Читать книгу The Hillman - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 3

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Louise, self-engrossed, and with a pleasant sense of detachment from the prospective inconveniences of the moment, was leaning back among the cushions of the motionless car. Her eyes, lifted upward, traveled past the dimly lit hillside, with its patchwork of wall-enclosed fields, up to where the leaning clouds and the unseen heights met in a misty sea of obscurity.

The moon had not yet risen, but a faint and luminous glow, spreading like a halo about the topmost peak of that ragged line of hills, heralded its approach. Louise sat with clasped hands, rapt and engrossed in the esthetic appreciation of a beauty which found its way but seldom into her town-enslaved life. She listened to the sound of a distant sheepbell. Her eyes swept the hillsides, vainly yet without curiosity, for any sign of a human dwelling. The voices of her chauffeur and her maid, who stood talking heatedly together by the bonnet of the car, seemed to belong to another world. She had the air of one completely yet pleasantly detached from all material surroundings.

The maid, leaving her discomfited companion with a final burst of reproaches, came to the side of the car. Her voice, when she addressed her mistress, sank to a lower key, but her eyes still flashed with anger.

"But would madame believe it?" she exclaimed. "It is incredible! The man Charles there, who calls himself a chauffeur of experience, declares that we are what he calls 'hung up'! Something unexpected has happened to the magneto. There is no spark. Whose fault can that be, I ask, but the chauffeur's? And such a desert we have reached! We have searched the map together. We are thirty miles from any town, many miles from even a village. What a misfortune!"

Louise turned her head regretfully away from the mysterious spaces. She listened patiently, but without any sort of emotion, to her maid's flow of distressed words. She even smiled very faintly when the girl had finished.

"Something will happen," she remarked indifferently. "There is no need for you to distress yourself. There must be a farmhouse or shelter of some sort near. If the worst comes to the worst, we can spend the night in the car. We have plenty of furs and rugs. You are not a good traveler, Aline. You lose heart too soon."

The girl's face was a study.

"Madame speaks of spending the night in the car!" she exclaimed. "Why, one has not eaten since luncheon, and of all the country through which we have passed, this is the loneliest and dreariest spot."

Louise leaned forward and called to the chauffeur.

"Charles," she asked, "what has happened? Are we really stranded here?"

The man's head emerged from the bonnet. He came round to the side of the car.

"I am very sorry, madam," he reported, "but something has gone wrong with the magneto. I shall have to take it to pieces before I can tell exactly what is wrong. At present I can't get a spark of any sort."

"There is no hope of any immediate repair, then?"

The chauffeur shook his head dolefully.

"I shall have to take the magneto down, madam," he said. "It will take several hours, and it ought to be done by daylight."

"And in the meantime, what do you suggest that we do?" she asked.

The man looked a little helpless. His battle of words with Aline had depressed him.

"I heard a dog bark a little while ago," he remarked. "Perhaps I had better go and see whether there isn't a farm somewhere near."

"And leave us here alone?" Aline exclaimed indignantly. "It is a good suggestion. It comes well from the man who has got us into such trouble!"

Her mistress smiled at her reassuringly.

"What have we to fear, you foolish girl? For myself, I would like better than anything to remain here until the moon comes over the top of that round hill. But listen! It is just as I told you. There is no necessity for Charles to leave us."

They all turned their heads. From some distance behind on the hard, narrow road, curling like a piece of white tape around the hillside, there came, faintly at first, but more distinctly every moment, the sound of horse's hoofs.

"It is as I told you," Louise said composedly. "Some one approaches—on horseback, too. He will be able to fetch assistance."

The chauffeur walked back a few yards, prepared to give early warning to the approaching horseman. The two women, standing up in the car, watched the spot where the road, hidden for some time in the valley, came into sight.

Louder and louder came the sound of the beating of hoofs. Louise gave a little cry as a man on horseback appeared in sight at the crest of the hill. The narrow strip of road seemed suddenly dwarfed, an unreasonable portion of the horizon blotted out. In the half light there was something almost awesome in the unusual size of the horse and of the man who rode it.

"It is a world of goblins, this, Aline!" her mistress exclaimed softly. "What is it that comes?"

"It is a human being, Dieu merci!" the maid replied, with a matter-of-fact little sigh of content.

Conscious of the obstruction in the road, the rider slackened his speed. His horse, a great, dark-colored animal, pricked up his ears when scarcely a dozen yards away from the car, stopped short, and suddenly bolted out on the open moor. There was the sound of a heavy whip, a loud, masterful voice, and a very brief struggle, during which the horse once plunged and reared so high that Louise, watching, cried out in fear. A few moments later, however, horse and rider, the former quivering and subdued, were beside the car.

"Has anything happened?" the newcomer asked, raising his whip to his hat.

He addressed Louise, instinctively conscious, even in that dim light, that she was the person in authority.

She did not at once reply. Her eyes were fixed upon the face of her questioner. There was little enough of him to be seen, yet she was aware of an exceptional interest in his dimly revealed personality. He was young, unusually tall, and his voice was cultivated. Beyond that, she could see or divine nothing.

He, for his part, with his attention still largely engaged in keeping his horse under control, yet knew, in those first few moments, that he was looking into the face of a woman who had no kinship with the world in which he had been born and had lived his days. Those were fugitive thoughts which passed between them, only half conceived, yet strong enough to remain as first and unforgettable impressions. Then the commonplace interests of the situation became insistent.

"I have broken down," Louise said. "My chauffeur tells me that it will take hours to effect some necessary repair to the car. And meanwhile—here we are!"

"You couldn't have chosen a worse place for a breakdown," the young man observed. "You are miles away from anywhere."

"You are indeed a comforter!" Louise murmured. "Do you think that you could possibly get down and advise us what to do? You look so far away up there."

There was another brief struggle between the man and his still frightened horse. Then the former swung himself down, and, with the bridle through his arm, came and stood by the car.

"If there is any way in which I can help," he ventured, "I am quite at your service."

Louise smiled at him. She remained unoppressed by any fear of inconvenience or hardship. She had the air of one rather enjoying her plight.

"Well, you have begun very nicely by doing what I asked you," she said. "Really, you know, to an impressionable person there was something rather terrifying about you when you appeared suddenly from out of the shadows in such a lonely place. I was beginning to wonder whether you were altogether real, whether one of those black hills there had not opened to let you out. You see, I know something of the legends of your country, although I have never been here before."

The young man was less at his ease. He stood tapping his boot nervously with his long riding-whip.

"I am sorry if I frightened you," he said. "My horse is a little restive, and the acetylene light which your chauffeur turned on him was sufficiently alarming."

"You did not exactly frighten me," she assured him, "but you looked so abnormally large. Please tell us what you would advise us to do. Is there a village near, or an inn, or even a barn? Or shall we have to spend the night in the car?"

"The nearest village," he replied, "is twelve miles away. Fortunately, my own home is close by. I shall be very pleased—I and my brother—if you will honor us. I am afraid I cannot offer you very much in the way of entertainment—"

She rose briskly to her feet and beamed upon him.

"You are indeed a good Samaritan!" she exclaimed. "A roof is more than we had dared to hope for, although when one looks up at this wonderful sky and breathes this air, one wonders, perhaps, whether a roof, after all, is such a blessing."

"It gets very cold toward morning," the young man said practically.

"Of course," she assented. "Aline, you will bring my dressing-bag and follow us. This gentleman is kind enough to offer us shelter for the night. Dear me, you really are almost as tall as you appeared!" she added, as she stood by his side. "For the first time in my life you make me feel undersized."

He looked down at her, a little more at his ease now by reason of the friendliness of her manner, although he had still the air of one embarked upon an adventure, the outcome of which was to be regarded with some qualms. She was of little more than medium height, and his first impressions of her were that she was thin, and too pale to be good-looking; that her eyes were large and soft, with eyebrows more clearly defined than is usual among Englishwomen; and that she moved without seeming to walk.

"I suppose I am tall," he admitted, as they started off along the road. "One doesn't notice it around here. My name is John Strangewey, and our house is just behind that clump of trees there, on the top of the hill. We will do our best to make you comfortable," he added a little doubtfully; "but there are only my brother and myself, and we have no women servants in the house."

"A roof of any sort will be a luxury," she assured him. "I only hope that we shall not be a trouble to you in any way."

"And your name, please?" he asked.

She was a little amazed at his directness, but she answered him without hesitation.

"My name," she told him, "is Louise."

He leaned down toward her, a little puzzled.

"Louise? But your surname?"

She laughed softly. It occurred to him that nothing like her laugh had ever been heard on that gray-walled stretch of mountain road.

"Never mind! I am traveling incognito. Who I am, or where I am going—well, what does that matter to anybody? Perhaps I do not know myself. You can imagine, if you like, that we came from the heart of your hills, and that to-morrow they will open again and welcome us back."

"I don't think there are any motor-cars in fairyland," he objected.

"We represent a new edition of fairy lore," she told him. "Modern romance, you know, includes motor-cars and even French maids."

"All the same," he protested, with masculine bluntness, "I really don't see how I can introduce you to my brother as 'Louise from fairyland.'"

She evaded the point.

"Tell me about your brother. Is he as tall as you, and is he younger or older?"

"He is nearly twenty years older," her companion replied. "He is about my height, but he stoops more than I do, and his hair is gray. I am afraid that you may find him a little peculiar."

Her escort paused and swung open a white gate on their left-hand side. Before them was an ascent which seemed to her, in the dim light, to be absolutely precipitous.

"Do we have to climb up that?" she asked ruefully.

"It isn't so bad as it looks," he assured her, "and I am afraid it's the only way up. The house is at the bend there, barely fifty yards away. You can see a light through the trees."

"You must help me, then, please," she begged.

He stooped down toward her. She linked her fingers together through his left arm, and, leaning a little heavily upon him, began the ascent. He was conscious of some subtle fragrance from her clothes, a perfume strangely different from the odor of the ghostlike flowers that bordered the steep path up which they were climbing. Her arms, slight, warm things though they were, and great though his own strength, felt suddenly like a yoke. At every step he seemed to feel their weight more insistent—a weight not physical, solely due to this rush of unexpected emotions.

It was he now whose thoughts rushed away to that medley of hill legends of which she had spoken. Was she indeed a creature of flesh and blood, of the same world as the dull people among whom he lived? Then he remembered the motor-car, the chauffeur, and the French maid, and he gave a little sigh of relief.

"Are we nearly there?" she asked. "Do tell me if I lean too heavily upon you."

"It is only a few steps further," he replied encouragingly. "Please lean upon me as heavily as you like."

She looked around her almost in wonder as her companion paused with his hand upon a little iron gate. From behind that jagged stretch of hills in the distance a corner of the moon had now appeared. By its light, looking backward, she could see the road which they had left below, the moorland stretching away into misty space, an uneasy panorama with its masses of gray boulders, its clumps of gorse, its hillocks and hollows.

Before her, through the little iron gate which her escort had pushed open, was a garden, a little austere looking with its prim flower-beds, filled with hyacinths and crocuses, bordering the flinty walks. The trees were all bent in the same direction, fashioned after one pattern by the winds. Before them was the house—a long, low building, part of it covered with some kind of creeper.

As they stepped across the last few yards of lawn, the black, oak door which they were approaching suddenly opened. A tall, elderly man stood looking inquiringly out. He shaded his eyes with his hands.

"Is that you, brother?" he asked doubtfully.

John Strangewey ushered his companion into the square, oak-paneled hall, hung with many trophies of the chase, a few oil-paintings, here and there some sporting prints. It was lighted only with a single lamp which stood upon a round, polished table in the center of the white-flagged floor.

"This lady's motor-car has broken down, Stephen," John explained, turning a little nervously toward his brother. "I found them in the road, just at the bottom of the hill. She and her servants will spend the night here. I have explained that there is no village or inn for a good many miles."

Louise turned graciously toward the elder man, who was standing grimly apart. Even in those few seconds, her quick sensibilities warned her of the hostility which lurked behind his tightly closed lips and steel-gray eyes. His bow was stiff and uncordial, and he made no movement to offer his hand.

"We are not used to welcoming ladies at Peak Hall, madam," he said. "I am afraid that you will find us somewhat unprepared for guests."

"I ask for nothing more than a roof," Louise assured him.

John threw his hat and whip upon the round table and stood in the center of the stone floor. She caught a glance which flashed between the two men—of appeal from the one, of icy resentment from the other.

"We can at least add to the roof a bed and some supper—and a welcome," John declared. "Is that not so, Stephen?"

The older man turned deliberately away. It was as if he had not heard his brother's words.

"I will go and find Jennings," he said. "He must be told about the servants."

Louise watched the disappearing figure until it was out of sight. Then she looked up into the face of the younger man, who was standing by her side.

"I am sorry," she murmured apologetically. "I am afraid that your brother is not pleased at this sudden intrusion. Really, we shall give you very little trouble."

He answered her with a sudden eager enthusiasm. He seemed far more natural then than at any time since he had ridden up from out of the shadows to take his place in her life.

"I won't apologize for Stephen," he said. "He is a little crotchety. You must please be kind and not notice. You must let me, if I can, offer you welcome enough for us both."