He shook his head to show that problem was beyond him.
“You’ll go after her,” I said in an even voice; “you’ll make him marry her?”
“Where am I to go?” he asked helplessly, and held out the envelope with a gesture; “and what could I do? Even if I knew— How could I leave the gardens?”
“Great God!” I cried, “not leave these gardens! It’s your Honor, man! If she was my daughter—if she was my daughter—I’d tear the world to pieces!” . . I choked. “You mean to stand it?”
“Make him marry her! Horsewhip him! Horsewhip him, I say!—I’d strangle him!”
He scratched slowly at his hairy cheek, opened his mouth, and shook his head. Then, with an intolerable note of sluggish gentle wisdom, he said, “People of our sort, Willie, can’t do things like that.”
I came near to raving. I had a wild impulse to strike him in the face. Once in my boyhood I happened upon a bird terribly mangled by some cat, and killed it in a frenzy of horror and pity. I had a gust of that same emotion now, as this shameful mutilated soul fluttered in the dust, before me. Then, you know, I dismissed him from the case.
“There it is,” he said, and pointing with his garden-rough forefinger. “I.A.P.A.M.P. What can you make of that?”
I took the thing in my hands. The adhesive stamp customary in those days was defaced by a circular postmark, which bore the name of the office of departure and the date. The impact in this particular case had been light or made without sufficient ink, and half the letters of the name had left no impression. I could distinguish—
I guessed the name in an instant flash of intuition. It was Shaphambury. The very gaps shaped that to my mind. Perhaps in a sort of semi-visibility other letters were there, at least hinting themselves. It was a place somewhere on the east coast, I knew, either in Norfolk or Suffolk.
Old Stuart had glanced up sharply, I am inclined to think almost fearfully, into my face. “You—you haven’t got it?” he said.
“For a moment I thought it might be Hampton,” I said.
“Hampton,” he repeated. “Hampton. How could you make Hampton?” He turned the envelope about. “H.A.M.—why, Willie, you’re a worse hand at the job than me!”
He replaced the letter in the envelope and stood erect to put this back in his breast pocket.