CHAPTER XIII

THE BOY WITH THE RED CAP

Jenny had failed with Powers; that seemed to be the state of the case--or, at least, her success was so precarious as to put her whole position in extreme peril. Neither storm nor sunshine, neither wrath nor cajolery, had won him securely. Behind each he could discern its true object--to gain time, to tide over. When Jenny had finished her equivocal proceedings, when she had settled down either to Fillingford or to Octon--Octon's success must still have seemed a possibility to the accomplice of their meetings--what would she do with her equally equivocal partner? Reward him? Yes, if she had trusted him. He knew very well that she trusted him no longer; her threats and her wheedling combined to prove it. Presumably Mr. Powers was acquainted with the parable of The Unjust Steward; he, too, was a child of this world--indeed his earthly parentage was witnessed to beyond the common by his moral features. What should he do when he was no longer steward, when Jenny was safely wedded to Fillingford, or had thrown off, of her own motive or on compulsion, all secrecy about Octon? Lady Sarah should receive--or at least introduce--him into a comfortable habitation and put money in his pocket to pay its rent. Jenny had overrated her domination; and she had forgotten that rogues are apt not to know when they are well off. Even when their own pockets are snugly lined, a pocket unpicked is a challenge and a temptation.

Lady Sarah's conduct is sufficiently accounted for by most praiseworthy motives--moral principle, family pride, loyalty to her brother. Let, then, no others be imputed. But if Jenny would not credit these to her, well, there were others of which she might have thought. She had chosen not to think of Lady Sarah at all--in connection with Powers at all events. The very omission might stand as a compliment to Lady Sarah, but Jenny was not the person who could afford to pay it; her own safety and honor still rested in those unclean hands.

The last days--the week of Jenny's hard-won respite--pa.s.sed for us at Breysgate like the interval between the firing of a fuse and the explosion. How would it go? Clear away obstacles and open the adit to profitable working? Or blow all the mine to ruins, and engulf the engineer in the _debris_? Nerves were on trial and severely tried. Chat was in flutters beyond description. I do not suppose that I myself was a cheerful companion. Jenny was steel, but the steel was red-hot.

At last--the last day! Jenny's week of respite drew to its end. Be sure I had counted! But if I had not, Octon himself came, most welcomely, to announce it. With a mighty relief I heard him say, as he threw himself into my arm-chair at the Old Priory, "I've just dropped in to say good-by, Austin. I'm off to-morrow."

"Off? Where to?" I had sooner have asked "For how long?" His reply answered both questions.

"Right out of this hole--for good." He smiled. "So, for once, I chanced meeting Lady Aspenick again in the park." He took up the poker and began to dig and prod my coals: all through our talk he held the poker, now digging and prodding, now using it to emphasize his words with a point or a wave. "I'm done with here, Austin. I've played a game that I never thought I should play again--and I've come to feel as if I'd never played it before. I've played it with all the odds against me, and I've made a good fight."

"Yes, too good," I said.

"Aye, aye! But I've lost. So I'm off." He lay back in the big chair--the same one in which Lacey had stretched his graceful, lithe young body--and looked up at me where I stood on the rug. "There's not much more to say, is there? I thought I'd say that much to you because you're a good fellow."

"And you're not," I retorted angrily--(Remember our nerves!) "Have you no care for what you love?"

"Am I so much the worse man of the two?" he asked.

"What's that got to do with it? Well, thank G.o.d you're going to-morrow!"

"Everybody always thanks G.o.d when I go, and I generally thank Him myself--but not to-day, perhaps." His next prod at the coals in the grate was a vicious one. "I suppose that some day there'll be a general feeling that I must be wiped out--an instinctive revolt against my existence, Austin. This neighborhood has felt the thing already. Some day it will be felt where stronger measures than cutting are in fashion.

Then I shall be killed. Perhaps I shall kill, too, but they'll get me in the end, depend upon it!" Suddenly he smiled in a tender reflective way.

"That was what poor little Madge was always so afraid of. Well, I had a good deal to try my temper while she was with me." He looked up at me, smiling now in mockery. "Don't be shocked, my excellent Austin. I'm talking about my wife."

"Your wife!" I cried in utter surprise and consternation.

That was exactly the effect he intended to produce and enjoyed producing. Amidst all his distress he found leisure to indulge his taste for administering shocks.

"You've always thought of me as a bachelor, haven't you? I suppose everybody thinks so--except one person. Well, it's no affair of theirs, and they've never chosen to inquire. I didn't mean to tell you, but the reference to her slipped out."

"You've had a wife all this time?" I gasped, sinking into a chair opposite to him.

He laughed openly at me. "Poor old Austin! No, it's not Powers over again." (So he knew about Powers!) "The poor child's been dead these twelve years."

I shrugged my shoulders impatiently. "Does it really amuse you to play the fool just now?"

"It amused me to make you jump." He watched me with a malicious grin for half a minute, then fell to prodding the coals again. "We were boy and girl--and I had only two years with her, and during that time I had the pleasure of seeing her nearly starve. I had no money and got very little work; in the usual way of things, I came into my little bit of money--it's precious little--too late. She was very pretty and a good girl, but not a lady by birth--no, not a lady, Austin. Consequently my folk--my respectable well-to-do folk--left her pretty nearly to starve--and me to look on at it. That's among the reasons why I'm so fond of respectable well-to-do people, why I have a natural inclination to acquiesce in their claim to all the virtues."

"Does Miss Driver know this?"

"Yes." He paused a moment. "She knows this--and a little more--which may or may not turn out material some day."

These words started my alarm afresh. Did he mean still to be in touch with Jenny, still to keep up communication with her--a hold on her--even though he went? If that were so, there was no end in sight, and no peace. The next instant he relieved me from that fear by adding in a low pensive voice, "But not while I live; we know each other no more after to-day."

Our eyes met again. He nodded at me, confirming his last words. "You may rely on that," he seemed to say.

"Do you leave by an early train to-morrow?" I asked.

"Yes--first thing in the morning."

"By this time to-morrow I shall feel very kindly toward you, Octon, and the more kindly for what you've told me to-day."

"I believe you will, and I understand the deferred payment of your love." He smiled at me again. "You're true to your salt, and I suppose you're a bit in love yourself, though you don't seem to know anything about it. Well, take care of her--take care of this great woman."

"I don't want to talk about her to you. I don't see the good of it."

"You ought to want to, because I understand her. But since you don't----" He dropped the poker with a clatter and reared himself to his height. "I'd better go, for, as heaven's above us, I can talk and think of nothing else--till to-morrow."

"Where are you going to?"

"Into the dark"--he laughed gruffly--"Continent. Did my melodrama alarm you? Not that it's dark any longer--more's the pity! It's not very likely we shall meet again this side the Styx." He held out his hand to me with a genuinely friendly air.

"We're both young!" I said as I clasped his hand. In the end, still, I liked him, and his story had moved me to a new pity. It was all of a piece with his perversity that he should have hidden so long his strongest claim to sympathy.

"I could have been young," he answered. "And that stiff fool can't." He squeezed my hand to very pain before he dropped it. "A great woman and a good fellow--well, in this hole it's something to have met! As for the rest of them--the fate of Laodicea, I think!"

"You're so wrong, you know."

"Yes? As usual? In the end I shall certainly be stamped out!" He shook his head with a whimsically humorous gravity. "Part of the objection to me is simply because I'm so large."

That was actually true when I came to think of it. His size seemed an oppression--a perpetual threat--in itself a form of bullying. Small men could have said the things he did with only half the offense; the other half lay in his physical security.

"Try to counteract that by improving your manners," I said, smiling at him in a friendly amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Let the grizzly bear put on silk knee-breeches--wouldn't he look elegant? Good-by, Austin. Take care of her!"

"Since you say that again--you know I would--with my life."

"And I--to my death. And I seem to die to-day."

There was nothing to be said to that. We walked out into the open air together. I rejoiced that he was going, and yet was sad. Something of what Jenny felt was upon me then--the interest of him, the challenge to try and to discover, the greatness of the effort to influence, the audacity of the notion of ruling. The danger of him--and his bulk! A Dark Continent he seemed in himself! I could not but be sorry that my little ship was now to lose sight of the coasts of it. But there was a n.o.bler craft--almost driven on to its rocks, still tossing in its breakers. For her a fair wind off land and an open sea!

As we stood before my door, I awaiting Octon's departure, he perhaps loath to look his last on a scene which must carry for him such significance, I saw Lacey coming toward me on horseback. He beckoned to me in token that he wanted me.

"Ah, an opportunity for another good-by!" said Octon grimly.

Lacey brought his horse to a stand by us, but did not dismount.

"I'm trespa.s.sing, I'm afraid, Lord Lacey! My being in this park is against the law, isn't it?"