Part 4 (1/2)
”You have rendered me a greater service than you know of, and I must not let you leave yourself out.” To hide a note of wistfulness in her voice, she added mischievously, ”Must I, Joe?”
”Yow could find wus'n' Wheatman o' th' 'Anyards,” said Joe, with st.u.r.dy precision of praise.
”Is he really a h.e.l.l-hound, Joe, when he's got a sup of beer in him? I've no clear notion what a h.e.l.l-hound is, but clearly it means something as bad, say, as a janissary--the worst animal I ever came across.”
”Sup o' beer in 'im,” snorted Joe contemptuously. ”He dunna really know what beer is, my lady. It's a grand thing is beer, if y'll only tak'
enough of it to do y' good, but there's no vartue in half a pint of it.
I've told 'im that lots of times. But it's G.o.d's truth, my lady, 'e dunna want no beer, dunna Master Noll, to mak 'im 'it like the kick of a 'oss. I on'y brought 'im a few daceys up t'ouse this mawnin', an'--”
”You row harder, Joe, and yawp less,” said I, interrupting him. ”Between you and Jane I shan't have a rag of character left.”
”Sup o' beer in him,” he growled, and spat loudly on his hands. Joe looked at all men as potential customers of the ”Bull and Mouth,” and judged them accordingly.
”I know the worst about you now, Master Wheatman, and by way of providing you with a less embarra.s.sing topic of conversation, you might tell me what we shall do when we get to Stafford.”
”We are going to Marry-me-quick's.”
She started so abruptly that I laughed outright, and Joe rumbled like an overloaded wagon. I explained.
”We shall approach the town on the south side where the wall comes down to the river. 'Marry-me-quick' is not, as you seem to suppose, a disagreeable process, but an agreeable old woman who lives in a cottage which backs on to the river. Every schoolboy in the town knows her by that name, which is also the name of a kind of toffee she makes, and by the sale of which she earns a modest living. I cannot tell you how the name originated, but there it is. I went to the grammar school in the town, and in my time I must have bought and consumed some hundredweights of her 'marry-me-quick.' In her tiny cottage you may rest in safety while I hunt up Jack Dobson and learn what has been done with your father.”
”An' if I'd got a s.h.i.+lling,” said the irrepressible Joe, ”for every pat of b.u.t.ter I've taken owd Marry-me-quick, I'd--I'd--”
He seemed lost for words, so I a.s.sisted him, and paid him back at the same time, by saying, ”Pluck up courage enough to speak to Jane.”
”That's rate, Master Noll.”
”Is Jane so very fond of money, Joe?” asked Mistress Waynflete curiously.
”No,” said Joe. ”She ain't grasping, ain't Jin. She told me t'nate, she c'd 'ave 'ad a mint of money if she'd liked, but she wouldna tak' it. Said it would 'a' burnt 'er fingers. 'More fool yow,' says I; 'it'd 'a' soon gotten cowd weather like this'n.' But Jin's all rate. Er'll never bre'k 'er arm at church door, wunna Jin.”
I explained to Mistress Waynflete that a woman who broke her arm at the church door was a housewifely maiden who became a slatternly housewife after marriage. ”There's no fear of Jane doing that,” she replied; ”she's as good as the guineas she would not take.”
For a s.p.a.ce silence fell on us. All my attention was required to keep the boat clear of the banks, for the little river turned and twisted through its meadows like a hunted hare. There was only the starlight to steer by, but I had fished every yard of the river, and knew it so well that I gave Joe a clear channel to row in. Not a sound jarred on the rhythmic purr of the oars in the rowlocks and the gentle lapping of the stream against the bow. This day had G.o.d been very good to me. This was life as I would have it; work to do for brain and brawn, and a woman to do it for who was worth the uttermost that was in me. Romance had flushed the drab night of my life with a rosy dawn, and my heart was lifted up within me. If it faded away, there would at least be the memory of it. But it might not fade. I was under no illusions as to the stiffness of my task. I was matched against the powers that be, against my Lord Brocton, whose ability to work this maiden ill was increased a thousandfold by his military authority. I saw my way into Stafford, and I saw no more, not even my way out of it, and least of all my way out of it with the Colonel rescued and restored to his daughter. Mistress Waynflete had been so determined in her decision to follow her father that perhaps she had some plan in mind. She said nothing if she had, and if she had, it would, I supposed, depend on her woman's power of influencing Brocton. The future was as black as the outlook along the river, but I faced it eagerly.
She broke the silence: ”The last boat I was in was a gondola. It was on a perfect night in a Venetian June, the sky a sapphire sprinkled with diamonds, the warm, scent-laden air filled with murmurings and s.n.a.t.c.hes of song. And there was no danger.”
”Romance, perchance,” said I.
”You cannot have a one-sided romance. Romance is an atmosphere breathed by two, not an emotion felt by one. To be sure, he was the most appallingly in earnest lover woman ever had. He wept for a kiss with his fingers twiddling on the hilt of his stiletto. Dear heart, these Italians!”
”I should like to meet his counts.h.i.+p,” said I energetically.
”Yes, he was a count, with a pedigree as long as the Rialto, and he had not two silver piastres to rub against each other. He was the handsomest man I have even seen. Fortunately, we left Venice before he had quite decided that it was time to dig his knife into me.”
”You speak lightly of your danger, madam,” I said coldly.
”A hot-blooded Italian with a stiletto in his hand is a much more desirable creature, let me tell you, than a cold-blooded Englishman with the devil in his heart. That fiery little count, conceited and poverty-stricken, did at any rate pay me the compliment of thinking for at least a fortnight that I was a patch of heaven fallen in his way, whereas to your cold-livered English lord I am no more than an appetizing dish.”
She was not speaking lightly now, but with cold, concentrated anger. I remembered the reticencies of her statement at the Hanyards, and began to see dimly some of the connecting links in her story. My Lord Brocton's character was well enough known to be the subject of common talk at our market ordinaries. My very manhood shamed me in the presence of this queenly woman, marked down by a t.i.tled blackguard as his quarry, and I sat still, fists tightly clenched on the tiller-ropes, and said nothing, waiting for her to speak again.