Laid up in Lavender Part 9

"I would!" the other said, with vengeful emphasis, and the two men stood a moment glaring at one another. Meanwhile the wind, toying with the white packet, rolled it slowly along the path; then, getting under it at a place where a break in the ridge produced an eddy, it began to hoist it merrily up the slope. At this point Walton's eye, straying for a second from his opponent, alighted on it.

Just then Woolley spoke. "You have had a lucky escape!" he said, with a reckless gesture, half menace, half farewell. "Good-bye! Don't come across my path again, or you will fail to come off so easily. And don't--don't, you fool!" he added, returning in a fresh fit of anger when he had already turned his back, "pat a man on the head when you have got him down, or he will----"

He stopped short, his hand at his breast pocket. For a moment, while his face underwent a marvellous change, he searched frantically in the pocket, in other pockets. "My notes!" he panted. "They were here!

Where are they?" Then a dreadful expression of rage and suspicion distorted his features, and he advanced on Walton, his hands outstretched. "What have you done with them?" he cried, scarcely able to articulate. "Where are they?"

"There!" the other answered sternly. He pointed to a little s.p.a.ce of clear turf halfway up the slope. On this the white packet could be seen fluttering gently over and over. "There! But if you are not pretty quick, you villain, you will pay a heavy price for this business!"

With an oath Woolley turned and started up the hill, the tall man watching his exertions with grim satisfaction. The pursuer speedily overtook the notes, but to gain possession of them was a different matter. Three times he stooped to clutch them, and three times a mischievous gust swept them away. Then he tripped and fell, and his hat tumbled off, and his oaths flew freely on the breeze.

Altogether it was not a dignified retreat, but it was a very characteristic one. The last time Walton got a glimpse of him, he was on the crown of the hill. He was still running, bent double with his face to the ground, and his hand outstretched. Walton never saw him again.

The latter, getting back to the house unnoticed, said nothing for the time of what had happened. But at night before he went to bed he told the doctor. "He ought to go to prison!" the latter said sternly. He was shocked beyond measure.

"So ought I," said Walton, "if it is to come to prisons."

"Pis.h.!.+"

A little word, but it cheered the tall gentleman, who, notwithstanding his escape, stood in need of cheering. He had not seen Pleasance since she had escaped from the room after hearing his explanation. She might have taken his story in many different ways, and he was anxious to know in which way she had taken it. But all day she had not shown herself. Even at dinner the doctor apologised for her absence. "She is not very well," he said. "She was a little upset this morning." And of course the tall gentleman accepted the excuse with a heavy heart, and presaged the worst.

But dressing next morning he caught sight of Pleasance on the lawn.

She was walking with her father--talking to him earnestly, as Walton could see. Apparently she was urging him to some course of action, and the doctor, with his hands under his coattails, was a.s.senting with a poor grace.

When Walton descended, however, they were already seated at breakfast, and nothing was said during the meal either of this prelude or of what was in their minds. But presently, when the doctor rose, he had something to say. It was something which it went against the grain to say; for he walked to the door--they were breakfasting in the hall, and it stood open--and looked out as if he had more mind to fly than speak. But he returned suddenly, and sat down with a b.u.mp.

"Mr. Walton," he said, his florid face more florid than usual, "I think there is something I ought to tell you. I do not think that I can repay you the money you have advanced. And the place is not worth it. What am I to do?"

"Do?" the other said, looking up. "Take another cup of tea, as I am doing, and think no more about it."

"That is impossible," Pleasance cried impulsively. She turned red the next instant, under the tall gentleman's eyes. She had not meant to interfere.

"Indeed!" he said, rising from his chair. "Then please listen to me.

There came to a certain house a man who had been a thief."

"No!" she said firmly.

"A man hopeless and despairing."

"No."

"Alas! yes," he answered, shaking his head soberly. "These are facts."

"No, no, no!" she cried. There were tears in her eyes. "I do not want to hear. I care nothing for facts!"

"You will not hear me?"

"No!"

Something in her face, her voice, the pose of her figure told him the truth. "If you will not listen to me," he said, leaning with both hands on the table and speaking in a voice scarcely audible to the doctor, "I will not say what I was going to propose. If I must be repaid, I must. But you must repay me, Pleasance. Will you?"

The doctor did not wait to hear the answer. He found the open door very convenient. He got away and to horse with a lighter heart than he had carried under his waistcoat for months. He felt no great doubt about the answer; and indeed all that June morning, which was by good luck as fine as the preceding one had been gloomy, while he rode from house to house with an unprofessional smile on his lips and in his eyes, the two left at home walked up and down the lawn in the suns.h.i.+ne, planning the life which lay before them, and of which every day was to be as cloudless as this day. A hundred times they pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed the old sundial, but it was nothing to them. Lovers count only the hours when the sun does _not_ s.h.i.+ne.

THE COLONEL'S BOY

THE COLONEL'S BOY

A stranger, coming upon the Colonel as he sat in the morning-room of the club and read his newspaper with an angelic smile, would have sought for another copy of the paper and searched its columns with pleasant antic.i.p.ations. But I knew better. I knew that the Colonel, though he had put on his gla.s.ses and was pretending to cull the news, was only doing what I believe he did after lunch and after dinner, and after he got into bed, and at every one of those periods when the old campaigner, with a care for his digestion and his conscience, selects some soothing matter for meditation. He was thinking of his boy; and I went up to him and smacked him on the shoulder. "Well, Colonel," I said, "how is Jim?"

"Hallo! Why, it's Jolly Joe Bratton!" he replied, dropping his gla.s.ses, and gripping my hand tightly--for we did not ride and tie at Inkerman for nothing. "The very man I wanted to see."

"And Jim, Colonel? How is the boy?" I asked.

"Oh, just as fit as a--a middy on sh.o.r.e!" he answered, speaking cheerfully, yet, it seemed to me, with an effort; so that I wondered whether anything was wrong with the boy--a little bill or some small indiscretion, such as might be pardoned in as fine a lad as ever stepped, with a six-months'-old commission, a new uniform, and a station fifty minutes from London. "But come," the Colonel continued before I could make my comment, "you have lunched, Joe? Will you take a turn?"

"To be sure," I said; "on one condition--that you let Kitty give you a cup of tea afterwards."

"That is a bargain!" he answered. And we went into the hall. Every one knows the "Junior United" hall. I had taken down my hat, and was stepping back from the rack, when some one coming downstairs two at a time--that is the worst of having any one under field rank in a club--hit me sharply with his elbow. Perhaps my coat fits a bit tightly round the waist nowadays, and perhaps not; any way, I particularly object to being poked in the back--it may be a fad, or it may not--and I turned round and cried "Confound----"

I did not say any more, for I saw who had done it. My gentleman stammered a confused apology, and taking a letter which it seemed I had knocked out of his hand, from the Colonel, who had politely picked it up, he pa.s.sed into the morning-room with a red face. "Clumsy scoundrel!" I said, but not so loudly that he could hear.

"Hallo!" the Colonel exclaimed, standing still, and looking at me.

"Well?" I said, perhaps rather testily. "What is the matter?"

"You are not on very good terms with young Farquhar, then?"

"I am not on any terms at all with him," I answered grumpily.

The Colonel whistled. "Indeed!" he said, looking down at me with a kind of wistfulness in his eyes; d.i.c.k is tall, and I am--well, I was up to standard once. "I thought--that is, Jim told me--that he was a good deal about your house, Joe. And I rather gathered that he was making up to Kitty, don't you know."

"You did, did you?" I grunted. "Well, perhaps he was, and perhaps he wasn't. Any way, she is not for him. And he would not take an answer, the young whipper-snapper!" I continued, giving my anger a little vent, and feeling all the better for it. "He came persecuting her, if you want to know. And I had to show him the door."

I think I never saw a man--certainly on the steps of the "Junior United"--look more pleased than the Colonel looked at that moment.

"Gad!" he said, "Then Jim will have a chance?"

"Ho! ho!" I answered, chuckling. "The wind sets in that quarter, does it? A chance? I should think he would have a chance, Colonel!"

"And you would not object?"

"Object?" I said. "Why, it would make me the happiest man in the world, d.i.c.k. Are we not the oldest friends? And I have only Kitty and you have only Jim. Why, it is--it is just Inkerman over again!"