The distant sound of the traffic in the road beyond the railing was like the muttering of an angry but distant sea. A white butterfly floated above the heat-scorched turf. Jack’s two little sunburnt hands were clasped on one of his own; he looked longingly and wistfully down on the child’s face and form as we look on what we cherish and may never see again.
“Jack,” said Brancepeth suddenly, “if you were never to see me any more after to-day would you remember me?”
Jack’s face had on it the distressed perplexed wonder with which children feel their hearts stirred by appeals which they very dimly understand; his eyes were suffused, his forehead frowned. “Of course I should,” he said almost crossly.
“Really?” said Brancepeth very wistfully.
“Yes,” said Jack very solemnly; then he burst out crying. “What do you say such things for?” he said between his sobs. “Where’s you going?”
“You dear little beggar,” said Harry, much moved himself, as he put his arm round the child’s shoulders and drew him closer. “I am not sure I’m going anywhere, but I may go a long way, and I mayn’t come back. Don’t cry. Listen. If you grow up without seeing me try and be a good man. Not such a beast as men are nowadays. Not such a fool as I am; a mere horse-riding, card-playing, dawdling, gaping, well-groomed tomfool. Keep out of the accursed London life. Don’t mind what women say. Tell the truth. Keep straight. Live on your land, if any land’s left when you’re of age. There are a lot of things I want to say to you, but I don’t know how to say ’em, and you’re too little, you wouldn’t understand. But don’t do as I’ve done, that’s all; and make yourself as like your uncle Ronnie as you can.”
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Katherine Massarene noticed that her father paired early in the season and was ordered by his physician to take the waters of Ems. But she made no remark on the fact, and her mother said, quite unsuspiciously, to her husband on his departure, “If you see the Duchess there, William, give her my love. She was looking worried and worn when she left.” She was always fascinated by that lovely apparition which had seemed to her so splendid an incarnation of aristocracy and grace, delicious insolence and incomparable sorcery.
“Them German waters are wonderful curers,” she said to her daughter. “They’re good for the Duchess’s nerves, and your father’s rheumatics.”
Katherine said nothing. Was her mother as simple as she seemed? she wondered. Herself, in her own despite, she felt a curious reluctant pity for Hurstmanceaux’s sister; such pity as she might have felt if she had seen a lithe young jaguar crushed by the hirsute strength of a baboon. The jaguar is itself cruel, stealthy, pitiless, but still—the duel is unequal, and is decided by sheer brutal savage force.