Again the long lash trembled over her head; again it cracked like a gun-shot somewhere in front of her, but this time, by the help of the recoil and by the sheer strength of her wrist, the lash darted out again behind her--as it seemed, under her very arm--and let out the report of a second barrel in the rear. And this fore-and-aft recoil cracking went on without intermission for at least a
minute--that minute during which the Judge's shaving was interrupted. Then it stopped, and there was a fine wild light in the Bride's
eyes, and her breath came quickly, and her lips and cheeks were glowing crimson.
The phlegmatic lad was quite speechless, and, in fact, with his gaping mouth and lolling tongue he presented a rather cruel spectacle. But the coachman found an [55] awestruck word or two: 'My soul and body!' he gasped.
'Ah!' said the Bride, 'that is something flash, ain't it though? I wonder I hadn't forgotten it. And now you have a try, old man!'
Honest Garrod, the coachman, opened his eyes wide. He knew that this was Mrs Alfred; he had heard that Mrs Alfred was an Australian; but he could scarcely believe his ears.
'No, miss--no, mum--thank you,' he faltered. The 'miss' came much more naturally than the 'mum.'
'Come on!' cried the Bride.
'I'd rather not, miss--mum,' said the coachman.
'What rot!' said Gladys. 'Here--that's it--bravo! Now blaze away!'
The old man had given in, simply because this extraordinary young lady was irresistible. The first result of his weakness was a yell of pain from the stable-boy; the poor lad's face was bleeding where the lash had struck it. Rough apologies followed. Then the old coachman--who was not without mettle, and was on it, for the moment--took off his coat and tried again. After [56] many futile efforts, however, he only succeeded in coiling the lash tightly round his own legs; and that made an end of it; the old man gave it up.
'Show us some more, mum,' said he. 'I've got too old and stiff for them games,'--as if in his youth he had been quite at home with the stock-whip, and only of late years had got rusty in the art of cracking it.
'Right you are,' said Gladys, gaily, when her laughter was over--she had a hearty, but a rather musical laugh. 'Give me the whip. Now, have you got a coin--a sixpence? No? No odds, here's half a sov. in my purse that'll do as well; and you shall have it, either of you that do this side o' Christmas what I'm going to do now. I'm going to show you a trick and a half !'
Her eyes sparkled with excitement: she was rather over-excited, perhaps. She placed the coin upon the ground, retreated several paces, measured the distance with her eye, and smartly raised the handle of the stock-whip. The crack that followed was the plain, straightforward crack, only executed with greater precision than before. Then she had resembled nothing so much as an angler idly flogging a stream; the difference was that [57] now, as it were, she was throwing at a rise. And she threw with wonderful skill; for, at the first crack, the half-sovereign spun high into the air and fell with a ring upon the cement; she had picked it up on the point of the lash!
It was a surprising feat. That she managed to accomplish it at the first attempt surprised no one so much as the Bride herself. This also added in a dangerous degree to her excitement. She was now in little less than a frenzy. She seemed to forget where she was, and to think that she was back on the station in New South Wales, where she could do what she liked.
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'Now that you've seen I can do that,' she cried to the lad, 'stand you with your back to the wall there, and I'll take your hat off for you!'
The answer of the dull youth was astonishingly wise; he said nothing at all, but beat a hasty retreat into the safety of the saddle-room.
She turned to the trembling Garrod. 'Then you!'
Even as he demurred, he saw her hand go up. Next moment the whipcord hissed past his face and there was a deafening report in [58] his right ear, and the next a fearful explosion just under his left ear, and many more at every turn and corner of his face, while the poor man stood with closed eyes and unuttered prayers. It was an elaborate substitute for the simpler fun of whipping his cap off, the unhappy creature being bareheaded already. At last, feeling himself still untouched, Garrod opened his eyes, watched his opportunity, and, while the lash still quivered in mid-air, turned and made a valiant bolt for shelter. His shirt was cut between the shoulder-blades as cleanly as though a knife had done it, but he reached the saddle-room with a whole skin.
'Ye cowardly devils!' roared the Bride, now beside herself--her dark eyes ablaze with diabolical merriment. 'I'll keep you there all
day, so help me, if you don't come out of it!' And, in the execution of her threat, the long lash cracked in the doorway with terrifying echoes.
At that moment, wildly excited as she was, she became conscious of a new presence in the yard. She turned her head, to see a somewhat mean-looking figure in ancient tweed, with his back to the light, but apparently regarding her closely from under [59] the shadow of his broad felt wideawake.
'Another of 'em, I do declare!' cried the Bride. And with that the lash cracked in the ears of the unfortunate new-comer, who stood as though turned to stone.
The blue sky, from this luckless person's point of view, became alive with the writhings of serpents, hell-black and numberless. His ears were filled and stunned with the fiendish musketry. He stood like a statue; his hands were never lifted from the pockets of his Norfolk jacket; he never once removed his piercing gaze from the wild face of his tormentor.
'Why don't you take off your hat to a lady?' that lunatic now shouted, laughing hoarsely, but never pausing in her vile work. 'Faith, but I'll do it for you!'
The wideawake then and there spun up into the air, even as the half-sovereign had spun before it. And the very next instant the
stock-whip slipped from the fingers of the Bride. She had uncovered the gray hairs of her father-in-law, Sir James Bligh! At the same moment there was a loud shout behind her, and she staggered backward almost into the arms of her horror-stricken [60] husband. Even then the Bride knew that Granville was there too, watching her misery with grinning eyes. And the Judge did not move a mus-cle, but stood as he had stood under her fire, piercing her through and through with his stern eyes; and there was an expression upon his face which the worst malefactors he had ever dealt with had perhaps not seen there; and a terrible silence held the air after the mad uproar of the last few minutes.
That awful stillness was broken by the patter of unsteady footsteps. With a crimson face the Bride tottered rather than ran across the yard, and fell upon her knees on the wet cement, at the Judge's feet.
'Forgive me,' she said; 'I never saw it was you!' [61]
CHAPTER V
GRANVILLE ON THE SITUATION
It was in the forenoon of the same day that Granville entered abruptly his mother's sanctum. Lady Bligh was busily writing at the great office-table, but she looked up at once and laid down her pen. Granville threw himself into her easiest chair with an air of emancipation.
'They have gone!' he ejaculated. If he had referred to the British workman or to the bailiffs he could not have employed more emphatic tones of relief; so Lady Bligh naturally asked to whom he did refer.
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'To the happy pair!' said Granville.
'They have gone to town, then?'
'To town for the day.'
Lady Bligh took up her pen again, but [62] only to wipe it, deliberately. 'Now, Granville,' she said, leaning back in her chair, 'I want you to tell me the truth about--about whatever happened before breakfast. I don't know yet quite what did happen. I want to get at the truth; but so far I have been able to gather only shreds and patches of the truth.'
Granville rose briskly to his feet and took his stand upon the hearthrug. Then he leant an elbow on the chimney-piece, adjusted his eyeglass, and smiled down upon Lady Bligh. One easily might have imagined that the task imposed upon him was congenial in the extreme. Without further pressing he told