But although the whole village from the squire down seethed with excitement that day, an exception must be made of Dr. Syn. The events of the night before seemed to interest him not at all. He spent the day largely in the pleasant company of Charlotte Cobtree, for, as he put it, “a twenty-first birthday is a very great occasion.' The dinner hour having been postponed till a late hour that day, the early evening found the doctor on his white pony riding beside Charlotte, and although many times upon the ride he had entreated her not to bother about his slow jogging but to enjoy a gallop, she resolutely refused to ride from him.
“You have sacrificed your whole day for my happiness,” she said. “You have remembered every minute that it is my day, when even the family have quite unconsciously, bless them, put off further festivities till dinner time. Therefore, if I wanted to gallop away from you, I couldn't, but you see, I do not want to.”
“Well, you are twenty-one, Charlotte,” replied Dr. Syn. “You have every right to please yourself. Thank you very much.”
For some time they rode forward at a gentle walk, and Dr. Syn's thoughts began to concentrate upon the new life of adventure that seemed to have been thrust upon him. A very different proposition this, to tackle, than directing the guns of the old Imogene in the grim game of piracy. Then he had only the ever-present possibility of violent death to face, and certainly no disgrace, for the best of the sea rovers went to death laughing, and did not give a toss of the dice for shame. But to run as he had given his word to run, a great scheme of law-breaking in England, was to court the risk of a disgrace which he was perfectly willing to face, but he must be careful not to involve the beautiful girl at his side in such disaster.
It was she who interrupted his train of thought with: “Oh, Doctor, whatever makes you scowl like that? Have you forgotten it is my birthday?”
“No, Charlotte,” he answered, smiling, but without looking at her. “But when you get to middle age the past has a way of obtruding itself, and to men who have lived an adventurous life it is generally the unpleasantnesses of the past that thrust themselves to the front. A young girl like you could not be expected to understand the depressions that come with middle age.”
“No?” she queried. “Perhaps I understand these depressions—in you—better than you imagine. Perhaps I understand more than anyone else where you are concerned, and the reason is that I am certain no one loves you more than I do.”
“That is very kind of you, my dear,” replied the doctor. He did not dare look back at her, but kept his pony just a little ahead. But she watched him closely.
“You see,” she went on, “my father is your oldest friend and I am, in many ways, his confidante. Do you suppose then that, both loving you as we do, that we have not been guilty of discussing you? We have, and I know as well as he does of the tragedy that drove you to America.”
“That is all finished. It is a closed book,” said Syn simply.
“Not quite, is it?” went on Charlotte. “Now that I am grown up, may I claim the privilege of telling you what I think? From what my father has told me, you were influenced to go abroad in a spirit of revenge. It was natural that when your wife betrayed you, all your love for her should be killed. You never blamed her, so my father tells me, but on the man, who had been your friend, you were determined to heap punishment. Unsuccessful in this, at last even that passion died in you, and you return to start life again with us. Why do you not accept the fact that your wife is dead, Doctor?”
“Because it is not right to accept a fact that is only told by a liar and a cheat,” he answered.
“And that is the reason you told my father that you could never marry again?” she asked.
“That is one reason,” he replied. “If I were to marry again and there was a child, and then my wife was found to be alive after all, what of my child then? What of the woman that had given it to me?”
“It would be but a legal quibble to make it wrong,” replied Charlotte. “For my part, I would break any law for the sake of the man I loved.”
The tone of her voice was so compelling that Dr. Syn checked his pony and looked at her. She, too, drew rein involuntarily and met his gaze, leaning slightly towards him from the saddle. Her face was above him, for she rode a man's horse and he was crouched on his pony.
For a few long seconds their eyes met, and with a brave glowing hers took hold and clung to his, binding him to her as the hands do in matrimony. Instinctively the doctor was disarmed. He felt the warm blood of youth once more in his veins. Was it possible that this beautiful girl loved him?
As he asked himself the question, she answered it with a slow nod and added: “I would take the risk. I love you.”
He felt his back straighten, he knew his eyes glowed as hers did. Subconsciously, he cursed the secrets that compelled him to ape an older man. He longed to change his pony for the fierce black horse he had conquered in the night. He wanted to appear to her the man of adventure that he was. And that very want betrayed him, for he dismounted like a young man and stood beneath her, drinking her in as, leaning forward, she let her curl brush his face.
“Why don't you say what is in your heart?” she urged.
“I can say that,” he whispered. “Yes, at least I can say that with all honesty. I love you. But in all honour I can never ask you to marry me. I would to God I could.”
“Because your wife may be alive?” she asked. “I have told you, I put you before the law, and so would our children when they understood.”
“There are other things,” he went on. “Aye, things black and damnable. Did you know the half of them, you would turn from me.”
“Let me be the judge of that,” she said quietly. “For now in all fairness, I have the right.”
“Aye, were the secrets mine, you should share them. But I put others on their oath never to tell those secrets even to their wives.”
“They were men then—these sharers of your secrets? I am glad of that, for I began to be jealous. And do they live—these men? Could you not ask them to release you?”
“I believe the most of them are dead. But an oath is an oath from which even death could not release us.”
She bowed her head slowly, dismissing all desire to know, since he had sworn to keep silence. The she laid one hand upon his shoulder and added: “Even though you say these things were black and damnable, I do not blame you, for my heart tells me that in all your life you could never have done anything except your honour forced you.”
“Thank God, I can say aye to that,” he answered. “In the worst moments of my poor life, when my hands were stained with blood, my honour drove me to it. A rough-hewn honour it may have been, for I was then amongst savage men who had no fine perception of what should be. There were no subtle points to that honour as there are among the duelling gentlemen of the coffee houses. It was rock-bottom honour, the foundation of a crude code of law made mostly by unlettered and ignorant scoundrels. And when fate called on me to administer that law in all its rigour, I knew that I was merely administering justice in that particular community. In the Last Day I shall have no fear in answering the Judge's charge on that score, but to tie you to such a man—who cannot share his memories with you—my honour forbids that, my dear.”
“But suppose my honour is rough-hewn, too.” Her fingers gripped his shoulders tightly. “For I suppose, according to the rules of society, I have dulled the fine points of mine by telling you I love you. Well, suppose I go further. Suppose I confess that were you the worst of criminals standing with a noose about your neck upon the open scaffold, I should still be proud to say 'I love you'.”
“Good evening, Vicar. Good evening, Miss Cobtree.”
Out of the flatness of the Marsh a third party had appeared. Hidden by the height of Charlotte's horse, and having taken advantage of the cover of a deep dyke that ran all the way from the highroad to Mother Handaway's field-bound cottage, Merry had approached unseen, and quietly walked round the head of Charlotte's horse upon them.
Dr. Syn's first impulse was to turn angrily upon the intruder, but he found himself unable to turn away from Charlotte. The sudden interruption of a conversation so intimate was enough to have thrown any girl into confusion. She had at least been seen leaning towards the man she loved so closely that her kiss curl caressed his face, and it was quite probable that her last words of love which she had spoken with all the conviction of her brave nature had been overheard. Yet no blush of shame was apparent on her cheeks as she very slowly raised her eyes, dancing with smiles, towards the intruder. It seemed to Dr. Syn that she was as proud of being surprised in her present attitude as she had boasted she would be beneath his scaffold.
“Good evening, Mr. Merry,” she said, in a voice clear of any embarrassment. The love that had shown from her eyes during her confession still danced in them. She had not troubled to alter her expression. Mr. Merry might have been her dearest confidant for all the trouble she took to disguise her feelings.
With the doctor it was different. Automatically, imperceptibly and yet rapidly he changed. When he turned towards Merry he was the kindly, elderly parson with something of a stoop that was so familiar a figure to all on Romney Marsh. He looked at Merry's sea-boots, wet with dyke water, and his kindly eyes took on an expression of reproof.
“You ought to know better, my man, than to spring out of a hiding-place without warning when a sensitive animal like Miss Charlotte's horse is standing near. It was foolish. I thought you had horse sense.”
Without waiting for his reply he turned to Charlotte's horse and ran his hand beneath the girth. “No, it is not too tight, my dear, though perhaps the saddle needs adjusting.”
“Help me to dismount then,” she said, “and while you fix it, I will just run over the field to speak to poor Mother Handaway. She is standing by the stable door talking to someone, and she will be hurt if I ride away without a word.”
Dr. Syn walked round to the near side of Charlotte's horse. As he lifted her from the saddle, he was again aware that Charlotte made no attempt at hiding her love for him in front of Merry, who at a nod from his master had sullenly complied by holding the animal's head.
Although for the last twenty years his adventurous life had subjected him to an iron control of brain and body, he was hard put to it now not to hurl Merry back into the dyke and then take Charlotte in his arms and hold her tightly, but the discipline of those twenty years saved him from doing anything so mischievously delightful. He even frowned at Charlotte, warning her not to be so provocative. But it was her moment, and a multitude of Merry would have made no difference.
“Lift me, please,” she pleaded, “for if I jump I may trip in my skirt and roll into Mr. Merry's dyke.” She laid her hand on Dr. Syn's shoulder and turned to Merry. “By the way, what were you doing in the dyke? Catching something?”
“Avoiding someone,” answered Merry, turning his head toward Mother Handaway's cottage. The he pointed. “Him, to be exact.”
“That man on the horse coming towards us? Why?”
“Ah! You don't know who he is. Neither of you know. But I know. I keeps an eye open on Romney Marsh, and there ain't much I don't know. And I knows that I ain't stopping around to be shot at by no jocular highwayman.”
“Highwayman?” repeated Charlotte, with no hint of the usual shudder which was customary amongst women as well as many men at the very sound of the word.
“Aye, and it's the famous Jimmie Bone, if you wants to know,” whispered Merry. “For a long while I've wished to see him unmasked, and up by the cottage I did. He was arguing with the old witch. Something about a stable that he could no longer use, and he seemed very put out. There's a hundred pound on his head from the authorities, but I ain't waiting to tell him so,” and leaving the horse's head, Merry slithered down the dyke bank and plunged into cover of the rushes.
