The Challenge of Love. Victorian Romance Novel

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      A wet, winter dusk tangled itself among the oak woods west of Navestock town, making the blacks and greys of the landscape seem colder and more sad. The grinding of wheels and the “plud-pludding” of drenched horses drifted along the high road with the galloping of the wind. Old Tom Tyser, muffled up on the box of the “White Hart” coach, shook the rain from his hat-brim, and grumbled.

      “Never knowed such weather! I’ve come home these seven days a-sittin’ in a puddle.”

      Wet it was, and Navestock Valley might have been some primeval sea-bottom suddenly upheaved, still drenched and running with the backwash of the sea. The land lay sodden and tired; the trees shook the rain from their boughs with petulant imprecations. As for the grey coach-horses, their ears flopped dejectedly, and did not prick up at the sound of the postman’s horn. Mr. Winkworth’s red-wheeled coach laboured and squeaked, and strained. A decrepit veteran, it crawled daily between the railway at Wannington and Navestock town, its black panels needing paint, its musty interior smelling of stable dung and straw.

      The passenger on the box beside old Tom Tyser saw Navestock town draw out of the dusk like a great rock in a grey sea. At first it was a mere black mass in the valley, but lights began to blink as the coach passed the lodge gates of “Pardons” and swung along beside the swollen river. Darkness blotted out the cloud scud above the swaying tops of the elms, and in Navestock lights blinked more and more, isolated yellow specks upon the outskirts, but clustered like star clusters towards the centre of the town. By old Josiah Crabbe’s stone house, where the row of Lombardy poplars whistled with the wind, the cobbles of West Street clashed a welcome to the horses’ hoofs. The sounds reverberated in the winding street, where empty footpaths gleamed wet in the light from cottage windows.

      A church tower, more elm trees, and the black mouths of side streets and alleys drifted by before the coach crunched across the market-place and drew up outside the White Hart Hotel. The darkness of a wet February evening hid the utter unimportance of this old-world event. The coach arrived, that was all. It carried just three passengers, and they abandoned it, and went their several ways. There was no stir of ostlers, no fluttering of curtains at the windows, no fat Mr. Winkworth standing under the “White Hart” portico. A single oil lamp flickered on its iron bracket over the hotel door. The pavement and square were crowded with nothing but puddles. All the upper windows in the big, white-fronted, square-built inn were black and lifeless patches. The bar and the billiard-room alone were steamily and huskily alive.

      The tall man in the ulster had climbed down from the box-seat and deposited a shabby leather portmanteau under the portico of the “White Hart.” He glanced about him, took off a rain-splashed top-hat, and smoothed the nap with the sleeve of his ulster. The light from the oil lamp dribbled down on him with a draughty waywardness. He was tall, with a gaunt breadth of shoulder that wedged out his ulster into sharp, square corners. The lamp-light fell on his face and ran off it like water off a crag, an ugly face with a big nose and a square chin. He was clean-shaven about a straight, terse mouth, and his eyes looked very steadily and very intently at life, as though determined to see nothing but the truth.

      A boy came splashing through the puddles in the market-place, and stared doubtfully at the young man under the “White Hart” portico.

      “Be you for Dr. Threadgold’s, mister?”

      He was a fat boy, with blown-out cheeks, a white muffler that bulged under his chin, and trousers that fitted very tightly over a certain portion of his figure. The man studied him with that indescribable gleam of the eyes that goes with a lively sense of humour.

      “That’s right—Mr. Pickwick. I’ve just come by the coach.”

      “My name’s not Pickwick.”

      “I beg your pardon, I’m sure.”

      The boy eyed him suspiciously.

      “My name’s Sam, Sam Perkins, and I carry out the bottles.”

      “That’s something to begin with. Can you manage this bit of luggage?”

      The boy heaved at the portmanteau, and found that it came up quite easily. The tall man’s voice had had a peculiar effect upon him. It was a deep, yet quiet voice, a voice that suggested a reserve of breath stored away in a capacious chest, a voice that would grow quieter and quieter under stress, like the smile of a man who is doggedly good-tempered and knows how to use his fists.

      “Anything else, sir?”

      The “sir” was a distinct uplift.

      “No; that’s the lot.”

      The portmanteau was exceedingly light, and its lightness filled the fat boy with speculative surprise. He remembered that when young Surgeon Stott came as assistant to Dr. Threadgold at Navestock, that gentleman’s luggage had filled the “White Hart” hand-cart, and that Fyson, the coachman, had broken his braces in getting it upstairs. Sam balanced the portmanteau on his shoulder, and made an imaginary inventory of its contents. He allowed the big man one night-shirt, a razor and washing-bag, a pair of slippers, two shirts, a pot of jam, and a second-best pair of trousers. Nor were Sam’s calculations far from the actual facts. Dr. John Wolfe had all his worldly possessions in that leather portmanteau.

      Dr. Montague Threadgold’s house stood on the north side of Mulberry Green, the long windows in its flat red front overlooking the old mulberry trees, and the white posts and chains that bounded the stretch of grass. A solid and portly house, it had for its neighbours a dozen other solid and portly houses, all built of red-brick with white stone cornices and ashlar work at the angles, all with massive front doors and lion-headed brass knockers, and door-steps white as newly starched aprons.

      Sam gave a tug at the bell-handle.

      “I’ll take the box round the back, sir.”

      John Wolfe nodded to him, scraped his boots on an iron scraper let into the wall, and saw the great green front door of Prospect House swinging back over a brown doormat that carried the word “Salve.”

      “Dr. Threadgold at home?”

      “Yes, sir.”

      “I’m Dr. Wolfe. You might take my ulster, and get it dried. Mind your apron. The thing’s wet through.”

      The maid smiled at the big man with the quiet voice. He was laughing to himself over that word “Salve,” and his mouth and eyes looked very pleasant when he was amused. A few details are full of significance to a man who has learnt to observe and to weigh impressions. Dr. Montague Threadgold was either a wag of a fellow or an affable person with no real sense of humour. Salve! Turn the word from Latin to English, and the mat might as well have whispered “pills.”

      A mahogany door at the end of the hall opened, and a short, stoutish man in a neat pair of black-and-white check trousers came sailing out.

      “Mr. Wolfe, I presume. Glad to see you, sir, glad to see you.”

      Dr. Montague Threadgold was the most affable of men. He was round, pink-faced, wore gold-rimmed glasses, and spent twenty minutes each morning in training a number of well-oiled hairs across the bald crown of his head. His affability and his energetic worthiness expressed themselves even in the play of his check-patterned legs. They were legs that twinkled, went at a quick strut, and pattered up and down stairs very quickly. His mouth was one of those prim mouths that purse СКАЧАТЬ