Lady Kilpatrick. Robert Williams Buchanan
servant’s arm. Mr. Conseltine stepped rapidly forward to open the door, and shook his brother’s hand as he passed from the room. Then, returning, he addressed Feagus, who was still puffing with anger.
‘Sit down, Mr. Feagus. Fill again, man, and wash the taste of that drunken blackguard out of your mouth. Yes, yes,’ he continued, seeing Feagus about to speak; ‘he’s all that you could call him, but he has to be endured; he knows too much to be crossed.’
‘Knows?’ snorted Feagus; ‘and what does he know, then?’
Conseltine looked warily round before replying, and then, bending across the table till his face was within a foot of Feagus’s, he said in a low voice:
‘He knows all about Moya Macartney.’
‘Moya Macartney!’ echoed his son. ‘And who, pray, is Moya Macartney?’
‘She was a peasant girl, away down in Kenmare. My brother married her—a sham marriage—’Twas Blake that played priest for him, and pretended to be in Holy Orders.’
‘That’s true!’ murmured Feagus. ‘And after—tell him what came of it!’
‘The old story. Henry grew tired of his plaything. One day, when the child—they had a child—was two years old, he told Moya the truth. She went on like a madwoman for a time, and then went quite cold and quiet. Henry thought ’Twas all right, and that she had accepted the situation; but within two hours she disappeared, taking the child with her, and for a month or two nothing was heard of her.’
‘Well?’ said Dick eagerly.
‘Then,’ continued Conseltine, ‘one night—a devilish cold winter’s night it was, too—the boy was brought to my brother with a letter. “Take your child,” the letter said, “and as you use him may God use you! You’ll never hear from me again.” ’Twas signed “Moya Macartney,” and a week later her body was found on the sands of Kenmare Bay.’
‘A good riddance,’ said Feagus. ‘And now, Dick, guess the name of the child!’
Dick looked questioningly at his father, who said quietly:
‘The child is the Squireen, Desmond Macartney.’
Feagus gazed sideways from under his ponderous brows at young Conseltine. The boy’s sullen mask was almost as inscrutable as his father’s smooth face.
‘Does Desmond Macartney guess that he’s my lord’s son?’ asked the youth.
‘No,’ said Conseltine. ‘A story was trumped up that he was the orphan son of people to whom my brother owed obligations. He’s too big a fool to trouble himself asking questions.’
‘Well, then,’ said Feagus, ‘spake out and let me know what ’tis ye fear.’
‘I fear my brother’s weakness. He may leave all to this young vagabond. He’s been conscience-haunted about Moya Macartney’s death ever since it happened, and I know that more than once he has made his will in favour of the Squireen. There’s not a square yard of the estate entailed. He could leave it to a beggar in the street if he liked, and Dick would get nothing but the title. I’m as certain as I can be that he has sent for you to make a will; and with that old rascal Peebles always whispering in his ears, praising the bastard, and running down Dick, there’s danger.’
‘Well?’ asked the lawyer, after a pause.
‘Well?’ Conseltine’s smooth voice echoed him.
There was silence for a full minute, during which Feagus sat looking over his glass from father to son.
‘Plain speech is best, Mr. Conseltine. I’m a friend of the family—a humble friend—and I’d like to see justice. Will ye spake straight, and say what ye’d have done?’
Conseltine smiled with half-shut eyes.
‘I thought you’d understand me,’ he said coolly. ‘I’m sure that the interests of the family are safe in your hands, and you may be sure that the family won’t be ungrateful.’
‘Ye can trust me, sor,’ said Feagus. ‘I’ll take care that justice is done. Ye needn’t fear your brother’s wakeness if I have the drawin’ o’ the will.’
Conseltine nodded again. The worthy trio brought their glasses together with a light chink, and drank.
‘You see now,’ continued Conseltine, ‘why Blake has to be humoured. He’s capable of blowing on us in one of his drunken tantrums, and then the whole story would be ripped up.’ Feagus nodded.
‘Keep out of his way, Mr. Feagus, or, if you meet him, control your temper. That’s all I wanted to say, and I think we understand each other.’
‘Fairly well,’ said Feagus.
‘’Tis a pretty kettle o’ fish I’m stirring,’ he said to himself, when father and son had left him alone; ‘but I’ll be surprised if I don’t keep the biggest trout for my own share. I’ll help Conseltine to get the estates, and then I’ll be on his back like the old man o’ the sea on Sinbad’s. Here’s success to virtue! ‘’tis a fine drink this, and ’tis not often, Jack Feagus, that ye get the chance of drinkin’ real wine out of a live lord’s cellar.’
Lord Kilpatrick had meanwhile been conducted to the drawing-room by the faithful, though outwardly unsympathetic, Peebles. Sitting at the open oriel window in a high-backed antique chair, he drew in the soft evening air with tremulous gulps. His face, which in youth and manhood had been singularly handsome, was drawn with pain and pettish anger, and wore that peculiar gray tinge so often seen in the complexions of people afflicted with diseases of the heart. His long, waxen fingers drummed irritably on the arm-pieces of his chair, so that the rings with which they were decorated cast out coruscations of coloured light.
Peebles, a long, dry Scotchman, who but for his white hair might have been of any age from thirty-five to eighty, long in leg and arm, long in the back, long in the nose and upper-lip, shrewd of eye, dry and deliberate in action, moved soundlessly about the room until summoned by his master’s voice.
‘Peebles!’
‘My lord?’
‘How do I look? No flattery, now. Speak out.’
‘Much flattery ye’ll get frae me, or ever did,’ muttered Peebles, taking his stand before the invalid, and scrutinizing him with a cast-iron countenance of no name-able expression.
‘Well, Peebles, well! How do I look?’
‘My lord,’ said Peebles, after another thirty seconds’ inspection, ‘you look as green as grass and as sick as peasemeal!’
‘Nonsense! Pooh! Rubbish!’ Each word shot out of his lordship’s mouth like a bullet, ‘I never felt better.’
‘Ye never looked worse,’ said Peebles.
‘God bless my soul!’ said his lordship. ‘It must be those damn’d globules that Clarke is giving me. They’re ruining my liver—actually ruining it. Infernal idiots of doctors!’ His fingers moved faster. ‘Go away, Peebles, go away!’
Peebles retired into the background, and stood scraping his lantern jaws with his right hand.
‘Peebles!’ said the old gentleman presently.
‘My lord?’
‘You don’t think——’ Lord Kilpatrick paused, hem’d, and finally shot the question out of himself with a suddenness which showed how strong a repugnance he had to conquer before he could ask it—‘you don’t think I’m going to die?’
‘Ye don’t suppose ye’re immortal, do ye?’ asked the unbending servitor.
‘Of course not! Confound you for an unfeeling blockhead!’ cried his master. ‘Give me