The Half-Hearted Part 8

"That's our friend," said Wratislaw, putting the paper into his pocket.

Lord Beauregard wrinkled his brow and stared at the bowl of his pipe.

"I see the motive clearly, but I am hanged if I understand why an evening paper should print it. Who in this country knows of the existence of Bardur?"

"Many people since Haystoun's book," said the other.

"I have just glanced at it. Is there anything important in it?"

"Nothing that we did not know before. But things are put in a fresh light. He covered ground himself of which we had only a second-hand account."

"And he talks of this Bardur?"

"A good deal. He is an expert in his way on the matter and uncommonly clever. He kept the best things out of the book, and it would be worth your while meeting him. Do you happen to know him?"

"No--o," said the great man doubtfully. "Oh, stop a moment. I have heard my young brother talk of somebody of the same name. Rather a figure at Oxford, wasn't he?"

Wratislaw nodded. "But to talk of Marka," he added.

"His mission is, of course, official, and he has abundant resources."

"So much I gathered," said Wratislaw. "But his designs?

"He knows the tribes in the North better than any living man, but without a base at hand he is comparatively harmless. The devil in the thing is that we do not know how close that base may be. Fifty thousand men may be ma.s.sed within fifty miles, and we are in ignorance."

"It is the lack of a secret service," said the other. "Had we that, there are a hundred young men who would have risked their necks there and kept us abreast of our enemies. As it is, we have to wait till news comes by some roundabout channel, while that cheerful being, Marka, keeps the public easy by news of hypothetical private expeditious."

"And meantime there is that thousand-mile piece of desert of which we know nothing, and where our friends may be playing pranks as they please. Well, well, we must wait on developments. It is the last refuge of the ill-informed. What about the dissolution? You are safe, I suppose?"

Wratislaw nodded.

"I have been asked my forecast fifty times to-day, and I steadily refuse to speak. But I may as well give it to you. We shall come back with a majority of from fifty to eighty, and you, my dear fellow, will not be forgotten."

"You mean the Under-Secretarys.h.i.+p," said the other. "Well, I don't mind it."

"I should think not. Why, you will get that chance your friends have hoped so long for, and then it is only a matter of time till you climb the last steps. You are a youngish man for a Minister, for all your elderly manners."

Wratislaw smiled the pleased smile of the man who hears kind words from one whom he admires. "It won't be a bed of roses, you know. I am very unpopular, and I have the grace to know it."

The elder man looked on the younger with an air of kindly wisdom. "Your pride may have a fall, my dear fellow. You are young and confident, I am old and humble. Some day you will be glad to hope that you are not without this despised popularity."

Wratislaw looked grave. "G.o.d forbid that I should despise it. When it comes my way I shall think that my work is done, and rest in peace. But you and I are not the sort of people who can court it with comfort. We are old sticks and very full of angles, but it would be a pity to rub them off if the shape were to be spoiled."

Lord Beauregard nodded. "Tell me more about your friend Haystoun."

Wratislaw's face relaxed, and he became communicative.

"He is a Scots laird, rather well off, and, as I have said, uncommonly clever. He lives at a place called Etterick in the Gled valley."

"I saw Merkland to-day, and he spoke his farewell to politics. The Whips told me about it yesterday."

"Merkland! But he always raised that scare!"

"He is serious this time. He has sold his town house."

"Then that settles it. Lewis shall stand in his place."

"Good," said the great man. "We want experts. He would strengthen your feeble hands and confirm your tottering knees, Tommy."

"If he gets in; but he will have a fight for it. Our dear friend Albert Stocks has been nursing the seat, and the Manorwaters and scores of Lewie's friends will help him. That young man has a knack of confining his affections to members of the opposite party."

"What was Merkland's majority? Two-fifty or something like that?"

"There or about. But he was an old and well-liked country laird, whereas Lewie is a very young gentleman with nothing to his credit except an Oxford reputation and a book of travels, neither of which will appeal to the Gledsmuir weavers."

"But he is popular?"

"Where he is known--adored. But his name does not carry confidence to those who do not know the man, for his family were weak-kneed gentry."

"Yes, I knew his father. Able, but crotchety and impossible! Tommy, this young man must get the seat, for we cannot afford to throw away a single chance. You say he knows the place," and he jerked his head to indicate that East to which his thoughts were ever turning. "Some time in the next two years there will be the devil's own mess in that happy land. Then your troubles will begin, my friend, and I can wish nothing better for you than the support of some man in the Commons who knows that Bardur is not quite so pastoral as Hamps.h.i.+re. He may relieve you of some of the popular odium you are courting, and at the worst he can be sent out."

Wratislaw whistled long and low. "I think not," he said. "He is too good to throw away. But he must get in, and as there is nothing in the world for me to do I shall go up to Etterick tomorrow and talk to him.

He will do as I tell him, and we can put our back into the fight.

Besides, I want to see Stocks again. That man is the joy of my heart!"

"Lucky beggar!" said the Minister. "Oh, go by all means and enjoy yourself, while I swelter here for another three weeks over meaningless telegrams enlivened by the idiot diplomatist. Good-bye and good luck, and bring the young man to a sense of his own value."

CHAPTER VIII

MR. WRATISLAW'S ADVENT

As the three men went home in the dusk they talked of the day. Lewis had been in a bad humour, but the company of his friends exorcised the imp of irritation, and he felt only the mellow gloom of the evening and the sweet scents of the moor. In such weather he had a trick of walking with his head high and his nostrils wide, sniffing the air like the wild a.s.s of the desert with which the metaphorical George had erstwhile compared him. That young man meanwhile was occupied with his own reflections. His good nature had been victimized, he had been made to fetch and carry continually, and the result was that he had scarcely spoken a word to Miss Wishart. His plans thus early foiled, nothing remained but to draw the more fortunate Arthur, so in a conspirator's aside he asked him his verdict. But Arthur refused to speak. "She is pretty and clever," he said, "and excellent company." And with this his lips were sealed, and his thoughts went off on his own concerns.

Lewis heard and smiled. The sun and wind of the hills beat in his pulses like wine. To have breathed all day the fragrance of heather and pines, to have gladdened the eye with an infinite distance and blue lines of mountain, was with this man to have drunk the cup of intoxicating youth. The cool gloaming did not chill; rather it was the high and solemn aftermath of the day's harvesting. The faces of gracious women seemed blent with the pageant of summer weather; kindly voices, simple joys--for a moment they seemed to him the major matters in life. So far it was pleasing fancy, but Alice soon entered to disturb with the disquieting glory of her hair. The family of the Haystouns had ever a knack of fine sentiment. Fantastic, unpractical, they were gluttons for the romantic, the recondite, and the dainty. But now had come a breath of strong wind which rent the meshes of a philandering fancy. A very new and strange feeling was beginning to make itself known. He had come to think of Alice with the hot pained affection which makes the high mountains of the world sink for the time to a species of mole-hillock. She danced through his dreams and usurped all the paths of his ambition. Formerly he had thought of himself--for the man was given to self-portraiture--as the adventurer, the scorner of the domestic; now he struggled to regain the old att.i.tude, but he struggled in vain. The ways were blocked, a slim figure was ever in view, and lo!

when he blotted it from his sight the world was dark and the roads blind. For a moment he had lost his bearings on the sea of life. As yet the discomfiture was sweet, his confusion was a joy; and it is the first trace of weakness which we have seen in the man that he accepted the unsatisfactory with composure.

At the door of Etterick it became apparent that something was astir.

Wheel-marks were clear in the gravel, and the ancient butler had an air of ceremony. "Mr. Wratislaw has arrived, sir," he whispered to Lewis, whereat that young man's face shone.

"When? How? Where is he now?" he cried, and with a word to his companions he had crossed the hall, raced down a lengthy pa.s.sage, and flung open the door of his sanctum. There, sure enough, were the broad shoulders of Wratislaw bending among the books.

"Lord bless me, Tommy, what extraordinary surprise visit is this? I thought you would be over your ears in work. We are tremendously pleased to see you."

The sharp blue eyes had been scanning the other's frank sunburnt face with an air of affectionate consideration. "I got off somehow or other, as I had to see you, old man, so I thought I would try this place first.

What a fortressed wilderness you live in! I got out at Gledsmuir after travelling some dreary miles in a train which stopped at every farm, and then I had to wait an hour till the solitary dogcart of the inn returned. Hullo! you've got other visitors." And he stretched out a ma.s.sive hand to Arthur and George.