With a blasphemous e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n Moggridge sprang from behind his tree, and set off down the drive in hot pursuit.
Lady Alicia screamed, "Stop! stop! Francis-I mean, Mr Beveridge; stop, please!"
But the favorite of the crack regiment, despite the lady"s saddle, sat his steed well, and rapidly left cries and footsteps far behind. The lodge was nearly half a mile away, and as the avenue wound between palisades of old trees, the shouts became m.u.f.fled, and when he looked over his shoulder he saw in the stretch behind him no sign of benefactress or pursuer. By continued exhortations and the point of his penknife he kept his horse at full stretch; round the next bend he knew he should see the gates.
"Five to one on the blank things being shut," he muttered.
He swept round the curve, and there ahead of him he saw the gates grimly closed, and at the lodge door a dismounted groom, standing beside his horse.
Only remarking "d.a.m.n!" he reined up, turned, and trotted quietly back again. Presently he met Moggridge, red in the face, muddy as to his trousers, and panting hard.
"Nice little nag this, Moggridge," he remarked, airily.
"Nice sweat you"ve give me," rejoined his attendant, wrathfully.
"You don"t mean to say you ran after me?"
"I does mean to say," Moggridge replied grimly, seizing the reins.
"Want to lead him? Very well-it makes us look quite like the Derby winner coming in."
"Derby loser you means, thanks to them gates bein" shut."
"Gates shut? Were they? I didn"t happen to notice."
"No, o" course not," said Moggridge, sarcastically; "that there sunstroke you got in India prevented you, I suppose?"
"Have a cigar?"
To this overture Moggridge made no reply. Mr Beveridge laughed and continued lightly, "I had no idea you were so fond of exercise. I"d have given you a lead all round the park if I"d known."
"You"d "ave given me a lead all round the county if them gates "ad been open."
"It might have been difficult to stop this fiery animal," Mr Beveridge admitted. "But now, Moggridge, the run is over. I think I can take Lady Alicia"s horse back to her myself."
Moggridge smiled grimly.
"You won"t let go?"
"No fears."
Mr Beveridge put his hand behind his back and silently drove the penknife a quarter of an inch into his mount"s hind quarters. In an instant his keeper felt himself being lifted nearly off his feet, and in another actually deposited on his face. Off went the accomplished horseman again at top speed, but this time back to Lady Alicia. He saw her standing by the side of the drive, her handkerchief to her eyes, a penitent and disconsolate little figure. When she heard him coming, she dried her eyes and looked up, but her face was still tearful.
"Well, I am back from my ride," he remarked in a perfectly usual voice, dismounting as he spoke.
"The man!" she cried, "where is that dreadful man?"
"What man?" he asked in some surprise.
"The man who chased you."
Mr Beveridge laughed aloud, at which Lady Alicia took fresh refuge in her handkerchief.
"He follows on foot," he replied.
"Did he catch you? Oh, why didn"t you escape altogether?" she sobbed.
Mr Beveridge looked at her with growing interest.
"I had begun to forget my petticoat psychology," he reflected (aloud, after his unconventional fashion).
"Oh, here he comes," she shuddered. "All blood! Oh, what have you done to him?"
"On my honour, nothing,-I merely haven"t washed his face."
By this time Moggridge was coming close upon them.
"You won"t forget a poor soldier?" said Mr Beveridge in a lower voice.
There was no reply.
"A _poor_ soldier," he added, with a sigh, glancing at her from the corner of his eye. "So poor that even if I had got out, I could only have ridden till I dropped."
"Would you accept--?" she began, timidly.
"What day?" he interrupted, hurriedly.
"Tuesday," she hesitated.
"Four o"clock, again. Same place as before. When I whistle throw it over at once."
Before they had time to say more, Moggridge, blood- and gravel-stained, came up.
"It"s all right, miss," he said, coming between them; "I"ll see that he plays no more of "is tricks. There"s nothin" to be afrightened of."
"Stand back!" she cried; "don"t come near me!"
Moggridge was too staggered at this outburst to say a word.
"Stand away!" she said, and the bewildered attendant stood away. She turned to Mr Beveridge.
"Now, will you help me up?"
She mounted lightly, said a brief farewell, and, forgetting all about the call at Clankwood she had ostensibly come to pay, turned her horse"s head towards the lodge.
"Well, I"m blowed!" said Moggridge.
"They do blow one," his patient a.s.sented.