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Updated: May 9, 2025
"What do you mean?" demanded Mortimer thickly; "don't you want to marry that girl!" but he shrank dismayed under the slow blaze that lighted Plank's blue eyes. "All right," he stammered, struggling to his fat legs and instinctively backing away; "I thought you meant business. I what the devil do I care who you marry! It's the last time I try to do anything for you, or for anybody else!
But Mortimer swung on him insultingly: "That's about all from you, too!" he said. "Leila, are you coming?" He stepped heavily toward her; but Plank's sudden crushing grip was on his fat arm above the elbow, and he emitted a roar of surprise and pain. "Don't touch him! Don't, in Heaven's name!" stammered Leila, as Plank, releasing him, stepped back beside her chair.
They talked for an hour, and, in the telling, even Plank's stolidity gave way sufficient to make his heavy voice ring at moments, and the glimmer of excitement edge his eyes.
Such curious-looking women, some of them quite pretty, too, in a certain way. Are you hungry, St Mr. Siward?" "Are you, St Mr. Siward?" mimicked Leila promptly. "I am," said Siward, laughing at Sylvia's significant colour and noting Plank's direct gaze as the waiter filled Leila's slender-stemmed glass.
I don't know whether it's time yet," he added, with a sidelong glance at Plank's stolid face; "I don't want to push the mourners too hard Well, I'll see about it And if it's the thing to do, and the time to do it" he turned on Plank with his boisterous and misleading laugh and clapped him on the shoulder "it will be done, as sure as snobs are snobs; and that's the surest thing you ever bet on.
Siward, unusually gay for awhile, presently turned sombre; and it was Plank's turn to lift him out of it by careless remarks about his rapid convalescence, and the chance for vacation he so much needed. Once Siward looked up vacantly: "Where am I to go?" he asked. "I'd as soon stay here." "But I'm going," insisted Plank. "The Fells is all ready for us." "The Fells! I can't go there!"
But as he had not, on his own statement, what did it matter? Why should he look that way at the foolish major, to whose garrulous gossip he was accustomed, and whose inability to refrain from prying was notorious enough. Turning disdainfully, she caught a glimpse of Plank's shocked and altered face.
His father's old servants had found him again, this time in the area; and this time the same ankle, not yet strong, had been broken. Through the waning winter days, as he lay brooding in bitterness, realising that it was all to do over again, Plank's shy visits became gradually part of the routine.
"Beverly Plank's shooting-box; Black Fells," she replied nodding toward the vast pile of blackish rocks against the sky, upon which sprawled a heavy stone house infested with chimneys. "Plank? Oh yes." He smiled to remember the battering blows rained upon the ramparts of society by the master of Black Fells.
For he had suddenly found the opportunity to defend himself; he had discovered the joint in Plank's old-fashioned armour the armour of the old paladins who placed a woman's honour before all else in the world.
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