"Yes--if you are going to behave to my friends as you did this afternoon."
"Your friends!" scornfully. "You include Rodd, do you? Rodd, Betty?"
"Yes, I do, and I am not too proud to do so. Nor too proud to be angry when I see a man ten years younger than he is slap him in the face! I am not so spoiled that I think everyone beneath me!"
"So it's Rodd now?"
"It's as much Rodd now," her cheeks hot, her eyes sparkling, "as it was anyone else before! Just as much and just as little. You flatter yourself, sir!"
"But, Betty," in a coaxing tone, "little spitfire that you are, can't you guess why I was short with Rodd? Can't you guess why I don't particularly love him? But you do guess. Rodd is what he is--nothing!
But when he lifts his eyes above him--when he dares to make eyes at you--I am not going to be silent."
"Now you are impertinent!" she replied. "As impertinent as you were mean before. Yes, mean, mean! When you knew he could not answer you!
Mean!"
And without waiting for a reply she ran up the stairs.
He went to one of the windows of the dining-room and looked across Bride Hill and along the High Street, full at that hour of market people. But he did not see them, his thoughts were busy with what had happened. He could not believe that Betty had any feeling for Rodd.
The man was dull, commonplace, a plodder, and not young; he was well over thirty. No, the idea was preposterous. And it was still more absurd to suppose that if he, Arthur, threw the handkerchief--or even fluttered it in her direction, for dear little thing as she was, he had not quite made up his mind--she would hesitate to accept him, or would let any thought of Rodd weigh with her.
Still, he would let her temper cool, he would not stay to tea.
Instead, he would by and by ride his new horse out to the Cottage. He had not been home for the weekend. He had left Mrs. Bourdillon to come to herself and recover her good humor in solitude. Now he would make it up with her, and while he was there he might as well get a peep at Josina--it was a long time since he had seen her. If Betty chose to adopt this unpleasant line, why, she could not blame him if he amused himself.
CHAPTER XIV
For a time after the Squire had driven away, Clement had sat his horse and stared after him, and in his rage had wished him dead. He had prepared himself for opposition, he had looked to be repulsed--he had expected nothing else. But in the scene which his fancy had pictured, his part had been one of dignity; he had owned his aspirations like a man, he had admitted his insufficiency with modesty, he had pleaded the power of love with eloquence, he had won even from the Squire a meed of unwilling approbation.
But the scene, as played, had run on other lines. The old man had crushed him. He had sworn at him, refused to listen to him, had insulted him, had treated him as no better than a shop-boy. And all this had cut to the quick. For Clement, born after Ovington had risen from the ranks, had his pride and his self-respect, and humiliated, he cursed with all his soul the prejudice and hide-bound narrowness of the Squire and all his caste. For the time he was more than a radical, he was a republican. If by a gesture he could have swept away King and Commons, lords and justices, he would not have held his hand.
It took him some time to recover, and it was only when he found himself, he hardly knew how, upon the bridge at Garthmyle that he grew more cool. Even then he was not quite himself. He had vowed that he would not see Josina again until he had claimed her from her father; but the Squire's treatment, he now felt, had absolved him from this, and the temptation to see her was great. He longed to pour out his mind to her, and to tell her how he had been insulted, how he had been treated. Perhaps, even, he must say farewell to her--he must give her up.
For he was not all hero, and the task before him seemed for the time too prodigious, the labor too little hopeful. The Hydra had so many heads, and roared so fearfully that for a moment his courage sank before it--and his love. He felt that he must yield, that he must see Josina and tell her so. In any event she ought to know what had happened, and presently he put up his horse at the inn and made by a roundabout road for their meeting-place by the brook.
There was but a chance that she would visit it, and in the meantime he had to exercise what patience he might. His castles in the air had fallen and he had not the spirit to rebuild them. He sat gazing moodily on the rippling face of the water, or watched the ousel curtsying on its stone; and he almost despaired. He had known the Squire to be formidable, he now knew him to be impossible. He looked down the stream to where Garth, lofty and fortress-like, raised its twisted chimneys above the trees, and he shook his fist at it. Remote and islanded on its knoll, rising amid ancestral trees, it stood for all that the Squire stood for--governance, privilege, tradition, the past--all the things he had not, all the things that mocked him.
He lingered there, savoring his melancholy, until the sun went down behind the hills, and then, attacked by the pangs of hunger, he made his way back to the village inn. Here he satisfied his appetite on such home-baked bread and yellow butter and nut-brown ale as are not in these degenerate times; and for wellnigh an hour he sat brooding in the sanded parlor surrounded by china cats and dogs--they too, would be of value nowadays. At length with a heavy heart--for what was he to do next?--he rode out of the yard, and crossing the bridge under the shadowy bulk of the squat church tower, he set his horse's head for home. It was nearly dark.
What was he to do next? He did not know, but as he rode through the gloom, the solemn hills falling back on either side and the dark plain widening before him, he took courage; he began to consider, with some return of hope, what lay before him, and how he must proceed--if he were not to give up. Clearly he must face the Squire, but it must be in the Squire's own house, where the Squire must hear him. The old man might insult him, rave at him, order him out, but before he was put out he would speak and ask for Josina, though the roof fell. There should be no further mistake. And he would let the Squire know, if it came to that, that he was a man, as good as other men. By heaven he would!
He was not all hero. But there were some heroic parts about him, and he determined that the very next morning he would ride out and would beard the Hydra in its den, be its heads ever so many. He would win his lady-love or perish!
By this time he was half-way home. The market traffic on the road had ceased, the moon had not yet risen, the night lay calm and still about him. Presently as he crossed a wet, rushy flat, one of the loneliest parts of the way, he saw the lights of a vehicle coming towards him.
The road at that point had not been long enclosed, and a broad strip of common still survived on either hand, so that moving on this the horse's hoofs made no sound save a soft plop-plop where the ground was wettest. He could hear, therefore, while still afar off, the tramp of a pair of horses driven at a trot, and it occurred to him that this might be the Squire returning late. If he could have avoided the meeting he would have done so, though it was unlikely that the Squire would recognize him in the dark. But to turn aside would be foolish.
"Hang me if I am going to be afraid of him!" he thought. And he touched up his horse with his heel.
Then an odd thing happened. While the carriage was still fifty yards from him, one of the lights went out. His eyes missed it, but his brain had barely taken in the fact when the second vanished also, as if the vehicle had sunk into the ground. At the same moment a cry reached his ears, followed by a clatter of hoofs on the road as if the horses were being sharply pulled up.
Clement took his horse by the head and bent forward, striving to make out what was passing. A dull sound, as of a heavy body striking the road reached him, followed by a silence that seemed ominous. Even the wind appeared to have hushed its whisper through the rushes.
"Hallo!" he shouted. "What is it? Is anything the matter?" He urged his horse forward.
His cry was lost in the crack of a whip, he heard the horses break away, and without farther warning they came down upon him at a gallop, the carriage bounding wildly behind them. He had just time to thrust his nag to the side, and they were on him and past him, and whirling down the road--a mere shadow, but as perilous and almost as noisy as a thunderbolt. There was no doubt now that an accident had happened, but before he could give help he had to master his horse, which had wheeled about; and so a few seconds elapsed before he reached the scene--reached it with his heart in his mouth--for who could say with what emergency he might not have to deal?
Certainly with a tragedy, for the first thing he made out was the form of a man stooping over another who lay in the road. Clement drew a breath of relief as he slipped from his saddle--he would not have to meet the crisis alone. But as his foot touched the ground, he saw the stooping man raise his hand with something in it, and he knew instinctively that it was raised not to help but to strike.
He shouted, and the blow hung in the air. The man, taken by surprise, straightened himself, turned, and saw Clement at his elbow. He hesitated; then, with an oath, he aimed his blow at the new-comer.
Clement parried it, rather by instinct than with intention, and so weakly, that the other's weapon beat down his guard and cut his cheek-bone. He staggered back and the villain raised his cudgel again.
Had the second blow fallen where it was aimed, it would have finished the business. But Clement, aware now that he fought for his life, sprang within the other's guard, and before the cudgel alighted, gripped him by the neckcloth. The man gave ground, tripped backwards over the body that lay behind him, and in a twinkling the two were rolling together on the road, Clement striving to beat in the ruffian's face with the butt-end of his whip, while the man tried vainly to shorten his weapon and use it to purpose.
It was a desperate struggle, in the mire, in the darkness--a struggle for life carried on in a silence that was broken only by the combatants' breathing and a rare oath. Twice each rolled the other, and once Clement, having the upper hand became aware that the fight had its spectator. He had a glimpse of a ghastly face, one side of which had been mangled by a murderous blow--a face that glared at them with its remaining eye. He guessed rather than saw that the man lying in the road had raised himself on an elbow, and he heard a gasping "At him, lad! Well done, lad!" then in a turn of the struggle he lost the vision. His opponent had him by the throat, he was undermost again--and desperate. His one thought now was to kill--to kill the brute-beast whose teeth threatened his cheek, whose hot breath burned his face, whose hands gripped his throat. He struck again and again, and eventually, supple and young, and perhaps the stronger, he freed himself and staggered to his feet, raising his whip to strike.
But the same thing happened to him which had happened to his assailant. As he stepped back to give power to the blow, he fell over the third man. He came down heavily, and for a moment he was at the other's mercy. Fortunately the rascal's courage was at an end. He got to his feet, but instead of pursuing his advantage, he snatched up something that lay on the ground, and sped away down the road, as quickly as his legs could carry him.
Clement recovered his feet, but more slowly, for the fall had shaken him. Still, his desire for vengeance was hot, and he set off in pursuit. The man had a good start, however, and presently, leaving the road and leaping the ditch, made off across the open common. To follow farther promised little, for in a few seconds his figure, already shadowy, melted into the darkness of the fields. Clement gave up the chase, and turned back, panting and out of breath.
He did not feel his wound, much less did he feel the misgivings which had beset him when he came upon the scene. Instead, he experienced a new and thrilling elation. He had measured his strength against an enemy, he had faced death in fight, he felt himself equal to any and every event. Even when stooping over the prostrate figure he saw the mangled and bleeding face turned up to the sky it did not daunt him, nor the darkness, nor the loneliness. The injured man seemed to be aware of his presence for he made an attempt to rise; but he failed, and would have fallen back on the road if Clement, dropping on one knee, had not sustained his head on the other. It was the Squire. So much he saw; but it was a Squire past not only scolding but speech, whom he held in his arms and whose head he supported. To all Clement's questions he made no answer. It was much if he still breathed.
Clement glanced about him, and his confidence began to leave him. What was he to do? He could not go for help, leaving the old man lying in the road; yet it was impossible to do much in the dark, either to ascertain the extent of the Squire's hurt, or to use means to stanch it. The moon had not yet risen, the plain stretched dark about them, no sound except the melancholy whisper of the wind in the rushes reached him. There was no house near and it was growing late. No one might pass for hours.
Fortunately when he had reached this stage he remembered that he had his tinder box and matches in his pocket, and he fumbled for them with his disengaged hand. With an effort, he got them out. But to strike a light and catch it in the huddled posture in which he knelt was not easy, and it was only after a score of attempts that the match caught the flame. Even so, the light it gave was faint, but it revealed the Squire's face, and Clement saw, with a shudder, that the left eye and temple were terribly battered. But he saw, too, that the old man was conscious, for he uttered a groan, and peered with the uninjured eye at the face that bent over him. "Good lad!" he muttered, "good lad!"
and he added broken words which conveyed to Clement's mind that it was his man who had attacked him. Then--his face was so turned that it was within a few inches of Clement's shoulder--"You're bloody, lad," he muttered. "He's spoiled your coat, the d--d rascal!"
With that he seemed to slip back into unconsciousness, and the light went out. It left Clement in a strait to know what he ought to do, or rather what he could do. Help he must get, and speedily, if he would save the Squire's life, but his horse was gone, and to walk away for help, leaving the old man lying in the mud of the way seemed inhuman.
He must at least carry him to the side of the road.
The task was no light one, for the Squire was tall, though not stout; and before Clement stooped to it he cast a last look round. But silence still wrapped all, and he was gathering his strength to lift the dead weight, when a sound caught his ear, and he raised himself. A moment, and joy!--he caught the far-off beat of hoofs on the turf.
Someone was coming, approaching him from the direction of Aldersbury.
He shouted, shouted his loudest and waited. Yes, he was not mistaken.
The soft plop-plop of hoofs grew louder, two forms loomed out of the darkness, a horse shied, a man swore.
"Here!" Clement cried. "Here! Take care! There's a man in the road."
"Where?" Then, "Confound you, you nearly had me down! Are you hurt?"
"No, but"
"I've got your horse. I met him a couple of miles this side of the town. What has----"
Clement broke in. "There's bad work here!" he cried, his voice shaky.
Now that help was at hand and the peril was over, he began to feel what he had gone through. "For God's sake get down and help me. Your uncle's man has robbed him and, I fear, murdered him."
"The Squire?"