Chapter 41

MR. RUNDLE TAKES A HAND

Battered and sorely bruised, Philip Slotman lay on his bed in the Feathers Inn in Little Langbourne, and cursed his luck. Every time he moved he swore to himself.

He was hurt in mind, body, and estate; he was consumed by a great rage and a sense of injury. He had suffered, and someone should pay—Joan mainly, after Joan, Hugh Alston. But it would be safer to make Joan pay. Not in money. Alston had insisted on it that he had nothing to expect in the way of cash from Miss Meredyth.

Slotman lay writhing, and cursing and planning vengeance. There were few things that he would not have liked to do to Hugh Alston, but finally he decided he could better hurt Hugh Alston through Joan, so thereafter he devoted his thoughts to Joan.

The church bells of Little Langbourne Church were ringing pleasantly when Philip Slotman, with many a grunt and inward groan, rose from his couch.

Except for a slight discoloration about the left eye and a certain stiffness of gait, there was nothing about Philip Slotman when he came down to the coffee-room for his breakfast to suggest that he had seen so much trouble the previous evening. But there were some who had seen Slotman come in, and among them was the waiter. He put his hand over his mouth, and smirked now at the sight of Slotman, and Slotman noticed it.

The bells rang no message of peace and good-will to Mr. Slotman this morning.

Yes, Joan would be the one. He would make her pay; he would hurt Alston through her, and hit her hard at the same time. He would stay here at Little Langbourne.

“Buddesby, sir?” said the waiter. “Yes, sir. Mister John Everard’s place about a quarter of a mile beyond the village. Very interesting old ’ouse, sir, one of the best farms hereabouts. Mr. Everard’s a well-to-do gentleman, sir, old family, not—”

“Oh, go away!”

The waiter withdrew. “Anyhow,” he thought, “he got it all right last night, and serve him right. Law! what a mess ’e were in when he came in.”

A quarter of a mile beyond the village. Slotman nodded. He would go. He remembered that Alston had said something last night about this man Everard, had suggested all sorts of things might happen to him, Slotman, if he communicated in any way with Everard.

“Anyhow I shall tell him, and unless he is a born fool he will soon get quit of her. By thunder! I’ll make her name reek, as I told her I would. I’ll set this place and Starden and half the infernal country talking about her! If she shews her face anywhere, she’ll get stared at. I’ll let her and that beast Alston see what it means to get on the wrong side of a chap like me.”

A quarter of a mile beyond the village. Thank Heaven it was no further.

The church bells had ceased ringing, from the church itself came the pleasant sounds of voices. The village street lay white in the sunlight with the blue shadows of the houses, a world of peace and of beauty, of sweet scenes and of sweet sounds; and now he had left the village behind him.

“Is this Buddesby, my man? Those gates, are they the gates of Buddesby?”

“Aye, they be,” said the man. He was a big, gipsy-looking fellow, who slouched with hunched shoulders and a yellow mongrel dog at his heels.

“The gates of Buddesby they be, and—” He paused; he stared hard into Slotman’s face.

“Oh!” he said slowly, “oh, so ’tis ’ee, be it? I been watching out for ’ee.”

“What—what do you mean?”

“I remember ’ee, I do. I remember your grinning face. I’ve carried it in my memory all right. See that dawg?” The man pointed to the lurcher. “See him: he’s more’n a brother, more’n a son, more’n a wife to me. That’s the dawg you run over that day, and you grinned. I seen it—you grinned!” The man’s black eyes sparkled. He looked swiftly up the road and down it, and Slotman saw the action and quivered.

“I’ll give you—” he began. “I am very sorry; it was an accident. I’ll pay you for—”

But the man with the blazing eyes had leaped at him.

“I been waiting for ’ee, and I’ve cotched ’ee at last!” he shouted.

Johnny Everard, hands in pockets, mooning about his stock and rickyard, this calm Sunday morning, never guessed how near he had been to receiving a visitor.

He had not seen Joan since that night when, with Ellice beside him, he had seen her and the man at the door of Mrs. Bonner’s cottage.

He had meant to go, but had not gone. He was due there to-day; this very morning Helen would expect him. He had never missed spending a Sunday with them since the engagement; and yet he felt loath to go, and did not know why.

He had seen Connie off to Church. Con never missed. Ellice had not gone. Ellice was perhaps a little less constant than Con. He wondered where the girl was now, and, thinking of her, the frown on his face was smoothed away.

Always there was wonder, a sense of unreality in his mind; a feeling that somehow, in some way, he was wrong. He must be wrong. Strangely enough, these last few days he had thought more constantly of Ellice than of Joan. He had pictured her again and again to himself—a little, white-clad, barefooted figure standing against the dusky background of the hallway, framed by the open door. He remembered the colour in her cheeks, and her brave championship of the other woman; but he remembered most of all the look in her eyes when she had said to him, “Please, please don’t!”

“I shall never kiss her again,” he said, and said it to himself, and knew as he said it that he was denying himself the thing for which now he longed.

He had kissed Joan’s cold cheek, he had kissed her hand, but her lips had not been for him. He had wondered once if they ever would be, and he had cared a great deal; now he ceased to wonder.

“I shall never kiss Gipsy again,” he thought, and, turning, saw her.

“So you—you didn’t go to Church, Gipsy?”

“I thought you had gone to Starden.”

They stood and looked at one another.

“No. I don’t think I shall go to Starden to-day.”

“But they expect you.”

“I—I don’t think I shall go to-day, Gipsy. Shall we go for a walk across the fields?”

“You ought to go to Starden,” she said. “She—she will expect you.”

But a spirit of reckless defiance had come to him.

“She won’t miss me if I don’t go.”

“No, she won’t miss you,” the girl said softly, and her voice shook.

“So—so come with me, Gipsy girl.”

“If you wish it.”

“You know I do.”

Yet when they went together across the fields, when they came to the edge of the hop-garden and saw the neatly trailing vines, which this year looked better and more promising than he could ever remember before, they had nothing to say to one another, not a word. Once he took her hand and held it for a moment, then let it go again; and at the touch of her he thrilled, little dreaming how her heart responded.

He scarcely looked at her. If he had, he might have seen a glow in her cheeks, a brightness in her eyes, the brightness born of a new and wonderful hope.

“After all, after all,” the girl was thinking. “I believe he cares for me a little—not so much as he loves her, but a little, a little, and I love him.”

Connie smiled on them as they came in together. It was as she liked to see them. She noticed the deep colouring in the girl’s cheeks, the new brightness in her eyes, and Connie, who always acted on generous impulses, kissed her.

“What’s that for?” Johnny cried. “Haven’t you one for me too, Con?”

“Always, always,” she said. She put her arms about his neck and hugged him.

It seemed as if the clouds that had so long overcast this little house had drifted away this calm Sabbath day, and the sun was shining down gloriously on them.

For some time Connie had been quietly watching the girl. There came back into her memory a promise given long ago. “I will do nothing, nothing, Con, unless I tell you first.”

She knew Ellice for the soul of honour; she had felt safe, and now she was waiting.

“Well, Ellice, have you anything to say to me?” Johnny was gone after dinner to his tiny study to wrestle with letters and figures that he abhorred.

“Yes,” Ellice said.

“I thought you had—well?”

“I am going to Starden,” the girl said. “I am going to Starden this afternoon, Con.”

“What for?”

“To see—her?”

“Why—why, darling, why?”

“To ask her if she can be generous—and oh, I believe she can—to ask her why she is taking him away from me when I love him so, and when—oh, Con—Con, when I believe that he cares a little for me.”

Con held out her arms, she caught the girl tightly.

“My love and my prayers and my wishes will go with you, darling.”