The last sentence was spoken in a different tone; one of relief, either at getting rid of the subject, or at the arrival of the train. It was about opposite to Hartledon when he caught sight of it, and it came on with a shrill whistle, skirting the village it towered above; a long line of covered waggons with a passenger carriage or two attached to them. Slackening its pace gradually, but not in time, it shot past the station, and had to back into it again.
The guard came out of his box and opened the door of one of the carriages—a dirty-looking second-class compartment; the other was a third-class; and a gentleman leaped out. A tall, slender man of about four-and-twenty; a man evidently of birth and breeding. He wore a light summer overcoat on his well-cut clothes, and had a most attractive face.
"Is there any law against putting on a first-class carriage to this night-train?" he asked the guard in a pleasing voice.
"Well, sir, we never get first-class passengers by it," replied the man; "or hardly any passengers at all, for the matter of that. We are too long on the road for passengers to come by us."
"It might happen, though," returned the traveller, significantly. "At any rate, I suppose there's no law against your carriages being clean, whatever their class. Look at that one."
He pointed to the one he had just left, as he walked up to the station-master. The guard looked cross, and gave the carriage door a slam.
"Was a portmanteau left here last night by the last train from London?" inquired the traveller of the station-master.
"No, sir; nothing was left here. At least, I think not. Any name on it, sir?"
"Elster."
A quick glance from the station-master's eyes met the answer. Elster was the name of the family at Hartledon. He wondered whether this could be one of them, or whether the name was merely a coincidence.
"There was no portmanteau left, was there, Jones?" asked the station-master.
"There couldn't have been," returned the porter, touching his cap to the stranger. "I wasn't on last night; Jim was; but it would have been put in the office for sure; and there's not a ghost of a thing in it this morning."
"It must have been taken on to Garchester," remarked the traveller; and, turning to the guard, he gave him directions to look after it, and despatch it back again by the first train, slipping at the same time a gratuity into his hand.
The guard touched his hat humbly; he now knew who the gentleman was. And he went into inward repentance for slamming the carriage-door, as he got into his box, and the engine and train puffed on.
"You'll send it up as soon as it comes," said the traveller to the station-master.
"Where to, sir?"
The stranger raised his eyes in slight surprise, and pointed to the house in the distance. He had assumed that he was known.
"To Hartledon."
Then he was one of the family! The station-master touched his hat. Mr. Jones, in the background, touched his, and for the first time the traveller's eye fell upon him as he was turning to leave the platform.
"Why, Jones! It's never you?"
"Yes, it is, sir." But Mr. Jones looked abashed as he acknowledged himself. And it may be observed that his language, when addressing this gentleman, was a slight improvement upon the homely phraseology of his everyday life.
"But—you are surely not working here!—a porter!"
"My business fell through, sir," returned the man. "I'm here till I can turn myself round, sir, and get into it again."
"What caused it to fall through?" asked the traveller; a kindly sympathy in his fine blue eyes.
Mr. Jones shuffled upon one foot. He would not have given the true answer—"Drinking"—for the world.
"There's such opposition started up in the place, sir; folks would draw your heart's blood from you if they could. And then I've such a lot of mouths to feed. I can't think what the plague such a tribe of children come for. Nobody wants 'em."
The traveller laughed; but put no further questions. Remembering somewhat of Mr. Jones's propensity in the old days, he thought perhaps something besides children and opposition had had to do with the downfall. He stood for a moment looking at the station which had not been completed when he last saw it—and a very pretty station it was, surrounded by its gay flowerbeds—and then went down the road.
"I suppose he is one of the Hartledon family, Jones?" said the station-master, looking after him.
"He's the earl's brother," replied Mr. Jones, relapsing into sulkiness. "There's only them two left; t'other died. Wonder if they be coming to Hartledon again? Calne haven't seemed the same since they left it."
"Which is this one?"
"He can't be anybody but himself," retorted Mr. Jones, irascibly, deeming the question superfluous. "There be but the two left, I say—the earl and him; everybody knows him for the Honourable Percival Elster. The other son, George, died; leastways, was murdered."
"Murdered!" echoed the station-master aghast.
"I don't see that it could be called much else but murder," was Mr. Jones's answer. "He went out with my lord's gamekeepers one night and got shot in a poaching fray. 'Twas never known for certain who fired the shot, but I think I could put my finger on the man if I tried. Much good that would do, though! There's no proof."
"What are you saying, Jones?" cried the station-master, staring at his subordinate, and perhaps wondering whether he had already that morning paid a visit to the tap of the Elster Arms.
"I'm saying nothing that half the place didn't say at the time, Mr. Markham. You hadn't come here then, Mr. Elster—he was the Honourable George—went out one night with the keepers when warm work was expected, and got shot for his pains. He lived some weeks, but they couldn't cure him. It was in the late lord's time. He died soon after, and the place has been deserted ever since."
"And who do you suppose fired the shot?"
"Don't know that it 'ud be safe to say," rejoined the man. "He might give my neck a twist some dark night if he heard on't. He's the blackest sheep we've got in Calne, sir."
"I suppose you mean Pike," said the station-master. "He has the character for being that, I believe. I've seen no harm in the man myself."
"Well, it was Pike," said the porter. "That is, some of us suspected him. And that's how Mr. George Elster came by his death. And this one, Mr. Percival, shot up into notice, as being the only one left, except Lord Elster."
"And who's Lord Elster?" asked the station-master, not remembering to have heard the title before.
Mr. Jones received the question with proper contempt. Having been familiar with Hartledon and its inmates all his life, he had as little compassion for those who were not so, as he would have had for a man who did not understand that Garchester was in England.
"The present Earl of Hartledon," said he, shortly. "In his father's lifetime—and the old lord lived to see Mr. George buried—he was Lord Elster. Not one of my tribe of brats but could tell that any Lord Elster must be the eldest son of the Earl of Hartledon," he concluded with a fling at his superior.
"Ah, well, I have had other things to do since I came here besides inquiring into titles and folks that don't concern me," remarked the station-master. "What a good-looking man he is!"
The praise applied to Mr. Elster, after whom he was throwing a parting look. Jones gave an ungracious assent, and turned into the shed where the lamps were kept, to begin his morning's work.
All the world would have been ready to echo the station-master's words as to the good looks of Percival Elster, known universally amidst his friends as Val Elster; for these good looks did not lie so much in actual beauty—which one lauds, and another denies, according to