Phyllis would meet me in the village, on the Cob, on the links, and pass by as if I were the Invisible Man. And why? Because of the reptile, Hawk. The worm, Hawk. The dastard and varlet, Hawk.
I crammed my hat on, and hurried out of the house towards the village.
CHAPTER XVI
A CHANCE MEETING
I roamed the place in search of the varlet for the space of half-an- hour, and, after having drawn all his familiar haunts, found him at length leaning over the sea-wall near the church, gazing thoughtfully into the waters below.
I confronted him.
“Well,” I said, “you’re a beauty, aren’t you?”
He eyed me owlishly. Even at this early hour, I was grieved to see, he showed signs of having looked on the bitter while it was brown. His eyes were filmy, and his manner aggressively solemn.
“Beauty?” he echoed.
“What have you got to say for yourself?”
“Say f’self.”
It was plain that he was engaged in pulling his faculties together by some laborious process known only to himself. At present my words conveyed no meaning to him. He was trying to identify me. He had seen me before somewhere, he was certain, but he could not say where, or who I was.
“I want to know,” I said, “what induced you to be such an abject idiot as to let our arrangement get known?”
I spoke quietly. I was not going to waste the choicer flowers of speech on a man who was incapable of understanding them. Later on, when he had awakened to a sense of his position, I would begin really to talk to him.
He continued to stare at me. Then a sudden flash of intelligence lit up his features.
“Mr. Garnick,” he said at last.
“From ch–chicken farm,” he continued, with the triumphant air of a cross-examining King’s counsel who has at last got on the track.
“Yes,” I said.
“Up top the hill,” he proceeded, clinchingly. He stretched out a huge hand.
“How you?” he inquired with a friendly grin.
“I want to know,” I said distinctly, “what you’ve got to say for yourself after letting our affair with the professor become public property?”
He paused awhile in thought.
“Dear sir,” he said at last, as if he were dictating a letter, “dear sir, I owe you–ex–exp—-”
He waved his hand, as who should say, “It’s a stiff job, but I’m going to do it.”
“Explashion,” he said.
“You do,” said I grimly. “I should like to hear it.”
“Dear sir, listen me.”
“Go on then.”
“You came me. You said ‘Hawk, Hawk, ol’ fren’, listen me. You tip this ol’ bufflehead into watter,’ you said, ‘an’ gormed if I don’t give ‘ee a poond note.’ That’s what you said me. Isn’t that what you said me?”
I did not deny it.
” ‘Ve’ well,’ I said you. ‘Right,’ I said. I tipped the ol’ soul into watter, and I got the poond note.”
“Yes, you took care of that. All this is quite true, but it’s beside the point. We are not disputing about what happened. What I want to know–for the third time–is what made you let the cat out of the bag? Why couldn’t you keep quiet about it?”
He waved his hand.
“Dear sir,” he replied, “this way. Listen me.”
It was a tragic story that he unfolded. My wrath ebbed as I listened. After all the fellow was not so greatly to blame. I felt that in his place I should have acted as he had done. It was Fate’s fault, and Fate’s alone.
It appeared that he had not come well out of the matter of the accident. I had not looked at it hitherto from his point of view. While the rescue had left me the popular hero, it had had quite the opposite result for him. He had upset his boat and would have drowned his passenger, said public opinion, if the young hero from London– myself–had not plunged in, and at the risk of his life brought the professor ashore. Consequently, he was despised by all as an inefficient boatman. He became a laughing-stock. The local wags made laborious jests when he passed. They offered him fabulous sums to take their worst enemies out for a row with him. They wanted to know when he was going to school to learn his business. In fact, they behaved as wags do and always have done at all times all the world over.