The Star-Gazers Part 79

"Why, you dissatisfied old woman," cried Oldroyd merrily, "I rode over as soon as I got your message."

"Well, then, why don't you do me some good at once, and not stand talking. If you knowed the aggynies I suffer, you wouldn't stand talking. You heered the news?"

"What, about the French?"

"Tchut! What do I know about the French? I mean about my grandbairn."

"Miss Hayle? No."

"The captain took her off, and we thought he'd married her, you know, but he didn't."

"Poor girl!" said Oldroyd, sadly.

"Bah! I haven't patience with her. Got her head turned up at The Warren, being with that girl there; and then, in spite of all I said, and her father said, she must be always thinking of the captain, and breaking her heart when she heard he was going to marry first this one and then that. She got so that at last he had only to hold up his finger and say come, and away she went; and now she's back in London, left to s.h.i.+ft for herself, with lots of fine clothes. She's writ home to her father for help. But we shall see--we shall see."

"A scoundrel!" exclaimed Oldroyd.

"Yes, he's a bad un," said the old woman, "a reg'lar bad un, but he'll get his deserts; you see if he don't. Ben Hayle arn't Sir John Day up at the Hall. He won't let my gentleman off so easy; you see if he do.

Ah, it's a strange world, doctor, and I begin to think it gets worse and worse."

Oldroyd listened to a good deal more of the old lady's moralising about the state of the world, as he ministered to her "aggynies," and finally left, after undertaking to call again very soon.

"Mind, you shut the door!" shouted the old woman; "the haps don't fit well. You must try it after you've let go."

"I'll mind," said Oldroyd good-humouredly; and, mounting Peter, he was thoughtfully jogging homeward, when the pony stopped in front of a gate, on which a man was seated--the pony having apparently recognised an old patient, and paused for the doctor to have a chat.

"Do, sir?" said the man, getting down slowly and touching his hat.

"Ah, Hayle, glad to see you looking so strong again."

"Ay, sir," said the man, smiling sadly; "you ought to be proud o' me, and make a show of what you've done for me. 'Bout your best job, warn't I?"

"Well, I suppose you were, in surgery," said Oldroyd, looking hard at the man's pinched face and settled frown; "but, I say, my man, hadn't you better drop that life now, and try something different?"

"Easier said than done, doctor," replied Hayle grimly. "Give a dog a bad name and hang him. n.o.body wouldn't employ me. S'pose I said to you. 'Change your life and turn parson.' Wouldn't be easy, would it?"

Oldroyd shook his head.

"Perhaps not," he said; "but you're too good a man for a poacher. Look here, Hayle; Morton has left and gone to Lord Bogmere's. Sir John Day is very friendly to me. Let me go and state your case to him frankly."

"Wouldn't be no good, sir."

"Don't say that. He's a thorough English gentleman, always ready to do anyone a good turn. I believe in you, Hayle; and if I say to him that you would gladly come and serve him faithfully, I should say so believing honestly that you would. Shall I speak to him?"

"Thank you kindly, sir, but not now. I've got too much else on my mind," said Hayle, gazing at the doctor searchingly. "Been to see the old lady?"

"Yes."

"Did--did she tell you any news?"

Oldroyd nodded.

"Ah, she would," said the ex-keeper thoughtfully. "Hah! he's a bad un; but I didn't think he'd be quite so bad as that to her; for she's a handsome gal, doctor--a handsome gal."

"More's the pity," thought Oldroyd, though he did not speak.

"It's well for him that I haven't run again him, I can tell you. Don't happen to know where the captain is, do you, sir?"

"No, I have not the least idea; and if I had, I don't think I should tell you."

"S'pose not, doctor," said the man, with a strange laugh, "seeing what's coming off."

"Why; what are you going to do?"

"Do, sir," said Hayle slowly, as he leaned on the gate, and looked down the dark path in the wood. "When I was a young man, and made up my mind to trap a hare or a fezzan, or p'raps only a rabbud, I trapped it.

P'r'aps I didn't the first time; p'raps I didn't the second or third; but I kept on at it till I did, and I'm going to trap him."

"What, Captain Rolph! Make him pay for the injury to your daughter?"

"I'm going to see if he'll make it up to her first. If he won't, I'll make him pay."

"Make it up! Do you mean marry her?"

"Yes; that's what I mean, sir," said Hayle slowly, and then, turning round to face the doctor, and fix him with his big dark eyes. "He shall pay his debt if he don't marry her!"

"Do you mean in money--breach of promise?"

"No," said the man, speaking to him fiercely. "No money wouldn't pay my gal nor me. He took a fancy to her, and she liked him, and I forgive him for his cunning way of following her when I was laid by. I forgive him, too, for what he did to me. It was fair fight so far, but it was his gun as shot me that night. I didn't bear no malice again him for all that, as long as he was square toward Judith; but he's thrown her off, and I'm going to see him about it."

"Man, man, what are you going to do?" cried Oldroyd.

"What am I going to do?" roared Hayle, blazing up into sudden fury.

"You're going to marry sweet young Miss Lucy, yonder. S'pose eighteen or nineteen years, by-and-by, doctor, there's another Miss Lucy as you're very proud on. You're genteel people, we're not; but the stuff's all the same. I was proud o' my Judith, same as you'll be proud of your Miss Lucy when she comes. What am I going to do? What would you do to the man as took her from you, and when his fancy was over sent her off?"

Oldroyd stood gazing at the fierce face before him.

"Doctor, when I heerd first as he'd thrown her over, I said to myself, 'He's a proud chap--proud of his strong body, and his running and racing: he shall know what it is to suffer now. Curse him, I'll break him across my knee.' Then I stopped and thought, doctor, and made up my mind that he should marry her, and if he don't--"

Hayle stopped short, with his lips tightened and his fists clenched; and then, in a curiously furtive way, he turned his face aside, sprang lightly over the gate into the wood, and disappeared from the doctor's sight.

"If I had done that fellow a deadly wrong I should not feel very happy and comfortable in my own mind," said Oldroyd, as he looked in the direction in which the man had disappeared. "Ah, well, it's no business of mine; and, thank goodness, I lead too busy a life to have many of the temptations talked of by good old Doctor Watts."

"Now, then, I've taken my physic," he added, after a few minutes'

thought, and with a cheery smile on his countenance, "so I'll go and have my sugar. Go on, Peter."

Peter went on, and, as if knowing where to go, took the doctor straight to The Firs.

Volume 3, Chapter XV.