"If you can manage that it will be nice," the woman said.
"Anything can be managed in this country when we have got money to pay for it."
"At any rate it will be a comfort to know that there is no fear of your being shot here. Every time you went away from me, if it was only for a week or two, I knew I might never see you again, and that you might get shot by some of those drunken miners. Well, I shall be free of all that now, and I own that I was wrong to grumble. I shall be happy here with you, and I see that it was indeed fortunate that you found those papers on the body of the man you came across dead in the woods."
She looked closely at him as she spoke.
"Well, that is a subject that there is no use talking about, Lola. It was a slice of luck; but there is an English proverb, that walls have ears, and it is much better that you should try and forget the past. Remember only that I am William Tunstall, who has come back here after being away twenty years."
She nodded. "I shall not forget it. You know, you always said I was a splendid actress, and many a fool with more dollars than wit have I lured on, and got to play with you in the old days at Santa Fé."
"There, there, drop it, Lola," he said; "the less we have of old memories the better. Now we will have the servants in, or they will begin to think we have gone to sleep over our meal." And he struck the bell which the butler, when he went out, had placed on the table beside him.
"Have you been over the house?" he asked when they were alone again.
"Not over it all. The old woman she called herself the housekeeper showed me a great room which she said was the drawing-room, and a pretty little room which had been her mistress's boudoir, and another room full of books, and a gallery with a lot of ugly pictures in it, and the bed-room that is to be ours, and a lot of others opening out of it."
"Well, I will go over them now with you, Lola. Of course I am supposed to know them all. Ah! this is the boudoir. Well, I am sure you can be comfortable here, Lola. Those chairs are as soft and easy as a hammock. This will be your sanctum, and you can lounge and smoke, and play your guitar to your heart's content. Yes, this is a fine drawing-room, but it is a deal too large for two of us; though in summer, with the windows all open, I daresay it is pleasant enough." Having made a tour of the rooms that had been shown Lola, they came down to the hall again.
"Now let us stroll out into the garden," he said. "You will like that." He lit a cigar, and Lola a cigarette. The latter was unfeignedly delighted with the masses of flowers and the beautifully kept lawns, and the views from the terrace, with a stretch of fair country, and the sea sparkling in the sunshine two miles away.
"Here comes the head-gardener, Lola, my old friend. This is Sam, Lola," he said, as the gardener came up and touched his hat. "You know you have heard me speak of him. My wife is delighted with the garden, Sam. She has never seen an English garden before."
"It is past its best now, sir. You should have seen it two months ago."
"I don't think it could be more beautiful," Lola said; "there is nothing like this in my country. We have gardens with many flowers, but not grass like this, so smooth and so level. Does it grow no higher?"
"Oh, it grows fast enough, and a good deal too fast to please us, and has to be cut twice a week."
"I see you are looking surprised at my wife smoking," William Tunstall said with a smile. "In her country all ladies smoke. Show her the green-houses; I think they will surprise her even more than the garden."
The long ranges of green-houses were visited, and Sam was gratified at his new mistress's delight at the flowers, many of which she recognized, and still more at the fruit the grapes covering the roofs with black and yellow bunches; the peaches and nectarines nestling against the walls.
"The early sorts are all over," Sam said; "but I made a shift to keep these back, though I did not think there was much chance of any but the grapes being here when you got back, as we heard that you would not be home much before Christmas."
"We changed our mind, you see, Sam, and I am glad we did, for if we had come then, Mrs. Tunstall would have been frightened at the cold and bleakness. I'll tell you what I want done, Sam. I want this conservatory next the house filled as much as possible with Mexican and South American plants. Of course, you can put palms and other things that will stand heat along with them. I want the stages cleared away, and the place made to look as much like a room as possible. Mrs. Tunstall will use it as a sitting-room."
"I think we shall have to put another row of pipes in, Mr. William. Those plants will want more heat than we have got here."
"Then we must put them in. My wife will not care how hot it is, but of course we don't want tropical heat. I should put some rockery down the side here to hide the pipes, and in the centre we will have a fountain with water plants, a foot or two below the level of the floor, and a low bank of ferns round. That is the only change, as far as I can see, that we shall want in the house. I shall be going over to Carlisle in a day or two, and I'll arrange with somebody there to make the alterations."
"Very well, Mr. William, if you will get some masons to do the rockery and fountain, I can answer for the rest; but I think I shall need a good many fresh plants. We are not very strong in hot subjects. Mr. Edgar never cared for them much."
"If you will make out a list of what you want, and tell me who is the best man to send to, Sam, I will order them as soon as you are ready to put them in."
And so, when Hugh returned at Christmas for the holidays, he was astonished at finding his aunt swinging in a hammock, smoking a cigarette, slung near a sparkling little fountain, and surrounded by semi-tropical plants. The smoking did not surprise him, for he had often seen her with a cigarette during their trip together; but the transformation of the conservatory astonished him.
"Well, Hugh, what do you think of it?" she asked, smiling at his surprise.
"It is beautiful!" he said; "it isn't like a green-house. It is just like a bit out of a foreign country."
"That is what we tried to make it, Hugh. You see, on the side next to the house where there is a wall, we have had a Mexican view painted with a blue sky, such as we have there, and mountains, and a village at the foot of the hills. As I lie here I can fancy myself back again, if I don't look up at the sashes overhead. Oh, how I wish one could do without them, and that it could be covered with one great sheet of glass!"
"It would be better," Hugh admitted, "but it is stunning as it is. Uncle told me, as he drove me over from Carlisle, that he had been altering the conservatory, and making it a sort of sitting-room for you, but I never thought that it would be like this. What are those plants growing on the rocks?"
"Those are American aloes, they are one of our most useful plants, Hugh. They have strong fibres which we use for string, and they make a drink out of the juice fermented; it is called pulque, and is our national drink, though of late years people drink spirits too, which are bad for them, and make them quarrelsome."
During the holidays Hugh got over his former dislike for his aunt, and came to like her more than his uncle. She was always kind and pleasant with him, while he found that, although his uncle at times was very friendly, his temper was uncertain. The want of some regular occupation, and the absence of anything like excitement, told heavily upon a man accustomed to both. At first there was the interest in playing his part: of meeting people who had known him in his boyhood, of receiving and returning the visits of the few resident gentry within a circuit of ten miles, of avoiding mistakes and evading dangers; but all this was so easy that he soon tired of it. He had tried to make Lola contented, and yet her lazy contentment with her surroundings irritated him.
She had created a good impression upon the ladies who had called. The expression of her face had softened since her first visit to Carlisle, and the nervous expression that had struck Mr. Randolph then had disappeared. Her slight accent, and the foreign style of her dress, were interesting novelties to her visitors, and after the first dinner-party given in their honour, at which she appeared in a dress of dull gold with a profusion of rich black lace, she was pronounced charming. Her husband, too, was considered to be an acquisition to the county. Everyone had expected that he would have returned, after so long an absence, rough and unpolished, whereas his manners were quiet and courteous.
He was perhaps less popular among the sturdy Cumberland squires than with their wives. He did not hunt; he did not shoot. "I should have thought," one of his neighbours said to him, "that everyone who had been living a rough life in the States would have been a good shot."
"A good many of us are good shots, perhaps most of us, but it is with the pistol and rifle. Shot-guns are not of much use when you have a party of Red-skins yelling and shooting round you, and it is not a handy weapon to go and fetch when a man draws a revolver on you. As to shooting little birds, it may be done by men who live on their farms and like an occasional change from the bacon and tinned meat that they live on from year's end to year's end. Out there a hunter is a man who shoots game I mean deer and buffalo and bear and other animals for the sake of their skins, although, of course, he does use the meat of such as are eatable. With us a good shot means a man who can put a ball into a Red-skin's body at five hundred yards certain, and who with a pistol can knock a pipe out of a man's mouth ten yards away, twenty times following; and it isn't only straightness of shooting, but quickness of handling, that is necessary. A man has to draw, and cock, and fire, in an instant. The twinkling of an eye makes the difference of life or death.
"Oh, yes! I am a good shot, but not in your way. I went away from here too young to get to care about tramping over the country all day to shoot a dozen or two of birds, and I have never been in the way of learning to like it since. I wish I had, for it seems an important part of country life here, and I know I shall never be considered as a credit to the county unless I spend half my time in winter riding after foxes or tramping after birds; but I am afraid I am too old now ever to take to those sports. I heartily wish I could, for I find it dull having no pursuit. When a man has been earning his living by hunting, or gold digging, or prospecting for mines all his life, he finds it hard to get up in the morning and know that there is nothing for him to do but just to look round the garden or to go out for a drive merely for the sake of driving."
When summer came Mr. Tunstall found some amusements to his taste. If there was a wrestling match anywhere in the county or in Westmoreland he would be present, and he became a regular attendant at all the race-courses in the north of England. He did not bet. As he said to a sporting neighbour, who always had a ten-pound note on the principal races, "I like to bet when the chances are even, or when I can match my skill against another man's; but in this horse-racing you are risking your money against those who know more than you do. Unless you are up to all the tricks and dodges, you have no more chance of winning than a man has who gambles with a cheat who plays with marked cards. I like to go because it is an excitement; besides, at most of the large meetings there is a little gambling in the evening. In Mexico and California everyone gambles more or less. It is one of the few ways of spending money, and I like a game occasionally." The result was that Mr. Tunstall was seldom at home during the summer.
When Hugh came home his aunt said: "I have been talking to your uncle about you, and he does not care about going away this year. He has taken to have an interest in horse-racing. Of course it is a dull life for him here after leading an active one for so many years, and I am very glad he has found something to interest him."
"I should think that it is very dull for you, aunt."
"I am accustomed to be alone, Hugh. In countries where every man has to earn his living, women cannot expect to have their husbands always with them. They may be away a month at a time up in the mountains, or at the mines, or hunting in the plains. I am quite accustomed to that. But I was going to talk about you. I should like a change, and you and I will go away where we like. Not, of course, to travel about as we did last year, but to any seaside place you would like to go to. We need not stop all the time at one, but can go to three or four of them. I have been getting some books about them lately, and I think it would be most pleasant to go down to Devonshire. There seem to be lots of pretty watering-places there, and the climate is warmer than in the towns on the east coast."
"I should like it very much, aunt; but I should like a fortnight here first, if you don't mind. My pony wants exercise terribly, Jim says. He has been out at grass for months now; besides, I shall forget how to ride if I don't have some practice."
So for the next fortnight Hugh was out from morning until night either riding or sailing with Gowan, and then he went south with his aunt and spent the rest of his holidays in Devonshire and Cornwall. He had a delightful time of it, his aunt allowing him to do just as he liked in the way of sailing and going out excursions. She always took rooms overlooking the sea, and was well content to sit all day at the open window; seldom moving until towards evening, when she would go out for a stroll with Hugh. Occasionally she would take long drives with him in a pony-carriage; but she seldom proposed these expeditions. As Hugh several times met with schoolfellows, and always struck up an acquaintance a few hours after arriving at a place with some of the boatmen and fishermen, he never found it dull. At first he was disposed to pity his aunt and to urge her to go out with him; but she assured him that she was quite contented to be alone, and to enjoy the sight of the sea and to breathe the balmy air.
"I have not enjoyed myself so much, Hugh," she said when the holidays were drawing to a close, "since I was a girl."
"I am awfully glad of that, aunt. I have enjoyed myself tremendously; but it always seems to me that it must be dull for you."
"You English never seem to be happy unless you are exerting yourselves, Hugh; but that is not our idea of happiness. People in warm climates find their pleasure in sitting still, in going out after the heat of the day is over for a promenade, and in listening to the music, just as we have been doing here. Besides it has been a pleasure to me to see that you have been happy."
When the summer holidays had passed away, Hugh returned to Rugby, and Lola went back to Cumberland.
CHAPTER IV.
AN EXPLOSION
AT Christmas Hugh found that things were not so pleasant at home. There was nothing now to take his uncle away from Byrneside, and the dullness of the place told upon him. His outbursts of ill-temper were therefore more frequent than they had been the last holidays Hugh had spent at home. He sat much longer in the dining-room over his wine, after his wife and Hugh had left him, than he did before, and was sometimes moody, sometimes bad-tempered when he joined them. Hugh's own temper occasionally broke out at this, and there were several quarrels between him and his uncle; but there was a savage fierceness in the latter's manner that cowed the boy, and whatever he felt he learned to hold his tongue; but he came more and more to dislike his uncle, especially as he saw that when angry he would turn upon his aunt and speak violently to her in her own language. Sometimes she would blaze out in return, but generally she continued to smoke her cigarette tranquilly as if utterly unconscious that she was spoken to.