John Caldigate Part 34

'I care nothing for your threats. I can only bid you go and do your worst.'

'That's what we intend.'

'That you should have lost money by me is a great sorrow to me.'

'You look sorry, squire.'

'But after what you have said, I can make you no offer. If you will go to my brother-in-law, Mr. Robert Bolton--'

'That's the lady's brother?'

'My wife's brother.'

'I know all about it, Caldigate. I won't go to him at all. What's he to us? It ain't likely that I am going to ask him for money to hold our tongues. Not a bit of it. You've had sixty thousand pounds out of that mine. The bank found twenty and took all the plant. There's forty gone.

Will you share the loss? Give us twenty and we'll be off back to Australia by the first ship. And I'll take a wife back with me. You understand? I'll take a wife back with me. Then we shall be all square all round.'

With what delight would he have given the twenty thousand pounds, had he dared! Had there been no question about the woman, he would have given the money to satisfy his own conscience as to the injury he had involuntarily done to his old partners. But he could not do it now. He could make no suggestion towards doing it. To do so would be to own to all the Boltons that Mrs. Euphemia Smith was his wife. And were he to do so, how could he make himself secure that the man and the woman would go back to Australia and trouble him no more? All experience forbade him to hope for such a result. And then the payment of the money would be one of many d.a.m.ning pieces of evidence against him. They had now got back for the second time to the spot at which the way up to the house at Folking turned off from the dike. Here he paused and spoke what were intended to be his last words. 'I have nothing more to say, Crinkett. I will not promise anything myself. A threatened man should never give way. You know that yourself. But if you will go to my brother-in-law I will get him to see you.'

'D---- your brother-in-law. He ain't your brother-in-law, no more than I am.'

Now the sword had been drawn and the battle had been declared. 'After that,' said Caldigate, walking on in front, 'I shall decline to speak to you any further.' He went back through the farmyard at a quick pace, while Crinkett kept up with him, but still a few steps behind. In the front of the house they found Jack Adamson, who, in obedience to his friend's suggestion had been sitting anywhere about the place.

'I'm blowed if he don't mean to stick to every lump he's robbed us of!'

said Crinkett, in a loud voice.

'He do, do he? Then we know what we've got to be after.'

'I've come across some of 'em precious mean,' continued Crinkett; 'but a meaner skunk nor this estated gent, who is a justice of the peace and a squire and all that, I never did come across, and I don't suppose I never shall.' And then they stood looking at him, jeering at him. And the gardener, who was then in the front of the house, heard it all.

'Darvell,' said the squire, 'open the gate for these gentlemen.' Darvell of course knew that they had been brought from the church to the house, and had been invited in to the christening breakfast.

'If I were Darvell I wouldn't take wages from such a skunk as you,' said Crinkett. 'A man as has robbed his partners of every shilling, and has married a young lady when he has got another wife living out in the colony. At least she was out in the colony. She ain't there now, Darvell. She's somewhere else now. That's what your master is, Darvell.

You'll have to look out for a place, because your master'll be in quod before long. How much is it they gets for bigamy, Jack? Three years at the treadmill;--that's about it. But I pities the young lady and the poor little b.a.s.t.a.r.d.'

What was he to do? A sense of what was fitting for his wife rather than for himself forbade him to fly at the man and take him by the throat.

And now, of course, the wretched story would be told through all Cambridgeshire. Nothing could prevent that now. 'Darvell,' he said, as he turned towards the hall steps, 'you must see these men off the premises. The less you say to them the better.'

'We'll only just tell him all about it as we goes along comfortable,'

said Adamson. Darvell, who was a good sort of man in his way,--slow rather than stupid, weighted with the ordinary respect which a servant has for his master,--had heard it all, but showed no particular anxiety to hear more. He accompanied the men down to the Causeway, hardly opening his mouth to them, while they were loud in denouncing the meanness of the man who had deserted a wife in Australia, and had then betrayed a young lady here in England.

'What were they talking about?' said his wife to him when they were alone. 'I heard their voices even here.'

'They were threatening me;--threatening me and you.'

'About that woman?'

'Yes; about that woman. Not that they have dared yet to mention her name,--but it was about that woman.'

'And she?'

'I've heard nothing from her since that letter. I do not know that she is in England, but I suppose that she is with them.'

'Does it make you unhappy, John?'

'Very unhappy.'

'Does it frighten you?'

'Yes. It makes me fear that you for a while will be made miserable,--you whom I had thought that I could protect from all sorrow and from all care! O my darling! of course it frightens me; but it is for you.'

'What will they do first, John?'

'They have already said words before the man there which will of course be spread about the country.'

'What words?'

Then he paused, but after pausing he spoke very plainly. 'They said that you were not my wife.'

'But I am.'

'Indeed you are.'

'Tell me all truly. Though I were not, I would still be true to you.'

'But, Hester,--Hester, you are. Do not speak as though that were possible.'

'I know that you love me. I am sure of that. Nothing should ever make me leave you;--nothing. You are all the world to me now. Whatever you may have done I will be true to you. Only tell me everything.'

'I think I have,' he said, hoa.r.s.ely. Then he remembered that he had told much to Robert Bolton which she had not heard. 'I did tell her that I would marry her.'

'You did.'

'Yes, I did.'

'Is not that a marriage in some countries?'

'I think nowhere,--certainly not there. And the people, hearing of it all, used to call her by my name.'

'O John!--will not that be against us?'

'It will be against me,--in the minds of persons like your mother.'

'I will care nothing for that. I know that you have repented, and are sorry. I know that you love me now.'

'I have always loved you since the first moment that I saw you.'

'Never for a moment believe that I will believe them. Let them do what they will, I will be your wife. Nothing shall take me away from you. But it is sad, is it not; on that the very day that poor baby has been christened?' Then they sat and wept together and tried to comfort each other. But nothing could comfort him. He was almost prostrated at the prospect of his coming misery,--and of hers.