The Master of the Ceremonies

“Black mask and a pair of pistols, on a dark night in a country road, eh, old lady? Stand and deliver; money or your life, eh?”

“Well, you may laugh, Jo-si-ah; but he looks just the sort of man who wouldn’t stop at anything. I am glad you wouldn’t let him have any money, for I’m sure you’d never get it back.”

“I don’t know so much about that, old lady, but whether or no, I wasn’t going to let him have any this morning. He has been short lately, and no mistake. Some one I know’s making a nice thing out of them at the mess.”

“Colonel Mellersh?”

“Mum!”

“Oh, there’s no one to hear us now. But, I say, Jo-si-ah, why is he so friendly with Miss Clode?”

“Because she sells packs of cards, old girl.”

“Ah, but there’s something more than that. I went in there one day, and he had hold of her hand across the counter; and I could see, though she turned it off, that she had been crying.”

“Asking her to wed, and let him succeed to the business,” said Barclay, with a chuckle.

“Don’t talk nonsense, Jo-si-ah. I wish I had a good, clear head like you, and was as clever, and then perhaps I could make this out.”

“What?”

“About Miss Clode. I’m sure she has seen better days.”

“That she has,” said Barclay, chuckling. “She looks pretty shabby now, a newsy, gossiping old hag!”

“I don’t dislike Miss Clode,” said Mrs Barclay thoughtfully. “There’s much worse in Saltinville.”

“I dare say,” he said, laughing. “I’ve only one thing against her.”

“What’s that?”

“She hates poor Claire Denville like poison.”

Volume One – Chapter Twenty Seven.

Fisherman Dick Stares

Major Rockley had counted upon getting a hundred pounds from Barclay, and the refusal annoyed him to so great an extent that he determined upon having a sharp walk to calm himself. So setting off at a good rate towards the main cliff to reach the downs beyond the town, he had not gone far before he saw a graceful figure, in a white dress, with black scarf and plain straw bonnet going in the same direction.

“Claire Denville as I’m a sinner!” he cried, his pale cheeks flushing, and a curious light shining in his dark eyes.

“Yes, without doubt,” he muttered. “Off for a walk to the downs. Lucky accident. At last!”

He checked himself, walking slowly, so as not to overtake her until she was well out of the town, and thinking that perhaps it would be as well to keep back until she turned, and then meet her face to face.

“The jade! How she has kept me at a distance. Refused my notes, and coquetted with me to make me more eager for the pursuit. The old man’s lessons have not been thrown away. I’m to approach in due form, I suppose. Well, we shall see.”

Claire went straight on, walking pretty quickly, and without turning her head to right or left. The streets were left behind; the row of houses facing the sea had come to an end; and she was getting amongst the fishermen’s cottages, while below the cliff the fishing boats were drawn high up on the shingle, and long, brown filmy nets spread out to dry, looking like square shadows cast by invisible sails, and mingled with piles of tarred barrels, lobster baskets, and brown ropes, bladders and corks.

Every here and there, on the railing at the cliff edge, hung oilskins to soften in the sunshine, and in one place a giant appeared to be sitting astride the rail, with nothing to be seen of him but a huge pair of boots. Farther on fish were drying in the air, and farther still there came up a filmy cloud of grey smoke from the shingle, along with a pleasant smell of Stockholm tar, for Fisherman Dick was busy paying the bottom of a boat turned upside down below the cliff.

These matters did not interest Major Rockley any more than the grey gulls that wheeled overhead and descended, to drop with a querulous cry upon a low spit of shingle where the sea was retiring fast.

For the fluttering white dress took up all his attention, and now that they were well beyond the promenaders, he was about to hasten his steps – too impatient to wait until she turned – when he uttered an impatient oath, for Claire suddenly stopped by a cottage where a woman was sitting knitting a coarse blue garment and nursing a little child.

It was all so sudden that it took the officer by surprise. The woman jumped up hastily on being spoken to, and curtseyed, and they went in at once, leaving the Major by the rails.

“Well, I can wait,” he said, smiling and taking out his cigar-case. “I can study the tarring of boats till her ladyship appears.”

He slowly chose and lit a cigar, and then, going close to the edge of the cliff, leaned upon the rails and gazed down at Fisherman Dick, who was working away busily, dipping his brush in a little three-legged iron pot, and carefully spreading the dark-brown odorous tar.

He was about forty feet below the Major, and for some time he went on steadily with his work, but all at once he stopped short, and turned his face upwards as if he felt that he was being watched; and as he did so his straw hat fell off and he stood fixed by the Major’s eyes as if unable to move.

The sensation was mutual, for Major Rockley felt attracted by the dark, Spanish-looking face, and the keen eyes so intently fixed upon his.

“Confound the fellow! how he stares,” said the Major, at last, as he seemed to wrench himself away, and turned his back.

As he did so, leaning against the rail, Dick Miggles drew a long breath, stared now at his iron tar-kettle, and carried it to the fire of old wreck-wood to re-heat it, as he stood by and thoughtfully scratched his head.

He looked up for a moment, and saw that the Major’s back was towards him, and then bent over his kettle again, and began pushing half-burned scraps of wood beneath, making the fire roar and the pitch heat quickly, and he did not look up again till the Major had walked away, when he began to brush again at the boat as if relieved, ending by giving one leg a tremendous slap, and stopping short as if to think.

The Major had some time to wait, and he passed a good deal of it walking up and down, as if watching a sail in the offing, till fortune favoured him; so that as he was approaching the cottage again, Claire came out quickly, and, seeing him, started and turned to walk in the other direction, out on the downs and round by the London Road into the town.

She repented on the instant, and wished that she had faced him boldly and passed on. But she was excited and confused by her visit, which had to her a curious suggestion of wrong-doing in it; and she was leaving the place, feeling agitated and guilty, when, seeing the Major, she had turned sharply to walk on, trembling, and hoping that he had not seen her. The hope died out on the instant, for she heard his steps, with the soft clink, clink of the rowels of his spurs; but he kept his distance till they were well beyond the cottages, and then rapidly closed up.

What would he think of her visit there? What would he say? were the questions Claire asked herself as she walked rapidly on to reach the stile that bounded the cornfield she would have to turn into and cross to get into the London Road; and all the time, clink, clink – clink, clink, those spurs rang on her ears, and came nearer and nearer.

The stile at last; and, trembling with eagerness, she was about to cross, when the Major passed her quickly, leaped over, and turned smilingly to face her with:

“Allow me, my dear Miss Denville. We meet at last.”

End of Volume One

Volume Two – Chapter One.

An Officer and a Gentleman

Claire shrank back for a moment, and her natural womanly timidity urged her to turn and hurry home by the way she had come.

But that would be showing Major Rockley that she was afraid of him, and this she wished to keep a secret in her own breast.

Bowing slightly, then, she declined the offer of his hand, stepped over the stile, and went on.

With anyone else Rockley would have felt bound to retire, but he only laughed. Claire was the daughter of the poor minister of fashion, who lived by the fees and offerings he received from new-comers; and he did not feel himself called upon to treat her as a lady.

“Why, my dear Miss Denville,” he said, laughing, “what have I done that you should try to cut me like this? I am ignorant. Come, shake hands.”

He held his out, as he walked by her side, and she turned upon him a look full of indignation.

“Are you not making a mistake, sir?” she said coldly.

“Mistake? No. My dear Claire, why do you treat me like this? How absurd it is to refuse my letters, and play coquette when we meet. Here have I been watching for such an opportunity as this for weeks.”

Claire’s eyes flashed at his assumption, but she made no reply, and walked on.

“How can you be so absurd,” he whispered, as he kept pace with her step for step, “when you know how I love you?”

“Major Rockley!” she cried, stopping short and facing him, “by what right do you insult me like this?”

“How beautiful she is!” he said in a low tone.

Claire bit her lips, and, divining that he was disposed to treat her as one in an entirely different rank of life, she hurried on along the path, with the tall corn waving on either side, trembling with dread and indignation, as she realised that he was behaving to her as he might to some servant-girl.

“Say what you like to me. Be angry. Punish me. I cannot help it,” he whispered. “Your beauty maddens me, as it has done all these weary months, and I must speak to you now.”

“Major Rockley, I am alone and unprotected. I ask you, as a gentleman, to leave me.”

“And as an officer and a gentleman I would leave you, but my passion masters me. Sweet Claire, whom I love so dearly, how can you be so cruel and so hard?”

He tried to take her hand, but she shrank from him and turned back.

“No, no, little one, you are not going to serve me like that!” he cried, darting before her. “Come, how can you be so absurd?” he whispered. “We are quite alone. No one can see our meeting, and yet you are trifling with me, and wasting golden moments. You know I love you.”

“Once more, Major Rockley, will you leave me? You insult me by staying.”

“No, I will not leave you,” he whispered excitedly; “and I do not insult you.”

“I am alone now, sir, but I have a father – brothers, who shall call you to account for this!” she cried, with her eyes full of indignation.

“Don’t,” he whispered imploringly. “You make your eyes flash and your face light up in a way that drives me frantic. Claire, if you speak to me like that again, I shall risk being seen, and take you to my heart to cover those lips with kisses. No, no; don’t shrink away; only be gentle with me, and talk sensibly. Let us be closer friends, dear. Come, let there be an end to all this coy nonsense. There, we understand one another now. That’s better.”

He seized her hand, and drew it through his arm; but, with a display of strength that he had not expected, she snatched it away, and stood pale with anger and indignation.

She hurried forward the next moment, but he laughingly kept at her side.

Claire turned and retreated, but he was still there; and, choking down her sobs, she walked as fast as she could towards the stile she had crossed.

It seemed evident to her that the Major must know the reason for her visit to the fisherman’s cottage, or he would never have dared to treat her with such bold insolence; and as she walked on he kept close beside her, pressing his suit in the most daringly insulting manner, while she ceased her protests now, and walked on in silence.

“It is the only way to deal with her,” he said to himself; “and, after this outburst to keep up appearances, we shall be on the best of terms.”

Claire had gone farther in her excitement than she had thought possible, and it seemed now that she would never reach the stile. Beyond that, there might be people who would help her; and in any case, the fishermen’s cottages were not many hundred yards away.

In spite of her silence, the Major kept on his passionate addresses and protestations, pleading his inability to obtain a hearing from her before; and at last, irritated by her silence, he caught her by the arm and held it fast.

“No, no; you are not going yet,” he said, speaking angrily. “What sort of a man do you take me for, that you play with me like this?”

“Major Rockley, will you loose my arm?”

“Claire Denville, will you promise to meet me to-night where I will name?”

“I am a defenceless woman, sir, and this is an insult – an outrage. Will you loose my arm?”

“You are a cruel coquette,” he cried passionately. “Is this your treatment, after the months of glances you have given me to lure me on?”

“Will you loose my arm, sir?”

“Will you be a sensible girl?” he whispered. “How can you be so absurd? Look about you: we are too far off for anyone to see who we are, and if they could see us, why should we care? What is the world to us? Come, Claire, my darling.”

He tried to draw her towards him, but she struggled to get free and reach the stile in the tall hedge that separated them from the bare downs beyond.

The tears of rage and indignation were in Claire’s eyes as she felt her helplessness, and saw how thoroughly she was in Rockley’s power. There seemed to be nothing she could do but scream for help, and from that she shrank.

Turning suddenly upon him, with her eyes flashing, she exclaimed:

“Major Rockley! as a gentleman I ask you to cease this cowardly pursuit.”

“Claire Denville, as the woman I adore and have set my mind to win, I ask you to cease this silly heroic nonsense. My dear child, is it to make terms?”

She snatched her hand by an angry movement from his grasp, and reached the stile; but he was too quick for her, catching her and drawing her back to clasp her in his arms.

“You shall not say I wasted my opportunity,” he whispered. “If I am to be punished by you, it shall be for something more than words. This kiss is to be the first of millions that you shall pay me back, and – Curse the fellow!”

There was a quick step, a hand was laid on the stile, and Richard Linnell vaulted over, white with jealous anger. For, coming along the downs, he had seen Claire cross the stile, followed by Rockley, and, half mad with rage, he had gazed at them for a moment or two, and then, feeling that all was over, and that there was no more love for him in the world, since the woman he had worshipped could be so light as to make appointments with the greatest libertine in the town, he walked straight back for the parade.

It was all plain enough; there had been an understanding between Claire and the Major, and hence that serenade. But for the horrible accident that night Claire would have come to the window and answered to the musical call.

What a boyish, childish idiot he had been: dreaming always of a vain, weak, frivolous woman, whom he had in his blind idolatry endowed with all the beauties and virtues of her sex.

“Well,” he said with a scornful laugh, “I ought to have known how artificial she would be. Like father, like daughter; but it is cruel, cruel work.”

He laughed bitterly.

“What an idiot I am!” he cried angrily. “A boy in such matters – a child. Well, it is a lesson. I might have known that she would be as ready to receive attentions as her sister, and now I may go, and console myself by making love to the handsome actress who is ready to make love to me.”

“Another actress,” he said aloud, as he strode on with his jealous anger up to boiling-point, his face flushed, and his teeth set fast.

“Liar!” he exclaimed. “Fool! Idiot again! I will not believe it. Claire Denville is too true and sweet to listen to a man like that.”

He turned and went back faster than he had come, but he had walked some distance, and the return journey gave him time to cool a little and to ask himself whether he was going to watch – to act the eavesdropper – and whether this was a manly part to play.

His indecision increased as he approached the down side of the stile, and he was about to turn and retreat when an excited voice, speaking loudly, sent a thrill through him, and running to the opening he leaped over into the cornfield.

At the sight of Linnell, Claire, who had been up to now strong and heroic, grew feeble and helpless.

“Mr Linnell! Help!” she cried, as she struggled to reach him; and as Rockley, white with fury at the interruption, loosed his hold, Richard Linnell was upon him, striking him a blow full in the chest, which sent him staggering back to fall amongst the corn.

Linnell would have followed, but he caught sight of Claire tottering towards the stile, and he turned to help her, but Rockley had sprung up and, with a hoarse cry of rage, struck at Linnell with his riding-whip, the plaited whalebone falling upon his cheek, and making a weal right across his face.

Major Rockley had better have restrained his rage, for in an instant that blow transformed Richard Linnell, the calm and quiet, into a savage.

He turned round with a roar more than a cry, and sprang upon Rockley; there was a fierce struggle, ending in the riding-whip being torn from its owner’s grasp, and for the space of a couple of minutes there was the sound of the lash cutting through the air, and the blows that fell upon the tight undress uniform.

No words were uttered, but there was the scuffling of feet, the hoarse panting of excited men, and the corn was trampled down.

“There,” cried Linnell at last, flinging Rockley from him, and throwing the whip in his face, “dog and coward! You have had the thrashing you deserved. Strike me again if you dare.”

Major Rockley picked up the whip, and brushed the dust from his uniform. He strove hard to make his convulsed face smooth and to force a smile, while he mastered the desire to writhe and utter impatient cries, so keen was the agony he felt.

“No,” he said, in a low hissing whisper, “you are a stronger man than I, and when we meet again it shall be on equal terms.”

He accompanied his words with a vindictive look that told Richard Linnell plainly enough how they would encounter next.

He repressed a shudder, and then a pang that seemed to pierce his heart shot through him, for with a malicious smile Rockley said:

“I did not know the lady had made an appointment with you. Of course, she had to keep up appearances. But there: I’ll say no more.”

He raised his cap mockingly, and went off across the cornfield, leaving Richard Linnell stung to the heart, his brow knit, and his eyes fixed upon Claire, who, white as ashes, and her face convulsed by the agony within her breast, crouched where she had sunk upon the lower steps of the stile.

Volume Two – Chapter Two.

“Impossible!”

“Claire – Miss Denville,” cried Richard Linnell, mastering the cruel thoughts suggested by Rockley’s words, “how dared that scoundrel insult you like this!”

“Hush!” said Claire agitatedly. “Don’t – pray don’t speak to me. I cannot bear it.”

“You are ill. You are faint. Let me help you over these bars and get you to one of the cottages.”

“No; I shall be better directly. Don’t speak to me now.”

She bent down, covered her face with her hands, and the tears came now in a passionate burst, while he went down on his knee beside her, laid one hand upon her arm, and, his doubts and suspicions all driven away by her grief, tried to whisper words of comfort as he bade her be calm.

Major Rockley had walked with jaunty military stride for the first two or three hundred yards with assumed calmness; then he gave vent to his rage in a torrent of oaths, and strode on rapidly out of sight, beating the air fiercely with his whip, and leaving the fields clear of his presence as Richard Linnell knelt by the sobbing girl.

“Miss Denville – Claire,” he said again, as he now possessed himself of her hand, while in his anger and remorse at having doubted her he poured forth his words in quick, excited tones.

“I had not thought to speak to you like this, and at such a time, but I cannot bear to see you weep – it cuts me to the heart, for I love you – Claire, dear Claire, I love you dearly as man can love.”

“Oh, hush, hush!” she moaned piteously, weak now with her emotion and the scene she had gone through.

“I must speak now,” he went on. “I have no opportunities of seeing you and telling you all I feel. Claire, I would have come and asked permission to address you, but I have been obliged to feel that my presence was not welcome to Mr Denville, and you – you have been so cold and distant to me of late.”

She did not speak, but kept one hand to her bent-down face, while he held the other tightly clasped in his.

“You do not speak,” he whispered. “Claire – you are not angry? I have suffered so – there, I confess – such jealous thoughts, such bitter cruel thoughts, though I had no right – no claim upon your love. But now, forgive me – only tell me – there was nothing between you and that man?”

She raised her head quickly, and dropped her hand.

“You ask me that!” she said proudly.

“Forgive me. You would if you knew all. I felt that you had come to meet him, and I was tortured with these jealous doubts, but I would not believe, and I came, as you saw. And now, Claire, one word – my love!”

Her eyes half closed as he drew her towards him; her lips trembled, and her colour went and came. Then, as if her memory, that had been veiled for the moment, tore aside the film of forgetfulness, she thrust him from her, and, with a look of anguish in her eyes, started to her feet.

“No, no!” she cried with a shiver; “it is impossible!”

“Hush! don’t say that,” he whispered. “Claire, I could not bear it. I know I am not well-to-do, but I love you. I cannot offer you a rich home, but I give you a love that is wholly yours. Don’t – don’t refuse me – don’t make me think that you despise me.”

“No, no, it is not that,” she sobbed wildly. “You must not speak to me. It is impossible.”

“Impossible?” he cried, holding her hands tightly.

“Yes, impossible.”

“No,” he said with a quiet smile, “it is not impossible. You will grow to the knowledge by-and-by that there is one who lives for your sake, whose every thought is yours, and these little obstacles will melt away when you know me as I am. Claire, I only ask for a little hope – to go away with the thought that I have no rival for your love.”

“Don’t speak to me – don’t think of me again!” she cried, with a wild look in her face. “Heaven bless you, Mr Linnell! Think well of me, whatever comes, but all that is over now.”

“Over? No, no; don’t say that. Claire – my love!”

He still held her hands in his, and as their eyes met her lips quivered, and her sweet face was drawn with anguish. It was a hard fight, but she conquered, and tearing herself away, she crossed the stile, and he saw her with bent head hurrying towards her home.

“It is impossible – impossible,” he muttered, as he stood leaning against the stile. “No; she may say that a thousand times, but I shall hold to my faith, and this affair will give me strength.”

He walked slowly homeward, dreaming for a time of Claire’s anguished face, and then the sight of a uniform brought back the thought of the Major, and the punishment he had received.

“Will he resent it?” he asked himself.

The answer was awaiting him later on at home, where he encountered Cora Dean just going out for a drive.

The pony-carriage was at the door, and there was nothing for it but to hand the ladies in, Mrs Dean receiving the attention with a most ungracious look, while Cora smiled and looked flushed and pleased as she drove off, with Sir Harry Payne, in Colonel Mellersh’s room, watching her with admiring eyes.

“Won’t be long, you know. Very kind of you to see me about it; as it’s his father he lives with,” said Sir Harry. “Handsome woman that, Colonel. Precious unfortunate, all this. I say, how lucky you were at the tables last night. Very handsome woman that. Ever act now, do you know?”

“Every day,” said Colonel Mellersh drily. “Here, I’ll ask Linnell to step in.”

Volume Two – Chapter Three.

No Better than a Fiddler

“But you can’t fight a fellow like that, Rockley,” said Sir Harry, who had been summoned to his brother-officer’s room.

“Not fight him? I’ll fight him, and kill him.”