She held out her hand and looked up into his face, and then he caught her in his arms; but even as he did so it seemed as though the dead past came back again, and that it was Leicester, and not the stranger, who held her to his heart.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE SECOND MEETING OF THE CYNIC AND THE COUNTRYWOMAN

"You'll be back for your lunch, Mr. Ricordo?"

"No, Mrs. Briggs. I'm going for a long walk, a very long walk; I don't know how far."

"But you'll be back for dinner to-night?"

"Don't expect me till you see me."

The simple country-woman looked up into his face, and although she did not know why, she thought she saw a change in him. The old look of cynical melancholy was gone, the eyes were no longer half closed, but wide open, eager, expectant.

"Did 'ee sleep well last night, sur?"

"I had strange dreams, Mrs. Briggs, very strange."

"Pleasant, I hope, sur."

"They were very strange, very wonderful. Good-morning, Mrs. Briggs.

Don't be anxious about me."

He left the house and took the road up to the golf links. When he reached the top of the hill, he stopped and took a long look at Olive's home. He knew she expected him this morning; he had told her that he would come and ask her father to consent to her becoming his wife. But he did not intend going; he wanted to be away among the moors, he wanted to think. His last evening's experiences had meant more to him than he knew. Mrs. Briggs was right when she thought she saw a change in him.

The world yesterday and the world to-day were different, and he was different. He was no longer the thoughtful, melancholy Eastern gentleman who called himself Ricordo; he was Radford Leicester. Not only had he risen from the dead, but the past had risen. The buried years seemed to be with him again, in a way he could scarcely realise.

When he had left England long years before, he had left it with one thought in his mind. He would go away only to return again, and he would return only to be revenged on the woman he had loved. For his love had turned to hatred. As he had loved pa.s.sionately, and with all the fervour of his nature, now he hated with as much intensity. For a few weeks he had lived in paradise only to be cast into an inferno, all the more ghastly because of the paradise in which he had lived. Through her he had become disgraced, through her he had become the byword of all who had known him. He had been a proud man, and this woman had wounded his pride, she had wounded his sense of justice, she had aroused all that was evil in him. And he had vowed vengeance. Revenge is one of the primitive pa.s.sions of humanity, and when Leicester found himself cast on the sea of life, without anchor or rudder, he determined that he would make Olive Castlemaine suffer as he had suffered. His disgrace should be hers. If he had been the byword for all who had known him, so should she.

At length when the time was ripe he came to England again. In his mind only one thought held possession in his heart, only one feeling was dominant--his hatred for the woman whom he had once loved should find expression. When he came to Vale Linden, and saw how matters stood, he formulated his plans. The thing he had conceived was cruel, but he had gloated over it. After all, the veneer of civilisation counts for very little. Rob a man of religion and he is only a savage, with a savage's instincts and desires. The Mosaic code expresses the natural bent of the heart; "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth." For years Leicester had brooded over his vow, and now the debt should be paid to the uttermost farthing. No thought of pity or of mercy came into his mind.

He felt he had been wronged; love had turned to hatred, and he would be revenged. The savage in him was covered by the thin veneer of civilisation, but it was there.

He seemed in a strange mood as he walked rapidly across the moors.

Sometimes he laughed quietly, as though some pleasant thought possessed him, and again he became moody, stern, and silent. But he was no longer the "Eastern gentleman with a fez." The day was warm, and he had clothed himself in a suit of light flannels, and instead of a fez he wore a panama. In spite of his black beard and brown skin he would no longer be taken for an Eastern. Every movement was that of an athletic Englishman.

He was no longer acting a part; the old life was soon to come to an end, and he would begin anew. What that new life was he hardly dared to confess even to himself, but it was there, in the background of his mind.

"I have won, I have got my way, I have conquered," he said again and again as he strode along. "G.o.d, if there is a G.o.d, is giving me my revenge. And if there is any justice in the world, it is just."

Hour after hour he walked; he seemed to be trying to tire himself, to, in some way, throw off the abundant energy that surged within him.

Presently he came to a shady dell, where he stopped. At his feet gurgled a stream of clear water. He lay flat on his face and took a long, deep drink.

"I wonder what whisky would taste like now," he said to himself. "It is six years since I touched it, six years; but the first year was a year of torment."

He shuddered at the thought of it. The memory of the time when it held him enslaved was terrible to him even yet.

"But I conquered it," he went on; "I vowed I would, and I have. Had the struggle been ten times as hard, I would have conquered it. No man is master of anything if whisky masters him."

He sat down beneath the tree and ate a simple lunch, then, taking another deep draught of the water, he continued his walk. A high hill was in front of him covered with gorse and bracken. In a few minutes he reached the top, and then he looked around him.

A look of recognition came into his eyes. He saw the cottage at which he had stayed after he had been driven out of Taviton; away in the distance was the pool which the country people said was haunted by the devil. He remembered it when he saw it last as dark and forbidding, but to-day it gleamed in the sunlight. Below him, not much more than a mile away, was the farmhouse in which he had sheltered himself from a storm, when he was planning what he should do with his life.

Scarcely without knowing why, he turned his footsteps towards the farm.

"I wonder if the woman lives there still?" he said to himself. "Let me see, what was she called? Yes, Mrs. Pethick, I remember now, and she talked religion to me. She believed in it, too!"

He cast his mind back over the years again, and remembered what the woman had said to him.

"I wonder, I wonder if there's anything in it, after all?" he said with a sigh.

Everything was quiet at the farmyard when he came to it. A sheep-dog lifted his head sleepily and prepared to growl, but, seeing a well-dressed man, decided that all was well. The chickens crouched beneath the shade of a tree; evidently the day was too warm for them to care to seek for food. Nothing was to be heard save the hum of insects and the occasional chirp of a bird. It was far warmer there in the farmyard than up among the moors where he had been walking.

Leicester walked up to the kitchen door and knocked.

"Come in," said a voice which, in spite of the years which had elapsed, Leicester remembered.

He opened the door and walked in. He recognised the kitchen at once--the cool slate floor, the huge chimney-place at the end, and the long deal table. Then a huge fire leaped up the chimney. Now there were only a few red embers, on which a kettle sang merrily.

Mrs. Pethick appeared as he entered. She was but little altered; the six years had sat lightly upon her, and she looked the same healthy, buxom country-woman that she had looked then. And yet Leicester thought he saw a sadder look in her eyes, and he wondered why it was.

"I wondered if you would sell me a gla.s.s of milk, ma'am," he said by way of introducing himself.

"Gla.s.s ov milk," she replied. "You c'n 'ave so much milk as you mind to, but I shaan't zell a drap a milk. 'Twud'dn be vitty."

"You mean that you won't take any money?" said Leicester.

"To be sure I wa'ant. I shud be shaamed to look 'ee in the faace, ef I wos to taake yer money fer a drop o' milk."

Leicester laughed at the woman's vehemence.

"Have 'ee come from far then, sur; you do look 'ot and tired?" she continued.

"Yes, I have walked a good many miles--from Vale Linden. Have you ever heard of it?"

"Iss, I've 'eerd ov it, but I've never been there. Why, that must be more'n twenty mile."

"Very likely. I've walked from there."

"And how be 'ee goin' back?"

"I'm going to walk."

"Good gracious! Why--but wudden 'ee ruther 'ave a cup of tay, sur?"

"I am afraid it would be troubling you."