“le jour de gloire est arrivé.”
marseillaise.
i
t is much later than claude’s usual hour for rising when he opens his eyes upon the morning following his midnight interview with miss giles. and he remains in a sort of half-dormant condition, listening to the sound of a rich contralto voice singing a martial air, to the accompaniment of a piano, at the other end of the house.
the young man dreamily endeavours to make out the words of the song, but cannot. though when it draws to a conclusion he is surprised to hear, as he fancies, in the chorus or refrain a poetical reference to the christian name of the young lady who has 278 honoured him with an appointment at the stables for that morning. claude, thus curiously reminded of his engagement, is not long in making his toilet and finding his way to the trysting-place; but discovering that glory has not yet put in an appearance there, he returns to the house, and looks in at the drawing-room door to discover who the fair singer may be.
there he finds miss mundella seated at the piano. she looks up as she hears the intruder’s footsteps, and, seeing claude, smiles ingenuously upon him, holding out to him a perfectly modelled hand, and apologising for her absence the previous day.
lileth is really glad to see angland, and, odd as it may appear, admires him considerably, although she intends to wipe him out of her way at the earliest opportunity. she feels quite sorry now, as she looks up at him, not for his own sake,—far from it,—but because she thinks what a much more agreeable cavalier he would make than the flap-eared mr. cummercropper, who at present fetches and carries for her. and after the manner of the soldiers of opposing armies, who fraternise together during a temporary armistice ere they again fly at one another’s throats, so lileth is just as glad to enjoy a conversation with her intended victim, as she would be with any other young man who came up to her standard of excellent parts, and these youths were very scarce visitors at murdaro.
“i hope i have not disturbed you with my playing,” miss mundella remarks, noticing as she does so the hesitation with which angland takes her hand. “i generally practice a little of a morning before breakfast. are you fond of music?”
279
“very fond,” answers claude, gazing with a mixed feeling of admiration and dislike at the proud, calm features of the fair object of his suspicions, as she bends over the music lying on the chair beside her.
“is it possible such a girl can be a heartless criminal, or at least an abettor?” he asks himself, “or are appearances against her only?”
then, to break the rather awkward silence, claude speaks about the song he had heard when he awoke, and requests her to oblige him by singing it once more. without any foolish affectation of hesitation she immediately complies.
“it is an almost forgotten piece of music nowadays, at least amongst english people,” lileth says. “i am rather fond of it, probably because it suits my voice.” then with perfect skill, her splendid face grandly eloquent with the military spirit engendered by the air and words, miss mundella sings the grand “chanson de roland” of the great napoleon’s time:—
“soldats fran?ais, chantez roland,
l’honneur de la chevalerie,
et répètez en combattant
ces mots sacrés,
ces mots sacrés:
gloire et patrie!
gloire et patrie!”
“rather an elastic kind of patriotism was that of rouget de lisle,” observes miss mundella laughingly as she finishes, her eyes sparkling and cheeks warm with the verve she has put into her song; “most of his chansons are charmingly spirited, and he is credited 280 with fifty i think; but there are some thoroughly imperialistic, others republican, and others again legitimist,—all got up for the occasion.”
“yes,” answers claude, as the inspiriting music, combined with the fascination of miss mundella’s presence, renders that young man gradually oblivious of his suspicions, “and he was rather fond of annexing other people’s musical ideas, if the german critics are to be believed. you know they say he got his grand marseillaise hymn from a deutscher named holzmann, some time before he wrote his impromptu masterpiece chez baron dietrich.”
“i have never heard that sin laid to his charge before,” remarks lileth, striking some sonorous chords upon the keys as she speaks. “are you great on musical anecdotes? i dote on them.”
“oh no. i know little or nothing upon the subject. i’m really afraid i couldn’t tell you even mendelssohn’s surname, if you asked it, correctly. but i remember about rouget because i saw the house when i was at strasbourg, and more particularly because it was there i heard a very good story, that in my opinion eclipses anything in the way of french wit i’ve ever heard before or since.”
“oh, will you repeat it to me?”
“well, i’m rather a bad hand at a story,” responds claude, “but i will try to give you a general idea of the joke, which was attributed either to rouget de lisle himself or to some relative of his. i daresay it has been put in the mouths of many other notables as well.
“there was a grand wedding taking place at the parish church, and the charming bride, all blushes281 and lace-veil, was tremblingly signing her name in the register, when, horror of horrors, she upset the contents of the ink bottle over her wedding robes! all the vestry was in a commotion directly, and the little bridesmaids were like to faint when they saw the horrible black stains destroying the spotless purity of the bridal vestments. what a bad omen! worse than spilling the salt at the breakfast. everybody was about to rush forward to commiserate with the unhappy bride.
“but de lisle’s relative, or somebody else’s relative, as the case may be, stepped forward, and, smiling on the woeful faces, took all the sting out of the accident; he even turned the mishap into the cause of much merriment, with a singularly happy bon mot:—
“‘mais c’est tout naturel,’ he said, ‘aussit?t que mademoiselle est arrivé au port, elle a jeté l’ancre.’”
when claude ceases speaking, lileth shows her appreciation of his anecdote with a low, musical laugh. then, taking advantage of the opportunity afforded her, she proceeds to give angland a good dose of the kind of music that she observes has effect upon him; hoping that in the intervals of playing, by a skilfully conducted conversation, to worm a little useful information from him as to his plans, as he warms to her fascinations and becomes confidentially inclined.
“yes,” she says, as angland finishes a gay description of the little concert given in his honour by the stockmen at the out-station the night before,—“yes, some of these men have naturally really splendid voices. always in the open air, and wearing no heavy coats to confine their chests, it is not to be wondered at that they have good lungs, at any rate. miners i282 know are proverbially good singers. i have heard several at different times. your late uncle sang very well, i believe, for example. have you heard, by-the-bye, anything of his boy billy yet?”
“no,” replies claude, “and i am very anxious to get on with my uncle’s——i mean, to find my uncle’s grave. but as billy is not here, and i can’t very well get on without him, i suppose i can’t do better than wait here for a time, as mr. giles so kindly pressed me to do, and see if the boy turns up.”
an independent observer, noticing the looks of admiration with which angland was regarding the young lady by the piano, would hardly have imagined that an immediate withdrawal from her company was what he chiefly desired.
“oh, pray, mr. angland,” says lileth, turning towards claude, and concentrating upon him all the will-power that a rapid glance of her glorious eyes can convey, “do not desert us just yet. it is such a pleasure to have an agreeable, educated man to converse with again. any one who has travelled, and who knows about something besides horses and cattle, is quite a rara avis up here, i can assure you. i shall miss you very much when you have to go,” adds miss mundella, with a sigh.
claude bows his acknowledgments of the compliments paid him, and the young lady continues speaking in a low voice, looking demurely downwards, and playing pianissimo meanwhile that bewitching cavatina love-spell of donizetti’s:—
“believe me, i somehow feel a very great deal of interest in your search. it is so brave, so honourable, of you to take all this trouble merely to visit the283 grave of your relative. i fancy few men would care to do that for an uncle nowadays.”
now it is one of the strange things “that no fellar can understand” how most of the best men one meets in every-day life will hasten to repudiate any assertion crediting them with an honourable or unselfish motive for any action they may have performed. it is just as if such a reason for a deed was something to be really ashamed of.
it is an odd but undeniable fact that men often take considerable trouble to make themselves out to be worse than they really are. so claude, following the general rule, immediately endeavours to prove that he is not so good-hearted—therefore, in a worldly sense, so foolish—an individual as miss mundella would imagine. in fact, he swallows the encomiastic bait held out to him by that young lady.
“i am really afraid,” he exclaims, “that i cannot claim that it is all affection, on my part, that brings me up this way to search for my uncle’s grave. i must confess that there are more mercenary considerations mixed up with my sublimer motives than you kindly would credit me with.” and here we have to record a serious mistake lileth made. for, instead of keeping her quarry under the gentle thraldom of her music, and the attractive warmth of manner which was really more natural to her than her usual appearance of coldness, miss mundella began to excuse this “mercenary motive” of claude’s to him in her ordinary conversational tones.
instantly he awakes, as it were, from the sweet confidential mood into which he has drifted, for the peculiar notes (timbre) of lileth’s voice have again284 called up the viaduct scene to his memory; and miss mundella can tell by the altered manner in which he speaks, as he rises with some feeble excuse for quitting her side, that she has somehow scared him for the nonce.
but she has gained one little piece of information: which is, that claude is aware that something advantageous to himself awaits the successful accomplishment of his expedition. “it must be the p. ns.” she thinks, as she leans backward on the sofa after he has left her.
and at breakfast lileth makes another and rather disconcerting discovery,—namely, that claude and glory have some secret understanding between them. and although those young people do all in their power to conceal the same from the dark-browed mistress of the house, her keen glances soon pierce their transparent natures, and she becomes cognisant of the fact, also, that their secret is antagonistic to herself.
it is towards evening that claude, who has been away on horseback all day, returns to the head-station, and is lucky enough to find glory giles by herself upon the verandah.
“is that don, the newspaper boy, you told me about?” that young lady asks, looking at the small, comical figure, who, on the top of a tall, lank mare, is holding angland’s horse by the station gate.
“yes,” answers claude, “and i will introduce him to you some day before long. you’ll find him a first-class youngster. but i can’t spare the time to do so now, for, miss giles,” lowering his voice, “for i’ve285 found billy, and of course i start directly on my search.”
“but the false message?” asks glory, rising, and looking anxiously up at the young man’s face.
“i have received puttis’s kind invitation also,” claude replies, with a smile. “let me tell you all about it.”
angland sits down by glory’s side, and, hardly taking his eyes off her sad, anxious little face for an instant, notices, with some relief, that the news of his departure is really unpleasant to his fair companion.
“soon after breakfast,” he continues, “that rascal carlo came to me, and told me something in a mysterious sort of way, which i at length made out to mean that a ‘wild fellow black fellow’ had brought me something. i followed carlo to the black camp,—i guessed i could not come to grief only a couple of hundred yards from the station,—and found a ‘boy’ there, who handed me a piece of crumpled paper, upon which was scrawled some words. they were these, as near as i remember: ‘you can trust this boy. he bring you to me.’ it was signed ‘billy.’”
“ah!” cries glory excitedly, and casting a swift glance down the passage towards lileth’s room, “and what did you do?”
there is something so charmingly attractive in the warm interest which glory evinces in what claude is narrating, and her sweet little face blushes so prettily with her emotion, that it is only by exerting all his self-command that angland can restrain himself from clasping the little form beside him in his arms.
angland, however, instead of acting thus, and at once destroying the good opinion glory has of him,286 does just the reverse of it, and withdrawing his eyes from the bewitching object of his affections, he goes on speaking:—
“i noticed at once that the black who’d brought the letter had a red ribbon tied round his forehead,—which i have often seen police and station ‘boys’ wearing, as a mark to distinguish them from the wild natives who may be about. i also thought that the messenger seemed to be putting on a good bit of ‘side’ for a warragal, and i hardly expected that billy would be hiding at a station, and employ a station-hand as his mercury. so, remembering the letter you intercepted, i guessed that the ‘boy’ must be a police ‘boy’ in mufti. so, after reading the note, i thought i would test the messenger by pretending that the letter, which i was sure he could not read, was a message from puttis. ‘here,’ i said, holding out the piece of paper, ‘mr. puttis say you take me to him. which way inspector sit down?’
“the black looked up at me rather sulkily, i thought, as if undecided how to answer; then, after a moment’s consideration, he mumbled,—
“‘’spector puttis him sit down longer bulla bulla ’tation!’
“‘all right,’ i said, ‘you wait here till i come back.’”
“and then?” asks glory.
“then i rode off to see my old miner, williams, and asked his advice. when i got to the out-station i found him most jubilant, for, what do you think?—he had found billy. yes, little joe, acting under williams’s orders, had been scouring the country with coloured handkerchiefs, which he gave to all the 287 niggers he could find. each of these had a small message to billy, telling him where to find me, written upon it.
“billy saw one of these messages, and——but i mustn’t say anything further about it, glory,—i mean miss giles,—for williams made me solemnly promise i wouldn’t do so to any one.”
“he was quite right,” remarks glory. “give him my compliments, and tell him that i think him ever so clever, and hope you’ll bring him here when you return.” then after a pause she looks up and asks claude a question, with her bewitching little head held sideways towards him, for her admirer’s ardent gaze has somewhat disconcerted the little, golden-haired maiden.
“may i ask one thing more? you won’t mind telling me that, will you?”
“what is it?” responds claude, who, to tell the truth, would have gone near breaking his promise with williams if glory had demanded him to do so.
“i want to know how you know that it was really billy that you have found?”
“well, because i’ve seen him. we both, in fact, mutually recognized each other, although, as i told you, it is about ten years since i saw billy in england. he, moreover, showed me an old scar i remembered upon his leg. he looks in very poor condition, poor fellow.”
“mr. angland,” says glory gravely, “i will try and find out why poor dr. dyesart’s boy was hunted from here. papa says, as i told you, that billy told one of the boys here that he had killed your uncle, and that billy ran away when he found that the boy had told papa. but papa must have been mistaken. it is all part of some horrible plan of lileth’s.” then288 standing up, and giving her tiny right hand to claude, who holds it as if it were a precious piece of fragile crockery, she continues in a pleading tone of voice:—
“you must not think papa had anything to do with that letter i got from carlo either. will you try, just for my sake, to believe that papa had nothing to do with driving away billy and writing that letter? my papa is rough, and i know you think he’s cruel to the niggers,—so did i when i first came up here for a visit, but i didn’t notice it after a while. but he’s really very good at heart; he really is.”
glory speaks very earnestly; but suddenly, as she remembers that her father was present when miss mundella bound her to secrecy about the photograph, her voice falters, and she hesitates whether she ought to tell claude all or not. but angland interrupts her thoughts by speaking.
“if your father was the worst fellow going, and had kicked me out of the house, instead of treating me very hospitably, as he has done, i would forgive him, and vote him first-class, because of his being your father. and now ‘good-bye’ till i return.”
claude finds the dreaded moment of separation, now that it has at last arrived, harder even than he had anticipated. there is a curious lump in his throat that renders the farewell words difficult of expression.
glory, on her part, although she bravely endeavours to appear the cheerful, laughing creature as claude knew her first, in order to ease his pain at parting, is not successful in carrying out this innocent piece of deception. and, to tell the truth, claude, although grieved to see her sadness, which this affected cloak of gaiety does not conceal from the eyes of her lover, 289 yet cannot help taking comfort to himself therefrom. for man’s love is a more selfish sentiment than it is generally regarded to be, and differs in this respect especially from woman’s, which, if more eccentric in its taste, is certainly more thoroughly disregardful of self-interest than that of the other and more practical sex.
claude, on his part, feels that what he would like to say to the golden-haired girl, that glances at him with such tender blue eyes, would not offend, perhaps not even surprise, his inamorata. but angland has a gentleman’s strict notions of propriety and integrity, and having already decided in his own mind that he has no right to speak those words that hover on his lips till his present mission is fulfilled, he refrains from doing so.
of course, whilst transmitting this fact in our history to paper, we feel that our hero will appear very foolish to certain of our readers. he, however, acted as he considered correctly, according to his lights, and no man can blame another for doing that; although they can pity his mistaken ideas of right and wrong to their heart’s content, if they feel so disposed.
“good-bye, miss giles,” he says at last, huskily; “for the service you did me the other night i can never repay you. there is only one thing i would like you to do, and that is, i have no time to write to my mother now before starting, if anything should stop us coming back again from the wilds, would you mind writing to her? it would comfort her to hear from some one whom i’ve spoken of already in my letters to her.”
then he is gone, and glory, returning to the house, enters her own room and “breaks down.” lileth, hearing 290 her cousin sobbing in the next room, and having been apprised of the arrival of the false messenger, smiles to herself as she guesses that claude has started for his last appointment on earth, and mentally congratulates herself upon the successful beginning her scheme has made. but she is somewhat astonished and disconcerted on presently being informed by carlo that inspector puttis’s messenger is awaiting claude’s return. inquiries made of glory through the door of her room—for having a sick headache that young lady does not appear at the dinner-table—only elicit the fact that angland has departed, having requested miss giles to convey his compliments and adieu to mr. giles and miss mundella.
before retiring to rest lileth indites a long letter to inspector puttis, of which the following is part:—
“your letter plan has missed fire. the boy you sent was somehow suspected by a., and carlo tells me that he heard your boy confess to a. that you had sent the letter. you can do what you like with your boy, of course, but i hope you will remove all chance of his again denouncing you. i shall send carlo to you next week, when i hope you will be able safely to dispose of him. carlo and your boy are both too dangerous now to be about. a. has started, and i had carlo out after them, and he tracked them some miles towards the flat top ranges. he believes that billy is with them, as they are travelling on the track of some blacks who arrived on the run from the hill country yesterday. come over here as soon as you finish your western patrol, but beware what you say before glory giles; she is not so foolish as she looks, and met a. down south. the two are great compatriots.”
