CHAPTER XXIII

Richard Vont, a few mornings later, leaned upon his spade and gazed over towards Mandeleys with set, fixed eyes. His clothes and hands were stained with clay, the sweat was pouring down his face, he was breathing heavily like a man who has been engaged in strenuous labour. But of his exhausted condition he seemed to take no count. There was something new at the Abbey, something which spoke to him intimately, which was crowding his somewhat turgid brain with the one great imagining of his life. For Mandeleys had opened its eyes. A hundred blinds had been raised, long rows of windows stood open. Men were at work, weeding the avenue, and driving mowing machines across the lawns which stretched down to the ring fence and the moat. Flaming borders of yellow crocuses became miraculously visible as the dank grass disappeared, and many spiral wreaths of smoke were ascending into the misty stillness of the spring morning. Away behind, in the high-walled garden, were more gardeners, bending at their toil. Richard Vont was no reader of the Morning Post, but an item in its fashionable intelligence of that morning lay clearly written before him. The Marquis was coming back!

Vont turned slowly away, left his spade in the tool shed, entered the cottage by the back door, carefully changed his clothes, washed the clay from his face and hands, and descended into the sitting room, where his breakfast awaited him. Mrs. Wells looked at him curiously. She was a distant connection and stood upon no ceremony with him.

"Richard," she demanded, "where were you when I come this morning?"

"Sleeping, maybe," he answered, taking his place at the table.

"And that you weren't," she contradicted, "for I made bold to knock at your door to ask if you'd like a rasher of bacon with your eggs."

He raised his head and looked at her steadily.

"Well?"

"I'm not one to pry into other people's affairs," she continued, "but your goings on are more than I can understand. All day long you sit with the Book upon your knee, and if a neighbour asks why you never pass the gate, or seemingly move a limb, it's the rheumatics you speak of. And yet last night your bed was never slept in, my man, and I begin to suspect other nights as well. What's it mean, eh?"

Richard Vont rose to his feet and opened the door.

"Just that," he answered harshly, pointing to it. "I'll not be spied on. Inch for inch and yard for yard, this cottage and garden are mine, I tell you—mine with dishonour, maybe, but mine. I'll have none around me that watches and frets because of the things that I choose to do. I'll lie out in the garden at nights, if I will, and not account to you, Mary Wells; or sleep on the floor, if it pleases me, and it's no concern of any one but mine. So back to the village gossips, if you will, and spread your tale. Maybe I'm a midnight robber and roam the countryside at night. It's my affair."

"A robber you're not, Richard Vont," was the somewhat dazed reply, "and that the world knows. And there's summut more that the world knows, too, and that is that since you came back from Americy, never have you set foot outside that gate. There's friends waiting for you at the village, and there's them as smokes their pipe at night in the alehouse, whose company 'd do you no harm, but for some reason of your own you live like a hermit. And yet—yet—"

"Go on, Mary," he said sturdily. "Finish it."

"It's the nights that are baffling," Mrs. Wells declared. "There's some of your clothes in the morning wrings with sweat. There's sometimes the look in your face at breakfast time as though you'd had a hard day's work and done more than was good for your strength."

"I'm no sleeper," he declared, "no sleeper at all. If I choose to walk in the garden, what business is it of yours, Mary, or of any one down in th' village? Answer me that, woman?"

"Every man, I suppose, may please himself," she conceded grudgingly, "but I don't hold with mysteries myself."

"Then you full well know," he replied, "how to escape from them. If they're too much for you, Mary, I've fended for myself before, and I can do it again."

Mrs. Wells snorted.

"Keep your own counsel, then, Richard."

"And you keep yours," he advised. "You're my nearest of kin, Mary, though you're but my cousin's widdy. If you can learn to keep a still tongue in your head and do what's asked of you, there may be a trifle coming to you when my time comes. But if you get these curious fits on you, and they're more than you can stand; if you're going bleating from house to house in the village, and spending your time in tittle-tattling, then we'll part. Them's plain words, anyhow."

Mrs. Wells became almost abject.

"You've said the word, Richard, and I'll bide by it," she declared. "You can run races with yourself round the garden all night long, if you've a will. I'll close my eyes from now. But," she added, as a parting shot, "that clay on your old clothes takes a sight of getting off."

Richard Vont ate his breakfast slowly and thoughtfully, entirely with the air of a man who accomplishes a duty. Afterwards, with the Bible under his arm, he took his accustomed seat at the end of the garden facing Mandeleys. There were tradesmen's carts and motor-vans passing occasionally on their way to and from the house, but he saw none of them. He was in his place, waiting, watching, perhaps, but without curiosity. Presently a summons came, however, which he could not ignore. He turned his head. David Thain, on a great black horse, had come galloping across the park from Broomleys, and had brought his restive horse with some difficulty up to the side of the paling. The greeting between the two was a silent, yet, so far as Vont was concerned, an eager one.

"You know what that means?" David observed, pointing with his crop towards the house.

"I know well," was the swift answer. "It's what I've prayed for. Move your horse out of the way, boy. Can't you see I'm watching?"

David looked at the old man curiously. Then he dismounted, and with his arm through the reins, leaned against the paling.

"There's nothing to watch yet," he said, "but tradesmen's carts."

"It's just the beginning," Vont muttered. "Soon there'll be servants, and then—him! If he comes in the night," the old man went on, his voice thickening, "I'll—"

Words seemed to fail him, but he had clenched his hands on the cover of the book he had closed, and his blue veins stood out in ugly fashion. David sighed. Yet, notwithstanding his despair, some measure of curiosity prompted a question.

"Just why do you want to see him so much?" he asked.

"Hate," was the quiet reply. "It's twenty years since, and I've a kind of craving to see him that much older. There's hate and love, you know, David. They're both writ of here. But I tell you it's hate that lasts the longest. Love is like my flowers. Look at them—my tall hollyhocks, my bush roses, my snapdragon there. They blossom and they fade, and they lie dead—who knows where? And in the spring they come again, or something like them. And hate," he went on, pointing to a spade which lay propped against the paling, "is like that lump of metal. It's here winter and summer alike. It doesn't change, it doesn't die; there's no heat would melt it. It was there last year, it's there to-day, it will be there to-morrow."

David sighed, and looked for a moment wearily away. The old man watched him anxiously. Exercise had brought a slight flush to his pallid cheeks and an added brightness to his eyes. He sat his horse well, and his tweed riding-clothes were fashionably cut. His uncle's frown became deeper.

"You're young, David," he said, "and I know well that you and me look out on life full differently. But an oath—an oath's a sacred thing, eh?"

"An oath is a sacred thing," David repeated. "I've never denied it."

"You'll not flinch, lad?" the old man persisted eagerly.

"I shall not flinch."

"Then ride off now. There's no gain to either of us in talking here, for your mind is set one way and mine another. You'll have a score of years of youth left after you've done my behest."

David paused with his foot in the stirrup, withdrew it and returned to the paling.

"Let me know the worst," he begged. "I've beggared your enemy for you. I've soiled my conscience for the first time in my life. I've lied to and ruined the man who trusted in my word. What is this further deed that I must do?"

Richard Vont shook his head.

"When the time comes," he promised, "you shall know. Meanwhile, let be! It's a summer morning, and you are but young; make the most of it. Come when I send for you."

So David rode off, up the broad slopes of the great park, along the wonderful beech avenue and out on to the highway. He turned in his saddle for a moment and looked towards the road from London.