To his surprise, within a few seconds a faint light shone through the
chink by the door-jamb, and he heard a footstep coming down the
passage. A bolt was withdrawn, very softly--the door opened--and Mrs
Tresize herself confronted him.
She stood just within the threshold, holding a lamp high: and its
rays, while they fell full on the doctor, causing him to blink,
crossed the rays of his gig-lamp which showed him that, late though
the hour was, she had as yet made no preparations for going to bed,
even to the extent of taking off her jewellery. The base of the
lamp, as its flames flickered in the draught, cast a waving shadow
over the widow's cap perched on her neatly coiled black tresses, and
the same shadow danced across her jet-black eyes and left them
staring at him, very bright and inquisitive. She wore a dress of
stiff black silk with a somewhat coquettish apron; and about her neck
a solid gold chain, thrice coiled, with a massive locket pendant at
her bosom. Above the locket was fastened a large memorial brooch
with a framework of gold, a face of crystal and, behind the crystal,
a weeping willow designed in somebody's hair. Altogether the widow's
attire and array suggested that she had recently dismissed, or was
even now expecting, company.
'Doctor Unonius?'
'You may well be surprised, madam--at this hour--'
'I did not send for you.'
'No, madam; and you will be surprised when you learn the reason of
this call--surprised but not (I beg) alarmed. To begin with, I have
a pistol here and can, at the worst, protect you.'
'Protect me?'
'I had best tell you my story, which is a sufficiently extraordinary
one. I have been dining at Penalune--nay, madam, do not
misunderstand me: I am as sober as a judge. On my homeward road I
overtook a suspicious character, and certain evidence I managed to
wrest from him leaves little doubt that robbery is intended here
to-night, as it has actually been achieved elsewhere. The man, I
should tell you--a powerful fellow--was dressed in woman's apparel.'
'Oh!' said Mrs Tresize shortly, and called down the passage behind
her--'Tryphena, come here!'
Without delay a middle-aged maid-servant appeared from a doorway that
(as the doctor knew) led out of an inner kitchen. Two sheep dogs
followed her growling, but at her command grew tractable and made no
demonstration beyond running around the doctor and sniffing at his
legs.
Tryphena, too--who, like her mistress, was fully dressed--betrayed no
surprise. She had, in fact, been sent upstairs at the sound of
wheels, and from behind a curtain had recognised Doctor Unonius as he
examined the paper by the light of his gig-lamp.
'Tryphena, here's Doctor Unonius, and he brings word we're to be
robbed and murdered in our beds.'
'The Lord preserve us!' said Tryphena.
'Amen,' said Mrs Tresize; 'and meanwhile you'd best go and stable the
horse while I hear particulars.'
Tryphena slipped out into the yard, the sheep dogs following.
The doctor would have helped her, but she took the lamp from his
hand, replaced it in its socket and set about unharnessing without
further to-do, coaxing Dapple the while to stand steady.
'Tryphena understands horses,' said Mrs Tresize. 'Come indoors,
please, and tell me all about it.'
Doctor Unonius lifted out the incriminating bag and followed her
along the passage. She paused at the door of the best kitchen and
pushed it wide. He looked in upon a bare but not uncheerful room,
where a clean wood fire blazed on an open hearth and over the fire a
kettle sang cosily. Gun-racks lined the walls, and dressers laden
with valuable china, and these were seasonably adorned with sprigs of
holly, ivy, and fir. A kissing-bush, even, hung from the bacon-rack
that crossed the ceiling, with many hams wrapped in bracken, a brace
of pheasants, and a 'neck' of harvest corn elaborately plaited: and
almost directly beneath it stood a circular table with a lamp and a
set of dominoes, the half of them laid out in an unfinished game.
The floor was of slate but strewn with rugs, some of rag-work others
of badgers' skins. A tall clock ticked sedately in a corner. On one
side of the chimney a weather-glass depended, on the other a
warming-pan--symbols, as it were, of conjugal interests, male and
female, drawing together by the hearth.
Doctor Unonius felt an unwonted glow at the sight of this interior.
He could not but admire, too, the widow's self-possession.
Instead of trembling and demanding explanations she suggested that a
glass of hot brandy and water would do him no possible harm after his
drive, and stepped to the corner cupboard without waiting for an
answer. It was a piece of furniture of some value, lacquered over
with Chinese figures in dusky gold. But the doctor's gaze travelled
rather to the gun-racks. He counted a dozen firearms, antique but
serviceable, and suggested that, with powder and shot, Landeweddy was
capable of standing a pretty stiff siege.
'I keep but two of them loaded,' said the widow, and indicated them--
a large blunderbuss and a fowling-piece with an immensely long
barrel; 'but there's powder and three sizes of shot in the right-hand
drawer, there, below the dresser. You can charge the others, if
you've a mind.'
'My warning would hardly seem to have impressed you, madam.'
'Oh yes, it has,' answered Mrs Tresize, measuring out the brandy.
'But you see, doctor, one gets accustomed to fears, living in this
lonely place; and with a man as protector one feels as safe as with a
regiment.'
'You flatter my ability, I fear,' said the doctor. 'I will do my
best, of course: but I ought to warn you that I am no expert with
firearms.'
'I can help you with the loading,' said Mrs Tresize. 'But tell me
the worst of the danger, please.'
Doctor Unonius set the bag on the table, and unloaded its contents
one by one while he told his story. The sight of the money-bags did
not produce quite the thrill he had looked for, but she evinced a
lively interest in the paper pinned to the map.
'_Mrs Tresize at Landeweddy, 48_,' she read, holding it under the
lamp, and slightly puckering her handsome brows.
'That doesn't flatter you, ma'am.'
'Hey?' Mrs Tresize looked up sharply. 'You don't suppose that means
my _age_?'
'I--er--fancied it might. It would be a guess, of course.'
'Nonsense,' said Mrs Tresize.
'It _is_ nonsense,' the doctor agreed. 'The man was obviously
misinformed.'
'It doesn't refer to my age at all,' said Mrs Tresize, positively.
'It--it alludes to something quite different. I was barely nineteen
when I married.'
'If you can guess to what it alludes--'
'_Reported good money, but near--_' read the widow, paused, and
uttered a liquid laugh. 'Oh, I am glad you showed me this.
We'll punish him for that, doctor, if he dares to turn up.'
'If,' echoed the doctor, with a glance at the gun-racks.
'I ought to go and warn Tryphena.'
'Every moment may be precious,' he agreed again, while she went to
the chimney-place and fetched the now boiling kettle.
She mixed the drink and set it close before him, where he leaned
pondering a pile of gold he had poured upon the table from one of the
canvas bags. The steam mounting from the glass bedimmed his
spectacles. He took them off to wipe them, and perceived that she
was smiling. She bit her lip at being thus caught.
'I was thinking,' she made haste to explain, 'what a funny situation
'twould be if by any chance the man was innocent, and you'd driven
off with money that honestly belonged to him.'
'Honest men don't put on women's clothes to tramp the moors at
night,' Doctor Unonius objected.
'Well, I don't see that it mightn't happen. A man having this money
to carry, and afraid of being robbed, might put it to himself that
rough characters--specially gipsies--often let a woman pass where
they'd attack a man. Or suppose, now, the man _was_ a gipsy?--he'd
sold three horses, we'll say, at Tregarrick Christmas Fair, and was
trudging it back to his camp somewhere on the moors. A gipsy would
be the very man to hit on that kind of disguise, it being against his
own principles to hurt any woman but his wife.'
'This man was a butcher, ma'am, and no gipsy.'
'O--oh!' cried the widow, with a little gasp. 'How do you know?'
'Never mind how I know, ma'am. He was a butcher, right enough; and,
on your hypothesis that I've committed highway robbery upon an
innocent man, I'd like you to explain how he comes to be carrying
about this paper. "One large chest" he credits you with possessing;
it is to be handled quickly and hidden in the orchard, if necessary--
that is, I suppose, if he should be surprised; and to resist him you
have nobody on the premises but your servant maid Tryphena. For what
innocent purpose, pray, does he carry about this memorandum?'
''Myes, I suppose you are right,' Mrs Tresize assented with a little
sigh, and forthwith shifted the conversation. 'But taste your
brandy, please, and tell me how you like it--though, to be sure, it
won't compare with Squire Peneluna's.'
It was, nevertheless, good sound brandy, genuine juice of the grape,
soft and well-matured. The doctor after a sip nodded his approval.
'I dare say, now,' she went on, 'you're accustomed to this sort of
thing? I mean, you must pass a good many nights, year's end to
year's end, in other folk's parlours. . . .' She broke off, and this
time with a genuine sigh. 'I used to wonder in days gone by, if ever
you'd be sitting here. I used to picture you . . . and now it's for
a robber you're waiting!' She ended with a laugh, yet turned her
face away.
But either the doctor was nettled or his mind refused to be diverted
by small talk from the business in hand. He somewhat curtly
commanded Mrs Tresize to indicate on the gun-rack the weapons her
late husband had commonly used, and to find him powder and shot.
For a moment she pouted her lips mutinously, but ended by obeying
him, with a shrug of her handsome shoulders.
She stood watching him while he carefully loaded the weapons and
rammed home the wads. It is possible that she had a mind to relent,
and suggest his whiling the time away with a game of dominoes.
At any rate she went so far as to hazard--with a glance at the ivory
tablets, and another at the hearth and the elbow-chairs--that he
would find the waiting tedious.
'Not if you can supply me with a book, ma'am,' he answered, laying
the two guns on the table, after sweeping the dominoes aside to make
room for them.
Mrs Tresize left the room and returned bearing a volume--Blair's
_Grave_. She understood (she said) that the doctor preferred serious
reading.
'Among all the poets that ever wrote,' said Doctor Unonius blandly,
'with the possible exception of Young, I have the greatest contempt
for Blair. He has the one unpardonable fault (not the one mentioned
by Horace, though he has that, too): he is dishonest. The finest
passage in the _Grave_ is impudently stolen from Dryden, and marred
in the stealing. But I thank Heaven, ma'am, that I can read any
printed matter; and when Blair disgusts me I can always take a
satisfactory revenge by turning him into Latin Elegiacs; by turning
him, so to speak, in his Grave,' concluded the doctor grimly.
This routed the lady, but she managed to get in the last word.
'Well, I can't pretend to understand you and your learning,' she
answered tartly; 'but since we seem to be thanking Heaven, I'll thank
it that I have a fire lit in my bedroom. It's the room just
overhead, and I'm going to ask Tryphena to sleep with me when she has
put up the bolts. Or, maybe, we shall sit up there for a while and
talk. But anyhow, we are light sleepers, the both of us, and if
there's any trouble you have only to call. Good-night.'
'Good-night, ma'am!' said Doctor Unonius, and opened the door for
her. Left alone, he went back to the table and began to turn the
pages of Blair.