The Broad Highway, Jeffery Farnol [best ebook reader under 100 txt] 📗

noble Sefton’s virtue is proud and high, and above even the breath of suspicion.”

“And yet my cousin would seem to be no laggard in love, and as to the Prince—his glance is contamination to a woman.”

“Sir,” returned Mr. Beverley very earnestly, “disabuse your mind of all unworthy suspicions, I beg; your cousin she laughs to scorn, and his Royal Highness she had rebuffed as few women have, hitherto, dared do.”

“It would almost seem,” said I, after a pause, “that, from what I have inadvertently learned, my cousin has some dirty work afoot, though exactly what, I cannot imagine.”

“My dear Mr. Vibart, your excellent cousin is forever up to something or other, and has escaped the well-merited consequences, more than once, owing to his friendship with, and the favor of his friend—”

“George?” said I.

“Exactly!” said my companion, raising himself on his elbow, and nodding: “George.”

“Have you ever heard mention of Tom Cragg, the Pugilist?” I inquired, blowing a cloud of smoke into the warm air.

“I won ten thousand guineas when he knocked out Ted Jarraway of Swansea,” yawned my companion; “a good fighter, but a rogue—like all the rest of ‘em, and a creature of your excellent cousin’s.”

“I guessed as much,” I nodded, and forthwith plunged into an account of my meeting with the “craggy one,” the which seemed to amuse Mr. Beverley mightily, more especially when I related Cragg’s mysterious disappearance.

“Oh, gad!” cried Beverley, wiping his eyes on the tattered lapel of his coat, “the resemblance served you luckily there; your cousin gave him the thrashing of his life, and poor Tom evidently thought he was in for another. That was the last you saw of him, I’ll be bound.”

“No, I met him afterwards beneath the gibbet on River Hill, where, among other incomprehensible things, he gave me to understand that he recognized me despite my disguise, assumed, as he supposed, on account of his having kidnapped some one or other, and ‘laid out’ a certain Sir Jasper Trent in Wych Street according to my orders, or rather, it would seem, my cousin’s orders, the author of which outrage Sir Jasper had evidently found out—”

“The devil!” exclaimed Mr. Beverley, and sat up with a jerk.

“And furthermore,” I went on, “he informed me that the Prince himself had given him the word to leave London until the affair had blown over.”

Now while I spoke, Mr. Beverley had been regarding me with a very strange expression, his cheeks had gone even paler than before, his eyes seemed to stare through, and beyond me, and his hands were tight-clenched at his sides.

“Mr. Beverley,” said I, “what ails you?”

For a moment he did not speak, then answered, with the same strange look:

“Sir Jasper Trent—is my cousin, sir.”

My negro-head pipe slipped suddenly, and fell into the grass, happily without injury.

“Indeed!” said I.

“Can you not see what this means, sir?” he went on hurriedly. “Jasper will fight.”

“Indeed,” said I again, “I fear so.”

“Jasper was always a bit of a fish, and with no particular affection for his graceless kinsman, but I am his only relative; and—and he hardly knows one end of a pistol from the other, while your cousin is a dead shot.”

“My cousin!” I exclaimed; “then if was he—to be sure I saw only his back.”

“Sir Jasper is unmarried—has no relations but myself,” my companion repeated, with the same fixed intentness of look; “can you appreciate, I wonder, what this would mean to me?”

“Rank, and fortune, and London,” said I.

“No, no!” He sprang to his feet, and threw wide his ragged arms with a swift, passionate gesture. “It means Life—and Helen. My God!” he went on, speaking almost in a whisper, “I never knew how much I wanted her—how much I had wilfully tossed aside—till now! I never realized the full misery of it all—till now! I could have starved very well in time, and managed it as quietly as most other ruined fools. But now—to see the chance of beginning again, of coming back to self-respect and—Helen, my God!” And, of a sudden, he cast himself upon his face, and so lay, tearing up the grass by handfuls. Then, almost as suddenly, he was upon his feet again, and had caught up his hat. “Sir,” said he somewhat shamefacedly, smoothing its ruffled nap with fingers that still quivered, “pray forgive that little ebullition of feeling; it is over—quite over, but your tidings affected me, and I am not quite myself at times; as I have already said, turnips and unripe blackberries are not altogether desirable as a diet.”

“Indeed,” said I, “you seemed strangely perturbed.”

“Mr. Vibart,” said he, staring very hard at the battered hat, and turning it round and round, “Mr. Vibart, the devil is surprisingly strong in some of us.”

“True,” said I.

“My cousin, Sir Jasper, is a bookish fellow, and, as I have said, a fool where anything else is in question; if this meeting is allowed to take place, I feel that he will most certainly be killed, and his death would mean a new life—more than life to me.”

“Yes,” said I.

“And for a moment, Mr. Vibart, I was tempted to sit down in the ditch again, and let things take their course. The devil, I repeat, is remarkably strong in some of us.”

“Then what is your present intention?”

“I am going to London to find Sir Maurice Vibart—to stop this duel.”

“Impossible!” said I.

“But you see, sir, it so happens that I am possessed of certain intelligence which might make Sir Maurice’s existence in England positively untenable.”

“Nevertheless,” said I, “it is impossible.”

“That remains to be seen, Mr. Vibart,” said he, and speaking, turned upon his heel.

“One moment,” said I, “was not your cousin, Sir Jasper, of the middle height, slim-built and fair-haired, with a habit of plucking at his lips when at all nervous or excited?”

“Exactly; you know him, sir?”

“No,” I answered, “but I have seen him, very lately, and I say again to stop this duel is an impossibility.”

“Do you mean—” he began, and paused. Now, as his eyes met mine, the battered hat escaped his fingers, and lay all unheeded. “Do you mean—” he began again, and again stopped.

“Yes,” said I, “I mean that you are too late. Sir Jasper was killed at a place called Deepdene Wood, no longer since than to-day at half-past seven in the morning. It was raining at the time, I remember, but the day grew glorious later.”

For a long moment Mr. Beverley stood silent with bent head, then, apparently becoming aware of the hat at his feet, he sent it flying with a sudden kick, and watched it describe a wide parabola ere it disappeared into the ditch, some yards away. Which done, he walked after it, and returned, brushing it very carefully with his ragged cuff.

“And—you are sure—quite sure, Mr. Vibart?” he inquired, smoothing the broken brim with the greatest solicitude.

“I stood behind a hedge, and watched it done,” said I.

“Then—my God!—I am Sir Peregrine Beverley! I am Sir Peregrine Beverley of Burnham Hall, very much at your service. Jasper—dead! A knight banneret of Kent, and Justice of the Peace! How utterly preposterous it all sounds! But to-day I begin life anew, ah, yes, a new life, a new life! To-day all things are possible again! The fool has learned wisdom, and, I hope, become a man. But come,” said he in a more natural tone, “let us get back to our ditch, and, while you tell me the particulars, if you don’t object I should much like to try a whiff at that pipe of yours.”

So, while I recounted the affair as briefly as I might, he sat puffing at my pipe, and staring away into the distance. But gradually his head sank lower and lower, until his face was quite hidden from me, and for a long moment after I had ended my narration, there was silence.

“Poor Jasper!” said he at last, without raising his head, “poor old Jasper!”

“I congratulate you, Sir Peregrine,” said I.

“And I used to pummel him so, when we were boys together at Eton —poor old Jasper!” And, presently, he handed me my pipe, and rose. “Mr. Vibart,” said he, “it would seem that by no effort, or virtue of my own, I am to win free of this howling desolation of Nowhere-in-Particular, after all; believe me, I would gladly take you with me. Had I not met with you it is—rather more than probable—that I—should never have seen another dawn; so if—if ever I can be of—use to you, pray honor me so far; you can always hear of me at Burnham Hall, Pembry. Good-by, Mr. Vibart, I am going to her—in all my rags—for I am a man again.”

So I bade him good-by, and, sitting in the ditch, watched him stride away to his new life. Presently, reaching the brow of the hill (there are hills everywhere in the South country), I saw him turn to flourish the battered hat ere he disappeared from my sight.

CHAPTER XV

IN WHICH I MEET WITH A PEDLER BY THE NAME OF “GABBING” DICK

“You won’t be wantin’ ever a broom, now?”

I sat up, sleepily, and rubbed my eyes. The sun was gone, and the blue sky had changed to a deep purple, set here and there with a quivering star. Yet the light was still strong enough to enable me to distinguish the speaker—a short, thick-set man. Upon his shoulder he carried a bundle of brooms, a pack was slung to his back, while round his neck there dangled a heterogeneous collection of articles—ribbons, laces, tawdry neck chains, and the like; indeed, so smothered was he in his wares that, as he stood there, he had more the aspect of some disordered fancy than of a human being.

“You won’t be wantin’ ever a broom, now?” he repeated, in a somewhat melancholy tone.

“No,” said I.

“Nor yet a mop?”

“Nor that either,” said I.

“A belt, now,” he suggested mournfully, “a fine leather belt wi’ a steel buckle made in Brummagem as ever was, and all for a shillin’; what d’ye say to a fine belt?”

“That I have no need of one, thank you.”

“Ah, well!” said the man, spitting dejectedly at a patch of shadow, “I thought as much; you aren’t got the look of a buyer.”

“Then why ask me?”

“Hinstinct!” said he, “it’s jest hinstinct—it comes as nat’ral to me as eatin’, or walkin’ these ‘ere roads.”

“Have you come far to-day?”

“Twenty mile, maybe,” he answered, setting down his bundle of brooms.

“Are you tired?”

“‘Course I’m tired.”

“Then why not sit down and rest?”

“Because I’d ‘ave to get up again, wouldn’t I?”

“Are you hungry?

“‘Ungry aren’t the word for it.”

“And how is trade?”

“Couldn’t be worse!”

“I perceive you are a pessimist,” said I.

“No,” said he, “I’m a pedler—baptism’l name Richard, commonly known as ‘Gabbin’ Dick.’”

“At least yours is a fine healthy trade,” said I.

“‘Ow so?”

“A life of constant exercise, and fresh air; to-day for instance—”

“‘Ot as a hoven!” said he.

“Yet there was a good, cool wind,” said I.

“Ah! an’ with dust enough to choke a man! And then there’s the loneliness o’ these ‘ere roads.”

“Loneliness?”