‘Get tea for me, wench, in half an hour,’
said he, this time quite quietly, though still sternly,
and without seeming to observe the quaking boy, who,
at first sight, referred these martial preparations
to a resolution to do execution upon him forthwith;
’you’ll find me in the garden when it’s
ready.’
And he strode out, and pushing open the wicket door
in the thick garden hedge, and, with his cane shouldered,
walked with a quick, resolute step down towards the
pretty walk by the river, with the thick privet hedge
and the row of old pear trees by it. And that
was the last that was heard or seen of Mr. Nutter
for some time.
SWANS ON THE WATER.
At about half-past six that evening, Puddock arrived
at Captain Cluffe’s lodgings, and for the last
time the minstrels rehearsed their lovelorn and passionate
ditties. They were drest ‘all in their best,’
under that outer covering, which partly for mystery
and partly for bodily comfort—the wind,
after the heavy rains of the last week, having come
round to the east—these prudent troubadours
wore.
Though they hardly glanced at the topic to one another,
each had his delightful anticipations of the chances
of the meeting. Puddock did not value Dangerfield
a rush, and Cluffe’s mind was pretty easy upon
that point from the moment his proposal for Gertrude
Chattesworth had taken wind.
Only for that cursed shower the other night, that
made it incumbent on Cluffe, who had had two or three
sharp little visits of his patrimonial gout, and no
notion of dying for love, to get to his quarters as
quickly as might be—he had no doubt that
the last stave of their first duet rising from the
meadow of Belmont, with that charming roulade—devised
by Puddock, and the pathetic twang-twang of his romantic
instrument, would have been answered by the opening
of the drawing-room window, and Aunt Becky’s
imperious summons to the serenaders to declare themselves,
and come in and partake of supper!
The only thing that at all puzzled him, unpleasantly
connected with that unsuccessful little freak of musical
love-making, was the fellow they saw getting away
from under the open window—the very same
at which Lilias Walsingham had unintentionally surprised
her friend Gertrude. He had a surtout on, with
the cape cut exactly after the fashion of Dangerfield,
and a three-cocked hat with very pinched corners, in
the French style, which identical hat Cluffe was ready
to swear he saw upon Dangerfield’s head very
early one morning, as he accidentally espied him viewing
his peas and tulips in the little garden of the Brass
Castle by the river side.
’Twas fixed, in fact, in Cluffe’s mind
that Dangerfield was the man; and what the plague
need had a declared lover of any such clandestine
manoeuvres. Was it possible that the old scoundrel
was, after all, directing his night visits differently,
and keeping the aunt in play, as a reserve, in the
event of the failure of his suit to the niece?
Plans as gross, he knew, had succeeded; old women
were so devilish easily won, and loved money too,
so well sometimes.
