Starvecrow Farm Part 18

"Do you know who I am?" she cried, for the moment forgetting herself in her pa.s.sion.

"No!" he answered, before she could say more. "That is just what I don't know, my girl. I have taken you on trust and you are pretty enough! But I know Clyne, and he is interested in you. And his taste is good enough for me!"

"Let me pa.s.s!" she cried.

He tried to seize her, but she evaded his grasp, slipped fearlessly behind the horse's heels and stood free. h.o.r.n.yold wheeled about, and with an oath:

"You sly baggage!" he cried. "You are not going to escape so easily!

You----"

There he stopped. Not twenty yards from him and less than that distance beyond her, was a stranger. The sight was so little to be expected in that solitary place, he had been so sure that they were alone and the girl at the mercy of his rudeness, that he broke off, staring. The stranger came slowly on, and when almost abreast of Henrietta raised his hat and paused, dividing his regards between the scowling magistrate and the indignant girl.

"Good morning," he said, addressing her. "If I am not inopportune, I have a letter for you from Captain Clyne."

"Then be good enough," she answered, "first to take me out of the company of this person." And she turned her shoulder on the justice, and taking the stranger with her--almost in his own despite--she sailed off; and, a very picture of outraged dignity, swept down the road.

Mr. h.o.r.n.yold glared after her, his bridle on his arm. And his face was red with fury. Seldom had he been so served.

"A parson, by heaven!" he said. "A regular Methody, too, by his niminy-piminy get-up! Who is he, I wonder, and what in the name of mischief brought him here just at that moment? Ten to one she was looking to meet him, and that was why she played the prude, the little cat! To be sure. But I'll be even with her--in Appleby gaol or out! As for him, I've never set eyes on him. And I've a good notion to have him taken up and lodged in the lock-up. Any way, I'll set the runners on him. Not much spirit in him by the look of him! But she's a spit-fire!"

Mr. h.o.r.n.yold had been so long accustomed to consider the girls of the village fair sport, that he was considerably put out. True, Henrietta was not a village girl. She was something more, and a mystery; nor least a mystery in her relations with Captain Clyne, a man whom the justice admitted to be more important than himself. But she was in trouble, she was under a cloud, she was smirched with suspicion; she was certainly no better than she should be. And not experience only, but all the coa.r.s.er instincts of the man forbade him to believe in such a woman's "No."

CHAPTER XI

CAPTAIN CLYNE'S PLAN

For a full hundred yards Henrietta walked on with her head in the air, too angry to accost or even to look at her companion; who, on his part, tripped meekly beside her. Then a sense of the absurdity of the position--of his position rather than her own, for she had whirled him off whether he would or no--overcame her. And she laughed.

"Was ever anything so ridiculous?" she cried. And she looked at him askance and something ashamed. The quick movement which had enabled her to escape had loosened the thick ma.s.s of her fair hair, and this, with her flushed cheeks and kindled eyes, showed her so handsome that it was well the impetuous justice was no longer with her.

The stranger was apparently less impressionable.

"I am glad," he said primly, "that my coming was so opportune."

"Oh! I was not afraid of him," Henrietta answered, tossing her head.

"No?" he rejoined. "Indeed. Still, I am glad that I came so opportunely."

He was a neat, trim man in black, of a pale complexion, and with the small features and the sharp nose that indicate at once timidity and obstinacy; the nose that in the case of the late Right Honourable William Pitt, whom he was proud to resemble, meant something more. But for a pair of bright eyes he had been wholly mean, and wholly insignificant; and Henrietta saw nothing in him either formidable or attractive. She had a notion that she had seen him somewhere; but it was a vague notion, and how he came to be here or commissioned to her she could no more conjecture than if he had risen from the ground.

"You are a stranger here?" she said at last, after more than one side-long glance.

"Yes, I descended from the coach an hour ago."

"And came in search of me?"

"Precisely," he replied. "Being empowered to do so," he continued, with a slight but formal bow, "by Captain Anthony Clyne, to whom I have the honour--my name is Sutton--of being related in the capacity of chaplain."

She coloured more violently with shame than before with anger: and all her troubles came back to her. Probably this man knew all; knew what she had done and what had happened to her. It was cruel--oh, it was cruel to send him! For a moment she could not collect her thoughts or master her voice. But at last,

"Oh!" she said confusedly. "I see. A lovely view from here, is it not?"

"Yes, to be sure," he replied, with the same precision with which he had spoken before. "I ought to have noticed it."

"And you bring me a letter?"

"It was Captain Clyne's wish that I----" he hesitated, and was plainly embarra.s.sed--"that I should, in fact, offer my company for a day or two. While you are under the care of the good woman at the inn."

She turned her face towards him, and regarded him with a mixture of surprise and distaste. Then,

"Indeed?" she said coldly. "In what capacity, if you please?"

But the words said, she felt her cheeks grow hot. They thought so ill of her, she had so misbehaved herself, that a duenna was not enough; a clergyman must be sent to lecture her. By-and-by he would talk goody-goody to her, such as they talked to Lucy in _The Fairchild Family!_ Save that she was grown up and Lucy was not!

"But it does not matter," she continued hurriedly, and before he could answer, "I am obliged to you, but Mrs. Gilson is quite able to take care of me."

"And yet I came very opportunely--just now," he said. "I am glad I came so opportunely."

Reminded of the insolence to which her loneliness had exposed her, Henrietta felt her cheek grow hot again.

"Oh," she said, "I did not need you! But I thought you said you brought a letter?"

"I have a letter. But I beg leave--to postpone its delivery for a day or two."

"How?" in astonishment. "If it is for me?"

"By Captain Clyne's directions," he answered.

She stopped short and faced him, rebellion in her eyes.

"Then why," she said proudly, "seek me out now if this letter is not to be delivered at once?"

"That, too, is by his order," Mr. Sutton explained in the same tone.

"And pardon me for saying," he continued, with a meaning cough, "that I have seen enough to be a.s.sured of Captain Clyne's forethought. Apart from which, in Lancas.h.i.+re, at any rate, the times are so troubled, the roads so unsafe, the common people so outrageous, that for a young lady to walk out alone is not safe."

"He should have sent a servant, then!" she answered sharply.

A faint colour rose to the chaplain's cheeks.

"He thought me more trustworthy, perhaps," he said meekly. "And it is possible he was under the impression that my company might be more acceptable."

"If I may be plain," she answered tartly, "I am in no mood for a stranger's company."

"And yet," he said, with a gleam of appeal in his eyes, "I would fain hope to make myself acceptable."