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The Queen's Scarlet, a novel by George Manville Fenn |
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Chapter 41. "Halt!" |
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_ CHAPTER FORTY ONE. "HALT!" "Why, it was plain enough," said Jerry, one day as he sat by Richard's bed. "He'd made all his plans and led you on out there on purpose." "Nonsense, man!" "Ah, you may call it nonsense, if you like, because you don't see through it now no more than you did then." "Of course I don't. When once you take a dislike to a man, you see nothing but evil in him. You invent things." "Oh, do I!" cried Jerry. "Never mind. I couldn't invent so much wickedness as he's got in him, if I tried all night. Now, just let me ask you two or three questions." "Go on then," said Dick, wearily. "Here goes then. You know your cousin to be in the habit of going out grassing and taking walks up Constitootion Hill for training hisself?" "Well, no, Jerry, I never did." "Never found him fond o' buttercups and daisies, or prospects and views and that sort o' thing?" "No." "Nor yet taking six or seven or eight-mile walks to get himself a happetite?" "Never." "Then don't it seem a little strange as he should have done it that day and walked on and on, and never once made out that you were close behind him all the time?" "It did seem strange to me once or twice. In fact, I felt pretty certain that he saw me." "Oh, no; not likely," said Jerry, with a derisive grin. "He's too nice and innocent a young gentleman as to think that sooner or later you'd be making him give up the title and the money. He wasn't likely to say to himself, 'I'll walk right away into the lonesomest place I can find, and coax him on and on till I get him where there's not a soul likely to be about, right down in one of the hop-gardens.' He wouldn't ever dream o' taking a loaded revolver with him and shoot you, so as to be able to enter to the property and be Sir Mark--not him!" Dick remained silent, but his fingers were tearing impatiently at the bed-clothes. "He wouldn't say to himself, 'I'll delude him down into a place like that and give him one pill.' And no one would ever say he was a likely gentleman to think of sticking the pistol in your hand so as to make it seem, when you were found by the hop-pickers, that you had done it yourself." Dick drew a long deep breath, and Jerry went on. "I'm getting too wicked altogether. Soldiering's pysoning my morals-- there's no mistake about it. You see how I get thinking all kinds of bad about as mild and pleasant a gentleman as ever was born to be a comfort to people." "Hold your tongue!" said Dick hoarsely. "Look here, Jerry, you don't think it possible that my cousin could have planned all that?" "Think it possible!" cried Jerry contemptuously; "why, I'm sure of it. He was getting desperate; and how you could go on looking at it all in such a hinnercent way caps me. Why, a child could see through it all, and so could you, only you wouldn't. You knew it was just as I said, now didn't you?" "I tried not to, Jerry, but it would take that shape." "Of course it would, because there was no other shape for it to take. Officers wear swords, but they don't go out walking in plain clothes with six-shooters in their pockets, to take aim at their cousins in lonely places. Well, he made a mistake this time, and so he'll find." But Mark Frayne was not heard of again for years, when someone brought news of having seen him far up the country in Queensland; but it might only have been a rumour, after all. This was long after Sir Richard Frayne's promotion to captain in the regiment which he joined in India; for when he had fully recovered from the wound which brought him within an inch of death--the fever caused by the exposure playing its part--he went through a course of study and received his commission. While he remained in England, many were the pleasant weeks he spent with his friends the Laceys, and many the poorly-played duets that followed on the flutes. There was no difficulty about the resumption of the title, and though the estate had been sorely plundered by the reckless spendthrift and gambler who had held it for a time, it soon began to recover in careful hands; while, as to Lacey, his losses were balanced by a heavy legacy just before he married, when he looked as handsome and easy-going as ever; and so he remained until stirred to action, as he subsequently was, when in Africa, upon more than one occasion. Then he proved a tough customer to have to deal with. "And so you will not stay with Captain Lacey, Jerry?" said Sir Richard one day. "No, S'Richard. I'd do anything for him, sir; and, as for his dear lady, she knows as I'd be her slave, but I seem to belong to you, sir, and, as you're going out to Indy, I feel as if I must go too, and so I volunteers." Jerry did go, and nursed his master after wounds received in struggles with the Hill Tribes, and, after fever, too; but never was Sir Richard Frayne so near death as upon that day when he was borne back to Ratcham upon a hurdle and the truth came out. "Ah!" Jerry used to mutter sometimes over his pipe, "that was a narrow squeak. But what I say is, there's worse lives than a soldier's, so three cheers for The Queen's Scarlet." [THE END] _ |
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