FullReads

‘Pack horses?’

‘Yes, the old game. It hasn’t been played before in my time, and my men had almost forgotten the trick of it. The horses need training, you see, and we reckoned the trained ones had all died out.’

‘Horses?’ repeated Doctor Unonius. ‘Then that accounts for the noise I heard–‘

‘Eh?’ queried Mr Rattenbury sharply.

‘A sound of galloping, as it were. I opened the window to look, but could see nothing.

Mrs Tresize caught her breath. ‘Yes, yes,’ she put in, ‘Doctor Unonius opened the window. You wouldn’t charge him with making signals, I hope?’

‘But–‘ began Doctor Unonius and Mr Rattenbury together. The doctor was about to say that, the road being hidden from this downstairs window, it followed that the window could not be seen from the road. But the riding-officer had the louder voice and bore him down.

‘But,’ he objected, ‘the light was shown from an upstairs window, ma’am.’

‘To be sure,’ the widow squared her chin and glanced at Doctor Unonius defiantly–‘and what should the doctor be doing here except attending on the sick? And where should my poor maid Tryphena be lying at this moment but upstairs and in bed with the colic?’

The doctor, on a sudden confronted with this amazing lie, cast up his hands a little way, and so, averting his eyes, turned slowly round to the fireplace. His brain swam. For the moment he could scarcely have been more helpless had some one dealt him a blow in the wind. His nature so abhorred falsehood that he blushed even to suspect it. To have it flung at him thus brazenly–

As he recovered his wits a little he heard the widow say,–

‘And as for the horses, they never came this way.’

‘Is that so?’ Mr Rattenbury swung round upon the doctor.

‘They–they certainly did not pass along the road outside,’ said Doctor Unonius, speaking as in a dream. ‘The noise of galloping turned off at some distance below the house, and seemed to die away to the northward.’

‘Then I’ve made a cursed mess of this,’ said the riding-officer, snatching up his hat. ‘Your pardon, ma’am! and if you won’t forgive me to-night, I’ll call and apologise to-morrow.’

CHAPTER VII.

He was gone. They heard the clatter of his horse’s hoofs down the road, and listened as it died away.

Neither spoke. Mrs Tresize stood by the table, and so that, glancing sideways across her left shoulder, her eyes studied the doctor’s back, which he kept obstinately turned upon her. He had put up a hand to the chimney-shelf and leaned forward with his gaze bent on the embers.

‘Doctor?’

‘Ma’am?’ after a long pause.

‘Do you really reckon smuggling so very sinful?’

‘It is not a question of smuggling, ma’am.’

‘Oh, yes, it is!’ she insisted. ‘Once you get mixed up in that business you have to deceive at times–if ’tis only to protect others.’

‘I can understand, ma’am,’ said the doctor, after another pause, ‘that to dabble in smuggling is to court many awkward situations. You need not remind me of that, who am fresh from misleading that young man. It was–if you will pardon my saying so–by reason of his trust in my good faith that you escaped cross-questioning.’

‘I’ll grant that, and with all my heart. But, since deceiving him goes so hard against the grain with you, he shall know the truth to-morrow, when he comes to apologise. Will that content you?’

‘It will be some atonement, ma’am. As for contenting me–‘

‘You mean that I have given you a shock? And that to recover your esteem will not be easy?’

She asked it with a small, pathetic sigh, and took a step towards the fireplace, as if to entreat his pardon. But before he could be aware of this his attention was claimed by a sound without. The latch of the back door was lifted with a click, and, almost before he could face about, steps were heard in the passage. The door of the best kitchen opened a foot or so, and through the aperture was thrust the head of Tryphena–of Tryphena, who by rights should be lying upstairs, victim of a colic.