FullReads

“Harry and Lord Rokesle are at cards, I believe. And Mrs. Morfit has retired to her apartments with one of her usual headaches, so that I have been alone these two hours. You visit Stornoway somewhat late, Mr. Orts,” Anastasia Allonby added, without any particular concealment of the fact that she considered his doing so a nuisance.

He jerked his thumb ceilingward. “The cloth is at any rascal’s beck and call. Old Holles, my Lord’s man, is dying up yonder, and the whim seized him to have a clergyman in. God knows why, for it appears to me that one knave might very easily make his way to hell without having another knave to help him. And Holles?–eh, well, from what I myself know of him, the rogue is triply damned.” His mouth puckered as he set about unbuttoning his long, rain-spattered cloak, which, with his big hat, he flung aside upon a table. “Gad!” said Simon Orts, “we are most of us damned on Usk; and that is why I don’t like it–” He struck his hand against his thigh. “I don’t like it, Anastasia.”

“You must pardon me,” she languidly retorted, “but I was never good at riddles.”

He turned and glanced about the hall, debating. Lady Allonby meanwhile regarded him, as she might have looked at a frog or a hurtless snake. A small, slim, anxious man, she found him; always fidgeting, always placating some one, but never without a covert sneer. The fellow was venomous; his eyes only were honest, for even while his lips were about their wheedling, these eyes flashed malice at you; and their shifting was so unremittent that afterward you recalled them as an absolute shining which had not any color. On Usk and thereabouts they said it was the glare from within of his damned soul, already at white heat; but they were a plain-spoken lot on Usk. To-night Simon Orts was all in black; and his hair, too, and his gross eyebrows were black, and well-nigh to the cheek-bones of his clean-shaven countenance the thick beard, showed black through the skin.

Now he kept silence for a lengthy interval, his arms crossed on his breast, gnawing meanwhile at the fingernails of his left hand in an unattractive fashion he had of meditating. When words came it was in a torrent.

“I will read you my riddle, then. You are a widow, rich; as women go, you are not so unpleasant to look at as most of ’em. If it became a clergyman to dwell upon such matters, I would say that your fleshly habitation is too fine for its tenant, since I know you to be a good-for-nothing jilt. However, you are God’s handiwork, and doubtless He had His reasons for constructing you. My Lord is poor; last summer at Tunbridge you declined to marry him. I am in his confidence, you observe. He took your decision in silence–‘ware Rokesle when he is quiet! Eh, I know the man,–’tisn’t for nothing that these ten years past I have studied his whims, pampered his vanity, lied to him, toadied him! You admire my candor?–faith, yes, I am very candid. I am Rokesle’s hanger-on; he took me out of the gutter, and in my fashion I am grateful. And you?–Anastasia, had you treated me more equitably fifteen years ago, I would have gone to the stake for you, singing; now I don’t value you the flip of a farthing. But, for old time’s sake, I warn you. You and your brother are Rokesle’s guests–on Usk! Harry Heleigh [Footnote: Henry Heleigh, thirteenth Earl of Brudenel, who succeeded his cousin the twelfth Earl in 1759, and lived to a great age. Bavois, writing in 1797, calls him “a very fine, strong old gentleman.”] can handle a sword, I grant you,–but you are on Usk! And Mrs. Morfit is here to play propriety–propriety on Usk, God save the mark! And besides, Rokesle can twist his sister about his little finger, as the phrase runs. And I find sentinels at the door! I don’t like it, Anastasia. In his way Rokesle loves you; more than that, you are an ideal match to retrieve his battered fortunes; and the name of my worthy patron, I regret to say, is not likely ever to embellish the Calendar of Saints.”