JACK AND HIS MASTER

It was necessary to bait the horses; it was equally essential for the pair themselves to have something to eat. So they rode under the olden arch of the oak-lined Falcon, and it was "your Grace" at every step, with ironic iteration very hard for either of them to bear without a word to the other. They dismounted therefore with the less delay; and Olivia turned her back upon the coffee-room window, and on an elderly, bald, well-dressed man, whose cool fixed stare made the girl extremely angry, when Jack at her side gave a shout of delight.

"So help me never! _it's the boss himself!_"

Olivia turned, and there was the objectionable old fellow in the window smiling and waving to her enchanted companion. And this was the man of whom she had heard so often! She did not stop to consider how he came to be here; the back-blockers were already at explanations, but Olivia was not listening. She was thinking of the bearded, jovial, hearty squatter of her imagination; and she was glancing askance at the ma.s.sive chin and forehead, and at the white moustache cropped close over the bad mouth of the real man.

"Mr. Dalrymple--my old boss--Miss Sellwood!" shouted Jack, introducing them with a wealth of pantomime. "We're coming up to lunch with you, sir; that is, you're to lunch with me; it's my shout!"

And poor Olivia found herself swept off her feet, as it were, into the presence of a man whom all her instincts had p.r.o.nounced odious at sight.

But the higher court of the girl's intellect reversed this judgment on the appeal of her trained perceptions. The elderly squatter was not after all a man to be summed up at a glance or in a word: his undoubted a.s.surance was tempered and redeemed by so many graces of manner and address as to upset entirely the girl's preconceptions of his cla.s.s. At table he treated her with a princely courtesy, imperceptibly including her in a conversation which poor Jack would have conducted very differently if left to himself. After the first few minutes, indeed, Olivia could see but two faults in the squatter; the first was the fierce light his charming manners reflected on those of Jack; and the second was a mouth which made the girl regret the austere cut of his moustache whenever she looked at Mr. Dalrymple.

"So you left before shearing, sir!" cried Jack, who was grossly eager for all station news. "I wonder you did that. They must be in the thick of it now!"

"They were to begin on the fifth of this month. The shearing, Miss Sellwood, is the one divine, far-off event towards which the whole sheep-station moves," added Mr. Dalrymple, with a glibness worthy of Claude Lafont.

"And don't you forget the lamb-marking," chimed in Jack. "I hope it was a good lambing this year, sir?"

"Seventy-nine per cent.," replied Dalrymple. "I'm afraid that's Greek to you, Miss Sellwood--and perhaps better so."

"You see, I'm as keen as ever on the old blocks!" cried Jack. It was a superfluous boast.

"So I do see; and I must say, Jack, you surprise me. Do you notice how he 'sirs' me, Miss Sellwood? I was on my way to pay homage to the Duke of St. Osmund's, not to receive it from Happy Jack of Carara!"

"Do you often come over to England, Mr. Dalrymple?" asked Olivia quickly. For the girl had seen the spasm in Jack's face, and she knew how the anaesthetic of this happy encounter had exhaled with the squatter's last speech.

"No, indeed!" was the reply. "I haven't been home for more years than I care to count; and the chances are that I shouldn't be here now but for our friend the Duke. He unsettled me. You see, Miss Sellwood, how jealous are the hearts of men! _I_ had no inheritance to come home to; but I had my native land, and here I am."

"And you have friends in Devenholme?"

"I have one friend; I wish that I dared say two," replied the squatter, looking from Jack to Olivia in his most engaging manner. "No, to tell you frankly, I was on a little inquisitive pilgrimage to Maske Towers. I did not wait for an invitation, for I knew that I should bring my own welcome with me."

"Of course, of course; come out to-morrow!" exclaimed Jack nervously.

"I'll send in for you, and you must stay as long as ever you can. If only I'd driven in, as I meant to, we'd have taken you back with us. Yet on the whole to-morrow will be best; you must give us time to do you well, you know, Mr. Dalrymple. It'll be a proud day for me! I little expected to live to entertain my own boss!"

Indeed, his pride was genuine enough, and truly characteristic of the man; but at the back of it there was a great uneasiness which did not escape the clear, light eye of Dalrymple. Not that the squatter betrayed his prescience by word or sign; on the contrary, he drank Jack's health in the champagne provided by him, and included Olivia's name in a very graceful speech. But Jack drank nothing at all; and having reduced his roll to a heap of crumbs, he was now employed in converting the crumbs into a pile of pellets.

Olivia pitied his condition; that tremulous brown hand, with the great bush freckles still showing at the gnarled finger-roots, touched her inexpressibly as it lay fidgeting on the white table-cloth. She strained every nerve to keep the squatter engaged and un.o.bservant; and she found herself fluctuating, in a rather irritating manner, between her first instinctive antipathy and her later liking for the man. He was extremely nice to her; he had an obvious kindness for poor Jack; and she apprehended a personal magnetism, a unique individuality, quite powerful enough to account for Jack's devotion to him. She felt the influence herself. Yet there was something--she could not say what.

The way in which her last vague prejudice was removed, however, made a deep impression upon Olivia, besides giving her a startling glimpse of her own feelings. And it all came of a casual remark of Dalrymple's, in elucidation of his prompt expedition to the district, to the effect that the Duke of St. Osmund's had once saved his life.

"Your life!" cried Olivia, while Jack ceased meddling with his bread.

"To be sure. Is it possible he has never told you the story?"

"Not a word of it! And only this morning, as we rode in, I asked him if he had never had any adventures!"

Her face was a flushed reproach.

"I'd forgotten that one," said Jack sheepishly. "I really had. It's so long ago; and it wasn't much when you come----"

"Not much!" interjected Dalrymple. "I should be very sorry to find myself in such a tight place again! It's some thirteen years ago, Miss Sellwood. I was thinking of taking up some cattle country in the unfenced part of Queensland. I had gone up to have a look at the place, and the blacks attacked us while I was there. We were three strong in an iron store: the owner, a stray shearer, and myself. The shearer had his horse hung up outside; he could have got away quite easily in the beginning; but our horses were all turned out, and he wouldn't leave us.

So we dragged his horse inside, and we set to work to defend the store."

"I know that shearer!" cried Olivia proudly. "Yet he hangs his head! Oh, go on, Mr. Dalrymple, go on!"

"From daybreak to sundown," continued the squatter, "we defended ourselves with a Winchester, a double-barrelled shot-gun, and an old muzzle-loading rifle. The blacks came on by the score, but they couldn't get in, and they couldn't set fire to the corrugated iron. It was riddled like a sieve, and each of us three had a hole in him too; but there was a wall of dead blacks up against the iron outside, and they were as good as sandbags. We should have beaten the fellows off before midnight if our powder had held out. It didn't; so I a.s.sure you we shook hands, and were going to blow up the place with a twenty-gallon tin of petroleum, that was luckily inside, when our friend the shearer came out with an idea. His horse had a ball in its body and was screaming like a woman, so that _it_ was no use. I recollect we put it out of its pain with our last charge. But there was long dry gra.s.s all round up to within some fifteen yards of the store; and after dark the shearer ran out three or four times with a bucket of petroleum, and once with a box of matches. The last time but one the blacks saw him. They had surrounded the place at a pretty respectful radius, and they were having what we call a spell; but they saw him the last time but one. And when he went out again and struck his matches they had something to aim at.

Well, his first match went out, and there was a sheaf of spears sticking in the sand and three new holes through the house. We waited; not another thing could we see. We didn't know whether he was dead or alive, and we heard the blacks starting to rush us. But we also heard the scratch of a second match; in another instant the thing flared up like a circular lamp--and us in the middle of the burner! The country was burnt black for miles all round, and we ourselves had a hot time of it, Miss Sellwood; but here are two of us, at all events, to tell the tale."

Olivia bowed to him; she could not speak. Then for a little she turned her wet eyes, wet with enthusiasm, upon the awkward hero of the tale.

And without more words the party broke up.

Jack was still remonstrating with Dalrymple when the girl rejoined them outside.

"Come now!" she said. "Was it true, or wasn't it?"

"More or less," admitted Jack.

"Was it true about the horse and the petroleum and the spears?"

He confessed that it was, but discredited his memory as a clumsy qualification. Olivia turned away from him, and said no more until she was in her saddle; then while Jack was mounting she rode up to the squatter.

"I am truly grateful to you, Mr. Dalrymple," she said; "and all the others will be as grateful as I am, and will look forward to your visit.

But for you, we might all have gone on being entertained by a hero unawares. You must tell us more. Meanwhile I for one can thank you most heartily!"

And she leant over and frankly pressed his hand; but said very little all the long ride home. Jack a.s.sured her, however, that he had never thought of his wound for years, although he must have a bullet in him somewhere to that day; he also told her that the fight with the blacks had been the beginning of his connection with his old boss, whose service he had never left until the end. And for miles he spoke of no one else; he was so grateful to Olivia for liking his friend, and he had so many stories of Dalrymple to set as well as he could against that one of himself. So the ride drew to an end in the golden afternoon, with never a tender word between the pair, though his heart was as full as hers; but she could not speak; and the great seal lay yet upon his lips.

CHAPTER XV

END OF THE INTERREGNUM

n.o.body was about when they dismounted, so Jack himself led the horses back to the stables, while Olivia gathered up her habit and scaled the steps. The stable clock struck five as the former was returning by way of the shrubbery; another seven hours, and Claude would come home with the news. For such an issue, it was still an eternity to wait. But Jack felt that the suspense would be easily endurable so long as he could have sight and speech of Olivia Sellwood; without her, even for these few minutes, it was hardly to be borne.

Yet this stage of his ordeal was made up of such minutes. He returned to desolate rooms. Olivia had disappeared; nor could he pitch upon a soul to tell him where she was. Door after door was thrown open in vain; each presented an empty void to his exacting eyes. He ran outside and stood listening on the terrace. And there, through an open upper window he heard a raised voice railing, which he could not but recognise as that of Lady Caroline. Her words were indistinguishable. But as Jack looked aloft for the window, one was pa.s.sionately shut, and he neither heard nor saw any more.

The first persons he ultimately encountered were Mr. Sellwood and the agent. They had golf-clubs in their hands and wholesome sweat upon their brows. The agent treated Jack as usual; the Home Secretary did not. He stated that he had at last won a round; but his manner was singularly free from exultation; indeed, it was quite awkward, as though perfect cordiality had suddenly become a difficult matter, and he was ashamed to find it so. Certainly there had been no difficulty of the kind before.

And Jack noted the change, but was too honourable himself to suspect the cause.

He next fell in with the Frekes. This excellent couple loved Jack for his goodness to their children, who were not universally popular. They now carried him off to tea in the nursery, where he stayed until it was time to dress for dinner. Jack liked the children; it was not his fault that they were so seldom in evidence. They were obviously spoilt; but Jack thought they were taken too seriously by all but their parents, who certainly did not take them seriously enough. So he had many a romp with the little outcasts, but never a wilder one than this afternoon, for the children took him out of himself. Their society, had he but known it, was even better for him in the circ.u.mstances than that of Olivia herself; it was almost as good as another meeting with Dalrymple of Carara. He rose at length from under his oppressors, dusty, dishevelled and perspiring, but for the moment as light-hearted as themselves. And there were the grave, sympathetic eyes of the parents resting sadly upon him to recall his trouble. Why should they look sad or sympathetic? Everybody had changed towards him; this was the difference in the Frekes. Could they have divined the truth? No suspicion of a broken confidence entered his head; yet it was sufficiently puzzled as he dressed, with unusual care, to make a creditable last appearance at the head of the table which would prove never to have been his at all. He had quite made up his mind to that; he found it appreciably harder to reconcile himself to the keen disappointment which awaited him in the dining-room.

Olivia was not coming down.