“Nay, madam,” resumed Kenelm, mildly; “banish your fears. If you will help me I feel sure that I can save your son from such perils, and I only ask you to let me save him. I am convinced that he has a good and a noble nature, and he is worth saving.” And as he thus said he took her hand. She resigned it to him and returned the pressure, all her pride softening as she began to weep.
At length, when she recovered voice, she said,—
“It is all along of that girl. He was not so till she crossed him, and made him half mad. He is not the same man since then,—my poor Tom!”
“Do you know that he has given me his word, and before his fellow-villagers, that if he had the worst of the fight he would never molest Jessie Wiles again?”
“Yes, he told me so himself; and it is that which weighs on him now. He broods and broods and mutters, and will not be comforted; and—and I do fear that he means revenge. And again, I implore you to keep out of his way.”
“It is not revenge on me that he thinks of. Suppose I go and am seen no more, do you think in your own heart that that girl’s life is safe?”
“What! My Tom kill a woman!”
“Do you never read in your newspaper of a man who kills his sweetheart, or the girl who refuses to be his sweetheart? At all events, you yourself do not approve this frantic suit of his. If I have heard rightly, you have wished to get Tom out of the village for some time, till Jessie Wiles is—we’ll say, married, or gone elsewhere for good.”
“Yes, indeed, I have wished and prayed for it many’s the time, both for her sake and for his. And I am sure I don’t know what we shall do if he stays, for he has been losing custom fast. The Squire has taken away his, and so have many of the farmers; and such a trade as it was in his good father’s time! And if he would go, his uncle, the veterinary at Luscombe, would take him into partnership; for he has no son of his own, and he knows how clever Tom is: there be n’t a man who knows more about horses; and cows, too, for the matter of that.”
“And if Luscombe is a large place, the business there must be more profitable than it can be here, even if Tom got back his custom?”