Читать книгу The Silent Woman - Rita - Страница 8

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With such words of defiance the man walked into the inn.

Rufus remained staring after him in sheer astonishment. Then he made a hasty step, as if to follow, but remembering the tragedy that had recently happened, paused midway.

"I can't have a row in there, not with his dead wife lying above," he thought. "But what can the man mean? No right. No lawful right? It sounds queer. Am I going to dig up family secrets and family skeletons in my search? Well, this business has got to be settled, so that's all about it. This hulking reprobate needn't think I'm to be put off with a statement without proof!"

The ancient labourer meanwhile had shelved himself into a corner abutting on the stable. He had a wholesome fear of his master's temper, and was fearful lest he had been over-communicative to the stranger, and would suffer for it. Seeing that the young man was seemingly halting between two opinions, he hailed him with a quavering voice.

"Doan't 'ee go for to cross Maister Dick," he advised. "He be a terrible hard man; 'tis wonderful how he kin rage whin the mood's on him. I be goin' to see arter th' sheep, now Moll's taken up w' th' due settin' out of th' corpse yonder. Best 'ee come 'long o' I, an' if so be 'ee wants th' landmarks o' th' propitty, ther's ne'er a soul i' th' place can put 'ee up to 'un better nor ole Luk, as they calls me hereabouts."

He took up a stout ash stick as he spoke, and straightened his bent figure with a rusty jerk. Rufus Myrthe decided to accompany him for two reasons. One, to keep away from the chance of unseemly disturbance, supposing he again interviewed the master of the Inn—the other, a hope that he might glean some useful information from the ancient Methuselah who had sought his company. They went out of the yard-gate, and crossed the moor in an easterly direction, till it took a sudden dip, and landed them on a tract of grassland enclosed by a low stone fence. Here the few sheep belonging to the innkeeper were grazing, the old dog lying near in placid observance of their movements.

"Now, lad," said the old labourer, "dew 'ee see yonder shaft, broken an' topply, as if't had two minds to keep itsel' up ony longer? That's nigh to where the pit be; 'ee can see 't for yer sel'. Ten year or more ago 'twas warked, an' some sayed there war a fortin' in't; an' some 'twar just waste o' labour an' money. Onyways, it didna last long. Warks an m'shinery stopped suddin like. Th' vein o' coal war too pore t' wark, so I heerd tell. An' maister, he swore, an' war that mad as folks didna dare to go anigh th' place. He'd set up this Inn by then, un' all th' custom waar gone. Naugaht 'ud make him b'lieve that there warn't coal i' plenty, an' o' good quality, an' he'd fetch engineers an' sichlike, an' they'd be a-testin' an' a-pryin', an a-diggin' ground oop till th' place war like a bog winter times, but warn't no manner o' use. An' it lays now as it lay then an' as gotten a bad name to't. Ne'er a livin' soul, man, boy, or wumman, as 'ud go nigh wi'in a mile o't arter sundown. They dew say as how 'tis haunted. 'Tis a queer sort o' a tale that's bound up wi' that. A queer sort o' tale!"

He shook his head in a palsied fashion and twisted his mouth into a tight bundle of folds and wrinkles that seemed to insinuate that he could be as secret as he had been communicative, did he so determine. Rufus felt the stirrings of curiosity gaining strength. He plied the old gaffer with questions. A great deal depended on learning who had gained possession of the property at that time, and by what means. He foresaw a considerable amount of trouble threatened by this unexpected usurpation of rights, and remembered that he had brought no title deeds with him, nor documents of any sort that might prove his claims.

The old man, however, seemed reluctant to give any more information. His tongue had wagged freely up to a certain point—now it stopped obstinately.

All Rufus could gain was a hint that something terrible had occurred just about the time of closing the mine. Something no one in the surrounding districts dare speak of save with bated breath. Of its nature Rufus asked in vain. It had given the mine a bad name; it had struck the wife of Dick Udale into the dumb and piteous object he had seen; it had turned Dick Udale himself into the surly, ill-tempered, ill-spoken individual, for whom no one had a good word, and left the whole family as pariahs even in this desolate region; shunned and friendless, victims of a fate whose results had spelt tragedy.

"Well," cried the young fellow at last. "I guess I'll go and have a look at the place myself. I can't lose my way this time. That old shaft is a good landmark."

He nodded carelessly to his strange companion, and strode on with the quick, eager step of youth spurred by curiosity.

The old labourer stood by the grazing sheep leaning on his stick and watching the departing figure.

"M'appen 'ee wouldna be in sich almighty haste if 'ee know'd all," he muttered, shaking his head warily, as at things unutterable. Then he sank down on a wedge of broken stone and began the arduous task of minding the sheep. This he accomplished by closing his eyes, what time he leant hands and chin for support on his stout ash staff, his head gradually performing a melancholy see-saw movement, to the accompaniment of occasional snores. Age, like youth, has certain vagrant tendencies for which due allowance must needs be made.

Meantime, Rufus Myrthe is making slow and arduous progress over waste ground, rough stones, and huge spaces of bog. The soft, grey sky wore the misty look of threatened rain; the air blew keen from the surrounding heights. He was conscious of hunger, and regretted that he had not thought of providing himself with even the labourer's frugal fare of bread and bacon. But he was determined to get to the old mine before returning to the Inn, and tried to forget trivial discomforts.

It took longer than he had believed possible to get within appreciable distance of his self-set goal, and half-way to it the clouds gathered darkly overhead, and a sweep of rain blew over the moor. He muttered something uncomplimentary to the Derbyshire climate, which had shown its worst and most depressing aspect to him in a three weeks' experience.

"The twenty first day of rain," he said, turning up the collar of his rough tweed coat. "Well, I'm so used to soaking now that it can't harm me. The clouds hereabouts are sort of leaking water-butts, with the taps left on. You get it all sides, all ways. On the peaks, and under the peaks, and alongside of the peaks. Valley, wood, or height—just the same! Reckon I've never had so much to do with promiscuous shower baths since my poor old mother gave up weeping over her boy's unregenerate soul, when she took up with the Christian Science folk." His foot slipped at this moment, and he made further acquaintance with the qualities of peat soil. Forcible exclamations seemed an inexhaustible accompaniment to this quagmire, and led to vaunting the superiority of land methods "out West," as he called it. "Guess we'd have had this levelled and drained before building an Inn within two miles of it!" Then he remembered that the house had never been intended for its advertised purpose, but utilised owing to stress of circumstances.

These reflections cast his thoughts back into that channel of mystery to which the strange words of the Silent Woman had been an introduction.

With his eyes on the ground, and his mind at work in wide fields of conjecture, he plodded on, determined to find out the mystery, if mystery there was; determined to fight for his heritage, however poor a thing it looked. Determined, too, to force the truth from that surly brute who had defied him "whatever the cost." He had braced his young shoulders and lifted his head to look up to and beyond the circle of these endless peaks when that last exclamation burst audibly from his lips. The sound of his own voice on that moorland solitude came strangely to his ears. Came, too, with that awakening to common facts of common life that act like an ice douche on the fever heats of imagination. "Cost!"—that was the trouble. He had some money, but no immediate means of increasing it to a capital. Home supplies could not be reckoned on. He had been thrown on his own resources since boyhood, and his people had grown used to his independence. There were young ones growing up. The nest was full enough. He could not ask for money to support what might after all only prove a worthless claim. He cursed his stupidity in coming over with such scant proof as to his own rights; without having mastered all the facts appertaining to the former possessors of the Marth Farm. Fifty years of absence left a wide margin for wrong doing, and the tracing of a pedigree through female branches represented no easy task in a place where surnames dropped out in course of time, and "Tom o' Will's," and "Dick o' th' Dales," slipped into recognised titles.

His reflections brought him at last to that portion of rough upheaval, scattered stones, and rusty iron truck-lines that proclaimed where the mine had been worked. The grey clouds stooped towards it, heavy with the burden of rain. A few scattered hovels built of rough blocks of stone, that had served for the colliers' accommodation, broke or touched the level of the moorland. Beyond lay the pit mouth; a black, yawning chasm, rudely barricaded now with blocks of stone and heaps of coarse, slaty coal, that had been drawn to the surface when it was in working order.

It was all ugly, bleak, desolate; and, as if to add to the desolation, the mist of the previous day began to gather slowly from the heights, and descend valley-wards, closing in the range of peak and hill, and warning the traveller once again how treacherous and easily lost were any landmarks hereabouts.

But Rufus Myrthe stood there silent and absorbed, and looked at the deserted works as if fascinated by their ugliness. Were they really worked out, useless, profitless? Had the discovery meant so little that it could be abandoned while the scheme was in working order? He took up block after block, examining seam and quality with eager eyes. He was thinking of something a Belgian engineer had told him coming over in the steamer. Something that, if applied to seemingly worthless coals, meant a fortune. And these were not worthless. He had seen specimens far worse. Even among that collection of the foreign engineer.

"I'd try it, if it were mine," he said aloud. "I believe there's money in it, even now."

As if in response to his exclamation there suddenly echoed across the misty solitudes a weird, unearthly cry. So uncanny was the sound that Rufus Myrthe started, with the nearest approach to terror he had ever confessed.

The cry seemed human, yet he could fancy no human throat its producer. His glance sped from point to point, but found no living object in view. With an involuntary shudder the young man turned away. The rolling mists came swiftly down, and drew their formless curtains over the desolate scene. They seemed to him to shroud invisible foes, that were slowly and stealthily marching behind and dogging his hurrying footsteps.

There was more than a doubt in his mind as to whether he could find his way back to the Inn. He had but few signs to guide him, and could only trust to his own instincts and such topographical knowledge as had come to him through the medium of previous wanderings in wild, rough country.

"What an awful place it is altogether," he thought. "No wonder it's got a bad name, as old Luke said. I feel as if I could never get rid of the sound of that awful cry. It haunts me. Perhaps after all, I ought to have searched."

He started. Again the cry sounded. Close behind him now. Wailing in his ears as if some visible presence must be within arm's reach. He looked behind, beside, before. Nothing was to be seen. No living soul, save himself, stood on that desolate moorside in the gloom of mist and fading day.