'There is a beastly bell for the out-of-door servants at Hulworth,' said Toffy, 'which is beside my window, and–'
'I know that bell,' said Peter. 'I tie it up regularly every time I am at Hulworth.'
'Have you also got a country seat?' asked Mr. Purvis.
'Oh, Hulworth is a mouldy old barrack,' replied Toffy. '"Country seat" is too fine a name for it.'
'Is it quite near Bowshott?' asked Purvis.
'No, it's nine miles off,' said Peter, 'unless you ride across country.'
'I wish,' he said to Ross that evening as they sat together in the corridor, 'that I had any one else to help me in this affair except Purvis.'
Ross knew the whole story, and was as trustworthy and straightforward a man as ever breathed. 'I wish you had,' he said cordially; 'but in his own creepy fashion I believe Purvis is working for you as well as he can, and he has an extraordinary knowledge of this country and its language. You see, it is not as if you were looking for your brother amongst the most respectable English colonists in the land. You may have to hunt for him in some remarkably queer places, and it is there, it strikes me, that Purvis will help you.'
'I wish the thing were settled one way or another,' said Peter, 'so that I might know where I stand. You see, if my brother is alive– Well?'
'Nothing, only I thought I heard something moving outside the wire-netting, and I hate the way Purvis creeps about.'
'Purvis is putting his little boy to bed and hearing him say his prayers,' said Toffy. 'He is a queer mixture.'
Rosa rose, and walking to the edge of the corridor peered out into the pitch-black night.
'It 's so dark,' he said, 'I cannot see a thing.'
'Never mind,' said Peter, 'there are no wild beasts to spring at you unawares. Do you remember poor Cranley, who was in Pitt's house at Eton? Did you ever hear how he was killed in his veranda in India by a tiger?'
'Yes,' said Ross absently, 'awfully sad thing. Do you know, Peter, I believe I must walk round to the other side of the house and see if that chap is really putting his child to bed.'
CHAPTER XIII
So much has been said and so much has been written on the subject of the man who works and the woman who weeps, the man who fares forth and the woman who waits at home, that it hardly seems necessary to begin a chapter with another dissertation upon this theme. Lovers are proverbially discontented in the adverse conditions of separation. Peter Ogilvie would have given much to be at home in the winter following his mother's death, and there is no doubt that Jane Erskine felt that things would have been many times easier away from home. But if these two persons had exchanged places their sentiments would doubtless have been exchanged also, thus proving what a difficult class of beings lovers are, and how impossible it is to satisfy or to console them.
Coming as it did in the middle of a long dull winter the change to Culversham was received by Jane with whole-hearted joy. Miss Abingdon's large staff of servants, all elderly and all over-paid, combined with their mistress to welcome Miss Erskine back. The familiar rooms had never looked more pleasant than on this bleak December afternoon. A big tea-table was set by the fire, and the massive silver upon it winked delightedly at the newly arrived guest. The fire (Miss Abingdon was famous for her good fires) roared joyfully up the chimney; the dogs knew Jane's voice long before she was out of the carriage, and proceeded to give an almost hysterical demonstration of their affection. And Miss Abingdon, whom emotion always made more than usually severe, snubbed her maid and scolded the butler, and, sitting down by the fire while Jane poured out tea, entered into so long and minute an account of the gardener's shortcomings that it would seem as though her niece had come from London for no other reason than to hear the recital of her wrongs.
'You must go to bed early,' said Miss Abingdon when she and Jane went to dress for dinner; and she kept her up talking until long after twelve o'clock. Mrs. Avory was established in a charming little cottage almost at the gate of the Vicarage, and was a sort of senior curate to Canon Wrottesley. Mrs. Avory, Miss Abingdon said, was really able to appreciate the canon, and in going so far the lady probably meant that Mrs. Avory wholly admired and perhaps came very near to accepting as her Pope the good-looking vicar. Mr. Lawrence was being most attentive and useful, as he always was, and had chosen a new tea-service for Miss Abingdon the last time he was in town—his taste was perfect in such matters. He had even arranged to have her baths painted with a special sort of white enamel, and Miss Abingdon could only hope the world would not censure her for confiding these intimate domestic details to a gentleman. Mrs. Wrottesley was still very far from well; her illness seemed to have brought out—so Miss Abingdon said—all the nobility of Canon Wrottesley's character. But—in justice, Miss Abingdon ought to say—Mrs. Wrottesley had been equally self-forgetful, and had insisted on her husband's going into society a little. He was coming to them—according to old-established custom—to dinner on Christmas Day, and Miss Sherard was coming down for the week, and whom else would Jane like to ask for Christmas?
Miss Abingdon was a staunch upholder of familiar customs. There was a certain ritual to be observed during Christmas week, and Miss Abingdon observed it. She gave handsome presents to her household on Christmas morning, and she always wept in church on Christmas Day, out of respect to the memory of an elder sister who had died many years ago, and whom as a matter of fact Miss Abingdon had never known very intimately, for she had married and left home when Mary Abingdon was but a child. She gave tips to bell-ringers and carol-singers, and entertained Sunday-school children and 'mothers' in the laundry. These anniversaries, she was wont to remark conscientiously, mitigating the enjoyment of placing handsome presents beside her guests' breakfast plates—these anniversaries were full of sadness. And having suffered fewer bereavements than commonly fall to the lot of most women of her age, she dutifully thought of her elder sister, whom she vaguely remembered as an occasional guest at her father's house, and she could not have enjoyed a Christmas Day sermon in which there was not an allusion to empty chairs.
After morning service Miss Abingdon walked to the Vicarage and bestowed her yearly gifts upon the Wrottesley family. It was a matter of conscience with her to give a present of exactly the same value to Mrs. Wrottesley as to the canon, and this year she offered her little gifts with a good deal of compunction, remembering how difficult she had often found it to be quite fair in the distribution. For Mrs. Wrottesley was failing in health, and in her own plain, unostentatious way she had made up her mind that her time for quitting this world was not very far off. She wrote her will with scrupulous exactness and justness, and having done so she made no allusion whatever to what must have been occupying her thoughts to the exclusion of everything else, but continued to live the life in which care for herself had always been conspicuously absent.
She received Miss Abingdon and Jane on Christmas Day in her pleasant drawing-room which the wintry sunshine was flooding with warmth and joyousness, and she tendered her thanks for the presents which had been brought for her, assured her inquirers that she was very much better in health, and said that she had ordered no dinner at home, so that her husband and boys might be forced to accept Miss Abingdon's customary hospitality. Canon Wrottesley received his wife's statement as to the improvement of her health with ingenuous pleasure. He believed that she was really looking better, twitted her kindly on her pale cheeks, and with the optimism which declines to harbour fears and apprehensions he refused to believe that she was seriously ill. The canon himself had had a bad cold lately, and his evident wish to believe that his own malady was as serious as Mrs. Wrottesley's had something pathetic in it. If he could get rid of a heavy cold and feel quite himself by Christmas Day, his wife surely would pick up in health as soon as the warm weather should come. He believed he was doing right in making light of her ailments, and Mrs. Wrottesley saw all this quite plainly, and loved him none the less for it.
'How is your cold?' said Miss Abingdon, with sympathy in her voice, and the vicar threw back his handsome head and tapped his throat, which he said was a bit husky still, although it was no use giving way to illness. 'Master your health,' he said in a tone of muscular Christianity, 'and it won't master you—eh, mamma?' he added, with an encouraging glance at his wife's pale face on the sofa.
The Vicar of Wakefield, and even Mr. Pickwick himself, had never been more jovial at a Christmas party than were Miss Abingdon's guests. A silver bowl in the middle of the table suggested punch; Canon Wrottesley must brew a wassail bowl. A footman was sent for this thing and that, for lemons and boiling water—the water must boil, remember? And too much sugar would spoil the whole thing. The vicar stirred the ingredients with an air, and poured from time to time a spoonful of the punch into a wine-glass, and sampled its quality by rolling it in his mouth and screwing up his eyes.
The wassail bowl being now mixed to his satisfaction, he filled the glasses of the company, allotting to each lady the thimbleful which he believed to be a woman's share of any alcoholic beverage, and extracting compliments from every one. The wassail bowl was a triumph, and the candle of Mr. Pickwick was put out. Even Dickens' hero could not have given such an air of jollity to a festive occasion like this. He toasted every one in the good old-fashioned custom, requesting 'A glass of wine with you' on this side and on that. After dinner the presence of Dorothy Avory furnished the pretext for inaugurating a country dance in the hall. Canon Wrottesley pushed chairs aside and rolled rugs up, and before many minutes were over Sir Roger de Coverley was in full swing, and he was footing it with the indomitable energy of the man whose feet may be heavy but whose heart is aye young.
Miss Abingdon in grey satin was the vicar's partner, and attempted to go through the steps in the minuet style; the young Wrottesleys, on the other hand, were at an age when to be asked to dance Sir Roger de Coverley can only be construed as deadly insult. Fortunately for them, the vicar by some strategical movement always found himself in the enviable position of the dancer who ambles forward to make his bow.
The lady who was playing the piano at last stopped the music with a few solemn chords, faintly suggestive of an Amen, and Canon Wrottesley, who was proceeding with his fifth or sixth sally into the middle of the figure, stopped breathless. Dorothy Avory looked over-heated when the dance was finished, and as she had furnished the excuse for a rather poor attempt at romping, her obvious fatigue was quite sufficient to give the canon an opportunity of a little quiet reading until all were rested. He put on his spectacles—which he always wore with an air of apology—and gave out the title of the story, The Old Vicomte—A Christmas Episode.
Doubtless the scene of the story was laid in France, but that fact hardly justified Canon Wrottesley in reading the whole of it in broken English. His knowledge of French had always been a matter of pride with him, and he enjoyed rolling out the foreign names with a perfect accent.
The number of listeners in the room had diminished considerably before the reading was finished. Good-nights were said on all sides, the Vicarage party drove away, and, the conscientious romping and jollity being over, it may have been felt by some of Miss Abingdon's guests that the duties of Christmas Day had not been altogether light, and that now perhaps enforced cheerfulness might be abandoned in favour of a more easy and natural frame of mind.
Kitty Sherard came into Jane's room in her dressing-gown, with her hair-brush in her hand, and deliberately relaxed after the fatigues of the evening. Most girls with such a profusion of curls as Kitty's would have been content to allow them to wander unrestrained over her shoulders; but Miss Sherard with her passion for decoration would have dressed beautifully on a desert island, if her trunks had been washed ashore with her; she had fastened a knot of rose-coloured ribbon in her hair, and wore it on one side just over her eye with an unstudied and perfectly successful effect.
'I suppose you know,' said Jane, 'that you are extraordinarily pretty, Kitty?'
'I spend a fortune on dresses which look cheap,' said Kitty, 'and so people think I am nice-looking.'
Jane thought such humility on the part of any one so pretty as Miss Sherard was a sign in her that she must be out of spirits; so she said, 'Oh, nonsense, Kitty!' in a very affectionate way, and begged that Miss Sherard would smoke a cigarette if she felt inclined.
'No,' said Kitty, 'I don't think I want to smoke.'
Jane drew her chair nearer the big chair on the hearth-rug, and, blowing out the candles, the two girls sat by the firelight.
Tenderness, as every one knows, is an ineradicable instinct of womanhood. Kitty Sherard might smoke cigarettes and drive in a very high dogcart, but just then her heart felt very nearly breaking, and she was so grateful to Jane for blowing out the lights and sitting near her that in defiance of her mood she began to laugh.
'What a moist party we were in church this morning!' she said, smiling broadly, and ignoring the fact that her eyes had tears in them. 'Miss Abingdon looked conscientiously tearful, and Mrs. Avory applied herself to her pocket-handkerchief as soon as the canon began his usual joyful Christmas message about empty chairs and absent friends.'
'Poor Mrs. Avory!' said Jane, 'weeping has become a sort of habit with her, and tears come very easily. If we had trimmed parasols and eaten tinned food for supper for a year or two, Kitty, I imagine we should become very tearful too.'
Miss Sherard unloosed the rose-coloured ribbon which bound her hair, and beginning to brush out her curls she said 'Yes,' slowly, and turned to other topics.
'Do you ever feel quite old, Jane?' she said at last. 'I do, especially during a long frost. I feel as if I had tried every single bit of pleasure that there is in the world and had come through it and out on the other side, and found that none of it was the least little bit of good.'
'Heaven send us a thaw soon!' exclaimed Jane.
'I quite adore my father,' said Kitty with emphasis, 'and I think he helps to keep me young; but it is rather pathetic, isn't it, that any one should think one so perfect as he thinks me?'
Jane rose ostentatiously from her place and opened the window and consulted a thermometer that hung outside.
'Still freezing hard,' she said, and returned to her seat again.
'You are rather a brick, Jane,' said Kitty.
'To-morrow,' said Jane, 'I shall certainly write to your father urging his immediate return before you begin to grow grey-haired.'
'You 've had a fairly odious Christmas Day,' said Kitty, not noticing the interruption. 'You 've had to dry Miss Abingdon's tears, and listen to Canon Wrottesley reading aloud, and you have had to be hearty to carol-singers and to waft holly-berries in the faces of mothers. Why don't you throw something at me when I come to your room in the middle of the night as cross as a bear with a sore head, and begin to grumble at you?'
This remark Jane considered serious. 'The end of it will be, that you 'll get engaged to be married, Kitty,' she said, 'and then I shall jeer at you and recall to you every one of your past flirtations, and all your good resolutions about remaining single, and being happy ever after.'
'Is it really still Christmas Day?' said Kitty. 'I thought it began quite a week ago, and that we had had nights and nights of wassail bowls and old memories and Christmas-card cheerfulness.' She gathered up her hair-pins and brushes and gave a yawn. 'If it is nearly twelve o'clock I suppose I ought to go,' she said.
'I am not a bit sleepy,' quoth Jane.
'Apart from the fact of my winter being dull,' said Kitty, 'with my beloved parent in Rome, my temper is never proof against giving way when any one reads aloud to me. The story of the French vicomte is really answerable for my present horrible state of mind.'
'One always connects reading aloud with sick-beds and work-parties,' said Jane. 'When you are ill, Kitty, I intend to come and read good books to you.'
'Mrs. Avory encouraged the canon,' said Kitty. 'I found out afterwards that she had read the story before, and yet she gave a sort of surprised giggle at everything.'
'The Wrottesleys are being awfully good to her,' said Jane excusingly.
Kitty was still gazing into the fire; her tone when she spoke was that of a sensible person considering some subject only remotely interesting to her. 'I suppose,' she said steadily, but with a touch of curiosity, 'that Mrs. Avory will always continue to think that to be true for ever and ever to Toffy is the most noble and virtuous action in the world.'
'They have been very faithful to each other,' said Jane.
A most unexpected thing then happened, for Kitty kneeled down suddenly on the hearth-rug, while the firelight shone in her eyes and gave a fierce red look to them. 'Oh, what is the use of it all?' she cried, 'and what is to be the end of it? Mr. Avory is not going to die—he 's the strongest man I know, and he can't be much more than forty years old! How does she think it is all going to end? Don't you see how absurd the whole thing is? She's seven years older than Toffy, so that even if she could marry him it would not be the best thing for him. Oh, I know she has behaved well, and worked hard! I know she has eaten horrid food and trimmed parasols, and been faithful and good, but will she ever let him care for any one else?'
'Kitty!' said Jane; she took another step forward, and taking Kitty's face between her hands she turned it towards her. 'Kitty!'
'Isn't it ridiculous!' said Kitty. She swallowed down a sob in her throat and made a pretence of laughing while her hands played with her hair-brush, and her eyes, which endeavoured to blaze defiance, only succeeded in looking large and full of tears.
'I never knew—I never guessed–' began Jane helplessly.
'You were never meant to know,' said Kitty, and she turned away her face suddenly from Jane's encircling hands and buried it in the cushion of the chair. Her voice dropped ominously; she was still kneeling on the hearth-rug with the paraphernalia of her toilet about her—ribbons and gold-backed brushes, and a little enamel box for hair-pins. 'No one was ever meant to know!' she cried, 'and now I shall never be able to look you in the face again as long as we both do live! It's been going on so long, Jane, and you 've all been so sorry for Mrs. Avory, and so sorry for Toffy.'
'Does he know?' asked Jane, in a low voice.
Kitty raised her head and pretended to laugh again. 'I 've not proposed to him yet,' she said.
'But he cares,' said Jane, with conviction. 'He does care, Kitty!'
'Oh,' said Kitty, bursting into tears, 'isn't it all a frightful muddle!'
The conclusion, therefore, which may be arrived at on the vexed question as to which is preferable—the lot of the man who works or the lot of the woman who weeps, may be summed up in the convenient phrase, 'There is a great deal to be said on both sides.'
It is true that Kitty Sherard and Jane, left behind in comfortable and prosaic England, were spared the torment of flies and mosquitoes and other minor ills; they escaped most of the hard things of life, and enjoyed many of its pleasures and luxuries; and these mitigations seemed to them things of very little worth, and the life of action, when viewed from the safe security of their environment, appeared to be the only possible condition which might assuage pain or lessen the bitterness of separation.
Peter Ogilvie, meanwhile, and his friend, Nigel Christopherson, were in the midst of weather as hot as can be very well endured even by English people, who seem capable of resisting almost every sort of bad climate. The sun rose on the edge of the level plains every morning with horrible punctuality, and stared and blazed relentlessly until it had burned itself out in a beautiful rage and glory in the blood-red western sky.
'Dawn,' Ross said, 'is one of the things you are disposed to admire when you first come to Argentine, but when the hot weather begins you feel inclined to throw your boots at the sun when it rises.'
Now it was afternoon, and a heavy day's work in the corral was over. Peter was writing letters, while Ross and Toffy dozed in long cane chairs in the corridor. Purvis sat on the little cretonne-covered box beside the empty fireplace, and looked with lack-lustre eyes into space. He had been helping with some work on the estancia; but he had brought none of his own men with him, as some neighbours had done, and the ominous whisper grew that there was trouble down at his place. Ross treated the matter lightly, and explained it by saying that Purvis was making a fortune with his steamers, and was feeding his men on carne flacca. 'Purvis does his best, poor beast, and I believe he is worth a dozen detectives in this affair of yours, Peter.'
Peter himself, however, was inclined to draw back a little. 'He has put me on the wrong scent once or twice,' he said.
'After all, you haven't told him much,' said Ross.
And Peter agreed that this was so.
There was an undefined feeling in his mind that if he had to learn that his brother was alive he would like to hear of it through such legalized channels as Sir John Falconer was arranging. The detective spirit was not strong in Peter Ogilvie. He would have preferred to take the whole world into his confidence, and to ask them to speak out if they had anything to say. But Mr. Semple and Sir John had cautioned him against this procedure, and the inquiries he had been able to make had been conducted at one time with such surprising caution that no possible clue was given towards finding the child, while at others he had allowed more to be known than Mr. Semple, for instance, would have thought wise. He had lately become more reserved in his dealings with their neighbour at La Dorada, and began almost to try to discount the fact that he had ever consulted Purvis at all about his affairs. He lightly waved aside any information that was given him, and was always busy at the moment when Purvis wanted a few words with him. He advised Toffy to say, if he were asked, that Sir John Falconer was making inquiries, and that for the present they themselves were not going to move in the matter. Toffy and Ross both thought that they had gone too far to make such an attitude possible. 'What harm can it do to find out what he knows?' Ross said more than once.
But Peter still held back. 'I hate his confounded mysteries,' he said, 'and I don't attach much importance to things that are only known in a back-stairs sort of way.'
This afternoon in his letter to Jane he had given it as his opinion that the little man who they had thought might help them was proving to be rather a fraud. 'He is always starting ideas,' wrote Peter, 'and nothing comes of them. Why, bless me, you would think that Argentine was peopled with unclaimed babies and stiff with missing heirs.'
He felt better when he had unbosomed himself to Jane and had got rid of some of his impatience and ill-temper.
'I think I 'll ride to the post presently,' he said, getting up and stretching himself; 'it must get cooler soon.'
Purvis got up also from his little wooden seat by the fireplace. 'I 'll come with you,' he said. 'I am expecting letters which may want my immediate attention, and I can call at the telegraph office on my way. May I give you my company so far?' he asked. There was a touch of the lackey about Purvis, and his voice was humble sometimes to the verge of irritation.
'Como no?' said Peter lazily, in the formula of the country. His tone was not enthusiastic. Purvis was so prone to circumlocution that the fact that he had asked deliberately to accompany him on the ride towards the mail in the cool of the evening convinced him that the man could have nothing of importance to say.
They rode together over the short, tough turf of the camp a little way without speaking, and then Purvis began, in his smooth thin voice, riding a little nearer to his companion so as to make himself heard without undue exertion, 'I wanted to speak to you alone.'
'Say on,' said Peter.
When he was riding Purvis was perhaps at his worst. He had an ugly seat in the saddle, and his dark grey suit, made with trousers, was worn without riding-boots. He looked straight in front of him with his tired watery eyes with the perpetual tear in them, and said, 'I believe we are within measurable distance of finding the man you seek.'
Peter looked full at him, but the other did not turn his head; his horse cantered along lazily in the evening light as he sat loosely in the saddle, his pale, expressionless face turned towards the path by which they were travelling.
'The name of the man,' he said, 'is Edward Ogilvie.'
'Yes,' said Peter; 'my brother.' The thing was out now, and he could thank Heaven that he did not wear his heart on his sleeve.
'It is a very strange story!' said Purvis.
'May we have it?' asked Peter briefly. He might employ Purvis, but it galled him to think that his future lay in his hands.
'No,' said Purvis, in his hesitating, thin voice. 'You can't have it for the present. To begin with,' he continued, turning towards Peter for the first time, and raising pathetically large eyes towards him, 'I am not going to speak about it until I am sure, nor am I going to speak about it until I have asked you for some necessary details which will make a mischance or a case of mistaken identity impossible. I don't want to make a fool of myself, as you have trusted me so far.'
'Ask me anything you like,' said Peter laconically. His mind was pretty full just then, and there was a note of confidence in Purvis's voice which gave him the idea that their search was nearly over. He began to wonder how much money he had, and whether there was any chance of the Scottish place being his. Bowshott, of course, would pass away from him, and the beautiful house with its galleries and its gardens would be the property of some unknown man. Possibly the man had a wife, and where Jane was to have reigned as mistress there would be some woman, unused to great houses, and with manners perhaps not suited to her position. He wondered what his mother would have thought about it all, and whether she could in the least realize what the result of her unfinished letter to him might be. Whatever her faults she had been a great lady to her finger-tips. He remembered her, as he had been wont to see her, showing her pictures and gardens to the foreign royalties who came to see her, or receiving Her Majesty when she drove over from Windsor and called upon her. Only Jane could ever fill her place adequately; Jane with her short skirts and graceful, swinging walk, and her queer plain hats that so perfectly became her, and made country neighbours look overdressed. He loved to remember her in a hundred different ways—in white satin, with a string of pearls about her neck; at meets, on one of her sixteen-hand hunters; playing golf; painting the rabbit-hutch in the garden; binding up Toffy's hand that morning, ages ago, when he had had a spill out of his motor-car; playing with the school-children on the lawn; or, best of all, perhaps, dancing in the great ballroom at Bowshott, and sitting with him afterwards in the dimness of his mother's tapestried chamber, her great white feather fan laid upon her knees.
'Is the man married?' asked Peter, with a drawl.
'He is married,' Purvis said, as the two horses swung together in their easy stride.
'Wife alive?' Peter slowed down and lighted a cigarette with deliberation.
'That is a part of the story which I cannot at present divulge,' said Purvis.
'It sounds mysterious!' said Peter, sending his horse into a canter again.
'If it were written in a romance it would hardly be believed,' said the other.
'You were going to ask me some questions,' said Peter, as though to put an end to any dissertation on the romantic side of the story. 'It is a business matter,' he said, 'and we had better be businesslike about it. We can unfold the romance of it later.'
'That is my wish,' said Purvis gravely.
Peter began to tell himself that he was treating the man badly. He had nothing to gain beyond a little money for his services, and so far he had behaved well and with tact. He was obviously disinterested, although perhaps the bill for pursuing his investigations might be fairly high.
'I have reason to believe that the identity of the man can be proved,' said Purvis; 'but I am not going to risk finding a mare's nest, as I have told you.'
'I am not much help to you,' said Peter. 'I have never set eyes oh my brother since I was two years old.'
'This is his photograph,' said Purvis, producing a coloured photograph from his pocket.
Peter took it into his hands and looked long at it. It represented a little boy with fair curls seated in a photographer's arm-chair.
'Can you tell me if it resembles any of your family?' said Purvis.
'Well, 'pon my word I don't know,' said Peter. 'The photograph is a small one, you see, and evidently not a very good one, and to my mind all children of that age look exactly alike. He looks a good little chap,' he finished, with a touch of kindness in his voice. If his brother turned out to be a good fellow reparation would be made easier; and, heavens! how badly the man had been treated.