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Clowes, on the other hand, regarded the whole affair in a spirit of rollicking farce, and refused to see that this was a serious matter, in which the honour of the house was involved. The next study was Ruthven's. This fact somewhat toned down the exuberances of Clowes's demeanour. When one particularly dislikes a person, one has a curious objection to seeming in good spirits in his presence.
The only sounds were the hoof-falls of the horse, the crunching of the wheels on the wet road, the occasional rattle of a vessel in the racks when the van happened to descend violently into a rut, and the steady murmur of Mrs Clowes's voice rehearsing the grandiloquence of the part of Dulcibel.
Rather less than a week later, on a darkening night, a van left the town of Bursley by the Moorthorne Road on its way to Axe-in-the-Moors, which is the metropolis of the wild wastes that cut off northern Staffordshire from Derbyshire. This van was the last of Mrs Clowes's caravanserai, and almost the last to leave the Fair.
Entertained as she might be, her thoughts were not so occupied by the charm and honey of Lord Clowes's attentions as to pretermit all dwelling on the aide's opinion of her, and this was shown when finally an interruption set her free from observation.
There'll be no time for peeling potatoes to-morrow. Kezia!" She shrilled the name. A slim little girl showed herself between the heavy curtains of the main tent of Mrs Clowes's caravanserai. "Bring Sapphira, too!" "Those yours?" asked Jock. "They're mine," said Mrs Clowes. "And I've six more, not counting grandchildren and sons-in-law like." "No wonder you want a pailful of potatoes!" said Jock.
The reins stretched out from the careless hand of Mrs Clowes and vanished through a slit between the double doors, which had been fixed slightly open. Mrs Clowes's gaze, penetrating now and then the slit, could see the gleam of her lamp's ray on a horse's flank.
"You always remind me of Nettie Hills at the Clowes's lodge," she retorted. "Mrs. Hills says she's that flighty in the way she carries on, no one would believe what a good sensible girl she is under all her nonsense, and walks out with her own young man as regular as clockwork." And that evening Val Stafford came to pay his respects to his old comrade in arms.
He would have given a thousand pounds to be in morning attire, but no constraint was perceptible in the big, careless, impassive figure framed against the sunlit yard. "Are you Mrs. Clowes's maid?" he singled out a tall, rather stiff, quiet-looking girl in the plain black dress of her calling. "Is your name Catherine? I want to speak to you."
The flares of the showmen were answering each other across the Fair-ground; and presently a young man came and hung one out above the railed platform of Mrs Clowes's booth; and Mrs Clowes blinked. From behind the booth floated the sounds of the confused chatter of men, girls and youngsters, together with the complaint of an infant.
Duval made such a 'mysterious joke about it would have been amusing to do foreign parts with Mr. Duval. But when Laura took the turning to the vicarage Catherine was invaded by a creeping chill of doubt. Was it possible that Captain Hyde was not Mrs. Clowes's lover after all? "I know which I'd choose," she said to Gordon. "I've no patience with the Major.
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