“I’ll lay you five shillings, George, he loses courage and sneaks back in time for dinner,” Mahone resumed.
The blood shot up to Hugh’s face; he knew that was what Mahone wanted, and he was the angrier that he had gratified him. He turned sharp away and fumbled at Bayard’s headstall till he felt surer of his self-control, then asked stiffly: “Can you tell me if the captain is in the west parlor? I must take my leave of him.”
“I don’t begrudge you the task,” Allestree hinted. “The captain lost his temper at Northrope, because the scurvy little tavern was so ill supplied, and he has not found it again yet. So look to yourself, Hugh.”
It did not need Allestree’s warning to bring the heart down into Hugh’s boots; the mere inhospitality of the closely shut door of the west parlor and the grim tone in which Butler bade him come in were enough to daunt him. The captain had been writing ponderously at the table in the centre of the room, but at Hugh’s coming he flung down his pen, and, after surveying him scowlingly, burst out: “You’re still set in your folly, then? Well, for Dick Strangwayes’ sake I’d fain have saved you, in spite of your cursed sullen ways.”
“I have not meant to be discourteous to you, Captain Butler,” Hugh protested; “I thank you for sheltering me and saving me that first time, I do thank you heartily. But now I think it better—”
“To seek other company,” Butler retorted. “If you were a bit older, I’d be angry with you, sir; and if you were a small bit younger, by the Lord, I’d cuff some wit into you; as ’tis—Well, I’ll shake hands, if you wish. On my soul, ’tis pity so decent a lad should not have the sense to keep his head on his shoulders.” Thereupon he turned his back, and, with great show of being occupied, fell to his writing, so Hugh, feeling miserably rebuked, had no course but to go quietly from the room.
Perhaps his downcast state touched Allestree a little, for he met him more kindly and spared farther jests while Hugh was mounting Bayard. “Better go to Tamworth if you are ill at ease here,” he counselled wisely. “But in any case God speed you and protect you for the sake of the innocence of you.”
At this Mahone went into a fit of laughter, from which he recovered only in time to bawl a farewell that reached Hugh but faintly, as he rode out by the sentinel at the gate of Woodstead.
Travelling slowly, to spare Bayard after his heavy work of the preceding day, he came about noon to a cross-road, where for a moment he hesitated: should it be north to seek Sir William’s help, or south to put himself into the provost’s hands and trust to his own innocence of ill intent to bring him clear? But he soon told himself that, if Sir William had had the power to aid, he would long ago have helped Dick Strangwayes; and, in any case, he had no will to live longer in holes and corners, as if he were indeed the murderer Peregrine had called him. Perhaps he would find friends if he went on boldly. So he jogged southward at an easy pace, so easy, indeed, that he gave up all idea of reaching Oxford that day. “And we don’t care to lie in the fields, Bayard,” he talked softly to the horse. “And we’ve not a penny to our names to hire lodgings. What say you if we swerve off to Ashcroft? Perhaps they’ll shelter us this night.”
At heart he knew they would, yet, remembering how carelessly he had departed thence, he felt a little backward about presenting himself to the Widow Flemyng. His pace lagged more and more as he drew near the farm, and he might have halted short to reconsider, had not the spat of rain upon the white roadway warned him to look to the sky. There the clouds were black with storm and thunder, so, having no wish to come at last to Oxford all bedraggled, he spurred forward hastily and galloped Bayard into Ashcroft stable just as the rain began pelting down.