"Why, Mr. Taffendale's the very man!" said the old minister. "I know him to be a wealthy man. He's on a committee of which I'm a member, so I meet him now and then. I'll tell you what I'll do, Mrs. Perris, if you like. I'll write him a note, saying that you've told me your troubles, and that I'm sure he won't be disappointed if he helps you. How would that be?"
"Thanking you kindly, Mr. Marriner, it would be a good help," Rhoda answered. "I should feel less what you might call ashamed and frightened about it if I had some writing of yours to show."
"All right, all right!" said the old man. "I'll write it now. I think you'll find Mr. Taffendale a likely man to apply to. Tell him all you've told me; let him see you mean business. He'll see then, I'm sure, that you know what you're talking about."
"Oh, I know what I'm talking about, Mr. Marriner!" said Rhoda, with quiet confidence. "I don't talk for talking's sake. And I know what I can do if I set out to do it."
Ten minutes later, when the old minister had mounted his horse and ridden away, Rhoda, holding the note which he had given her, stood in the darkness outside the chapel, thinking. Once she turned in the homeward direction, only to pause before she had taken many steps. And after the pause she suddenly turned in the other direction and began to walk rapidly down the village street, already deserted and quiet.
"Since it's got to be done, I'll do it now," she muttered to herself. "I'll do it, and get it over."
Martinsthorpe was a long, straggling village lying in a valley which ran from east to west. It was divided into two halves by a high-road running north and south, and transecting the one street at the point where the Dancing Bear looked down from his swinging sign upon the cross-roads formed by the intersection. In the western half of the village stood the church, the school, the principal farmsteads, and the great house of the place; in the eastern there was nothing more pretentious in the way of human habitation than the smithy, the carpenter's shop, a general store kept by an old woman, various clusters of labourers' cottages, and the little chapel. Beyond lay open and uninhabited country which stretched, wood, meadow and arable land, for many a mile before the next village showed itself through its ring of ash and elm. But just beyond the chapel a footpath ran across the valley and up the hillside in the direction of the Limepits, Taffendale's place on the uplands, and this Rhoda took, and followed with swift steps. Having made up her mind on the question which—in spite of her silence upon it during her conversation with the old minister—had been agitating it all day, she was resolved on a plan of action, and she went with firmness and resolution to its first beginnings.
The great stretch of flat land on which the Lime-pits Farm stood like some giant ship in the midst of an otherwise lonely sea, was silent almost to oppression as Rhoda passed across it in the dusky night. Long before she reached it she saw the gaunt farmstead outlined against the stars. Something in its vast solidity, its bulky mass of house and outhouse, barn and granary gave her a curious sense of power, wealth, security—it seemed to typify Taffendale and his money. And as she drew nearer the sense deepened, for opposite the farm lay the famous limepits, from which the bulk of that money was drawn, and from the burning pits a dull glow of fiery red was rising to the night. She stood for a moment between the two sources of wealth which were in this one man's control, and she felt the glow of the burning pits play over her face, and caught the pungent odour of the lime in her nostrils. Then, with a quick catching of her breath she turned boldly to the farmhouse and knocked firmly at its door.
Chapter IV
Taffendale, always a man of action, and supremely interested in his numerous affairs, had been out and about during the whole of a long day. From an early hour of the morning until close upon noon he had been busied with the demands made upon him by his farm and his lime quarry; after dinner he had galloped into the market-town to attend the weekly auction sale, and had subsequently gone to a special meeting of the Board of Guardians; on his return home he had had his correspondence to deal with; his early supper over, he had given two hours to his account books. And when Rhoda's knock sounded at his door, he had just put on his slippers, lighted his pipe, mixed himself a glass of whisky-and-water, and was about to spend a quiet hour over the newspaper before going to bed. That last hour at night, he was accustomed to say, was the only one he ever really got to himself.
The sound of the firm, decisive knock, reverberating through the stone-walled passages of the big house, caused Taffendale to take his pipe out of his mouth and to look vaguely around him. His farmstead was so isolated in the midst of the lonely land, so far away from any other habitation and from the nearest high-road, that it was a rare thing for any person to come there at any time except by invitation or on business; that any one should call there at such a late hour of the night was something quite out of the common. He sat for a moment wondering if he had heard aright; then he remembered that his housekeeper and servants always went to bed at nine o'clock, and that there was no one to answer this unusual summons. With the unwillingness of a man who dislikes disturbance all the more because its cause is unknown to him, Taffendale slowly raised himself out of his chair and went down the hall to open the front door. In the light of the swinging lamp he recognised Rhoda Perris. The rustic porch in which she stood made a sort of setting and frame around her; behind her the red glow of the burning lime-kilns, across the garden and the road, conspired with the deep blue of the night to form a background to her figure and to the warm tint of her hair. Taffendale felt himself start at the unexpected sight of her.
"Mrs.—Mrs. Perris?" he said questioningly.
"Good evening, Mr. Taffendale," she replied in tones which were curiously suggestive of timidity and yet of assurance. "You'll excuse me for calling at a time like this, but can I have a word with you?"
Taffendale stood aside and motioned her to enter.
"Come in—come in!" he said. "Yes—yes; certainly, Mrs. Perris."
Closing the door, he led the way back to his sitting-room, wondering greatly what had brought Perris's wife there. No reason for her visit suggested itself to him; he was still speculating about it in a vague, indefinite fashion when he led her into the room and pushed forward the easy-chair from which he had just risen. And as Rhoda took it he plunged his hands deep into the pockets of the riding-breeches in which he had been going about all day, and had been too busy to take off before his supper, according to his usual practice, and stood looking down at her with the doubtful expression of a puzzled man. As he looked, the consciousness of the woman's attractive and compelling femininity forced itself upon him; he felt, rather than saw, the healthy glow of her cheeks, reddened by the rush of the wind across the uplands over which she had walked, and the clearness of her grey eyes and the warmth of her hair, and something stirred within himself and troubled him. He withdrew one hand from a pocket and rubbed his chin as if in perplexity.
"It's—it's rather cold to-night," he said suddenly. "It—it turns cold of a night. Will you take anything, Mrs. Perris?"
He glanced at the spirit-case which stood on the table, and he made a move towards it with the zest of a man who finds relief from embarrassment in action.
Rhoda raised her head and shook it.
"Oh, no, thanking you kindly, Mr. Taffendale," she hastened to say. "I never touch spirits."
"A glass of wine, then," said Taffendale. "Come—a glass of port won't do you any harm. And if you're afraid of drinking it without eating, there's a cake somewhere. My housekeeper's gone to bed, but I know there's always a plum-cake at hand."
He had turned to a sideboard as he spoke, and had begun fumbling about in one of its recesses. Rhoda made no answer to this second invitation except to murmur something inarticulate which might be taken as acquiescent; she sat in front of the blazing fire, instinctively appreciative