let me talk awhile. War," observed the solicitor, "is a bad thing between enemies, but it is worse between friends. It is horrible between nations, but it is hell between two halves of one nation."
"Talk plainly," growled Taffendale.
"The internecine war in the United States," continued the solicitor, "was necessarily much more dreadful than any war between the United States and say, Spain, could be, because it is, I say, hell, and very bad hell for war to spring up in a community, whether that community is large or small. Well, in its way, Mark, a war in a village is as bad as a war between two halves of a nation."
"Damn it, why all this jargon?" exclaimed Taffendale. "What are you driving at?"
The solicitor tapped the sheet of paper on which he had scribbled his memoranda.
"I think it would be foolish to carry out these instructions," he said. "Now, just be quiet and listen to me. Who started all this?"
Taffendale frowned
"It's no good denying it, Mark—you've been foolish about Mrs. Perris. I don't want to know the truth about your private affairs, but"—he paused and shook his head—"there'd have been no stangriding at Martinsthorpe last night if it hadn't been for you. That's true!"
"Before God, she's as innocent as—as I am!" exclaimed Taffendale. "Foolish we may have been in meeting, but there's naught wrong."
"All the same, Perris left home," said the solicitor. "And folks talked. And as I say, the stangriding would never have taken place if it hadn't been for you. There's nothing illegal in riding the stang—it's an ancient custom. And if you want my opinion, the fires resulted not from design but from accident. The places were not set on fire deliberately."
Taffendale's face darkened, and his mouth became more obstinate.
"I know what I've lost," he said sullenly.
"And I know that you're insured to whatever amount you've lost," said the solicitor, with quiet firmness. "Take my advice, Mark. Don't set all Martinsthorpe against you because of your sheer desire for revenge. Let the law deal with these people: don't you interfere. Remember, there's a man dead."
"They couldn't prove that I killed him," muttered Taffendale. "It was a mixed-up fight by that time. I have bruises on me."
"I don't think there 'll be any need to prove anything or disprove anything. But I know what the people will think and say," replied the solicitor. "Come, there's enough bad blood—don't make more. Let things quieten down. Just remember—village folk have a rough and rude sense of justice, and they wouldn't have carried out that old Pagan practice of stang-riding if they hadn't felt they were bound to protest against your carrying on, as they call it, with another man's wife."
"You'd better throw up the law and take to the pulpit," sneered Taffendale.
"Not I! I'm no preacher, and I'm telling you what's best for you. Now, Mark, be sensible. Let things quieten down. And, Mark, take a bit more advice. Get Mrs. Perris home to her own people. You say you've taken her into your house. That's foolish. Get her away from it!" said the solicitor. "Come, be sensible."
Taffendale smote the desk at his side with a heavy fist.
"By God, then, I won't!" he cried. "The woman came to me for help, and I helped her. It wasn't my fault nor hers that we—that we fell in love with each other. She was in trouble then, and she's in trouble now—she hasn't a roof above her head—I won't turn her away from mine. Let folk say what they choose—there's my housekeeper there, and she's cousin of mine as well as housekeeper. Evil to them that think it! She stays there, I tell you."
"And—for how long, Mark?" asked the solicitor.
"Till—till I hear that that fellow Perris is dead, or till seven years is up," answered Taffendale, in a low voice.
"Ah! Then—you'd marry her?"
"I'd—I will marry her if the chance comes!" said Taffendale. "But—no talk of turning her out of Limepits. I'll go out myself first. I'm not going to see a defenceless woman treated that way—especially if—well, if I've been anything like the cause of it."
The solicitor made no reply, and Taffendale suddenly stretched across the table, and seizing the memoranda tore the paper to shreds.
"Very well, I'll take your advice," he said. "I'll do naught against the villagers. But there's one matter you can attend to—you'll do it better than I shall. See that yon young Robey is properly buried, and pay all expenses, and let his mother know that there 'll be a pound a week for her as long as she lives. I wish to God it hadn't happened—but it's done now, and there's naught can undo it."
Chapter XIX
On the second morning after the night of the stangriding Taffendale rose at an earlier hour than usual—rose, indeed, before any of his men and maids had left their beds—and going out to his stackyard looked about him. The great, square enclosure, flanked on one side by the long line of farm buildings, and on the other by a row of tall poplars which formed a well-known landmark over a wide stretch of the surrounding country, had been so carefully and zealously tidied up and set in order by the farm hands and the lime-burners that ii looked as if the departing tenant had left it swept and garnished for the incoming of his successor. There was not a grey ash nor a wisp of smoke-grimed straw left on all the wide surface; the men, in their zeal to carry out Taffendale's instructions, had even washed and brushed all trace of smoke and fire from the walls of the outbuildings and had lopped away from the poplars those lower branches which had been scorched by the leaping flames. Over all this erninently spick-and-span scene, which would now remain an empty space until the next harvest, ten months hence, refilled it, hung the clear blue of a frosty October morning sky, in the far horizon of which a red sun was slowly rising. And Taffendale, looking round again, laughed grimly, reflecting that where, only a few hours before, the whole yield of a good harvest, carefully garnered and housed against winter, had stood proudly under its thatch, there was now nothing but a neat and tidy stackyard—empty.
"But there's a different scene down at Cherry-trees, I'm thinking," he muttered to himself, with another cynical laugh. "Nobody 'II take the trouble to tidy things up there yet awhile."
And, half-unconsciously, he walked slowly up the steps of the granary and stood where he and his foreman had stood when the unholy shoutings of the stang-riders had been carried by the freshening wind to their ears. From the head of the steps Taffendale had often looked out across country, and had more than once noticed that from that elevation—the highest about the Limepits—there were only three signs of human habitation to be seen. To the south-west the square, battlemented head of Martinsthorpe church appeared over the tops of the elms and beeches which shut in the village; far away on the eastward the spire of another village church, renowned for its height, rose above the thick woods beyond Badger's Hollow. And in the middle foreground of the landscape stood Cherry-trees, a mean group of poor buildings when seen close at hand, but when viewed from some distance forming a pleasant patch of red and yellow against the prevalent green and grey.
This piece of colour was now gone. Taffendale saw the sturdy square tower in the near right, the sharp, slender spire in the far left, but the little farmstead was brought down to the level of the land on which it had stood: there was not so much as a ruinous wall, a shattered mass of gable-end to rise above the hedgerows. As he lingered there,
