But May could not move. There flashed across her the terrible thought that perhaps she had humiliated herself for nothing.
'My lady—I hope—will your ladyship please to forgive my father and mother? I entreat you not to send them away. We shall all be so grateful to your ladyship if you will overlook—'
'That will do,' said Lady Shale decisively. 'I will merely say that the sooner you leave the lodge the better; and that you will do well never again to pass the gates of the Hall. You may go.'
Miss Rockett withdrew. Outside, the footman was awaiting her. He looked at her with a grin, and asked in an undertone, 'Any good?' But May, to whom this was the last blow, rushed past him, lost herself in corridors, ran wildly hither and thither, tears streaming from her eyes, and was at length guided by a maidservant into the outer air. Fleeing she cared not whither, she came at length into a still corner of the park, and there, hidden amid trees, watched only by birds and rabbits, she wept out the bitterness of her soul.
By an evening train she returned to London, not having confessed to her family what she had done, and suffering still from some uncertainty as to the result. A day or two later Betsy wrote to her the happy news that the sentence of expulsion was withdrawn, and peace reigned once more in the ivy-covered lodge. By that time Miss Rockett had all but recovered her self-respect, and was so busy in her secretaryship that she could only scribble a line of congratulation. She felt that she had done rather a meritorious thing, but, for the first time in her life, did not care to boast of it.
THE RIDING-WHIP
It was not easy for Mr. Daffy to leave his shop for the whole day, but an urgent affair called him to London, and he breakfasted early in order to catch the 8.30 train. On account of his asthma he had to allow himself plenty of time for the walk to the station; and all would have been well, but that, just as he was polishing his silk hat and giving final directions to his assistant, in stepped a customer, who came to grumble about the fit of a new coat. Ten good minutes were thus consumed, and with a painful glance at his watch the breathless tailor at length started. The walk was uphill; the sun was already powerful; Mr. Daffy reached the station with dripping forehead and panting as if his sides would burst. There stood the train; he had barely time to take his ticket and to rush across the platform. As a porter slammed the carriage-door behind him, he sank upon the seat in a lamentable condition, gasping, coughing, writhing; his eyes all but started from his head, and his respectable top-hat tumbled to the floor, where unconsciously he gave it a kick. A grotesque and distressing sight.
Only one person beheld it, and this, as it happened, a friend of Mr. Daffy's. In the far corner sat a large, ruddy-cheeked man, whose eye rested upon the sufferer with a look of greeting disturbed by compassion. Mr. Lott, a timber-merchant of this town, was in every sense of the word a more flourishing man than the asthmatic tailor; his six-feet-something of sound flesh and muscle, his ripe sunburnt complexion, his attitude of eupeptic and broad-chested ease, left the other, by contrast, scarce his proverbial fraction of manhood. At a year or two short of fifty, Mr. Daffy began to be old; he was shoulder-bent, knee-shaky, and had a pallid, wrinkled visage, with watery, pathetic eye. At fifty turned, Mr. Lott showed a vigour and a toughness such as few men of any age could rival. For a score of years the measure of Mr. Lott's robust person had been taken by Mr. Daffy's professional tape, and, without intimacy, there existed kindly relations between the two men. Neither had ever been in the other's house, but they had long met, once a week or so, at the Liberal Club, where it was their habit to play together a game of draughts. Occasionally they conversed; but it was a rather one-sided dialogue, for whereas the tailor had a sprightly intelligence and—so far as his breath allowed—a ready flow of words, the timber-merchant found himself at a disadvantage when mental activity was called for. The best-natured man in the world, Mr. Lott would sit smiling and content so long as he had only to listen; asked his opinion (on anything but timber), he betrayed by a knitting of the brows, a rolling of the eyes, an inflation of the cheeks, and other signs of discomposure, the serious effort it cost him to shape a thought and to utter it. At times Mr. Daffy got on to the subject of social and political reform, and, after copious exposition, would ask what Mr. Lott thought. He knew the timber-merchant too well to expect an immediate reply. There came a long pause, during which Mr. Lott snorted a little, shuffled in his chair, and stared at vacancy, until at length, with a sudden smile of relief he exclaimed, 'Do you know my idea!' And the idea, often rather explosively stated, was generally marked by common-sense of the bull-headed, British kind.
'Bad this morning,' remarked Mr. Lott, abruptly but sympathetically, as soon as the writhing tailor could hear him.
'Rather bad—ugh, ugh!—had to run—ugh!—doesn't suit me, Mr. Lott,' gasped the other, as he took the silk hat which his friend had picked up and stroked for him.