Mr. Tuke rode homewards in a very grave and preoccupied frame of
mind. Perhaps he was conscious of a peril more nearly threatening his
peace than any scheme of truculent knavery. Of the latter he could
take every advantage that circumstance permitted him, without risk of
self-accusation. The other was a more delicate question to face--a
question of such moment that, pondering it, he must temporarily
relegate to the background of his thoughts the issues involved in his
adventure of the night.
Plainly, it amounted to this--was it to be control or abuse of the
indefinite quantity known as a man’s honour?
He was not a coxcomb, or conceited; but he was an experienced
worldling, and, as such, he could not pretend to misdeem, in any
pretty maid, those premonitory symptoms of a disease of the heart that
may be called aptly an “affection.”
Now--except when the stubborn devil in him was baited into cruelty--he
was a good-natured and humane enough fellow, with a natural scorn of
inflicting upon any other the pain he would himself shrink from
enduring. Moreover he had sworn himself to a life of cleanliness and
redemption of the past. Thirdly, and most important, did he or did he
not seriously contemplate the possibility of a connection with a lady
of gentle degree, to whom--if he offered his heart at all--he must
make his presentation with washed hands and an unstained conscience?
What problems may not be involved in a demand for straight yes or no
where the heart is called upon to answer! But then, what an
inextricable problem is the heart itself. Its sympathies are so
manifold that, would it be consistent, it must seal its every artery
of distribution, and so, in serene isolation, beat self-contained and
self-sufficient.
And here, where the brain, with its power of selection, picks out the
indubitable course, comes in the heart to reinstate a tender little
image that reason has ousted from its niche.
“Oh, Betty, Betty!” groans our gentleman. “I would I had never
happened across you, you jade!”
Desperate over his inability to navigate an uncharted sea, he put his
thoughts about on a course that promised plainer sailing.
The drugging of last night--what of that?
This of that--that too-eager knavery had reacted upon itself in the
sense of, by some impolitic stroke, confirming the suspicions of the
very antagonist it had sought secretly to circumvent.
Plainly, the rogues had drugged him to secure his non-interference
during another determined attempt upon his house--with what success
remained to be seen.
And now at least he was definitely acquainted with his enemies, if not
with their object; though this, he could not but conclude, was to
acquire possession of Luvaine’s legendary stone, which, for some
unaccountable reason, they supposed was hidden away on his premises.
Here his way was clear; his justification for pronounced action
obvious and inspiriting. He could feel a legitimate joy in striking at
villainy that had recklessly ventured to throw off its disguise.
Thinking these thoughts, he came in sight of his gates, and was
surprised to see them flung wide, and the rutted tracks of wheels
going up the moss.
He rode in, his horse padding it softly on the thick carpet--rode in
and drew rein abruptly with a muttered oath.
There, a little way off amongst the trees, was his henchman in earnest
talk with the same gaunt hag he had seen him exchange speech with once
before.
Now, he had little opportunity to note them; for, almost as he paused,
the two separated, the man going off hurriedly towards the house, and
the woman advancing in his own direction with a secret manner of
haste.
As she plunged into the drive, she saw him and drew up with a startled
jerk--then came slowly on, her eyes full of fear and defiance.
He set his horse across her path and awaited her.
“What do you here, woman?” he demanded sternly, as she stopped over
against him.
She drew her thin shawl about her shoulders.
“He--the man,” she muttered, with a sort of fierceness breaking
through instinctive deprecation, “does me many a little kindness. I
came to see him.”
“And tempt him to dishonest traffic in his master’s goods? That is a
double-dealing charity.”
She clinched her hands and her teeth. He saw “You lie” on her lips,
though the words were not uttered. But he hardly resented the
implication. He knew in his heart he slandered his servant--that he
could never bring himself to do the man justice.
For a moment he scanned the seamed face set daringly opposite him.
There were traces of a wild, lost beauty furrows of sorrow and want
and despair in it to an unprejudiced mind. But that in this instance
his was not.
“Harkee, mistress!” he said. “I was watching you two once before when
you thought yourselves unobserved. Something then passed from him to
you--here, in this drive. Do you deny it?”
“No,” she said.
“Then take warning, and carry your dealing to an open market. I want
no secret pilferers about.”
He pulled his rein, nodded at her with set lips, and rode on his way.
Issuing from the drive a scene of animation, unwonted to that dead
prospect, met his gaze. A couple of vans were pulled up before the
porch, the horses that had drawn them standing apart and nosing in
their bags. Men, a half-dozen of them, were busy going to and fro,
lugging huge objects swathed in packing sheets into the house, and
returning, hotly slouching and empty-handed. Further, under a tree,
stood Darda holding a saddle-horse by the bridle; and on the lawn,
walking hither and thither in earnest converse, strolled Whimple and
the little baronet of “Chatters.”
Now, this latter sight, for all his reasoned conclusions, Mr. Tuke
took in with something a scowling displeasure. No doubt the two were
long acquainted, relatively as to their different conditions, and had
so met and exchanged speech for years before he happened upon the
district. None the less, their intimacy at the present juncture
annoyed and a little distressed him. He could not be morally confirmed
in his mistrust of the servant without questioning the _bona fides_ of
any one to whom the latter appeared to give his confidence.
It was a foolish--indeed, it seemed an outrageous suspicion in face of
the comically ingenuous personality of the poor little Sir David. But
why the devil couldn’t the man let Whimple alone?
His new friend caught sight of him as he stood drawn up at the outlet
of the drive; saluted, and came towards him with an air of the utmost
importance and solemnity.
“Tuke,” he said, putting up his hand on the other’s saddle-bow and
looking earnestly in his face--“where the deuce have you been?”
“Yes, yes,” he went on, conscious of a certain atmosphere. “It’s all
right--it’s no business of mine, of course. Only, you’ve been wanted,
my friend.”
“Oh!--by whom?”
“By Whimple, there. The man’s half-wild with fright.”
The other answered with a little contemptuous laugh.
“Oh!” said Sir David, flushing slightly. “We can’t all command
courage, you know. You and me may be different; but----”
“Well, well, Blythewood, what’s it all about?”
“I’ll tell you. I rode over early to ask if you’d put up for the
Wilton hunt, and found your furniture here unpackin’ and Dennis
lookin’ on, like a wamble-cropped sentryman. ‘Hullo, my friend!’ says
I, ‘hath Boneless been a-stalkin’ in your bed-chamber that you show
the colour of a new sack?’ And, by Gad, Tuke, you ain’t in rosy
condition yourself!”
“Never mind me.”
“Well, he was scared; and what d’ye suppose he told me?--that he’d
feared an attempt on the house last night on the part of three bodeful
ruffians that visited your grounds after dark.”
“Yes--well?”
“You take it coolly, upon my soul. Well--this. He was lookin’ out of
one of the upper windows and saw them slinkin’ amongst the
trees--three as bloody rogues as ever----”
“Yes, yes, I know. What did they do? What did _he_ do?”
“Umph! Why he did nothin’; but he kept watch and so did they, waitin’
no doubt for the lights to be extinguished; and presently there came a
noise of wheels and up rolled your vans here from Winton. At that they
retreated--cursing, for he could hear them--but not far, it seems; for
all the time the first cargo was unloadin’, he could catch the white
of their faces now and again amongst the shrubs. So, on some pretext
or another, he stabled the horses and put up the porters against your
comin’, thinkin’--as was right--that our gentlemen would shy at so
brave a company. And then from room to room he walked all night; and
he saw the rogues come out on the gravel and dance wi’ rage in the
moonlight.”
“Why didn’t he take a posse of his bodyguard and ask the scoundrels
their business?”
“Oh, come, Tuke! You ask too much of the man--upon my word you do. He
ain’t exactly a free agent here, I gather. But don’t this follow
queerly on what you told us the other night? And Dennis acquaints me
there are signs of their having tried to force an entrance already.”
“Does he? He appears to give you confidences that he withholds from
me.”
“Well,” answered Sir David, dryly and a little haughtily, “maybe I
invite them more than you do.”
“That is possible, of course. Would it be an abuse of them to specify
the nature of this presumed attempt?”
The little baronet took his hand from the saddle, and looked at the
other with a puzzled and rather angry expression.
“’Tis round by the north wing, I understand,” said he coldly--“a
grating that gives light to some secret hole below the basement,”--and
with a brief “Good-day to you!” he turned and walked away.
Mr. Tuke made no attempt to follow and conciliate him. He was in fact
worried out of all present geniality by the constant strain upon his
faculties engendered of wearying suspicion. While he moved so blind
and helpless, a friendship that was curious merely confounded him.
Therefore, instead of succumbing to a natural instinct of
good-fellowship, he merely pricked his horse on, and rode round by the
further wing of the house.
Hitherto he had taken no concern to examine the nature of the opening
that admitted light and air to the “Priest’s Hole.” Now, he had little
difficulty in identifying the actual spot, for, in addition to its
being below a barred aperture in the house-side, which he felt
convinced was that that belonged to the gloomy chamber within, its
neighbourhood presented unmistakable signs of some recent trespass.
A massive grating of wrought-iron, sunk deep in the masonry of the
wall, which it pierced at a basement depth of five or six feet, looked
upon a sunless little area--a mere narrow box of cemented stones; and
this, without doubt, was the object he sought. The excavation had been
so matted in and overgrown with a generation of bramble and dog-wood
and wayfaring tree, that no one might have guessed the pit sunk within
the mass, had not a torn opening in the latter, bristling with white
splints of branches, led him to investigation, as it led the horseman
in the present instance.
He dismounted, and forcing his body through the aperture, came upon
the dank twilight well, and looked down.
Then, as his eyes adapted their vision to the gloom, he saw that
ineffectual hands had been busy at the grating--filing at it--chipping
at the stones in which it was embedded--vainly, in that cabined space,
endeavouring to force it from its iron grip.
“H’m!” muttered he, as he rent his way to the daylight once more.
“Luck and Mr. Turk are my guardian angels hitherto. I must face this
business in sober earnest.”
Walking round to the front again, he saw that Sir David had ridden
away, and that Whimple was standing at the porch watching the
operations of the men. Waiting until they were alone together for a
moment--“Why did you never tell me of that attempt on the ‘Priest’s
Hole’?” said he quietly.
Nothing of course in reply, but that same cursed look of distress and
muttering of near inaudible evasions.
“Here,” he said in the same tone, “take my horse!”
He walked through the house till he came to a certain dreary stone
chamber and to a ring set in the boards. Here he wrenched up the flap,
and leapt into the dusky hole beneath.
There was no sign there of the least success having attended the
efforts of the baffled rogues. The grating was immovable in its
socket, stones and stanchions wedded endurably.
A narrow ledge for a seat projected from one side of the pit. Using
this as a stepping-stone, he scrambled out and hurried off to
superintend the placing of his furniture, leaving the flap open.