Читать книгу The League of the Leopard - Bindloss Harold - Страница 4

It was a chilly night when Dane crouched in very damp clover beside a straggling hedge, waiting for the poachers, and wishing he had been wise enough to remain at home. Rain had fallen throughout the day, and now heavy clouds drifted overhead, while a chilly breeze shook an eery sighing out of the firs behind him. The moon was seldom visible, but a subdued luminescence filtered through, and he could just see Maxwell crouching in a neighboring ditch which was not wholly dry.

"What are you meditating upon, Hilton?" Maxwell asked.

"I was just thinking what a fool I was to come at all, and that it is almost time I went home again. When a man has had tropical fever it is his own fault if he suffers from indulgence in amusements of this description."

"I am not entirely comfortable either," Maxwell said dryly. "My boots are full of water, and my hair is thick with sand; but I dare say both of us have had worse experiences. If those fellows don't come in the next ten minutes I'll turn back with you."

Neither said anything further for a space. The firs moaned behind them, the dampness chilled them through, and the odor of wet clover was in their nostrils. When, instead of ten minutes, nearly half an hour had passed, there was a low whistle from a hidden keeper, and Dane could dimly see several indistinct figures in the adjoining meadow.

"Kevan and the constable should head them off," whispered Maxwell. "I'll race you for the first prisoner, Hilton!"

It was characteristic of Maxwell that he had worked an opening ready in the hedge, and slipped through it, while Dane hurled himself crashing upon the thorns. He broke through them, somehow, and noticed very little as he raced across the dripping aftermath except that two men strove to drag something over the opposite hedge. Before he could reach it, Maxwell had separated from him, and because the moon shone down through a rift in the clouds, he saw him clear the hedge in a flying bound. The next moment he had his hand on the collar of one man brought up by the thorns. Dane saw his face for an instant, and then, when the other kicked him savagely on the knee, he shifted his hand to his throat, and was doing his best to choke the fight out of him when he heard footsteps behind him, and something descended heavily upon his head. He fell with a violence that shook the remaining senses out of him, and lay vacantly listening to the sound of running feet and hoarse shouts which grew fainter in the distance, until Maxwell, returning, shook him by the arm. It was dark again now, for the moon had vanished, and a thin drizzle was falling. Dane's head ached intolerably, and a warm trickle ran into one of his eyes.

"Are you badly hurt, Hilton?" asked Maxwell, stooping and holding out a flask.

"No," Dane answered dubiously, as, gripping his comrade's hand, he staggered to his feet. "Mine is a pretty thick cranium, but somebody did their best to test its solidity with the butt of a gun. Did you get them?"

"We did not." Maxwell, who seldom showed what he felt, evinced no chagrin. "The constable managed to stick fast in the one gap in the second hedge; but we got their net, and, although I don't wish to trouble you if you are not fit, if you could describe the fellow you grappled with, we should know where to find him."

Dane did so to the best of his ability.

"It's young Jim Johnstone!" the keeper exclaimed; "an' after this we should grip him trying to slip off by the night train. I'm minding Mr. Black told me he'd e'en be sitting up in case yon rascals killed onybody, an' ye needed authority. He's a pleasant-spoken gentleman, an' this is a clear case o' unlawful woundin'."

"Start at once with that fool of a policeman!" said Maxwell. "Now, Hilton, if you can manage to walk as far as the road, I will drive you home."

He held out his arm, but grew tired long before they reached his trap: Dane was no featherweight, and he leaned upon him heavily. When Maxwell helped his comrade down before The Larches there were lights in the lower windows, though it was very late, and its owner stood upon the steps awaiting them.

"I could not sleep until I heard whether you had caught the rascals," he began. "But what's this? Have they hurt you, Hilton?"

"Not much, sir," answered Dane.

Seeing Mrs. Chatterton in the hall, he shook off Maxwell's arm, and attempted to enter it unassisted to prove his assertion. The attempt, however, was a distinct failure. He tripped upon a mat, reeled forward drunkenly, and, clutching at the nearest chair, sank into it, presenting a sufficiently surprising spectacle, for his collar, as he subsequently found, was burst, while there were generous rents in his garments, and the red trickle flowed faster down his face. Then there followed confusion, for Mrs. Chatterton was a gentle but easily disconcerted lady, and her husband addicted to over-vigorous action. So, while the one proceeded in search of bandages, and, not finding them, returned to ask useless questions and, in spite of his feeble protests, pour cold water over Dane's injured head, Chatterton smote a gong and hurled confused orders at the startled servants. This lasted until a dainty figure came swiftly down the stairway, and chaos was reduced to order when Lilian took control with a firm hand.

"Don't trouble him with questions, Aunty, but get some brandy, quick!" she said. "Uncle, please do not make any more useless noise, but ask one of these foolish women to bring hot water. Annie, bring me the arnica, and the first piece of clean linen you can find. Now, Hilton, you are not hurt very badly, are you?"

She bent down, with the light of a big hanging lamp upon her, and, forgetting the faintness and pain, which was considerable, Dane felt his heart bound within him. In spite of her swift orderliness, the girl's eyes were anxious as well as very pitiful, and there was a tension in her voice.

"No," he replied, as carelessly as he could, for all his pulses were throbbing. "I am just a little dizzy, and shall be better presently. I am chiefly ashamed of making such a scene, Lily."

It did the man good to see the relief in his attendant's face. Miss Chatterton flushed a little under his gaze and became once more strictly practical.

"The wound is worse than you suppose," she said, with a slight but perceptible shiver. "Take a mouthful of this brandy, and I will fix a dressing. Aunty, hold the bandage, and give me the scissors!"

She did all very cleverly, then slipped away; and ten minutes later Dane was glad to bid Chatterton and his wife good-night. His head still throbbed painfully – for the trigger-guard which struck his forehead had bitten deep – and, having seen what pleased him greatly, he desired to be alone to think.

When he had gone, Mrs. Chatterton looked at her husband.

"Did it strike you as significant that Lily should come down at a few moments' notice dressed just as she left us?" she asked.

"Am I quite a fool?" said Chatterton, and then added in oracular fashion: "Hilton Dane will make his mark some day; and it was his father's roll which started me on the way to prosperity."

As it happened, Lilian Chatterton had also food for reflection, and sat long by an open window looking out into the night. There was no doubt, she admitted, that she found Hilton Dane's society congenial. His swift deference to all her wishes pleased her; and as he had intimated that he desired nothing more than her friendship, there was no reason why it should not be granted him. Under different circumstances the girl fancied that her interest might have carried her farther; but Thomas Chatterton's thinly veiled command was a fatal barrier. Even then she frowned, remembering the summary manner in which he had purposed to dispose of her as though she were a chattel. Nevertheless, she had been badly startled by the sight of the wounded man; and the fact remained that when her eyes first rested upon him she grew almost faint with a sudden and wholly unexplainable fear. Lilian wondered, with a crimsoning of her face, whether she had betrayed the relief she certainly experienced on discovering that his injuries were not serious; and then she closed the window with somewhat unnecessary violence.

The next sun had not long risen when Dane went out shakily into the freshness of the morning. His brain had refused duty during the preceding night, and there were questions to be grappled with. Hilton Dane possessed a long patience, but, although a chivalrous person, he was not a fool. He shrank from the thought of allowing the iron-master's ward to be forced into a union with him, even if that were possible – about which, however, knowing the young lady's character, he was very doubtful. Also, he was at present a comparatively poor man, and though he believed there was a moderate fortune in his invention, he saw that some time must elapse before he could realize it. Abusing his host's interference fervently, he decided that because the continual effort to keep silence was wearing his resolution down, it would be well to avoid further temptation by leaving The Larches.

He had just arrived at this decision when Chatterton came upon him.

"You do not look at all fit, Hilton," said the elder man. "The cut on your forehead would, of course, account for that; but it has struck me lately that something is troubling you. I refrain on principle from prying into other folks' affairs; but, considering the time I have known you, if you have any difficulty, I think you might confide it to me."

Dane understood what lay behind this, and he felt that it was the last thing under the circumstances he would think of doing.

"You have made my stay here so pleasant that if I remain much longer I shall never be fit for work again," he said. "I have accordingly decided to run up to London, and, if the railroad builders have not my work cut out, look round for another foreign commission."

Thomas Chatterton started a little, and tried to hide a frown.

"I thought you had changed your mind after the letter you showed me, and decided to stay in this country. It strikes me as downright folly to risk accidents and fevers abroad with such a patent in your hands. Your pump would beat the best pulsometer ever put into a mine. If you don't approve of the offers you have received, and my suggestions, why can't you sell it to the public through a limited company?"

Dane laughed a little.

"As I said before, sir, by the time I paid promoters and directors, there would be very little left for me. If the pump, which cost years of thought and experimenting, is to enrich anybody it shall be its inventor; and another good foreign commission should supply me with the necessary money."

"Listen to me," said Chatterton. "It is time I spoke plainly. I have been called a hard man, but I hope I am equally just, and I had to fight desperately for a foothold at the beginning. Well, I kept a mental ledger, and no man ever robbed or assisted me but I made against his name a debit or credit entry. Some of those debts were heavy, but in due time I paid them back in full."

For a moment Chatterton certainly looked a hard man as he shut his hand slowly, and with a very grim expression in his heavy-jawed visage, stared steadily at Dane. Then the grimness vanished as he added:

"There is still a sum standing to the credit of Henry Dane, and I feel ashamed often that I have let it stand so long. There is still one way in which you could help me wipe it off, if none of those mentioned already suits you. My niece will not leave me dowerless – and – for if it had not been so I should not have spoken – you expressed your admiration pretty openly some years ago."

Dane had no enviable task before him, but, remembering his compact, he was determined to accomplish it, even if it should be necessary to use a little brutality.

"I am afraid I see two somewhat important objections, sir," he answered quietly. "In the first place, it is not apparent that the lady approves of me."

"Pshaw!" said Chatterton. "When I was your age I never allowed such trifles to daunt me. You surely did not expect her to say she had been patiently waiting for you?"

"I think I mentioned two objections, sir, and the second is of almost equal importance," Dane responded gravely. "I am at present a poor man, you see."

Thomas Chatterton faced round on him again with his jaw protruded, and a deeper hue in his generally sufficiently florid countenance.

"You need not be, unless you are fond of poverty. You mean – "

"That a boy and girl attachment seldom lasts long – on either side."

Chatterton moved a few paces forward, with the dry cough which those who knew his temper recognized as a danger signal, then wheeled round upon his heel and strode toward the house; and Dane noticed that he kicked an unoffending dog he usually fondled.

As luck would have it, the next person Dane met was Lilian, and she looked very winsome as she stood bareheaded under the morning sunshine in her thin white dress. Dane's lips set tight as he watched her, then suddenly his face softened again.

"I am glad to see you recovering, Hilton," she greeted him. "That hat hides my bandages nicely. Do you feel able to walk slowly over to Culmeny with me to-day?"

It was a tantalizing question: Dane felt not only able but very willing to walk across the breadth of Scotland in Lilian Chatterton's company. He feared however, that his moral strength would prove unequal to the strain the excursion might impose, for it was growing very difficult to observe the conditions of the indefinite compact.

"I am very sorry, but I have letters to write," he said.

Lilian Chatterton was a trifle quick-tempered, and though Dane knew it, and considered it not a fault but a characteristic, he wondered at the ways of women as she answered:

"I could not, of course, expect you to delay your correspondence, which is no doubt important. Have you run out of those new powder cartridges?"

Dane felt that, under the circumstances, this was particularly hard on him, but he smiled dryly.

"The correspondence relates to my departure for London. I want you to listen, Lilian. I have just had an interview with your uncle, which makes my absence appear desirable. Perhaps you can guess its purport, and the gist of what he said."

The clear rose-color deepened a little in the girl's cheeks, but she answered steadily.

"I will admit the possibility. The most important question is what you said to him."

Now Dane had not only subdued mutinous alien laborers, and held them to their task, but he had even been complimented by a South American Spaniard upon the incisive vocabulary which helped him to accomplish it. Nevertheless, at that moment he felt almost abject, and found speech of any kind very difficult.

"Are you ashamed of your answer?" asked the girl.

"I am," Dane admitted. "There was, however, only one way in which I could satisfy Mr. Chatterton without running the risk of allowing him to apply considerable misdirected energy to the task of convincing a second person. Therefore, though I did not like it, I took that way. He was not pleased with me."

"You told him – " Lilian began, coloring still more.

"I did," said Dane grimly. "Horribly unflattering, wasn't it; but it was the best I could do for you."

The girl first experienced a wholly illogical desire to humiliate the speaker; but, recognizing the unreasonableness of this, she reflected a moment, and then laughed mirthlessly.

"It should certainly prove effective. Still, a woman would have found a neater way out of the difficulty!"

Lilian left him, and when the man passed out of earshot into the shrubbery, he used a few pointed and forbidden adjectives in connection with what he termed his luck.

He was leaning moodily upon a gate, looking down on a sunlit stubble-field the following afternoon, when the next link was forged in the chain of circumstances which, beginning with Chatterton's fishing, would drag him through strange adventures. There was late honeysuckle on the hedges, and festoons of warm-tinted straw. Running water sang soothingly beneath the pine branches overhanging a neighboring hollow; while all the wide vista of river, moor, and fell was mellowed by the golden autumn haze. Dane, however, was far from happy. He was in no way jealous of Carsluith Maxwell, which was perhaps surprising; but, in addition to his other troubles, it did not please him that the latter should have accompanied Miss Chatterton home on foot from Culmeny. They had also been an inordinate time over the journey.

Presently, a little brown-faced child came pattering barefooted down the lane, and stopping, glanced at him shyly, as though half afraid. She was a pretty, elfish little thing, though her well-mended garments betokened industrious poverty. She apparently gathered courage when the man smiled at her.

"Whom are you staring so hard at, my little maid?" said he.

The child fished out a strip of folded paper from somewhere about her diminutive person, and held it up to him.

"Ye will be the Mr. Dane who's staying at The Larches?"

Dane nodded, and the girl glanced up and down the lane suspiciously.

"Then Sis telt me to give ye this when there was naebody to see."

"And who is your sister, and what's it all about?" asked Dane; and the little thing smiled roguishly.

"Just Mary Johnstone. Maybe it would tell ye gin ye lookit inside it, sir."

She vanished the next moment, with a patter of bare feet, leaving Dane to stare blankly at the folded paper.

"Now, who is Mary Johnstone, and what can she want with me?" he wondered, as he prepared to follow the child's advice and read the missive. When this had been done, however, he was not greatly enlightened.

"I'm taking a great liberty," it ran. "I am in great trouble, and you are the one person who can help me. If you would not have two little children go hungry all winter, you will meet me by the planting at Hallows Brig in the gloaming to-morrow. I saw you at The Larches, and thought I could trust you."

"Very confiding of Miss Johnstone, whoever she is, but I'm thankful my conscience is clear," thought Dane. It was unfortunate that he did not obey the first impulse which prompted him to destroy the note. Instead of this, he lighted another cigar, and sat down to consider the affair.

Just then the local constable, who on an eventful occasion had also stuck fast in the hedge, came tramping through the stubble with elephantine gait.

"Grand weather the day, sir," he beamed. "Ye will have heard we grippit the man who broke yere heid."

"I'm summoned as a witness; but who is Mary Johnstone?" asked Dane. "You should know everybody about here."

"Old Rab Johnstone's daughter; and that's no great credit to the lass. Rab's overfond of the whisky, and never does nothing when he can help it, which is gey often, I'm thinking. The daughter's a hard working lass – sews for the gentlefolks; and she and her brither between them keep the two mitherless bairns fed. It's him we've got in the lock-up for breaking yere heid."

"Oh," said Dane, as a light dawned upon him. "Then Mary Johnstone would be the pretty, light-haired girl I saw sewing for Miss Chatterton?"

"That same, sir," answered the constable, with professional alacrity. "Miss Chatterton has missed nothing, has she?"

"Of course not!" Dane said impatiently. "I was only inquiring out of curiosity. You need not mention it. Would this coin be of any use to you?"

The official admitted that it might be; but when he appeared to smother a bovine chuckle, Dane turned upon him.

"What the deuce is amusing you so?"

"Naething, sir," the man answered sheepishly. "I'm taken that way whiles in hot weather."

The constable furnished further particulars about the poacher's family before he departed; and Dane, reflecting that his must be the most damaging testimony against the prisoner, understood why Mary Johnstone had sent for him. It was perhaps foolish, but the child's face had attracted him; and deciding that the lot of the pretty seamstress, struggling to bring up her sisters under the conditions mentioned, must be a hard one at the best, he resolved at least to hear what she had to say.