“He that rebuketh a wicked man getteth
himself a blot!-The
Bible.
By all the ill-luck in the world Sir
Walter Hickle was sitting in the patch called the
garden, turning a small parcel elatedly over and over
in his pocket, as Leonie, and her companion, and the
dog came sliding down the hill towards the cottage.
For the time being Leonie had totally
forgotten the proceedings of the night before, which
had metamorphosed her radiant self from a free into
a bond woman.
“Oh!” she said, putting
one hand unexpectedly on Jan Cuxson’s arm and
digging her stick fiercely into the ground, as the
man in the garden half rose from his chair and sank
back with a frown.
“Oh!” she repeated.
“Tired, dear?”
Neither of them noticed the little
endearing word which had slipped out so naturally,
but Leonie’s face was wan and her eyes were dead
as she dragged herself down the last few yards, while
her aunt fluttered down to the gate to meet them,
with her mind and skirts in a whirl.
“Jan Cuxson!” she exclaimed,
offering a limp hand, and “How very nice,”
she continued, lying quite successfully. “I
should have known you anywhere. Do come in
and have tea!”
And in the same breath, and with that
strange cruel cunning of the shallow mind, which is
the abortive twin of decent feminine intuition, she
leapt at the difficulty she saw threatening, and tried
to dispel it.
“Let me introduce you to Sir
Walter Hickle, my niece’s fiance.”
Sir Walter ambled forward with outstretched
hand as Cuxson, nodding curtly, bent to pick up Leonie’s
stick, which had clattered to the floor.
A malicious gleam shone in the elder
man’s little eyes as he looked at the splendid
young fellow who had seemed, physically anyway, so
fit a match for Leonie as they tramped down the hill
together; and though there was no sign of his inward
perplexity and repulsion in Jan Cuxson’s face
as his eyes swept the obese figure of the notorious
old knight, his jaw took a sudden, almost ugly, outward
thrust with the birth of a mighty resolution.
Leonie walked to the gate with him
when he took his departure, having refused tea from
a certain undefined feeling that he could not even
sit in the same room as the man whom he intended to
do out of the odd trick.
He crushed Leonie’s hand as
he looked straight into her eyes, so desperate and
ashamed, and spoke very gently and deliberately as
he slipped his hand to her wrist and pulled her a
little closer.
“I shall be in the last cove
to-morrow at eleven, waiting for you.”
And naturally Leonie had responded
to the mastery in the voice, as all women do respond
when the voice is the right one; and a soft wave of
colour swept from chin to brow as she turned from the
gate, and walked through the doorway straight to her
bedroom; while her future lord pranced furiously among
the bric-a-brac, and her aunt’s beads and
bracelets clashed against the china as she wrung her
hands over the tea things, and portending disaster.
Leonie sat down on her bed with her
eyes shining like stars.
The lid of her life’s casket
had opened wide, and from under a hideous heap of
fear, disgust, lost illusions, and despair, hope had
sprung, spreading her iridescent wings in the warmth
of love.
She sat until the shadows crept about
her, then got up from her bed with a little laugh,
and descended to give battle for her life and freedom.
Think of every synonym connected with
the word tumult and you will get a vague idea of the
storm which crashed about the girl’s defenceless
head as she stood with her back to the door of the
tiny sitting-room, with a perfectly gorgeous diamond
ring sparkling and flashing in front of her upon a
table.
“I cannot marry you, Sir Walter,
I simply cannot do it,” she was saying, slowly
and distinctly. “You must let me go.
So please give the ring to somebody else, there are
heaps of girls ever-oh, ever so much nicer
than me!”
She smiled sweetly as she picked up
the ring and held it out to the man, who snatched
it from her as he sprang to his feet, and hurled it
through the window.
Then he moved to the other side of
the table and leant both clenched fists upon it as
he looked Leonie up and down.
“You needn’t wear the
ring, my girl,” he said slowly, “but no
one picks Walter Hickle up one day and throws him
down the next. You’re going to marry me
this day month, you take that straight from me.
Let’s hear why you’ve changed your mind
so sudden; willing to marry last night, unwilling
to marry to-day.
“Come on, now, out with it!”
he suddenly shouted, bringing his hand with a crash
on the table as Leonie hesitated, blushing divinely.
“Only-be-cause I-I
don’t love you, Sir Walter, and it’s-it’s
not right to marry without love!”
“Posh! There wasn’t
so much of this ’ere right to marry last night.
Fallen in love with that young feller-me-lad, I suppose.
Where did you meet him? What were you doing?
How-how-
Leonie turned the handle of the door,
but shrank back as the man, with a bound, flung himself
at her and wrenched her hand free; and Susan Hetth
clashed her bracelets and bits as she put her hands
tightly over her face, in her fright forgetting the
mixture of colours she heaped on it daily in the hope
of stemming the neap tide of old age.
“Get out, you there!”
snarled the man, lashed to fury by the whip of jealousy.
“Get out, go away, wash your face-you
look like a-a-like a damned
fut’rist, get out!”
And not daring to pass the two near
the door, she prepared to get, with a great loss of
dignity, through the bow window; in fact, one foot
was just over the sill when the man called her back.
“Come back,” he bellowed,
“I want you as witness to what I’m goin’
to say to your niece, the young lady what plays fast
and loose with honest men. Fast and loose, I
don’t fink!”
Leonie shuddered as the veneer of
refinement cracked under the strain of the man’s
rage, showing the brutality and grossness immediately
underneath.
She pulled her hand free, and backed
towards the mantelpiece, against which she leant,
staring at him.
“I am not going to marry you!”
The voice was low but positive, and
the quiet in the room was intense as Sir Walter bounced
up within a foot of her and shook a fat forefinger
in her face.
“Aren’t you,” he
said, “aren’t you! And I’ll
just tell you three things what’ll make you
change your tune, my girl.
“One,” he placed the fat
forefinger on the ill-bred thumb, “an’
the least important, you’ll marry me ’cos
you’re an ’etth, daughter of Colonel Bob
Hetth, V.C., an’ your fut’rist aunt ain’t-hasn’t
half rubbed it in about the Hetths never breaking
their word, I give you mine!”
“Please leave my father’s
name out of this,” quietly replied Leonie, her
face dead white from the sickening thudding of her
heart.
“Well, if you don’t keep
your word, Miss tiger cat, I’ll run you in for
breach of promise, an’ bring your father’s
name into court!”
“You couldn’t!”
“Couldn’t!-couldn’t
what?” stormed the man.
“Run,” said Leonie gently,
and added sweetly, and with great vulgarity, “you’re
too fat!”
“Two!” continued Sir Walter,
purple in the face, but wisely ignoring the insult
to his person. “You’ll marry me ’cos
no one else’ll have you. You’re
batty, my gel-gone in the top storey-can’t
even go out to work for your living ’cause you
ain’t always to be trusted. I know all
about yer, but I’m willin’ to take the
risk. There won’t be any trapersin’
round the ’ouse after dark once yer married to
me, I give you my word. Course, if you like
to go on spungin’ on your aunt, obligin’
her to live in a ’olé like this, well, that’s
your look h’out-’ardly up to
mark tho’, being an ’etth, daughter of
a V.C.”
His small eyes gleamed as they rested
on Leonie’s stricken face.
“Stop, please,” she said
hurriedly, “I can’t stand any more just
now. I-I couldn’t really.
Will you give me a week to think it over?”
The man laughed contemptuously.
“A few days, a few hours, then?”
There was something horrible in the
humiliation of the girl’s pleading, but it made
not the slightest impression on the ex-costermonger,
who had at one time been accustomed to enforcing his
commands with the buckle end of his waist-belt.
“Not a minute, not a second,”
he chortled, seeing the end of the chase in sight.
“Think of the ’old I have on yer aunt.
Lady Susan Hetth, sister of Colonel Bob ’etth,
V.C., creeping out h’of a gentleman’s
rooms at three h’o’clock of the mornin’
an’ payin’ me ’ush money-think
of h’it. Now what ‘ev you got to
say. Why don’t you be sensible an’
quiet, gal? I’ve got yer, it ain’t
no use kickin’. Be sensible an’
I’ll smother you in di’monds, give yer
two Rolls-Royce, yacht, Monty Carlo any time, Park
Lane-make every other woman want ter scratch
yer eyes out-what more could yer
want? Now what have yer got to say!”
What was there to say?
Aunt Susan tried to obliterate herself
behind the window curtain; Sir Walter, thumbs in armholes,
tilted himself backwards and forwards on toe and heel
as Leonie came forward and leant with both hands the
table, as she looked from one to the other without
speaking.
In fact the silence became intolerable
to Sir Walter, who had expected, and would have thoroughly
enjoyed a heated altercation, in which he would have
known exactly where he was.
“Well, what ’ev yer got to say, my gel?”
Leonie looked from one to the other.
“I will marry you this day month,
Sir Walter.” She threw up her hand as
he laughed triumphantly. “Wait one moment!
But until that day I will have nothing to do with
you, nothing. I will not meet you nor
go out with you, nor bother about a trousseau, nor
the future in any way. I shall go out and come
in when I like, and go where and how I like.
I shall meet whom I like. I won’t deceive
you, I shall meet Jan Cuxson just as often as I like.
And I should advise you not to interfere with me
in any way. He is young and strong, and, as an
old friend of the family, might resent it. You
can trust him, he is a gentleman-which
means-oh, well!-you will find
the exact meaning in a French dictionary.”
She crossed to the door, turned, and
looked, slowly from one to the other.
“Is the bargain concluded?”
“Yes!-I’ll
take yer on those terms-but you’ll
pay a ’undred per cent interest on the month,
I’ve lent yer-an’ then
some I give yer my word!”
The door shut quietly as the man sank into a chair.
“Batty!” he said as he
mopped his bald head, “absolutely balmy.
But it’s worth while-it’s
worth while-let her have ’er month-let
’er-I shall have a whole lifetime
to break ’er in.”