Marmaduke - Flora Annie Webster Steel

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has widened," said Jack Jardine. "Well, I don't think it has done so abnormally. It has been going on ever since poor Pitt turned out such a weakling. You know the family history. After he married Lady Helen, whom he shouldn't have married because she too, poor soul, was, as it were, doomed to disease, though she was a duke's daughter and so, satisfied his lordship's pride--a miserable story, Duke, a miserable story. Well, there was one disappointment about an heir after another, as you know, Duke, and it hit home into the peer--for he is no fool. Put it briefly, though he is quite ready to tell you he is suffering from the indiscretions of youth while he is in torments with the gout, and at the same time supping every night on broiled foxes' tongues and mulled claret, he can't bear to see the results in Pitt. He hates him because he hasn't the physique to carry on the name. He is a very remarkable man, Duke, is your father."

      "Very," assented the young man grimly. "I wish the devil he wasn't."

      "That's why I, and all the rest of us who have Drummuir interests at heart, are so glad you've come home. You're presumptive heir now, and to all intents and purposes you're 'apparent.' And you're straight and strong, thanks to your poor mother. So we look to you to keep up the honour of the name. I believe if you play your cards well, you might easily oust Miss Fanny Biggs, or Mdlle. Fantine----"

      Marmaduke burst into a laugh.

      "Thank you," he said; "that is most succinct! I needn't ask any more. But does the old man really mean to marry her?"

      Jack Jardine nodded.

      "Would have done it three months ago but for the gout. And she isn't really so bad, but devilish sly; and that man Compton, whom the peer has taken up with over the railway business, is in with her." He gave a sigh and knocked the ashes out of his pipe. "I've my work cut out for me, Duke, I can tell you."

      There was a slight pause, and then Marmaduke said curiously--

      "I've often wondered, Jack, why you, who by your brains could have made your own way, have been contented to stick on in this cursed old place among us cursed people, letting us youngsters call you Jack and borrow money from you. By the way, I shouldn't have been able to come home if you hadn't sent me that last hundred pounds."

      Jack Jardine said nothing; then he walked to the window.

      "You may as well know, Duke, it may help you to steer your way. It is because I, a poor lawyer, loved your mother--not before, but after she became Lady Drummuir! Of course she never guessed; but I helped her to try and keep your father straight. She led an awful life----"

      "You needn't tell me that!" broke in Marmaduke, fiercely.

      "Yet your father didn't mean ill to her. Anyhow, I tried to help her, and so I suppose it became a habit. Love is a queer thing, Duke!"

      "I believe it is," said Marmaduke, magisterially, "but it has not come my way yet," and he added joyously, "I hope it won't for some years to come, for I like enjoying myself."

      Apparently he did; for as the summer evening began to close in on Drummuir Castle and the menkind, with only Mdlle. Fantine and her duenna to represent the opposite sex, gathered in the huge dining-room to attack a heavy dinner which would have sufficed for a regiment, he was the life and soul of the party, and ate through the menu with a relish which aroused regret and admiration in the old lord.

      "Dash it all," he bawled, "why can't I eat soup, fish, top and bottom and four sides through five courses like that dashed youngster of mine, who puts it on to his shoulders instead of his waist like I do?"

      And when the claret began to circle round faster and faster Marmaduke never let it pass; so that when, with sweet decorum, Mdlle. Fantine and her duenna prepared to withdraw, he nearly killed the Skye terrier in his flamboyant haste to open the door. Nay, more! He followed them into the corridor for an instant. What passed there none saw, but he returned to his seat with flushed cheeks and throbbing veins, feeling vaguely that the battle of wits had begun.

      Of what followed his memory was confused. He remembered that outside the windows the summer twilight was still flooding the green lawns, while humanity inside, after guzzling itself stupid with rich food, was trying to grow witty over the boozing of mulled claret and whisky-toddy. They began, of course, with the young queen's health, and went on methodically till they came to the good old Scotch toast: "Here's to oorsels. Wha' better? Damn few!" After this, which seemed to afford general satisfaction, they proceeded to particularise, and Marmaduke had a dim recollection of someone proposing "The future Commander-in-Chief, coupled with the name of Captain Marmaduke Muir."

      But whether he replied, or whether the effort to rise and do so was too much for him and he rolled under the table, he could not say.

      Certain it is that on that first night of his return to the home of his fathers Marmaduke Muir was hopelessly drunk.

      Certain also that he erred in company, the only sober man being Jack Jardine, who invariably sought the shelter of the table at an early period and lay there comfortably, his head on a buffet, listening to the commiserations on his weak head until he fell asleep, to wake when the carouse was over, and see that the gentlemen's gentlemen sorted their respective masters to their respective beds.

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      Marrion Paul sat in the semi-darkness of the summer night waiting for her grandfather to return from his duties at the Castle. She did not generally do so, for he was apt to be late; but on this, the first day of Captain Duke's return, sleep would have been out of the question until she heard something of the evening. For she did not mince matters with herself; those six years of independent life in Edinburgh had opened her eyes to the world, and the first sight of Marmaduke Muir had told her that the long ten years had not changed her at all; that he was as much the sun in her heaven as he had been in the old childish days. The sun in her heaven, and something more superadded to those olden times.

      Then the day had been disturbing. Everyone had come to her praising the Captain's looks and ways and general charm; to all of which she had replied coolly, feeling the while in a perfect quiver of gladness. Miss Margaret had been the hardest to damp when she had appeared in the afternoon with the sporting dogs and a stout crop in her hand on her way to take them a scramble over the rocks and round by the lower bay.

      "Oh, Marrion!" she cried enthusiastically. "Saw you ever the like? Elizabeth says he's like the Apollo Belvidere!"

      "I am not knowing the gentleman," protested Marrion distantly. "But Captain Duke has grown to a fine figure. But has Miss Muir seen Andrew Fraser? He's twice the man he was when he went away."

      It was a false move on Marrion's part, for it brought on her instantly the hearty reply--

      "I'm glad to hear it, Marmie; so I suppose we will be having you cried in the kirk before long. Duke says he has been most faithful."

      Whereupon the speaker called to her dogs in a stentorian voice worthy her father's, cracked her whip scientifically, and strode away for an hour or two's freedom. For the atmosphere of the dower house was stifling, and there was always a chance of meeting the Rev. Patrick Bryce on the sands below the rocks, where he went always to compose his sermons, with which the reverend gentleman had no little difficulty. Not because he was stupid, but because he found it laborious to reconcile his own views with those of his flock; they, however, being inclined to be lenient with one who had earned for himself the nickname of "the bonny parson," and who was known to be the best shot and fisherman in the district. For this reason he would have been welcome at the Castle, but for his unswerving outspoken protest against its general behaviour.

      Marrion, meanwhile, finding more peace as the day died down, took to wandering at the far side of the quadrangle listening to the distant sounds of revelry; her hands, as she walked, busy with her knitting-pins--after the fashion of Scotchwomen in those days--going faster and faster as her thoughts grew hotter over what she knew was happening at the

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