"I'd put a year's wages on it," answered Jim.

So the three began their climb. At his post below Father Halloran judged from the pace at which Walter started that he would soon lead the others; for Jim had a climb to negotiate which was none too easy, even by daylight, and the Squire must fetch a considerable _detour_ before he struck the hedge, along which, moreover, he would be impeded by brambles and undergrowth. He saw this, but it was too late to call a warning.

Walter, beyond reach of the lantern's rays, ascended silently enough, but at a gathering pace. He forgot the necessity of keeping in line. It did not occur to him that his father must be dropping far behind: rather, his presence seemed beside him, inexorable, d.o.g.g.i.ng him with the morrow's unthinkable compulsion. What mad adventure was this? Here he was at home hunting Charley Hannaford. Well, but his father was close at hand, and Father Halloran just below, who had always protected him. At this game he could go on for ever, if only it would stave off tomorrow. To-morrow--

A couple of lithe arms went about him in the darkness. A voice spoke hoa.r.s.e and quick in his ear--spoke, though for the moment he was chiefly aware of its hot breath.

"Broke your word, did ye? Set them on to us, you blasted young sprig!

Look 'ee here--I've a knife to your ribs, and you can't use your gun.

Stand still while my boy slips across, or I'll cut your white heart out. . ."

Walter a Cleeve stood still. He felt, rather than heard, a figure limp by and steal across the gully. A slight sound of a little loose earth dribbling reached him a moment later from the opposite bank of the gully.

Then, after a long pause, the arms about him relaxed. Charles Hannaford was gone.

Still Walter a Cleeve did not move. He stared up into the wall of darkness on his left, wondering stupidly why his father did not shoot.

Then he put out his hand: it encountered a bramble bush.

He drew a long spray of the bramble towards him, fingering it very carefully, following the spines of its curved p.r.i.c.kles, and, having found its leafy end, drew it meditatively through the trigger-guard of his gun.

The countryside scoffed at the finding of the coroner's jury that the last heir of the a Cleeves had met his death by misadventure. Shortly after the inquest Charley Hannaford disappeared with his family, and this lent colour to their gossip. But Jim Burdon, who had been the first to arrive on the scene, told his plain tale, and, for the rest, kept his counsel.

And so did Father Halloran and the Squire.

THE COLABORATORS.

OR, THE COMEDY THAT WROTE ITSELF AS RELATED BY G. A. RICHARDSON.

I.

How pleasant it is to have money, heigho!

How pleasant it is to have money!

Sings (I think) Clough. Well, I had money, and more of it than I felt any desire to spend; which is as much as any reasonable man can want.

My age was five-and-twenty, my health good, my conscience moderately clean, and my appet.i.te excellent: I had fame in some degree, and a fair prospect of adding to it: and I was unmarried. In later life a man may seek marriage for its own sake, but at five-and-twenty he marries against his will--because he has fallen in love with a woman; and this had not yet happened to me. I was a bachelor, and content to remain one.

To come to smaller matters--The month was early June, the weather perfect, the solitude of my own choosing, and my posture comfortable enough to invite drowsiness. I had bathed and, stretched supine in the shade of a high sand-bank, was smoking the day's first cigarette. Behind me lay Ambleteuse; before me, the sea. On the edge of it, their shrill challenges softened by the distance to music, a score of children played with spades and buckets, innocently composing a hundred pretty groups of brown legs, fluttered hair, bright frocks and jerseys, and innocently conspiring with morning to put a spirit of youth into the whole picture.

Beyond them the blue sea flashed with its own smiles, and the blue heaven over them with the glancing wings of gulls. On this showing it is evident that I, George Anthony Richardson, ought to have been happy; whereas, in fact, Richardson was cheerful enough, but George Anthony restless and ill-content: by reason that Richardson, remembering the past, enjoyed by contrast the present, and knew himself to be jolly well off; while George Anthony, likewise remembering the past, felt gravely concerned for the future.

Let me explain. A year ago I had been a clerk in the Office of the Local Government Board--a detested calling with a derisory stipend. It was all that a University education (a second in Moderations and a third in _Literae Humaniores_) had enabled me to win, and I stuck to it because I possessed no patrimony and had no 'prospects' save one, which stood precariously on the favour of an uncle--my mother's brother, Major-General Allan Mclntosh, C.B. Now the General could not be called an indulgent man. He had retired from active service to concentrate upon his kinsfolk those military gifts which even on the wide plains of Hindostan had kept him the terror of his country's foes and the bugbear of his own soldiery.

He had an iron sense of discipline and a pa.s.sion for it; he detested all forms of amus.e.m.e.nt; in religion he belonged to the sect of the Peculiar People; and he owned a gloomy house near the western end of the Cromwell Road, where he dwelt and had for butler, valet, and factotum a Peculiar Person named Trewlove.

In those days I found my chief recreation in the theatre; and by-and-by, when I essayed to write for it, and began to pester managers with curtain-raisers, small vaudevilles, comic libretti and the like, you will guess that in common prudence I called myself by a _nom de guerre_.

Dropping the 'Richardson,' I signed my productions 'George Anthony,' and as 'George Anthony' the playgoing public now discusses me. For some while, I will confess, the precaution was superfluous, the managers having apparently entered into league to ensure me as much obscurity as I had any use for. But at length in an unguarded moment the manager of the Duke of Cornwall's Theatre (formerly the Euterpe) accepted a three-act farce.

It was poorly acted, yet for some reason it took the town. '_Larks in Aspic_, a Farcical Comedy by George Anthony,' ran for a solid three hundred nights; and before it ceased my unsuspecting uncle had closed his earthly career, leaving me with seventy thousand pounds (the bulk of it invested in India Government stock), the house in the Cromwell Road, and, lastly, in sacred trust, his faithful body-servant, William John Trewlove.

Here let me pause to deplore man's weakness and the allurement of splendid possessions. I had been happy enough in my lodgings in Jermyn Street, and, thanks to _Larks in Aspic_, they were decently furnished.

At the prompting, surely, of some malignant spirit, I exchanged them for a house too large for me in a street too long for life, for my uncle's furniture (of the Great Exhibition period), and for the unnecessary and detested services of Trewlove.

This man enjoyed, by my uncle's will, an annuity of fifty pounds.

He had the look, too, of one who denied himself small pleasures, not only on religious grounds, but because they cost money. Somehow, I never doubted that he owned a balance at the bank, or that, after a brief interval spent in demonstrating that our ways were uncongenial, he would retire on a competence and await translation to join my uncle in an equal sky--equal, that is, within the fence of the elect. But not a bit of it!

I had been adjured in the will to look after him: and at first I supposed that he clung to me against inclination, from a conscientious resolve to give me every chance. By-and-by, however, I grew aware of a change in him; or, rather, of some internal disquiet, suppressed but volcanic, working towards a change. Once or twice he staggered me by answering some casual question in a tone which, to say the least of it, suggested an ungainly attempt at facetiousness. A look at his sepulchral face would rea.s.sure me, but did not clear up the mystery. Something was amiss with Trewlove.

The horrid truth broke upon me one day as we discussed the conduct of one of my two housemaids. Trewlove, returning one evening (as I gathered) from a small _reunion_ of his fellow-sectarians in the Earl's Court Road, had caught her in the act of exchanging railleries from an upper window with a trooper in the 2nd Life Guards, and had reported her.

"Most unbecoming," said I.

"Unwomanly," said Trewlove, with a sudden contortion of the face; "unwomanly, sir!--but ah, how like a woman!"

I stared at him for one wild moment, and turned abruptly to the window.

The rascal had flung a quotation at me--out of _Larks in Aspic!_ He knew, then! He had penetrated the disguise of "George Anthony," and, worse still, he meant to forgive it. His eye had conveyed a dreadful promise of complicity. Almost--I would have given worlds to know, and yet I dared not face it--almost it had been essaying a wink!

I dismissed him with instructions--not very coherent, I fear--to give the girl a talking-to, and sat down to think. How long had he known?--that was my first question, and in justice to him it had to be considered: since, had he known and kept the secret in my uncle's lifetime, beyond a doubt, and unpleasant as the thought might be, I was enormously his debtor. That stern warrior's att.i.tude towards the playhouse had ever been uncompromising. Stalls, pit, and circles--the very names suggested Dantesque images and provided ill.u.s.trations for many a discourse.

Themselves verbose, these discourses indicated A Short Way with Stage-players, and it stood in no doubt that the authorship of _Larks in Aspic_ had only to be disclosed to him to provide me with the shortest possible cut out of seventy thousand pounds.

I might, and did, mentally consign Trewlove to all manner of painful places, as, for instance, the bottom of the sea; but I could not will away this obligation. After cogitating for awhile I rang for him.

"Trewlove," said I, "you know, it seems, that I have written a play."

"Yessir! _Larks in Aspic_, sir."

I winced. "Since when have you known this?"

The dog, I am sure, took the bearings of this question at once. But he laid his head on one side, and while he pulled one whisker, as if ringing up the information, his eyes grew dull and seemed to be withdrawing into visions of a far-away past. "I have been many times to see it, Mr.

George, and would be hard put to it to specify the first occasion. But it was a mattinay."

"That is not what I asked, Trewlove. I want to know when you first suspected or satisfied yourself that I was the author."

"Oh, at once, sir! The style, if I may say so, was unmistakable: _in_-nimitable, sir, if I may take the libbaty."

"Excuse me," I began; but he did not hear. He had pa.s.sed for the moment beyond decorum, and his eyes began to roll in a manner expressive of inward rapture, but not pretty to watch.

"I had not listened to your talk, sir, in private life--I had not, as one might say, imbibed it--for nothink. The General, sir--your lamented uncle--had a flow: he would, if allowed, and meaning no disrespect, talk the hind leg off a jacka.s.s; but I found him lacking in 'umour. Now you, Mr. George, 'ave 'umour. You 'ave not your uncle's flow, sir--the Lord forbid! But in give-and-take, as one might say, you are igstreamly droll.

On many occasions, sir, when you were extra sparkling I do a.s.sure you it required pressure not to igsplode."

"I thank you, Trewlove," said I coldly. "But will you, please, waive these unsolicited testimonials and answer my question? Let me put it in another form. Was it in my uncle's lifetime that you first witnessed my play?"

Trewlove's eyes ceased to roll, and, meeting mine, withdrew themselves politely behind impenetrable mists. "The General, sir, was opposed to theatre-going _in toto_; anathemum was no word for what he thought of it.

And if it had come to _Larks in Aspic_, with your permission I will only say 'Great Scot!'"

"I may take it then that you did not see the play and surprise my secret until after his death?".

Trewlove drew himself up with fine reserve and dignity. "There is such a thing, sir, I 'ope, as Libbaty of Conscience."