Читать книгу The Ancient Highway - James Oliver Curwood - Страница 7

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A woman's scream coming from Hurd's room would have startled Clifton, but it would have sunk no deeper than what he whimsically called his secondary emotion. A scream was not an unusual thing. More often than not a woman screamed without reason or judgment—at a mouse, a bug, a splash of mud or water on her dress, and surely he would have expected one to scream if she had come suddenly upon a man sitting as Hurd was now sitting in his office chair.

But to laugh...

He took a step toward the door, wondering how much his dizziness had to do with what he had heard. His first impulse was to open it and look in; his second held him back as the significance of a feminine presence in Hurd's room pressed itself upon him. Whoever she was he could hear her moving about, or possibly it was Hurd making an effort to get on his feet. Then the laugh came again. It was not loud or hysterical, but was very soft, and with a genuineness of humor in it that was like the spontaneity of water rippling over little stones. It was almost a giggle.

He drew a deep breath into his empty lungs. This, to say the least, was an unexpected and rather astounding situation. He had observed that Hurd's private office occupied the extreme corner of the building. Except through the main door there could be no other means of exit or ingress unless one climbed through a window seven floors above the street.

There remained only one conclusion and as its weight settled upon Clifton he drew cautiously away from the door. The rest room had concealed someone while he and Ivan Hurd were fighting. That person was young, if he could guess anything by her voice. She was with Hurd when the office girl had taken in his note saying he had five minutes in which personally to give the timber king an important message from certain large interests in Toronto. Hurd had asked her to step into the smaller room for a few moments, and from there she had witnessed the entire affair from its melodramatic beginning to its farcical ending. Now she had come out after the storm, was surveying its victim, and instead of being horrified or frightened she found him an object which had roused in her a most exceptional sense of humor—for her sex!

He made this mental reservation as he continued his retreat toward the main corridor. He would have expected a man to laugh, unless a certain part of his brain had gone completely dead. Hurd was funny as he had left him in his chair, pulpy and almost lifeless, his piggy eyes half open, the pen behind his ear, the cigar in his mouth, the hat at a rakish angle on his head!—unforgettably funny from a masculine point of view. But from a woman's, or a girl's—

Well, the world was changing, and changing swiftly. He had seen a lot of it during the last ten years. He had especially noticed it because he had spent recent years in places where there was never change. Women were different. They no longer ran true to type. They were smoking, and quarreling in public places, and fighting in politics, and everlastingly bobbing their heads. Their velvety sympathy was giving way to something else. They could box a man's ears as well as melt into tears. They cried less and fought more, and tears were a politic asset which frequently denoted wisdom instead of weakness. Quite logically they were also developing a new sense of humor as they became more intimate with men and their ways.

That was why the girl had laughed at Hurd, and Clifton found a strong undercurrent of approval running through him as he punched an elevator button.

His head grew muddled as the elevator went down with him. He saw several faces where there should have been one, and he was conscious of holding himself up stiffly, like an intoxicated person struggling to appear normal. It was impossible for him to get out of his vision the bobbed head of the girl who was running the car. It was like all other bobbed heads, irritatingly common and offensive to everything that was esthetic in man. Why didn't such women wear rings in their noses, he wondered, and blacken their teeth, and pull out what few hairs they had left in their eyebrows? Back of his dizziness he had the curious feeling that he had almost come in contact with at least one person who had not performed that idiotic amputation of her hair. She was the girl in Hurd's room. No "bobbed" girl would have a voice or a laugh like hers.

Clifton met the first draught of cool air from outside with an audible gasp. It was like a tonic, and helped to settle his stomach back in its place. For several minutes he stood leaning against the stone entrance, drinking it in. Then he took off his hat and ran a hand through his hair. There was a lump where the chair-rung had hit him. A little more and Hurd would have laid him out. He moved away from the Hurd-Foy Building and walked up the street. It was six o'clock when he dropped into an inconspicuous cafe and called for a pot of strong black tea.

After that he sauntered up Sherbrooke in the direction of Mount Royal. He was all right again and his old cheer began to return. With it came also a new sense of exhilaration, almost of freedom. He had dreaded this meeting with Ivan Hurd, not because he was afraid for himself but because of what might happen to the other. Now it was over, and luck had been entirely with him. His imagination could not have conceived a more satisfactory and at the same time a more harmless punishment for Hurd. He had scarred a soul without taking a life, and Hurd would die with the gall of it in his heart.

As he walked under the thick canopy of the trees that made a cool green corridor of the old highway he meditated on Joe's arrival at Benedict's, and what had happened there. Of course it would be a big surprise, dropping in on him like this—right out of the grave, you might call it. He could see Benedict pumping Joe down to the last drop of information that was in the boy, doubting to the very last that the dead man of Haipoong had actually turned up alive.

Good old Benedict! He began to moralize a little about him, that lovable, ungainly, preposterously careless and altogether fearless one man in the world who cared as little for entanglements with women as he did himself. His adventure with the little Simla widow was his one fall from grace so far as Clifton knew. Clifton wondered why it was that at infrequent intervals some pertinacious little devil would prod his memory with that particular incident. At those times he could see the widow as clearly as he had ever seen her in the flesh six years ago, with her romp of short gold curls, her vivid blue eyes, her mouth that was always pursing itself up into little round O's of delighted enthusiasm or attention—and the height of her—which was just enough to reach Benedict's arm when it was held straight out from his body. He had seen her standing in that silly way one day, measuring herself.

Of course she was pretty. Benedict's judgment wasn't wrong there. She was twenty-six, and seemed to tell the truth about it. The Afghans had shot up her subaltern husband six months after they were married, when she was twenty-one. Quite naturally she wanted another, and had made a strong play for Benedict. She would have got him, too, if it hadn't been for his own strategic generalship in the matter. Possibly he had been a little unfair, but as his opponent was a widow, and short-haired, his conscience had never pricked him.

Then it occurred to Clifton that he had heard in the widow's voice something of that same infectious sweetness which had come from Hurd's room. Funny. It was her laugh which had attracted Benedict first—made him crane his neck over the top of a hedge to see who it came from. Voices like that were dangerous and could cover up an enormous amount of deviltry. On the spur of the moment he had almost opened the door of Hurd's room, just because of such a voice. He was curious enough to reflect upon what he might have seen. Probably someone whom Hurd was going to take out to dinner. Yet there was a flaw in that supposition, for an invited guest would scarcely have found entertainment in what had happened.

He made no great mental effort to solve the mystery.

Nor did he make haste to reach the gloomy old stone house in the midst of its big garden, where Aldous lived. This place was ancestral down to its last stone, for an adventurous Aldous who was associated with the Hudson's Bay Company had come over from London and built it a hundred and sixty years before, and it never had been out of the hands of some scion of the English line since that day. Clifton remembered how the Simla widow had raved about its possibilities, its ghosts and its weirdly improbable stories, and how prosaic Benedict had fluffed up and colored like a pleased little child at her talk. The widow would have liked that place!

He came to it at last, away back in the deep gloom of the three-hundred-year-old trees where the Indians used to hold their councils with the white adventurers who were blazing trails into the hinterlands. It was aglow with light, just as Clifton had seen it on another night more than ten years ago—dully aglow, as if its illumination were still made by candles instead of electricity. The small windows gave that effect. Clifton's heart was beating a little faster when he reached the entrance. It was thrilling, this coming back from the dead. And he loved Benedict.

Scarcely had the dull clang of the knocker sounded from within when he heard approaching footsteps. He would have known them among a thousand, those steady, long-gaited steps of Benedict's, never excited or in undue haste, no matter what lay in front or what was coming from behind. The door opened, and Benedict's six feet three inches of oddly thin and slightly stooping figure filled his vision. Of course there was no change. He had expected none. Benedict's scarce blond hair was no thinner, the wisp of a mustache was still under his nose, his cravat had the same careless twist, there were ashes on his smoking-jacket, and his arms were—as they had always been—too long for his sleeves.

They looked at each other.

"By Jove, if it isn't the old boy himself, true as life!" exclaimed Benedict.

Clifton knew it would be something like that, a greeting with no emotional fireworks. They gripped hands, all four together, and the thrill went through them. It glowed in their eyes. It quivered on their voiceless lips. It twisted at their hearts and stirred their blood with a steady heat. They were two men who would die one for the other. For a few moments they did not speak or close the door. There was a moist glisten in Benedict's pale blue eyes. Clifton knew the same was in his own. Then he laughed. It was a bit nervous.

"How's Bones?" he asked. Bones was the nickname he had given Benedict the first time he had seen him stripped to the skin, with all of his joints revealed.

Benedict closed the door, put a long arm about Clifton's shoulders and walked with him down a low-ceilinged hall into a great room where half the odds and ends of the earth were hanging on the walls.

He picked up a cigaret case in which was a dent made by a partly spent bullet, and extended it to Clifton.

"Have one?" he asked.

By this time two tears had gathered triumphantly in the corners of his eyes, and Clifton, lighting a cigaret, brushed a hand across his own.

"Sure!" he said. "I haven't smoked a cigaret since our tiger hunt at Djharling."

That was the week they had separated, Benedict returning to an important matter in England, Clifton making his plans for China.

Neither sensed the passing of the first hour, or the beginning of the second. There was a lot to be talked about, when the talking began, without anything to interrupt them. Joe was in bed, Bim was in the garage, and the old house was very still. In that first hour of their renewed comradeship little that was ancient history repeated itself. Clifton told of the affair at Haipoong, and Benedict's eyes took on their old peculiar glitter when he heard of the thrills he had missed, and why Clifton had kept his escape to himself. The glitter became a deep and appreciative fire with laughter behind it when he learned of the final vengeance meted out to Ivan Hurd. He chuckled. Benedict's chuckle was infinitely more eloquent than laughter; it was something no one could forget, a mellow vibration of every vocal expression that was in him.

"I feel better now," finished Clifton. "I was a bit of a coward for a long time, afraid I would kill Hurd if I came back. Now it's settled, and in a better way. I feel good about it. I can settle down at last."

They talked about Joe, and of what had happened to them in the years since their parting at Djharling. Clifton, of course, had continued his wandering and had seen a large part of Asia. Benedict had slumped, he admitted. Actually began taking on flesh for a time. Lazed in England for a year, went over to Egypt, then came to the place he liked best of all quiet places—this house on the big hill overlooking Montreal. He loved Montreal. It was the one city in the world—that and Quebec—to dream one's dreams of the past in. Of course, if he had known Clifton was alive and in China, or Timbuctoo, or any place in the Antipodes—

He shrugged his baggy shoulders.

"I'd have looked you up, old chap," he said.

They fell back upon old days instead of making plans for new ones. Clifton had never been quite so happy, not for many years. He told Benedict so frankly. He never wanted another thrill or another shock. He was glad to be home, and didn't think he would ever go very far away again—unless Benedict insisted.

He picked up the silver cigaret case. Reminiscence twinkled in his eyes.

"Remember the Simla widow?" he asked.

Benedict was visibly flustered. He tried to laugh, and failed miserably. Clifton was delighted.

"Remember the day she tried to baby you out of this cigaret case?" he went on. "I was behind the hedge, and heard her!"

"You bally scoundrel—"

"Never saw her look cuter than she did that day, Bones, with her curls all freshly done up and the sun in them—that is, if you like short curls. She said that as this case had saved your life by stopping a Hun bullet she'd like to treasure it all her own, if you would be so kind as to let her have it. And you would have—if I hadn't appeared on the scene. Close shave for you, that was!"

"It was," agreed Benedict.

"Wonder what became of the widow," mused Clifton. "She's rather a setting to our Simla Hills adventures and I sometimes wonder what happened to her. She was a man-getter and I'll wager she laid one out at last."

Benedict hid himself behind a screen of cigaret smoke.

"No doubt, old chap. She wasn't the kind to give up."

"Never been sorry I got you away, have you?"

"I've been happier every day."

"I knew you would. You're not the sort to get married."

"I wouldn't marry the best woman in the world," said Benedict, reappearing through the smoke.

"Neither would I."

Benedict mixed himself a mild whisky and soda.

"You must admit she was rather nice," he argued.

"Who? The widow?"

"Yes."

"A nice little devil," agreed Clifton. "Yellow bobbed hair, blue eyes, a baby mouth—Lord, what a dance she would have led you into if I hadn't pulled you away from her bait! I'd rather be back in my grave at Haipoong than meet such a fate as that, Bones."

Benedict's chuckle filled the room.

"What are you going to do, now that you've settled with Hurd?" he asked in his slow, drawling voice. "Buy a farm?"

Clifton grew serious. He got up and walked slowly back and forth across the room.

"I've come back to begin where I left off," he said, stopping before the other and looking down at him. "Benedict, when I left Quebec woods ten years ago I had hope and ambition, and somehow—you know how as well as I—the war took everything out of me. Ruin and death came to the last of my family while I was over there trying to do something for the ones who brought it about. I wanted to kill a certain man. The disease worked in me. And the war itself made me learn to hate—not so much the men I was fighting against—but my own people, the stay-at-homes, the cowards, the money-grabbers; I saw delusion, fraud, hypocrisy, rotting principles, and I acknowledge I was a fool. I began to wander about, like a lot of others who went through that fuss, and the world soon let me know how funny I was. Three years with you helped me a lot, and I've picked up ever since. Now I'm back, and I'm never going away again!"

"Bravo!" applauded Benedict.

Clifton's face was radiant.

"I want quiet and peace forevermore," he went on. "I'm going back to the only love I have, the forests. First I'm going to take a walk up through French Quebec, where people live as quietly as they did two hundred years ago. From now on until I die I don't want to be startled or thrilled or excited. Those moments with Ivan Hurd were the last.

"I want nothing more than the stillness of the Peribonka, the swashbuckling roar of the glorious Mistassini, the sun-filled valleys of peace and quiet about Lake St. John, where the women still bake their bread outdoors and the men drive horses instead of automobiles. I want to go into the woods with the men from Metabetchewan again, and I'm homesick to walk down that one long street in Chicoutimi, with its smell of logs and pulpwood and its tolling of cathedral bells. I tell you, Benedict, I'm for all time tired of changes, emotions, surprises, shock. I want peace, quiet—"

Benedict's ungainly form was rising. He had a look in his face that stopped Clifton.

"Clifton—old chap—beg pardon!"

Clifton, with his mouth still open, turned about.

Benedict's hand sought his arm, as if to give him support, and from what seemed a vast distance away he heard Benedict's chuckle.

"My wife, old top!"

In the doorway, smiling at him, stood a little vision of white and gold. It was the Simla widow!