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

man!” said the Preacher, shaking his head.

“Many people have told me the same, sir,” said I, and vaulted over the stile. Yet, turning back when I had gone some way, I saw him leaning where I had left him, and with his pipe still in his mouth.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

IN WHICH I MEET MY COUSIN, SIR MAURICE VIBART

As I approached the smithy, late though the hour was (and George made it a rule to have the fire going by six every morning), no sound of hammer reached me, and coming into the place, I found it empty. Then I remembered that to-day George was to drive over to Tonbridge, with Prudence and the Ancient, to invest in certain household necessities, for in a month’s time they were to be married.

Hereupon I must needs contrast George’s happy future with my dreary one, and fall bitterly to cursing myself; and, sitting on the Ancient’s stool in the corner, I covered my face, and my thoughts were very black.

Now presently, as I sat thus, I became conscious of a very delicate perfume in the air, and also, that some one had entered quietly. My breath caught in my throat, but I did not at once look up, fearing to dispel the hope that tingled within me. So I remained with my face still covered until something touched me, and I saw that it was the gold-mounted handle of a whip, wherefore I raised my head suddenly and glanced up.

Then I beheld a radiant vision in polished riding-boots and speckless moleskins, in handsome flowered waistcoat and perfect-fitting coat, with snowy frills at throat and wrists; a tall, gallant figure, of a graceful, easy bearing, who stood, a picture of cool, gentlemanly insolence, tapping his boot lightly with his whip. But, as his eye met mine, the tapping whip grew suddenly still; his languid expression vanished, he came a quick step nearer and bent his face nearer my own—a dark face, handsome in its way, pale and aquiline, with a powerful jaw, and dominating eyes and mouth; a face (nay, a mask rather) that smiled and smiled, but never showed the man beneath.

Now, glancing up at his brow, I saw there a small, newly healed scar.

“Is it possible?” said he, speaking in that softly modulated voice I remembered to have heard once before. “Can it be possible that I address my worthy cousin? That shirt! that utterly impossible coat and belcher! And yet—the likeness is remarkable! Have I the—honor to address Mr. Peter Vibart—late of Oxford?”

“The same, sir,” I answered, rising.

“Then, most worthy cousin, I salute you,” and he removed his hat, bowing with an ironic grace. “Believe me, I have frequently desired to see that paragon of all the virtues whose dutiful respect our revered uncle rewarded with the proverbial shilling. Egad!” he went on, examining me through his glass with a great show of interest, “had you been any other than that same virtuous Cousin Peter whose graces and perfections were forever being thrown at my head, I could have sympathized with you, positively —if only on account of that most obnoxious coat and belcher, and the grime and sootiness of things in general. Poof!” he exclaimed, pressing his perfumed handkerchief to his nostrils, “faugh! how damnably sulphur-and-brimstony you do keep yourself, cousin—oh, gad!”

“You would certainly find it much clearer outside,” said I, beginning to blow up the fire.

“But then, Cousin Peter, outside one must become a target for the yokel eye, and I detest being stared at by the uneducated, who, naturally, lack appreciation. On the whole, I prefer the smoke, though it chokes one most infernally. Where may one venture to sit here?” I tendered him the stool, but he shook his head, and, crossing to the anvil, flicked it daintily with his handkerchief and sat down, dangling his leg.

“‘Pon my soul!” said he, eyeing me languidly through his glass again, “‘pon my soul! you are damnably like me, you know, in features.”

“Damnably!” I nodded.

He glanced at me sharply, and laughed.

“My man, a creature of the name of Parks,” said he, swinging his spurred boot to and fro, “led me to suppose that I should meet a person here—a blacksmith fellow—”

“Your man Parks informed you correctly,” I nodded; “what can I do for you?”

“The devil!” exclaimed Sir Maurice, shaking his head; “but no —you are, as I gather, somewhat eccentric, but even you would never take such a desperate step as to—to—”

“—become a blacksmith fellow?” I put in.

“Precisely!”

“Alas, Sir Maurice, I blush to say that rather than become an unprincipled adventurer living on my wits, or a mean-spirited hanger-on fawning upon acquaintances for a livelihood, or doing anything rather than soil my hands with honest toil, I became a blacksmith fellow some four or five months ago.”

“Really it is most distressing to observe to what depths Virtue may drag a man!—you are a very monster of probity and rectitude!” exclaimed Sir Maurice; “indeed I am astonished! you manifested not only shocking bad judgment, but a most deplorable lack of thought (Virtue is damnably selfish as a rule)—really, it is quite disconcerting to find one’s self first cousin to a blacksmith—”

“—fellow!” I added.

“Fellow!” nodded Sir Maurice. “Oh, the devil! to think of my worthy cousin reduced to the necessity of laboring with hammer and saw—”

“Not a saw,” I put in.

“We will say, chisel, then—a Vibart with hammer and chisel —deuce take me! Most distressing! and, you will pardon my saying so, you do not seem to thrive on hammers and chisels; no one could say you looked blooming, or even flourishing like the young bay tree (which is, I fancy, an Eastern expression).”

“Sir,” said I, “may I remind you that I have work to do?”

“A deuced interesting place though, this,” he smiled, staring round imperturbably through his glass; “so—er—so devilish grimy and smutty and gritty—quite a number of horseshoes, too. D’ye know, cousin, I never before remarked what a number of holes there are in a horseshoe—but live and learn!” Here he paused to inhale a pinch of snuff, very daintily, from a jewelled box. “It is a strange thing,” he pursued, as he dusted his fingers on his handkerchief, “a very strange thing that, being cousins, we have never met till now—especially as I have heard so very much about you.”

“Pray,” said I, “pray how should you hear about one so very insignificant as myself?”

“Oh, I have heard of good Cousin Peter since I was an imp of a boy!” he smiled. “Cousin Peter was my chart whereby to steer through the shoals of boyish mischief into the haven of our Uncle George’s good graces. Oh, I have heard over much of you, cousin, from dear, kind, well-meaning relatives and friends—damn ‘em! They rang your praises in my ears, morning, noon, and night. And why?—simply that I might come to surpass you in virtue, learning, wit, and appearance, and so win our Uncle George’s regard, and, incidentally, his legacy. But I was a young demon, romping with the grooms in the stable, while you were a young angel in nankeens, passing studious hours with your books. When I was a scapegrace at Harrow, you were winning golden opinions at Eton; when you were an ‘honors’ man at Oxford, I was ‘rusticated’ at Cambridge. Naturally enough, perhaps, I grew sick of the name of Peter (and, indeed, it smacks damnably of fish, don’t you think?)—you, or your name, crossed me at every turn. If it wasn’t for Cousin Peter, I was heir to ten thousand a year; but good Cousin Peter was so fond of Uncle George, and Uncle George was so fond of good Cousin Peter, that Maurice might go hang for a graceless dog and be damned to him!”

“You have my deepest sympathy and apologies!” said I.

“Still, I have sometimes been curious to meet worthy Cousin Peter, and it is rather surprising that I have never done so.”

“On the contrary—” I began, but his laugh stopped me.

“Ah, to be sure!” he nodded, “our ways have lain widely separate hitherto—you, a scholar, treading the difficult path of learning; I—oh, egad! a terrible fellow! a mauvais sujet! a sad, sad dog! But after all, cousin, when one comes to look at you to-day, you might stand for a terrible example of Virtue run riot—a distressing spectacle of dutiful respect and good precedent cut off with a shilling. Really, it is horrifying to observe to what depths Virtue may plunge an otherwise well-balanced individual. Little dreamed those dear, kind, well-meaning relatives and friends—damn ‘em! that while the wilful Maurice lived on, continually getting into hot water and out again, up to his eyes in debt, and pretty well esteemed, the virtuous pattern Peter would descend to a hammer and saw—I should say, chisel—in a very grimy place where he is, it seems, the presiding genius. Indeed, this first meeting of ours, under these circumstances, is somewhat dramatic, as it should be.”

“And yet, we have met before,” said I, “and the circumstances were then even more dramatic, perhaps,—we met in a tempest, sir.”

“Ha!” he exclaimed, dwelling on the word, and speaking very slowly, “a tempest, cousin?”

“There was much wind and rain, and it was very dark.”

“Dark, cousin?”

“But I saw your face very plainly as you lay on your back, sir, by the aid of a Postilion’s lanthorn, and was greatly struck by our mutual resemblance.” Sir Maurice raised his glass and looked at me, and, as he looked, smiled, but he could not hide the sudden, passionate quiver of his thin nostrils, or the gleam of the eyes beneath their languid lids. He rose slowly and paced to the door; when he came back again, he was laughing softly, but still he could not hide the quiver of his nostrils, or the gleam of the eyes beneath their languid lids.

“So—it was—you?” he murmured, with a pause between the words. “Oh, was ever anything so damnably contrary! To think that I should hunt her into your very arms! To think that of all men in the world it should be you to play the squire of dames!” And he laughed again, but, as he did so, the stout riding-whip snapped in his hands like a straw. He glanced down at the broken pieces, and from them to me. “You see, I am rather strong in the hands, cousin,” said he, shaking his head, “but I was not—quite strong enough, last time we met, though, to be sure, as you say, it was very dark. Had I known it was worthy Cousin Peter’s throat I grasped, I think I might have squeezed it just—a little—tighter.”

“Sir,” said I, shaking my head, “I really don’t think you could have done it.”

“Yes,” he sighed, tossing his broken whip into a corner. “Yes, I think so—you see, I mistook you for merely an interfering country bumpkin—”

“Yes,” I nodded, “while I, on the other hand, took you for a fine gentleman nobly intent on the ruin of an unfortunate, friendless girl, whose poverty would seem to make her an easy victim—”

“In which it appears you were as much mistaken as I, Cousin Peter.” Here he glanced at me with a sudden keenness.

“Indeed?”

“Why, surely,” said he, “surely you must know—” He paused to flick a speck of soot from his knee, and then continued: “Did she tell you nothing of—herself?”