Cashel Byron's Profession Part 7

"Which is certainly not suggestive of a valetudinarian," remarked Lucian, looking hard at the stranger.

They had now come close to the two, and could hear Lord Worthington, as he prepared to enter the carriage, saying, "Take care of yourself, like a good fellow, won't you? Remember! if it lasts a second over the fifteen minutes, I shall drop five hundred pounds."

Hermes placed his arm round the shoulders of the young lord and gave him a playful roll. Then he said with good accent and p.r.o.nunciation, but with a certain rough quality of voice, and louder than English gentlemen usually speak, "Your money is as safe as the mint, my boy."

Evidently, Alice thought, the stranger was an intimate friend of Lord Worthington. She resolved to be particular in her behavior before him, if introduced.

"Lord Worthington," said Lydia.

At the sound of her voice he climbed hastily down from the step of the carriage, and said in some confusion, "How d' do, Miss Carew. Lovely country and lovely weather--must agree awfully well with you. Plenty of leisure for study, I hope."

"Thank you; I never study now. Will you make a book for me at Ascot?"

He laughed and shook his head. "I am ashamed of my low tastes," he said; "but I haven't the heap to distinguish myself in your--Eh?"

Miss Carew was saying in a low voice, "If your friend is my tenant, introduce him to me."

Lord Worthington hesitated, looked at Lucian, seemed perplexed and amused at the name time, and at last said,

"You really wish it?"

"Of course," said Lydia. "Is there any reason--"

"Oh, not the least in the world since you wish it," he replied quickly, his eyes twinkling mischievously as he turned to his companion who was standing at the carriage door admiring Lydia, and being himself admired by the stoker. "Mr. Cashel Byron: Miss Carew."

Mr. Cashel Byron raised his straw hat and reddened a little; but, on the whole, bore himself like an eminent man who was not proud. As, however, he seemed to have nothing to say for himself, Lord Worthington hastened to avert silence by resuming the subject of Ascot. Lydia listened to him, and looked at her new acquaintance. Now that the constraint of society had banished his former expression of easy good-humor, there was something formidable in him that gave her an unaccountable thrill of pleasure. The same impression of latent danger had occurred, less agreeably, to Lucian, who was affected much as he might have been by the proximity of a large dog of doubtful temper. Lydia thought that Mr.

Byron did not, at first sight, like her cousin; for he was looking at him obliquely, as though steadily measuring him.

The group was broken up by the guard admonis.h.i.+ng the gentlemen to take their seats. Farewells were exchanged; and Lord Worthington cried, "Take care of yourself," to Cashel Byron, who replied somewhat impatiently, and with an apprehensive glance at Miss Carew, "All right! all right!

Never you fear, sir." Then the train went off, and he was left on the platform with the two ladies.

"We are returning to the park, Mr. Cashel Byron," said Lydia.

"So am I," said he. "Perhaps--" Here he broke down, and looked at Alice to avoid Lydia's eye. Then they went out together.

When they had walked some distance in silence, Alice looking rigidly before her, recollecting with suspicion that he had just addressed Lord Worthington as "sir," while Lydia was admiring his light step and perfect balance, which made him seem like a man of cork; he said,

"I saw you in the park yesterday, and I thought you were a ghost. But my trai--my man, I mean--saw you too. I knew by that that you were genuine."

"Strange!" said Lydia. "I had the same fancy about you."

"What! You had!" he exclaimed, looking at her. While thus unmindful of his steps, he stumbled, and recovered himself with a stifled oath. Then he became very red, and remarked that it was a warm evening.

Miss Goff, whom he had addressed, a.s.sented. "I hope," she added, "that you are better."

He looked puzzled. Concluding, after consideration, that she had referred to his stumble, he said,

"Thank you: I didn't hurt myself."

"Lord Worthington has been telling us about you," said Lydia. He recoiled, evidently deeply mortified. She hastened to add, "He mentioned that you had come down here to recruit your health; that is all."

Cashel's features relaxed into a curious smile. But presently he became suspicious, and said, anxiously, "He didn't tell you anything else about me, did he?"

Alice stared at him superciliously. Lydia replied, "No. Nothing else."

"I thought you might have heard my name somewhere," he persisted.

"Perhaps I have; but I cannot recall in what connection. Why? Do you know any friend of mine?"

"Oh, no. Only Lord Worthington."

"I conclude then that you are celebrated, and that I have the misfortune not to know it, Mr. Cashel Byron. Is it so?"

"Not a bit of it," he replied, hastily. "There's no reason why you should ever have heard of me. I am much obliged to you for your kind inquiries," he continued, turning to Alice. "I'm quite well now, thank you. The country has set me right again."

Alice, who was beginning to have her doubts of Mr. Byron, in spite of his familiarity with Lord Worthington, smiled falsely and drew herself up a little. He turned away from her, hurt by her manner, and so ill able to conceal his feelings that Miss Carew, who was watching him, set him down privately as the most inept dissimulator she had ever met. He looked at Lydia wistfully, as if trying to read her thoughts, which now seemed to be with the setting sun, or in some equally beautiful and mysterious region. But he could see that there was no reflection of Miss Goff's scorn in her face.

"And so you really took me for a ghost," he said.

"Yes. I thought at first that you were a statue."

"A statue!"

"You do not seem flattered by that."

"It is not flattering to be taken for a lump of stone," he replied, ruefully.

Lydia looked at him thoughtfully. Here was a man whom she had mistaken for the finest image of manly strength and beauty in the world; and he was so devoid of artistic culture that he held a statue to be a distasteful lump of stone.

"I believe I was trespa.s.sing then," she said; "but I did so unintentionally. I had gone astray; for I am comparatively a stranger here, and cannot find my way about the park yet."

"It didn't matter a bit," said Cashel, impetuously. "Come as often as you want. Mellish fancies that if any one gets a glimpse of me he won't get any odds. You see he would like people to think--" Cashel checked himself, and added, in some confusion, "Mellish is mad; that's about where it is."

Alice glanced significantly at Lydia. She had already suggested that madness was the real reason of the seclusion of the tenants at the Warren. Cashel saw the glance, and intercepted it by turning to her and saying, with an attempt at conversational ease,

"How do you young ladies amuse yourselves in the country? Do you play billiards ever?"

"No," said Alice, indignantly. The question, she thought, implied that she was capable of spending her evenings on the first floor of a public-house. To her surprise, Lydia remarked,

"I play--a little. I do not care sufficiently for the game to make myself proficient. You were equipped for lawn-tennis, I think, when I saw you yesterday. Miss Goff is a celebrated lawn-tennis player. She vanquished the Australian champion last year."

It seemed that Byron, after all, was something of a courtier; for he displayed great astonishment at this feat. "The Australian champion!" he repeated. "And who may HE--Oh! you mean the lawn-tennis champion. To be sure. Well, Miss Goff, I congratulate you. It is not every amateur that can brag of having shown a professional to a back seat."

Alice, outraged by the imputation of bragging, and certain that slang was vulgar, whatever billiards might be, bore herself still more loftily, and resolved to snub him explicitly if he addressed her again.

But he did not; for they presently came to a narrow iron gate in the wall of the park, at which Lydia stopped.

"Let me open it for you," said Cashel. She gave him the key, and he seized one of the bars of the gate with his left hand, and stooped as though he wanted to look into the keyhole. Yet he opened it smartly enough.