Читать книгу The Wings of Victory - Fred M. White - Страница 7

Table of Contents

Manby Dorn had taken no heed of Sylvia's characteristic outbreak when she had discovered the trick he had played upon her. He had seen her like that before. Many a time she had written those letters of his either in sulky silence or with a wild outburst of passion, and once, indeed, she had actually threatened him with a riding whip. But nothing had come of it, and in a day or two the usual cold and distant relationship between father and daughter had been restored.

Sylvia knew him for what he was, a fact that did not disturb him in the least. Indeed, why should it, when all the world had put a proper valuation on him and treated him accordingly? There were, of course, plenty of people in the immediate neighbourhood of his own class who had known him from boyhood, and there had been a time when young Manby Dorn had been welcomed everywhere. But that time had long ceased. Men of his own class met him and passed him as if he had been a stranger; there was not a woman within miles who would have spoken to him. Not that he cared; he was long past that. So long as he could have his creature comforts and retain a certain measure of credit with his tailor, nothing mattered. And the last thing in the world he thought of was to give any consideration to the feelings of his wife and child.

Therefore he folded his letter and posted it in his own cynical way. He would see Sylvia at lunch, no doubt, then the incident would be forgotten. But there was no Sylvia at lunch, and no sign of her anywhere in the house. This was rather unusual, and Dorn began to have his misgivings. For Sylvia had never behaved in this way before. She had been cold and contemptuous or blazingly indignant. And now, apparently, she had vanished, bent upon some scheme of her own. That she had little or no money he knew very well. That she had left the house and was seen walking down the road with a bag in her hand, going in the direction of Tavistock, he discovered later on from a road-member by the wayside.

It was useless to ask Mrs. Dorn anything, of course. She did not know what had become of Sylvia, and she did not seem to care. That confused mind of hers had long been past comprehension of anything. When Sylvia was with her she seemed glad enough for the presence of her daughter, but once the girl was out of her sight she might have had no identity at all.

"Here, wake up," Dorn said. "What's become of Sylvia? Where's the girl gone?"

Mrs. Dorn shook her head slowly. No gleam of intelligence crept into those dark eyes of hers, those eyes that would have been as beautiful as any in the world had there been but one spark of expression in them.

"I don't know," she said. "Sylvia, who is Sylvia? And where has she gone? I don't know. I shall find it some day; I shall find it before I die. And then she will be happy and comfortable, and I shall die in peace."

Dorn turned away hopelessly. All this was so much beating in the air. And it had been going on more years than he cared to count. It was always the same. Whether he treated his wife cruelly or indifferently, or with an outbreak of passion, she met it in that absent way of hers; it formed a wall so thick than even all his cunning could not get behind it. And so it had been ever since that fateful night when, in a moment of drunken passion, he had hurled that lamp at her, and Lanton Place had been burnt to the ground. It never occurred to him that this tragedy had been the culmination of three years of torture and tyranny, and that the fine, sensitive mind of his wife had gone down before it. It never occurred to him that his neglect and sinful extravagance had led to this deplorable condition of things. It never occurred to him, when he was away from home spending his own money and hers, that he was leading up to a painful tragedy. All he knew now was that he had come to the end of his tether, and that he was saddled with a mad wife and a daughter who hated and despised him. And, indeed, things were very critical. He was at the limit of his resources. He could not think of even one of those little criminal schemes of his which had hitherto been successful. If this man Bevill failed him now, then within a few hours the Dorns would be on the verge of starvation. It was a black and bitter outlook, rendered all the more depressing by Sylvia's sudden disappearance.

Where was she? Where was she gone? Dorn asked himself over and over again during the next day or so. It had been so unlike Sylvia to go off like this. And Tavistock was not very far off. Had she revolted at length? Had she made up her mind that at last she would expose him? Was it her intention to call upon John Bevill and throw herself upon his mercy?

But no, she would never do that; she would never forget that he was her father, and that any confession of hers would place him in the reach of the police, whom he knew had been only too anxious to lay him by the heels for many years. There was comfort in the thought that Sylvia would not so far forget herself. And yet, why had she gone? Why had she disappeared in this strange fashion without saying a word to anyone?

Over this problem Dorn brooded for the best part of two days. He even roused himself so far as to walk into Tavistock and make a few inquiries. It was quite a relief to learn that Mr. Bevill was not at Baron's Court for the moment, so that if Sylvia had called there to see him she would most certainly have been disappointed. And beside, Dorn was not the sort of man to address that begging letter to Baron's Court without first having ascertained something about the man he was addressing. And it was characteristic of Dorn, too, that he cared absolutely nothing what happened to Sylvia so long as she did not betray him. He could have heard without a single regret that she had been found dead at the bottom of the Dart. He was thinking of himself always.

At any rate, it was good to discover that Bevill was away from home, that nobody knew where he was or when he was likely to return. So Dorn, neat and immaculate as usual, plodded his way homeward, relieved in his mind to a certain extent and, at the same time, deeply annoyed because he had failed with those blandishments of his to elicit a further meed of credit from a local wine merchant. There was absolutely nothing to drink in the house, his last cigar was between his lips, and the prospect was dreary enough. There was a certain amount of food which he partook of later on, seated moodily at the table opposite the wife, who never spoke to him now and, indeed, never spoke to anyone unless in reply to a direct question. It was like sitting at a table with a corpse, some dread skeleton opposite him that reminded him vaguely of the past. He was glad to get it all over presently and shut himself in the library.

And there he sat till the light faded and the stars crept out, one by one; sat there moodily with an empty pipe in his mouth, and an empty glass by his side. He heard the one old servant fasten up the front door, he heard his wife creeping restlessly up to her bedroom. Then he opened the window and stepped out into the still night.

"Heavens, what a life!" he murmured to himself. "What an existence! Where is it going to end? Where——"

He pulled up suddenly, conscious of a solitary figure standing there against the background of the ragged shrubbery. It seemed to him that the figure carried something in its hand.

"What are you doing here?" Dorn demanded.

"It's all right, sir," the man said civilly enough. "I didn't want to disturb you or anybody in the house. I am one of the warders from the convict prison."

As the man spoke he turned, and in the dim starlight Dorn could see that he carried a rifle in his hand. The sheen of his peaked cap was visible in the gloom.

"Is that so?" Dorn asked. "One of those poor devils managed to get away I suppose?"

"Yes, sir," the warder said. "Yesterday afternoon. There are a dozen of us out altogether and we have tracked him as far as here. We are bound to have him before morning. This isn't a bad hiding-place of yours, sir."

"Oh, you are about right there," Dorn said bitterly. "It's an absolute wilderness. But we've got no outbuildings he can secrete himself in. Have you been all through the shrubbery? Plenty of cover there."

"There are two other men with me, sir," the warder explained. "And we've been all over the place. Don't let us disturb you, sir. You can go back into the house with an easy mind."

"I'm not quite so sure of that," Dorn said. "I am practically alone here without a weapon, and the man you are looking after is pretty sure to be desperate. By the way, has he managed to change his clothes?"

"I don't think he has, sir—at least he was in prison clothes when he was seen by a workman a couple of hours ago. You had better go back to the house, sir, I think."

Dorn made his way listlessly back again and re-entered the library by means of the window. At any rate, this had made a pleasant little break in the most dreary monotonous evening ever remembered. He was half-inclined to stay outside there and join in the man hunt. But then he thought of that immaculate suit he was wearing, and decided that on the whole he was better off where he was. He sat there gazing into the darkness till the church clock struck one, waiting and perhaps hoping for something to happen. Just as he was about to close the window the crack of a rifle broke the silence. Then there was a shout, followed by another shot.

Dorn could hear a confused voice in the distance, then a figure flashed from the bushes and came headlong in the direction of the open window. It was no convict this, but a man dressed in a suit of dark grey with a smart cap on the back of his head. He came forward eagerly enough, furtive and desperate, and stood in front of Dorn with his hand on the window-ledge. Dorn could hear him panting with his exertions. Then, without any warning or invitation, the fugitive fell over the window-sill fairly into the room, and as coolly as his condition permitted softly pulled the window down.