Doctor Syn A Smuggler Tale of the Romney Marsh by Russell Thorndike Page B

swear that sooner or later you’d succeed in getting hold of him—let the young idiot ruin you, eh? Then make a virtuous song about it to the squire, and a settlement to keep your mouth shut, perhaps.”
    “Beast!” cried the girl, and she struck him sideways across the mouth with her clenched hand.
    “Hello!” thought Jerk, crouching in the bushes, “here’s another one having a ‘go’ at him; well, the more the merrier, so long as I’m the last.”
    The schoolmaster recoiled, trying to look as if the stinging blow had not hurt, but the blood was flowing from his lip and from the hand of the girl as well.
     
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    “So that’s it, is it?” he sniggered, “a real love match, p’haps? The squire’s consent, the wedding bells, and live happily ever after, eh? Ecod! my lady, I think not. Rash is your man, see? and lucky you are to get him; you whose father’s gibbet chains are still swinging in Rye.”
    “And yours are swinging a bit nearer than that!” said Jerry Jerk to himself.
    “You leave my father out of it,” went on the girl, “for from all I’ve heard of him he was a better man than you, and he was fond of me, too; so it’s lucky for you he’s not here to hear you speaking bad of his child.”
    “You know nothing about him—he was a drunken rascal!”
    “Doctor Syn knew him well, and he’s told me things. A rough man he was, certain, and none rougher, reckless, too, and brave, a lawbreaker on land as well as sea, pitiless to his enemies, staunch to his friends, but contemptible he never was; and so, Mister Rash, you can afford to respect him, and I say again that I wish he were here to make you.”
     
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    “Shouldn’t care if he was,” replied the schoolmaster, “for there’s always the law to look after a man.”
    “So there is,” chuckled Jerk, “and that you’ll find.”
    “Bah! what’s the good of haggling and squabbling?” said Mr. Rash. “You’re mine, or you’ll have to bear the consequences.”
    “And that is?” asked the girl defiantly.
    “The rope for your friends when I turn King’s evidence.”
    “You wouldn’t dare, you coward, for you’d be hanged yourself as well.”
    “King’s evidence will cover me all square.”
    “So you’re determined to turn it, are you?”
    “I am, unless you change your mind.”
    The girl didn’t reply to that, so Mr. Rash, thinking that he was making an advance, continued:
     
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    “Think, Imogene—this Cobtree fellow will be packed off to London in a month or so, and from there on to Oxford; and after a university career of drinking, gambling, and loose living, with precious little learning, he’ll settle down to the gentleman’s life, marry some person of quality, and you—eh? what of you, then?”
    “I earn my living now, don’t I?” replied the girl. “Well, what’s to prevent me going on the same?”
    “Don’t you want to marry?” went on the schoolmaster. “Don’t you want a house of your own? Don’t you want to be the envy of all the girls in the village?”
    “Not at the price of my happiness; and, besides, I’m not so sure that I do want all those things so desperate. I’m afraid the wife of Mister Rash would be too genteel a job for me.”
     
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    “Oh, I’d soon educate you up to that,” returned the schoolmaster, looking pleased.
    “It ’ud be a nuisance to both of us, wouldn’t it?”
    “I shouldn’t mind—it would be a pleasant business making a respectable woman of you, Imogene. You see, you’re not common like these village girls, and that’s what attracts me; otherwise, it might have been better for me to have fixed my choice on one of them: one that hasn’t a bad mark against her, so to speak. But I don’t mind what folk say. I suppose they’ll talk a bit and laugh behind my back. Well, let ’em, say I. I don’t care, because I want you.”
    “Then it’s a pity that I’m not the same way of thinking, isn’t it?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “That I wouldn’t marry you—no, not though you got the whole village the rope!”
    “You ungrateful wretch, not after all