Читать книгу Moreton Bay - F. W. Mole - Страница 10

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When John Gatcombe apprized his noble master of the result of his mission to Pentecost, he was furious. In flaming anger he shouted: "The minx defies me, does she? This defiance is to my liking. She thrashed Lannigan and it served him well right. Now I'll give her a chance to thrash me. Get out of this, Gatcombe, and if you cross me with the vixen, I'll shoot you for the dog that you are."

"I would warn you again, your lordship, to have a care. Your threat of violence to myself passes unheeded. Your obsession to lay claim to your dead tenant's daughter is madness. The Worthingtons have powerful friends. They will appeal to Lord Tenterden, who is the maid's godfather."

"I said, 'Get out of this,' and on your way tell the pert little jade that even if the King of England were her godfather, I'll have my way with her."

A few days later another messenger from Earl Belriven rode up to Pentecost farm with a message to Mary Worthington to call upon him at the Manor of Grassmere on the Sunday afternoon following. The message was couched in such friendly and apparently reasonable terms concerning Lucifer that she thought it might be advisable after all to see his lordship and reason with him. The matter of the heriot had to be settled sooner or later, and she had faith in her winsomeness. Moreover, she argued with herself, if she showed his lordship that she was unafraid and met him boldly, but in a reasonable spirit, he might look at the matter from another viewpoint. She was aware that he was not insensible to her beauty, and by acting diplomatically she might gain time. Therefore, she decided to call upon the noble earl at the time appointed. She was not afraid.

Lest she upset her mother, she did not mention the matter to her, but she sent one of the stable boys with a note to Nigel Lording informing him of his lordship's request and asking him to meet her at the lodge gate of the Manor at 4 o'clock on the Sunday appointed, what time she anticipated her interview with his lordship would have ended.

The earl's dinner hour was over by 2 o'clock, and Mistress Julia Darnley had gone to the still-house. To pave the way for his meeting with Mary Worthington, he went to the still-house and suggested to his mistress that she take the children for a walk as he desired to be alone during the afternoon and did not want to be disturbed. As this was a most unusual request on the part of his lordship, she, with a jealous woman's curiosity, asked the reason for such an unusual procedure.

"Madam," replied his lordship, with an angry flash from his bloodshot eyes, "though you have the privilege of living with me, I do not vouchsafe to you the right to question my orders."

Accepting the rebuke with haughty disdain, Mistress Julia Darnley, beautiful in features and figure, very dark and imperious, prepared herself and her two young daughters for absenting themselves. With a supercilious sneer, she desired to know whether his lordship would vouchsafe to permit her to visit her father, who lived but a short distance from the Manor.

"You may please yourself where you go," replied his lordship, adding, "so that you do go and take your brats with you."

The men servants were next dispatched on different errands, and the maids were permitted to have the afternoon to themselves.

The clock at the lodge struck three as Mary Worthington, with her groom, rode up in a dogcart. She was admitted to the Manor grounds by the lodge-keeper, and walked up the long gravelled drive to the main entrance. As she approached the stately mansion with its architecture of different periods from the Saxon to the Elizabethan, she was somewhat perturbed by the ominous stillness of the place. She saw no one about, and his lordship who was expecting her and was keenly on the look out for her approach, admitted her to the hall and led her to his library.

Mary Worthington, dressed simply, never looked more seductively beautiful. Her easy grace, and shapely figure, the proud uplift of her little head crowned by its glorious mass of red-gold curling hair, made a startling impression on the amorous sensibilities of his lordship. In the heated state of his blood from his after dinner imbibings and the vision of so much loveliness coming to him in his loneliness, made his brain reel and his blood to flow like liquid fire in his veins. His desire for her was unmistakable. She had dressed to attract, not to repel in the hope that the beauty of her, of which she was not unconscious, might be regarded by this libertine as a thing too dainty, too delicate to smirch. Her tight-fitting bodice, accentuating the roundness of her firm round figure, was cut low at the throat, revealing the strong white column of her neck and the incipient swell of her bosom.

"Madame," the young earl spoke, addressing her with courtly grace, for he wished to create an excellent impression with her. "I am honoured that you have come. Pray be seated. You are the fairest maid on God's earth. That I swear."

"It is prodigiously amiable of your lordship to say so," replied Mary, smiling as she seated herself on a richly upholstered couch, "I am but one of your lordship's vassals," she continued demurely, "but I venture you did not invite me here this afternoon to discuss myself."

"I assure you, madame, there is nothing at present more interesting to discuss. You intrigue me immensely," remarked his lordship ardently as he seated himself beside her on the couch and, as Mary thought, uncomfortably near her.

"But, your lordship, I opined that you were more interested in my horse than in me," answered Mary, edging discreetly away from a presence she loathed. "I understand from Mr. John Gatcombe that you wanted my colt Lucifer for your heriot, and it was on that account you were desirous of seeing me to obtain my consent to handing him over."

"You understood correctly, madame, but Gatcombe informed me that you were so attached to your horse that I conceived the idea that it would be most cruel to separate you."

"Oh, it would, your lordship, I assure you most humbly," said Mary beseechingly.

"Then, fairest maid of Devon, I want both you and your horse to grace the Manor of Grassmere."

"Your lordship, I do not understand!" exclaimed Mary most seriously.

"Madame, even as Faust, I would sell my soul to the devil to possess you. It was to tell you this that I desired to see you."

"Surely your lordship is jesting," replied Mary indignantly.

"'Pon honour, never more serious in my life, m'dear," answered his lordship, moving his right arm around her.

"Then you are infamous," exclaimed Mary, jumping up suddenly from the couch and facing the earl with flashing eyes and heaving bosom.

"Neither jesting nor infamous, m'dear, I assure you. I desire to enthrone you here as Mistress of Grassmere, and to crown you with all the wealth and luxury at my command."

"My lord, what you are suggesting is insulting to me and dishonourable. You would not have dared if my father were alive."

"Pooh! I would dare anything to call you mine."

"That can never be, your lordship. You have no claim to me or to my horse, and that you know. I came here at your request, hoping that when you saw me and had the opportunity of hearing me personally to intercede for my horse—a gift from my father—you would be noble and generous enough not to persist in this foolishness."

"Foolishness, forsooth! With you on the scales of my desire, you outweigh both nobility and generosity. I cannot give you up. My desire for you is not a passion of to-day but of many days. When you, in the ravishing beauty of your anger, thrashed Captain Lannigan with your hunting crop, I resolved then that you should be mine. Had your father not been killed, I admit there would have been some difficulty in claiming you. But now that he is dead, the way is made clear. I claim you as a heriot. It has been done before, and I am thankful for the splendid precedent. Law, custom and precedent give you to me. I claim you as a chattel of Pentecost."

The noble lord, dressed in the height of fashion of his day to woo and to captivate, stood up as he gave expression to this specious reasoning. He spoke calmly and deliberately, and in the knowledge that his victim was in his power. There was no one within call. The walls of the library, deeply lined with books, were thick and its doors massive. Notwithstanding his dissipation—he was a noted duellist and gambler—he was lithe, strong and alert, and paced the heavily carpeted floor like a watchful tiger ready to spring as he spoke.

"No m'dear, I cannot give you up. You are too wondrously young and beautiful. I claim you. Won't you come to me?"

As he asked this, he stood facing his visitor, calmly, expectantly. He could not imagine a refusal. He was too used to gaining his ends to be denied. That this girl, a mere nobody, should refuse him, was beyond his belief. It was past his understanding. He took it for granted that she would be pleased to be singled out as worthy of his love, of the adornment of his manor. Was ever magnanimity greater than his? Assuredly the position he took up was unassailable, his reasoning sound. But he received a terrible shock when this frail girl, whom he imagined, in the sublimity of his egotism, that he could so easily bend to his will, answered him in exact converse of his mental reasoning.

"You coward! you poltroon! Me you may claim but never hold. Let me go."

Spurned and tainted with cowardice and brought suddenly to earth in such an unexpected fashion, the noble lord lost his temper and with it his reasoning.

"No, I will not let you go," he shouted. "You are mine, mine, do you understand?" He attempted to take her in his arms, but quick as a fawn she jumped aside and made for the door leading to the hall outside. But his lordship with the spring of an athlete barred her way. Doubling back she took refuge behind a massive oak table laden with books in bronze stands. Then she was really afraid. She felt that she was alone with a sexual maniac. The man was mad in his lust for her.

With his back to the door, the young earl took stock of the situation for a moment, then bent low like a sprinter toeing the mark, waiting for the crack of the pistol. Mary Worthington watched every movement with the tenseness of despair. She felt that shouting would be useless and that she must fight and resist with every ounce of her strength. When the earl sprang on to the table to reach her, she took refuge behind a heavy chair. From the table her assailant jumped on to the chair with the sure-footedness of a chamois. Before she could again elude him he caught her by the neck of her bodice and ripped it to her waist exposing her bosom in all its naked loveliness.

Unconsciously she called out "Nigel! Nigel!" and drew the stiletto which Nigel Lording had given her. The earl caught sight of the deadly blade and became more wary. Pausing for a minute, thinking desperately, he made another attempt to seize her but she again eluded him and took refuge behind the couch where she had first sat down. She was now between the couch and the door but had not time to turn to the door before the earl gave the couch a vicious kick which sent it forward hitting her above the knees and knocking her backward.

In attempting to save herself from being hurled against the marble mantel, she tripped and fell, the stiletto falling from her grasp and dropping near the door. Instantly the Earl was on his knees beside her and held her in his arms, kissing her passionately on the lips and bosom, with kisses that seared like a leaping flame.

Then she fainted.

When she recovered her senses, she found the earl lying across her, dead, his blood streaming over her. Freeing herself of his heavy body she got up and looked with dazed horror at the lifeless body which had rolled face downwards on the blood-drenched carpet. It was then she saw her stiletto buried to the hilt below the left shoulder blade. Ignorant as to how the tragedy had happened, she ran from the room and out of the manor like a despairing soul fleeing from unmentionable demons. Terror-stricken, she ran down the carriage drive towards the Lodge when she met Nigel Lording waiting for her.

"O God, I don't know what I've done! I don't know what I've done!" she moaned, falling helplessly into the arms of her lover.

"Mary, beloved, for Christ's sake, tell me what has happened. You are covered with blood."

"His lordship—dead—stabbed with your stiletto. But I never stabbed him. I couldn't have done it!"

The lodge-keeper, hearing her moaning and crying, ran up to see what was the matter and heard what Mary Worthington had said.

"Then who killed him?" he asked.

"I don't know. Oh, believe me, but I don't know," she wailed.

"I believe you, my darling, you could not do such a thing," interjected Nigel Lording consolingly, supporting his beloved with his arms.

Turning to the lodge-keeper, he said: "You had better see to it, Mason. Proceed at once to Tavistock, obtain a surgeon, and acquaint the watch."

"Come, my beloved, I'll take you home."

It had been a glorious June day, and as the sun slowly dropped behind the western hills, empurpling their crest with its golden splendour, two loving souls weighed down with a terrible fear of what might be the ultimate outcome of this ghastly tragedy, stepped across the threshold of Pentecost, hoping there to find sanctuary.

Shaken by the tempest of her grief, Mary Worthington clung to the only refuge that seemed meet—her mother. Throwing herself into her mother's loving arms, she sobbed convulsively.

"Oh, mother, mother, no matter how tongues may babble, I didn't kill his lordship. As God is my judge, I am innocent of such a crime. I had reason enough to kill him to protect my honour, but I never, never stabbed him. Though he got what he deserved, it was not my hand that struck him down. When I recovered from my swoon he was dead, but who killed him, I don't know. Oh, believe me, mother, I do not know how it happened."

"My precious lamb," sobbed her mother, encompassing her daughter with her arms, "I believe you. But, oh, God, in your great mercy, stand by us in this fearful hour of our tribulation."

Even as she threw out this sudden invocation, she sensed in her wisdom that the matter looked black for her first born and equally black for her lover; and in after years she often wondered why God, in His sovereign and awful prerogative, should, for some inscrutable reason, leave them to work out their destiny in the groove of His immutable rule.