confront Reynard at Bristol, and have it out with him there by word of mouth.
‘But, master,’ said Tupcombe, ‘you can’t. You cannot get out of bed.’
‘You leave the room, Tupcombe, and don’t say “can’t” before me! Have Jerry saddled in an hour.’
The long-tried Tupcombe thought his employer demented, so utterly helpless was his appearance just then, and he went out reluctantly. No sooner was he gone than the Squire, with great difficulty, stretched himself over to a cabinet by the bedside, unlocked it, and took out a small bottle. It contained a gout specific, against whose use he had been repeatedly warned by his regular physician, but whose warning he now cast to the winds.
He took a double dose, and waited half an hour. It seemed to produce no effect. He then poured out a treble dose, swallowed it, leant back upon his pillow, and waited. The miracle he anticipated had been worked at last. It seemed as though the second draught had not only operated with its own strength, but had kindled into power the latent forces of the first. He put away the bottle, and rang up Tupcombe.
Less than an hour later one of the housemaids, who of course was quite aware that the Squire’s illness was serious, was surprised to hear a bold and decided step descending the stairs from the direction of Mr. Dornell’s room, accompanied by the humming of a tune. She knew that the doctor had not paid a visit that morning, and that it was too heavy to be the valet or any other man-servant. Looking up, she saw Squire Dornell fully dressed, descending toward her in his drab caped riding-coat and boots, with the swinging easy movement of his prime. Her face expressed her amazement.
‘What the devil beest looking at?’ said the Squire. ‘Did you never see a man walk out of his house before, wench?’
Resuming his humming—which was of a defiant sort—he proceeded to the library, rang the bell, asked if the horses were ready, and directed them to be brought round. Ten minutes later he rode away in the direction of Bristol, Tupcombe behind him, trembling at what these movements might portend.
They rode on through the pleasant woodlands and the monotonous straight lanes at an equal pace. The distance traversed might have been about fifteen miles when Tupcombe could perceive that the Squire was getting tired—as weary as he would have been after riding three times the distance ten years before. However, they reached Bristol without any mishap, and put up at the Squire’s accustomed inn. Dornell almost immediately proceeded on foot to the inn which Reynard had given as his address, it being now about four o’clock.
Reynard had already dined—for people dined early then—and he was staying indoors. He had already received Mrs. Dornell’s reply to his letter; but before acting upon her advice and starting for King’s-Hintock he made up his mind to wait another day, that Betty’s father might at least have time to write to him if so minded. The returned traveller much desired to obtain the Squire’s assent, as well as his wife’s, to the proposed visit to his bride, that nothing might seem harsh or forced in his method of taking his position as one of the family. But though he anticipated some sort of objection from his father-in-law, in consequence of Mrs. Dornell’s warning, he was surprised at the announcement of the Squire in person.
Stephen Reynard formed the completest of possible contrasts to Dornell as they stood confronting each other in the best parlour of the Bristol tavern. The Squire, hot-tempered, gouty, impulsive, generous, reckless; the younger man, pale, tall, sedate, self-possessed—a man of the world, fully bearing out at least one couplet in his epitaph, still extant in King’s-Hintock church, which places in the inventory of his good qualities
‘Engaging Manners, cultivated Mind,
Adorn’d by Letters, and in Courts refin’d.’
He was at this time about five-and-thirty, though careful living and an even, unemotional temperament caused him to look much younger than his years.
Squire Dornell plunged into his errand without much ceremony or preface.
‘I am your humble servant, sir,’ he said. ‘I have read your letter writ to my wife and myself, and considered that the best way to answer it would be to do so in person.’
‘I am vastly honoured by your visit, sir,’ said Mr. Stephen Reynard, bowing.
‘Well, what’s done can’t be undone,’ said Dornell, ‘though it was mighty early, and was no doing of mine. She’s your wife; and there’s an end on’t. But in brief, sir, she’s too young for you to claim yet; we mustn’t reckon by years; we must reckon by nature. She’s still a girl; ’tis onpolite of ’ee to come yet; next year will be full soon enough for you to take her to you.’
Now, courteous as Reynard could be, he was a little obstinate when his resolution had once been formed. She had been promised him by her eighteenth birthday at latest—sooner if she were in robust health. Her mother had fixed the time on her own judgment, without a word of interference on his part. He had been hanging about foreign courts till he was weary. Betty was now as woman, if she would ever be one, and there was not, in his mind, the shadow of an excuse for putting him off longer. Therefore, fortified as he was by the support of her mother, he blandly but firmly told the Squire that he had been willing to waive his rights, out of deference to her parents, to any reasonable extent, but must now, in justice to himself and her insist on maintaining them. He therefore, since she had not come to meet him, should proceed to King’s-Hintock in a few days to fetch her.
This announcement, in spite of the urbanity with which it was delivered, set Dornell in a passion.
‘Oh dammy, sir; you talk about rights, you do, after stealing her away, a mere child, against my will and knowledge! If we’d begged and prayed ’ee to take her, you could say no more.’
‘Upon my honour, your charge is quite baseless, sir,’ said his son-in-law. ‘You must know by this time—or if you do not, it has been a monstrous cruel injustice to me that I should have been allowed to remain in your mind with such a stain upon my character—you must know that I used no seductiveness or temptation of any kind. Her mother assented; she assented. I took them at their word. That you was really opposed to the marriage was not known to me till afterwards.’
Dornell professed to believe not a word of it. ‘You sha’n’t have her till she’s dree sixes full—no maid ought to be married till she’s dree sixes!—and my daughter sha’n’t be treated out of nater!’ So he stormed on till Tupcombe, who had been alarmedly listening in the next room, entered suddenly, declaring to Reynard that his master’s life was in danger if the interview were prolonged, he being subject to apoplectic strokes at these crises. Reynard immediately said that he would be the last to wish to injure Squire Dornell, and left the room, and as soon as the Squire had recovered breath and equanimity, he went out of the inn, leaning on the arm of Tupcombe.
Tupcombe was for sleeping in Bristol that night, but Dornell, whose energy seemed as invincible as it was sudden, insisted upon mounting and getting back as far as Falls-Park, to continue the journey to King’s-Hintock on the following day. At five they started, and took the southern road toward the Mendip Hills. The evening was dry and windy, and, excepting that the sun did not shine, strongly reminded Tupcombe of the evening of that March month, nearly five years earlier, when news had been brought to King’s-Hintock Court of the child Betty’s marriage in London—news which had produced upon Dornell such a marked effect for the worse ever since, and indirectly upon the household of which he was the head. Before that time the winters were lively at Falls-Park, as well as at King’s-Hintock, although the Squire had ceased to make it his regular residence. Hunting-guests and shooting-guests came and went, and open house was kept. Tupcombe disliked the clever courtier who had put
