Джорджетт Хейер - The Toll-Gate

At that moment, the door opened, and Ben slid somewhat warily into the kitchen. Aware of having incurred his friend’s displeasure, he did not venture to address him; but Chirk said encouragingly: “Come here, Benny!” and stretched out a hand.

Much relieved, he bounded across the room. “It’s all right and tight, ain’t it?” he asked anxiously. “And I give Mollie——”

“Never you mind about Mollie! You tell me this, son! Where’s your dad loped off to?”

“I dunno. She knows me, Mollie does! She——”

“Don’t you tell me no lies!” said Chirk sternly. “Your dad never loped off without telling you when he’d be back!”

“Well, he did!” said Ben, wriggling to shake off the grip on his shoulder. “’Leastways, he said he’d be back in an hour, but he never said no more. It don’t matter, Mr. Chirk! I got Jack instead, and we has a bang-up dinner every day, and he’s learnt me to play cards. I like him better than me dad, much! He’s a swell cove!”

“There’s a young varmint for you!” said Chirk, with some severity. “Now, you stand still, Benny, else you don’t give Mollie another carrot as long as you live! Did you ever know your dad go off like this before?”

Ben shook his head vigorously, and once more proffered the suggestion that his dad had been pressed.

“And all the same to you if he was, I suppose!” said Chirk. “Think, now! Didn’t he ever leave you to mind the gate before?”

“Ay. He did when he went to market, or the Blue Boar.”

“Did he leave you all night?”

“No,” Ben muttered, hanging his head.

“Benny!” said Chirk warningly. “You know what’ll happen to you if you tell me any more bouncers, don’t you?”

“Me dad said I wasn’t to tell no one, else he’d break every bone in me body!” said Ben desperately.

“Well, I won’t squeak on you, so he won’t know you whiddled the scrap. And if you don’t, I’ll break every bone in your body, so you won’t be any better off,” said Chirk calmly. “This ain’t the first time your dad’s loped off, is it?”

“Yes, it is!” Ben asseverated. “Only onct, before, he went off and told me to mind the gate in the night, and if anyone was to ask where he was he said to tell ’em he was laid down on his bed with a touch o’ the colic! And he come back before it was morning, honest he did!”

“Where did he go to?”

“I dunno! It was dark, and he woke me up—’least, he didn’t, ’cos there was a waggon, or something, went through the gate, and that woke me. And me dad said as I was to sit by the fire in here till he come back, and to keep me chaffer close, ’cos he was going out.”

“How long was he gone, Benny?”

“A goodish while. All night, I dessay,” replied Ben vaguely. “Nobody comed through the gate, and I went to sleep, and when me dad come in the fire was gone out.”

Chirk let him go. He glanced up at John, slightly frowning. “Queer start!” he remarked.

“Which way did that wagon go, Ben?” asked John.

After a moment’s reflection, Ben said that he thought it was going Sheffield-way. He added that they didn’t often get them along the road after dark; and then, feeling that the subject was exhausted, begged for a sugar-lump to give to the mare. John nodded permission, and he sped forth once more, leaving the two men to look at one another.

“It is a queer start,” said Chirk, rubbing his chin. “Danged if I know what to make of it!”

“What had the waggon to do with it? What was on it?”

“It don’t make a ha’porth o’ difference if there was a cageful o’ wild beasts on it, I don’t see what call Ned had to go along with it!” said Chirk. “If a party o’ mill-kens have been and slummed Chatsworth, and loaded the swag on to that there waggon, they might grease Ned in the fist to keep his mummer shut, but they wouldn’t want him to go along with them!” He pulled out a large silver watch, and consulted it. “Time I was brushing, Soldier! I don’t take the mare up to Kellands, so if you’ll let her bide in the shed till I come back, I’ll be obliged to you.”

The Captain nodded. “She’ll be safe enough. Think it over, Chirk!—and give my message to Rose!”

IT was some two hours later when Chirk came back to the toll-house, and he found the Captain alone, Ben having been sent, protesting, to bed an hour before. The very faintest clink of spurred heels was all that warned John of the highwayman’s return; he caught the sound, and looked up from his task of applying blacking to his top-boots, just as the door opened, and Chirk once more stood before him. In answer to the questioning lift of an eyebrow, he nodded, and, setting the boot down, lounged over to the cupboard, from which he produced a couple of bottles. Whatever suspicions had still lurked in Chirk’s mind at parting, seemed to have been laid to rest. He cast off his coat, without taking the precaution of removing his pistol from its pocket, and, leaving it over the back of a chair beside the door, walked to the fire, and stirred the smouldering logs with one foot. “Where’s the bantling?” he asked.

“Asleep,” John replied, lacing two glasses of port with gin. “He wanted to wait for you to come back, but I packed him off—as soon as he’d shown me your Mollie.” He handed one of the glasses to his guest. “A neatish little mare: strong in work, I should think.”

Chirk nodded. “Ay. Takes her fences flying and standing. Clever, too. She’s the right stamp for a man of my trade. She wouldn’t do for a man of your size. What do you ride, Soldier?”

“Seventeen stone,” John said, with a grimace.

“Ah! You’ll need to keep your prancers high in the flesh, I don’t doubt.” He lifted his glass. “Here’s your good health! It ain’t often I get given flesh-and-blood: it’s to be hoped I don’t get flustered.” He drank, smacked his lips, and said approvingly: “A rum bub! Rose said as I was to tell you she’d be along in the morning to fetch your shirt. Proper set-about she was, when I told her I’d made your acquaintance: combed my hair with a joint-stool, pretty well!” He smiled reminiscently, looking down into the fire, one arm laid along the mantelshelf. Then he sighed, and turned his head. “Seems I’ll have to put a bullet into that Coate, Soldier. Rose is mortal set on getting rid of him.”

“She’s not more set on it than I am, but if you go about the business with your barking-iron I’ll break your neck!” promised John genially. “As good take a bear by the tooth!”

“The old gager—the Squire—saw him tonight,” said Chirk. “Sent for him to go to his room, which has put them all in a quirk, for fear it might send him off in a convulsion. It hadn’t—not while I was there, anyways.” He drained his glass, and set it down. “I’ll pike off now, Soldier, but you’ll be seeing me again. Maybe there’s one or two kens where I might get news of Ned.” A wry smile twisted his mouth. “I’m to take my orders from you, unless I’m wishful to raise a breeze up at Kellands. So help me bob, I don’t know why I don’t haul my wind before that climber mort of mine’s turned me into a regular nose!”

John smiled, and held out his hand. “We shall do!” he said.

“You may do! I’m. more likely to be nippered!” retorted Chirk; but he gripped John’s hand, adding: “No help for it! Fall back, fall edge, I’ve pledged my word to Rose I’ll stand buff. Women!”

Upon this bitterly enunciated dissyllable he was gone, as noiselessly as he had come.

The Captain’s first visitor, the following morning, was Rose, who stepped briskly into the toll-house soon after nine o’clock, cast a critical eye over Mrs. Skeffling’s handiwork, wrested from her clutches the torn shirt, and sallied forth into the garden in search of Captain Staple. She found him chopping wood. He greeted her with his disarming smile, and a cheerful good-morning. He then listened with becoming meekness to a comprehensive scold, which, although apparently aimed at the unsuitability of his occupation and his attire, was, as he perfectly understood, a punishment for having dared to discover the trend of her maidenly affections.

“But chopping wood is capital exercise!” he said.

“Capital exercise indeed! I’m sure I don’t know what the world’s coming to! And I’ll thank you, Mr. Jack, not to go sending messages to me that you’ll stable Mr. Chirk’s mare to please me! I never did! I declare I was never so mortified! I should be a deal better pleased if Mr. Chirk would take himself off, and not come bothering me any more, for I’m a respectable woman, and keep company with a highwayman I will not!”

“No, I do think he must abandon that way of life,” agreed John.

“It’s nothing to me what he does!” said Rose.

“Poor Chirk!”

Her face puckered. She whisked out her handkerchief and rather fiercely blew her nose. “It’s no manner of use, Mr. Jack!” she said, in a muffled tone. “You ought to know better than to encourage him! I can’t and I won’t marry a man who might be carried off to gaol any moment!”

“Certainly not: you would never know a day’s peace! Besides, it’s not at all the thing. But he doesn’t expect you to marry him under such circumstances as that, does he?”

She sat down on the chopping-block, and wiped her eyes. “No, he says he’ll settle down, and live honest, farming. But talking pays no toll, sir, and where is the money to come from to buy a cottage, let alone a farm?”

The Captain refrained from telling her that Mr. Chirk proposed to found his career as an honest farmer on the theft of some traveller’s strong-box, and merely said: “Would you marry him, if he were not a highwayman?”

She nodded, and disappeared into the handkerchief again. “To think, after all these years, and the offers I’ve had, I should take and fall in love with a common vagabond!” she said, into its folds. “Enough to make my poor mother turn in her grave! For I was brought up respectable, Mr. Jack!”