Beaumaroy Home from the Wars Part 22

"Conventual!" Beaumaroy murmured.

"Yours isn't. It's all personal with you. You recognize no rights in people whom you don't like, or who you think aren't deserving, or haven't earned rights. And you don't judge your own rights by what the law gives you, either. The right of conquest you called it; you hold yourself free to exercise that against everybody, except your friends, and against everybody in the interest of your friends--like poor Mr.

Saffron. I believe you'd do the same for me if I asked you to."

"I'm glad you believe that, Doctor Mary."

"But I can't deal with you on that basis. It's even difficult to be friends on that basis--and certainly impossible to be partners."

"I never suggested that we should be partners over the money," Beaumaroy put in quickly.

"No. But I'm suggesting now--as you did before--that we should be partners--in a secret--in Mr. Saffron's secret." She smiled again as she added, "You can manage it all, I know, if you like. I've unlimited confidence in your ingenuity--quite unlimited."

"But none at all in my honesty?"

"You've got an honesty; but I don't call it a really honest honesty."

"All this leads up to--the Radbolts!" declared Beaumaroy, with a gesture of disgust.

"It does. I want your word of honour--given to a friend--that all that money--all of it--goes to the Radbolts, if it legally belongs to them. I want that in exchange for the certificate."

"A hard bargain! It isn't so much that I want the money--though I must remark that in my judgment I have a strong claim to it; I would say a moral claim but for my deference to your views, Doctor Mary. But it isn't mainly that. I hate the Radbolts getting it--just as much as the old man would have hated it."

"I have given you my--my terms," said Mary.

Beaumaroy stood looking down at her, his hands in his pockets. His face was twisted in a humorous disgust. Mary laughed gently. "It is possible to--to keep the rules without being a prig, you know, though I believe you think it isn't."

"Including the sack in the water-b.u.t.t? My sack--the sack I rescued?"

"Including the bag in the water-b.u.t.t. Yes--every single sovereign!"

Though Mary was pursuing the high moral line, there was now more mischief than gravity in her demeanour.

"Well, I'll do it!" He evidently spoke with a great effort. "I'll do it!

But, look here, Doctor Mary, you'll live to be sorry you made me do it.

Oh, I don't mean that that conscience of yours will be sorry. That'll approve, no doubt, being the extremely conventionalized thing it is. But you yourself--you'll be sorry--or I'm much mistaken in the Radbolts."

"It isn't a question of the Radbolts," she insisted, laughing.

"Oh yes, it is, and you'll come to feel it so." Beaumaroy was equally obstinate.

Mary rose. "Then that's settled--and we needn't keep Captain Alec waiting any longer."

"How do you know that I shan't cheat you?" he asked.

"I don't know how I know that," Mary admitted. "But I do know it. And I want to tell you----"

She suddenly felt embarra.s.sed under his gaze; her cheeks flushed, but she went on resolutely:

"To tell you how glad, how happy, I am that it all ends like this; that the poor old man is free of his fancies and his fears, beyond both our pity and our laughter."

"Aye, he's earned rest, if there is to be rest for any of us!"

"And you can rest too. And you can laugh with us, and not at us. Isn't that, after all, a more human sort of laughter?"

She was smiling still as she gave him her hand, but he saw that tears stood in her eyes. The next instant she gave a little sob.

"Doctor Mary!" he exclaimed in rueful expostulation.

"No, no, how stupid you are!" She laughed through her sob. "It's not unhappiness!" She pressed his hand tightly for an instant and then walked quickly out of the house, calling back to him, "Don't come, please don't come. I'd rather go to Captain Alec by myself."

Left alone in the cottage, now so quiet and so peaceful, Beaumaroy mused awhile as he smoked his pipe. Then he turned to his labours--his final night of work in the Tower. There was much to do, very much to do; he achieved his task towards morning. When day dawned, there was nothing but water in the water-b.u.t.t, and in the Tower no furnis.h.i.+ngs were visible save three chairs--a high carved one by the fireplace, and two much smaller on the little platform under the window. The faded old red carpet on the floor was the only attempt at decoration. And in still one thing more the Tower was different from what it had been. Beaumaroy contented himself with pasting brown paper over the pane on which Mike had operated. He did not replace the match-boarding over the window, but stowed it away in the coal-shed. The place was horribly in need of suns.h.i.+ne and fresh air--and the old gentleman was no longer alive to fear the draught!

When the undertaker came up to the cottage that afternoon, he glanced from the parlour, through the open door, into the Tower.

"Driving past on business, sir," he remarked to Beaumaroy, "I've often wondered what the old gentleman did with that there Tower. But it looks as if he didn't make no use of it."

"We sometimes stored things in it," said Beaumaroy. "But, as you see, there's nothing much there now."

But then the undertaker, worthy man, could not see through the carpet, or through the lid of Captain Duggle's grave. That was full--fuller than it had been at any period of its history. In it lay the wealth, the sceptre, and the trappings of dead majesty. For wherein did Mr.

Saffron's dead majesty differ from the dead majesty of other kings?

CHAPTER XVII

THE CHIEF MOURNERS

The attendance was small at Mr. Saffron's funeral. Besides meek and depressed Mrs. Wiles, and Beaumaroy himself, Doctor Mary found herself, rather to her surprise, in company with old Mr. Naylor. On comparing notes she discovered that, like herself, he had come on Beaumaroy's urgent invitation and, moreover, that he was engaged also to come on afterwards to Tower Cottage, where Beaumaroy was to entertain the chief mourners at a midday repast. "Glad enough to show my respect to a neighbour," said old Naylor. "And I always liked the old man's looks.

But really I don't see why I should go to lunch! However, Beaumaroy----!"

Mary did not see why he should go to lunch--nor, for that matter, why she should either, but curiosity about the chief mourners made her glad that she was going. The chief mourners did not look, at first sight, attractive. Mr. Radbolt was a short plump man, with a weaselly face and cunning eyes; his wife's eyes, of a greeny colour, stared stolidly out from her broad red face; she was taller than her mate, and her figure contrived to be at once stout and angular. All through the service, Beaumaroy's gaze was set on the pair as they sat or stood in front of him, wandering from the one to the other in an apparently fascinated study.

At the cottage he entertained his party in the parlour with a generous hospitality, and treated the Radbolts with most courteous deference. The man responded with the best manners that he had--who can do more? The woman was much less cordial; she was curt, and treated Beaumaroy rather as the servant than the friend of her dead cousin; there was a clear suggestion of suspicion in her bearing towards him. After a broad stare of astonishment on her introduction to "Dr. Arkroyd," she took very little notice of Mary; only to Mr. Naylor was she clumsily civil and even rather cringing; it was clear that in him she acknowledged the gentleman. He sat by her, and she tried to insinuate herself into a private conversation with him, apart from the others, probing him as to his knowledge of the dead man and his mode of living. Her questions hovered persistently round the point of Mr. Saffron's expenditure.

"Mr. Saffron was not a friend of mine," Naylor found it necessary to explain. "I had few opportunities of observing his way of life, even if I had felt any wish to do so."

"I suppose Beaumaroy knew all about his affairs," she suggested.

"As to that, I think you must ask Mr. Beaumaroy himself."

"From what the lawyers say, the old man seems to have been getting rid of his money, somehow or to somebody," she grumbled in a positive whisper.

To Mr. Naylor's intense relief, Beaumaroy interrupted this conversation.

"Well, how do you like this little place, Mrs. Radbolt?" he asked cheerfully. "Not a bad little crib, is it? Don't you think so too, Dr.

Arkroyd?" Throughout this gathering Beaumaroy was very punctilious with his "Dr. Arkroyd." One would have thought that Mary and he were almost strangers.

"Yes, I like it," said Mary. "The Tower makes it rather unusual and picturesque." This was not really her sincere opinion; she was playing up to Beaumaroy, convinced that he had opened some conversational manoeuvre.