“So.”
“I mean to act like a man of honor.”
“One thing is certain, sir, that Dick Wilson is better out of the way. Good-night, Richard, you have been very kind to me, and I thank you. Egad, sir, I shall never forgive myself for having served you thus.”
“We are still friends, Dick.”
“Yes, sir, till you are married to Miss Hardacre. Well, it’s a queer world. Good-night, lad, good-night.”
The Lady Letitia kept her bed next day, but sent down a sealed note to her nephew in which she expressed herself as being greatly distressed by what had passed the previous night. She advised Richard “to persuade that unfortunate creature Wilson to take his departure with all despatch.” The dowager threw out many broad hints reflecting upon the sincerity of the painter’s statements, and suggested to Richard that Miss Hardacre must have compromised herself with the man many years ago. Jeffray threw the letter in the fire. He was beginning to discover how much veracity there was in Aunt Letitia’s world-wise soul.
Richard ordered Peter Gladden to go down in person and engage a room for Wilson at the Wheat Sheaf. Wilson’s pack and red bundle were carried down to the inn by a very scornful and unobsequious servant who believed that no real gentleman would travel with such luggage, and who also doubted the likelihood of such a “shabby creature” being able to distribute decent largesse. Richard and the painter breakfasted together, smoked their pipes in the library afterwards, and discussed the dilemma once again. It appeared to Wilson that the young Squire of Rodenham was not madly enamoured of Miss Jilian Hardacre. “She had been very kind to him, yes. He thought her a sweet woman, despite his aunt’s scandalous innuendoes. Certainly he had paid his cousin a great deal of attention, and he would act honorably by her like an English gentleman.” Wilson screwed his face up a little over the lad’s chivalrous sentiments. He did not venture to meddle with so delicate a question, however, having had sufficient excitement to satisfy him for months.
Jeffray walked with Wilson through the park to Rodenham village, the painter dressed again in his cocked hat, rusty brown suit and club-tailed wig. The day was Shrove-Tuesday, as Jeffray would have discovered earlier had he invaded his own kitchen and found the grooms and wenches tossing pancakes. Rodenham village itself was in a holiday temper, the boors turning out in clean smocks, the girls and women tricked out in their best gowns, with ribbon in their hair and new scarlet stockings showing under their short petticoats. Even the brats had had their faces polished and been blessed with clean pinafores. The benches in front of the Wheat Sheaf were ladened with farmers who had come in to drink George Gogg’s beer and watch the “cock-throwing.” Old Sam Sturtevant, the cobbler, had been training a couple of cocks since Christmas, and the birds were as nimble and spry at the game as could be. Sam was engaged with a crowd of hinds in pegging out one of his birds upon the green, and in kicking a line in the turf to show where the thrower should stand, when Jeffray and the painter passed the church and came down the road leading to the village with its wood and plaster fronts, its thatched roofs and sour and ragged gardens.
The sport sacred to Shrove-Tuesday had begun as Richard and the painter came down towards the green. A crowd of jabbering, hairy-faced boors were swearing and screaming on the grass. Some twenty paces distant from the crowd of hinds and slatterns, Sam Sturtevant, the cobbler, was holding one of his trained cocks by a string fastened to the leg. A rustic was in the act of taking his three shots for a penny at the bird, the object being to knock the cock down, and run and catch him before he could recover his legs. So well trained was the bird that he dodged each cast of the stick, the crowd jeering and laughing as the fellow lost his penny to the cobbler. The next gentleman was more clever in his throwing. Richard saw the bird go down on the grass, a twitching and fluttering mass of feathers. The cock recovered himself, however, before the fellow could reach him, and the stick-throwing recommenced amid the shouts of the spectators.
Richard Jeffray had never seen the sport since the days when he was a mere animal of a boy. His eyes flashed in his pale face; his mouth hardened. Crossing the road with Wilson at his heels, he looked round angrily at the boors, who had abated their yelling on the Squire’s approach, and had pulled off their hats and were louting and grinning in their uncouth way. Richard went up to the cobbler, an old man with a flinty face, whose eyes were glistening over the pence his cock had earned for him.