Starvecrow Farm. Weyman Stanley John

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СКАЧАТЬ what has that to do with the young woman you're going bail for?" the doctor retorted. "Go bail, Tom, for a wench you don't know, and that'll jump the moon one of these fine nights! I tell you, man, I never heard the like! Never! Go bail for a girl you don't know!"

      "And I tell you," cried a voice that made the glasses ring, "I have heard the like! And I'll give you the man, my lad!" And Mrs. Gilson, putting aside the two who blocked the doorway, confronted the offending Tyson with a look comparable only to that of Dr. Keats of Eaton when he rolled up his sleeves. "I'll give you the name, my lad!" she repeated.

      "Well," the doctor answered, though he was manifestly taken aback, "you must confess, Mrs. Gilson-"

      "Nay, I'll confess nothing!" the landlady retorted. "What need, when you're the man? Not give bail for a woman you don't know? Much you knew of Madge Peters when you made her your wife! And wasn't that going bail for her? Ay, and bail that you'll find it hard to get out of, my man, though you may wish to! For the matter of that, it's small blame to her, whatever comes of it!" Mrs. Gilson continued, setting her arms akimbo. "If all I hear of your goings-on is true! What do you think she's doing, ill and sick at home, while you're hanging about old Hinkson's? Ay, you may look black, but tell me what Bess Hinkson's doing about my place all this day? I never saw her here twice in a day in all my life before, and-"

      "What do you mean?" Tyson cried violently. To hear a thing which he thought no one suspected brought up thus before a roomful of men! He looked black as thunder at his accuser.

      "I mean no harm of your wife," the terrible landlady answered; something-perhaps this roasting of her husband on his own hearth-had roused her beyond the ordinary. "None, my gentleman, and I know none. But if you want no harm said of her, show yourself a bit less at Hinkson's. And a bit less in my house. And a bit more in your own! And the harm will be less likely to happen!"

      "I'll never cross your doorstep again!" Tyson roared.

      And stumbling to his feet he cast off one or two who in their well meaning would have stayed him. He made for the door. But he was not to escape without further collision. On the threshold he ran plump against a person who was entering, cursed the newcomer heartily, and without a look pushed violently by him and was gone.

      He neither cared nor saw who it was whom he had jostled. But the company saw, and some rose to their feet in consternation, while others, carried their hands to their heads. There was an involuntary movement of respect which the new comer acknowledged by touching his hat. He had the air of one who knew how to behave to his inferiors; but the air, also, of one who never forgot that they were his inferiors.

      "Your friend seems in a hurry," he said. His face was not a face that easily betrayed emotion, but he looked tired.

      "Beg your honour's pardon, I am sure," Gilson answered. "Something's put him out, and he did not see you, sir."

      Mrs. Gilson muttered that a pig could have seen. But her words were lost in the respectful murmur which made the company sharers in the landlord's apology.

      Not that for the most part they knew the strange gentleman. But there is a habit of authority which once gained becomes a part of the man. And Anthony Clyne had this. He retained wherever he went some shadow of the quarter-deck manner. He had served under Nelson, and under Exmouth; but he had resisted, as a glance at his neat, trim figure proved, that coarsening influence which spoiled for Pall Mall too many of the sea-dogs of the great war. Like his famous leader, he had left an arm in the cockpit; and the empty sleeve which he wore pinned to the lappel of his coat added, if possible, to the dignity of the upright carriage and the lean, shaven face. The death of his elder brother had given him the family place, a seat in the House, a chair at White's, and an income handsome for his day. And he looked all this and more; so that such a company as now eyed him with respect judged him a very perfect gentleman, if a little distant.

      But from Clyne Old Hall, where he lived, he could see on the horizon the smoke of toiling cities; and in those cities there were hundreds who hated his cold proud face, and thousands who cursed his name. Not that he was a bad man or a tyrant, or himself ground the faces of the poor. But discipline was his watchword, and reform his bugbear. To palter with reform, to listen to a word about the rights of the masses, was to his mind to parley with anarchy. That governors and governed could be the same appeared to his mind as absurd as that His Majesty's ships could be commanded from the forecastle. All for the people and nothing by the people was his political maxim, and one amply meeting, as he believed, all eventualities. Lately he had had it carved on a mantel-piece, and the prattle of his only child, as the club-footed boy spelled it out syllable by syllable, was music to his ears.

      Whoever wavered, therefore, whoever gave to the violence of those times, he stood firm. And he made others stand. It was his honest belief that a little timely severity-in other words, a whiff of grape-shot-would have nipped the French Revolution in the bud; and while he owned that the lower orders were suffering and times were bad, that bread was dear and work wanting, he was for quelling the least disorder with the utmost rigour of the law.

      Such was the man who accepted with a curt nod Tom Gilson's apology. Then "Have you a room ready?" he asked.

      "The fire is still burning in Mr. Rogers's room," Mrs. Gilson answered, smoothing at once her apron and her brow. "And it'll not be used again to-night. But I thought that you had gone on, sir, to Whitehaven."

      "I shall go on to-morrow," he answered, frowning slightly.

      "I'll show your honour the way," Tom Gilson said.

      "Very good," he answered. "And dinner, ma'am, as soon as possible."

      "To be sure, sir." And "This way, your honour." And taking two candles Gilson went out before Captain Clyne, and with greater ceremony than would be used in these days, lighted him along the passage and up the stairs to Mr. Rogers's room in the south wing.

      The fire had sunk somewhat low, but the room which had witnessed so many emotions in the last twenty-four hours made no sign. The table had been cleared. The glass fronts of the cupboards shone dully; only a chair or two stood here or there out of place. That was all. But had Henrietta, when she descended to breakfast that morning, foreseen who would fill her chair before night, who would dine at her table and brood with stern unseeing eyes on the black-framed prints, for whom the pale-faced clock would tick off depressing seconds, what-what would she have thought? And how would she have faced her future?

      CHAPTER VIII

      STARVECROW FARM

      The company at Mrs. Gilson's, impressed by the appearance of a gentleman of Captain Clyne's position, scarce gave a second thought to the doctor's retreat. But to Tyson, striding homewards through the mud and darkness, the insult he had suffered and the feeble part he had played filled the world. For him the inn-parlour still cackled at his expense. He saw himself the butt of the evening, the butt of many evenings. He was a vain, ill-conditioned man, who among choice spirits would have boasted of his philandering. But not the less he hated to be brought to book before those whom he deemed his inferiors. He could not deny that the landlady had trounced him, and black bile whelmed all his better feelings as he climbed the steep track behind the inn. "D-d shrew!" he growled, "D-d shrew!" and breathing hard, as much in rage as with exertion, he stood an instant to look back and shake his fist before he plunged into the darkness of the wooded dell through which the path ascended.

      Two or three faint lights marked the position of the inn a couple of fields below him. Beyond it the pale surface of the lake reflected a dim radiance, bestowed on it through some rift in the clouds invisible from where he stood. A far-away dog barked, a curlew screamed on the hill above him, the steady fall of a pair of oars in the rowlocks rose from the lake. The immensity of the night closed all in; and on the thoughtful СКАЧАТЬ