“And after you’ve made the transfer; what then?”
Jarvis’s tone was icy; his eyes searched the handsome, flushed face at his side mercilessly.
“Why,” he blustered, “you may as well know: I intend to marry Barbara. I’d do it, anyway; contract or no contract, and let that damned dog in the manger gnaw his bone till he’s tired of it; only Barbara—Miss Preston—objects. She’s like all women—sticks at a trifle, and yet is ready to swallow the earth, if you give ’em a chance.”
“Miss Preston doubtless supposes that her honor is involved. I can conceive that she might do so. A trifle, I believe you called it. And if you——”
“Oh, come; what’s the use of talking like that!” David interrupted impatiently. “I’m sick of all that sort of nonsense.” He pulled his hat over his eyes and stared morosely at the landscape. “If I didn’t care as much about the girl as I do, I’d cut the whole thing and go west again. This is no place for a man like me.”
“I’m disposed to agree with you,” observed Jarvis calmly. “Shall I set you down here?”
David recognized his surroundings with a start. They had reached the outskirts of the village, and Jarvis had stopped his horse in front of his own house.
“Oh, I may as well get out here, I suppose,” he said sullenly.
He turned and lifted his hat to Jarvis, with a sweeping bow.
“Much obliged for the delightful ride,” he said, with a sneering upward quirk of the mouth.
Jarvis sat motionless in his carriage watching the easy swing of the arrogantly youthful figure, as it passed down the street. He saw David go in at the front entrance of the Barford Eagle, yet still he sat silent, his brows drawn over brooding eyes.
His man, lounging in front of the stables, caught sight of the waiting equipage, and hurried down the driveway.
“Any orders, sir?” he asked. “Shall I take the horse, sir?”
Jarvis glanced at the man, something of his old irritability flaring up in his look.
“No,” he said shortly. “I’m not coming in now.”
He spoke sharply to his horse, turned abruptly, and drove rapidly away, past the pollarded willows, over the echoing bridge, and on into the country road beyond, muffled with the accumulated dust of a rainless midsummer. Presently he reached and passed the stone gateway of the Preston farm, and its orchards laden with unripe fruit. He looked at both with the sombre, unseeing intentness of a man who is at war with his deeper instincts.