"That doesn't matter."
"I'll do my best, and you won't be ashamed of yourself or of me."
"That's all I need to know."
Jim and I took carriage to Elveshurst on Monday to make ready for our guests, a cart behind us bringing a large quantity of iced delicacies hard to find in the Weald. Lord Tarlton, Sophia, Dick, and Harvey Alford arrived by coach-and-six on Tuesday afternoon with a maid and valet in attendance in addition to a footman on the driver's seat, and a man-of-war's man, the little lord's man Friday, riding his favorite hunter. Until I greeted them, I had seen Dick only at a distance and Harvey not at all since my return, and I could not help but expect great changes in seventeen years, eight months, and several days.
That is about the age of a locust native to Maine. After seventeen years of sleep and perhaps dreams in his secret place, he comes forth full of vigor and appetite. But Dick and Harvey had been out and around and alive; fools or physicians by now, and looking into their faces, I was baffled and perplexed. I could read almost nothing there because almost nothing was there to read. Dick was a projection of Lord Tarlton, of darker skin, careless instead of meticulous of dress, weaker and hence less dangerous in the long run, more dangerous in any one crossing; he would be more likely to strike out recklessly, while his father would bide his time. I could not doubt that he was a formidable rider. Recklessness and cruelty do not make a finished and rounded horseman, but can win many races. He looked at me with ill-concealed disdain.
I remembered hearing that he had never married. Loving him and wishing to retain him, Lord Tarlton had no doubt frowned on the notion—or else given it his pale, terrifying smile. He had never loved Sophia and was glad to get shed of her, but had got his price for her just the same—a young man whose appearance and manner and name fitted him for his entourage, and whom he had expected to use. This last had not worked out very well, I thought. He was not too strong, but too weak, and Sophia had somehow interfered. But she, too, could make nothing of him except a companion in desperate loneliness; she had not even been able to have children by him, perhaps because of a yearning for suicide. Lord Tarlton looked at him with barely concealed disdain.
But there was much to read in the face of Pike, the little lord's body servant. He had the voice, the strut, and something of the spruceness that the Royal Navy imbues in its petty offcers. His heavy-lidded, three-cornered eyes, suggestive of a swane's and somewhat common to pugilists, were of stony blue; one ear had been battered out of shape. He was inclined to glower at all except his master; at him he gazed with a kind of dumb worship and the dull visage became wildly animated when the lord addressed him. He was not very tall but of great strength and endurance; he had a short bull-neck, heavy jaws, a squat nose, stiff sandy hair cut short, hairy wrists, and short, thick, powerful hands. Lord Tarlton ordered him about in a somewhat brutal tone which evidently reassured the man and which he loved to hear.
Along a lagoon followed by water fowl in their evening flight, I had built half a dozen dry platforms, with reed-enclosed sides—duck-blinds, as they were called in Maine. After refreshments, my guests changed to rough clothes, and v^th their guns and gillies—the latter of my supplying except in the case of Pike, who attended his master —they got into the shelters to shoot high-climbing widgeon, darting teal, air-boring prochard which come and are gone with incredible swiftness, and noble, wary mallards.
I had given Lord Tarlton the best blind, and, taking the next one in the row, let pass all ducks making in his direction. To compensate for this flattery, I fired only at those he had fired at and missed, not only calling attention to these misses but frequently "wiping his eye," in the parlance of hunters—a trial to his temper and self-control. My only motive was pleasure. It was good sport to confuse and needle him—until sport would be over and work began.
The five guns brought down twenty-five birds in an hour's shooting—good fare for all hands. Harvey proved to be high gun, and perhaps for the first time in many years. Lord Tarlton was low.
These trivia passed from my mind when, at eight o'clock, I met with my guests at dinner. We five who had dined together in Malta had met once more about a glimmering board, and what long-laid ghosts rose up by sympathetic magic? No one knew but I. Sophia glimpsed them just around the corner of her eye, and her eyes grew haunted and her face pale except for a crimson circle on each cheek. Still she could not make out their shapes or hear their whisperings.
The dining room of Elveshurst Hall could not compare in splendor with the great chamber of Lepanto Palace, but had somewhat the same style. Although the spread of plate and crystal was not half as fine, it picked up and mingled the countless gleamings of candles, causing a kind of aura over the lace cloth. No fault could be found with my meat and drink as to quality or variety. The service of my new-hired, high-paid footmen from London was as skillful as that of old family retainers. In all this I took grim pleasure.
"How did this pleasant manor come by its name?" Lord Tarlton asked when his face was flushed with wine.
He spoke softly, but silence set in, and Sophia brought her hand quickly to her hps, as though to hold them closed. Only she and I, I thought, remembered the asking of a similar question in regard to Lepanto Palace by her Yankee lover in a scene of hate and evil remote in time and space; but there came a groping within the lordling's brain, to judge from his indrawn eyes; and Dick's eyes glittered with excitement he did not understand.
"My lord, I believe that first is a West Saxon word meaning wood,'" I answered. "No doubt they thought that these woods were peopled by elves."
"Why, I like your learning the lore of the country, or you can blow me down. You ought to put down roots here—marry and found a house. You'll reap some of the harvest yourself, and your grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be great in the land."
"He must have his portrait painted, too," Dick said, the devil in him raised by the wine. He looked with exaggerated seriousness at Harvey.
"I'd advise Lawrence," Harvey replied in a weighty tone.
These two being up to their old tricks was an unexpected development that cast a new and eerie light on the whole scene. As though time had really rolled back, reality became hard to grasp and the mind wandered strangely. This was so with me and, I felt sure, with Sophia; and she was more haunted than I because she remained in the dark. Nor was Lord Tarlton's mind at rest. He had drunk more than either, and a sense of power, with its accompanying arrogance, crept through him; but there was something in the wind that he scented and did not like. He had only minimized, not yet overborne, the awkward fact of my knowing too much about the sea fight. He did not want to be bothered by it now—not now, when the three of them were getting drunk together on a rarer drink than wine—but he dared not forget it. He believed I did not know enough to make him any trouble, even if I should try. The fact remained that I was a rich man of unknown aims who showed no fear of him. He had more respect for money itself than the younger men, which comes with age, experience, and disillusionment.
It seemed that I knew the brew these three men were sharing in dreadful fellowship and glory, and it was evil. I did not know evil's nature or its substance, but I had learned to recognize some of its aspects. Wherever three or more are gathered together, there is an altar and a god; and the congregation of these three was ancient and terribly wicked. It belonged to the devil as surely as the bond between the Vindictive men belonged to God. I thought it had begun with their joint denial of the first law and platform of God, which by some mystery may be the essence of God—the brotherhood of man. There are many who mocked it and despised it, and since proof of it ever rose before their eyes, they came to hate it with a deadly hate.