Gone! A feeling of desolation and helplessness swept over Joan.
Gone when she had counted so on his help! She remembered what she had written: "I ask you earnestly to leave Starden," and he had obeyed her.
It was her own fault; she had driven him away, and now she needed him.
The girl was watching her out of the corner of her small black eyes. She saw Joan tear up the letter she had commenced to write.
"It was to him, she didn"t know he had gone," Alice Betts thought, and Alice Betts was right.
Mr. Philip Slotman had fallen on evil days, yet Mr. Philip Slotman"s wardrobe of excellent and tasteful clothes was so large and varied that poverty was not likely to affect his appearance for a long time to come.
Presumably also his stock of cigars was large, for leaning against the gate beside the tumble-down barn he was drowning the clean smell of the earth and the night with the more insinuating and somewhat sickly smell of a fine Havannah.
Some way down the road, perhaps a quarter of a mile distant, stood a large shabby car drawn up against a hedge, and in that car dozed a chauffeur.
Mr. Slotman took out his watch and looked at it in the dim light.
It was past nine, and he muttered an oath under his breath.
"She won"t be such a fool as not to come now that fellow"s gone!" he thought, and he was right, for a few moments later she was there.
"So you did come?"
"I am here," Joan said quietly. "You wish to speak to me?"
"Don"t be so confoundedly hold-off! Aren"t you going to shake hands?"
"Certainly not!"
"Oh, very well!" he snarled. "Don"t then. Still putting on your airs, my lady!"
"I am here to hear anything you wish to say to me. Any threats that you have to make, any bargain that you wish to propose. I thought when I paid you that money--"
"That money"s gone; it went in a few hours."
He felt savagely angry at her calmness, at her pride and superiority.
Why, knowing what he knew, she ought to be pretty well on her knees to him.
"Please tell me what you wish to see me about and let me go. It is money, of course?"
Her voice was level, filled with scorn and utter contempt, and it made the man writhe in helpless fury.
"Look here, stow that!" he said coa.r.s.ely. "Don"t ride the high horse with me. Remember I know you, know all about you. I know who you are and what you are, and--and don"t--don"t"--he was stuttering and stammering in his rage--"don"t think you can put me in my place, because you can"t!"
Joan did not answer.
"If I want money I"ve got a right to ask for it! And I do. I"ve got something to sell, ain"t I?--knowledge and silence. And silence is worth a lot, my girl, when a woman"s engaged to be married, and when there"s things in her past she don"t care about people knowing of. Yes, Miss Joan Meredyth, my lady clerk on three quid a week was one person, but Miss Meredyth of Starden Hall, engaged to be married to Mr. John Everard of Buddesby, is another, ain"t she?"
"Please say what you have to say," she said coldly. "I do not wish to stay here with you."
"But you are going to," he said. "You are going to!" He reached out suddenly and gripped her hand. He had expected that she might struggle; it would have been human if she had, but she didn"t.
"Please release my hand," she said coldly. "I do not wish to stay here with you!" She paused. "Tell me why you wish to see me!"
He dropped her hand with a snarling oath.
"Well, if you want to know, it is money, and this time it is good money.
I am up against it, and I"ve got to have money. I"ve been down here several times, hunting round, listening to things, hearing things. I heard about your engagement. I have heard about you. Oh, everyone looks up to you round here--Miss Meredyth of Starden!" He laughed. "And it is going to pay Miss Meredyth of Starden to shut my mouth, ain"t it? June, nineteen eighteen, ain"t so long ago, is it? Mr. Hugh Alston--hang him!--you set him on to me, didn"t you?"
"So you have seen him?"
"I saw him, curse him! He came and--and--"
"Thrashed you?" Joan asked quietly "I thought he might!"
"Stop it! Stop your infernal airs!" he almost shouted. "I am here for money, and I want it, and mean to have it--five thousand this time!"
"I shall not pay you!"
"Oh, you won"t--you won"t! Then I go to Buddesby. I"ll have a little chat there. I"ll tell them a few things about Marlbury and about a trip to Australia that did not come off, and about a marriage that never took place. I"ve got quite a lot to chat about at Buddesby, and I shan"t be done when I"m through there either. There"s a nice little inn in Starden, isn"t there? If one talked much there it would soon get about the place!"
Under cover of the darkness her cheeks flamed, but her voice was still as cold and as steady as before.
"Have you ever considered," she asked quietly, "that what you think you know, may not be true?"
"It is true! And if it isn"t true, it is good enough for me; but it is true!"
"It is not!"
He laughed. "It is--at any rate I think so, and others"ll think so. It"ll want a lot of explaining away, Joan, won"t it? if even it isn"t true.
But I know better. Well, what about it--about the money?"
"I shall consider," she said quietly. "I paid you before, blackmail! If I asked you if this was the final payment, and you said Yes. I know that I need not believe you, so--so I shall consider. I shall take time to think it over."
"Oh, you will?"
"Yes!"
Down the road came a cart. It lumbered along slowly, the carter trudging at the horse"s head. Slotman looked at the slow-coming figure and cursed under his breath.
"When shall I hear?"
"I shall think it over, decide how I shall act, whether I shall pay you this money or not," she said. "In a few days, this day week, not before." She turned away.
"And--and if I go to Buddesby and get talking?"
"Then of course I pay you nothing!" she said calmly.