Part 13 (2/2)
”Oh yes: why not? He would think it showed want of faith to prevent me. He's very sensible about things like that,” said Isabel without affectation. ”There are always typhoid and diphtheria about in the autumn, but Jimmy never fusses. It wouldn't be much use if he did, with him and Val always in and out of infected houses.”
”Pure fatalism--” said Lawrence, hitting with his stick at the flowers by their path. ”Your brother ought to put his foot down--” Isabel seized his arm.
”Take care!-- There was a bee in it. You really are most careless Captain Hyde! I shan't take you for any more walks if you do that. I dare say it was one of my own bees, and he had the very narrowest escape! And Val wouldn't dream of interfering.
Ben and I are the best of friends. Besides, it's Mrs. Janaway I really go to see, poor dear, she don't ever hear a bit o' news from week's end to week's end. Wouldn't you be glad to see me,” her eyes were dest.i.tute of challenge but not of humour, ”if you lived three miles deep in the Plain, alone with your husband and the Prince of Wales?”
”I should be delighted to see you at any time.”
Isabel, not knowing what to do with this speech, let it alone.
”And the dog: I mustn't forget the dog. They have a thoroughbred Great Dane. Mr. Bendish gave Ben the puppy because it was the worst of the litter and they thought it would die: but it didn't die--no animal does that Ben gets hold of--and he's too fond of it now to part with it, though a dog fancier from Amesbury has offered him practically his own price for it.”
”I should like to see the Dane.”
”Well, you will, if you come with me. There's the cottage.”
They had turned a bend and the head of the dale lay before them, a mere dimpling depression between b.r.e.a.s.t.s of chalky gra.s.s. Set close by the way on a cross-track, which forded the brook by stepping stones and went on over the downs to Amesbury, stood a small, square, tumbledown cottage, its door opening on primeval turf, though behind it a plot of garden enclosed in a quickset hedge provided Mrs. Janaway with cabbages and gooseberries and sour apples and room to hang out the clothes.
”Ben won't be in, but Billy will be looking after Clara. Billy is no good with the sheep, but he's death on tramps. In fact if I weren't here it wouldn't be too safe for you to go to the door.
A Dane can pull any man down: I've heard even Jack Bendish say he wouldn't care to tackle him--”
Even Jack Bendis.h.!.+ Lawrence smiled. He felt the p.r.i.c.k of Isabel's blade, it amused him, automatically he reacted to it, she made him want to fight the Dane first and Jack Bendish afterwards--but he retained just too much of the ascendancy of his six and thirty years to gratify her by self-betrayal.
”You're a very brave young lady,” he said cheerfully, ”but if I were Val--”
He stopped short. From the cottage window, now not twenty yards off, there had come a burst of the most appalling screams he had ever heard in his life, the mechanical screaming of mortal agony.
Isabel went as white as chalk and even Hyde felt the blood turn cold at his heart. Next moment the door was torn open and out of it came a big red-bearded man, dressed in a brown tweed jacket and velveteen trousers tied at the knees, and prancing high in a solemn jig. In one hand he held up an iron stake and in the other a rag of red and black carpet . . . the body of a woman in a black dress, her arms and legs hanging down, her face a scarlet mask that had ceased to scream.
”Keep back, Isabel,” said Lawrence: then, running across the turf, ”Drop that, Janaway! drop her!” in the hard authoritative voice of the barrack square. With the fitful docility of the mad, Janaway obeyed, and directly he did so Lawrence checked and stood on the defensive, taking a moment to collect his wits--he had need of them: he had to make his head guard his hands. He was a tall powerful man, but so was the shepherd: to offset Hyde's science, Janaway was mad and would be stopped by no punishment short of a knock-out blow: and Lawrence carried only an ordinary walking-stick, while Janaway had hold of an upright from a bit of iron railing, five feet long and barbed like a spear.
”If he whacks me over the head with that or jabs it into my stomach, I'm done,” Lawrence thought, and pat to the moment Janaway, his mouth open and his teeth bare, rushed on him and struck at his eyes. Lawrence parried and sprang aside: but his arm was jarred to the elbow. ”That was a close call. Ha! my chance now . . .” Like a flash, as Janaway turned, Lawrence ran in to meet him body to body, seized him by the lapels of his coat, pinned down his arms, set one foot against his thigh, and with no great exertion of strength, by the Samurai's trick of falling with one's enemy, heaved him up and shot him clean over his own shoulder: then, as they dropped together, struck with his wrist a paralysing blow at the base of the spine. Janaway's yell of fury was choked into a rattling groan.
Lawrence was up in a twinkling, but the shepherd lay where he had fallen, and Lawrence let him lie: he knew that, so handled, the victim could be counted out of action, perhaps for good and all.
He stood erect, breathing deep. Ben could wait, but what of Mrs.
Ben? He was shocked to find Isabel already at her side on the reddened turf.
Mechanically Lawrence picked up his stick before he went to join her. Clara was huddled up over a pool of blood, her head between her knees: not a pleasant sight for a young girl. But Isabel, though white and trembling, was collected. ”I can't feel her heart, I--I'm afraid--”
She broke off. Her glance had travelled beyond Lawrence and her features were stiffening into a mask of fear. ”Oh, the dog, the dog!” she pointed past him. ”Billy, Billy, down, sir!”
From some eyrie on the hillside the Dane had watched without emotion the legitimate spectacle of his master beating his mistress: in the war of the s.e.xes, a dog is ever on the man's side. But when the tables were turned Billy went to the rescue.
He was coming round the corner of the cottage when Isabel caught sight of him, travelling in great bounds at the pace of a wolf, but silent. Lawrence had but just time to swing Isabel behind him before the Dane leapt for his throat. Lawrence struck him over the head, but the blow glanced: so sudden, so thundering came the impact that Lawrence all but went down under it: and once down. . . .
The great jaws snapped one inch from his cheek, and before the Dane could recover Lawrence had seized him by the throat and fought him off. Then Lawrence set his back against the cottage wall and felt safer. A second blow got home, and spoilt Billy's beauty for ever: it laid open his left eye and the left side of his jaw. Undaunted, the Dane gave himself an angry shake, which spattered Lawrence with blood, and gathered his haunches for a second spring. But by now Lawrence had clubbed his stick and was beating him about the head with its heavy k.n.o.bbed handle. Swift as the dog was, the man was swifter: they fought eye to eye, the man forestalling every motion of the dog's whipcord frame: Lawrence's blood was up, he would have liked to fight it out bare-handed. They would not have been ill-matched, for when the Dane reared Lawrence overtopped him only by an inch or so, and the weight of the steelclad paws on his breast tore open his clothes and pinned him to the wall. But Lawrence thrashed him off his feet whenever he tried to rise, till at length the lean muzzle sank with a low baffled moan.
Even then there was such fell strength in him that Lawrence dared not spare him, and blow rained on blow.--”Don't kill him,” said Isabel. ”Put this over his head.”
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