The Highwayman (Bailey)/Chapter V

Colonel Boyce was established in the house, a guest of high honour.

Harry, dazed at the mere fact, could not be very sure how it had happened or why. The Wavertons, mother and son, had assaulted the Colonel with hospitality—for a night—for another—for longer and longer—and he, appearing at first honestly dubious, remained with a benign condescension.

There is no doubt that, in an honourable way, Lady Waverton was fascinated by Colonel Boyce. She saw nothing coarse in his highly-coloured manners, suspected no guile in his flattery or his parade of importance. Harry, who had never supposed her a wise woman, was surprised by her complete surrender. He had credited her with too much pride to succumb to flattery, which was to his taste impudently gross. But he was not yet old enough to allow that other folks might have tastes wholly unlike his own, and he had himself—it is perhaps the only trait of much delicacy in him—a shrinking discomfort under praise.

Colonel Boyce took his victory with a complacency which Harry thought oddly fatuous in a man so acute.

"Egad, the old lady would go to church with me to-morrow if I asked her;" he laughed, and seemed to think that in that at least my lady showed sense.

"You had better take her, sir," said Harry, with a sneer. "I know she has a good dower. And a fool and her money are soon parted."

"Damme, Harry, you are venomous!" For the first time in their acquaintance Colonel Boyce showed some signs of smarting. "What harm have I done you? No, sir, you have a nasty tongue. I intend the old lady no harm, neither. What if she has a tenderness for me? I suppose that does not make me a fool."

"To be sure, sir, I did not know your affection was serious." Harry laughed disagreeably.

"I believe you would not miss a chance to say a bitter thing though it ruined you, Lud, Harry, if you can't be grateful, don't be a fool too. What a pox are your Wavertons to me? I don't value them a pinch of snuff. What I am doing, I am doing for you. You know what you were when I found you—no better than a footman out of livery. Now, they treat you like a gentleman."

"And all for the beaux yeux of my father. Well, it's true, sir. But I don't know that I like any of us much the better for it."

To his great surprise his father looked at him with affectionate admiration. "Egad, you take that tone very well," said he. "It's a good card. Maybe it's the best with the women."

Harry had to laugh. "I think you have the easiest temper in the world, sir."

"Aye, aye. It has been the ruin of me."

And so they parted the best of friends. Indeed Harry had never liked his father so well or felt so much his superior. Thus from age to age is filial affection confirmed.

But he had to allow some adroitness in his father. Not only Lady Waverton, but Geoffrey too, succumbed to the paternal charms. That was the more surprising. Geoffrey, behind his vanity and his affectation, was no fool. He had also a temper apt to dislike any man who made a show of position or achievement beyond his own. Yet he hung upon the lips of Colonel Boyce. What they gave him was indeed a pleasing mixture—secrets about great affairs flavoured with deference to his ingenious criticisms. There was something solid about it, too. The Colonel, displaying himself as a man of much importance, perpetually hinted that only the occasion was needed for Mr. Waverton to surpass him by far, and to that occasion he could point the way. It appeared to Harry that his father had in mind to enlist Geoffrey for the proposed mission to France, or some other scheme unrevealed. And being unable to see any reason for wanting Geoffrey as a man, he suspected that his father wanted money.

He saw clearly that nobody wanted him, and was therewith very well content. At this time in his life he asked nothing better than to be left alone with his whims and the open air. He covered many a mile of sticky clay in these autumn days, placidly vacant of mind, and afterwards accounted them the most comfortable of his life.

Mr. Waverton's house was set upon a hill, at one end of a line of hills which now look over the wilderness of London, falling steeply thereto, and upon the other side, to northward and the open country, more gently. In the epoch of Harry Boyce those hills were all woodland—pleasant patches still remain,—and if the need of great walking was not upon him he was often pleased to loiter through their thickets. It was on a wild south-westerly day when the naked trees were at a loud chorus that Alison came to him.

The dainty colours of her face laughed from a russet hood, russet cloak and green skirt wind-borne against her gave him the delight of her shape.

"'Stand, sir, and throw us that you have about you,'" she cried.

"You're poetical, ma'am."

"I vow not I. I say what I mean. There's an unmaidenly trick. And, faith, I am here to rifle you, Mr. Boyce."

"Wish you joy, ma'am. What of?"

"Of your conceit, to be sure. Have you anything else?"

"I have nothing which could be of any use to Miss Lambourne. So God knows why she runs after me."

"Oh, brave!" Miss Lambourne was not out of countenance. "'Tis a shameless maid indeed which runs after a man"—she made him a curtsy. "But what is the man who runs away from a maid?"

Harry Boyce cursed her in his heart. She was by far too desirable. The rain-fraught wind had made the dawn tints of her clearer, lucent and yet more delicate. Her grey eyes danced like the sunlight ripples of deep water. Her lips were purely, brilliantly red. She fronted him and the wind, flaunting the richness of her bosom, poised and strong. She seemed the very body of life. For the first time he felt unsure of himself. "Did you come to call names, ma'am?" he growled.

"I allow you the privileges of a gentleman, Mr. Boyce."

"Gentleman? Oh Lud, no, ma'am. I am an upper servant. Rather better than the butler. Not so good as the steward."

"It won't serve you, sir. You have insulted me, and I demand satisfaction." She drew off her gauntleted glove and flicked him in the face with it. "Now will you fight?"

"Oh, must we slap and scratch then?" Harry flushed darker than the mark of the glove. "I thought we had been fighting."

Miss Lambourne laughed. "You can lose your temper then? It's something, in fact. Yes, we have been fighting, sir, and you don't fight fair."

"Who does with a woman?" Harry sneered. "I cry you mercy, ma'am. You are vastly too strong for me. Let me alone and I ask no more of you."

To which Miss Lambourne said, very innocently, "Why?" Harry looked up and saw her beautiful face meek and appealing, with something of a demure smile in the eyes. "Come, sir, what have I asked of you? You have done me something of a great service. There was a man handling me—do you know what that means?"—she made a wry face and gave herself a shaking shudder—"You rid me of him, and with some risk to your precious skin. Well, sir, I am grateful, and I want to show it. Odds life, I should be a beast did I not. I want to thank you and to sing your praises—to yourself also perhaps. And you are pleased to be a churl and a boor."

"In effect," said Harry coolly. "Egad, ma'am, let me have the luxury of hating you. For I am the Wavertons' gentleman usher and you are the nonpareil Miss Lambourne, vastly rich and—" he ended with a shrug and a rueful grin.

"And—?" Miss Lambourne softly insisted.

"And damnably lovely. Lord, you know that."

"I thank God," said Miss Lambourne devoutly. "Is it true, Mr. Boyce—do the meek inherit the earth?" She held out her hands to him, one bare, one gloved, she swayed a little towards him, and her face was gentle and wistful. "Nay, sir, I ask your pardon. Call friends if you please and will please me."

Harry lost hold of himself at last. The blood surged in him, and he caught at her and kissed her fiercely.

It was he who was embarrassed. As he stood away from her, eyeing her with a queer defiant shame, she smiled through a small matter of a blush, and breathing quickly said: "What does it feel like, sir?"

"The world's a miracle," Harry said unsteadily and would have caught her again.

She turned, she was away light of foot, and in a moment through the wind he heard her singing to a tune of her own the child's rhyme: