Chapter 14

The Great Beast

Joses had been haunting the village off and on for some time past.

Boy Woodburn knew nothing of him except that Monkey Brand disliked him.

Herself she had been given no chance of forming an opinion till lately, when Joses had asked permission of her father to paint some of the horses. Old Mat had given leave, and Joses had gained the entrée to the stables. He had made the most of his chance, haunting the yard, dogged by Monkey Brand, who resented his presence, watched him jealously, and made things as uncomfortable and precarious for the artist as he could. Joses, to do him justice, stuck to his self-imposed task with astonishing pertinacity in spite of opposition. He did not give up indeed until Flaminetta, a lengthy mare with an astonishing reach, suddenly exploded without warning and missed his head with a steel-shod heel by a short foot.

Joses tumbled backward off his stool and crawled out of danger on his hands and knees with astonishing alacrity for so gross a man.

Monkey Brand, an interested witness of the catastrophe, came limping up full of the tenderest solicitude.

"Oh, my, Mr. Joses!--my!" he cried. "I never knew her to do that afore. _Ah, yer! what ye up to?_"

Joses, still on his hands and knees, looked up at the little jockey, his eyes aghast with anger and fear.

"Ginger!" he snorted. "You put it there."

Monkey Brand eyed him with bland interest.

"You know a wunnerful deal about 'orses for a hartist, Mr. Joses," he remarked, not troubling to deny the soft impeachment.

Joses got to his feet and began to talk volubly.

Monkey Brand listened in respectful silence, waving to the lads to keep in the background.

When the orator had finished, the little jockey went in to report to Old Mat.

"He knows altogether too much that Mr. Joses do," he ended.

The trainer nodded.

"I guessed as much," he said. "I'll make inquiries."

* * * * *

Two days later Old Mat called his head-lad into the office. He was in his socks and shut the door with precautions.

Mystery was the breath of life to both men, who were at heart but children.

"Seen Joses lately?" began the old man cautiously.

"Not since then, sir," the other answered in the same tone.

Old Mat went to the window and drew down the blind. There was nobody but Maudie in the yard outside, and no human being within fifty yards. But such considerations must not come between the principal actors and the correct ritual for such occasions.

"I was over at Lewes yesterday," he panted huskily. "I see that tall inspector chap--him I put on to Flaminetta for the Sefton."

Monkey was all alert.

"What did he say, sir?"

"Not much," muttered the other. "Enough, though."

Monkey drooped his eyelids and tilted his chin. His face became a masterpiece of secrecy and cunning.

Old Mat turned his lips inward.

"I've warned him off," he said, "you might snout about a bit and rout out what he _is_ after."

The other nodded.

"Monkey's the man, sir," he said, and stole away on tip-toe.

* * * * *

That evening the old trainer, driving through the village, came on the discomfited artist and drew up to have a word with him.

"Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" began the old man in his sympathetic wheeze. "This _is_ a bad job to be sure, Mr. Joses. So that long mare o' mine had a shot at your pore brain-box. When I heard, I wep' a tear, I did reelly." He shook a sorrowful head. "You mustn't come no more, though, Mr. Joses, you mustn't. If anything was to 'appen to you in my place I should never forgive meself. 'Tain't so much the compensation to your widows and such. It's _here_"--he thumped his heart--"I'd feel it."

Joses began to make excuse, but the old man refused to be convinced.

"Rogues and rasqueals, Mr. Joses," he cried. "Layin' pitchforks for yer feet--same as the Psalmist says. Hosses is much the very same as men. Kilted cattle, as the sayin' is. Once they turn agin' you your number's up. And they got _somefin'_ agin' you. No fault o' yours, I know--godly genelman like you. But where it is _there_ it is!" He sat in his buggy and wiped his dewy eye. "And there's the dorg, Mr. Joses. Big dorg, too!"

* * * * *

Joses, ejected from Putnam's, as Adam had been from Paradise, might be the loser; but Art certainly was not.

For he painted abominably.

Even the lads jeered at his efforts, while Old Mat said:

"I reck'n my old pony could do better than that, if I filled her tail with paint and she sat on it."

But Joses was not to be beaten so easily. Meeting Boy Woodburn in the village street, he asked her if he might paint Billy Bluff.

The girl, knowing Billy's views on Mr. Joses, excused herself and her dog.

Joses walked down the village street with her, expostulating.

Mrs. Haggard, the vicar's wife, an austere woman, with a jealously guardian eye for all the village maidens, met the pair and eyed the girl severely.

Later in the day she came on Boy alone and stopped her.

"Do you know that man, Joyce?" she asked.

Mrs. Haggard was the one person in the world who called Boy by her Christian name. And she did it, as she did everything else, on principle.

"Not really," answered Boy.

"I don't like him," said Mrs. Haggard.

"Neither do I," answered the girl.

"I'm glad to hear it," said the other. "He's _not_ a nice man."

That evening Mrs. Haggard went to see Mrs. Woodburn and gave the trainer's wife some of her reasons--and they were good reasons, too--for thinking Mr. Joses _not_ a nice man.

Mrs. Woodburn, who was in the judgment of the vicar's wife a good but curious woman, showed herself distressingly undistressed.

"Boy can look after herself, I guess," she said, a thought grimly.

She reported later to Mat what Mrs. Haggard had told her and what she had replied to Mrs. Haggard.

Old Mat agreed.

"She can bite all right," he said. "Trust Boy."

* * * * *

And Boy, as she walked down the hillside on leaving Mr. Silver and the old mare, felt like biting.

She was annoyed with Mr. Silver, annoyed with Joses, and, above all, annoyed with herself.

She had been mischievous, and now she was being punished for it.

She did not like Joses; and she _did_ like being alone in the wood at dusk.

Her companion walked too close to her; he laughed too much; she was aware of that haunted and haunting eye of his rolling at her continually; and he smelt of alcohol.

Also he would talk.

"That's Silver, is it?" he said familiarly, as they walked down the hill.

"That's _Mr._ Silver," she retorted.

His eye sought hers, questioning; but found nothing save a proud, cold face.

"Your dadda's training for him, isn't he?" continued the fat man.

Her dadda!

The cheek of it!

"I don't know."

"He's a Croesus, isn't he?"

"He's _not_ a greaser," with warmth.

Joses laughed his unpleasant laughter.

"A Croesus, I said. Rolling. He's the Bank of Brazil and Uruguay."

"I don't know," replied the girl. "I haven't asked."

They had reached the stile into the wood.

"Good-night," she said.

"I'll see you through the wood," the other answered.

A moment she hesitated. Should she after all go back by the field? If she did he would think she was afraid. And she was not, as she would show him. But she wished that Billy Bluff was with her. Reluctantly at length she climbed the stile and walked through the dusk. He shambled at her side.

"Begun to bathe yet?" he asked.

"No."

"You let me know when you begin, and I'll come and paint you on the rocks."

Her eyes flashed up at his.

"You won't!" she said fiercely.

He edged in upon her, laughing sleekly.

"Saucy, is it?" he said.

"Keep off!" she cried.

"Wants taming, does it?"

He wound his arm about her.

"Let me go!"

She kicked his shins with her square-toed shoes.

She kicked hard and hurt him.

"You little devil!" he snorted.

He pressed her to him, seeming to smother her, like an offensive blanket.

His red beard brushed her forehead; his hot face crowded down on hers; and above all his great red nose protruded above her like an inflamed banana.

Mrs. Haggard was fond of saying that Joyce Woodburn was like a wild animal. And in a way the vicar's wife was right. Self-preservation was the first law of life for the girl as for every healthy young creature. And long and intimate contact with horses and dogs had made her swift and direct in action as were they.

Now when she felt herself in the clutches of the Beast, and the Greater Death closing in upon her, she knew as little of doubts and scruples as any creature of the wilderness.

That hateful breath was in her nostrils; those covetous eyes were close to hers; that inflamed and evil nose protruded over her in flaming invitation.

She seized it in her gloved hand and wrenched it. The effect was immediate.

Joses squealed and clapped both hands to his damaged organ.

"My----, you----!" he squeaked in the voice of a Punch.

The girl broke away and ran. She was swift and hard as a greyhound. For a moment the other stood, leaning over a bed of nettles, snorting and sniffing as the blood dripped from his nose. Then he pursued. She heard him thundering behind her. It was like the pursuit of a fawn by a grizzly. She had only a hundred yards to go to the open; and as she fled with her head on her shoulder, and her plait flapping, feeling the strength in her limbs and the courage in her heart, she mocked her pursuer silently.

That drink-sodden grampus catch her!

Her pride came toppling down about her. She tripped, wrenched her ankle, and knew that she was done.

Before her was a familiar tree she had often climbed, with a branch some six feet from the ground.

She swung herself up.

The Great Beast came snorting up. He was a dreadful sight. His nose was bleeding profusely, and the blood had mingled with his beard and moustache. He had lost his cap, and his head shimmered bald at her feet beneath wisps of hair.

He seemed like a great vat full of spirit into which she had tossed a lighted match.

"I got you, my beauty!" he panted in smothered and unnatural voice.

He put his hands on the branch.

She stamped on them with her heels: and she stamped hard. He swore, and drew from a leather sheath a wooden-handled knife such as Danish fisher-folk use.

She grasped the branch above her and swung in the air; but she could not swing forever thus.

"I can wait," said the Great Beast beneath, laughing dreadfully.

Then there came the sound of a man singing some kind of boating-song.

The voice was deep and drawing nearer.

"_Then we'll all swing together, Steady from stroke to bow._"

It was Silver strolling home through the wood.

Boy heard him; so did Joses, and withdrew into the dusk.

The girl slipped down from the tree.

The young man dawdled up, and looked at her with some surprise.

"Anything up?" he asked.

"Yes," said Boy. "Up a tree."

She limped coldly away.

He followed her.

"Are you lul-lame?" he asked, shy and anxious.

"Sprained my off-hind fetlock," she replied.