The Challenge of Love. Victorian Romance Novel
you there! Come over here, will you?”
Wolfe ignored the summons, but a number of Navestock heads appeared at the doors and windows. Turrell went very white when he was angry. He had a trick, too, of masticating his words, as though tasting their offensiveness before he hurled them at an enemy’s head.
“Hi, you there!”
Wolfe turned an imperturbable face.
“I beg your pardon——”
Turrell flung across with jerky, violent strides. He was very well aware of the grinning faces at the windows.
“Here, what do you mean by ignoring me, eh?”
Nothing could have been franker.
“I never answer, sir, when I am shouted at.”
“Oh, you don’t, don’t you! Nice manners for an understrapper! Now, what I want to know is, what you think you are doing here on my property?”
“Doctoring, sir.”
“You don’t physic the pump, do you? Look here, young man, you keep to matters that concern you.”
Wolfe corked the bottle with pleasant deliberation.
“They do concern me, Mr. Turrell.”
“They concern your confounded impertinence. No bluster, if you please. We don’t take our orders from young carpet-baggers who come into the town with a toothbrush and a pair of slippers. I’m not here to argue, sir, only to instruct you to mind your pill-and-ointment business. The water in that bottle is my property. Hand it over.”
“The bottle, sir, belongs to me.”
“Look here, young man, has old Threadgold put you up to this?”
“Dr. Threadgold has done nothing of the kind.”
“No, curse him, he’s too much sense. Very good. He is the responsible person in this town, not any officious young bonesetter who gets two pounds a week. We kick such folk out, sir—if they put on airs. See? Hand me over that bottle.”
Wolfe uncorked it, and turned it upside down. The water went “gollop, gollop,” and splashed the stones at Mr. Turrell’s feet.
“There is your property, sir.”
He looked Turrell in the eyes, recorked the bottle, and put it in his pocket.
“I am glad we understand each other, Mr. Turrell. Even an understrapper has responsibilities. Good morning.”
“Confound your insolence. Do you think——”
He found himself addressing John Wolfe’s back. Moreover, the heads at the doors and windows were all a-grin. The “gallery” might well smile over two grown men quarrelling about eight ounces of water in a blue-glass medicine bottle.
CHAPTER SIX
On Tarling Moor the gorse was still in bloom, though the full glory of gold had deserted it for the waving branches of the broom. Great white clouds sailed over Beacon Hill, and the slanting sunlight smoothed the slopes of the moor, burnishing them into sleek colour masses of green, purple, and bronze. Tarling Moor was a rare galloping ground for a man whose blood had been over-heated. Beacon Hill lifted a calm and unfretful forehead against the sky, and the shadows of wind-driven clouds raced with the sunlight over the hills.
John Wolfe came riding back from the direction of Herongate, where he had been called to see a shepherd who was ill. The climb out of that rotten, worm-eaten old town towards the wide spaciousness of the moor had cleared Wolfe’s brain and steadied his heart. Only a few hours had passed since Jasper Turrell had tried to bully him in Virgin’s Court, and that one incident seemed likely to make of Navestock a battleground or a tilting-yard.
Wolfe had felt a desire to be alone, to thrash things out in his own mind, to climb up above the little dust storms of the moment and gain a broad view of his own horizon. The ride over Tarling Moor had given him the calmness of outlook that he needed. Wolfe knew that he had been warned off that morning, and that Jasper Turrell had thrown a stick at him, as he would have thrown a stick at a dog that had shown an inclination to trespass under his garden gate. And Jasper Turrell’s attitude was likely to be the attitude of Navestock. The incident of that absurd quarrel had opened Wolfe’s eyes. The little people would not only twist their mouths at him and gibber maliciously; they would gather like apes and try to pelt him out of the town. Turrell had bellowed a warning. The people who owned Navestock would tolerate no man who attempted to tell them unpleasant truths.
Now Wolfe was a born fighter, one of those men whose chin and fists go up even in the face of a crowd. He had glimpses of what might happen in Navestock, the anger and malice he might arouse, the abuse he would receive, the influence that would be exerted against him. It takes a man of great courage to stamp the faces of his fellows with the seal of hate. Few of us find pleasure in offending those who dwell about us. Our amiability is apt to make us cowards. But Wolfe had that touch of fanaticism that compels a man to utter what he knows to be the truth.
Across the sterner gloom of his thoughts rose the sun-splashed spires of the Moor Farm cypresses. Wolfe saw the red house with its holly hedges spreading along the ridge below him as he descended the moor. An impulse stirred in him, bidding him turn aside towards Moor Farm. More than once since his first visit he had passed across the paddock and up the stone-paved path. These people of the moor did him good when he was lonely. There was a charm about the old house, and Wolfe had seen the orchard in bloom, and the daffodils nodding their heads over the rich green grass. The comely, smiling good-will of the mother contrasted with the wind-blown hair and sparkling frankness of wild-eyed Jess. These were people who filled the heart when it felt empty, and made a man’s sad thoughts grow mischievous and young.
As Wolfe neared the white gate he saw a short, brown-smocked figure come running across the paddock. The figure waved an arm and shouted. It was Bob, the carter’s boy, who had bumped in and out of Navestock on the back of the brown pony.
“Mr. Wolfe, sir, you be wanted.”
He ran up and opened the white gate.
“I was just a-coming for you, sir.”
Wolfe rode in.
“Somebody ill, Bob?”
“The missus, sir. That there thasthma.”
“I take your word for it, Bob. You are an excellent diagnostician.”
The boy grinned.
“Thank yer, sir. I be’unt much of a chap at words.”
Bob ran at Wolfe’s side, and took his horse when he dismounted at the end of the holly hedge. The geese had followed them, gaggling in line, with the old one-eyed gander at their head. They made a cheerful noise; and the humming of the wind in the cypresses was like the humming of some great happy spirit watching the sunlight race over the grass.
Wolfe had reached the porch, when a black cat came whisking out, followed by a flying figure with a round basket set helmet-wise upon its head. The flying figure saved itself within six inches of Wolfe’s waistcoat, and fell back with a flush of colour and a glimmer of mischievous confusion.
“Oh—Mr. Wolfe!”
The black cat had fled terror-stricken into the summer-house. Wolfe’s eyes were full of laughter.
“Is this the latest fashion in bonnets?”
Jess tossed the thing off into a corner of the porch.
“Don’t be silly. I was only frightening old Thomas. It’s the egg basket.”
“Oh, the egg basket?”
“Yes.”
“I