ANOTHER FLIGHT.
The day was drawing to its decline before Fox returned to Hall. He had
been alarmed at having been seen by his sister in the dove-cote, and he
tried by craft to extract from her whether she had observed what he had
been doing in it. He hung about Kilworthy for several hours, uncertain
what course to pursue. He could draw nothing from Julian to feed his
alarm, and he persuaded, or tried to persuade, himself that she had no
suspicions that he had been in the dove-cote; then he considered what he
had best do with the money-bags concealed there. He could remove them
only at night, and if he removed them, where should he hide them? No
more effectual place of concealment could well be imagined than the
pigeon-house with its many lockers, the depths of which could not be
probed by the eye from below, and only searched by the hand from a
ladder. He puzzled his brain to find some other place, but his ingenuity
failed him. He was angry with Julian for having come on the terrace at
the inopportune moment when he was in the pigeon-house, and he was angry
with himself for having gone there in daylight.
He asked, was it probable that Julian, had she suspected anything, would
not at once have assailed him with inquiries wherefore he had gone to
that deserted structure, and what he was doing within it, on the ladder.
It would be unlike her not immediately to take advantage of an occasion
either against him, or of perplexity to him, and he almost satisfied
himself that she had believed his account, and was void of suspicion
that there was concealment behind it. Even if she did suspect and search
the lockers of the pigeon-cote, he must know it. He would find she had
been there, and he deemed it advisable not to disturb his arrangement,
but leave the money hidden there till he was given fresh cause for
uneasiness relative to its safety, at all events for a few days, till he
could discover another and more secret place for stowing it away.
He remained for some hours, lurking about and watching; for he argued
that, if Julian entertained any thought that he had been in the
dove-cote on private ends, like a woman she would take the earliest
occasion of trying to discover his ends, and would go, as soon as she
thought she was unobserved, to the place and explore its lockers.
But though he kept himself hidden, and narrowly watched her proceedings,
he could find no cause for mistrust. She left the terrace and went off
to the stables to see her horse; she ordered it out for a ride; then, as
rain began to fall, she countermanded it; then she went to the parlour,
where she wrote a letter to her father to give him an account of the
marriage of his son, and to express her views thereon.
Finding her thus engaged, and with his mistrust laid at rest, Fox left
Kilworthy and went to Tavistock, where he entered a tavern and called
for wine. He had not resolved what to do about the mortgage money on
Hall.
He believed that, with the five hundred pounds stowed away in the
pigeon-holes at Kilworthy, and with what money old Cleverdon was able to
raise, sufficient, or almost sufficient, could be paid to secure Hall.
If more had to be found, it could perhaps be borrowed on the security
of the small Crymes estate in Buckland; but Fox was most averse to
having his own inheritance charged for this purpose. If Hall were let
slip, then he was left with nothing save his five hundred pounds and the
small Buckland property.
He sat in the tavern for long, drinking, and trying to reach a solution
of his difficulty, consumed with burning wrath at the manner in which he
had been imposed upon, and entangled in the embarrassments of a family
into which he had pushed his way, believing that by so doing he was
entering into a rich heritage.
When he reached Hall, at nightfall, he had drunk so much, and was in
such an inflamed and exasperated frame of mind, as to promise trouble.
Bess saw the condition he was in the moment he entered the door, and she
endeavoured to turn him aside from her father's room, towards which he
was making his way, unsteadily.
The serving-men and maids were about, and a few guests. Comments,
unfavourable to Fox, had passed with some freedom, and not inaudibly,
relative to his absence on that afternoon. No one desired his presence,
and yet the fact of his being away provoked displeasure. It was taken as
an insult to those present. That some trouble had fallen on Squire
Cleverdon, that his position in Hall was menaced, was generally known
and commented on in the house, by guests and servants alike. That Fox
had left in connection with this difficulty was admitted but
nevertheless not excused.
French was there disposed to make himself merry, with a fund of good
stories to scatter among the guests. When Fox appeared, all present,
guests and servants, were in jovial mood, having eaten and drunken to
their hearts' satisfaction; some were in the passage, some in the
dining-room that opened out of it, with the door open. Mr. Cleverdon was
with the guests, and when he beheld his son-in-law in the entrance, he
started up and came towards him. Fox saw him at once, and hissed, caught
at the side-posts of the door with his left, and pointed jeeringly at
the Squire.
"I want to have a talk with you, my plump money-bag, my well-acred
Squire father-in-law, and if there are others by, so much the better. It
is well that all the world should see the bubble burst. Ha! ha! ha! This
is the man who was a little farmer, and pushed himself to become a
justice! The little shrivelled toad who would blow himself out to be
like an ox. His sides are cracking, mark you!"
"Take him away," said the old man, "he is drunk."
"Go--I pray you go!" pleaded Bessie. "Prithee, respect him, at least in
public, look at his grey hairs, consider the trouble he is in."
"His grey hairs!" retorted Fox. "Why should I respect them? They have
grown grey in rascality. So many years of sandy locks, so much roguery,
so many more with grey hair, double the amount of roguery. Why should I
respect an old rogue? I would kick and thrash a young one out of the
house. His trouble--forsooth! His trouble is naught to mine, hooked on
to a disreputable, drowning family, and unable to strike out in their
faces, and wrench their hands away, and let them swallow the brine and
go down alone."
The Squire and the guests stood or sat spell-bound. What was to be done
with the fellow? How could he be brought to silence? The stream of words
of a drunken man is no easier stopped than is a spring by the hand laid
against it.
"Ha! ha!" jeered Fox, still pointing at his father-in-law; "there is the
man who has ruled so tyrannically in his house, who drove his son
out-of-doors because he followed his own example and married empty
pockets. But his son did better than the father, he did take a girl with
a few lumps of granite and a few shovelfuls of peat, but the father's
own wife had nothing. What he suffered in himself he would not suffer in
his son."
The old man, shaking with rage as with the palsy, and deadly white,
turned to the servants, and called to them to take away the fellow.
"Take me away!" screamed Fox. "Take and shake me, and see if there be
any gold in my pockets that will fall out, and which he may pick up. I
tell you I am rich; I have the money all ready, I could produce that in
an hour, which would save Hall, and send that fellow there, the lawyer,
and his men back to Exeter to-night, if they cared to go over Black
Down in the dark, where robbery is committed and coaches stopped and
plundered. I have the gold all ready, but do not fancy I will give one
guinea to help a Cleverdon. I hate them all--father, daughter, and son;
I curse the whole tribe, I dance on their heads, I trample on their
hearts, I scorn them. They hold out their hands to me, but I will not
pick them up."
Bessie put her arms about him, and, with eyes that were full of tears,
and face blanched with shame, entreated him to go, to control himself,
to remember that this old man that he insulted was his father-in-law,
and that, for better, for worse, in riches or poverty, he was her
husband.
"I am not like to forget that," hissed Fox. "O, troth, no! Linked to
thee--to thee, with thy ugly face and empty purse; thee, whom no one
else would have, who has been hawked about and refused by all, and I am
to be coupled to thee all my life. 'Fore heaven, I am not like to forget
that."
This, addressed to Bessie, whom every servant in the house loved, and
every guest who knew her respected, passed all bounds of endurance.
An angry roar rose from the men and maids who had crowded into the
entrance-hall from the kitchen, from the courtyard, from the stables.
The guests shouted out their indignation, and a blow was aimed at Fox
from a groom behind, that knocked him over, and sent him down on his
knees into the dining-room. He was not seriously hurt--not deprived of
his senses--but other blows would have followed from the incensed
servants had not Bessie thrown herself in the way to protect him.
"Take him up--throw him into the horse-pond!"
"Get a bramble, and thrash him with it till he is painted red."
"Cast him in with the pigs."
Such were the shouts of the servants, and, but for the interposition of
Bessie, serious results would have followed. She gave Fox her hand, and,
leaning on her shoulder, he was able to stagger to his feet. The blow he
had received had driven the final remains of caution he had about him
from his brain; he glared around in savage rage, with his teeth showing,
and his short red hair standing up on his head like the comb of an angry
cock.
"Who touched me? Bring him forth, that I may strike him." He drew his
hunting-knife, and turned from side to side. "Ah! let him come near, and
I will score him as I did Anthony Cleverdon."
Bessie uttered a cry and drew back.
Fox looked at her, and, encouraged by her terror and pain, proceeded.
"It is true, I did. We had a quarrel and drew swords, and I pinked him."
"A lie!" shouted one present. "Thou wearest no sword."
Fox turned sharply round, and snarled at the speaker. "I have not a
bodkin--a skewer--but I have what is better--a carving-knife; and with
that I struck him just above the heart. He fell, and ran, ran, ran"--his
voice rose to a shriek--"he ran from me as a hare, full of fright, lest
I should go after him and strike him again, between the shoulder-blades.
Farmer Cleverdon! Gaffer Cleverdon! Thou hast a fool for a son--that all
the world knows--and a knave as well, and add to that--a coward."
He stopped to laugh. Then, pointing with his knife at his father-in-law,
he said:
"They say that he has gone to join the rebels. It is false. He is too
great a coward to adventure himself there, and add to that I have cut
too deep and let out too much white blood. He is skulking somewhere to
be healed or to die."
Bessie had staggered back against the wall. She held her hands before
her mouth to arrest the cries of distress that could barely be
controlled. The old man had become white and rigid as a corpse.
"I would he were with the rebels. I hope he will be so healed, and that
speedily, that he may join them, and then he will be taken and hung as a
traitor. I' faith, I would like to be there! I would give a bag of gold
to be there--to see Anthony Cleverdon hung. I'd sit down on the next
stone and eat my bread and cheese, and throw the crusts and the rinds in
his face as he hung.--The traitor!"
An hour later there came a tap at the door of Willsworthy. Uncle Sol
opened, and Bessie Cleverdon entered, pale.
She asked to see her grandmother, Mistress Penwarne, who was still
there.
"I am come," she said, "to relieve you. Go back to Luke, and I will
tarry with Urith. Luke must need you, and I can take your place here. I
will not lay my head under the roof of Hall whilst Fox is there. It is
true that I promised this day to love and obey him, but I promised what
I cannot perform. He has forfeited every right over me! Till he leaves
Hall I remain here--with Urith--both unhappy--maybe we shall understand
each other. My poor father! My poor father! I cannot remain with him
whilst Fox is there!"