Two Sides of the Face | Page 9

try,' I said. Everyone's
prettily talking about the case."
"What can it concern anyone over there?"
"Why, bless you, the wide world's ringing with it! And look here,
master, I'll tell you another thing. The country's with you to a man.
You've been shamefully used, they say, and they mean it. Why, you've
only to lift a hand and you can have 'em at your back to defy the Sheriff
and all his works--if ever it should come to that."
"It won't," said Roger, turning back to the house.
This was the first news to reach him that his affairs were being publicly
discussed, and for a moment it annoyed him. Of danger he had scarcely
a suspicion. Here at Steens the days passed quietly, the servants
obeying him as though he had been master for years. They brought him
no gossip, and any rumours Malachi picked up Malachi kept to himself.
Roger, never a man to talk with servants, brooded rather on the
attempted wrong. That in itself was enough to sour a man. He had met
it with prompt action and baulked it, but he nursed a sense of injury. He
felt especially bitter towards Mr. Jose, first of all for permitting such a
will to be made without discovering it, and next for shilly-shallying
over the decisive counter-stroke. To possible trouble ahead he gave no
thought.
The days drew on to hay-harvest, and on the 5th of June Roger and his

men started to mow Behan Parc, a wide meadow to the east of the
house. Roger took a scythe himself: he enjoyed mowing.
By noon the field was half-shorn, and the master, pausing to whet his
scythe, had begun to think upon dinner, when at a call from Malachi he
looked up to see a ragged wastrel of a man picking his way across the
swathes towards him with a paper in his hand.
"Hullo! What's this?" he demanded, taking the paper and unfolding it.
As his eye took in its contents the blood surged up and about his
temples. He tore the paper across and across again, flung the pieces on
the ground, and stooped for his scythe.
The wastrel cast a wild look about him and fled. As he turned,
presenting his back, Roger hurled his hone. It caught him a little above
the shoulder-blades, almost on the neck, and broke in two pieces. The
unhappy man pitched forward on his face.
Some of the mowers ran to pick him up. "Thee'st killed him, master, for
sure!" cried one.
"Ch't!" snarled Roger, and strode back to the house without another
look.
The law was in motion, then, and in motion to oust him! He could
scarcely believe it; indeed, it was scarcely thinkable. But over his first
blind, incredulous rage there swept a passionate longing to be alone in
the house --to sit in it and look about him and assure himself. Without
thought of what he did, he touched the door-jamb reverently as he
stepped across the threshold. He wandered from room to room, and
even upstairs, feeling the groove in the oaken stair-rail familiar under
his palm. Yes, it was his, this home of dead and gone Stephens; it was
here, and he was its master. And of this they would dare to deprive
him--they, an interloping trollop and a dirty little attorney! No, it
couldn't be done. He clenched and unclenched his fists. It could never
be done in England; but the wrong was monstrous, all the same.

By-and-by he grew calmer, went down to the parlour, ate his dinner,
and sallied out to the meadow again. The wastrel had disappeared.
Roger asked no questions, but took up his scythe, stepped into the rank,
and mowed. He mowed like a giant, working his men fairly to a
standstill. They eyed him askance, and eyed each other as they fell
behind. But disregarding the rank, he strode on and on, scything down
the grass-- his grass, grown on his earth, reaped with his sweat.

IX.
The hay had been gathered and stacked, and the stacks thatched; and
still Roger lived on at Steens unmolested. He began to feel that the
danger had blown over, and for this security old Malachi was
responsible. Malachi had witnessed the scene in the hayfield, and
dreamed for nights after of the look on his master's face. The next time
a messenger arrived (he told himself) there would be murder done; and
the old man, hazy upon all other points of the law and its operations,
had the clearest notion of its answer to murder. He had seen gibbets in
his time, and bodies dangling from them in chains.
He began to watch the road for messengers, and never slackened his
watch. Six in all he intercepted during