Part 7 (1/2)

She changed her mind, seeing that. ”No, do you take them in,” she said. ”Will you take them in, please?” she repeated peremptorily; and she pushed the hawthorn into his arms, and held out her basket. The stranger took the things with reluctance, but without demur, and went into the house.

”Now,” she said, turning rapidly upon Woolley, ”what do you want?”

”My answer?” he retorted, with answering curtness.

A second before he had not intended to say that. He had meant to carry the war into the stranger's country. But his temper mastered him for a second, and he found himself staking all, when he had planned an affair of outposts. ”Wait, Miss Pleasance,” he added desperately, seeing in a moment what he had done, and that he had committed himself. ”I beg you not to give it me without thought--without thought of others, of me, of your father, as well as of yourself! Do not judge me hastily! Do not judge me,” he continued pa.s.sionately, for her face was icy, ”by myself as I am now, Pleasance, wild with love of you, but----”

”By what then, Mr. Woolley?” she asked, her lip curling. ”By what am I to judge you if not by yourself?”

”By----”

”Well?” she said mercilessly. He had paused. He could not find words.

In truth, he had made a mistake. If he had ever had a chance of winning her his chance was gone now; and, recognising this, he let his fury grow to such a pitch that he could not wait for the answer he had requested. He was mad with love of her, with rage at his own mistake, with shame at being so outgeneralled. ”I will tell you, Miss Partridge!” he cried, his eyes sparkling with pa.s.sion; ”Judge me by the future! That fellow who was with you, do you know who he is? Do you know that I can put him in gaol any day?--ay, in goal!”

”What has he done?” she asked. ”Tell me.”

It was a pity he could not say, ”He is a thief--a forger--a swindler!”

The charge he could bring against the stranger was heavy enough; and yet he found it difficult to word it so that it should seem heavy.

”You thought he was shot?” he said at last. ”Bah! he shot himself.”

”I know it,” she answered, without the movement of a muscle.

He stared at her. How was it? he wondered. Before his departure he had been the Old Hall's master. He had wound the poor doctor round his finger, and Pleasance had been civil to him at least. Now all this was altered. And why? ”Ah, well! He shall go to gaol, d----n him!” he said, putting his conclusion into words. ”He shall go to gaol! and if you have a fancy for him you must go there to see him!”

She lost her self-possession under the insult, and her face turned scarlet. ”You coward!” she said, with scorn. ”You would not dare to say to his face what you have said behind his back. Let me pa.s.s!”

She swept into the house and left him standing in the sunlight. As she hurried through the hall, which to her dazzled eyes seemed dusky, she caught a glimpse of the tall gentleman leaning over the bureau with his back to her. Had he heard? The door was open, and so was one window. She could not be sure, but the suspicion was enough. Her face was on fire as she ran up the stairs. How she hated, oh, how she hated that wretch out there! She thought that she had never known before what it was to hate.

For there was something in what he had said. There was the sting. How had she come to be so intimate with one who had done what the tall gentleman had done? She tried to trace the stages, but she could not.

Then she tried to think of him with some of the horror, some of the distaste which she had felt at the time of his arrival, when he lay ghastly and blood-stained behind the closed door. But she could not.

The face we have known a year can never put on for us the look it wore when we saw it first. The hand of time does not move backward.

Pleasance found this was so, and in the solitude of her own room hid her face and trembled. Could anything but evil come of such a--a friends.h.i.+p?

Meanwhile Woolley's state of mind was even less enviable. Hitherto his way in the world had been made by the exercise of tact and self-control; and he valued himself upon the possession of those qualities. He could not understand why they had failed him at this pinch, or why the advantage he had so far enjoyed had deserted him now. Yet the secret was not far to seek. He was jealous; and when jealousy attacks him, the man who lives by playing on the pa.s.sions of others falls to the common level. Jealousy undermines his judgment as certainly as pa.s.sion deprives the fencer of his skill.

Though Woolley did not allow that this was the cause of his defeat, he knew that he could not command himself at present, and before seeking the doctor he took a turn to collect his thoughts and arrange his plans. When he returned to the house he found the hall empty. He pa.s.sed through it and down a short pa.s.sage to a small room at the back, which Dr. Partridge used--especially in times of trouble, when bills poured in and he mediated a fresh loan--as a kind of sanctum.

Woolley rapped at the door.

To his surprise no ”Come in!” answered his knock, but some one rising hastily from his chair came to the door and opened it to the extent of a few inches. It was the doctor. He squeezed himself through. His face was agitated--but then the pa.s.sage was ill lit, even on a summer afternoon--his manner nervous. ”You want to see me, my dear fellow?”

he said, holding the door close behind him and speaking effusively.

”Do you mind coming back in a quarter of an hour or so? I am--I shall be disengaged then.”

”I would prefer,” Woolley said doggedly, ”to see you now.”

”Wait ten minutes, and you shall,” the doctor replied, taking him by the b.u.t.ton with his disengaged hand, as though he would bespeak his confidence. ”At this moment, my dear fellow--excuse me!”