The Master of the Ceremonies

“Major Rockley!” she cried, stopping short and facing him, “by what right do you insult me like this?”

“How beautiful she is!” he said in a low tone.

Claire bit her lips, and, divining that he was disposed to treat her as one in an entirely different rank of life, she hurried on along the path, with the tall corn waving on either side, trembling with dread and indignation, as she realised that he was behaving to her as he might to some servant-girl.

“Say what you like to me. Be angry. Punish me. I cannot help it,” he whispered. “Your beauty maddens me, as it has done all these weary months, and I must speak to you now.”

“Major Rockley, I am alone and unprotected. I ask you, as a gentleman, to leave me.”

“And as an officer and a gentleman I would leave you, but my passion masters me. Sweet Claire, whom I love so dearly, how can you be so cruel and so hard?”

He tried to take her hand, but she shrank from him and turned back.

“No, no, little one, you are not going to serve me like that!” he cried, darting before her. “Come, how can you be so absurd?” he whispered. “We are quite alone. No one can see our meeting, and yet you are trifling with me, and wasting golden moments. You know I love you.”

“Once more, Major Rockley, will you leave me? You insult me by staying.”

“No, I will not leave you,” he whispered excitedly; “and I do not insult you.”

“I am alone now, sir, but I have a father – brothers, who shall call you to account for this!” she cried, with her eyes full of indignation.

“Don’t,” he whispered imploringly. “You make your eyes flash and your face light up in a way that drives me frantic. Claire, if you speak to me like that again, I shall risk being seen, and take you to my heart to cover those lips with kisses. No, no; don’t shrink away; only be gentle with me, and talk sensibly. Let us be closer friends, dear. Come, let there be an end to all this coy nonsense. There, we understand one another now. That’s better.”

He seized her hand, and drew it through his arm; but, with a display of strength that he had not expected, she snatched it away, and stood pale with anger and indignation.

She hurried forward the next moment, but he laughingly kept at her side.

Claire turned and retreated, but he was still there; and, choking down her sobs, she walked as fast as she could towards the stile she had crossed.

It seemed evident to her that the Major must know the reason for her visit to the fisherman’s cottage, or he would never have dared to treat her with such bold insolence; and as she walked on he kept close beside her, pressing his suit in the most daringly insulting manner, while she ceased her protests now, and walked on in silence.

“It is the only way to deal with her,” he said to himself; “and, after this outburst to keep up appearances, we shall be on the best of terms.”

Claire had gone farther in her excitement than she had thought possible, and it seemed now that she would never reach the stile. Beyond that, there might be people who would help her; and in any case, the fishermen’s cottages were not many hundred yards away.

In spite of her silence, the Major kept on his passionate addresses and protestations, pleading his inability to obtain a hearing from her before; and at last, irritated by her silence, he caught her by the arm and held it fast.

“No, no; you are not going yet,” he said, speaking angrily. “What sort of a man do you take me for, that you play with me like this?”

“Major Rockley, will you loose my arm?”

“Claire Denville, will you promise to meet me to-night where I will name?”

“I am a defenceless woman, sir, and this is an insult – an outrage. Will you loose my arm?”

“You are a cruel coquette,” he cried passionately. “Is this your treatment, after the months of glances you have given me to lure me on?”

“Will you loose my arm, sir?”

“Will you be a sensible girl?” he whispered. “How can you be so absurd? Look about you: we are too far off for anyone to see who we are, and if they could see us, why should we care? What is the world to us? Come, Claire, my darling.”

He tried to draw her towards him, but she struggled to get free and reach the stile in the tall hedge that separated them from the bare downs beyond.

The tears of rage and indignation were in Claire’s eyes as she felt her helplessness, and saw how thoroughly she was in Rockley’s power. There seemed to be nothing she could do but scream for help, and from that she shrank.

Turning suddenly upon him, with her eyes flashing, she exclaimed:

“Major Rockley! as a gentleman I ask you to cease this cowardly pursuit.”

“Claire Denville, as the woman I adore and have set my mind to win, I ask you to cease this silly heroic nonsense. My dear child, is it to make terms?”

She snatched her hand by an angry movement from his grasp, and reached the stile; but he was too quick for her, catching her and drawing her back to clasp her in his arms.

“You shall not say I wasted my opportunity,” he whispered. “If I am to be punished by you, it shall be for something more than words. This kiss is to be the first of millions that you shall pay me back, and – Curse the fellow!”

There was a quick step, a hand was laid on the stile, and Richard Linnell vaulted over, white with jealous anger. For, coming along the downs, he had seen Claire cross the stile, followed by Rockley, and, half mad with rage, he had gazed at them for a moment or two, and then, feeling that all was over, and that there was no more love for him in the world, since the woman he had worshipped could be so light as to make appointments with the greatest libertine in the town, he walked straight back for the parade.

It was all plain enough; there had been an understanding between Claire and the Major, and hence that serenade. But for the horrible accident that night Claire would have come to the window and answered to the musical call.

What a boyish, childish idiot he had been: dreaming always of a vain, weak, frivolous woman, whom he had in his blind idolatry endowed with all the beauties and virtues of her sex.

“Well,” he said with a scornful laugh, “I ought to have known how artificial she would be. Like father, like daughter; but it is cruel, cruel work.”

He laughed bitterly.

“What an idiot I am!” he cried angrily. “A boy in such matters – a child. Well, it is a lesson. I might have known that she would be as ready to receive attentions as her sister, and now I may go, and console myself by making love to the handsome actress who is ready to make love to me.”

“Another actress,” he said aloud, as he strode on with his jealous anger up to boiling-point, his face flushed, and his teeth set fast.

“Liar!” he exclaimed. “Fool! Idiot again! I will not believe it. Claire Denville is too true and sweet to listen to a man like that.”

He turned and went back faster than he had come, but he had walked some distance, and the return journey gave him time to cool a little and to ask himself whether he was going to watch – to act the eavesdropper – and whether this was a manly part to play.

His indecision increased as he approached the down side of the stile, and he was about to turn and retreat when an excited voice, speaking loudly, sent a thrill through him, and running to the opening he leaped over into the cornfield.

At the sight of Linnell, Claire, who had been up to now strong and heroic, grew feeble and helpless.

“Mr Linnell! Help!” she cried, as she struggled to reach him; and as Rockley, white with fury at the interruption, loosed his hold, Richard Linnell was upon him, striking him a blow full in the chest, which sent him staggering back to fall amongst the corn.

Linnell would have followed, but he caught sight of Claire tottering towards the stile, and he turned to help her, but Rockley had sprung up and, with a hoarse cry of rage, struck at Linnell with his riding-whip, the plaited whalebone falling upon his cheek, and making a weal right across his face.

Major Rockley had better have restrained his rage, for in an instant that blow transformed Richard Linnell, the calm and quiet, into a savage.

He turned round with a roar more than a cry, and sprang upon Rockley; there was a fierce struggle, ending in the riding-whip being torn from its owner’s grasp, and for the space of a couple of minutes there was the sound of the lash cutting through the air, and the blows that fell upon the tight undress uniform.

No words were uttered, but there was the scuffling of feet, the hoarse panting of excited men, and the corn was trampled down.

“There,” cried Linnell at last, flinging Rockley from him, and throwing the whip in his face, “dog and coward! You have had the thrashing you deserved. Strike me again if you dare.”