The Lion's Skin. Rafael Sabatini

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СКАЧАТЬ lordship flatters me by this interest. My looks pleased him, let us hope. And you answered him—what?”

      “That your honor is a gentleman newly crossed from France.”

      “You are well-informed, mistress,” said Mr. Caryll, a thought tartly, for if his speech was tainted with a French accent it was in so slight a degree as surely to be imperceptible to the vulgar.

      “Your clothes, sir,” the landlady explained, and he bethought him, then, that the greater elegance and refinement of his French apparel must indeed proclaim his origin to one who had so many occasions of seeing travelers from Gaul. That might even account for Mr. Green's attempts to talk to him of France. His mind returned to the matter of the bridal pair below.

      “You told him that, eh?” said he. “And what said his lordship then?”

      “He turned to the parson. 'The very man for us, Jenkins,' says he.”

      “And the parson—this Jenkins—what answer did he make?”

      “'Excellently thought,' he says, grinning.”

      “Hum! And you yourself, mistress, what inference did you draw?”

      “Inference, sir?”

      “Aye, inference, ma'am. Did you not gather that this was not only a runaway match, but a clandestine one? My lord can depend upon the discretion of his servant, no doubt; for other witness he would prefer some passer-by, some stranger who will go his ways to-morrow, and not be like to be heard of again.”

      “Lard, sir!” cried the landlady, her eyes wide with astonishment.

      Mr. Caryll smiled enigmatically. “'Tis so, I assure ye, ma'am. My Lord Rotherby is of a family singularly cautious in the unions it contracts. In entering matrimony he prefers, no doubt, to leave a back door open for quiet retreat should he repent him later.”

      “Your honor has his lordship's acquaintance, then?” quoth the landlady.

      “It is a misfortune from which Heaven has hitherto preserved me, but which the devil, it seems, now thrusts upon me. It will, nevertheless, interest me to see him at close quarters. Come, ma'am.”

      As they were going out, Mr. Caryll checked suddenly. “Why, what's o'clock?” said he.

      She stared, so abruptly came the question. “Past four, sir,” she answered.

      He uttered a short laugh. “Decidedly,” said he, “his lordship must be viewed at closer quarters.” And he led the way downstairs.

      In the passage he waited for her to come up with him. “You had best announce me by name,” he suggested. “It is Caryll.”

      She nodded, and, going forward, threw open a door, inviting him to enter.

      “Mr. Caryll,” she announced, obedient to his injunction, and as he went in she closed the door behind him.

      From the group of three that had been sitting about the polished walnut table, the tall gentleman in buff and silver rose swiftly, and advanced to the newcomer; what time Mr. Caryll made a rapid observation of this brother whom he was meeting under circumstances so odd and by a chance so peculiar.

      He beheld a man of twenty-five, or perhaps a little more, tall and well made, if already inclining to heaviness, with a swarthy face, full-lipped, big-nosed, black-eyed, an obstinate chin, and a deplorable brow. At sight, by instinct, he disliked his brother. He wondered vaguely was Lord Rotherby in appearance at all like their common father; but beyond that he gave little thought to the tie that bound them. Indeed, he has placed it upon record that, saving in such moments of high stress as followed in their later connection, he never could remember that they were the sons of the same parent.

      “I thought,” was Rotherby's greeting, a note almost of irritation in his voice, “that the woman said you were from France.”

      It was an odd welcome, but its oddness at the moment went unheeded. His swift scrutiny of his brother over, Mr. Caryll's glance passed on to become riveted upon the face of the lady at the table's head. In addition to the beauties which from above he had descried, he now perceived that her mouth was sensitive and kindly, her whole expression one of gentle wistfulness, exceeding sweet to contemplate. What did she in this galley, he wondered; and he has confessed that just as at sight he had disliked his brother, so from that hour—from the very instant of his eyes' alighting on her there—he loved the lady whom his brother was to wed, felt a surpassing need of her, conceived that in the meeting of their eyes their very souls had met, so that it was to him as if he had known her since he had known anything. Meanwhile there was his lordship's question to be answered. He answered it mechanically, his eyes upon the lady, and she returning the gaze of those queer, greenish eyes with a sweetness that gave place to no confusion.

      “I am from France, sir.”

      “But not French?” his lordship continued.

      Mr. Caryll fetched his eyes from the lady's to meet Lord Rotherby's. “More than half French,” he replied, the French taint in his accent growing slightly more pronounced. “It was but an accident that my father was an Englishman.”

      Rotherby laughed softly, a thought contemptuously. Foreigners were things which in his untraveled, unlettered ignorance he despised. The difference between a Frenchman and a South Sea Islander was a thing never quite appreciated by his lordship. Some subtle difference he had no doubt existed; but for him it was enough to know that both were foreigners; therefore, it logically followed, both were kin.

      “Your words, sir, might be oddly interpreted. 'Pon honor, they might!” said he, and laughed softly again with singular insolence.

      “If they have amused your lordship I am happy,” said Mr. Caryll in such a tone that Rotherby looked to see whether he was being roasted. “You wanted me, I think. I beg that you'll not thank me for having descended. It was an honor.”

      It occurred to Rotherby that this was a veiled reproof for the ill manners of the omission. Again he looked sharply at this man who was scanning him with such interest, but he detected in the calm, high-bred face nothing to suggest that any mockery was intended. Belatedly he fell to doing the very thing that Mr. Caryll had begged him to leave undone: he fell to thanking him. As for Mr. Caryll himself, not even the queer position into which he had been thrust could repress his characteristics. What time his lordship thanked him, he looked about him at the other occupants of the room, and found that, besides the parson, sitting pale and wide-eyed at the table, there was present in the background his lordship's man—a quiet fellow, quietly garbed in gray, with a shrewd face and shrewd, shifty eyes. Mr. Caryll saw, and registered, for future use, the reflection that eyes that are overshrewd are seldom wont to look out of honest heads.

      “You are desired,” his lordship informed him, “to be witness to a marriage.”

      “So much the landlady had made known to me.”

      “It is not, I trust, a task that will occasion you any scruples.”

      “None. On the contrary, it is the absence of the marriage might do that.” The smooth, easy tone so masked the inner meaning of the answer that his lordship scarce attended to the words.

      “Then we had best get on. We are in haste.”

      “'Tis СКАЧАТЬ