good mind to cut it.”

“Ah! you dare not do that,” said Scrivener; “you are too deep in by now. What about the Kimberley diamonds and the silver ingots, and the——?”

Rowton’s tone changed. He stood up, and a look of perplexity flitted across his handsome face.

“It is true, Scrivener,” he said, “it is too late to withdraw now, and I did wrong to lose my temper over one like you.”

There was an indescribable scorn in his words.

“Yes,” he continued, “I am in too deep; there is nothing for it but to stay in.”

“And the life is a jolly one, my fighting cock,” said Scrivener.

“Yes, jolly enough.” Rowton began to hum the first bar of the well-known song, “Begone, dull care;” and his rich baritone filled the room.

“Yes! faith,” he continued, “the life suits me well enough; I am a jolly rover, and I like excitement and dare-devil escapes, and all the rest of the thing. I am sorry I showed temper to you, Scrivener, but the fact is, I did not want you just now on the scene. I am particularly busy at the present moment on my own account.”

“But your time is ours,” said Scrivener. “What would Long John say, or Spider, if I told them you were giving your most precious moments to private concerns?”

“Now, listen to me, Scrivener,” said the other man; “your pals may say exactly what they please of me. I have agreed to take the lead of you all, and I do not complain of the life; it has plenty of excitement and there are heaps of plums. I do not attempt also to deny that the richest plums have fallen into my mouth, but clearly understand once for all, that I know my own value. I know that I have a head on my shoulders; I know that I have a keen eye for business; I know that I am a desperate man whose courage has never yet failed him. No one knows better than I the game I am playing, and no one more clearly realises what my lot must be in the long run. ‘A short life and a merry one’ is my motto, and before Heaven! I’ll have it; but if you think, even for a moment, that you are going, any of you, to bully me or even pretend to lead me, I’ll cut off to Australia by the very next steamer that sails.”

“Yes, and if you do,” said Scrivener, “you’ll be met on board and brought back; you know where. I do not think,” he continued, “that I need add any more.”

“I don’t think you need; we both understand the position,” said Rowton.

He sat down again and remained perfectly still, with his hands hanging between his great legs, his head slightly bent forward. There were lines of perplexity wrinkling his brow; but presently he looked up with a laugh, which showed the gleam of strong white teeth.

“You would suppress me if you could,” he said; “but it would take a stronger than you to do that. My day is only at noon; I wait for the black dog of care, I wait for the demon of misery until the night time. Now then, tell me, Scrivener, why it is you have altered your plans and come here at this hour; Samson and I did not expect you until nightfall.”

“I came to tell you,” said Scrivener, “that the goods which you expect will not arrive until to-morrow. We have had word at our head office that it is safer to keep them where they are for another twenty-four hours. I thought it best to call on purpose.”

“Did any one see you coming?”

“Did any one see me?” said the man, laughing. “Of course—plenty; why, I had a pipe and a glass of spirits at the sign of the ‘Jolly Dogs,’ on my way through the village. I am a commercial traveller this time. How do you like the get-up?”

“Admirable, most admirable; I did not know you at first. I really thought you were the character.”

“Yes, I was sure these checks would do it,” said Scrivener, looking down with affection at the hideous pattern of his trousers. “I had a good time at the ‘Jolly Dogs,’ and have ordered dinner there on my return. Oh! I’m all right, but I have only told you one half of what brought me here. We have an important commission for you, Silver, and you are to go up to town to see Long John to-night.”

“What does he want me for?” asked Rowton.

“He wants you to go to Spain with——”

The man bent forward and began to whisper.

Rowton’s brow grew black.

“When does he want me to go?” he asked.

“To-morrow.”

“How long will the business take?”

“That depends on yourself; it ought to be done within a fortnight.”

“Then tell Long John from me that he must get some other man to do the job; I am already engaged and cannot go.”

“This is madness,” said Scrivener; “you are the only man among us who can go. How can you pretend to be one of us and yet shirk duty in this way?”

“You must get someone else,” repeated Rowton. “Ah! here comes lunch; you can lunch with me, after all, if you please, Scrivener; I can recommend this round of beef. Samson, bring in some ale.”

The man withdrew.

“You’ll have to go,” pursued Scrivener, as he followed his host to the table.

“I do not intend to; I have another engagement.”

“But no one else speaks Spanish; you are the only one among us who has the slightest smattering of the tongue. You alone can do the work.”

Adrian drew the great joint of beef towards him.

“I am sorry to disoblige,” he said, as he cut huge slices from the joint and piled them on his guest’s plate, “but the fact is, I am going to be married next week.”

“Great Heaven!” cried Scrivener. “Is this the time for marrying? What do we want with a woman in the business?”

Rowton’s black eyes flashed.

“Do you think I would bring her into your accursed business?” he said. “Not I; but now listen once for all, Scrivener. I marry the girl I love next week, and I go away with her on a holiday and don’t return to business for a month. For five weeks from now I take complete holiday. You can tell Long John so from me. At the end of that time I am once more at his service. Now he can take me or leave me. I am quite willing to cut the concern, notwithstanding your threats. I can get off to Australia as knowingly as anybody else.”

“No, you can’t, Rowton; your personality is too marked. Cut four inches off your height, and take a trifle from your breadth, and give you less strongly marked features, and you might manage the thing; but what disguise could you put on that we should not see Adrian Rowton peeping through? You have no help for yourself; you are in the toils and you must stay with us to the bitter end.”

“I am always forgetting,” said Rowton. “Were it not for—” he stretched out his huge arms as he spoke and indulged in a mighty yawn—“were it not for the angel who will soon walk by my side, I would cut the knot in another way. As it is, you do well to remind me of my cage, Scrivener; I am in it, but even a captive lion has the liberty of the length of his chain; and I shall take mine to the full length of my tether. Five weeks I take; a week to get ready for my wedding bells and four weeks of bliss with the angel of my life. After that you and the devil can have your way. Now I have spoken, and you can take my message to Long John.”

“You have spoken truly,” said Scrivener. “I’ll take your message; I do not promise what the upshot will be.”

“It may be anything you please as far as I care,” said Rowton. “I’ll change my mind for no man; now, help yourself to some beer.”

Scrivener took a long draught, and Rowton ate in silence; his thoughts were far away, and his heart, for all his brave words, felt like lead in his breast.

While he ate and frowned and thought, Scrivener regarded him furtively.

“Where are you going to live when you marry?” he asked abruptly.

Rowton brought his thoughts back to present things with an effort.

“Did you speak?” he asked.

“I only want to know, Silver, if your bride is to come to this house?”

“She is not.”

“Where then?”

“She will come with me to Rowton Heights.”

“What!” exclaimed Scrivener; “you don’t mean to say——”

Rowton nodded.

“Yes,” he said, “I do; the king will come into his own; I shall lord it at Rowton Heights, and mark my words, will be the great man of the place before I am six weeks in possession. I am marrying a lady, and she will help me to entertain the county folk.”

Scrivener’s small eyes began to glitter.

“It is like you, Rowton,” he said after a pause; “you always were magnificent in your ideas; but Rowton Heights! I did not think you would dare.”

“There is nothing under Heaven that I would not dare,” said Rowton. “And now, with your permission, if you have lunched, I have got heaps to attend to. Take my message to Long John; tell him that I wed next week, that I take my full honeymoon with its four quarters; and that at the end of that time he will hear from me from Rowton Heights.”