Courtesy commanded Rosamond to open the gate and invite the Judge in.
She disobeyed. She leaned over the bar, so that he himself could not
effect entrance, and said sweetly:
“How fortunate that you arrived at this moment and not later. For I can
at least exchange a word of greeting with you ere I continue on my way.”
He pondered this unforeseen contingency. That she might not be at home
to receive him on the day set had never occurred to him.
“You are going out?”
“I am obliged to go. It is an unescapable duty that I must perform.”
“Surely you are not going any distance on foot?”
“Oh--er--the carriage will be here in a moment,” she said hastily.
“Er--in fact--I think I hear it--I mean, see it--down the hill. Isn’t
that Blake now, driving in from the Poplars road?” She shaded her eyes
and peered, as if she were honestly trying to distinguish the driver of
a romping steed, which was just then taking the lowest turn of the hill
at a gallop. By strategy and force, Blake had succeeded in driving the
mare round the tower and back to the Roseborough road.
“Ah, yes, Blake. You know I advised poor dear Mearely to sell Florence;
but he said she was such a beautiful creature that he would rather risk
his neck with her than sit safely behind an ugly beast. I should advise
you to use Marquis, my dear lady. That mare is not reliable.”
“So Blake says. He threatened to take her to the farm yesterday. But he
also says he can manage her; and, as he always _does_ manage her I take
his word for my safety and don’t worry.”
The Judge had a happy thought.
“You may regard your own safety thus lightly, fair lady. But will you
not consider the place you hold in _our_ hearts? Can any gallant man in
Roseborough think of your unprotected loveliness in danger and keep his
pulses steady?”
Inwardly Rosamond registered another plaintive and helpless protest
against the misuse of her bright gown which circumstance was making
that day. “They’ll drive me back to crape,” she said to herself, “in
order to have my adventures free from persecution.” Aloud she said,
veiling her eyes till they were only a peep of sparkling blue heavens
through clouds:
“I have begun to feel lately that Roseborough’s gentlemen have
indeed--so to speak--a perception of my lonely state.”
“Ah. As to the others I can’t say. They would hardly have the--ah--same
interest as myself. No, hardly, I have a personal responsibility
regarding you.”
She interrupted quickly.
“Has your invitation reached you yet, for to-night?”
“Ah--yes. I thank you. I met Mrs. Witherby on the bridge. Ah--I was
about to say....”
“Can that possibly be Florence pounding up the hill? Yes, it is. Dear
me. Really, I wish she were more sedate, to-day of all days.”
Rosamond was talking against time; her words meant nothing more than
that she desired to keep the Judge at bay until the carriage arrived,
when she would pretend she had visits to make and so dismiss him. Not
understanding this, the Judge was inspired by her last sentence to a
very pretty belief; namely, that Mrs. Mearely wished her mare to trot
sedately on this day, because she was on her way to the cemetery; a
visit to the Mearely plot being her delicate method of assuring both
the departed and Roseborough that her return to colours betokened no
frivolity of spirit--that she was still a Mearely and would maintain
the Mearely dignity. This also, he thought, was a good omen for him;
since there could be no question about his superfitness to assist her
in her loyal task.
“My dear lady....” He spoke with a slow profundity which made the
blinking, sparkling eyes open wide at him. “You are on the way to
his--ah--grave. I understand. I may say I more than understand. I will
postpone until this evening--ah--the communication I came here to make
to you. Um--ah--drop a posy--ah--on the poor fellow for me, will you
not?”
Rosamond stared at him as blankly as any milkmaid.
“_What?_” said she, with unmodified bluntness.
Whatever might have developed, in the course of explanation, was
prevented by a rival emissary of fate, with less propriety and more
force than Judge Giffen. Florence rounded the curve. She had the bit in
her teeth and blood in her eye--and the devil himself in her heels and
her head. Blake was chiefly occupied in administering punishment. If
she _would_ bolt, she should do it under the whip, until discouragement
set in.
Florence, being dumb, could not explain what it was about the stolid,
large, high-backed, flea-bitten white horse (and possibly his imposing
master) which irritated her beyond endurance; but she expressed herself
after her temperament. She swerved from the road and, charging upon
the unsuspecting nag--whose back was toward her, his head sunk in the
timothy along the wall--bit him sharply on the rump. The flea-bitten
white was less stolid than he looked. He emitted a shrill snort and
kicked with all his might; the Judge lost his hat and almost lost
his seat. Florence pranced in and nipped the other side. Whereupon
the flea-bitten white sounded his protest to all the world, reared,
turned and ran at a racing gait down the hill. The Judge’s _pince-nez_
flew off in one direction and his crop in the other; the bridle had
already been jerked from his easy hold, so that it is no slur on his
horsemanship to say that Judge Giffen rode down the first two winds of
the hill clinging to the pommel.
What of Florence? In sidling in to take her second nip, she had swung
the light vehicle half-round, and now, ere Blake could get the mastery,
she swung it all the way and charged off down the hill again. The
pounding of hoofs on the gravel brought more than one Roseborough
dweller to her front windows. Presumably Mrs. Mearely’s were not the
only eyes to see the _finale_. The judge’s horse, ignoring the shouts
of the toll-man and the closing of the bridge to let a tow go by,
leaped the gates and the towline and galloped over the bridge and
disappeared in a cloud of dust.
Blake’s experience was less happy. Florence did not include the
carriage in her calculations, but attempted to perform the same feat.
She got through the barrier, by taking it with her; but the wheels were
tipped by the fence rails, the vehicle rose upon its side and Blake
dived, as if from a springboard, into the river. His aquatics seemed to
satisfy Florence’s passion for excitement for that day at least. She
righted herself deftly and began to crop the clover beside the path,
all mildness now as to mien.
The men on the barge fished Blake out with ropes and a hook. He was
none the worse evidently, for he climbed to his seat and started
Florence homeward under a harsh hand.
Until then Mrs. Mearely had had the grace to resist the temptation
to laugh. Now the storm took her, and shook her the worse for her
repression. She laughed until she was so limp that she was obliged
to hang on to the gate to keep from falling, and then she laughed
until she was so limp that she could no longer hold to the gate. She
collapsed in a bed of mignonette and sweet alyssum, green parasol and
all, exactly as if some one had broken off a big bunch of lilac and
tossed it there. In the end, she turned over on her side, laid her head
on a white close-growing pillow of alyssum and wept quietly, because
flesh and blood could bear no more.
Thus Blake found her, when dripping coachman and foaming mare stopped
at the gate.
“By the Lud! Mrs. Mearely, mum, are ye in a swound? The dundered ’oss
’ll kill us all afore she’s contented.”
“No, Blake. I--I’m all right now,” Rosamond answered weakly.
“What--what do you suppose is the matter with the mare?”
“The mare,” he exploded wrathfully. “Well, mare she may be, an’ mare
she is; but a lady she ain’t, nor never will be! She’s a wicious, a
indecent, an’ a cavortin’ female--an’ ’eadstrong, also, like all of her
sect. I never saw a female of any specie that was wuth her salt; an’
they’re that irksome they wears a man out with chastisin’ of ’em. Soon
as I’ve got a dry change on me, I’m a-goin’ to take this she-_himp_ of
Satan out to the farm; and I’ll give her such a what-for on the road
as’ll tone down her ’abits, or I’m but a ol’ feeble liar.”
“You’ll bring Marquis back?”
“Ay, mum. Marquis is a gentleman. But I won’t be bringin’ ’im till
to-morrow afternoon, or mebbe next day. It’s accordin’. Look at
her--the deceiver! To see her now, you’d say she wouldn’t steal oats.
Ugh! You ’ap’azard critter! Did you see what she done, mum? Did you see
what she done to his honour, the Jodge--to his honour, Jodge Giffen?
‘As she got any rev’rence to her? Not a penn’orth! She prances on to
the werry dignity of the Court, an’ rares up an’ bites his Sycle-hops.
Ugh! You ’eretic! Bitin’ the werry dignity of the Court in his
Sycle-hops!”
“Bites? Blake, what on earth do you mean?” She asked the question
in trepidation, lest the strange word prove a disguise for some
indelicacy, Blake being simple and rustic of speech.
“His Sycle-hops. His ’oss, mum. His brown ’oss is named ‘Seep-yer’--for
the colour, he says; w’ich is some sort of a ’igh-tone joke befittin’
a Jodge, no doubt. An’ the flea-bitten w’ite he calls Sycle-hops, says
he, account of him bein’ sech a ’uge ’oss an’ one eye a bit better’n
t’other.” Mrs. Mearley’s recently acquired knowledge of mythology came
to her aid.
“Oh! Cyclops!” She was relieved.
“Jes’ wot I said. An’ that’s wot this wicious an’ wulgar female of her
sect’s gone an’ bit! I’m mortyfied, mum, plumb mortyfied. I’ll drive
round now an’ get a dry change, afore the five teeth I’ve got drops
out from chill; an’ then I’ll be off till to-morrow--or next day. It’s
accordin’. Ugh! You shameless, wile, an’ himproper hanimal, you! I’ll
learn ye to respect the Courts o’ the land.”
“So you won’t be here to-night. Very well. Hurry off at once, before
you get more rheumatism. But I hope you won’t whip Florence any more.
I’m particularly fond of her. You must not be cruel to her, Blake.”
“She’s a female; an’ wot else can ye do with a female? They’re
cavorters, from the first one down the line. If I’d a-ben Adam,
I’d a-seen wot the A’mighty meant when he called it the tree o’
knowledge--a tree full o’ switches, that’s wot! An’ I’d a-stopped the
cavortin’ of the sect right there where it started. Yes, mum; H’eve
would a-ben a different ’ooman if Timothy Blake had ’ad her. It would
a-ben the makin’ of her,” he added regretfully. “Good-day, mum.”
He did not turn his head as he drove off and, therefore, was not
affronted by the sight of his mistress rocking with laughter.
“I wonder if the Judge’s horse has stopped running yet?” she said to
herself, and danced up and down on her toes with delight. “I shall
always love Florence for that. I think she postponed a declaration.”
Three o’clock did not sound from the stone tower. The toll-man became
so interested in relating to a farmer, who was taking a load of live
fowls to Trenton, the exciting story of Florence’s achievements--with
historical references to the Giffen and Mearely families, and notes on
Blake’s pedigree, also Florence’s, besides digressions as to his own
age, health, and episodic life-story--that three passed to four without
interrupting his train of thought. When the farmer and his squawking
equipage passed on, the toll-man went into the tower to fill his pipe
from the cut plug in his coat pocket, planning to take a few pleasant
puffs before repeating the story all over again to a black-suited,
black-whiskered stranger he saw reaching the bridge on the Trenton
side. His coat hung under the clock; and, since the clock ticked at ten
after four, he rang the hour. When he stepped out again, the stranger
had disappeared. He did not observe an abnormal trembling of the tall
rushes and sedges by the Roseborough slough, as if a large body were
crawling among them.
[Illustration]