FullReads

Tryphena, too–who, like her mistress, was fully dressed–betrayed no surprise. She had, in fact, been sent upstairs at the sound of wheels, and from behind a curtain had recognised Doctor Unonius as he examined the paper by the light of his gig-lamp.

‘Tryphena, here’s Doctor Unonius, and he brings word we’re to be robbed and murdered in our beds.’

‘The Lord preserve us!’ said Tryphena.

‘Amen,’ said Mrs Tresize; ‘and meanwhile you’d best go and stable the horse while I hear particulars.’

Tryphena slipped out into the yard, the sheep dogs following. The doctor would have helped her, but she took the lamp from his hand, replaced it in its socket and set about unharnessing without further to-do, coaxing Dapple the while to stand steady.

‘Tryphena understands horses,’ said Mrs Tresize. ‘Come indoors, please, and tell me all about it.’

Doctor Unonius lifted out the incriminating bag and followed her along the passage. She paused at the door of the best kitchen and pushed it wide. He looked in upon a bare but not uncheerful room, where a clean wood fire blazed on an open hearth and over the fire a kettle sang cosily. Gun-racks lined the walls, and dressers laden with valuable china, and these were seasonably adorned with sprigs of holly, ivy, and fir. A kissing-bush, even, hung from the bacon-rack that crossed the ceiling, with many hams wrapped in bracken, a brace of pheasants, and a ‘neck’ of harvest corn elaborately plaited: and almost directly beneath it stood a circular table with a lamp and a set of dominoes, the half of them laid out in an unfinished game. The floor was of slate but strewn with rugs, some of rag-work others of badgers’ skins. A tall clock ticked sedately in a corner. On one side of the chimney a weather-glass depended, on the other a warming-pan–symbols, as it were, of conjugal interests, male and female, drawing together by the hearth.

Doctor Unonius felt an unwonted glow at the sight of this interior. He could not but admire, too, the widow’s self-possession. Instead of trembling and demanding explanations she suggested that a glass of hot brandy and water would do him no possible harm after his drive, and stepped to the corner cupboard without waiting for an answer. It was a piece of furniture of some value, lacquered over with Chinese figures in dusky gold. But the doctor’s gaze travelled rather to the gun-racks. He counted a dozen firearms, antique but serviceable, and suggested that, with powder and shot, Landeweddy was capable of standing a pretty stiff siege.

‘I keep but two of them loaded,’ said the widow, and indicated them– a large blunderbuss and a fowling-piece with an immensely long barrel; ‘but there’s powder and three sizes of shot in the right-hand drawer, there, below the dresser. You can charge the others, if you’ve a mind.’

‘My warning would hardly seem to have impressed you, madam.’

‘Oh yes, it has,’ answered Mrs Tresize, measuring out the brandy. ‘But you see, doctor, one gets accustomed to fears, living in this lonely place; and with a man as protector one feels as safe as with a regiment.’

‘You flatter my ability, I fear,’ said the doctor. ‘I will do my best, of course: but I ought to warn you that I am no expert with firearms.’

‘I can help you with the loading,’ said Mrs Tresize. ‘But tell me the worst of the danger, please.’

Doctor Unonius set the bag on the table, and unloaded its contents one by one while he told his story. The sight of the money-bags did not produce quite the thrill he had looked for, but she evinced a lively interest in the paper pinned to the map.

‘Mrs Tresize at Landeweddy, 48,’ she read, holding it under the lamp, and slightly puckering her handsome brows.

‘That doesn’t flatter you, ma’am.’

‘Hey?’ Mrs Tresize looked up sharply. ‘You don’t suppose that means my age?‘