The House 'Round the Corner Part 14

"It seems to me she's larnt summat (something) i' Cornwall," commented Mrs. Jackson.

"And him old enough to be her father!" marveled Betty.

"Fiddlesticks! It's the life he's led that's aged him. He's not a day more'n thirty-five."

Mrs. Jackson was no bad judge. Her employer was in his thirty-sixth year.

After luncheon, Marguerite Ogilvey collected her treasures, and, with Betty's help, packed them in boxes obtained at the village shop. Before tea, she wrote a letter, which Armathwaite took to the post. While there, he inquired about the fishing, and the grocer pointed out a very tall and stoutly-built man stacking hay at the bottom of a long field.

"That's Mr. Burt," he said. "He owns a mile or more of the best water.

If you were to go an' see him now, sir, you could settle things straight off."

"But I want to have a word with Miggles."

"He'll be here in ten minutes, sir, an' I'll tell him to give you a hail. The Nuttonby road pa.s.ses the end of that field."

Matters seemed to be arranged conveniently; as, indeed, they were, if sprites were laying snares for Robert Armathwaite's feet.

He met Farmer Burt, and was given all fishing facilities at once. Nay, more, if this weather lasted, as was likely, and all the hay was saved by sunset, Burt himself would call next day, and reveal the lie of the land.

"Make it Sat.u.r.day," said Armathwaite, mindful of another fixture.

"Right you are, sir!"

Someone shouted. It was Miggles, breast-high beyond a hedge. At that instant Armathwaite caught sight of a dog-cart swinging into Elmdale. A gallant figure at the reins seemed somehow familiar. Therefore, instead of describing the kind of bath he wished Tom Bland to bring from an ironmonger's, he said sharply to the postman:

"Who is that in the dog-cart?"

"Young Mr. Walker, o' Nuttonby, sir," was the answer.

James Walker! The man whom Marguerite Ogilvey said she hated, and such a phrase on a girl's lips with reference to a man like Walker almost invariably means that she has been pestered by his attentions. The Grange was nearly a mile distant, and Walker was now dashing through the village street.

"d.a.m.n!" said Armathwaite, making off at top speed.

Miggles gazed after him.

"Rum houses draws rum coves," he said, trudging away on his daily round.

"Not that he's the first who's d.a.m.ned young Jimmy Walker, not by a jolly long way!"

Evidently, an Aristotelian postman.

CHAPTER VI

THE STORM BREAKS

Armathwaite's face, as he strode through Elmdale, was hardly that of a man who had found there the quiet and solitude he had stipulated for when in treaty with Walker & Son. Its stern and hara.s.sed aspect was seen and commented on by a score of people. Though most of the inhabitants were busy in the fields, there were watchers in plenty peering from each farm and cottage. Already the village held in common the scanty stock of information possessed by the Jacksons concerning the Grange's new tenant, because mother and daughter were far too shrewd to provoke discussion by withholding the facts stated by the house agent. They knew that every urchin who could toddle had peeped through gate and hedges that morning; they were more alive than Armathwaite himself to the risk Miss Meg ran of being seen if she went outside the house, front or back, for ten seconds. The best way to disarm gossip was to answer as best they might the four questions put by every inquirer: Who is he? Where does he come from? Is he married? How long will he stop?

Singularly enough, in a land of variable weather, Elmdale at this time was bathed in brilliant sunshine from morn till eve. The ripening crops, the green uplands, the moor, with its gorse just fading and its heather showing the first faint flush of purple, were steeped in the "great peacefulness of light" so dear to Ruskin. If one searched the earth it would be hard to find a nook where sorrow and evil were less likely to dree their weird; yet, Armathwaite expected to meet those grim sisters stalking through the ancient house when he saw an empty dog-cart and an open door; he seldom erred in such forecasts, and his divination was not at fault now.

As he entered the hall, he heard the girl's voice, clear and crisp and scornful.

"How dare you say such things to me! How dare you! My father is alive and well. If he were here now----"

James Walker chuckled.

"Tell that to the Marines," he began. The remainder of the sentence died on his lips when Armathwaite's tall form appeared in the doorway.

"You here, Mr. Walker?" said the Anglo-Indian calmly. Then, noting Marguerite Ogilvey's white face and distraught eyes, he a.s.sumed a mystified air, and cried:

"Hullo, Meg, what's gone wrong?"

She flew to him instantly, clasping his arm, and the confident touch of her fingers thrilled him to the core.

"Oh, Bob, I'm so glad you've come back," she almost sobbed. "That--that nasty little man has been telling such horrid fibs. He says--he says--Oh, Bob, won't you send him away?"

At that moment the mental equilibrium of James Walker, junior (his father was also James) was badly shaken. It oscillated violently in one direction when he noted the manner of address these two adopted the one to the other. It swung to another extreme on hearing himself described as "a nasty little man" by a girl for whom a long-dormant calf love had quickened in his veins when Tom Bland announced that "Meg Garth, or her ghost," was at the Grange that day. It positively wobbled when Armathwaite threw a protecting arm round the desired one's shoulders. So he listened, open-mouthed, when Armathwaite spoke.

"Sorry I wasn't at home, Meg, dear, when Mr. Walker arrived--or he wouldn't have troubled you," the mysterious stranger was saying. There was an unpleasant glint in the steely glance that accompanied the next words:

"Now, Mr. Walker, come outside, and explain your business."

But Walker was no country b.u.mpkin, to be overawed and silenced by a man of superior social status. He was puzzled, and stung, stung beyond hope of cure. Yet he was not afraid. Certain qualities of sharpness and cuteness warned him that if he controlled his temper, and did not bl.u.s.ter, he held the whip hand in a situation of which the true inwardness was still hidden.

"My business is not with you, Mr. Armathwaite," he said, with the utmost civility his tongue was capable of. "I heard of Miss Garth's arrival, and came to see her. It's not my fault if she's vexed at what I've said.

I meant no offense. I only told the truth."

"I have reason to believe that you forced yourself into Miss Garth's presence;" and, in repeating the name, Armathwaite pressed the girl's shoulder gently as an intimation that no good purpose would be served by any correction in that respect. "Again, and for the last time, I request you to leave her."

"There's no last time about it," said Walker, who was watching Marguerite's wan and terror-stricken face. "I had a perfect right to call on Meg Garth. She daren't pretend she doesn't know me, and a false name can't humbug me, or Tom Bland, for that matter."

"I know you only too well," broke in the girl with a vehemence that brought a momentary rush of color to her cheeks. "You annoyed me for two years, and I'm sorry now I didn't complain to my father about your ridiculous oglings and shilling boxes of chocolates, which I gave to the village children."

She struck harder than she knew. Walker bridled like an annoyed turkey-c.o.c.k. Armathwaite pressed Marguerite's shoulder a second time, and withdrew his hand.

"If your ungracious admirer won't leave you, Meg, you had better leave him," he said, smiling into her woebegone face. "Go into the drawing-room, or join Mrs. Jackson. _I'll_ deal with Mr. Walker."

He held the door open, purposely blotting Walker out of sight, and the girl obeyed. She went out bravely enough, but he caught a smothered sob as she pa.s.sed towards the kitchen. There also, he was bitterly aware, danger lurked in other guise, though the two well-disposed women might perchance have the wit to discredit Walker's revelations, whatever they were.

Closing the door, which swung half open again without his knowledge, he turned an inquiring and most unfriendly eye on the unwanted visitor.

"I hope you are ashamed of yourself," he said quietly.

If Walker had understood mankind better, he would not have misinterpreted that suave utterance by imagining, as he did, that it betokened fear of exposure. Unhappily, he strutted, and slapped a gaitered leg with a switch he carried in place of a whip.