Chapter XXXII: Old Scores

Someone was whistling on the garden-path below the parlour-window. Someone had sauntered up by way of the orchard through an April night of radiant moonlight, and was softly whistling an old, old love-song with a waltz-refrain.

There was a light burning in the parlour, and at the table a woman sat with bent head working. She did not look up as the sweet, rhythmic sound reached her. She worked steadily on.

The waltz-refrain came to an end. There fell a step outside the window. A wicked, mischievous face peered in.

"What! All alone, queen of the roses? Will you grant me admittance?"

She looked across at him then, but she did not rise. "Come in, certainly, if you wish!" she said.

He came in with the air of one conferring a royal favour. He moved round the table to her side, bent, and lightly kissed her hand.

She suffered him with an enigmatic smile, scarcely pausing in her work.

"And where is the worthy cow-puncher?" he said.

She raised her brows ever so slightly. "Are you speaking of Jake--my husband?"

He smiled briefly, derisively. "Even so. Of Jake--your husband."

She smiled also, but her smile was wholly sweet. "He will be in soon. He has gone round to see that all is well. Sit down, won't you, and wait till he comes?"

"Oh ho!" said Saltash. He sat down facing her, closely watching her every movement with his queer, restless eyes. "Do you think he will be pleased to see me?" he asked.

She glanced at him. "As pleased as I am," she said.

"Are you pleased?" He flung the question as though he scarcely expected an answer.

But she answered it with serenity. "Yes, I am quite pleased to see you, Charlie. I have been half-expecting you all day."

"Really!" he said.

She bent her head. "Ever since I heard of your return to the Castle. It was kind of you to come round so soon. And we want to thank you--Jake and I--for letting us use the stables till the new ones at Graydown are leady."

"Really!" Saltash said again. He added, "As half are already demolished and the other half will be pulled down as soon as the Stud goes, it was not much of a favour to grant. Do I understand that Jake is to continue in command under the new regime?"

She smiled again as she answered, "In absolute command."

He frowned momentarily. "A fortunate thing for Jake!"

"He thinks so too," she said.

He began to finger his cigarette case. "Do you mind if I smoke?"

"Not in the least." She raised her eyes suddenly and fully to his. "Please remember that you are in the house of friends!" she said, with a slight emphasis on the last word.

"You amaze me!" said Saltash.

She laid aside her work with heightened colour. "Charlie, I have some rather serious things to say to you."

"My dear girl," he protested, "must you?"

"Yes, I must, and you must listen." She spoke with resolution. "I will be as brief as I possibly can, but I must speak. Smoke--please smoke--if you want to!"

He laughed a little, leaning towards her. "On second thoughts, I don't. This promises to be interesting, after all. Do you know when I came in just now you looked so prim that I was nearly frightened quite away?"

She was looking him straight in the face. "Charlie, why did you come?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "Ask the needle why it follows the magnet!" he said.

His eyes caressed her, but she steadily faced them. "I ought to hate you," she said. "But I don't. I think of you always--in spite of myself--as a friend. I suppose that is a woman's way--to be tricked and to forgive. Anyhow, I forgave you a long while ago. I believe I have even begun to forget. Charlie, I know that you are capable of a sincere friendship. I can't help knowing it."

"You deceive yourself," he said lightly. His eyes still dwelt upon her, but it was with a half-tender mockery, as one who smiles at the make-believe of a child.

Her lips quivered a little. "No," she said. "It is the truth. You are pleased to wear a mask--but I know--the real man. I know that you are often crooked in your dealings, often cruelly malicious and vindictive; but at the back of it all there is a man capable of big things, of chivalry, generosity, and honest kindness of heart. Charlie, I appeal to that man!"

"What do you want of him?" said Saltash. And still he looked at her, but again his look had changed. The mockery had given place to a species of dispassionate curiosity. His ugly face had the odd melancholy as of something longed for but hopelessly lost which may be seen on the face of a monkey.

Because of that look she suddenly stretched out her hands to him impulsively, generously.

"I want fair play," she said. "Perhaps I don't deserve it. I haven't always treated you fairly. But I want you to put the past away from you--as I have done. I want to trust you again."

There were tears in her eyes as she spoke. He held her hands hard pressed in his.

"A dangerous experiment, Maud of the roses," he said. "But if you will you must. What more do you want?"

She answered him quickly, pleadingly. "Charlie, you have a grudge against--my husband! I want it put right away--right away. I don't think you have the power to hurt him, but even if you had, I want to know that you wouldn't use it. He has always served you faithfully. I want fair play for him."

Saltash's dark face showed a faint, twisted smile. "You certainly credit me with considerable generosity," he said.

"He deserves fair play from you," she insisted. "You have tried to undermine his reputation, and you have failed. But you might have succeeded, although you know, as well as I do--that he is a white man."

"Do I?" said Saltash.

"You do! You do!" she said with conviction. "You have no right to cherish a grudge against him. He has done nothing to deserve it."

"And how do you know that?" said Saltash.

"I know him," she said with simplicity.

"I see." His smile became a little more marked. "Did he ever tell you the funny story of my double?" he asked.

She gave a great start, and in a moment her face was burning.

"I see," he said again. "You needn't answer. And you tell me that I have no right to cherish a grudge against him."

She spoke with difficulty. "He did not accuse you of anything."

Saltash laughed. "Left you to draw your own conclusions, eh? Score number one! And after that, when he knew that I was coming home, when he knew that you were mine for the asking, didn't he race you into marriage with him before you had time to find your breath?"

Her face burned more hotly. "Wouldn't you have done the same?" she said.

He looked sardonic. "You must remember that I am not--a white man, my queen of the roses. My standards won't compare with his. Score number two then! And hasn't he baulked me at every turn ever since? When have I ever got back any of my own--except once when I made you see him as he wasn't--a drunkard, and except when one night of moonshine I held you in my arms and you gave your lips to mine?" His voice suddenly thrilled.

She caught her breath sharply. "I was mad!" she said. "I was mad!"

She would have withdrawn her hands from his, but he frustrated her. A gleam of mischief flashed in his eyes. "No, Maud of the roses, it was just--a dream. Have you never said to yourself, That was the happiest dream of my life?"

She shook her head. "That part of my life is over--quite over. I have come into reality, and--Charlie--it is better than any dream. That is why I want all that is evil to be taken away. If Jake has ever wronged you, then I have wronged you. And I appeal to your kindness of heart, your generosity, for forgiveness."

The mischief died out of the eyes that watched her. Saltash bent a little over the hands he held. "But why should you take that trouble--if I have ceased to count?" he said.

"You do count," she answered quickly and earnestly.

"Surely not if--as you say--it is out of my power to hurt him." There was a hint of banter in the words, but they held no venom.

"It isn't that," she said. "I want to know that the hatchet is buried, that there will be no more ill feeling. Jake is his own master, and I know he will make his mark. But I want him to have a fair chance, free from all handicap."

"What do you mean by that?" Saltash suddenly broke in. "I presume he is still a paid servant though it may no longer be my privilege to employ him."

She lifted her head a little. "No. Jake is his own master. The Stud was bought with my money. It belongs to him."

Saltash's brows went up. "Your money? You never had any!"

"Never before last winter," she said. "I inherited a very large fortune from my uncle in the North. It came to me--just in time."

Saltash's brows were working up and down like a monkey's. "And you--bought the Stud? Then all this American business was bunkum! Did my agent know of this?"

She shook her head. "No; no one knows yet except Jake, Bunny, and me."

He let her hands go abruptly, and began to pace the room.

She stood motionless, watching him. "Even Jake did not know till it had all gone through," she said, after a moment. "I told him--on the night of the fire."

"What did he say?" Saltash tossed the words over his shoulder. His dark face was drawn, almost distorted.

Maud hesitated. Then: "He asked me why I had done it," she said, in a low voice.

He paused in his walk. "And you struck a bargain with him? He was to let you go your own way for all time, please yourself, live your own life! Wasn't that it?"

Her eyes fell involuntarily before the sudden fire in his. "Oh no!" she said quickly. "Oh no! I didn't want that."

"What then?" He wheeled and came to her, stood before her. "Surely you didn't give him all that for nothing!"

She faced him again steadily. "He wouldn't have taken it," she said.

"Then--" he was standing close to her; his odd eyes gazed, deeply craving, into hers.

But she did not flinch. "I gave it to him--for love," she said.

He made a sudden movement; his features were for a moment convulsed. Then swiftly he controlled himself. "You--love the man!" he said.

She clasped her hands together tightly. Her eyes never wavered for an instant from his. "Yes, I love him," she said.

He flung violently away from her. "Why didn't I destroy him long ago?" he said.

Again he paced the room with sharp, jerky movements. Suddenly he flung two questions over his shoulder. "That was why you changed your mind after sending me that ring? That was what you came to me to the Castle to tell me?"

She bent her head. "I believe that was the reason. But I couldn't have told you that then. I didn't know it myself."

"How long have you known it?"

He was not looking at her, and very piteously she smiled. "It came to me--quite suddenly--in the hall at 'The Anchor' when you told me--you told me--that he wouldn't be such a fool as to believe in me. I left him without seeing him again. And then--and then--just when my uncle died--he came to me. And I knew that he did believe in me after all."

Saltash broke into a laugh--the laugh of a man who hides pain. "It was my doing then! Come, you owe me something after all. But it seems I have been misspending my energies ever since. I thought you wanted to be rid of him."

Again abruptly he came back to her, stopped in front of her. "And so it all came out on the night of the fire," he said.

She looked at him, and her blue eyes shone. "Yes," she said softly. "There have been no misunderstandings since then."

He smiled a little with twisted brows. "Do you know who was responsible for that fire?"

She started. "No!"

"A certain scoundrel named Stevens," he said. "The same scoundrel who pulled the Albatross at the Cup Meeting, and was thrashed for it by the virtuous cow-puncher. Do you know who was at the back of that scoundrel?"

Her eyes fell before the grim bitterness of his. "Charlie!" she faltered.

"Yes, Charlie," he said. "Charles Burchester, Lord Saltash, another scoundrel blacker than the first who had suffered a similar punishment for a somewhat similar offence from the same virtuous hands. Scoundrel number one won't trouble you again. I have shipped him off to Australia. Scoundrel number two is awaiting his orders to go to--another place."

Her lips suddenly quivered. She put out a trembling hand. "Charlie, I don't believe it of you!"

"Believe it or not," he said, "it's true. I'm a spiteful devil. You said so yourself a minute ago." But he held her hand almost as one pleading for clemency.

She raised her eyes to his. The fascination of the man drew her, but--possibly for the first time--not against her better judgment. "Let us forget it all!" she said. "Let us be friends!"

He laughed in a fashion that moved her to pity, and bending kissed her hand. "If Jake agrees--Amen!" he said.

And then sharply, like an animal trapped, he turned towards the window and met Jake face to face.

They stood for a moment so, confronting each other in dead silence. Then lightly Saltash spoke.

"Caught trespassing, but not poaching!" he said. "Your wife and I have been settling--old scores."

Jake's eyes went past him to his wife's face. She made no sign of any kind, save that she met the look.

Jake came quietly forward. "You are very welcome, my lord," he said, and held out a steady hand.

A gleam of surprise crossed Saltash's dark face. He took the hand, looking at Jake whimsically. "You are the fellow who is not accustomed to being beaten at the winning-post," he said. "Well, you were a bad starter and the odds were dead against you, but you've got there. I congratulate you."

"You are very good, my lord." Jake's eyes, red-brown and resolute, looked into his.

Saltash shrugged his shoulders, with a slight grimace. "The _role_ is thrust upon me. I wonder if I shall be able to sustain it."

Something in the word reached Jake. His lips parted in a sudden smile that banished all the hardness from his face. His hand squarely gripped and held. For a second--just a second--there was a gleam of comradeship in his eyes. "I guess it's up to you, my lord," he said.

The moment passed and Saltash turned aside, laughing with a certain royal graciousness that was all his own. "The odds are ninety-nine to one, Bolton," he said. "But you are too accustomed to that to be dismayed."

"I put my money on the hundredth chance," Jake answered in his slow, sure fashion. "And I reckon I shan't lose it."