He backed across the room, unable to unfix his stare, and escaped into the passage. He ran downstairs, through the house, and out of it. Paul Dewdney, seeing his hurry, looked up with a friendly grin, and the next instant the child was clinging to him, screaming. ‘Husha, Master Jacky, where’ve you catched hurt, my champion? Tell Paul where you’ve catched hurt.’ But not yet could that tale be told. Indeed it was never fully told. After a storm of terror the child managed to falter out a few significant phrases, and Paul, who had sharper wits than most of bis kind, guessed the rest. ‘Ah, my dear, you mustn’t mind her. Her’ve had a fall, dauntee see, on her poor head, poor lady. She baint herself, Master Jacky, not she. And God send she’s not long for this warld, as we all says, and who wouldn’t? Now who’s for a ride on the pony, Master Jacky? Pony’s been asken after you, he has. Where’s that Master Jacky away to, says Pony . . .’
And so, being come full circle, young Squire Marden’s thoughts are back at Paul Dewdney, who now lies dead upstairs.
He had been absent in mind for but a moment, and now with a gesture he tried to shake off his load. ‘Well, we must all come to it.’ He turned again towards the priest, but would not meet his eyes. ‘He was a faithful fellow. God rest him.’
‘Amen,’ said Father Gandy. When he spoke again, after a long silence, it was in a quietly conversational tone. ‘Touching that other matter, my dear sir, I wish you may not distress yourself unduly about it. My lord Endham must wait for his money, as many a better man has done before him. You were at fault, I grant you, in hazarding a sum so far beyond your immediate reach; and still more at fault in nursing the pride that plunged you into that extravagance. But . . .’
‘He thought me a bumpkin,’ interrupted the young man. ‘He thought me a country cousin who for very prudery dared not risk a high stake.’
‘The devil himself,’ said Father Gandy, ‘feigns to think us timid when we resist him. It is his chief weapon against young men of spirit. But listen, my friend. I have formed a resolution. Tonight you have lost a servant, and needs must think of finding another.’
‘True.’ But deuced early, thought he, to be talking of that.
‘What were Paul’s duties?’
‘You know them as well as I,’ answered Marden, a trifle stiffly. ‘Multifarious. Paul does . . . Paul did everything except what his mother did.’
‘What he did I can do,’ said Father Gandy. ‘No, listen. This is a thought I have long had maturing. I came to this household twenty years ago, as tutor to yourself and chaplain to the family. But now you need no tutor, and could make shift, I dare wager, without a chaplain. It is often in my mind that I am a lazy fellow, and you have done me the honour to confess that you are not a man of fortune.’
‘Enough of that,’ said Marden, almost roughly. ‘I shall find it hard to forgive you, Father Raphe, if you abuse my confidence so far as to suppose that I could let you leave me . . .’
‘That was not my thought, and is not,’ said Father Gandy, with a half-bantering smile. ‘What I venture to propose is that I should ease my conscience at the expense of your comfort. Give me leave to be, in future, not a priest but a lay brother. Nay, I am serious, Jack. Call it a whim if you like, but it’s something more. It is my wish to wear the habit of humility, and scrub floors to the glory of God.’
‘Reverend sir,’ cried Marden in a tone of decision, ‘I cannot entertain so improper a notion . . .’
‘Say rather: Brother Raphe,’ said Raphe Gandy. ‘For I am resolved to have my way.’
The knocking on the tavern door startled the company. They sat staring with mouths agape, and something like alarm stirred among them when the knock was not immediately followed by an entry. Who could it be so timid as to await permission, or so arrogant as to demand ceremonious ushering-in? A woman? No, the rapping was peremptory, the work of no woman. A stranger certainly, for not even Coachy Timms himself could remember the last time a visitor had stood waiting to be admitted. This was an event, and they were alert with curiosity, all but Gipsy Noke, who thought ruefully of his unfinished song. He alone was angry with the stranger, telling himself that he cared not who it might be. This silence, emphasised by the ticking clock, quickened by the vibration of expectancy, endured for perhaps ten seconds, or less, and then the rapping was repeated, the potman went shuffling across the sanded floor, and at the same moment the door was flung open from the outside and a stranger came striding in. He was a lean swaggering fellow, muffled in a handsome cloak and wearing a three-cornered beaver-hat. His most conspicuous feature was a large Roman nose, surmounted by heavy eyebrows that made a continuous arch from under which two deep-set eyes flashed scornfully.
It pleased this gentleman to fly into a towering rage.