“Time to go to the devil,” said Cashel. “I am going out.”
“Yes, and get a chill. Not if I know it you don’t.”
“Well, go to bed yourself, and then you won’t know it. I want to take a walk round the place.”
“If you put your foot outside that door tonight Lord Worthington will lose his five hundred pounds. You can’t lick any one in fifteen minutes if you train on night air. Get licked yourself more likely.”
“Will you bet two to one that I don’t stay out all night and knock the Flying Dutchman out of time in the first round afterwards? Eh?”
“Come,” said Mellish, coaxingly; “have some commonsense. I’m advising you for your good.”
“Suppose I don’t want to be advised for my good. Eh? Hand me over that lemon. You needn’t start a speech; I’m not going to eat it.”
“Blest if he ain’t rubbing his ‘ands with it!” exclaimed Mellish, after watching him for some moments. “Why, you bloomin’ fool, lemon won’t ‘arden your ‘ands. Ain’t I took enough trouble with them?”
“I want to whiten them,” said Cashel, impatiently throwing the lemon under the grate; “but it’s no use; I can’t go about with my fists like a nigger’s. I’ll go up to London tomorrow and buy a pair of gloves.”
“What! Real gloves? Wearin’ gloves?”
“You thundering old lunatic,” said Cashel, rising and putting on his hat; “is it likely that I want a pair of mufflers? Perhaps YOU think you could teach me something with them. Ha! ha! By-the-bye — now mind this, Mellish — don’t let it out down here that I’m a fighting man. Do you hear?”
“Me let it out!” cried Mellish, indignantly. “Is it likely? Now, I asts you, Cashel Byron, is it likely?”
“Likely or not, don’t do it,” said Cashel. “You might get talking with some of the chaps about the castle stables. They are generous with their liquor when they can get sporting news for it.”
Mellish looked at him reproachfully, and Cashel turned towards the door. This movement changed the trainer’s sense of injury into anxiety. He renewed his remonstrances as to the folly of venturing into the night air, and cited many examples of pugilists who had suffered defeat in consequence of neglecting the counsel of their trainers. Cashel expressed his disbelief in these anecdotes in brief and personal terms; and at last Mellish had to content himself with proposing to limit the duration of the walk to half an hour.
“Perhaps I will come back in half an hour,” said Cashel, “and perhaps I won’t.”
“Well, look here,” said Mellish; “we won’t quarrel about a minute or two; but I feel the want of a walk myself, and I’ll come with you.”
“I’m d — d if you shall,” said Cashel. “Here, let me out; and shut up. I’m not going further than the park. I have no intention of making a night of it in the village, which is what you are afraid of. I know you, you old dodger. If you don’t get out of my way I’ll seat you on the fire.”
“But duty, Cashel, duty,” pleaded Mellish, persuasively. “Every man oughter do his duty. Consider your duty to your backers.”
“Are you going to get out of my way, or must I put you out of it?” said Cashel, reddening ominously.
Mellish went back to his chair, bowed his head on his hands, and wept. “I’d sooner be a dog nor a trainer,” he exclaimed. “Oh! the cusseduess of bein’ shut up for weeks with a fightin’ man! For the fust two days they’re as sweet as treacle; and then their con trairyness comes out. Their tempers is puffict ‘ell.”
Cashel, additionally enraged by a sting of remorse, went out and slammed the door. He made straight towards the castle, and watched its windows for nearly half an hour, keeping in constant motion so as to avert a chill. At last an exquisitely toned bell struck the hour from one of the minarets. To Cashel, accustomed to the coarse jangling of ordinary English bells, the sound seemed to belong to fairyland. He went slowly back to the Warren Lodge, and found his trainer standing at the open door, smoking, and anxiously awaiting his return. Cashel rebuffed certain conciliatory advances with a haughty reserve more dignified, but much less acceptable to Mr. Mellish, than his former profane familiarity, and went contemplatively to bed.
CHAPTER IV
One morning Miss Carew sat on the bank of a great pool in the park, throwing pebbles two by two into the water, and intently watching the intersection of the circles they made on its calm surface. Alice was seated on a campstool a little way off, sketching the castle, which appeared on an eminence to the southeast. The woodland rose round them like the sides of an amphitheatre; but the trees did not extend to the water’s edge, where there was an ample margin of bright greensward and a narrow belt of gravel, from which Lydia was picking her pebbles.
Presently, hearing a footstep, she looked back, and saw Cashel Byron standing behind Alice, apparently much interested in her drawing. He was dressed as she had last seen him, except that he wore primrose gloves and an Egyptian red scarf. Alice turned, and surveyed him with haughty surprise; but he made nothing of her looks; and she, after glancing at Lydia to reassure herself that she was not alone, bade him good-morning, and resumed her work.
“Queer place,” he remarked, after a pause, alluding to the castle. “Chinese looking, isn’t it?”
“It is considered a very fine building,” said Alice.
“Oh, hang what it is considered!” said Cashel. “What IS it? That is the point to look to.”
“It is a matter of taste,” said Alice, very coldly.
“Mr. Cashel Byron.”
Cashel started and hastened to the bank. “How d’ye do, Miss Carew,” he said. “I didn’t see you until you called me.” She looked at him; and he, convicted of a foolish falsehood, quailed. “There is a splendid view of the castle from here,” he continued, to change the subject. “Miss Goff and I have just been talking about it.”
“Yes. Do you admire it?”
“Very much indeed. It is a beautiful place. Every one must acknowledge that.”
“It is considered kind to praise my house to me, and to ridicule it to other people. You do not say, ‘Hang what it is considered,’ now.”
Cashel, with an unaccustomed sense of getting the worst of an encounter, almost lost heart to reply. Then he brightened, and said, “I can tell you how that is. As far as being a place to sketch, or for another person to look at, it is Chinese enough. But somehow your living in it makes a difference. That is what I meant; upon my soul it is.”
Lydia smiled; but he, looking down at her, did not see the smile because of her coronet of red hair, which seemed to flame in the sunlight. The obstruction was unsatisfactory to him; he wanted to see her face. He hesitated, and then sat down on the ground beside her cautiously, as if getting into a very hot bath.
“I hope you won’t mind my sitting here,” he said, timidly. “It seems rude to talk down at you from a height.”
She shook her head and threw two more stones into the pool. He could think of nothing further to say, and as she did not speak, but gravely watched the circles in the water, he began to stare at them too; and they sat in silence for some minutes, steadfastly regarding the waves, she as if there were matter for infinite thought in them, and he as though the spectacle wholly confounded him. At last she said,
“Have