Chapter 30

The Man with the Gamp

The good news was confirmed.

That night a telegram came from Mr. Silver to say he was coming down next morning and asking them to meet him at Lewes.

"I knew he'd come if he could to-morrow," cried the girl.

Her mother looked at her.

"It's your birthday, Boy," she said.

The girl's fair face flushed.

"He doesn't know that," she said, on the defensive. "And you're not to tell. It's the last day of hunting. That's what I meant."

She was indeed seventeen next day. And the sign of her womanhood was that when she came down in the morning her hair was bunched in a neat little coil at the back of her head. Because of it she was shy and somewhat defiant. Dressed for hunting in snowy shirt and long-skirted dark coat, she entered the parlour more swiftly than her wont, in her shoes and stockings, and carrying her riding-boots in her hand.

Her father's mild blue eye penetrated her secret at once.

"That's a little bit o' better," he said. "It's _Miss_ Woodburn now."

"Now then, father," reproved Mrs. Woodburn.

"Oh, I knows my place, plea Gob," mumbled the old man. "Ought to arter all the trainin' you been at the pains to put me to." And he winked and chuckled and grunted over his porridge.

"Let me look at you, Boy," said her mother, when the teasing old man had gone.

The girl coloured faintly. Her mother kissed her. "Joyce," she said gravely, "you're a woman now."

"Am I, mother?" laughed the girl. "I feel like a boy sometimes still."

She was gay with an unusual gaiety.

Her mother marked it with those observant eyes of hers.

After the pair had read together, as their custom was, Mrs. Woodburn laid the Bible down and took up her knitting.

Boy pulled on her boots before the fire.

"I hope you won't marry out of your own class, Boy," said Mrs. Woodburn at last quietly. "We're humble folk, as dad says."

"I don't think I shall marry at all," replied the girl curtly. "I don't feel like it."

The mother continued on her tranquil way.

"When you marry, marry your own sort," she advised.

Boy was silent for a time.

"Isn't Mr. Silver our sort?" she asked at last, her eyes on her mother's.

Mrs. Woodburn, for all her liberal mind, was of the older generation.

"My dear," she said, "he's an Eton man."

"He's not like one," replied the girl shortly. "He's a gentleman."

"My dear, Eton men are gentlemen," reproved Mrs. Woodburn.

"Some," replied the girl. "The Duke is." She added maliciously--"Sometimes."

* * * * *

Old Mat, Monkey Brand, and Albert started early for the meet.

It was a long hour later before mother and daughter, waiting in the parlour, heard the steady clop-clop of a horse's feet and the crisp trundle of wheels on the road.

In another moment the buggy had drawn up at the gate; Goosey Gander was stretching his neck, and Jerry of the corrugated brow was touching his hat to the descending passenger.

A tall, top-hatted figure, enfolded in long, shaggy gray frieze coat, came up the paved yard toward them between clouds of arabis.

Silver had changed in the train on the way down. He was booted, spurred, and above all radiant.

Mrs. Woodburn went out on to the steps to meet him. The girl hid her hair behind her mother's stately figure.

"So you've managed it!" smiled Mrs. Woodburn.

"I was determined not to miss it," replied the young man, striding up the steps stiff in his top-boots. "Miss Woodburn, congratulations."

"Who told you?" cried Boy, taken aback.

"Billy Bluff, of course," replied the other. "Caddish of him, wasn't it?"

They went into the parlour.

Mrs. Woodburn did not offer the traveller a drink for the simple reason that it never occurred to her to do so.

"By Jove! I _am_ late!" cried the young man, glancing at the clock. "There was a break-down at Hayward's Heath."

He stripped off his ulster, and stood up in his pink coat, his baggy white breeches, and top-boots.

In Boy Woodburn's judgment most men, so attired, looked supremely ridiculous. It was not so with Mr. Silver. It may be that his absolute lack of self-consciousness distracted attention from his costume. It may be that he was so real himself that he dominated his artificial habiliments. Certainly his strong, clean face, his short, crisp hair, and pleasant, booming voice possessed and pleased the girl.

"You'd better be off, or you'll have the Duke down on you," said Mrs. Woodburn.

"Dad's gone an hour since," said Boy.

She led the way swiftly down long stone passages out into the yard. He followed, his eyes on that shining bunch of hair before him.

The yard looked deserted. The fan-tails strutted vaingloriously; Maudie lay in the sun on the stable wall; and Billy Bluff's kennel was empty.

"Hullo, where's Bill?" cried the young man.

"Some idiot's let him off his chain," grumbled the girl. "Just like them. A hunting morning."

A great gray horse, led by little Jerry, was feeling his way through the stable-door. Banjo stood seventeen hands or over, but he was all quality. His long neck was hog-maned; and his Roman nose and sober colour gave him an air of wisdom and experience which a somewhat frivolous character belied.

Young Lollypop, a brown three-year-old, followed demurely behind. For all his sixteen hands, he looked a mere stripling beside the gray; but he was far too tall for the girl to mount without assistance. Stanley went for a bucket, but before he could return Silver had shot the girl into the saddle, and stood a moment looking up at her with eyes in which laughter and admiration mingled.

The girl seemed so slight and yet so masterful on these great larruping thoroughbreds she always rode!

Young Lollypop had the callow and awkward ways of a young giraffe, but, though only a three-year-old, he was sedate as an old maid and had the dignity of a churchwarden. His behaviour was an example to his flippant colleague.

For Banjo, directly he felt his master on his back, began to galumph about the yard with a clatter of hoofs among the injured fan-tails and to the discomfiture of Maudie.

"Right!" grunted Silver, settling into his saddle. "Now, you old hog, you!"

Brown Lollypop cocked his long ears and watched with pained disapproval the gambols of his elder. Himself incorruptible, he was no doubt well pleased at heart that Banjo's misconduct should throw up in high relief his own immaculate conduct. Lollypop was in fact a bit of a prig. Had he been a boy he would have been head of his school, a Scholar of Balliol, and President of the Union at his University.

The girl followed her leader through the gate, the brown horse stepping gingerly, swinging his tail, and feeling his bit, while Banjo galumphed and grunted to the sound of a squeaking leather.

The meet was at Folkington Green, at the foot of the Downs on the edge of the low country.

Once in the road, Silver and the girl turned their backs on the sea and made through the village.

Just outside it a familiar figure was waiting them on the road, apologetic and pleading.

"I knew he would," said Boy. "He started with father and got turned back. Now he's waiting for us. _Go back, you bad dog!_"

"Poor boy!--he wants a bit of a hunt, too," said the young man.

"I'll hunt him!" cried the girl remorselessly, and proceeded to do so with vigour.

It was some time before the dog was routed and they were free to pursue their way.

"What's the time?" asked the girl.

Silver referred to his wrist-watch.

"It's nearly half-past eleven."

"We must trot," said Boy.

They trotted away, the brown horse and the gray side by side, the regular clap-clap of their feet sometimes overlapping and sometimes beating in unison, only to break eventually again, to the disappointment of the girl's attentive ear. It was the fashion amid the hunting folk to despise hacking along the road as so much waste of time. To the girl the steady tramp along the hard road was like the march of life. She would hack from covert to covert, one of a great cavalcade, men and women, with bobbing heads, their faces set all in the same direction, the sound of the horses' feet splashing all round her like a stream. She would flow along in the centre of that stream, unconscious of those about her, silent when addressed, absorbed in the only music for which she cared.

The noise of Banjo blowing his nose now brought her back to earth. She peeped at the face of the man on the big gray at her side.

"Had a bad time?" she asked warily.

He turned to her, his face lit with the smile that took all the heaviness out of it.

"Worrying," he said.

"Well, you're through now," said the girl.

"Plea Gob," he answered, "till next time. We'd have been in the cart but the Bank of England stood by like a brick."

Their steady pace took them along. They were getting away from the hills, and the Weald was opening before them. The sun shone on them, and the willows on either side the road declared that April was at hand. They eased down to a walk.

Silver opened his chest.

"I feel like singing!" he cried.

"Sing then," said Boy.

In his quiet booming voice he sang a verse from _Two on the Downs_, which in their long hacks home of evening she had taught him--

_Sing ho! So we go, Over Downs that are surging green Under the sky and the seas that lie Silvery-strewn between_.

He finished and turned to her with a laugh and shining eyes.

She glanced away, and on her face was that delicious wary look he loved so well, baffling and baffled, disturbing because disturbed, as when a little wind ruffles at evening a willow, exposing to the sky in spite of protest the silvery undersides of naked, shining leaves.

Jim Silver edged across to her.

"Miss Woodburn!" he said quietly. He held out a great gloved hand.

Boy looked resolutely between her horse's ears.

"Trot," she said.

A few straggling foot-passengers, an occasional trap, a man on a bicycle, and some children pushing a perambulator, showed them they were drawing near their goal.

About half a mile in front the road opened on to a green. There among trees they could see a gathering of men and horses.

"Good!" cried the young man. "They haven't moved off yet. Shall we slow down?"

"Best get on, I think," replied the girl.

A man in a slouch hat, carrying a gamp as untidy as himself, was walking before them down the middle of the road.

"Ass!" muttered the young man. "Why can't he keep to one side?"

Boy shot ahead, Silver took a pull. Banjo made a fuss, took offence, then went striding hugely by, and shied off, splashing through a puddle.

The brown waters rose and drenched the pedestrian.

"Thank _you!_" he called furiously after the horseman.

Banjo, as though frightened at his deed, tried a bolt. A horseman of unusual power, Silver steadied the great horse and swung him across the road. There Banjo sidled, yawed, and passaged, fretting to be after the brown.

The young man, swinging to the motions of the tossing gray, raised his hand in that large and gracious way of his.

"So sorry," he shouted back.

The man with the gamp shuffled toward him.

"Of course it wasn't deliberate!" he cried.

It was Silver's turn to be angry.

He gripped the gray, lifted him round like a polo pony, and drove him back to the angry man.

"You don't think I'd do a thing like that on purpose!" he said, and saw for the first time that the man with the gamp was Joses.

"You didn't know it was me, of course," sneered the other, shaking with anger.

"I did not," replied Silver, calm and cold as Joses was hot.

"Then I don't believe you," cried the tout.

Silver looked down at him.

"I've said I'm sorry. I've no more to say," he remarked quietly.

"Haven't you?" cried the fat man. "I have, though."

He made a snatch at Banjo's rein.

The gray reared, backed away into the ditch, collapsed there on his quarters, and recovered himself with the grunt and flounder of a hippopotamus emerging from a river.

A little crowd was collecting swiftly, drawn by the hopes of a row.

Then there came the clatter of a horse's feet. Boy was coming back to the group at a gallop.

"I saw what happened," she said, her deep voice a little sharp. "Your horse shied and splashed Mr. Joses." She appealed swiftly to him. "Wasn't that it?"

"Yes," said Silver coldly. "I splashed him by accident and apologised."

"_And he turned nasty!_"

The intervening voice was harsh and unfamiliar. Silver turned to see a tall inspector of police sitting like a pillar of salt in a dog-cart, which had drawn up in the road.

Joses, who had seen him, too, began to shake, and more horrible still to laugh.

"He was naturally a bit annoyed," said Silver.

The tall inspector was looking Joses up and down. There was a dreadful air of domination about him.

"If you're satisfied, sir, I say no more," said the inspector, reluctant as a dog to leave a bone.

"I'm satisfied," replied Silver.

The inspector withdrew. The little knot of people who had gathered began to disperse. The young man and the girl trotted on their way.

"Most unfortunate," muttered Silver.

"Most," Boy answered.

In Joses's eyes she had seen again that look of the wild beast, caged and cowering.

The young man felt censure in her voice.

"Well, I don't think it was my fault," he said, nettled.

"I know it wasn't," she cried. "But--"

"What?"

"That inspector's way with him. Like a slavedriver."

"I know," said Silver. "Horrible."