Читать книгу A Shadowed Love - Fred M. White - Страница 13

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"I shall wake up presently and find it is all a dream," Molly said, with her face turned to the blue sky. "Dick, to think that a week should make all the difference to our fortunes! Already Pant-street has become a vague memory."

Dick was lying on his back on a patch of purple heather and listening to the hum of the bees. The air was crisp and pure. Down below lay the valley with its golden patches of cornland. In a belt or trees Stanmere nestled. High up were the great woods and the stretches of heather, and behind again a desolate land of ravine and rock and bog and larch, where no man ventured after dark unless he was born to the soil. But Dick had had the benefit of twenty years' personal acquaintance with the place, and it was no idle boast of his that he could find his way over the moor blindfold.

Down in a little hollow in the centre of a shady garden lay Shepherd's Spring. Dick had the key in his pocket, but they had not entered yet. But all their belongings lay outside the gate, and a freshly engaged maidservant mounted guard over it. It was quite impossible to think about the house yet, for Dick and Molly had a thousand sweet old associations to renew.

They stayed there on the heath pointing this and that spot out to one another till Molly's eyes grew dim, and she had to use her handkerchief. When Dick produced a lunch basket, a hearty meal was partaken of in spite of the wasps. There was zeal about that luncheon that neither of them ever forgot.

"I want to dance and shout and sing," Molly cried. "And I shall have you here from now till Monday morning. And there is a sprig of white heather!"

She darted on it, and placed it in her hat. The cream white coralled bloom was all that was needed to make her happiness complete. Dick was more sober. Perhaps he was a little frightened at his sudden good fortune.

"Let us go into the house," he said. "I'm just a trifle fay, as the Scotch say. I don't know, Molly, but we are on the verge of tremendous events, and I am chosen for one of the puppets in the drama. Let us see the cottage."

The garden was trim and tidy, for it had been seen to regularly. Inside the rooms were small, and Spencer's estimate that they were well furnished was a modest statement, for the place was luxuriously appointed. There were fine carpets and pictures and statues, old china and Empire furniture, oak and Chippendale, and Adam and the like. Dick gasped as he looked at the drawing-room.

"Have you seen a ghost?" Molly asked.

"Well, something like it," Dick admitted. "This room has given me quite a turn. It is smaller, but it is furnished exactly like the drawing-room in Cambria Square where I first met my dear little blind girl."

"Something resembling, you mean?"

"Absolutely the same. The same small tables and the vases and glasses for flowers. When you have filled them all with blossoms the likeness will be marvellous. Molly, what does all this mean?"

No lucid explanation came to the bewildered Molly. The two seemed to have blundered into the heart of a mystery like a dark, unfamiliar landscape that from time to time was illuminated by a flash of lightning. Every day seemed to bring some fresh surprise.

"It maddens me," Dick cried. "Just think of the extraordinary patchwork of adventures that I have had lately, and how inexplicable they are, and how they fit together. If that man has deliberately led us into trouble—"

"But it does not seem possible," Molly urged. "Mr. Spencer has a great reputation. He has been very kind to you, and you say he has a noble face."

"So he has," Dick admitted, "but—"

"But me no buts, sir. It was by the purest accident that you became of service to Mr. Spencer. And see how kind he has been to you."

"And yet I am certain he had some deep design when he offered me this place. If you had only seen how his eyes lighted up and how he talked to himself! I tell you, it was a sudden inspiration."

"And a very good one for us," Molly laughed. "Oh, I admit the mystery, which, my dear boy, is no business of ours. Mr. Spencer chooses to keep his daughter to himself, and you are warned to keep clear and think no more about the matter."

"I shall never forget that pathetic, beautiful face and those blue eyes," Dick said. "And I am glad to think she has been here."

"My dear Dick, what do you mean?"

"Sherlock Holmes," Dick smiled. "She has told me that she needed no eyes so far as her own room was concerned. This room would not be a replica of the one in Cambria Square unless blind Mary had been here. Here is the foundation of a novel, if I could only get to the bottom of it."

"Meanwhile I have something more practical to do," said Molly. "Give a hand, Dick, so that we can have a walk after tea with a clear conscience."

It was a glorious ramble after tea through that lovely familiar country, down through the leafy silence of the warren, where every step held some precious association, and back again by way of the Stanmere woods and through the breast-high bracken home. Then they rested for a moment, silent for the time being.

The silence was broken presently by a sharp voice, followed by one pitched in a rusty key like the creaking of a door. Down the drive under the beeches towards Stanmere two men were walking, apparently discussing some point of the deepest interest. They passed Dick and his sister quite unconscious of their presence.

"Herr Greigstein," Molly exclaimed. "Greigstein in Harris tweeds, looking like a large landed proprietor. It is quite apparent that he is not down here for the pleasure of our society. Who is the little man with the face of dried parchment. He looks like Mr. Tulkinghorn—the traditional receptacle for family secrets."

Dick nodded approvingly.

"You have got it," he said. "That is Mr. Martlett, of Lincoln's Inn, the old lawyer from whom I got the keys of our cottage. The drama progresses, Molly. I wonder what part I am cut for—the fool or the hero?"