Chapter XIV: Jealous Watchers of the Night

Fie on’t! Oh fie! ’Tis an unweeded garden
That’s gone to seed: things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely....
... Frailty thy name is woman!
—SHAKESPEARE (_Hamlet_).

It was late at night when Colonel Harcourt dismounted, stiff and tired, in front of the _Cheveral Arms_. He had successfully sought at Bath a pair of friends who were to call upon Sir David on the morrow; but he had, somewhat morosely, declined their proffered hospitality. For some ill-defined reason he had been drawn back to Bindon.

The sleepy landlord had but a poor supper to serve: _per contra_ an excellent bottle of wine. One, indeed, that so curiously resembled the Clos-Royal of which the colonel had approved at Bindon House that, as he tasted it, he found himself sardonically regretting that he had not pressed a more handsome gratuity into old Giles’s palm.

Indeed, he soon called for another bottle. Yet he was in no better a humour after the cracking of the second seal. The thoughts seething in his brain remained as dark and heavy as the liquor in his glass, but were far from being as generous.

His physical equilibrium was disturbed. It had always been a part of Antony Harcourt’s power with men, as with women, that no matter how seriously they might take him, he should take himself and them with gentlest ease. But to-night he was a prey to two passions that would not let their presence be denied. A passion of resentment against his whilom host; a longing to feel his own hand striking that cold, pale cheek, or yet to see a thin stain of blood upon that affectedly old-fashioned waistcoat spreading and running down, whilst he should smile and wonder that it should actually show red.

The other passion! He was in love with the widow Marvel—as damnably in love as the raw boy, Herrick, himself, with the added torture of the _roué_ who has never yet known denial, of the materialist who can console himself with no poetic fancies and can dull his senses with no falutin of sensibility.

A month ago, if anyone had told him that his elegant person should house two such wild beasts, he would not have thought the suggestion even worth the trouble of a smile. Now, as he lay back on his wooden chair, eyeing the ruby in his glass with a deep, vindictive eye, Colonel Harcourt felt his savage guests tear at him, and was in as dangerous a mood as ever undid a fool or made a criminal. All at once the heat of the room, of the wine, of his own fierce mood, stifled him. He rose, lit himself a cigar, and sallied out, bare-headed and uncloaked, into the sweet, still night.

The inn stood a little apart from the village—a gunshot distance from the gates of Bindon Park. Colonel Harcourt paced a few steps down the moonlit white road and paused, drawing reflective puffs, feeling almost without noticing how grateful was the cool air upon his head, hearing without listening the mysterious whisper of the trees on the other side of the park walls. He moved his cigar from his lips and hesitated.

Then, on an impulse that was as sudden as it was purposeless, he turned off from the hard road, silver in the moonlight, and struck over the stile into the darkness of the narrow, tree-shaded path that led to the church on the grounds. From this, giving the Rectory a wide berth, he branched off, and, aimlessly enough, directed his steps towards the House. Twelve strokes of the night floated gravely from the little square church tower. A dog bayed in the village and was answered in deeper note from Bindon stable-yards. On went Antony Harcourt fitfully, slowly, now pausing, now beating time with steady footfall to an evil little pipe of song that the dark secret world and his own heart seemed to take up, one after the other, like a catch.

A dry stick snapped sharply under his feet, the light of a lantern flashed upon his face, a hand fell heavily on his shoulder. It was one of the keepers, who instantly apologised profoundly to Bindon’s personable guest and sped him on his way with a reverential “Good-night, sir,” succeeded by a stare and a shrug. The ways of gentle-folk were strange.

Burgundy is a wine that long remains hot in the blood. Colonel Harcourt’s pulses were throbbing. A curious excitement pervaded his being. Like the sails of a mill under a fitful breeze, anon his brain whirled with plans, anon seemed to stagnate, unable to formulate a thought. He found himself at last standing at the entrance of the ruins, at the back of the Herb-Garden. Before him the tower-wing of the house cut the shimmering star-shine with pointed gable, with massed chimney stack, with the huge black square of the keep, all fantastically picked out by stripes of moonlight. The curious exotic spices of the Herb-Garden rose against his nostrils.

He flung upwards a look of scorn:—was the brain-sick star-gazer even now at his telescope? Upon the sweep of his downward glance an illumined window caught and arrested his attention. He made a rapid calculation from the gables—Mistress Marvel’s window!

Lady Lochore still kept them at late hours it seemed, in this whilom sleepy house! The fair widow was doubtless but just disrobing for the night. As he gazed somewhat sentimentally—what tricks will Clos-Royal and the witchery of a Lammas-night play even with a middle-aged gentleman of vast experience and acute sense of humour!—suddenly he started and stared, open mouthed upon a curse.

Something black and tall and slight, a man’s figure, had appeared against the bright open window, cutting it across with outstretched arms and, almost at the same moment, something dimly pale and of soft outline, a woman’s figure, flung itself between his eyes and the unexpected vision. He caught a glimpse of white bare arms. Then all vanished again as if it had not been, and there was naught but the lighted window, open to the night, confiding, innocent, tranquil.

Colonel Harcourt gnashed his teeth and cursed long and deep within himself. For all his libertine theories and Lady Lochore’s denunciations he had never doubted for a moment but that Mrs. Marvel’s favours were a prize as yet untouched. And now—behold! One more audacious than himself had slily reached up and plucked the golden fruit!

“By the Lord, I’ll run that Lovelace to earth!” This was the first articulate thing out of his fury.

He began scrambling through the ruins in his frantic desire to reach a closer point of view. A dangerous way, in truth, but one that would perchance prove more dangerous by daylight, since the perils that are unknown do not exist and the god of chance proverbially favours the reckless. Colonel Harcourt risked his life a score of times and knew it not. Hot in his determination, he scarcely felt the hurt when he fell; and, when he spurned the crumbling, slipping stone beside him, the sound of its drop into unknown vaults evoked no image of what he himself had escaped. As little had he heeded the song of the bullet in his ear or the roar of the mine beside him when he had led his lads up the French lines at Barrosa, a dozen years before. Torn, panting, bruised, he landed at length safely on a poison-plot of the Herb-Garden. Even as he looked up again the light at the gable-end window went out.

With that light went out his own heat of disappointed passion. _Homme à bonnes fortunes_ as he was, he was not the man to care to come second anywhere. Mrs. Marvel’s chief charm after all had been her unattainableness. The colonel, as he stood in the moonlight, was all at once a sober man. It seemed to him now that, culminating with that second bottle, he had gradually been getting drunk this whole fantastic fortnight.

“What, in all the devils’ names, did it really matter that a weak-minded recluse should slight him and his fellow guests, that he should have taken upon himself this absurd challenge, from which there was now no retreat? What was there in the country widow? And why should he have seen red because of the timely discovery that she was wanton and not virtuous? And how the devil was he to get out of this infernal garden?”

A pretty situation wherein to bring his forty-eight years’ experience and his thirteen stone of flesh! As he ruefully felt over his bruised body and damaged garments, his fingers struck against a hard outline in his waistcoat pocket. The key! He gave a soft chuckle. It was a poor end to a summer night’s venture, but an undoubted relief to be able to extricate oneself in commonplace fashion by walking out through an open gate.

Wrapping his philosophical humour round him as the best cloak to cover his sense of moral dilapidation, he was cautiously picking his way, when he became aware of a hasty footstep behind him. As he turned round, the moonlight showed him a tall, slender black figure, a haggard, white face!

“Luke Herrick!”

“Colonel Harcourt!”

The older man was the first to speak. He was not astonished—only (he told himself) highly amused. There was a tone in his voice, however, which belonged less to amusement than to some biting desire to use the keenest-edged weapon wits could provide.

“How fortunate that I should have the key of the gate and be able to let you out, Mr. Herrick!”

He began to fumble for the lock in the darkness of that shaded spot, and laughed as he felt the young man press forward suddenly behind him and then draw back a step with a hissing breath. The gate creaked on its hinges. Colonel Harcourt, with a gesture the mocking courtesy of which was lost in the night, invited the other to proceed.

“After you, sir. Why do you hesitate? It is quite fit that dashing youth should take precedence of middle-age on certain occasions.”

Herrick clenched his fist; then with a desperate effort regained control of his most sore and injured self and stalked out of the garden, spurning that earth his feet would tread for the last time.

“You walk late, my young friend,” resumed Harcourt, as he joined him.

“So do you, sir!” cried Herrick thickly.

The colonel laughed with quite a mellow sound. In proportion as Herrick’s discomfiture became manifest his own geniality returned.

“Our ways lie together as far as the moat-bridge,” remarked he.

Herrick made no reply. What though she had fallen, and fallen to such an one, she was still a woman; and through him, who had worshipped her, shame should not come upon her. Let Harcourt mock and jeer in his triumph, he would be patient ... till a fitter moment.

“By George! our little Romeo is discreet,” thought the colonel. “But I’ll loosen your tongue yet, you dog!—A charming night!” quoth he aloud. “Delightful last remembrance to carry away with one, is it not?”

Herrick paused for an appreciable instant; then steadily took up his way again, still in silence.

“I presume you leave to-morrow?” pursued the elder man. “Our good host——”

“You, I presume,” interrupted Herrick, “intend to remain, at least in the neighbourhood!”

They were in the thickest shade of the shrubbery, but each knew the other’s eye upon him. Their attitude, morally, was like that of men fencing in the dark, feeling blade on blade yet never venturing a full thrust.

“You are right. I do not leave just yet. In truth, I have a transaction to complete before I altogether withdraw from this delightful spot. But you——”

“I, sir?” echoed Luke, breathing quickly through his nostrils.

“Oh, you——” Harcourt laughed good-humouredly, almost paternally. “I was going, I declare, to commit the folly, unpardonable in my years, of offering a young man advice. I was going to say, my good lad, that from the poetic point of view, your visit here must have been so inspiring, so, what shall I say? so eminently successful, that it would be a thousand pities for you to prolong it. Disillusion,” he added, with a light sigh, “swiftly follows upon joy.”

Herrick chewed a thousand savage retorts, but let not one escape beyond his clenched teeth.

“You have doubtless a vast experience, sir,” he responded at last; and the colonel was forced to admit in his own mind that his adversary was stronger than he had deemed him.

In this mood they reached the moat-bridge, and the full-spaced moonlight. Then both paused, and, for the first time, saw each other clearly. The imaginary rivals stood a moment and took stock of each other’s tell-tale appearance.

“By the Lord,” thought Colonel Harcourt, running his eye sardonically over the dark stains on Herrick’s handsome evening suit, his tossed and dishevelled hair, “it is all correct and complete! He’s had to come down by the window! The deuce!... I who thought the situation would have suited me!” He had another quiet laugh which enraged the youth almost beyond endurance. For one voluptuous moment Herrick saw himself laying this triumphant elderly Lothario at his feet. For every stain, for every rent in that riding suit, for every stone scratch on those heavy boots—brute beast, who could enter thus into his lady’s presence!—he should feel the cuffing of an honest fist! Nor were Colonel Harcourt’s next words likely to conduce to the young man’s self-control.

“Most poetical Herrick,” he said, “you have lost your hat, and you are in sad need of a brush!”

“For the matter of that, sir, where is your hat? And as for requiring a brush——”

Then he clenched his fist, this time for a most deliberate purpose. The situation was undoubtedly strained. Suddenly a piping voice drew their attention to quite a new quarter.—Upon the other side of the moat-bridge stood the quaint be-frilled, be-ringletted, tightly be-pantalooned figure of Mr. Villars. And even as they gazed this worthy hobbled across and came close to them, his face under the moonlight visibly quivering with excitement.

“My dear Harcourt! ... Luke, my poor lad!”

They turned upon him like angry dogs disturbed in the preliminaries of a private quarrel. The colonel’s somewhat precarious and thin-spread geniality was not proof against this witness of his inexplicable plight.

“My good friends,” pursued Villars, the mystification on his countenance giving way to a gloating delight as he looked from one to the other, “what has happened? This has been indeed a night of adventures! We thought you had gone to Bath, Colonel. Luke, lad, the ladies have missed you—at least some of them, he—he—he!” The skin of his dry hands crackled as he rubbed them. “This is extraordinary. This is something quite romantic, he—he!”

“Mr. Villars,” interrupted Harcourt suddenly, “is it not time you were in your beauty sleep, and your hair in curl papers?”

He turned his broad back upon the inquisitive gentleman and fixed Herrick for a couple of seconds with a hard straight look.

“Colonel Harcourt,” cried the boy hotly in answer, “I am at your service.”

“Mr. Herrick,” returned the other, “you are an understanding youth. I regret to be unable to respond just now as I should wish. But in a few days perhaps—I have a good memory.”

His tone was now as hard as his eye. He nodded towards the speechless poet with a little wave of the hand that was full of significance. Then without further noticing Mr. Villars, he turned on his heel and walked away towards the trees where he was instantly swallowed in the black shadows.

As Herrick stood glaring after him into space, his wrist was seized and a wrinkled eager face was thrust offensively close to his.

“My dear boy, I know all about it—all about it. The Deyvil! But that was a brilliant idea of yours to fox under that cloak. Her suggestion, eh? Naughty boy. Lucky dog, he—he! But what about the colonel, eh? What? You don’t mean to say the pretty widow has two——”

In the great silence of this hour before the dawn the sound of a master slap rang out sharp as a pistol shot; and the echo of it came back like a jeer from the terrace walls.

“A raving lunatic,” said Villars to himself with wry lips, as he nursed his cheek and blankly watched Herrick stride towards the house. “Certainly not worth taking the least notice of!”

Nevertheless, if that young man’s paper ever fell into his hands!

But Herrick was taking to his rooms a heart heavy enough to have satisfied even the financier’s vindictiveness.