A curious little heartache accompanied Colonel Musgrave on his way home
that afternoon. He had not seen Patricia Stapylton for twenty-four
hours, and he was just beginning to comprehend what life would be like
without her. He did not find the prospect exhilarating.
Then, as he came up the orderly graveled walk, he heard, issuing from
the little vine-covered summer-house, a loud voice. It was a man's
voice, and its tones were angry.
"No! no!" the man was saying; "I'll agree to no such nonsense, I tell
you! What do you think I am?"
"I think you are a jackass-fool," Miss Stapylton said, crisply, "and a
fortune-hunter, and a sot, and a travesty, and a whole heap of other
things I haven't, as yet had time to look up in the dictionary. And I
think--I think you call yourself an English gentleman? Well, all I have
to say is God pity England if her gentlemen are of your stamp! There
isn't a costermonger in all Whitechapel who would dare talk to me as
you've done! I would like to snatch you bald-headed, I would like to
kill you--And do you think, now, if you were the very last man left in
all the _world_ that I would--No, don't you try to answer me, for I
don't wish to hear a single word you have to say. Oh, oh! how _dare_
you!"
"Well, I've had provocation enough," the man's voice retorted, sullenly.
"Perhaps, I have cut up a bit rough, Patricia, but, then, you've been
talkin' like a fool, you know. But what's the odds? Let's kiss and make
up, old girl."
"Don't touch me!" she panted; "ah, don't you _dare!_"
"You little devil! you infernal little vixen? You'll jilt me, will you?"
"Let me go!" the girl cried, sharply. Rudolph Musgrave went into the
summer-house.
The man Colonel Musgrave found there was big and loose-jointed, with
traces of puffiness about his face. He had wheat-colored hair and
weakish-looking, pale blue eyes. One of his arms was about Miss
Stapylton, but he released her now, and blinked at Rudolph Musgrave.
"And who are you, pray?" he demanded, querulously. "What do you want,
anyhow? What do you mean by sneakin' in here and tappin' on a fellow's
shoulder--like a damn' woodpecker, by Jove! I don't know you."
There was in Colonel Musgrave's voice a curious tremor, when he spoke;
but to the eye he was unruffled, even faintly amused.
"I am the owner of this garden," he enunciated, with leisurely
distinctness, "and it is not my custom to permit gentlewomen to be
insulted in it. So I am afraid I must ask you to leave it."
"Now, see here," the man blustered, weakly, "we don't want any heroics,
you know. See here, you're her cousin, ain't you? By God, I'll leave it
to you, you know! She's treated me badly, don't you understand. She's a
jilt, you know. She's playin' fast and loose----"
He never got any further, for at this point Rudolph Musgrave took him by
the coat-collar and half-dragged, half-pushed him through the garden,
shaking him occasionally with a quiet emphasis. The colonel was angry,
and it was a matter of utter indifference to him that they were
trampling over flower-beds, and leaving havoc in their rear.
But when they had reached the side-entrance, he paused and opened it,
and then shoved his companion into an open field, where a number of
cows, fresh from the evening milking, regarded them with incurious eyes.
It was very quiet here, save for the occasional jangle of the cow-bells
and the far-off fifing of frogs in the marsh below.
"It would have been impossible, of course," said Colonel Musgrave, "for
me to have offered you any personal violence as long as you were, in a
manner, a guest of mine. This field, however, is the property of Judge
Willoughby, and here I feel at liberty to thrash you."
Then he thrashed the man who had annoyed Patricia Stapylton.
That thrashing was, in its way, a masterpiece. There was a certain
conscientiousness about it, a certain thoroughness of execution--a
certain plodding and painstaking carefulness, in a word, such as is
possible only to those who have spent years in guiding fat-witted
tourists among the antiquities of the Lichfield Historical Association.
"You ought to exercise more," Rudolph Musgrave admonished his victim,
when he had ended. "You are entirely too flabby now, you know. That path
yonder will take you to the hotel, where, I imagine, you are staying.
There is a train leaving Lichfield at six-fifteen, and if I were you, I
would be very careful not to miss that train. Good-evening. I am sorry
to have been compelled to thrash you, but I must admit I have enjoyed it
exceedingly."
Then he went back into the garden.
V
In the shadow of a white lilac-bush, Colonel Musgrave paused with an
awed face.
"Good Lord!" said he, aghast at the notion; "what would Agatha say if
she knew I had been fighting like a drunken truck-driver! Or, rather,
what would she refrain from saying! Only, she wouldn't believe it of me.
And, for the matter of that," Rudolph Musgrave continued, after a
moment's reflection, "I wouldn't have believed it of myself a week ago.
I think I am changing, somehow. A week ago I would have fetched in the
police and sworn out a warrant; and, if the weather had been as damp as
it is, I would have waited to put on my rubbers before I would have done
that much."