My Lord Duke

by E. W. Hornung

Overnight the pair had arrived too late to see much more than the lofty, antique hall and the respective rooms in which they were to sup and sleep; but the birds awoke Jack in the early morning, and he was up and out before seven o'clock.

As yet he had seen little that attracted him within, and at this hour he felt a childish horror of the dark colossal canvases overhanging the grand staircase and the hall; like the sightless suits of armour standing blind sentinel below, they froze him with the look of lifeless life about the grim, gigantic figures. He was thankful to see one of the great double doors standing open to the sun; it let him out into a portico loftier than the hall; and folding his arms across a stone balustrade, the whilom bushman looked forth between Corinthian columns like the masts of a ship, and was monarch of all he beheld.

A broad and stately terrace ran right and left below; beyond and below this, acres of the smoothest, greenest sward were relieved by a few fine elms, with the deer still in clusters about their trunks. The lawn sloped quietly to the verdant shores of a noble lake; sun and dew had dusted the grass with silver; sun and wind were rippling the lake with flakes of flame like leaping gold-fish; and across the water, on the rising ground, a plantation of young pines ran their points into the radiant sky. These trees appealed to the Duke more than anything he had seen yet. His last bush hut had been built among pines; and such is the sentimental attraction of the human heart towards a former condition—better or worse, if it be but beyond recall—that the Duke of St. Osmund's had to inspect that plantation before anything else. Leaving the Towers behind him, unnoticed and indeed forgotten, he crossed the lawn, skirted the lake, and plunged amid the pine-trees as his impulse spurred him. But on his way back, a little later, the mellow grandeur of that ancient pile broke in upon him at last, and he stood astounded in the wet grass, the blood of possession running hot in his veins.

The historic building stretched on this side for something like a quarter of a mile from end to end. Here the blue sky sank deep between turret and spire, and there it picked out a line of crumbling battlements, or backed the upper branches of an elm that (from this point) cut the expanse of stone in two. It had grown out of many attempts in as many ages; thus, besides architectural discrepancies for the eyes of the few, the shading of the walls was as finely graduated as that of an aging beard, but the prevailing tint was a pearly gray, now washed with purple, and exquisitely softened by the tender haze still lingering in the dewy air. And from every window that Jack could see, flashed a morning sun; for as he stood and looked, his shadow lay in front of him along the milky grass.

To one extremity of the building clung an enormous conservatory, likewise ablaze from dome to masonry; at the other, the dark hues of a shrubbery rested the eye; but that of the Duke was used to the sunlit desert, and not readily dazzled. His quick glance went like a bullet through the trees to a red gable and the gilt hands of a clock just visible beyond. On the instant he recovered from his enchantment, and set off for the shrubbery at a brisk walk; for he had heard much of the Maske stables, and evidently there they were.

As he was in the shrubbery, the stable clock struck eight after a melodious chime sadly spoilt by the incessant barking of some small dog; the last stroke reverberated as he emerged, and the dog had the morning air to itself, to murder with its hideous clamour. But the Duke now saw the exciting cause, and it excited him; for he had come out opposite the stable-yard gates, which were shut, but from the top of which, with its lame paw lifted, a vertical tail, and a back like a hedgehog asleep, his own yellow cat spat defiance at an unseen foe. And between the barks came the voice of a man inciting the dog with a filthy relish.

"Set him off, Pickle! Now's your time. Try again. Oh, blow me, if you can't you can't, and I'll have to lend you a hand."

And one showed over the gate with the word, but the fingers grabbed the air, for Jack had snatched his pet in the nick of time. He was now busy with the ring of the latch, fumbling it in his fury. The breath came in gusts through his set teeth and bristling beard. One hand clasped the yellow cat in a fierce caress; the other knotted into a fist as the gate flew open.

In the yard a hulking, smooth-faced fellow, whose pendulous under-lip had dropped in dismay, changed his stare for a grin when he saw the Duke, who was the smaller as well as the rougher-looking man of the two; for he had not only come out without his collar, which he discarded whenever he could; but he had clapped on the old bush wideawake because Claude was not up to stop him.

"Well, and who are you?" began the other cheerfully.