Lady Good-for-Nothing Part 7

The road--the same by which he had arrived last night--mounted all the way and led across the neck of the headland. His business, however, lay out upon the headland itself and almost at its extremest verge; and a mile above the town he struck off to the left where a bridle-path climbed by a long slant to the ridge. Half an hour's easy riding brought him to the top of the ascent, whence he looked down on the long beach he had travelled yesterday. The sea lay spread on three sides of him. Its salt breeze played on his face; and the bay horse, feeling the tickle of it in his nostrils, threw up his head with a whinny.

"Good, old boy--is it not?" asked the Collector, patting his neck.

"Suppose we try a breather of it?"

The chine of the headland--of turf, short-cropped by the unceasing wind--stretched smooth as a racecourse for close upon a mile, with a gentle dip midway much like the hollow of a saddle. The Collector ran his eye along it in search of the two men he had come to meet, but could spy neither of them.

"Sheltering somewhere from the breeze, maybe," he decided. "_We_ don't mind it, hey? Come along, lad--here's wine for heroes!"

He touched Bayard with the spur, and the good horse started at a gallop--a rollicking gallop and in the very tune of his master's mood; and if all Port Na.s.sau had not been at its devotions, the chins of its burghers might have tilted themselves in wonder at the apparition--a Centaur, enlarged upon the skyline.

Man and horse at full stretch of the gallop were launching down the dip of the hollow--the wind singing past on the top note of exhilaration-- when the bay, too well trained to shy, faltered a moment and broke his stride, as a figure started up from the lee-side of the ridge.

The Collector sailing past and throwing a glance over his shoulder, saw the figure and lifted a hand. In another ten strides he reined up Bayard, turned, and came back at a walk.

He confronted a lean, narrow-chested young man, black-suited, pale of face, with watery eyes, straw-coloured eyelashes and an underbred smile that twitched between timidity and a.s.surance.

"Ah?" queried the Collector, eyeing him and disliking him at sight.

"Are you "--doubtfully--"by any chance Mr. Wapshott, the Surveyor?"

"No such luck," answered the watery-eyed young man with an offhand attempt at familiarity. "I'm his a.s.sistant--name of Banner--Wapshott's unwell."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Mr.--Mr. Wapshott--sends word that he's unwell." Under the Collector's eye the youth suddenly s.h.i.+fted his manner and became respectful.

"I beg your pardon?" the Collector repeated slowly. "He 'sends word,'

do you say? I had not the honour at my Inn--from which I have ridden straight--to be notified of Mr. Wapshott's indisposition."

Mr. Banner attempted a weak grin and harked back again to familiarity.

"No, I guess not. The fact is--"

"Excuse me; but would you mind taking your hands out of your pockets?"

"Oh, come! Why?" But none the less Mr. Banner removed them.

"Thank you. You were saying?"

"Well, I guess, between you and me"--Mr. Banner's hands were slipping to his pockets again but he checked the motion and rested a palm nonchalantly on either hip--"the old man was a bit too G.o.d-fearing to sign to it."

"You mean," the Collector asked slowly, "that he is not, in fact, unwell, but has asked you to convey an untruth?"

"You've a downright way of putting it--er--sir" Mr. Banner confessed; "but you get near enough, I shouldn't wonder. You see, the old--the Surveyor is strict upon Lord's Day Observance."

The Collector bent his brows slightly while he smoothed Bayard's mane.

Of a sudden the small scene by the Church porch recurred to him.

"Stay," he said. "I have not the pleasure of knowing Mr. Wapshott, but may I attempt to describe him to you? He is, perhaps, a gentleman of somewhat stunted growth, but of full habit, and somewhat noticeably red between the ear and the neck-stock?"

"That hits him."

"--with a wife inclining to portliness and six grown daughters, taller than their parents and not precisely in their first bloom. I speak,"

added the Collector, still eyeing his victim, "as to a man of the world."

"You've seen him anyhow," Mr. Banner nodded. "That's Wapshott."

"I saw him entering his place of wors.h.i.+p; and I note that he thinks what you call the Lord's Day well worth keeping at the cost of a falsehood.

May I ask, Mr.--" The Collector hesitated.

"Banner."

"Ah, yes--pardon me! May I ask, Mr. Banner, how it comes that you have a nicer sense than your superior of what is due to His Majesty's Service?"

Mr. Banner laughed uneasily. "Well, you mightn't guess it from my looks," he answered with an attempt to ingratiate himself by way of self-deprecation, "but I am pretty good at working out levels. I really am."

"That was not my point, though I shall test you on it presently.

You are, it appears, a somewhat less rigid Sabbatarian than Mr.

Wapshott?"

Hereupon Mr. Banner became cryptic. "You needn't fear about that," he answered. "I have what they call a dispensation; and until you startled me, I was up here keeping the Lord's Day as well as the best of 'em.

Better, perhaps."

"We will get to business," said the Collector. "Follow me, please."

He wheeled his horse and, with Mr. Banner walking at his stirrup, rode slowly out to the end of the headland and as slowly back. The Collector asked a question now and then and to every question the young man responded pat. He was no fool. It soon appeared that he had studied the trajectory of guns, that he had views--and sound ones--on coast defences, and that by some study of the subject he had come, a while ago, to a conclusion the Collector took but a few minutes to endorse; that to build a fort on this headland would be waste of public money.

Professionally, Mr. Banner was tolerable. The Collector, consulting with him, forgot the pertness of his address, the distressing tw.a.n.g of his accent. He had dismounted, and the pair were busy with a tape, calling out and checking measurements, when from the southward there was borne to the Collector's ears the distant crack of a shot-gun.

At the sound of it he glanced up, in time to see Mr. Banner drop the other end of the tape and run. Almost w.i.l.l.y-nilly he followed, vaguely wondering if there had happened some accident that called for aid.

Mr. Banner, when the Collector overtook him, had come to a halt overlooking the long beach, and pointed to a figure--a speck almost--for it was distant more than a mile.

"That Josselin girl!" panted Mr. Banner. "I call you to witness!"

The Collector unstrapped his field-gla.s.s, which he carried in a bandolier, adjusted it, and through it scanned the beach. Yes, in the distant figure he recognised Ruth Josselin. She carried a gun--or rather, stood with the gun grounded and her hands folded, resting on its muzzle--and appeared to be watching the edge of the breakers, perhaps waiting for them to wash to her feet a dead bird fallen beyond reach.

"See her, do you? I call you to witness!" repeated the voice at his elbow.

"Why, what is the matter?"

"Sabbath breakin'," answered Mr. Banner with a curious leer.

"Ah!"

"But you yourself don't take much account of the Lord's Day, seemingly.

Bathin', f'r instance."

"Indeed!" The Collector eyed his companion reflectively. "You honoured me with your observation this morning?"