Читать книгу The Broken Trail - Harold Bindloss - Страница 9
ОглавлениеMOONLIGHT AND SHADOW
Pale-yellow reflections lingered in the west, where the plain ran to the sea. The east was dusky blue, and the half-moon rose behind a sharp black hill. Soft darkness crept down the curving glen, but in some places a faint silver beam pierced the Scots firs' branches and touched the hazel thickets by the stony path. Emerson smelt honeysuckle, and a burn splashed in the gloom.
The glen was famous long since, when the moss-troopers followed the burn across the waste to raid Northumberland; but Emerson was not thinking about historical romance. After dinner Anne and he had crossed the hill and he was satisfied to be with her in the summer dusk. Although he had but recently arrived, and her cultivation was higher than his, Anne and he were friends. She was frank and up-to-date, and he imagined her brother's trusting him was something of a bond.
Anne's speculations, when she did speculate about Emerson, were mixed. He was athletic and carried himself like a soldier. Then he was a fresh type and stood for independence and effort. The young men she knew were mainly occupied by sport, and rather laboriously copied their jazzing friends in town. In fact, all, so to speak, used one model. The Canadian modestly but firmly asserted his individuality. Moreover, in the bleak hills, young men were not numerous. Anne knew she was attractive, and rather liked to use her charm.
Where a gate broke a dry-stone wall she stopped. A Scots fir spread its branches across the mossy stones and the spot commanded a noble view. The deep river valley was blurred and indistinct, but where it opened to the plain the moon was on the marshes, and the Solway pierced the misty levels like a shining blade.
"All is very calm and perhaps you are lucky, because on the Border it is not often like that," said Anne. "Our hills are torn by storms, and floods carve deep gullies in the moors. Well, I suppose storm is bracing, and at all events, a Solway gale breaks the sort of narcotic quiet that rules at Copshope."
Emerson saw the old house's lights glimmer in the trees. An owl called behind the beech wood and light mist floated about the fields. He felt the spot was marked by a soothing, homelike charm.
"I'd begun to think it was always summer at Copshope," he said. "But don't you like quiet?"
"One can have enough," Anne replied, and laughed. "A month at Edinburgh, and sometimes two or three weeks in town, is all the change I get, and it makes me long for more. One is very quiet when one is doped. However, I mustn't grumble, and I don't suppose you know much about being bored."
"Well, I've loafed for three weeks, and I feel I want to keep it up. You see, I have not taken a holiday before. Once or twice I tried, but I got up against obstacles that forced me back to work. Now I think about it, the thing was queer."
"I wonder——" said Anne, with a smile. "Something, of course, depends upon one's seeing the obstacles, and to picture your loafing is hard."
"Then, if you're interested, you can watch me," Emerson rejoined. "At length, nothing's doing and my partner holds the fort. The Old Country's a bully country, and I mean to take a rest——"
Anne turned her head, and signing him to be quiet, stepped back into the gloom. Stones rattled on the path, as if somebody came down the glen. Emerson imagined it looked as if they were lovers and Anne would sooner not attract the stranger's notice. The supposition was humorous, but he admitted the joke had some charm.
The stranger went fast. His step was not a plowman's step and his boots were not the boots the dalesfolk used. Emerson noted things like that. When the other crossed a spot where the moonbeams pierced the trees he thought he knew somebody whose figure and carriage resembled the fellow's. The man passed the spot, and stopping about fifty yards farther on, looked about. Anne touched Emerson, and for a few moments they were very quiet. Then the fellow began to push through a broken hedge, and when he plunged down the bank on the other side he swore.
Emerson started. Since the dalesfolk mended hedges with barbed wire, the fellow's swearing was perhaps not remarkable. The strange thing was, his accent and expletives were Western.
"Has one of your neighbors spent some time in Canada or the United States?" he asked.
"I think not; besides, the man is not a neighbor," Anne replied.
She moved back from the wall, and when her face was in the moonlight Emerson saw she cogitated.
"All the same, I thought I knew his walk," she resumed in a hesitating voice.
"Somehow I imagined I had seen him before," said Emerson. "He's steering across the field. Where do you think he'll go?"
"A path to the house runs along the other side, and a lane behind the garden joins the valley road," said Anne; and then, as if she obeyed an impulse, pushed Emerson. "Follow him!"
Emerson shoved through the broken hedge and kept the gloom of another across the field. His steps were nearly noiseless and light mist floated about. Moreover, he was at one time a mounted policeman, and the Royal North-West are first-class scouts. To some extent, however, the mist was a drawback. The man he followed was but a minute in front, and if he stopped, Emerson might run up against him, and an explanation would be awkward. Anyhow, the other would know he was watched, and Emerson wanted to find out why he took the field path to the house. Anne did not know him, and Emerson was satisfied he was not a countryman.
Where the path went round a clump of larches he halted. A burn splashed behind the trees, and he thought the noise would drown the other's steps; so far as he could see, nobody was about. Two hundred yards off, the Copshope windows shone; the lights were on the ground floor and some were dim, as if the shades obscured the glass.
Then a gate creaked, and Emerson crossed a plank that spanned the burn. The path he took curved along by the beeches at one side of the lawn, and under the spreading branches all was dark. Garnet heard nothing, although he knew the gravel was freshly raked. Yet he thought somebody was in front and, like himself, kept the grass border in order to go noiselessly.
Stopping behind the last trunk, he got his breath and looked about. The moon was higher and the dewy lawn sparkled in silver light. A trail of mist shimmered about the bushes on the other side. The front of the house was yet in gloom, but after a few moments a dark object crossed an illuminated window. Although the terrace was flagged, Emerson heard nothing. The dark object vanished like a ghost.
A minute or two afterwards he stole up the shallow terrace steps. Nobody was on the flagged walk, and had the door opened, he would have seen the reflection from the hall. Garnet knitted his brows. The fellow was not Harden's servant; Anne did not know him, and a servant would not steal into the house. To steer for the corner where he vanished would occupy some moments and Garnet's boots might jar on the flags. Emerson resolved to go the other way, round the house, and meet the fellow.
He started. But for the kitchen and the housekeeper's room, the windows at the back were dark. Emerson crept round the garage and stable and the gardener's potting sheds, but all was quiet. Yet somebody had gone round the corner. In fact, he rather thought the fellow was still lurking by the wall. Anyhow, Emerson was satisfied the other had not heard him. He had hunted the shy prairie antelope, and where silence is indicated the Royal North-West troopers do not make much noise. Then his foot struck a bucket and the iron rang like a bell. Garnet frowned and clenched his fist. The noise would carry; there was now no use in his waiting in the courtyard, particularly since the outbuildings cut his view. Since he had, no doubt, alarmed the other, he ought perhaps to watch the lane that joined the road.
The lane followed the edge of a beech wood, and Emerson waited under a tree. He was on the grassy border and knew himself indistinguishable a yard or two off. On the other side the hedge was low, and the sky behind it was clear. Garnet thought he had fixed on the proper spot.
By and by somebody came along the lane and he felt he ought to know the step. The other was going briskly, but not very fast, as if he did not want his speed to excite curiosity. Then a tall figure cut the sky behind the hedge and Garnet knew the sharp, dark outline. The man who had passed him in the glen was making for the road.
Emerson had no grounds to stop him, and since he did not mean to do so, he would sooner the fellow did not imagine he was watched. To some extent his caution was mechanical; he took the line he would have taken were he a police trooper.
The indistinct figure melted, the quick steps died away, and Emerson started for the house. He calculated it was about ten minutes since he climbed the terrace steps. The stranger had not gone to the hall door and certainly was not in the courtyard at the back. Emerson wondered where he was while the ten minutes went.
Anne met him on the terrace. The moonlight had reached the house and he thought she looked bothered.
"Well?" she said.
Emerson narrated his search and she nodded.
"You were not justified to meddle and I am glad you did not. Perhaps I ought not to have sent you—but I thought him like Keith."
"He was like Keith," Emerson agreed.
"But Keith's at Winnipeg, and if somebody copied his walk and clothes in order to rob the bank, he would not come to Scotland and lurk about our house."
"It's strange. In a way, to suspect the fellow Keith met at Vancouver would be ridiculous. There's another thing: when Keith goes fast, his step is rather uneven. The other's was not."
"He did not go to the kitchen; I know our neighbors' servants and gamekeepers. You are satisfied he was not about the yard?"
"That is so," said Emerson, smiling. "One mustn't boast, and when I crept along the wall I knocked over a bucket; but I was a mounted policeman."
Anne looked up with surprise. She had remarked that he carried himself like a soldier and moved with a sort of rhythmical precision, but she had not pictured him a constable.
"The Royal North-West, I suppose?" she said. "Cowboy frontier cavalry?"
"I reckon not," Emerson replied with a twinkle. "The force is drilled and disciplined like a regiment of British line. Then the boys are not swashbuckling ruffians. On the whole, they're steady, resolute young fellows who try to carry out an awkward job. In the back blocks the R.N.W.M.P. stand for right and law. However, the important thing is, they taught me still-hunting."
Anne played up. He did not want to talk about his adventures, and somehow she would sooner they did not talk about the man who passed them in the glen.
"Oh, well, we have been out for some time. Perhaps you ought to say nothing to my father. We haven't much to go upon and mustn't be romantic. Besides, I think Keith's misfortune hurts him more than he is willing for us to know."
They went to the house. Mrs. Harden had recently gone to bed: a sudden neuralgic headache, Harden thought. Anne went off, and Harden took Emerson to the smoking-room. For some time he talked with old-fashioned politeness, but Emerson imagined it cost him an effort, and at length he said:
"Brooding will not help, but I am anxious for my son. Keith has pluck, but he has got a nasty knock, and when one is young to wait is hard. Yet, until the directors admit he had nothing to do with the robbery, he must stop at the bank."
"Keith certainly had nothing to do with it," Emerson remarked.
"For Keith to steal is unthinkable," Harden agreed. "He is, of course, my son, but if he were not, I'd still be satisfied the directors' suspecting him was altogether extravagant."
He went off soon afterwards, but Emerson smoked out his pipe. When he pondered his host's remarks, it looked as if Harden had grounds for his confidence that Garnet did not know.
