Doctor Syn on the High Seas - Thorndike Russell. Страница 8

“Schemes, eh?” repeated the Doctor. “I can well believe that. I

will tell you my authority. I am the prospective son-in-law to the

Senora. Yes, sir, her daughter, the Senorita, with her mother’s

consent, has promised to marry me.”

“Marry you?” retorted the Squ ire. “We’ll see about that. I rather

think she will marry my nephew.”

Doctor Syn shook his head. “She has already refused him, sir.”

“Then if he’s such a fool as I always suspected, she shall marry me,”

said the Squire. “Or I’ll marry the widow, and then refuse you the

daughter. Yes, sir, I’ll brook no interference from a hypocritical

young parson, who no doubt thinks to get the dead Spaniard’s money into

his own coffers.”

“There is no more to be said, I think, sir. Tomorrow at noon. Good

day.”

“Oh no,” replied the Squire. “Not good day yet. I have not finished

with you.”

“But I have with you till noon tomorrow,” replied Doctor Syn, turning

his horse’s head down the long drive and riding slowly away.

“I think not, till my grooms have done with you,” cried the Squire.

He then balwed out the words: “Stables, quick! All of you!”

- 18 -

Doctor Syn saw him run into the stable yard, and so put his own hose

to the canter.

The drive was a long one through an avenue of trees. Fortunately the

young parson knew the lie of the ground. He remembered that there was a

back lane from the stables which was a short cut to the Lodge gates. He

remembered that these gates were locked. Even at a gallop he could

hardly reach them and persuade the man to open before the arrival of the

half-dozen bullies that Bully Tappitt kept to do other and dirtier work

than grooming. Just as he was considering the possibility of attempting

a gallop, he heard the deep bell clanging from the stable tower, and

guessed that this must be a signal to the lodge-keeper to stop him. The

bell was followed by a banging of doors, cries from stablemen, cracking

of whips, and then the full-throated baying of hounds. Doctor Syn had

no intention of riding into such disadvantage. He knew well that Bully

Tappitt would not scruple to go to extremes. This at the best would be

a flogging, perhaps injury to his horse, and then as an excuse a

trumped-up accusation of libelous interference, which the Squire would

lodge against him to the College authorities. The odds were too heavy

to risk. It was then that a richer way out occurred to him.

Turning his hose sharp to the right, he rode through the woods, along

the mossy path that led to the river. The Isis ran there broad and

wide, but it would not be the first time that the young scholar and sum

his horse, and he considered that a wetting and a laugh against Tappitt

in the face of his bullies were preferable to a bad manhandling. He was

no coward, as he was to show by the different risk he was to take, but

as a lover he was not desirous to court any facial disfigurement.

So he galloped through the wood in the opposite direction taken by

his would-be assailants. Just as he approached the boathouse, a voice

cried out, “Now, then, sir, what do you want?”

“A heavily built waterman barred his way. He was armed with a short,

sharp boat-hook.

The Doctor reined his horse. “I have been talking to your master,

the Squire of Iffley,” he answered pleasantly, waving his ha nd towards

the river. “He thinks that this little ditch is unswimmable, on

horseback. You know how given he is to a wager. I am about to prove to

him that a good horse and rider find it easy. What do you think?”

“I think not,” growled the boatman. “The stable bell has been

clanging, and that means “close all ways out of the estate.”

“If you come here, I’ll give you good reason not to detain me,”

replied Doctor Syn, affably putting his hand into his breeches pocket.

He saw the covetous glint into the other’s eye. He read his though, “If

this fool cares to hand me a guinea to get out of here, I’ll take it,

stop him leaving and then deny his gift to my master.”

Doctor Syn sure enough held up the guinea invitingly with his right

hand. The man approached, and put out one hand for the coin, and with

the other tried to grasp the rein. The rider shortened rein to prevent

this, and at the same time distracted the other’s attention with a

sudden “Hallo! Is this a good one? I believe not. I’ve been done

brown. I should have rung them one by one. It looks to me—well,

dull.”

“I’ll ring it,” said the other eagerly. “Let’s see.”

“I’ll try it in my teeth,” answered Syn.

He suited the action to the word; put the coin between his teeth, and

made a face as though biting hard.

- 19 -

The man waited for his judgment, eyeing the guinea held so firmly in

the young man’s white teeth. Instead he should have kept his eye on the

young man’s right hand. The fist closed, and a terrific blow caught the

waterman under the jaw. Down the bank he rolled into the water, and

down the bank went horse and rider straight into the river, and by the

time the man scrambled for the bank and held his jaw, Doctor Syn was in

midstream heading for the bank. The current was stronger than he

thought, and swept his horse below the opposite landing-stage, but

Doctor Syn headed for a meadow belonging to a little farm, intending to

land there, despite a notice on a tree which said, “Trespassers will be

prosecuted.”

The owner of the farm happened to be out with a fowling-piece under

his arm, and, objecting to the swimming would-be

trespasser, cried out: “Now then, if, as I saw, you come from yonder

cursed place, you should know what to expect from me if you attempt to

touch my bank. I’ve suffered enough from the sins of the Tappitt crowd,

so my advice is, swim back as fast as you can, lest I drill holes in

you.”

“I’ve just escaped from there, my good friend,” Doctor Syn called

back. “I preferred a wettin g to a whipping from the rascals. So of

your charity let me land here, or my horse may drown.”

“Who are you, then?” asked the farmer cautiously.

“A young doctor of Queen’s College,” he answered. “And with every

cause to hate the folk behind me.”

The farmer immediately came down from the bank and pointed out the

best spot for landing, which was no sooner accomplished than Doctor Syn

was asking which was the best bridge to cross in order to come upon the

road leading past the gates of Iffley Court, and on the way to Oxford.

‘I wish to have the laugh of them from the safe side of their locked

gates,” he said. “Aye, and before they have discovered how I have

tricked them, too,” he added.

For this reason of haste, re refused the farmer’s offer o f a stable

for his horse and grooming, while he should dry his clothes by the

kitchen fire, and himself with a warming drink.

But for all his haste, the farmer insisted on rubbing down the horse

with a wisp of grass, and as he did so he talked. “I’ll show you the

way beyond the house. You can gallop it in three minutes, while they’ll

be hunting you in the grounds, or waiting for you to break cover.

You’ll reach Iffley gates before that rogue you knocked into the Isis.

I’ll do anything against them ov er there. I have cause enough to hate

them. Lend me your ear, for my wife is coming down the meadow, and what

I would say is her grief.”

Thereupon he quickly whispered a foul story of seduction which the

Squire of Iffley had carried out against their daughter. She had been