Part 17 (2/2)
Tom, without a moment's hesitation, described the place with precision--a spot not more than a hundred yards from the house.
”What right had you to come sneaking about the place?” hissed G.o.dfrey, a vain attempt to master an involuntary movement of the muscles of his face at once clinching and showing his teeth. At the same moment he raised his whip unconsciously.
Tom instinctively stepped back, and raised his stick in att.i.tude of defense. G.o.dfrey burst into a scornful laugh.
”You fool!” he said; ”you need not be afraid; I can see you are speaking the truth. You dare not tell me a lie!”
”It is enough,” returned Tom with dignity, ”that I do not tell lies. I am not afraid of you, Mr. Wardour. What I dare or dare not do, is neither for you nor me to say. You are the older and stronger and every way better man, but that gives you no right to bully me.”
This answer brought G.o.dfrey to a better sense of what became himself, if not of what Helmer could claim of him. Using positive violence over himself, he spoke next in a tone calm even to iciness.
”Mr. Helmer,” he said, ”I will gladly address you as a gentleman, if you will show me how it can be the part of a gentleman to go prowling about his neighbor's property after nightfall.”
”Love acknowledges no law but itself, Mr. Wardour,” answered Tom, inspired by the dignity of his honest affection for Letty. ”Miss Lovel is not your property. I love her, and she loves me. I would do my best to see her, if Thornwick were the castle of Giant Blunderbore.”
”Why not walk up to the house, like a man, in the daylight, and say you wanted to see her?”
”Should I have been welcome, Mr. Wardour?” said Tom, significantly.
”You know very well what my reception would have been; and I know better than throw difficulties in my own path. To do as you say would have been to make it next to impossible to see her.”
”Well, we must find her now anyhow; and you must marry her off-hand.”
”Must!” echoed Tom, his eyes flas.h.i.+ng, at once with anger at the word and with pleasure at the proposal. ”Must?” he repeated, ”when there is nothing in the world I desire or care for but to marry her? Tell me what it all means, Mr. Wardour; for, by Heaven! I am utterly in the dark.”
”It means just this--and I don't know but I am making a fool of myself to tell you--that the girl was seen in your company late last night, and has been neither seen nor heard of since.”
”My G.o.d!” cried Tom, now first laying hold of the fact; and with the word he turned and started for the stable. His run, however, broke down, and with a look of scared bewilderment he came back to G.o.dfrey.
”Mr. Wardour,” he said, ”what am I to do? Please advise me. If we raise a hue and cry, it will set people saying all manner of things, pleasant neither for you nor for us.”
”That is your business, Mr. Helmer,” answered G.o.dfrey, bitterly. ”It is you who have brought this shame on her.”
”You are a cold-hearted man,” said Tom. ”But there is no shame in the matter. I will soon make that clear--if only I knew where to go after her. The thing is to me utterly mysterious: there are neither robbers nor wild beasts about Thornwick. What _can_ have happened to her?”
He turned his back on G.o.dfrey for a moment, then, suddenly wheeling, broke out:
”I will tell you what it is; I see it all now; she found out that she had been seen, and was too terrified to go into the house again!--Mr.
Wardour,” he continued, with a new look in his eyes, ”I have more reason to be suspicious of you and your mother than you have to suspect me. Your treatment of Letty has not been of the kindest.”
So Letty had been accusing him of unkindness! Ready as he now was to hear anything to her disadvantage, it was yet a fresh stab to the heart of him. Was this the girl for whom, in all honesty and affection, he had sought to do so much! How could she say he was unkind to her?--and say it to a fellow like this? It was humiliating, indeed! But he would not defend himself. Not to Tom, not to his mother, not to any living soul, would he utter a word even resembling blame of the girl! He, at least, would carry himself generously! Everything, though she had plunged his heart in a pitcher of gall, should be done for her sake!
She should go to her lover, and leave blame behind her with him! His sole care should be that the wind-bag should not collapse and slip out of it, that he should actually marry her; and, as soon as he had handed him over to her in safety, he would have done with her and with all women for ever, except his mother! Not once more would he speak to one of them in tone of friends.h.i.+p!
He looked at Tom full in the eyes, and made him no answer.
”If I don't find Letty this very morning,” said Tom, ”I shall apply for a warrant to search your house: my uncle Rendall will give me one.”
G.o.dfrey smiled a smile of scorn, turned from him as a wise man turns from a fool, and went out of the gate.
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