Читать книгу A Secret of the Sea (Vol. 1-3) - T. W. Speight - Страница 12

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A pleasant morning-room at Stammars. Lady Dudgeon is busy with her correspondence. To her enter Sir Thomas and Mr. Pomeroy. The former has a volume of Hansard under his arm, the latter carries a roll of manuscript. Lady Dudgeon lays down her pen and looks up.

"There is no fear, I hope, Mr. Pomeroy," she says, "that Sir Thomas's letter of thanks to his supporters will be too late for the next issue of the 'Pembridge Gazette'?"

"The editor has promised me that it shall appear on Saturday without fail."

"Have you got the speech ready that Sir Thomas is to deliver at the Farmer's Dinner on Tuesday next?"

"Sir Thomas had it from me yesterday."

"Have you looked over it, my dear?"--to the baronet.

"I fell asleep over it last night while you were at the ball."

"And you doubtless found that Mr. Pomeroy had succeeded in faithfully reproducing your views and ideas with regard to the various important topics on which you are desirous of addressing our friends on Tuesday next?"

"Mr. Pomeroy has written the speech. If he would only speak it too, I----"

"That is nonsense, dear. No one but yourself must be the exponent of your own ideas. Mr. Pomeroy's share in the transaction is a purely mechanical one--that of finding words wherewith to clothe the thoughts of a profoundly original mind. Am I not right, Mr. Pomeroy?"

"Your ladyship could not be otherwise."

"So be it," said Sir Thomas. "Anything for a quiet life. But I'll be hanged if I ever knew before that I had such a lot of ideas."

"That is just what I have said all along, my dear. If you had never succeeded in getting into Parliament, what would have become of the splendid abilities, of the choice gifts of intellect, with which Nature has so liberally endowed you? They would simply have been wasted, and your country would have been so much the poorer by the loss of them."

"That is all very fine, your ladyship; but as for my splendid abilities--fudge! My abilities lie among my turnips and short-horns, and not in speechifying to a lot of fellows who laugh at me the moment my back is turned."

"The modesty of real talent, Mr. Pomeroy."

"Just so, madam."

"I have not been your wife all these years, Sir Thomas, without being aware that you were born to be a landmark in your country's history."

"Heaven forbid! Why not make a milestone of me at once?"

Sir Thomas sighed deeply, jingled the change in his pocket, and looked out of the window. Presently he began to whistle under his breath.

Her ladyship folded and addressed a note with slow, mechanical precision. Turning to her husband, she said--

"You will have to be very industrious in order to get your speech off by heart in readiness for Tuesday's dinner."

"I shall indeed--more's the pity! I never could get my lessons off by heart when I was a school-boy, and it is not likely that I can take kindly to the task at my time of life."

"Now that your election is safe, there will be no necessity for you to speak, except on very rare occasions. There are too many empty-headed speakers, too many frothy orators, in Parliament already. All the more will your grand faculty of silence be invaluable to your country. We want men of profound thought, with the ability to express themselves in the fewest possible words. When once it is understood by the House that you are not a speaker, but a thinker, you cannot fail to be appreciated. Am I not right, Mr. Pomeroy?"

"Undoubtedly you are right, madam. The House will soon learn to appraise Sir Thomas at his proper value."

"You will be a man, dear, much sought for on committees. Your opinion will carry immense weight with it, because it will be so seldom expressed. There is a massive solidity of brain about you, such as few of your contemporaries can hope to rival."

"That's all very well; but don't forget to let me have a supply of lozenges on Tuesday. If I haven't a lozenge in my mouth while I'm speaking, I shall be sure to break down."

"The lozenges shall not be forgotten," said her ladyship. "I will make a note of it."

"And I shall want a spare handkerchief in my pocket. Something to fumble with, you know. I can't bear to be empty-handed when I'm speaking. So awkward, you know."

"Everything shall be attended to." Then, turning to Mr. Pomeroy, she added, "How delightful it is to note the little peculiarities of genius! Lozenges and a spare handkerchief for one; for another, an orange or a toothpick! When Sir Thomas's biography comes to be written, these little traits of character must not be forgotten."

"They are very characteristic," said Jack, with the utmost seriousness.

Gerald (or, as we had better perhaps call him during his sojourn at Stammars, Jack Pomeroy) could never feel quite sure whether Lady Dudgeon in her own mind really believed her husband to be possessed of those superior qualities the presence of which she was continually striving to impress as an undoubted fact on the minds of all around her, or whether it was merely an effort on her part to blind people to the deficiencies of her very commonplace idol.

How was it possible, Jack often asked himself, that such a woman as Lady Dudgeon could be self-deceived in so simple a matter? On every other subject her ladyship was shrewd and clear-headed to a degree. She could scold her servants, or check her tradesmen's accounts; she could discuss the last fashion in bonnets, or the last bit of gossip anent a neighbour's shortcomings, as effectively and with as much relish as any middle-aged lady in the three kingdoms. And yet with regard to Sir Thomas she seemed so thoroughly in earnest, her admiration of him (while keeping the matrimonial yoke fixed tightly on his shoulders) seemed so genuine, that it was next to impossible to believe that she was merely acting a part in furtherance of certain hidden views of her own. It was a problem that Jack set himself to study from the day of his arrival at Stammars; but at the end of a month he found himself no nearer its solution than he had been at first.

Sir Thomas himself was by no means elated by the honour which the electors of Pembridge had thrust upon him. He felt it especially hard that he should have to leave the country, which he loved so much, and be obliged to mew himself up in London during the six pleasantest months of the year.

"What do I want with being M.P.?" he would often ask himself, with a sort of mild despair. "When a man has got his cows, and his sheep, and his grass crops, and his wheat to look after, as I have, what more can he want to make him happy? What a fool I must have been to let Matilda persuade me as she did! And then that speechifying! Ugh! Matilda may say what she likes, but I've not got what Cozzard calls 'the gift of the gab;' and if I had, there's far more talking done in the world now than there's any need for. If people would only work more and talk less, we should be all the better for it."

The "Cozzard" alluded to was Sir Thomas's factotum and chief business man in all inferior matters. Mr. Kelvin looked after his interests in matters superior. Cozzard was something more than a gamekeeper, without coming up to the modern notion of a bailiff. Being Sir Thomas's foster-brother, he could do and say things that nobody else would venture on, and was more in his master's confidence, and knew more of his master's secrets, than Lady Dudgeon herself.

In search of this faithful retainer, Sir Thomas bent his steps this morning towards the stables, after leaving his wife and Mr. Pomeroy. He found Cozzard in the harness-room, smoking a short black pipe and mending a fishing-rod: a spare, grizzled, hard-featured man, in a velveteen coat and gaiters, with an unmistakable something about him that spoke of horses, and dogs, and guns, and a free life in the woods and fields.

"Morning, Cozzard," said Sir Thomas. "I've just looked in to tell you that we're off to London next week."

"I'm mortal sorry to hear it, Sir Thomas."

"So am I sorry, Cozzard--very sorry."

"It's all through that confounded 'lection. I wish with all my heart that you'd lost it!"

"So do I wish with all my heart that I'd lost it--only I wouldn't for the world have her ladyship hear me say so."

"Lord! how we shall all miss you down here at the old place! But there! it seems months now since we saw you about the fields with your billycock on your head and your spud in your hand, or riding Gray Dapple from one farm to another, and all through that confounded 'lection. And now Gray Dapple's that fat for want of exercise she can hardly get out o' the stable door, and everything looks different since you took to them 'lectioneering ways."

"I am missed, then, a little bit, am I, Cozzard?"

"I should think you just was, Sir Thomas.--Why even old Granny Roper at the toll-bar says to me, only yesterday, says she: 'My snuff doesn't seem to have the right flavour now the squire's not here to dip his fingers in my box.'"

"The old girl said that, did she! I'll send her a quarter of a pound of the best rappee this very afternoon."

"Why the very dogs, Spot, and Ranger, and Lob, seem to miss you. I know they do. And poor old John Nutley as died t'other day--eighty and five weeks was his age--what were his last words? Why these: 'Give my respex to Sir Thomas,' says he, 'as has been a good master to me, and tell him as I should like to have seen him again afore going home. He would have shaken bands with me, I know he would, if he had been here.'"

"Poor old John! But why didn't you send for me?"

"You were speechifying at Pembridge," said Cozzard sententiously, not without a touch of contempt in his voice.

Sir Thomas coughed and turned the subject. "What I want you to do," said he, "is to write me a long letter once a week while I'm away in London, telling me how everything is going on. Not but what I shall drop down and see you sometimes on a Saturday. I would come every week--it's not a long journey--only you know----," and Sir Thomas actually winked at Cozzard.

"Only her ladyship wouldn't like it," said Cozzard bluntly.

"That's just it. When I'm not busy at the House she will want me to go out with her. She doesn't like me to be gadding about by myself."

"Just like my old woman when she fetches me of a night from the Green Lion."

"You will write me the letter, won't you, Cozzard--a good long one every Saturday? You will tell me how the stock is getting on, and how the crops look, and give a look at the kitchen garden, and see that a couple of hampers of fresh vegetables are sent up to us every week, and----"

"But, Sir Thomas----!" pleaded Cozzard, with a visible lengthening of his thin visage. "I couldn't put down half that, not if I was to write all day on Sunday. Six lines is the most as ever I could manage, and then there mustn't be any long words in it."

"Then I'll tell you what you shall do: you shall get my god-daughter, Sally, to do the writing part. You tell her what to say, and she'll put it down all right and ship-shape, and I'll bring her a new silk gown when I come back from London. And now get Gray Dapple saddled, and find my favourite spud. You and I, Cozzard, will go round the farms this very morning."

It had been altogether a surprise to Pomeroy to find Miss Deane in the position of governess at Stammars. Was the coincidence of her being there at the same time as himself due altogether to accident, or was there some hidden purpose underlying it?--Was it, or was it not, connected in any way with the concealment by Kelvin of the contents of the sealed packet? And yet, how was it possible that Olive Deane could have any knowledge of the sealed packet? Matthew Kelvin was not a man who would be likely to take anyone into his confidence in such a matter. No; Miss Deane's presence at Stammars must evidently be set down as one of those fortuitous events which happen so often in real life; events which would seem as if they must have their origin in some set purpose or prearranged design, but which are in reality due to the merest accident.

"You did not expect to see me here, Mr. Pomeroy," said Olive with a smile, as she shook Jack's hand about an hour after his arrival at Stammars.

"No, indeed," said Jack. "It is quite an unexpected pleasure."

"When I saw you last, I had no idea whatever of coming here. Lady Dudgeon, knowing I was out of a situation, called on me some three days after your departure from Pembridge, and offered me the charge of her two daughters--a charge which I was glad to accept. When one has to work for one's daily bread, it does not do to be idle for too long a time."

"I have been used to idleness--to comparative idleness, that is--for so long a time that I am afraid it will go rather against the grain to settle down to any daily occupation."

"And yet it must be their very rarity which makes the idle hours of a busy man seem so peculiarly sweet." Then she turned the subject. "Miss Lloyd is away visiting in Leicestershire, and will not be back for about a week." This she said with her searching eyes bent full upon him.

"So I have been told already," said Jack, drily: but he could not prevent a little tell-tale colour from mounting to his cheek.

Nothing more was said at that time, nor was Miss Lloyd's name mentioned again between them till after that young lady's return.

Jack was very eager that she should return. He chafed and fumed at her absence, but why he should do so he could not have told anyone, unless it were that he thought he could have spent his time much more pleasantly and profitably to himself than in cataloguing the books, and writing the letters, of an unfledged country M.P. But having advanced so far in his enterprise, he was by no means minded to give it up. He would await the return of Eleanor Lloyd even though she should be two months away instead of a single week. He had not yet decided as to what his line of action should be when he should meet her. All that he left to time and circumstance: at present he asked only that he might see this girl about whom so much had been told him, and towards whom he stood in a relationship so peculiar and uncommon.

He was destined to see her sooner than he was aware of.

Always a great walker, Jack found his greatest pleasure, since he had come down to Stammars, in long, solitary rambles along the pleasant Hertfordshire roads, and the more lonely the road, the better he was pleased. As he was posting along at the rate of four miles an hour one afternoon towards the end of January, swinging his walking-stick, and watching the flying clouds, his ear was suddenly caught by a low, plaintive cry that evidently came from somewhere close at hand. He stood still to listen. Presently he heard it again, evidently the wailing cry of a very young child. He looked round him on every side, but there was not a human being nor even a house visible from where he was standing. Once again the cry came, this time louder than before. His eyes, drawn by the sound, concentrated themselves on the root of a large tree, of a tree which grew out of the hedge and overshadowed the road. Between the footpath and the hedge was a tiny watercourse, now covered with a thin coat of ice. Over this Jack strode, and began to peer about in the hedge bottom. He was not long in discovering the origin of the cry that he had heard. In a sort of tiny recess formed in part by the gnarled roots of the tree, and in part by the close-woven shoots of the hedge, lay a child--a child of apparently some six months old, with a tiny, pinched face, and dark, serious eyes, that gazed up wonderingly at Pomeroy for a moment and then filled with tears.

"A pleasant predicament truly!" muttered Jack to himself. "There must surely be somebody belonging to it close by."

He swung himself up on to the root of the tree, and took a long, steady look round. The point where he now was was exactly on the crown of a small hill. Right and left of him the road dipped down into a valley with bare, treeless fields on either side. Nowhere was there a human being visible: had there been one he could hardly have failed to see it. The child had evidently been deserted--left there to be found by chance, or otherwise to die.

When Jack had satisfied his mind on this point he dropped quickly from his perch, flung his stick over the hedge, picked up the child as tenderly as he knew how, stepped lightly across the brook, and set off on his way back to Stammars--a three miles' walk. He felt very awkward indeed, and was possessed by an acute sense of the ludicrous appearance he must have presented had anyone been there to see him, which fortunately there was not. The child seemed wrapped up warmly enough, its outside covering being an old black skirt of some cheap material. Whether it were a boy or a girl, Jack had no skill to judge, nor was that a point which had much interest for him. That strange, serious look in its eyes troubled him a little; but when, after it had finished its examination of him, a wintry smile flickered over its little white face, while it seemed to nestle nearer to him, he could not keep his arms from folding themselves still more closely round it.

The difficulty that now presented itself to Jack's mind was how to dispose of the child. It would never do to take the little waif to Stammars: Lady Dudgeon would have been horrified: and yet Jack shrank instinctively from the thought of leaving it to the tender mercies of the workhouse authorities, although that was clearly the proper thing to do. He was still debating the question, when he heard the noise of wheels behind him. He turned instinctively, and to his great dismay saw a pony phaeton coming rapidly along the road, driven by a youth in livery, beside whom was seated a lady--whether young or old Jack could not yet tell--but evidently well wrapped up in furs. The hot colour rushed to his face. What should he do? What indeed could he do? There was no bye-lane up which he could slink--no stile through which he could wriggle, and so put the shelter of the thick hedge between himself and the road; and it was quite evident that he could not leave the child on the footpath and take to his heels. All that he could do was to pull his hat savagely over his brows, set his teeth, and march stubbornly on, as if it were the most natural and proper thing in the world for a gentleman in a fashionable overcoat and kid gloves to be strolling along a country road in the middle of the afternoon, hugging a baby--and not a nicely dressed baby either--and acting generally the part of a nursemaid.

"I hope she's an old lady--a grandmother, or at least a mother," said Jack to himself in desperation. "In that case, it mightn't be a bad thing to appeal to her, and tell her how I came to pick up this pitiful little vagabond. It's quite evident that I can't walk into Pembridge like this."

But, as it happened, the lady who caused poor Jack to quake so terribly was neither a grandmother nor a mother. She was, in fact, no other than Eleanor Lloyd, who was on her way back to Stammars a couple of days before she was expected there. One of the children having been taken suddenly ill at the house where she had been staying, she had hurried her departure. She had quitted the train a couple of stations short of Pembridge in order to call upon another friend, and it was in this other friend's phaeton that Miss Lloyd was now being conveyed to Stammars.

As the phaeton drove past, Pomeroy, struggling gallantly on, with a very red face, could not resist shooting a little glance out of the corners of his eyes at the occupant of the carriage. She was young and had blonde hair--so much he could see; and then he set his eyes stubbornly before him and would not look again. He could see too that she gave him one quick comprehensive glance in passing. He thought the worst was over, and began to breathe again. But hardly had the phaeton passed him a score yards when a small hamper that had been tied up under the back seat slipped, and fell to the ground. Unconscious of her loss, the lady drove serenely on. What was to be done? Unless Jack should call out, the hamper would be left behind in the road; and if he did call out they would drive back, and then all concealment on his part would be impossible. "I'm in for it now and no mistake!" he muttered to himself, and then he called at the top of his voice.

By the time the phaeton had been driven back and the hamper picked up, Jack, who had been walking steadily forward all the time, was within half a dozen yards of the lady. She turned to thank him, but he could see that all the time she was speaking her eyes were fixed in a sort of mild surprise on the burden in his arms.

"If you are going my way, perhaps you will allow me to help you along the road," she said.

"You are very kind, and I will gladly avail myself of your offer," he replied. "But first a word of explanation. I found this little waif in the hedge bottom about half a mile from here, evidently deserted. Of course I could not leave it there; but now that I have brought it away I am really at a loss to know what to do with it."

"Deserted, did you say?" exclaimed Miss Lloyd, and she was out of the phaeton in a moment. "Poor, poor little darling!" and before Jack knew what had happened, he found himself relieved of his burden. Miss Lloyd's next act was to stoop and kiss the child. When she looked up, her lovely blue eyes were brimmed with tears, but a half-smile still dimpled the corners of her mouth. Pomeroy vowed to himself that never in the whole course of his life had he seen anything half so charming.

Then they got into the phaeton, Jack sitting behind, and Miss Lloyd still holding the baby.

"What a cruel thing to do!" she said. "Who would believe that there could be such hard hearts in this beautiful world!"

Jack did not answer, but his heart gave a little sigh. "What a darling she is!" he thought. "I wonder whether Eleanor Lloyd is half as pretty. And yet, why wonder, for what is Eleanor Lloyd to me, or I to Eleanor Lloyd?"

He could not keep his eyes off her, and Miss Lloyd could not keep hers off the baby. "If it were a duchess's child she couldn't take to it more kindly," said Jack to himself. "What strange creatures women are!"

Presently Miss Lloyd turned with a bright look in her eye. "How good it was of you to pick up the child, and bring it away with you!"

"Under the circumstances, I don't see what else I could have done," said Pomeroy, simply.

"Many people would have left the child where they found it, and have satisfied themselves with telling the inmates of the nearest house of their discovery."

"That is a plan I never thought of," said Jack, with a smile, "or else I should very likely have adopted it."

"No, I don't think you would," said Miss Lloyd, earnestly.

"In any case, now that I have saddled myself with the young shaver, I'm quite at a loss to know what to do with him."

"Do with him, indeed!" exclaimed Miss Lloyd. "Don't you know, sir, that it's a little girl?"

"I certainly didn't know anything of the kind," said the crest-fallen Jack. "But at that age they are all so much alike."

"Ah, you gentlemen are very ignorant of many things." Then she added, "I suppose it would never do to take the child to Stammars."

"To Stammars!" exclaimed Jack, in astonishment. "That is the place where I am living at present."

"Indeed! A guest of Sir Thomas Dudgeon, I presume?"

"Hardly that. My name is John Pomeroy, and I am only Sir Thomas's new secretary."

"And I am Miss Lloyd. Like you, my present home is at Stammars."

Pomeroy did not answer. He was confounded. But through him there shot a strange, rapturous thrill, such as he had never felt before. "I wish we were going to travel together for a thousand miles instead of three!" was the unspoken thought in his heart. "This is she whom I have secretly longed to see ever since I was quite a boy. Her name itself had always a strange fascination for me. And now I see her and know her. If there be any wit in my brain, any power of pleading in my tongue, any strength of purpose in my heart--then shall this sweet creature become my wife!"

"I think," said Miss Lloyd, "that for the present, at least, we could not do better than place this little darling under the care of Mrs. Nixon, the wife of the under gardener at Stammars. She is a mother herself, and will treat it kindly. We shall then have time to think about its future. It is very singular that you and I should have met thus. When I passed you on the road I was certainly puzzled at first to make out what it was that you were carrying," she added, with a smile. "But when I saw what it really was, I thought that you were perhaps doing it for a wager. Such things have been done, I daresay. But to do what you did out of pure compassion, was very nice of you indeed."