My Lord Duke Part 8

"Grant the convention, and the art is perfect," continued Claude, with the tail of his eye on Jack.

"It is the caricature that is more like than life," pursued Stubbs, with a sidelong glance in the same direction.

Jack saw these looks; but from his corner he could not see the sketch, nor had he any suspicion of its subject. All else that he noted was the flush of triumph, or it may have been whisky, or just possibly both, on the pale, fringed face of Impressionism. He held out his hand for the half-sheet of paper on which the sketch had been made.

"I hope it won't offend you," exclaimed the artist, hesitating.

"Offend me! Why should it? Let's have a look!"

And he looked for more than a minute at the five curves and a beard which had expressed to quicker eyes the quintessence of his own outward and visible personality. At first he could make nothing of them; even when an interpretation dawned upon him, his face was puzzled as he raised it to the trio hanging on his words.

"It won't do, mister," said the Duke reluctantly. "You'll never get saplings like them," tapping the five curves with his forefinger, "to hold a nest like that," putting his thumb on the beard, "and don't you believe it."

There was a moment's silence. Then the Impressionist said thickly:

"Give me that sketch."

Jack handed it back. In another moment it was littering the ground in four pieces, and the door had banged behind the indignant draftsman.

"What on earth have I done?" cried the Duke, aghast.

"You have offended Llewellyn," replied Claude shortly.

"How? By what I said? I'll run after him this minute and apologise. I never meant to hurt his feelings. Where's that stove-pipe hat?"

"Let _me_ go," said Stubbs, getting up. "I understand the creative animal; it is thin-skinned; but I'll tell our friend what you say."

"I wish you would. Tell him I meant no harm. And fetch him down with you just whenever you can come."

"Thanks--that will be very pleasing. I daresay August will be our best time, but we shall let you know. I'll put it all right with Ivor; but these creative a.s.ses (saving your presence, Lafont) never can see a joke."

"A joke!" cried Jack, when he and Claude were alone.

"Stubbs is ironical," said Claude severely.

"Look here," said the Duke, "what are you givin' us, old boy? Seems to me you clever touchers have been getting at a cove between you. Where does this joke come in, eh?"

And his good faith was so obvious that Claude picked up the four quarters of torn paper, fitted them together, and entered upon yet another explanation. This one, however, was somewhat impatiently given and received. The Duke professed to think his likeness exceedingly unlike--when, indeed, he could be got to see his own outlines at all--and Claude disagreeing, a silence fell between the pair. Jack sought to break it by taking off his collar (which had made him miserable) and putting it in his pocket with a significant look; but the act provoked no comment. So the two men sat, the one smoking cigarettes, the other his cutty, but neither speaking, nor yet reading a line. And the endless roar of Piccadilly, reaching them through the open windows, emphasised their silence, until suddenly it sank beneath the midnight chimes of the city clocks. In another minute a tiny, tinkling echo came from Claude's chimney-piece, and the Duke put down his pipe and spoke.

"My first whole day in London--a goner," he said; "and a pretty full day it's been. Listen to this for one day's work," and as he rehea.r.s.ed them, he ticked off the events on his great brown fingers. "Got run in--that's number one. Turned up among a lot of swells in my old duds--number two.

Riled the cleverest man you know--number three--so that he nearly cleared out of your rooms; and, not content with that, hurt the feelings of the second cleverest (present company excepted) so that he _did_ clear--which is number four. Worst of all, riled you, old man, and hurt your feelings too. That's the finisher. And see here, Claude, it isn't good enough and it won't do. I won't wash in London, and I'm full up of the hole; as for my own house, it gave me the fair hump the moment I put my nose inside; and I'd be on to make tracks up the bush any day you like--if it weren't for one thing."

"What's that," said Claude, "if it's a fair question?"

The other concealed his heightened colour by relighting his pipe and puffing vigorously.

"I'll tell you," said he; "it's that old girl and--what's the daughter's name again?"

"Olivia."

"Olivia. A beautiful name for a beautiful girl! She's all that and more."

"And much more."

"You see, she's as good inside as out; she has a kind heart."

"I have always found it so," said Claude, "and I've known her since she was a child."

The two kinsmen, who had been so wide apart a few minutes since, were now more than ever mutually akin. They drew their chairs together; but the touchstone was deep down in either heart.

"You knew her when she was a child!" repeated the Duke in a kind of awe.

"Yes; and I daresay, now, you used to play with her, and perhaps take her on your knee, and even pull her hair and kiss her in them old days.

Yet there you sit smoking cigarettes!"

His own pipe was out. He was in a reverie. Claude also had his own thoughts.

"The one thing was this," said the Duke at length: "would the old woman and her daughter come to see us up the country?"

Claude was torn two ways. The Towers scheme was no longer his first anxiety. He returned to it by an effort.

"They would," he said. "Lady Caroline told me so. They would come like a shot in August. She said so herself."

"Would you put me up to things in the meantime? Would you be showing me the ropes?"

"The very thing I should like to do, so far as I am able."

"Then we'll start to-morrow--I mean to-day. That settles it. And yet----"

"Out with it," said Claude, smiling.

"Well, I will. I mean no harm, you understand. Who am I to dare to look at her? Only I do feel as if that girl would do me a deal of good down there--you know, in making me more the sort of chap for my billet. But if she's gone and got a sweetheart, he might very easily object; so I just thought I'd like to know."

"She hasn't one, to my knowledge," said Claude at length.

"Is that a fact?" cried the Duke. "Well, I don't know what all you fellows are thinking of, but I do know that I am jolly glad. Not from any designs of my own, mind you--I haven't as much cheek as all that--but to save trouble. Do you know, Claudy, I've had a beast of a thought off and on all the night?"

"No; what was that?"

"Why, I half suspected she was your own girl."

CHAPTER VI

A NEW LEAF

"The Duke of St. Osmund's and Mr. Claude Lafont left town yesterday for Maske Towers, the family seat near Devenholme." So ran the announcement in the morning papers of the next day but one. And the Duke was actually exploring his inheritance when it appeared.