“Let him come and take her,” he said to himself.
CHAPTER XXX
That was what he was longing for—for the claimant to come in person and lay a hand upon her. He felt that he would have given half his estate for the chance of answering the fellow as he should be answered—not by any reference to the opinions of those half-pagan patriarchs known as The Fathers; not by any reference to the views promulgated in the Middle Ages by that succession of thieving voluptuaries, murderers and excommunicators, the heads of the Church of Rome; or by modern sentimentalists struggling to reach the focus of the public eye—no, but by the aid of a dog-whip.
That was what he was longing for in these days—the chance to use his dog-whip upon the body of Marcus Blaydon. But Marcus Blaydon did not seem particularly anxious to give him the chance, and this fact caused his indignation against the man to increase. He felt as indignant as the henwife when her favourite chicken had shown some reluctance to come out of its coop to be killed.
It was the Reverend Osney Possnett, the vicar of Athalsdean, who paid a visit to the Manor House. Mr. Possnett had not been able to officiate at the marriage ceremony between Priscilla and Marcus Blaydon; he had been in Italy at the time; it was his curate for the time being, the Reverend Sylvanus Purview, who had married them. Doubtless if Mr. Purview had remained in the parish he would have paid Priscilla a visit when still under her father’s roof, to offer her official consolation upon the untoward incident which, happening at the church porch immediately after the ceremony, had deprived her (as it turned out) of the society of her husband; but the Reverend Sylvanus Purview had found that the air of the Downs was too bracing for him, and he had quitted the parish a few days after the vicar’s return, leaving the vicar to pay for his month’s board and lodging, which he himself had, by some inadvertence that was never fully explained, omitted doing, although it was afterwards discovered that he had borrowed from Churchwarden Wadhurst the money necessary for this purpose.
Mr. Possnett had, however, made up for his curate’s official deficiencies, as well as his monetary, and had spoken very seriously to Priscilla, on his return from Siena, on the subject of what he termed her trial—though it was really to Marcus Blaydon’s trial he was alluding.
Priscilla had listened.
And now the Reverend Osney Possnett would not accept the formal statement of the footman, that Mr. and Mrs. Wingfield were not at home, but had written a few lines on the back of his card, begging Priscilla to allow him to speak a few words to her.