Ethel Dell - The Hundredth Chance

"All right then. I didn't," the horseman said.

Bunny's expression changed. He smiled; and when he smiled his lost youth looked out of his worn face. "Good for you!" he said. "I say, I hope we shall see you again some time."

"If you are here for long, you probably will," the man made answer.

"Do you live here?" Bunny's voice was eager. His eyes sparkled with interest.

The man nodded. "Yes, I'm a fixture. And you?"

"Oh, we're going to be fixtures too," said Bunny. "This is my sister Maud. I am Sir Bernard Brian."

Maud's ready blush rose burningly. She fidgeted to be gone. Bunny's swaggering announcement made her long to sink through the earth. She dreaded to hear his listener laugh, even looked up in surprise when no laugh came.

He was surveying Bunny with that same unblinking regard that had disconcerted her. The slight smile was still on his face, but it was not a derisive smile.

After a moment he said, "My name is Bolton-Jake Bolton. Think you can remember that?"

"What are you?" said Bunny, with frank curiosity.

"I?" The faint smile suddenly broadened, showing teeth that were large and very white. "I am a groom," the horseman said.

"Are you?" The boy's eyes opened wide. "Then you're not a mister!" he said.

"Oh no, I'm not a mister!" There was certainly a laugh in the womanish voice this time, but it held no open ridicule. "I'm plain Jake Bolton. You can call me Bolton or Jake-which ever you like. Good day, Sir Bernard!"

He backed his horse with the words, and mounted.

Maud did not look at him. She felt too overwhelmed. Moreover, she was sure-painfully sure-that he looked at her, and she thought there must be at least amusement in his eyes.

With relief she heard him turn his horse and trot down the hill. He had not even been going their way, then. Her face burned afresh.

"What a queer fish!" said Bunny. "Hullo! What are you so red about?"

"I wish you wouldn't tell people your title," she said. "They only laugh."

"He didn't laugh when I told him," said Bunny. "And why shouldn't I? I've a right to it."

He would not see her point she knew. But she made an attempt to explain. "He would have liked to call himself a gentleman," she said. "But-he didn't."

"That's quite different," said Bunny loftily. "He knows he isn't one."

Maud abandoned the argument then, because-though it was against her judgment-she found that she wanted to agree.

"Hark to the brute!" said Bunny.

A long, loud peal of laughter was echoing through the house. Maud shuddered at the sound. The noisy wooing of her mother's suitor made her feel physically sick. But for Bunny, she would have fled incontinently from the man's proximity. Because of Bunny, she sat at a rickety writing-table in a corner of the room and penned an urgent, almost a desperate, appeal to the bachelor uncle in the North to deliver them from the impending horror. No other consideration on earth would have forced such an appeal from her. She felt literally distraught that night. She was being dragged, a helpless prisoner, to the house of bondage.

Again came that loud, coarse laugh, and with it the opening of a door on the other side of the passage.

"Watch out!" warned Bunny. "They're coming!"

There was a hint of nervousness in his voice also. She heard it, and swiftly rose. When their own door opened, she was standing beside him, very upright, very pale, rigidly composed.

Her mother entered, flushed and smiling. Behind her came her accepted lover, – a large, florid man, handsome in ascertain coarse style, with a dissipated look about the eyes which told its own tale. Maud quivered in impotent resentment whenever she encountered those eyes. They could not look upon a woman with reverence.

He strolled into the room in her mother's wake, fondling a dark moustache, in evident good humour with himself and all the world.

Lady Brian ran to her daughter with all a girl's impetuosity. "My dear, it's all settled!" she declared. "Giles and I are going to be married, and we're all going to live at "The Anchor" with him. And dear little Bunny is to have the best ground-floor rooms. Now, isn't that kind?"

It was kind. Yet Maud stiffened to an even icier frigidity at the news, and dear little Bunny's nose turned up to an aggressive angle.

After a distinct pause, Maud bent her long neck and coldly kissed her mother's expectant face. "I hope you-and Mr. Sheppard will be very happy," she said.

The happy suitor broke into his loud, self-satisfied laugh. "Egad, what an enthusiastic reception!" he cried. "Have you got a similar chaste salute for me?"

He swaggered towards her, and Maud froze as she stood. Her eyes shot a blue flare of open enmity at him; and-almost in spite of himself-Giles Sheppard paused.

"By Jove!" he said. "You've got a she-wolf here, madam."

Lady Brian turned. "Oh, Giles, don't be absurd! Maud is not like me, you know. She was never demonstrative as a child. She was always shy and quiet. They are not quite used to the idea of you yet. You must give them time. Bunny darling, won't you give Mother a kiss?"

"What for?" said Bunny.

He was tightly gripping Maud's cold hand with fingers that were like tense wire. His eyes, very wide and bright, defied the whole world on her behalf.

"I'm not going to kiss anyone," he said. "Neither is Maud. I don't know what there is to make such a fuss about. You've both been married before."

The landlord of "The Anchor" gave a great roar of laughter. "Not bad for a bantling, eh, Lucy? Didn't know I was to have a sucking cynic for a step-son. You're quite right, my boy; there is nothing to make a fuss about. And so we shan't ask you to dance at the wedding. Not that you could if you tried, eh? And my Lady Disdain there won't be invited. We are going to be married by special licence to-morrow afternoon, and you can take possession of your new quarters while the knot is being tied. How's that appeal to you?"

Bunny looked at him with a certain grim interest. "It'll suit me all right," he said. "But I'm hanged if I can see where you come in."

Giles Sheppard laughed again with his tongue in his cheek. "Oh, I shall have my picking at the feast, old son," he declared jovially. "I've had my eye on your mother for a long time. Pretty piece of goods she is too. You're neither of you a patch on her. They don't do you credit, Lucy, my dear. Sure they're your own?"

"The man's drunk!" said Maud suddenly and sharply.

"My dear! My dear!" cried Lady Brian, in dismayed protest.

The girl bit her lip. The words had escaped her, she knew not how.

Giles Sheppard however only laughed again, and seated himself on the edge of the table to contemplate her.

"We shall have to try and find a husband for you, young woman," he said, "a husband who'll know how to bring you to heel. It'll be a tough job. I wonder who'd like to take it on. Jake Bolton might do the trick. We'll have Jake Bolton to dine with us to-morrow. He knows how to tame wild animals, does Jake. It's a damn' pretty sight to see him do it too. Gosh, he knows how to lay it on-just where it hurts most."

He chuckled grimly with his eyes on Maud's now crimson face.

"Now, Giles," protested Lady Brian, "you've promised to be good to my two children. I'm sure we shall all shake down comfortably presently. Dear Maud has a good deal to learn yet, so you must be patient with her. We were foolish ourselves at her age, I have no doubt."

"Oh, no doubt," said her fiancé, with his thick-lidded eyes still mocking the girl's face of outraged pride. "We've all been foolish in our time. But there's only one treatment for that complaint in the female species, my lady; and that is a sound good spanking. It does a world of good, takes the stiffening out of a woman in no time. I've had a daughter of my own-a decent little filly she was too. Married now and gone to Canada. But I had to keep her in order, I can tell you, before she went. I gave her many a slippering, and she thought the better of me for it too. She knew I wouldn't stand any of her nonsense."