Jeremy had not exaggerated when he had said that De Rothan rode about the country as though he had nothing whatever to fear. His audacity carried him even into some of the country houses round about, and Jeremy himself met him in Hastings, riding along the High Street with a groom at his heels. He bowed to Jeremy and took off his hat.
"Good day to you, sir. I can assure you, in passing, that our mutual friend is very well."
"Damn your cheek," said Jeremy.
And De Rothan laughed in his face.
Some days elapsed before the Chevalier appeared again at Stonehanger. He had more desire to see Nance than to warn her father, for Durrell was becoming a negligible quantity now that the crisis was at hand. De Rothan was not the man to waste time upon a thing that was no longer of any use. He had made many shrewd guesses, but he had yet to learn that Nance herself was arrayed against him.
He found Durrell alone under one of the yews on the terrace. He had been reading and had fallen asleep with the book open across his knees. He woke with a start when De Rothan touched him, dropped the book, and looked up at the Frenchman with a narrowing and mistrustful stare.
"I had no notion you were here, sir. I have not been asleep more than five minutes."
He was confused, flurried, and De Rothan had quick eyes. He caught the restless antagonism in the other's manner. Durrell was a little afraid.
De Rothan sat down on the terrace wall, studying Durrell with cynical and amused eyes.
"So they have been frightening you, have they? Poor friend—poor comrade!"
Durrell moved restlessly in his chair. He had foreseen this meeting and had prepared himself for it, yet De Rothan's flippant scorn held him at a disadvantage.
"I have decided to abandon this enterprise——"
"Did they dangle a rope under your nose? Alas, we have not the blood of the martyrs in us! That little black-chinned bully has been here with his tongue and his pistols. He tried his bombast with me, but I had the adder's head under my heel."
Durrell's face twitched irritably.
"I have not been frightened from my purpose. But I see certain things as I did not see them before."
"A convenient conscience, eh!"
"I cannot share your methods."
"Indeed! That overwhelms me."
He looked at Durrell with amused contempt.
"So you know that I have compelled Mr. Jasper Benham to be my guest? And yet you cannot appreciate what a desperate piece of cleverness it was. A little man comes and storms at you, and instead of holding loyal to me, you throw up your arms and surrender."
"I have refused to accept your methods."
"Because of a wonderful new affection for this cub of a Sussex squire? Thunder! I wish you had your girl's courage, and not the heart of a sheep."
Durrell's eyes began to glitter in his white face.
"It is because of Nance that I have seen fit to renounce you and your cleverness."
"You overwhelm me! How much does your daughter know?"
"Everything."
"Oh, come, now, come!"
"I said everything."
"And she does not despise you for playing the coward—calling out when the shoe begins to pinch?"
De Rothan's insolence roused Durrell to a thin and austere dignity.
"Sir, do you think that my daughter admires your idea of honour any more than I do? Her sympathies are with this young man, concerning whom you saw fit to tell me many lies."
"Ah—is that so!"
"I have said it. I do not ask your leave to tell the truth."
De Rothan's face seemed to sharpen and to harden its outlines. He looked at Durrell out of half-closed eyes.
"Let us be frank. Am I to understand that this calf that I have tied up in a stall is particularly precious to your daughter?"
"I refuse to deal in such terms."
"The devil take all our little nicenesses! Do you mean to tell me that Nance cares one farthing whether that round-headed young oaf——"
"My daughter is not for your discussion."
De Rothan laughed, but it was the laughter of a man whose self-love felt savage.
"What a pretty little romance I have been feeding! That I should have rubbed this young fool on the raw, while sweet Nance pitied him."
Durrell's fingers kept up an agitated rapping on the arms of the chair.
"If you have any sense of honour, De Rothan——"
"Honour! I am packed full of honour. My marrow tingles with it. But you, Sir Pantaloon, do not understand."
"You are right. I do not understand."
"No, who could expect it. You desert me to play the fond father. It is very laughable. As if you could not have played the fond father and kept all your ambitions! Well, Mr. Anthony Durrell, I think there is nothing left for you but to sit here and wait to see the Emperor land."
"I believe less, sir, in the Emperor than I did."
"A pity! Yet we shall recover from your sudden scepticism. No doubt you will be happier with your books."
De Rothan rose, and stood looking over Stonehanger Common. His long mouth curled, and his nostrils were contemptuous. Durrell watched him uneasily, resentfully, still tapping the chair-rails with his fingers.
"You will release Mr. Benham."
De Rothan turned on him sharply.
"Pardon me—am I so soft a fool! I am not a man who turns back, or who shirks the holding of an advantage. I have some respect for my own neck, though I no longer look to you to respect it."
Durrell nodded solemnly.
"No good can come of it. As for this house——"
"Shut the door on me quickly. Lock me out in a great hurry, Mr. Durrell. I will wish you good morning."
He marched off across the grass, swaggering with stiff shoulders, and smiling a queer, sidelong smile up at Nance's window. David Barfoot was holding his horse in the yard. De Rothan glanced at him as though there were some sudden significance in the thought that the man was deaf.
"Do you sleep well in summer, Mr. David?"
Barfoot stared back at him and said nothing.
In the lane, close to the yew-tree where Jasper had been shot, De Rothan came right upon Nance and Jeremy Winter. They were climbing the hill side by side, Jeremy leading his horse by the bridle. The meeting roused a quick crackle of complex enmities. De Rothan stiffened in the saddle, and raised his hat to Nance.
She did not look at him, but beyond him, and her face was white frost. Jeremy bit his lip. There were so many things that he desired to say and do.
De Rothan smiled in his face as he passed him.
"Good day to you, sir; I may tell our friend that he has a kind relative who sees that his shoes are kept warm."
"Tell him what you please. It won't matter. Liars are easily known."
"How you would like to argue with me! But I am content with my present advantages. Good day."
De Rothan rode on, savagely amused. The varied experiences of life had not made him magnanimous, or tolerant, and cynic that he was he loved himself like a spoiled and passionate boy. He could not forgive the snatching away of a thing that he himself desired, his overweening egotism ruffing itself over the insult.
The most cynical of men are often the worst sensualists, and anything that balks their appetite rouses the wrath of the animal in them. De Rothan's hatred of Jasper Benham was natural enough in itself. He had been meddled with and humiliated by this young man, and De Rothan had no sentimentality when the stiff-haired anger of a dog was on him. Man of the world that he was, his cynicism could not save his vanity from being exasperated by the affair between Nance and Jasper Benham. He might call it a pinafore romance, and sneer at the crude preferences of a young girl. His self-love became an angry, snarling, dangerous thing, the more dangerous because it was clever and could sneer.
"Why not?"
His sullen face gleamed under the light of sudden suggestive thought. Why not, indeed? There were many ways of humiliating and hurting a man besides slashing him with a whip.
He roused his horse to a canter, brisked up by the delightful maliciousness of this new inspiration. He swaggered in the saddle and assumed a flamboyant jauntiness in passing a coach full of women on the Hastings road. The preposterous simplicity of the idea made him laugh, the sly noiseless laughter of a bon viveur enjoying a suggestive story.
"Bravo for the villain! What a queer mix-up of characters we mortals be! The philosopher crushing the wasp that has stung him. It is the nature of wasps to sting, therefore a philosopher should not be angry. But there is a joy in the crushing. And to see the sick black mug of that little fencing-master! It would be worth it even for that."
De Rothan rode home in great good humour. He left his horse with François, and went straight to the attic where Jasper was imprisoned. Gaston opened the door.
Jasper was lying on his straw in the corner, his face turned to the wall. He sat up when De Rothan entered, his hair over his eyes, a fine stubble on his upper lip and chin. A man's dignity is apt to go to pieces under such conditions, showing how greatly he is the slave of his comb and his razor.
De Rothan eyed him whimsically.
"Very good, Mr. Benham, very good indeed. Work just a little more straw into your hair. It would be sacrilege to have you washed and barbered."
He gloated, opening his chest, and forcing back his shoulders. Jasper looked at him stubbornly.
"If it is a question which dog is the dirtier——"
"My good young man, I am a Pharisee of the Pharisees. I make clean the outside of the cup. Women prefer it. Gaston, come down with me. Presently you may show Mr. Benham himself in a mirror."
Gaston followed De Rothan to the panelled dining-room. Master and man were in a good humour with one another.
"Bring the sherry and glasses, Gaston. If you can manage to make our friend up yonder look a little dirtier and more like an unclean lunatic I shall be gratified."
He poured out two glasses of wine.
"I expect more visitors, Gaston, my friend. Have two bedrooms got ready, and see that the locks of the doors are in order."
"More visitors, sir!"
"We are to fetch them to-night, Gaston. I shall want you and François with me. Jean can stay with the gentleman. He is a surly lad, is Jean. Tell him to cuff Mr. Benham on the mouth if he tries to talk to him. And have the horses ready at ten."