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.