But Lord Almeric, who had recovered from his temporary panic, and was as angry with her as with Pomeroy, shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, I don"t know," he said resentfully. "It has naught to do with me, ma"am. I don"t want you kept, but you have behaved uncommon low to me; uncommon low.
And "twill do you good to think on it. Stap me, it will!"
And he turned on his heel and sneaked out.
Mr. Pomeroy laughed insolently. "There is still Tommy," he said. "Try him. See what he"ll say to you. It amuses me to hear you plead, my dear; you put so much spirit into it. As my lord said, before we came in, "tis as good as a play."
She flung him a look of scorn, but did not answer. For Mr. Thoma.s.son, he shuffled his feet uncomfortably. "There are no horses," he faltered, cursing his indiscreet companion. "Mr. Pomeroy means well, I know. And as there are no horses, even if nothing prevented you, you could not go to-night, you see."
Mr. Pomeroy burst into a shout of laughter and clapped the stammering tutor (fallen miserably between two stools) on the back. "There"s a champion for you!" he cried. "Beauty in distress! Lord! how it fires his blood and turns his look to flame! What! going, Tommy?" he continued, as Mr. Thoma.s.son, unable to bear his raillery or the girl"s fiery scorn, turned and fled ign.o.bly. "Well, my pretty dear, I see we are to be left alone. And, damme! quite right too, for we are the only man and the only woman of the party, and should come to an understanding."
Julia looked at him with shuddering abhorrence. They were alone; the sound of the tutor"s retreating footsteps was growing faint. She pointed to the door. "If you do not go," she cried, her voice shaking with rage, "I will rouse the house! I will call your people! Do you hear me? I will so cry to your servants that you shall not for shame dare to keep me! I will break this window and cry for help?"
"And what do you think I should be doing meanwhile?" he retorted with an ugly leer. "I thought I had shown you that two could play at that game.
But there, child, I like your spirit! I love you for it! You are a girl after my own heart, and, damme! we"ll live to laugh at those two old women yet!"
She shrank farther from him with an expression of loathing. He saw the look, and scowled, but for the moment he kept his temper. "Fie! the Little Masterson playing the grand lady!" he said. "But there, you are too handsome to be crossed, my dear. You shall have your own way to-night, and I"ll come and talk to you to-morrow, when your head is cooler and those two fools are out of the way. And if we quarrel then, my beauty, we can but kiss and make it up. Look on me as your friend,"
he added, with a leer from which she shrank, "and I vow you"ll not repent it."
She did not answer, she only pointed to the door, and finding that he could draw nothing from her, he went at last. On the threshold he turned, met her eyes with a grin of meaning, and took the key from the inside of the lock. She heard him insert it on the outside, and turn it, and had to grip one hand with the other to stay the scream that arose in her throat. She was brave beyond most women; but the ease with which he had mastered her, the humiliation of contact with him, the conviction of her helplessness in his grasp lay on her still. They filled her with fear; which grew more definite as the light, already low in the corners of the room, began to fail, and the shadows thickened about the dingy furniture, and she crouched alone against the barred window, listening for the first tread of a coming foot--and dreading the night.
CHAPTER XXIX
MR. POMEROY"S PLAN
Mr. Pomeroy chuckled as he went down the stairs. Things had gone so well for him, he owed it to himself to see that they went better, he had mounted with a firm determination to effect a breach even if it cost him my lord"s enmity. He descended, the breach made, the prize open to compet.i.tion, and my lord obliged by friendly offices and unselfish service.
Mr. Pomeroy smiled. "She is a saucy baggage," he muttered, "but I"ve tamed worse. "Tis the first step is hard, and I have taken that. Now to deal with Mother Olney. If she were not such a fool, or if I could be rid of her and Jarvey, and put in the Tamplins, all"s done. But she"d talk! The kitchen wench need know nothing; for visitors, there are none in this damp old hole. Win over Mother Olney and the Parson--and I don"t see where I can fail. The wench is here, safe and tight, and bread and water, damp and loneliness will do a great deal. She don"t deserve better treatment, hang her impudence!"
But when he appeared in the hall an hour later, his gloomy face told a different story. "Where"s Doyley?" he growled; and stumbled over a dog, kicked it howling into a corner. "Has he gone to bed?"
The tutor, brooding sulkily over his wine, looked up. "Yes," he said, as rudely as he dared--he was sick with disappointment. "He is going in the morning."
"And a good riddance!" Pomeroy cried with an oath. "He"s off it, is he?
He gives up?"
The tutor nodded gloomily. "His lordship is not the man," he said, with an attempt at his former manner, "to--to--"
"To win the odd trick unless he holds six trumps," Mr. Pomeroy cried.
"No, by G.o.d! he is not. You are right, Parson. But so much the better for you and me!"
Mr. Thoma.s.son sniffed. "I don"t follow you," he said stiffly.
"Don"t you? You weren"t so dull years ago," Mr. Pomeroy answered, filling a gla.s.s as he stood. He held it in his hand and looked over it at the other, who, ill at ease, fidgeted in his chair, "You could put two and two together then, Parson, and you can put five and five together now. They make ten--thousand."
"I don"t follow you," the tutor repeated, steadfastly looking away from him.
"Why? Nothing is changed since we talked--except that he is out of it!
And that that is done for me for nothing, which I offered you five thousand to do. But I am generous, Tommy. I am generous."
"The next chance is mine," Mr. Thoma.s.son cried, with a glance of spite.
Mr. Pomeroy, looking down at him, laughed--a galling laugh. "Lord!
Tommy, that was a hundred years ago," he said contemptuously.
"You said nothing was changed!"
"Nothing is changed in my case," Mr. Pomeroy answered confidently, "except for the better. In your case everything is changed--for the worse. Did you take her part upstairs? Are your hands clean now? Does she see through you or does she not? Or, put it in another way, my friend. It is your turn; what are you going to do?"
"Go," the tutor answered viciously. "And glad to be quit."
Mr. Pomeroy sat down opposite him. "No, you"ll not go," he said in a low voice; and drinking off half his wine, set down the gla.s.s and regarded the other over it. "Five and five are ten, Tommy. You are no fool, and I am no fool."
"I am not such a fool as to put my neck in a noose," the tutor retorted.
"And there is no other way of coming at what you want, Mr. Pomeroy."
"There are twenty," Pomeroy returned coolly. "And, mark you, if I fail, you are spun, whether you help rue or no. You are blown on, or I can blow on you! You"ll get nothing for your cut on the head."
"And what shall I get if I stay?"
"I have told you."
"The gallows."
"No, Tommy. Eight hundred a year."
Mr. Thoma.s.son sneered incredulously, and having made it plain that he refused to think--thought! He had risked so much in this enterprise, gone through so much; and to lose it all! He cursed the girl"s fickleness, her coyness, her obstinacy! He hated her. And do what he might for her now, he doubted if he could cozen her or get much from her. Yet in that lay his only chance, apart from Mr. Pomeroy. His eye was cunning and his tone sly when he spoke.
"You forget one thing," he said. "I have only to open my lips after I leave."
"And I am nicked?" Mr. Pomeroy answered. "True. And you will get a hundred guineas, and have a worse than Dunborough at your heels."
The tutor wiped his brow. "What do you want?" he whispered.
"That old hag of a housekeeper has turned rusty," Pomeroy answered.
"She has got it into her head something is going to be done to the girl.
I sounded her and I cannot trust her. I could send her packing, but Jarvey is not much better, and talks when he is drunk. The girl must be got from here."
Mr. Thoma.s.son raised his eyebrows scornfully.
"You need not sneer, you fool!" Pomeroy cried with a little spirt of rage." "Tis no harder than to get her here."
"Where will you take her?"
"To Tamplin"s farm by the river. There, you are no wiser, but you may trust me. I can hang the man, and the woman is no better. They have done this sort of thing before. Once get her there, and, sink me! she"ll be glad to see the parson!"
The tutor shuddered. The water was growing very deep. "I"ll have no part in it!" he said hoa.r.s.ely. "No part in it, so help me G.o.d!"