“How did it happen?” she asked, faintly, at last.
“Things went wrong wi’ him—bad wrong in Parliament and everywhere, and he didn’t take it well. He stood the world off like-ay, he had no temper for black days. He shut himself up at Hamley in his chemical place, like his father, like his father before him. When the week-end came, there he was all day and night among his bottles and jars and wires. He was after summat big in experiment for explosives, so the papers said, and so he said himself before he died, to Miss Claridge—ay, ‘twas her he deceived and treated cruel, that come to him when he was shattered by his experimenting. No patience, he had at last—and reckless in his chemical place, and didn’t realise what his hands was doing. ‘Twas so he told her, that forgave him all his deceit, and held him in her arms when he died. Not many words he had to speak; but he did say that he had never done any good to any one—ay, I was standing near behind his bed and heard all, for I was thinking of her alone with him, and so I would be with her, and she would have it so. Ay, and he said that he had misused cruel her that had loved him, her ladyship, that’s here. He said he had misused her because he had never loved her truly, only pride and vainglory being in his heart. Then he spoke summat to her that was there to forgive him and help him over the stile ‘twixt this field and it that’s Beyond and Away, which made her cry out in pain and say that he must fix his thoughts on other things. And she prayed out loud for him, for he would have no parson there. She prayed and prayed as never priest or parson prayed, and at last he got quiet and still, and, when she stopped praying, he did not speak or open his eyes for a longish while. But when the old clock on the stable was striking twelve, he opened his eyes wide, and when it had stopped, he said: ‘It is always twelve by the clock that stops at noon. I’ve done no good. I’ve earned my end.’ He looked as though he was waiting for the clock to go on striking, half raising himself up in bed, with Miss Faith’s arm under his head. He whispered to her then—he couldn’t speak by this time. ‘It’s twelve o’clock,’ he said. Then there came some words I’ve heard the priest say at Mass, ‘Vanitas, Vanitatum,’—that was what he said. And her he’d lied to, there with him, laying his head down on the pillow, as if he was her child going to sleep. So, too, she had him buried by her father, in the Quaker burying-ground—ay, she is a saint on earth, I warrant.”
For a moment after he had stopped the Duchess did not speak, but kept untying and tying the blue ribbons under her chin, her faded eyes still fastened on him, burning with the flame of an emotion which made them dark and young again.
“So, it’s all over,” she said, as though to herself. “They were all alike, from old Broadbrim, the grandfather, down to this one, and back to William the Conqueror.”
“Like as peas in a pod,” exclaimed Soolsby—“all but one, all but one, and never satisfied with what was in their own garden, but peeking, peeking beyond the hedge, and climbing and getting a fall. That’s what they’ve always been evermore.”
His words aroused the Duchess, and the air became a little colder about her-after all, the division between the classes and the masses must be kept, and the Eglingtons were no upstarts. “You will say nothing about this till I give you leave to speak,” she commanded. “I must tell her ladyship.”
Soolsby drew himself up a little, nettled at her tone. “It is your grace’s place to tell her ladyship,” he responded; “but I’ve taken ten years’ savings to come to Egypt, and not to do any one harm, but good, if so be I might.”
The Duchess relented at once. She got to her feet as quickly as she could, and held out her hand to him. “You are a good man, and a friend worth having, I know, and I shall like you to be my friend, Mr. Soolsby,” she said impulsively.
He took her hand and shook it awkwardly, his lips working. “Your grace, I understand. I’ve got naught to live for except my friends. Money’s naught, naught’s naught, if there isn’t a friend to feel a crunch at his heart when summat bad happens to you. I’d take my affydavy that there’s no better friend in the world than your grace.”
She smiled at him. “And so we are friends, aren’t we? And I am to tell her ladyship, and you are to say ‘naught.’