The large mansion at Iffley stood in its own distinctive grounds, and was hidden by trees. A high wall ran round three sides, and the river completed the circle of defence upon the fourth.
Doctor Syn rode to the Lodge gates, and without dismounting rang the bell.
A forbidding-looking man-servant came out from the Lodge and asked him his business. He opened one side of the great gates with an ill grace, and Doctor Syn noted that he locked it again directly he had passed through.
Now, it so happened that the Squire of Iffley had heard that Doctor Syn had forbidden his pupils to play cards or dice, and as this had been one of the Bully's sources of income, he was enraged to see the cause of his disappointment riding up the drive.
Bully Tappitt did not wait for his servant to open the front door. He opened it himself, and, grabbing a heavy whip from a handy peg, strode out in a fine rage on to the porch steps.
“And what the devil brings you here?” he asked brusquely. “I thought you had warned your companions against visiting me. However, if you are here to play behind their backs, I am your man, with cards or dice in secret.”
“I am not here for gaming, sir,” replied Doctor Syn, without dismounting. “I bring you a message from a lady.”
“The devil you do,” laughed the Squire. “Come in your official position as a parson, no doubt. Well, understand that I am not paying compensation to any woman who has had the privilege of my attentions.”
“There is no question of attentions in this case, sir,” replied Doctor Syn coldly. “You have not had the honour of meeting the lady in question, and she will only extend you that honour in the presence of myself and her English legal adviser, Mr. Antony Cobtree. She will receive you at White Friars House, St.
Giles', tomorrow at noon, if you desire to interview her concerning your nephew's affairs in Spain.”
“Are you talking of the Almago women from Madrid?” asked Tappitt.
“I have the honour to be speaking on behalf of the Se—ora Almago, sir.”
“Are they in Oxford, then?” he demanded.
“They are, sir,” went on Syn. “I myself have lodged them with the good woman who lets the apartments I named.”
“But they were to come here. What the devil!” exploded the Squire. “Why are they not here? I invited them.”
“Pardon me, sir. The invitation was null and void, and under the circumstances demanded no reply.” Doctor Syn spoke quietly, but with a cold disdain. “The letter did not come from you. It came, in fact, from nobody, for, as I pointed out to my good friends at Lympne Castle, and have since confirmed it, there is no such person as Elinor Tappitt, wife to the Squire of Iffley. You are a bachelor.”
“And who are you to interfere with my schemes—” started the Squire.
“Schemes, eh?” repeated the Doctor. “I can well believe that. I will tell you my authority. I am the prospective son-in-law to the Se—ora. Yes, sir, her daughter, the Se—orita, with her mother's consent, has promised to marry me.”
“Marry you?” retorted the Squire. “We'll see about that. I rather think she will marry my nephew.”
Doctor Syn shook his head. “She has already refused him, sir.”
“Then if he's such a fool as I always suspected, she shall marry me,” said the Squire. “Or I'll marry the widow, and then refuse you the daughter. Yes, sir, I'll brook no interference from a hypocritical young parson, who no doubt thinks to get the dead Spaniard's money into his own coffers.”
“There is no more to be said, I think, sir. Tomorrow at noon. Good day.”
“Oh no,” replied the Squire. “Not good day yet. I have not finished with you.”
“But I have with you till noon tomorrow,” replied Doctor Syn, turning his horse's head down the long drive and riding slowly away.
“I think not, till my grooms have done with you,” cried the Squire. He then bawled out the words: “Stables, quick! All of you!” Doctor Syn saw him run into the stable yard, and so put his own horse to the canter.
The drive was a long one through an avenue of trees. Fortunately the young parson knew the lie of the ground. He remembered that there was a back lane from the stables which was a short cut to the Lodge gates. He remembered that these gates were locked. Even at the gallop he could hardly reach them and persuade the man to open before the arrival of the half-dozen bullies that Bully Tappitt kept to do other and dirtier work than grooming. Just as he was considering the possibility of attempting a gallop, he heard the deep bell clanging from the stable tower, and guessed that this must be a signal to the lodge-keeper to stop him. The bell was followed by a banging of doors, cries from stablemen, cracking of whips, and then the full-throated baying of hounds.
Doctor Syn had no intention of riding into such disadvantage. He knew well that Bully Tappitt would not scruple to go to extremes. This at the best would be a flogging, perhaps injury to his horse, and then as an excuse a trumped-up accusation of libellous interference, which the Squire would lodge against him to the College authorities. The odds were too heavy to risk. It was then that a richer way out occurred to him.
Turning his horse sharp to the right, he rode through the woods, along the mossy path that led to the river. The Isis ran there broad and wide, but it would not be the first time that the young scholar had swum his horse, and he considered that a wetting and a laugh against Tappitt in the face of his bullies were preferable to a bad manhandling. He was no coward, as he was to show by the different risk he was to take, but as a lover he was not desirous to court any facial disfigurement.
So he galloped through the wood in the opposite direction taken by his would-be assailants. Just as he approached the boathouse, a voice cried out, “Now, then, sir, what do you want?” A heavily built waterman barred his way. He was armed with a short, sharp boat-hook.
The Doctor reined in his horse. “I have been talking to your master, the Squire of Iffley,” he answered pleasantly, waving his hand towards the river.
“He thinks that this little ditch is unswimmable, on horseback. You know how given he is to a wager. I am about to prove to him that a good horse and rider find it easy. What do you think?”
“I think not,” growled the boatman. “The stable bell has been clanging, and that means 'close all ways out of the estate'.”
“If you come here, I'll give you good reason not to detain me,” replied Doctor Syn, affably putting his hand into his breeches pocket. He saw the covetous glint come into the other's eye. He read his thought, “If this fool cares to hand me a guinea to get out of here, I'll take it, stop him leaving and then deny his gift to my master.” Doctor Syn sure enough held up the guinea invitingly with his right hand.
The man approached, and put out one hand for the coin, and with the other tried to grasp the rein. The rider shortened rein to prevent this, and at the same time distracted the other's attention with a sudden “Hallo! Is this a good one? I believe not. I've been done brown. I should have rung them one by one. It looks to me—well, dull.”
“I'll ring it,” said the other eagerly. “Let's see.”
“I'll try it in my teeth,” answered Syn.
He suited the action to the word; put the coin between his teeth, and made a face as though biting hard.
The man waited for his judgment, eyeing the guinea held so firmly in the young man's white teeth. Instead he should have kept his eye on the young man's right hand. The fist closed, and a terrific blow caught the waterman under the jaw. Down the bank he rolled into the water, and down the bank went horse and rider straight into the river; and by the time the man scrambled for the bank and held his jaw, Doctor Syn was in midstream heading for the bank.
The current was stronger than he thought, and swept his horse below the opposite landing-stage, but Doctor Syn headed for a meadow belonging to a little farm, intending to land there, despite a notice on a tree which said, “Trespassers will be prosecuted.” The owner of the farm happened to be out with a fowling-piece under his arm, and, objecting to the swimming would-be trespasser, cried out: “Now then, if, as I saw, you come from yonder cursed place, you should know what to expect from me if you attempt to touch my bank. I've suffered enough from the sins of the Tappitt crowd, so my advice is, swim back as fast as you can, lest I drill holes in you.”
“I've just escaped from there, my good friend,” Doctor Syn called back. “I preferred a wetting to a whipping from the rascals. So of your charity let me land here, or my horse may drown.”
“Who are you, then?” asked the farmer cautiously.
“A young doctor of Queen's College,” he answered. “And with every cause to hate the folk behind me.” The farmer immediately came down from the bank and pointed out the best spot for landing, which was no sooner accomplished than Doctor Syn was asking which was the best bridge to cross in order to come upon the road leading past the gates of Iffley Court, and on the way to Oxford.
“I wish to have the laugh of them from the safe side of their locked gates,” he said. “Aye, and before they have discovered how I have tricked them, too,” he added.
For this reason of haste, he refused the farmer's offer of a stable for his horse and grooming, while he should dry his clothes by the kitchen fire, and himself with a warming drink.
But for all his haste, the farmer insisted on rubbing down the horse with a wisp of grass, and as he did so he talked. “I'll show you the way beyond the house. You can gallop it in three minutes, while they'll be hunting you in the grounds, or waiting for you to break cover. You'll reach Iffley gates before that rogue you knocked into the Isis. I'll do anything against them over there. I have cause enough to hate them. Lend me your ear, for my wife is coming down the meadow, and what I would say is her grief.” Thereupon he quickly whispered a foul story of seduction which the Squire of Iffley had carried out against their daughter. She had been taken across the river by boat, and sent back the next morning with money stitched into her clothing. At the end of this sad story the man chuckled grimly:
“But my revenge is coming, and little do they know how I am going to strike. I have planned with some cunning.”
“It seems to me, then,” said Doctor Syn, “that it were a good thing for the neighbourhood if this scoundrel should be removed to the place in which he rightly belongs.”
“Aye, sir,” replied the farmer. “And that is where I wish him, and I'll help him there too. The deepest Hell.”
“The same place to which I was referring,” nodded the parson dryly. “Well, keep your ears open for immediate gossip concerning him, and you may find that I have taken the responsibility of sending him there from your shoulders.”
“Don't rob me of revenge. I live for it,” pleaded the man. “Let me be some help to you.”
“The time is not yet ripe. But soon I may ask your help,” and with a wave of his hand and still dripping wet, Doctor Syn cantered out through the farmyard and galloped up the road to the bridge.
The farmer was right. He reached the gates in less than three minutes, but drew rein ere he came abreast of them, walking his horse along the grass footpath to avoid the noise.
But so much noise was the Squire of Iffley making with his curses and his riding-crop upon backs of hounds and stable-men that no one heard the rider approach or saw him peer through the gates with a grin. In the centre of the drive stood Tappitt, lashing out freely with his whip. Some half-dozen stablemen armed with cudgels and whips were staring up the drive.
“I tell you,” cried the Squire, “that he can only get out this way. The coward is hiding in the trees somewhere. Loose those mastiffs and let 'em rout him out.
He can't get out of locked gates, or jump the wall.”
“I'm afraid he has got out all the same,” laughed Doctor Syn.
The Squire swung round with an oath, and stared at the rider through the gates.
“I may be a parson, but I am also a good judge of horseflesh. I never ride a horse who cannot jump. But, my faith, the Isis is a broad ditch. However, a good horse is a good horse. Tomorrow? At noon? The attorney, the ladies and myself will await you at St. Giles'. Good day. I'm sorry I cannot stay longer to enjoy your sport and hospitality, but we tutors are hard-worked.” And digging his heels in hard, Doctor Syn let his horse out into a full gallop towards Oxford.
