THE SCARECROW RIDES (30 page)

For some time they rode forward at a gentle walk, and Dr. Syn's
thoughts began to concentrate upon the new life of adventure that
seemed to have been thrust upon him. A very different proposition this,
to tackle, than directing the guns of the old
Imogene
in the grim
game of piracy. Then he had only the ever-present possibility of
violent death to face, and certainly no disgrace, for the best of the
sea rovers went to death laughing, and did not give a toss of the dice
for shame. But to run as he had given his word to run, a great scheme
of law-breaking in England, was to court the risk of a disgrace which
he was perfectly willing to face, but he must be careful not to involve
the beautiful girl at his side in such disaster.

It was she who interrupted his train of thought with: “Oh, Doctor,
whatever makes you scowl like that? Have you forgotten it is my
birthday?”

“No, Charlotte,” he answered, smiling, but without looking at her.
“But when you get to middle age the past has a way of obtruding itself,
and to men who have lived an adventurous life it is generally the
unpleasantnesses of the past that thrust themselves to the front. A
young girl like you could not be expected to understand the depressions
that come with middle age.”

“No?” she queried. “Perhaps I understand these depressions—in
you—better than you imagine. Perhaps I understand more than anyone
else where you are concerned, and the reason is that I am certain no
one loves you more than I do.”

“That is very kind of you, my dear,” replied the doctor. He did not
dare look back at her, but kept his pony just a little ahead. But she
watched him closely.

“You see,” she went on, “my father is your oldest friend and I am,
in many ways, his confidante. Do you suppose then that, both loving you
as we do, that we have not been guilty of discussing you? We have, and
I know as well as he does of the tragedy that drove you to America.”

“That is all finished. It is a closed book,” said Syn simply.

“Not quite, is it?” went on Charlotte. “Now that I am grown up, may
I claim the privilege of telling you what I think? From what my father
has told me, you were influenced to go abroad in a spirit of revenge.
It was natural that when your wife betrayed you, all your love for her
should be killed. You never blamed her, so my father tells me, but on
the man, who had been your friend, you were determined to heap
punishment. Unsuccessful in this, at last even that passion died in
you, and you return to start life again with us. Why do you not accept
the fact that your wife is dead, Doctor?”

“Because it is not right to accept a fact that is only told by a
liar and a cheat,” he answered.

“And that is the reason you told my father that you could never
marry again?” she asked.

“That is one reason,” he replied. “If I were to marry again and
there was a child, and then my wife was found to be alive after all,
what of my child then? What of the woman that had given it to me?”

“It would be but a legal quibble to make it wrong,” replied
Charlotte. “For my part, I would break any law for the sake of the man
I loved.”

The tone of her voice was so compelling that Dr. Syn checked his
pony and looked at her. She, too, drew rein involuntarily and met his
gaze, leaning slightly towards him from the saddle. Her face was above
him, for she rode a man's horse and he was crouched on his pony.

For a few long seconds their eyes met, and with a brave glowing hers
took hold and clung to his, binding him to her as the hands do in
matrimony. Instinctively the doctor was disarmed. He felt the warm
blood of youth once more in his veins. Was it possible that this
beautiful girl loved him?

As he asked himself the question, she answered it with a slow nod
and added: “I would take the risk. I love you.”

He felt his back straighten, he knew his eyes glowed as hers did.
Subconsciously, he cursed the secrets that compelled him to ape an
older man. He longed to change his pony for the fierce black horse he
had conquered in the night. He wanted to appear to her the man of
adventure that he was. And that very want betrayed him, for he
dismounted like a young man and stood beneath her, drinking her in as,
leaning forward, she let her curl brush his face.

“Why don't you say what is in your heart?” she urged.

“I can say that,” he whispered. “Yes, at least I can say that with
all honesty. I love you. But in all honour I can never ask you to marry
me. I would to God I could.”

“Because your wife may be alive?” she asked. “I have told you, I put
you before the law, and so would our children when they understood.”

“There are other things,” he went on. “Aye, things black and
damnable. Did you know the half of them, you would turn from me.”

“Let me be the judge of that,” she said quietly. “For now in all
fairness, I have the right.”

“Aye, were the secrets mine, you should share them. But I put others
on their oath never to tell those secrets even to their wives.”

“They were men then—these sharers of your secrets? I am glad of
that, for I began to be jealous. And do they live—these men? Could you
not ask them to release you?”

“I believe the most of them are dead. But an oath is an oath from
which even death could not release us.”

She bowed her head slowly, dismissing all desire to know, since he
had sworn to keep silence. The she laid one hand upon his shoulder and
added: “Even though you say these things were black and damnable, I do
not blame you, for my heart tells me that in all your life you could
never have done anything except your honour forced you.”

“Thank God, I can say aye to that,” he answered. “In the worst
moments of my poor life, when my hands were stained with blood, my
honour drove me to it. A rough-hewn honour it may have been, for I was
then amongst savage men who had no fine perception of what should be.
There were no subtle points to that honour as there are among the
duelling gentlemen of the coffee houses. It was rock-bottom honour, the
foundation of a crude code of law made mostly by unlettered and
ignorant scoundrels. And when fate called on me to administer that law
in all its rigour, I knew that I was merely administering justice in
that particular community. In the Last Day I shall have no fear in
answering the Judge's charge on that score, but to tie you to such a
man—who cannot share his memories with you—my honour forbids that, my
dear.”

“But suppose my honour is rough-hewn, too.” Her fingers gripped his
shoulders tightly. “For I suppose, according to the rules of society, I
have dulled the fine points of mine by telling you I love you. Well,
suppose I go further. Suppose I confess that were you the worst of
criminals standing with a noose about your neck upon the open scaffold,
I should still be proud to say 'I love you'.”

“Good evening, Vicar. Good evening, Miss Cobtree.”

Out of the flatness of the Marsh a third party had appeared. Hidden
by the height of Charlotte's horse, and having taken advantage of the
cover of a deep dyke that ran all the way from the highroad to Mother
Handaway's field-bound cottage, Merry had approached unseen, and
quietly walked round the head of Charlotte's horse upon them.

Dr. Syn's first impulse was to turn angrily upon the intruder, but
he found himself unable to turn away from Charlotte. The sudden
interruption of a conversation so intimate was enough to have thrown
any girl into confusion. She had at least been seen leaning towards the
man she loved so closely that her kiss curl caressed his face, and it
was quite probable that her last words of love which she had spoken
with all the conviction of her brave nature had been overheard. Yet no
blush of shame was apparent on her cheeks as she very slowly raised her
eyes, dancing with smiles, towards the intruder. It seemed to Dr. Syn
that she was as proud of being surprised in her present attitude as she
had boasted she would be beneath his scaffold.

“Good evening, Mr. Merry,” she said, in a voice clear of any
embarrassment. The love that had shown from her eyes during her
confession still danced in them. She had not troubled to alter her
expression. Mr. Merry might have been her dearest confidant for all the
trouble she took to disguise her feelings.

With the doctor it was different. Automatically, imperceptibly and
yet rapidly he changed. When he turned towards Merry he was the kindly,
elderly parson with something of a stoop that was so familiar a figure
to all on Romney Marsh. He looked at Merry's sea-boots, wet with dyke
water, and his kindly eyes took on an expression of reproof.

“You ought to know better, my man, than to spring out of a
hiding-place without warning when a sensitive animal like Miss
Charlotte's horse is standing near. It was foolish. I thought you had
horse sense.”

Without waiting for his reply he turned to Charlotte's horse and ran
his hand beneath the girth. “No, it is not too tight, my dear, though
perhaps the saddle needs adjusting.”

“Help me to dismount then,” she said, “and while you fix it, I will
just run over the field to speak to poor Mother Handaway. She is
standing by the stable door talking to someone, and she will be hurt if
I ride away without a word.”

Dr. Syn walked round to the near side of Charlotte's horse. As he
lifted her from the saddle, he was again aware that Charlotte made no
attempt at hiding her love for him in front of Merry, who at a nod from
his master had sullenly complied by holding the animal's head.

Although for the last twenty years his adventurous life had
subjected him to an iron control of brain and body, he was hard put to
it now not to hurl Merry back into the dyke and then take Charlotte in
his arms and hold her tightly, but the discipline of those twenty years
saved him from doing anything so mischievously delightful. He even
frowned at Charlotte, warning her not to be so provocative. But it was
her moment, and a multitude of Merry would have made no difference.

“Lift me, please,” she pleaded, “for if I jump I may trip in my
skirt and roll into Mr. Merry's dyke.” She laid her hand on Dr. Syn's
shoulder and turned to Merry. “By the way, what were you doing in the
dyke? Catching something?”

“Avoiding someone,” answered Merry, turning his head toward Mother
Handaway's cottage. The he pointed. “Him, to be exact.”

“That man on the horse coming towards us? Why?”

“Ah! You don't know who he is. Neither of you know. But I know. I
keeps an eye open on Romney Marsh, and there ain't much I don't know.
And I knows that I ain't stopping around to be shot at by no jocular
highwayman.”

“Highwayman?” repeated Charlotte, with no hint of the usual shudder
which was customary amongst women as well as many men at the very sound
of the word.

“Aye, and it's the famous Jimmie Bone, if you wants to know,”
whispered Merry. “For a long while I've wished to see him unmasked, and
up by the cottage I did. He was arguing with the old witch. Something
about a stable that he could no longer use, and he seemed very put out.
There's a hundred pound on his head from the authorities, but I ain't
waiting to tell him so,” and leaving the horse's head, Merry slithered
down the dyke bank and plunged into cover of the rushes.

Jimmie Bone saw the manoeuvre, and checked his horse, while he
tucked his three-cornered hat under his arm for the few seconds
required in which to adjust a black mask that covered him to the mouth.
Then clapping his spurs he put his horse at the intervening dyke,
cleared it and galloped to the next, taking it with an ease that showed
consummate horsemanship. In a few seconds he was alongside the dyke in
which Merry was plunging, and had pulled from his holster a long
pistol. Dr. Syn noted that Mr. Bone rode a black horse, not unlike
Gehenna, who had apparently forestalled his stable, and remembering
Grinsley's black mount, he told himself that black horses were
evidently in fashion amongst the local rogues.

“Now then, what's the game? Come out of it, you water rat,” cried
the highwayman to Merry. “Trying to cheat an honest gentleman of the
road from his lawful dues, is it? Come on, it's your money or your
life, so fork out and sharp's the word.”

“Come now, Mr. Bone, is it likely as though I had money,” whined the
terrified Merry.

“Likely, I should say it's certain,” replied the highwayman,
“considering as how you ain't the cove to do something for nothing and
you was give a gold spade for carryin' a message from certain gents I
knows in Rye—aye, a message to yonder old Mother at the cottage, and
considerin' you showed her that same guinea and there ain't no inn
between there and here where you could spend it, considerin' all that,
I says stump up sharp.”

“But look you, Mr. Bone—”

“And not so free with your Mr. Bones,” cut in the highwayman. “We've
never been interdooced to my knowledge, and I've no wish to know yer
better, although I'll be obliged to be better acquainted with that
there guinea. Toss her up.”

“I'm a poor man—” began Merry, reluctantly holding out the guinea
piece.

“And I'll be the richer by a guinea,” laughed the highwayman,
stretching his hand down and taking the coin reluctantly held out to
him. “And now, you stop over this side of the dyke while I deals with
these others. Why, sakes alive, if it ain't a parson. Now, why the
devil couldn't you have been anything but that, and an old 'un, too.”
For while the highwayman had been attending to Merry, Dr. Syn had taken
the opportunity of putting on his reading spectacles. “Oh sakes, had
you but been a justice of the peace, a well fed lawyer, or even some
portly merchant from London city, why then I'd have robbed you
willingly. Why, I never yet have robbed a parson. A selfish virtue,
sir, but if I did it 'ud be the ruin of all good luck that seems to
stand as faithful by me as the horse I ride. Now, the lady is
different. I'll relieve you, Miss, of the pretty pearl string about
your neck, which I see you have taken pains to hide as far as possible
beneath your kerchief. I'll come over for it.”