The Amateur Gentleman Part 31

"Dear lady," said he very gently, "if I offended you a while ago--forgive me--Cleone."

"Indeed," said she, looking away from him; "it would seem I must be always forgiving you, Mr. Beverley."

"Why, surely it is a woman's privilege to forgive, Cleone--and my name--"

"And a man's prerogative to be forgiven, I suppose, Mr. Beverley."

"When he repents as I do, Cleone; and my--"

"Oh! I forgive you," she sighed.

"Yet you still walk very fast."

"It must be nearly ten o'clock."

"I suppose so," said Barnabas, "and you will, naturally, be anxious to reach home again."

"Home," she said bitterly; "I have no home."

"But--"

"I live in a gaol--a prison. Yes, a hateful, hateful prison, watched by a one-legged gaoler, and guarded by a one-armed tyrant--yes, a tyrant!" Here, having stopped to stamp her foot, she walked on faster than ever.

"Can you possibly mean old Jerry and the Captain?"

Here my lady paused in her quick walk, and even condescended to look at Barnabas.

"Do you happen to know them too, sir?"

"Yes; and my name is--"

"Perhaps you met them also this morning, sir?"

"Yes; and my--"

"Indeed," said she, with curling lip; "this has been quite an eventful day for you."

"On the whole, I think it has; and may I remind you that my--"

"Perhaps you don't believe me when I say he is a tyrant?"

"Hum," said Barnabas.

"You don't, do you?"

"Why, I'm afraid not," he admitted.

"I'm nineteen!" said she, standing very erect.

"I should have judged you a little older," said Barnabas.

"So I am--in mind, and--and experience. Yet here I live, prisoned in a dreary old house, and with nothing to see but trees, and toads, and cows and cabbages; and I'm watched over, and tended from morning till night, and am the subject of more councils of war than Buonaparte's army ever was."

"What do you mean by councils of war?"

"Oh! whenever I do anything my tyrant disapproves of, he retires to what he calls the 'round house,' summons the Bo'sun, and they argue and talk over me as though I were a hostile fleet, and march up and down forming plans of attack and defence, till I burst in on them, and then--and then--Oh! there are many kinds of tyrants, and he is one. And so to-night I left him; I ran away to meet--" She stopped suddenly, and her head drooped, and Barnabas saw her white hands clench themselves.

"Your brother," said he.

"Yes, my--brother," but her voice faltered at the word, and she went on through the wood, but slowly now, and with head still drooping.

And so, at last, they came out of the shadows into the soft radiance of the moon, and thus Barnabas saw that she was weeping; and she, because she could no longer hide her grief, turned and laid a pleading hand upon his arm.

"Pray, think of him as kindly as you can," she sighed, "you see--he is only a boy--my brother."

"So young?" said Barnabas.

"Just twenty, but younger than his age--much younger. You see," she went on hastily, "he went to London a boy--and--and he thought Mr. Chichester was his friend, and he lost much money at play, and, somehow, put himself in Mr. Chichester's power. He is my half-brother, really; but I--love him so, and I've tried to take care of him--I was always so much stronger than he--and--and so I would have you think of him as generously as you can."

"Yes," said Barnabas, "yes." But now she stopped again so that he must needs stop too, and when she spoke her soft voice thrilled with a new intensity.

"Will you do more? You are going to London--will you seek him out, will you try to--save him from himself? Will you promise me to do this--will you?"

Now seeing the pa.s.sionate entreaty in her eyes, feeling it in the twitching fingers upon his arm, Barnabas suddenly laid his own above that slender hand, and took it into his warm clasp.

"My lady," said he, solemnly, "I will." As he spoke he stooped his head low and lower, until she felt his lips warm upon her palm, a long, silent pressure, and yet her hand was not withdrawn.

Now although Barnabas had clean forgotten the rules and precepts set down in the "priceless wollum," he did it all with a graceful ease which could not have been bettered--no, not even by the Person of Quality itself.

"But it will be difficult," she sighed, as they went on together.

"Ronald is very headstrong and proud--it will be very difficult!"

"No matter," said Barnabas.

"And--dangerous, perhaps."

"No matter for that either," said Barnabas.

"Does it seem strange that I should ask so much of you?"

"The most natural thing in the world," said Barnabas.

"But you are a stranger--almost!"

"But I--love you, Cleone."

After this there fell a silence between them; and so having crossed the moonlit meadow, they came to a tall hedge beyond whose shadow the road led away, white under the moon; close by the ways divided, and here stood a weather-beaten finger-post. Now beneath this hedge they stopped, and it is to be noted that neither looked at the other.

"Sir," said she, softly, "we part here, my home lies yonder," and she pointed to where above the motionless tree-tops rose the gables and chimneys of a goodly house.