Corporal Sam and Other Stories Part 26

'_Mrs Tresize at Landeweddy, 48_,' she read, holding it under the lamp, and slightly puckering her handsome brows.

'That doesn't flatter you, ma'am.'

'Hey?' Mrs Tresize looked up sharply. 'You don't suppose that means my _age_?'

'I--er--fancied it might. It would be a guess, of course.'

'Nonsense,' said Mrs Tresize.

'It _is_ nonsense,' the doctor agreed. 'The man was obviously misinformed.'

'It doesn't refer to my age at all,' said Mrs Tresize, positively.

'It--it alludes to something quite different. I was barely nineteen when I married.'

'If you can guess to what it alludes--'

'_Reported good money, but near--_' read the widow, paused, and uttered a liquid laugh. 'Oh, I am glad you showed me this.

We'll punish him for that, doctor, if he dares to turn up.'

'If,' echoed the doctor, with a glance at the gun-racks.

'I ought to go and warn Tryphena.'

'Every moment may be precious,' he agreed again, while she went to the chimney-place and fetched the now boiling kettle.

She mixed the drink and set it close before him, where he leaned pondering a pile of gold he had poured upon the table from one of the canvas bags. The steam mounting from the gla.s.s bedimmed his spectacles. He took them off to wipe them, and perceived that she was smiling. She bit her lip at being thus caught.

'I was thinking,' she made haste to explain, 'what a funny situation 'twould be if by any chance the man was innocent, and you'd driven off with money that honestly belonged to him.'

'Honest men don't put on women's clothes to tramp the moors at night,' Doctor Unonius objected.

'Well, I don't see that it mightn't happen. A man having this money to carry, and afraid of being robbed, might put it to himself that rough characters--specially gipsies--often let a woman pa.s.s where they'd attack a man. Or suppose, now, the man _was_ a gipsy?--he'd sold three horses, we'll say, at Tregarrick Christmas Fair, and was trudging it back to his camp somewhere on the moors. A gipsy would be the very man to hit on that kind of disguise, it being against his own principles to hurt any woman but his wife.'

'This man was a butcher, ma'am, and no gipsy.'

'O--oh!' cried the widow, with a little gasp. 'How do you know?'

'Never mind how I know, ma'am. He was a butcher, right enough; and, on your hypothesis that I've committed highway robbery upon an innocent man, I'd like you to explain how he comes to be carrying about this paper. "One large chest" he credits you with possessing; it is to be handled quickly and hidden in the orchard, if necessary-- that is, I suppose, if he should be surprised; and to resist him you have n.o.body on the premises but your servant maid Tryphena. For what innocent purpose, pray, does he carry about this memorandum?'

''Myes, I suppose you are right,' Mrs Tresize a.s.sented with a little sigh, and forthwith s.h.i.+fted the conversation. 'But taste your brandy, please, and tell me how you like it--though, to be sure, it won't compare with Squire Peneluna's.'

It was, nevertheless, good sound brandy, genuine juice of the grape, soft and well-matured. The doctor after a sip nodded his approval.

'I dare say, now,' she went on, 'you're accustomed to this sort of thing? I mean, you must pa.s.s a good many nights, year's end to year's end, in other folk's parlours. . . .' She broke off, and this time with a genuine sigh. 'I used to wonder in days gone by, if ever you'd be sitting here. I used to picture you . . . and now it's for a robber you're waiting!' She ended with a laugh, yet turned her face away.

But either the doctor was nettled or his mind refused to be diverted by small talk from the business in hand. He somewhat curtly commanded Mrs Tresize to indicate on the gun-rack the weapons her late husband had commonly used, and to find him powder and shot.

For a moment she pouted her lips mutinously, but ended by obeying him, with a shrug of her handsome shoulders.

She stood watching him while he carefully loaded the weapons and rammed home the wads. It is possible that she had a mind to relent, and suggest his whiling the time away with a game of dominoes.

At any rate she went so far as to hazard--with a glance at the ivory tablets, and another at the hearth and the elbow-chairs--that he would find the waiting tedious.

'Not if you can supply me with a book, ma'am,' he answered, laying the two guns on the table, after sweeping the dominoes aside to make room for them.

Mrs Tresize left the room and returned bearing a volume--Blair's _Grave_. She understood (she said) that the doctor preferred serious reading.

'Among all the poets that ever wrote,' said Doctor Unonius blandly, 'with the possible exception of Young, I have the greatest contempt for Blair. He has the one unpardonable fault (not the one mentioned by Horace, though he has that, too): he is dishonest. The finest pa.s.sage in the _Grave_ is impudently stolen from Dryden, and marred in the stealing. But I thank Heaven, ma'am, that I can read any printed matter; and when Blair disgusts me I can always take a satisfactory revenge by turning him into Latin Elegiacs; by turning him, so to speak, in his Grave,' concluded the doctor grimly.

This routed the lady, but she managed to get in the last word.

'Well, I can't pretend to understand you and your learning,' she answered tartly; 'but since we seem to be thanking Heaven, I'll thank it that I have a fire lit in my bedroom. It's the room just overhead, and I'm going to ask Tryphena to sleep with me when she has put up the bolts. Or, maybe, we shall sit up there for a while and talk. But anyhow, we are light sleepers, the both of us, and if there's any trouble you have only to call. Good-night.'

'Good-night, ma'am!' said Doctor Unonius, and opened the door for her. Left alone, he went back to the table and began to turn the pages of Blair.

CHAPTER VI.

Doctor Unonius had drawn the table close beside an elbow-chair to the right of the fireplace. The excuse he made to himself was that, with a bright fire burning, he could the better see to read by blending its blaze with the light of the lamp. But it may be conjectured that, having disposed himself thus comfortably, he indulged in a nap.

A strange sound fetched him out of it with a bounce. He leapt to his feet, and stood for a moment stupidly rubbing his eyes. The fire had burnt itself low. Blair's _Grave_ lay face-downward on the hearth-rug, whither it had slipped from his knee. The clock in the corner ticked at its same deliberate pace, but its hands pointed to twenty minutes past two.

What was the sound? Or, rather--since it no longer continued--what had it been? As it seemed to him, it had resembled the beat of horses' hoofs at a gallop; a stampede almost. It could not have gone past on the high-road, for the noise had never been loud: yet it seemed to come from the high-road for a while, and then to drop suddenly and be drawn out in a series of faint thudded echoes.

Doctor Unonius went to the window, drew the curtains, unbarred a shutter, and stared out into the night. A newly risen moon hung low in the south-east, just above the coping of the courtlage wall, but the wall with its shrubs and clumps of ivy, ma.s.sed in blackest shadow, excluded all view of the terrestrial world. The sound, whatever it had been, was not repeated.

Doctor Unonius stood for half a minute or so and gazed out with his forehead pressed to the pane. Then he closed the shutter again, let fall the curtain, and with a slight s.h.i.+ver went back to the fireplace.

He had picked up a pair of tongs and was stooping to pick up the charred ends of wood and pile them to revive the blaze, when another sound fetched him upright again. This also was the sound of a horse at a gallop, but now it drew nearer and nearer up the road.

It clattered past the courtlage wall, and with that came to a sudden sprawling halt. A man's voice, the rider's, shouted some two or three words the doctor could not catch; but a moment later he heard the latch of the yard gate clink and horse and man lunge through, and had scarcely time to arm himself with one of the guns before three sharp strokes rattled on the back door.

Doctor Unonius hurried out to the pa.s.sage. There he all but ran into Mrs Tresize, who came downstairs, lamp in hand and fully dressed as before. As before, too, she was entirely composed in manner.

'I will open,' she said. 'Go back and put the other gun away quickly, the pistol too. Keep the one in your hand if you will, and come back to me while I pretend to draw the bolts. No, please don't argue. It will be all right if you do as I say.'

She appeared so very sure of herself that, against his will, the doctor obeyed.

'_Pretend_ to draw the bolts?' he kept muttering. Had the door been unbarred, then, all this while?

She was opening it, at any rate, when he returned to the pa.s.sage.

But before lifting the latch she demanded, as if upon second thought,--

'Who is there? And what is your business?'

'Mr Rattenbury,' answered a loud voice. 'You shall know my business fast enough if you will kindly open.'

Without more ado she flung the door wide, and the ray of her lamp fell upon Mr Rattenbury, the young riding-officer, cloaked, high-booted, and spurred.

'A strange business it must be, sir,' said the widow, 'that brings you hammering up sick folk at this time of night!'