Laid up in Lavender Part 7

She changed her mind, seeing that. "No, do you take them in," she said. "Will you take them in, please?" she repeated peremptorily; and she pushed the hawthorn into his arms, and held out her basket. The stranger took the things with reluctance, but without demur, and went into the house.

"Now," she said, turning rapidly upon Woolley, "what do you want?"

"My answer?" he retorted, with answering curtness.

A second before he had not intended to say that. He had meant to carry the war into the stranger's country. But his temper mastered him for a second, and he found himself staking all, when he had planned an affair of outposts. "Wait, Miss Pleasance," he added desperately, seeing in a moment what he had done, and that he had committed himself. "I beg you not to give it me without thought--without thought of others, of me, of your father, as well as of yourself! Do not judge me hastily! Do not judge me," he continued pa.s.sionately, for her face was icy, "by myself as I am now, Pleasance, wild with love of you, but----"

"By what then, Mr. Woolley?" she asked, her lip curling. "By what am I to judge you if not by yourself?"

"By----"

"Well?" she said mercilessly. He had paused. He could not find words.

In truth, he had made a mistake. If he had ever had a chance of winning her his chance was gone now; and, recognising this, he let his fury grow to such a pitch that he could not wait for the answer he had requested. He was mad with love of her, with rage at his own mistake, with shame at being so outgeneralled. "I will tell you, Miss Partridge!" he cried, his eyes sparkling with pa.s.sion; "Judge me by the future! That fellow who was with you, do you know who he is? Do you know that I can put him in gaol any day?--ay, in goal!"

"What has he done?" she asked. "Tell me."

It was a pity he could not say, "He is a thief--a forger--a swindler!"

The charge he could bring against the stranger was heavy enough; and yet he found it difficult to word it so that it should seem heavy.

"You thought he was shot?" he said at last. "Bah! he shot himself."

"I know it," she answered, without the movement of a muscle.

He stared at her. How was it? he wondered. Before his departure he had been the Old Hall's master. He had wound the poor doctor round his finger, and Pleasance had been civil to him at least. Now all this was altered. And why? "Ah, well! He shall go to gaol, d----n him!" he said, putting his conclusion into words. "He shall go to gaol! and if you have a fancy for him you must go there to see him!"

She lost her self-possession under the insult, and her face turned scarlet. "You coward!" she said, with scorn. "You would not dare to say to his face what you have said behind his back. Let me pa.s.s!"

She swept into the house and left him standing in the sunlight. As she hurried through the hall, which to her dazzled eyes seemed dusky, she caught a glimpse of the tall gentleman leaning over the bureau with his back to her. Had he heard? The door was open, and so was one window. She could not be sure, but the suspicion was enough. Her face was on fire as she ran up the stairs. How she hated, oh, how she hated that wretch out there! She thought that she had never known before what it was to hate.

For there was something in what he had said. There was the sting. How had she come to be so intimate with one who had done what the tall gentleman had done? She tried to trace the stages, but she could not.

Then she tried to think of him with some of the horror, some of the distaste which she had felt at the time of his arrival, when he lay ghastly and blood-stained behind the closed door. But she could not.

The face we have known a year can never put on for us the look it wore when we saw it first. The hand of time does not move backward.

Pleasance found this was so, and in the solitude of her own room hid her face and trembled. Could anything but evil come of such a--a friendship?

Meanwhile Woolley's state of mind was even less enviable. Hitherto his way in the world had been made by the exercise of tact and self-control; and he valued himself upon the possession of those qualities. He could not understand why they had failed him at this pinch, or why the advantage he had so far enjoyed had deserted him now. Yet the secret was not far to seek. He was jealous; and when jealousy attacks him, the man who lives by playing on the pa.s.sions of others falls to the common level. Jealousy undermines his judgment as certainly as pa.s.sion deprives the fencer of his skill.

Though Woolley did not allow that this was the cause of his defeat, he knew that he could not command himself at present, and before seeking the doctor he took a turn to collect his thoughts and arrange his plans. When he returned to the house he found the hall empty. He pa.s.sed through it and down a short pa.s.sage to a small room at the back, which Dr. Partridge used--especially in times of trouble, when bills poured in and he mediated a fresh loan--as a kind of sanctum.

Woolley rapped at the door.

To his surprise no "Come in!" answered his knock, but some one rising hastily from his chair came to the door and opened it to the extent of a few inches. It was the doctor. He squeezed himself through. His face was agitated--but then the pa.s.sage was ill lit, even on a summer afternoon--his manner nervous. "You want to see me, my dear fellow?"

he said, holding the door close behind him and speaking effusively.

"Do you mind coming back in a quarter of an hour or so? I am--I shall be disengaged then."

"I would prefer," Woolley said doggedly, "to see you now."

"Wait ten minutes, and you shall," the doctor replied, taking him by the b.u.t.ton with his disengaged hand, as though he would bespeak his confidence. "At this moment, my dear fellow--excuse me!"

There was an odd tone in the doctor's voice--a tone half wheedling, half hostile. But Woolley concluded that Pleasance was with him--making a complaint in all probability; and this satisfied him. He thought that he could still depend on the doctor. With a sulky nod he gave way and returned to the lawn, and there he paced up and down, prodding the daisies with his stick. Things had gone badly with him.

So much the worse for some one.

When he returned he found the doctor alone in the dingy little room, into which one plumped down two steps, so that it was very like a well. "Come in, come in," the elder man said fussily. "What is it, Woolley? What can I do for you?" As he spoke his hands were busy with the papers on the table. Moreover, after one swift glance, which he shot at his a.s.sistant's face on his entrance, he avoided looking at him. "What is it?"

"First," Woolley rejoined with acidity, "I should like to know whether you propose to keep that fellow in your house as a companion for your daughter?"

"The tall gentleman?"

"Precisely."

"He is gone!" was the unexpected answer. "He is gone already. If you doubt me, my dear fellow," the doctor added hastily, "ask the servants--ask Daniel."

"Gone, is he?" Woolley said gloomily, considering the statement.

"Yes, he quite saw the propriety of it," the doctor continued. "He gave me no trouble."

"And paid you no fees, I suppose?"

"Well, no, he did not."

"Then now to my second question, sir," Woolley went on, tapping with his fingers on the table. But try as he might, he could not quite rise to the old level of superiority, he could not drive the flush from his cheek or still his pulse. "What is your daughter's answer? From something which has pa.s.sed between us I conclude it to be unfavourable to me."

"Indeed?" the doctor said, looking at him blankly.

"But, favourable or unfavourable," Woolley continued, "I must have it betimes. You bade me go away and give her a month to think over it. I have done so, and I am back. Now I ask, What is her answer?"

"Well," the doctor said, rubbing his hands in great perplexity, "I have not--I am not sure that I am prepared to say. You must give me a little more time--indeed you must. Let us say until the day after to-morrow. I will sound her and give you a decisive answer then--after breakfast, and here if you like."

The suitor restrained himself. He longed to reject the proposal. But he did love her in his way, and at the sound of her father's uncertain utterance hope began to tell her flattering tale. "Very well!" he said. "But you understand, I hope," he continued, his manner curiously made up of shame and defiance, "the alternative, sir? If I am not to be allied to you, it will no longer suit me to have my money tied up here, and I must have it--the sooner the better."

"Well, well," the poor doctor said testily, "we will talk about that, Woolley, when the time comes."

There seemed to be nothing more to say. Yet Woolley lingered by the table, fingering the things on it without looking up. Perhaps an impulse to withdraw his threat and end the interview more kindly was working in him. If so, however, he crushed it down, and presently he took himself off. When his step ceased to sound in the pa.s.sage the doctor drew a sigh of relief.

It has been said that travellers along the moorland road which pa.s.ses near the Old Hall--a road once frequented, but now little trodden, save by tramps--that travellers along it see nothing of the house. The house lies below the surface. In like manner a visitor arriving at the Old Hall itself during the next thirty-six hours would have observed nothing strange, though there was so much below the surface. The a.s.sistant contrived to be abroad at his work during the greater part of the intervening day. He judged that love-making would help him little now. The doctor rubbed his hands and talked fast to preserve appearances; and Pleasance as well as her suitor seemed to regret their joint outbreak. She was civil to him, if somewhat cold. So that when he knocked at the door of the little room--after a sleepless night in which he had pondered long how he should act at the coming interview--he had some hopes. He was feeling almost amiable.

The doctor was seated behind his table, Pleasance on a chair in the one small window recess. With three people in it the room looked more like a well than ever. With three people? Nay, with four. Woolley shut the door behind him very softly and set his teeth. For behind the doctor stood the tall gentleman.

The a.s.sistant smiled viciously. He was not prepared for this, but his nerves were strung to-day. "A trick?" he said, looking from one to another. "Very well. I know what to do. I can guess what my answer is to be, doctor, and need scarcely stay to hear it. Shall I go?"

"No! no!" the doctor replied, hurriedly. He was distressed and perturbed, perhaps by the menace which underlay the other's words. As for the tall gentleman, he gazed gravely over his beard, while Pleasance looked through the window, her face hot. "No, no, I have something to say which affects you. And this gentleman here----"

"Has he anything to say?" the a.s.sistant retorted, eyeing his antagonist. "I am ready to hear it--before I take out a warrant against him for attempting to commit suicide. It is punishable with a considerable imprisonment, my friend!"

"I am no friend of yours," was the stranger's reply, given very gravely. "You do not know me, Edgar Woolley."

The a.s.sistant started. It was the first time he had heard the tall gentleman's voice, and for a breathing s.p.a.ce, while the looked two on one another, he seemed to be racking his memory. But he got no result, and he retorted with a bitter laugh, "No, I do not know you. Nor you me--yet!"

"Yes, I do," was the unexpected answer. "Too well!"

"Bah!" Woolley exclaimed, though it was evident that he was ill at ease. "Let us have an end of these heroics! If you have anything to say, say it."