"Because then I should have been tortured, and have confessed it, true or false, in the agony, and have been hanged. They used to hang them then, and put them out of their misery; and I should have been put out of mine, and no one have been blamed but me for ever more."
"You forget," said Tom, lost in wonder, "that then I should have blamed you, as well as every one else."
"True; yes, it was a foolish faithless word. I did not take it, and it would have been no good to my soul to say I did. Lies cannot prosper, cannot prosper, Mr. Thurnall!" and she stopped short again.
"What, my dear Grace?" said he, kindly enough; for he began to fear that she was losing her wits.
"I saved your life!"
"You did, Grace."
"Then, I never thought to ask for payment; but, oh, I must now. Will you promise me one thing in return?"
"What you will, as I am a man and a gentleman; I can trust you to ask nothing which is not worthy of you."
Tom spoke truth. He felt,--perhaps love made him feel it all the more easily,--that whatever was behind, he was safe in that woman"s hands.
"Then promise me that you will wait one month, only one month: ask no questions; mention nothing to any living soul. And if, before that time, I do not bring you that belt back, send me to Bodmin Gaol, and let me bear my punishment."
"I promise," said Tom. And the two walked on again in silence, till they neared the head of the village.
Then Grace went forward, like Nausicaa when she left Ulysses, lest the townsfolk should talk; and Tom sat down upon a bank and watched her figure vanishing in the dusk.
Much he puzzled, hunting up and down in his cunning head for an explanation of the mystery. At last he found one which seemed to fit the facts so well, that he rose with a whistle of satisfaction, and walked homewards.
Evidently, her mother had stolen the belt; and Grace was, if not a repentant accomplice--for that he could not believe,--at least aware of the fact.
"Well, it is a hard knot for her to untie, poor child; and on the strength of having saved my life, she shall untie it her own way. I can wait. I hope the money won"t be spent meanwhile, though, and the empty leather returned to me when wanted no longer. However, that"s done already, if done at all. I was a fool for not acting at once;--a double fool for suspecting her! a.s.s that I was, to take up with a false scent, and throw myself off the true one! My everlasting unbelief in people has punished itself this time. I might have got a search-warrant three months ago, and had that old witch safe in the bilboes. But no--I might not have found it, after all, and there would have been only an esclandre; and if I know that girl"s heart, she would have been ten times more miserable for her mother than for herself, so it"s as well as it is. Besides, it"s really good fun to watch how such a pretty plot will work itself out;--as good as a pack of harriers with a cold scent and a squatted hare. So, live and let live. Only, Thomas Thurnall, if you go for to come for to go for to make such an abominable a.s.s of yourself with that young lady any more, like a miserable school-boy, you will be pleased to make tracks, and vanish out of these parts for ever. For my purse can"t afford to have you marrying a schoolmistress in your impoverished old age; and my character, which also is my purse, can"t afford worse."
One word of Grace"s had fixed itself in Tom"s memory. What did she mean by "her two?"
He contrived to ask Willis that very evening.
"Oh, don"t you know, sir? She had a young brother drowned, a long while ago, when she was sixteen or so. He went out fishing on the Sabbath, with another like him, and both were swamped. Wild young lads, both, as lads will be. But she, sweet maid, took it so to heart, that she never held up her head since; nor will, I think, at times, to her dying day."
"Humph! Was she fond of the other lad, then?"
"Sir," said Willis, "I don"t think it"s fair like,--not decent, if you"ll excuse an old sailor,--to talk about young maids" affairs, that they wouldn"t talk of themselves, perhaps not even to themselves. So I never asked any questions myself."
"And think it rude in me to ask any. Well, I believe you"re right, good old gentleman that you are. What a n.o.bleman you"d have made, if you had had the luck to have been born in that station of life!"
"I have found too much trouble, in doing my duty in my humble place, to wish to be in any higher one."
"So!" thought Tom to himself, "a girl"s fancy: but it explains so much in the character, especially when the temperament is melancholic.
However, to quote Solomon once more, "A live dog is better than a dead lion;" and I have not much to fear from a rival who has been washed out of this world ten years since. Heyday! Rival! quotha? Tom Thurnall, you are going to make a fool of yourself. You must go, sir!
I warn you; you must flee, till you have recovered your senses."
There appeared next morning in Tom"s shop a new phenomenon. A smart youth, dressed in what he considered to be the newest London fashion; but which was really that translation of last year"s fashion which happened to be current in the windows of the Bodmin tailors. Tom knew him by sight and name,--one Mr. Creed, a squireen like Trebooze, and an especial friend of Trebooze"s, under whose tutelage he had learned to smoke cavendish a.s.siduously from the age of fifteen, thereby improving neither his stature, nor his digestion, his nerves, nor the intelligence of his countenance.
He entered with a lofty air, and paused awhile as he spoke.
"Is it possible," said Tom to himself, "that Trebooze has sent me a challenge? It would be too good fun. I"ll wait and see." So he went on rolling pills.
"I say, sir," quoth the youth, who had determined, as an owner of land, to treat the doctor duly _de haut en bas_, and had a vague notion that a liberal use of the word "sir" would both help thereto, and be consonant with professional style of duel diplomacy, whereof he had read in novels.
Tom turned slowly, and then took a long look at him over the counter through halfshut eye-lids, with chin upraised, as if he had been suddenly afflicted with short sight; and worked on meanwhile steadily at his pills.
"That is, I wish--to speak to you, sir--ahem--!" went on Mr. Creed; being gradually but surely discomfited by Tom"s steady gaze.
"Don"t trouble yourself, sir: I see your case in your face. A slight nervous affection--will pa.s.s as the digestion improves. I will make you up a set of pills for the night; but I should advise a little ammonia and valerian at once. May I mix it?"
"Sir! you mistake me, sir!"
"Not in the least; you have brought me a challenge from Mr. Trebooze."
"I have, sir!" said the youth with a grand air, at once relieved by having the awful words said for him, and exalted by the dignity of his first, and perhaps last, employment in that line.
"Well, sir," said Tom deliberately, "Mr. Trebooze does me a kindness for which I cannot sufficiently thank him, and you also, as his second. It is full six months since I fought, and I was getting hardly to know myself again."
"You will have to fight now, sir!" said the youth, trying to brazen off by his discourtesy increasing suspicion that he had "caught a Tartar."
"Of course, of course. And of course, too, I fight you afterwards."
"I--I, sir? I am Mr. Trebooze"s friend, his second, sir. You do not seem to understand, sir!"
"Pardon me, young gentleman," said Tom, in a very quiet, determined voice; "it is I who have a right to tell you that you do not understand in such matters as these. I had fought my man, and more than one of them, while you were eating blackberries in a short jacket."
"What do you mean, sir?" quoth the youth in fury; and began swearing a little.
"Simple fact. Are you not about twenty-three years old?"
"What is that to you, sir?"
"No business of mine, of course. You may be growing into your second childhood for aught I care: but if, as I guess, you are about twenty-three, I, as I know, am thirty-six: then I fought my first duel when you were five years old, and my tenth, I should say, when you were fifteen; at which time, I suppose, you were not ashamed either of the jacket or the blackberries."
"You will find me a man now, sir, at all events," said Creed, justly wroth at what was, after all, a sophism; for if a man is not a man at twenty, he never will be one.
"_Tant mieux_. You know, I suppose, that as the challenged, I have the choice of weapons?"
"Of course, sir," said Creed, in an off-hand generous tone, because he did not very clearly know.
"Then, sir, I always fight across a handkerchief. You will tell Mr.
Trebooze so; he is, I really believe, a brave man, and will accept the terms. You will tell yourself the same, whether you be a brave man or not."
The youth lost the last words in those which went before them. He was no coward: would have stood up to be shot at, at fifteen paces, like any one else; but the deliberate butchery of fighting across a handkerchief--
"Do I understand you, sir?"
"That depends on whether you are clever enough, or not, to comprehend your native tongue. Across a handkerchief, I say, do you hear that?"