Полная версияSir Hilton's Sin
“Yes. Oh, indeed!” cried Sir Hilton, grasping at his advantage. “Pray, madam, will you be good enough to explain.”
Lady Tilborough, who had drawn back behind the couch to give the principals in this domestic scene room to develop their quarrel, exchanged mirthful glances with the doctor.
“Taking the bull by the horns,” whispered Granton.
“Cow!” whispered back Lady Tilborough, correctively, and she laid her hands upon the piled-up Polar bear skin to support herself, but snatched them away with a look of alarm at the doctor, one which changed to a glance full of inquiry, his answer from a yard or so away being a gesture with the hands which, being interpreted, meant, Haven’t the least idea. But he moved a little nearer, touched the skin, and then whispered the one word: “Dog!”
Lady Tilborough felt comforted, nodded her head and turned her eyes from the doctor to watch the domestic scene, and then felt uncomfortable, for she found that Lady Lisle’s attention had been drawn to what was going on between her and the doctor concerning the strangely piled-up hill of white fur, and her dark eyes were now fixed upon her uninvited visitor with a furious look of suspiciously jealous rage.
Lady Lisle saw in all this a means of making a counter attack upon her husband’s desperate assault, and she seized upon the weapon proffered by fate at once.
“Don’t add insult to injury before these friends of yours, sir,” she cried, fully equipped now for the counter attack; “and pray do not imagine that you have blinded me by this contemptible dust you are trying to throw in my eyes.”
“Dust, madam?” cried Sir Hilton, some what staggered by the reaction that had taken place.
“Yes, sir – dust. You forget that I was a witness to your appearance in that den of infamy.”
“Den of infamy, madam?”
“Yes, sir; den of infamy – disgracefully inebriated.”
“Oh, poor old Hilton!” whispered Granton. “I must – ”
“Silence!” cried Lady Lisle, turning upon the speaker, in the tones and with the air of a tragedy queen, her eyes flashing again as she saw a peculiar movement beneath the Polar bear skin, from the bottom of which there was the sudden protrusion of a very prettily-booted little foot.
“Yes, Sir Hilton,” continued Lady Lisle, pressing her hands upon her heaving bosom to keep down the seething passion. “I repeat, disgracefully inebriated, dressed in the low, flaunting guise of a jockey.”
“Oh, dear,” groaned Sir Hilton, completely taken aback.
“And forgetting the wife who rescued you from ruin – home – position – even yourself, as a man bearing an honoured title in the country, stooping to toy and play with that – abandoned creature.”
“What!”
“Whom you have had the audacity to bring with you into this – my house.”
“My dear madam!” cried Lady Tilborough, indignantly.
“Silence, woman!” shouted the furious wife. “Do you think me blind? Did I not see you and your confederate plotting together just now to try and hide his shame?”
“No,” cried Granton; “nothing of the kind.”
“Laura!” roared Sir Hilton. “You must be mad!”
“Mad? Ha, ha!” cried Lady Lisle, hysterically, and covering three yards in a gliding rush that would have been a triumph upon the stage she seized the Polar bear skin with both hands, whisked it off, and displayed the sleeping figure of poor little Molly, flushed, dishevelled, not to say touzled, by the heavy covering from which she had been freed, and just aroused sufficiently to open a pair of pretty red lips and say drowsily —
“Kiss me, dear.”
“Ha!” ejaculated Lady Lisle, with her eyes darting daggers, and her fingers playing instinctively the part of a savage barbarian-woman face to face with the rival who has supplanted her with the man she loved – they crooked themselves into claws.
“Well, I am blowed!” exclaimed Sir Hilton, with a puzzled look of horror and despair so wildly comical, aided as it was by his making a drag with both hands at his already too thin hair.
“Now, sir,” cried Lady Lisle, “what have you to say to that?”
Crash!
Chapter Twenty Four.
The Tout’s Final
That crash was not a human utterance proceeding from the lips of Sir Hilton Lisle, but a sudden shivering of glass, followed closely by the falling of big flower-pots in the conservatory, amidst the breaking of woodwork and rustling twigs and leaves.
But a human utterance followed in an angry, raucous voice which shouted —
“Oh, murder! I’ve done it now; I’ve broke my blooming leg.”
While faintly heard from somewhere outside there was the yelping, barking, howling whine of a dog.
The effect was magical.
The ladies shrieked, the sleeper awakened, and sat up, frightened and wondering, rubbing her eyes, and, as the two gentlemen rushed into the conservatory, the two doors of the drawing-room were thrown open, for Mark and Jane to enter by one, Syd and Sam Simpkins by the other.
“Oh, Syd!” sobbed Molly, holding out her arms.
“Oh, dear!” sighed the boy, after a glance at the great skin upon the floor; “the cat’s out of the bag now.”
“Yes, reg’lar,” growled the trainer. “There, don’t you squeal, my gal. There’s enough to do the high strikes without you, and I’m going to see as you have your rights.”
“Syd, my darling, come here,” cried Lady Lisle. “What does all this mean?”
The boy was saved from answering by the action of Mark, who had darted into the conservatory, dog-like, on hearing a scuffle going on, and more breaking of glass, so as to be in the fight, and he now backed in, dragging at the dilapidated legs of the race-tout, helped by Sir Hilton and Granton, each of whom had hold of an arm, as they deposited their capture on the carpet. “Gently, Marky Willows,” said the prisoner, coolly; “one of them legs is broke.”
“Broken! Which?” cried the doctor, the natural instinct of his craft rising above the feeling of triumph over the capture. In an instant he was upon one knee, feeling for the fracture, “Why, they’re both right enough.”
“Air they?” said the tout, coolly. “A blooming good job too! I thought one was gone. Here, Marky, would you mind getting me my boots?”
“Your boots?” cried the groom, looking with disgust, in the broadening daylight, at a pair of very dirty, stockingless feet.
“Yes, lad; they’re jus’ behind that there spiky plant in the big tub.”
“There, Mark!” cried Jane, triumphantly. “Burglars! What did I say?”
“Burglars, be hanged!”
“You scoundrel!” cried Sir Hilton. “What were you doing there?” and, as if answering, the piteous wailing of a dog came from outside.
“Trying to get out to my poor little dawg, Sir Rilton, on’y my foot slipped just as I was opening that top light. You oughter be ashamed of yourself, you ought!”
“Well, of all the effrontery!” cried Granton.
“So he oughter, doctor. That there flower-stand’s painted up ter rights, but it’s rotten as touchwood.”
“You ruffian! You broke in, and have been hidden there all the time.”
“Broke in, Sir Rilton. Nay, I wouldn’t do sech a thing. I come in at that glass door right and proper enough, to try and see her ladyship about that pretty little dawg, but she and you was so busy having a row over the family washing that I says to myself, ‘The best thing you can do, Dinny’s to call again,’ and I was going to call again, as I says, when that beggarly rotten old flower-stand give way. Hark at the pretty little dear asking for his master.”
For the puppy whined again.
“Well, you’re a pretty scoundrel!” cried the doctor. “You dirty brute! Here, Hilt, old fellow, I should have him locked-up in a horse-box while you send for the police.”
“What!” shouted the tout, struggling up into a sitting position. “What for?”
“Burgling,” cried Sir Hilton.
“Not me, sir. I ain’t no burglar. Where’s my jemmies and dark lanthorns, and where’s the swag? I swear I ain’t touched a thing.”
“You may swear that if you like when you’re brought up before the Bench, where I’m chairman, as it happens.”
“Me – police – brought up before the Bench? You won’t do it, Sir Rilton. I knows too much.”
“What!” cried Sir Hilton and the doctor together, while the ladies exchanged glances.
“You don’t want the dirty linen washed in public,” said the tout, with a chuckle. “Her ladyship there said so.”
“Enough of this,” cried Lady Lisle, who had recovered herself. “Let this man be taken away and secured till the police come.”
The imperious words had their effect upon one who was present, Mark collaring the tout.
“And you – man,” continued Lady Lisle, “are that – person’s father.” She uttered the word “person” in a tone, innocent as the appellation was, so acid that it made, the trainer bristly and Syd more of a man.
“Yes, I’m her father, my lady, but it’s no use to cut up rough.”
“Silence, man!” cried Lady Lisle, indignantly; “take the creature away.”
“Shan’t!” roared the trainer, starting. “She’s my gal, and she shall have her rights.”
“Syd!” cried poor Molly, in a passionate burst of tears, and she turned and flung her arms round the boy’s neck.
“Syd, my child!” wailed Lady Lisle, passionately. “You too? Has it come to this?”
“Yes,” sobbed and wailed the poor, pretty, childish-looking thing, turning now upon Lady Lisle and throwing up her dishevelled head, “of course it has; and he ain’t yours now – he’s mine, ain’t you, Syd dear, and you won’t let your poor little wife be abused like that, will you?”
“No,” cried the boy, stoutly, as Lady Lisle clapped her hands to her temples, and stared as if she could not believe her eyes and ears.
“Yes, auntie dear, it’s all right; this is my darling little wife, and we love one another like – Here, what’s the matter with you?”
This was to the doctor, who suddenly threw up his hands, spun round with his face to Lady Tilborough, and began stamping about, laughing hysterically, seeming moment by moment as if he would choke.
“Here, Lady Tilborough – Hetty darling,” he half sobbed, “take me away. I shall have a fit!”
“Be quiet, dear,” she whispered, catching him by the arm. “I shall break down too. Listen – pray listen! The whitewashing of poor old Hilt.”
Poor old Hilt had also clapped his hands to his head, and looked for a moment as if his horrible fit of semi-delirium was returning and the drug he had taken about to resume its sway.
“Here – water!” he cried. “No – no, I think I understand. Here, Syd, my boy, is this all true?”
“Yes, uncle, it’s true enough; and I’m proud of her.”
“So am I, Syd – so am I. Hooray! Bless you, my boy! Bless you, too, my pretty little darling!” he cried, catching Molly in his arms and kissing her roundly again and again, while the pretty, childish-looking little thing clasped him round the neck, smiled in his face, and replied with a sharp, chirruping smack.
“Hilton!” cried Lady Lisle.
“But it’s Syd’s wife, my dear.”
“Yes, my lady,” cried the trainer, “and she’s got her rights.”
“Rights? Right,” corrected Sir Hilton, taking Molly’s hand, and tucking it under his arm, to drag her shivering before the fierce-looking sharer of his joys.
“Can’t you see, my dear, that it’s all right? Now then, tell the poor little girl that you’re ashamed of what you said.”
Lady Lisle drew herself up, and seemed to be swallowing something that forced its way into her throat. Then, coldly —
“Yes,” she said, “I retract everything that I said – to – Syd’s – Oh, the horror of it!” she gasped. “Syd’s wife. But as for you, sir – yes, I wronged you, too, by those terrible thoughts; but all is at an end between us.”
“Eh?” ejaculated Sir Hilton.
“All is at an end between us. Never can I take the hand of man again who could stoop to playing the part of a common jockey.”
“But it was for the best, my dear.”
“Yes, Lady Lisle,” cried Lady Tilborough, “and to save two very old friends from ruin and despair.”
“Yes, Lady Lisle; that is a fact,” cried Granton.
“Possibly,” said Lady Lisle, coldly.
“And I’ll never do so any more, Laura.”
“Perhaps not,” said the lady, half-hysterically, for something was dragging her hard in her heaving bosom; “but I cannot trust the word of a man who has degraded himself as you did with drink.”
“Haw, haw, haw!” cried Dandy Dinny, in his most raucous tones.
“You hold your row,” said Mark, giving his prisoner a shake.
“Shee – ahn’t!” growled the man.
“Ah, Mr Trimmer, you are there,” cried Lady Lisle, as the door opened and the agent, looking pale, but particularly neat in his dark Oxford mixture suit and white, much-starched cravat, entered, to look wonderingly round at the strange scene, and wince as he caught the trainer’s eyes; but Lady Lisle’s look fascinated him, and he could not retreat.
“Yes, my lady,” he said in his blandest tones. “I heard the noise of breaking glass, and I hurriedly dressed and came down.”
“Come here. I want your assistance badly. I am glad to have someone in whom I can place trust.”
She took a step towards the agent, and raised her hand as if to place it upon Trimmer’s arm, and her lips parted to ask him to lead her from the room, when Dandy Dinny shouted coarsely to Trimmer —
“What, my lovely Methody P.! How much did you lose on the race?”
“Lose – race?” cried Lady Lisle, shrinking away, with white circles seeming to form round her dark, dilating eyes. “Surely, Mr Trimmer, you were not there?”
“Why, of course he was, auntie,” cried Syd. “I saw the old humbug twice.”
“What!” half shrieked Lady Lisle, “is there no one in whom I can trust?”
“Yes, my lady,” cried the tout, harshly. “You trust to me, and buy that little white dawg – no, I’ll make yer a present of it, if you’ll cry quits about me being here. No, you don’t, Marky; I’m going to speak. I’m a-going to give her ladyship the right tip, and my tips are the real square right ’uns.”
There was a bit of a struggle, which was checked by Sir Hilton, who, as if inspired by his thoughts, interfered.
“Yes, my dear,” he said; “hear what the man says.”
“Right you are, Sir Rilton. You always was a gent as I respected. Look here, my lady, don’t you be so hard on a gent as likes to go in for a bit of the real true old English sport. I know, my lady – yes, I’ve jest done, and then I’ll put on my boots. Pricked my foot, I did, with that there spiky plahnt. Here, don’t you think anything o’ that drop o’ fizz he had. Sir Rilton didn’t have enough to make him tight.”
“No – on my soul I didn’t, Laura,” cried Sir Hilton. “The man’s right.”
“Right I am, Sir Rilton,” cried the tout. “No, you don’t, my white-chokered herb!” he shouted, making a dash at Trimmer, who was quietly making for the door. “Got him! You, Mark Willows, you collar old Sam Simpkins. He’s t’other customer in that little game.”
“Here, what do you mean, sir?” said Sir Hilton, sternly.
“Mean, Sir Rilton – mean, Lady Lisle, and my Lady Tilborough – and Heaven bless my lady and the noble man of your chice – why, I mean this, as I see with these here eyes, going about and in and out selling my c’rect cards, all the starters, anceterer – No, you don’t; down you goes on your marrow-bones and makes confession to the lot.”
The tout had tightly hold of Trimmer’s collar as he spoke, and now, by a clever kick, he sent his legs from under him and pressed him down upon his knees, shivering, helpless, and whiter than ever.
“Now, my lady – now, all of you, here’s the real true tip: Sir Rilton here warn’t tight. He was hocussed with a dose o’ powder, so as he shouldn’t be able to ride La Sylphidey, and them’s the two as done it. That’s my tip.”
“A lie! You scoundrel! A lie!”
“I don’t understand him,” panted Lady Lisle.
“Hocussed him instead of the horse, my lady,” said the trainer, coolly. “You see, I couldn’t get at the mare to save myself from a heavy pull. Yes, my lady; yes, doctor, I mixed the dose, and I can assure you, Sir Hilton, that cham was real good.”
“But oh, daddy,” cried poor Molly, bursting into tears, “don’t say you did a thing like that!”
“’Bliged to, my gal; but I should never ha’ thought on it if it had not been for that smooth-tongued Trimmer. There, Sir Hilton. I’m very sorry, but I throw up the sponge.”
“Now, Laura,” cried Sir Hilton; “can’t you forgive me now?”
L’Envoi
The troubles never even got into the gossip column of the Tilborough County Despatch, in connection with the busy candidature of the popular sporting baronet for the vacant seat, and the retirement of Watcombe, the brewer, who was reported to have been beaten by his opponent “hands down.” For it was considered to be easier to let bygones be bygones, especially as Trimmer, the trustworthy agent of the Lisle estate, was reported to have resigned – the notice might have said disappeared – and in course of time, under the careful guidance of Lady Lisle, Mrs Sydney Smithers did not make such a very unpresentable little lady after all.
It took time, though, for Syd’s pretty wife was in the habit of making slangy slips redolent of the music-hall, as, for instance, when she made Lady Tilborough and the doctor, who both petted her and Syd, laugh till they wiped their eyes, by saying of Lady Lisle —
“Oh, yes, she’s ever so good to me, and I love her down to the ground; but she’s such a caution, don’tcherknow!”