Trevlyn Hold Part 29

"I can ride on to the Hold, and send it back."

George hesitated a moment. "I would rather you left it at the Farm, Rupert. It will not be far to walk after that."

Rupert acquiesced. Did he wonder why he might not ride the horse to the Hold? George would not say, "Because even that slight attention must, if possible, be kept from Chattaway."

He fastened the bridle to a hook in the wall, where Mr. Chattaway often tied his horse, where Cris sometimes tied his. There was a stable near; but unless they were going to remain in the office or about the pits, Mr. Chattaway and his son seldom put up their horses.

George Ryle walked away with a quick step, and Rupert returned to his desk. A quarter-of-an-hour pa.s.sed on, and the clerk did not return.

Rupert grew impatient for his arrival, and went to the door to look out for him. He did not see Ford; but he did see Cris Chattaway. Cris was approaching on foot, at a snail's pace, leading his horse, which was dead lame.

"Here's a nice bother!" called out Cris. "How I am to get back home, I don't know."

"What has happened?" returned Rupert.

"Can't you see what has happened? How it happened, I am unable to tell you. All I know is, the horse fell suddenly lame, and whined like a child. Something must have run into his foot, I conclude. Whose horse is that? Why, it's George Ryle's," Cris exclaimed as he drew sufficiently near to recognise it. "What brings his horse here?"

"He has lent it to me, to save my walking home," said Rupert.

"Where is he? Here?"

"He has gone home on foot. I can't think where Ford's lingering," added Rupert, walking into the yard, and mounting one of the smaller heaps of coal for a better view of the road by which Ford might be expected to arrive. "He has been gone this hour."

Cris was walking off in the direction of the stable, carefully leading his horse. "What are you going to do with him?" asked Rupert. "To leave him in the stable?"

"Until I can get home and send the groom for him. _I'm_ not going to cool my heels, dragging him home," retorted Cris.

Rupert retired indoors, and sat down on the high stool. He still had some accounts to make up. They had to be done that evening; and as Ford did not come in to do them, he must. Had Ford been there, Rupert would have left him to do it, and gone home at once.

"I wonder how many years of my life I am to wear out in this lively place?" thought Rupert, after five minutes of uninterrupted attention given to his work, which slightly progressed in consequence. "It's a shame that I should be put to it. A paid fellow at ten shillings a week would do it better than I. If Chattaway had a spark of good feeling in him, he'd put me into a farm. It would be better for me altogether, and more fitting for a Trevlyn. Catch him at it! He wouldn't let me be my own master for----"

A sound as of a horse trotting off interrupted Rupert's cogitations. He came down from his stool. A thought crossed him that George Ryle's horse might have got loose, and be speeding home riderless, at his own will and pleasure.

It was George Ryle's horse, but not riderless. To Rupert's intense astonishment, he saw Mr. Cris mounted on him, and leisurely riding away.

"Halloa!" called Rupert, speeding after the horse and his rider. "What are you going to do with that horse, Cris?"

Cris turned his head, but did not stop. "I'm going to ride him home. His having been left here just happens right for me."

"You get off," shouted Rupert. "The horse was lent to me, not to you. Do you hear, Cris?"

Cris heard, but did not stop: he was urging the horse on. "_You_ don't want him," he roughly said. "You can walk, as you always do."

Further remonstrance, further following, was useless. Rupert's words were drowned in the echoes of the horse's hoofs, galloping away in the distance. Rupert stood, white with anger, impotent to stop him, his hands stretched out on the empty air, as if their action could arrest the horse and bring him back again. Certainly the mortification was bitter; the circ.u.mstance precisely one of those likely to affect an excitable nature; and Rupert was on the point of going into that dangerous fit known as the Trevlyn pa.s.sion, when its course was turned aside by a hand laid upon his shoulder.

He turned, it may almost be said, savagely. Ford was standing there out of breath, his good-humoured face red with the exertion of running.

"I say, Mr. Rupert, you'll do a fellow a service, won't you? I have had a message that my mother's taken suddenly ill; a fit, they say, of some sort. Will you finish what there is to do here, and lock up for once, so that I can go home directly?"

Rupert nodded. In his pa.s.sionate disappointment, at having to walk home when he expected to ride, at being treated as of no moment by Cris Chattaway, it seemed of little consequence to him how long he remained, or what work he had to do: and the clerk, waiting for no further permission, sped away with a fleet foot. Rupert's face was losing its deathly whiteness--there is no whiteness like that born of pa.s.sion or of sudden terror; and when he sat down again to the desk, the hectic flush of reaction was shining in his cheeks and lips.

Well, oh, well for him, could these dangerous fits of pa.s.sion have been always arrested on the threshold, as this had been arrested now! The word is used advisedly: they brought nothing less than danger in their train.

But, alas! this was not to be.

CHAPTER XVII

DEAD BEAT

Nora was at some business or other in the fold-yard, when the servant at Trevlyn Hold more especially devoted to the service of Cris Chattaway entered the gate with George Ryle's horse. As he pa.s.sed Nora on his way to the stables, she turned, and the man spoke.

"Mr. Ryle's horse, ma'am. Shall I take it on?"

"You know the way," was Nora's short answer. She did not regard the man with any favour, reflecting upon him, in her usual partial fashion, the dislike she entertained for his master and Trevlyn Hold in general. "Mr.

Trevlyn has sent it, I suppose."

"Mr. Trevlyn!" repeated the groom, betraying some surprise.

Now, it was a fact that at Trevlyn Hold Rupert was never called "Mr.

Trevlyn." That it was his proper t.i.tle was indisputable; but Mr.

Chattaway had as great a dislike to hear Rupert called by it as he had a wish to hear himself styled "the Squire." At the Hold, Rupert was "Mr.

Rupert" only, and the neighbourhood generally had fallen into the same familiar mode when speaking of him. Nora supposed the man's repet.i.tion of the name had insolent reference to this; as much as to say, "Who's Mr. Trevlyn?"

"Yes, Mr. Trevlyn," she resumed in sharp tones of reprimand. "He is Mr.

Trevlyn, Sam Atkins, and you know he is, however some people may wish it forgotten. He is not Mr. Rupert, and he is not Mr. Rupert Trevlyn, but he is Mr. Trevlyn; and if he had his rights, he'd be Squire Trevlyn.

There! you may go and tell your master that I said so."

Sam Atkins, a civil, quiet young fellow, was overpowered with astonishment at Nora's burst of eloquence. "I'm not saying naught against it, ma'am," cried he, when he had sufficiently recovered. "But Mr. Rupert didn't send me with the horse at all. It was young Mr.

Chattaway."

"What had he to do with it?" resentfully asked Nora.

"He rode it home from Blackstone."

"_He_ rode it? Cris Chattaway!"

"Yes," said the groom. "He has just got home now, and told me to bring the horse back at once."

Nora desired the man to take the horse to the stable, and went indoors.

She could not understand it. When George returned home on foot, and she inquired what he had done with his horse, he told her that he had left it at Blackstone for Rupert Trevlyn. To hear now that Cris had reaped the benefit of it, and not Rupert, excited Nora's indignation. But the indignation would have increased fourfold had she known that Mr. Cris had ridden the horse hard and made a _detour_ of some five miles out of his way, to transact a private matter of business of his own. She went straight to George, who was seated at tea with Mrs. Ryle.

"Mr. George, I thought you told me you had left your horse at Blackstone for Rupert Trevlyn, to save his walking home?"

"So I did," replied George.