Lady Good-for-Nothing: A Man's Portrait of a Woman by Arthur Quiller-Couch
Chapter VIII.
ANOTHER SABBATH-BREAKER.
The road--the same by which he had arrived last night--mounted all theway and led across the neck of the headland. His business, however, layout upon the headland itself and almost at its extremest verge; and amile above the town he struck off to the left where a bridle-pathclimbed by a long slant to the ridge. Half an hour's easy ridingbrought him to the top of the ascent, whence he looked down on the longbeach he had travelled yesterday. The sea lay spread on three sides ofhim. Its salt breeze played on his face; and the bay horse, feeling thetickle of it in his nostrils, threw up his head with a whinny."Good, old boy--is it not?" asked the Collector, patting his neck."Suppose we try a breather of it?"
The chine of the headland--of turf, short-cropped by the unceasingwind--stretched smooth as a racecourse for close upon a mile, with agentle dip midway much like the hollow of a saddle. The Collector ranhis eye along it in search of the two men he had come to meet, but couldspy neither of them.
"Sheltering somewhere from the breeze, maybe," he decided. "_We_ don'tmind it, hey? Come along, lad--here's wine for heroes!"
He touched Bayard with the spur, and the good horse started at agallop--a rollicking gallop and in the very tune of his master's mood;and if all Port Nassau had not been at its devotions, the chins of itsburghers might have tilted themselves in wonder at the apparition--aCentaur, enlarged upon the skyline.
Man and horse at full stretch of the gallop were launching down the dipof the hollow--the wind singing past on the top note of exhilaration--when the bay, too well trained to shy, faltered a moment and broke hisstride, as a figure started up from the lee-side of the ridge.
The Collector sailing past and throwing a glance over his shoulder, sawthe figure and lifted a hand. In another ten strides he reined upBayard, turned, and came back at a walk.
He confronted a lean, narrow-chested young man, black-suited, pale offace, with watery eyes, straw-coloured eyelashes and an underbred smilethat twitched between timidity and assurance.
"Ah?" queried the Collector, eyeing him and disliking him at sight."Are you "--doubtfully--"by any chance Mr. Wapshott, the Surveyor?"
"No such luck," answered the watery-eyed young man with an offhandattempt at familiarity. "I'm his Assistant--name of Banner--Wapshott'sunwell."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Mr.--Mr. Wapshott--sends word that he's unwell." Under the Collector'seye the youth suddenly shifted his manner and became respectful.
"I beg your pardon?" the Collector repeated slowly. "He 'sends word,'do you say? I had not the honour at my Inn--from which I have riddenstraight--to be notified of Mr. Wapshott's indisposition."
Mr. Banner attempted a weak grin and harked back again to familiarity.
"No, I guess not. The fact is--"
"Excuse me; but would you mind taking your hands out of your pockets?"
"Oh, come! Why?" But none the less Mr. Banner removed them.
"Thank you. You were saying?"
"Well, I guess, between you and me"--Mr. Banner's hands were slipping tohis pockets again but he checked the motion and rested a palmnonchalantly on either hip--"the old man was a bit too God-fearing tosign to it."
"You mean," the Collector asked slowly, "that he is not, in fact,unwell, but has asked you to convey an untruth?"
"You've a downright way of putting it--er--sir" Mr. Banner confessed;"but you get near enough, I shouldn't wonder. You see, the old--theSurveyor is strict upon Lord's Day Observance."
The Collector bent his brows slightly while he smoothed Bayard's mane.Of a sudden the small scene by the Church porch recurred to him."Stay," he said. "I have not the pleasure of knowing Mr. Wapshott, butmay I attempt to describe him to you? He is, perhaps, a gentleman ofsomewhat stunted growth, but of full habit, and somewhat noticeably redbetween the ear and the neck-stock?"
"That hits him."
"--with a wife inclining to portliness and six grown daughters, tallerthan their parents and not precisely in their first bloom. I speak,"added the Collector, still eyeing his victim, "as to a man of theworld."
"You've seen him anyhow," Mr. Banner nodded. "That's Wapshott."
"I saw him entering his place of worship; and I note that he thinks whatyou call the Lord's Day well worth keeping at the cost of a falsehood.May I ask, Mr.--" The Collector hesitated.
"Banner."
"Ah, yes--pardon me! May I ask, Mr. Banner, how it comes that you havea nicer sense than your superior of what is due to His Majesty'sService?"
Mr. Banner laughed uneasily. "Well, you mightn't guess it from mylooks," he answered with an attempt to ingratiate himself by way ofself-deprecation, "but I am pretty good at working out levels. I reallyam."
"That was not my point, though I shall test you on it presently.You are, it appears, a somewhat less rigid Sabbatarian than Mr.Wapshott?"
Hereupon Mr. Banner became cryptic. "You needn't fear about that," heanswered. "I have what they call a dispensation; and until you startledme, I was up here keeping the Lord's Day as well as the best of 'em.Better, perhaps."
"We will get to business," said the Collector. "Follow me, please."
He wheeled his horse and, with Mr. Banner walking at his stirrup, rodeslowly out to the end of the headland and as slowly back. The Collectorasked a question now and then and to every question the young manresponded pat. He was no fool. It soon appeared that he had studiedthe trajectory of guns, that he had views--and sound ones--on coastdefences, and that by some study of the subject he had come, a whileago, to a conclusion the Collector took but a few minutes to endorse;that to build a fort on this headland would be waste of public money.
Professionally, Mr. Banner was tolerable. The Collector, consultingwith him, forgot the pertness of his address, the distressing twang ofhis accent. He had dismounted, and the pair were busy with a tape,calling out and checking measurements, when from the southward there wasborne to the Collector's ears the distant crack of a shot-gun.
At the sound of it he glanced up, in time to see Mr. Banner drop theother end of the tape and run. Almost willy-nilly he followed, vaguelywondering if there had happened some accident that called for aid.
Mr. Banner, when the Collector overtook him, had come to a haltoverlooking the long beach, and pointed to a figure--a speck almost--forit was distant more than a mile.
"That Josselin girl!" panted Mr. Banner. "I call you to witness!"
The Collector unstrapped his field-glass, which he carried in abandolier, adjusted it, and through it scanned the beach. Yes, in thedistant figure he recognised Ruth Josselin. She carried a gun--orrather, stood with the gun grounded and her hands folded, resting on itsmuzzle--and appeared to be watching the edge of the breakers, perhapswaiting for them to wash to her feet a dead bird fallen beyond reach.
"See her, do you? I call you to witness!" repeated the voice at hiselbow.
"Why, what is the matter?"
"Sabbath breakin'," answered Mr. Banner with a curious leer.
"Ah!"
"But you yourself don't take much account of the Lord's Day, seemingly.Bathin', f'r instance."
"Indeed!" The Collector eyed his companion reflectively. "You honouredme with your observation this morning?"
Mr. Banner grinned. "Better say the whole of Port Nassau was hon'rin'you. Oh, there'd be no lack of evidence!--but I guess the magistrateswere lookin' the other way. They allowed, no doubt, that even aSabbath-breaker might be havin' friends at Court!"
The Collector could not forbear smiling at the youth's impudence.
"May I ask what punishment I have probably escaped by that advantage?"
"Well," said Mr. Banner, "for lighter cases it's usually the stocks."
Still the Collector smiled. "I am trying to picture it," said he, aftera pause. "But you don't tell me they would put a young girl in thestocks, merely for firing a gun on the Lord's Day, as you call it?"
"Wouldn't they!" Mr. Banner chuckle
"You are a strange folk in Port Nassau." The Collector frowned, upon asudden suspicion, and his eyes darkened in their scrutiny of Mr.Banner's unpleasant face. "By the way, you told me just now that youwere here upon some sort of a dispensation. Forgive me if I do youwrong, but was it by any chance that you might play the spy upon thisgirl?"
"Shadbolt asked me to keep an eye liftin' for her."
"Who is Shadbolt?"
"The Town Beadle. He's watchin' somewhere along the cliffs."Mr. Banner waved a hand towards the neck of the headland."It's a scandal, and by all accounts has been goin' on for weeks."
"So that is why you called me to witness? Well, Mr. Banner, I have ahorsewhip lying on the turf yonder, and I warn you to forget yoursuggestion. . . . Shall we resume our measurements?--and, if you please,in silence. Your presence is distasteful to me."
They turned from the cliff and went back to their work, in which--forthey both enjoyed it--they were soon immersed. It may have been, too,that the wind had shifted. At any rate they missed to hear, ten minuteslater, a second shot fired on the beach, not more distant but fainterthan the first.