Читать книгу Laid up in Lavender - Stanley John Weyman - Страница 7

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"To be content," said the carrier, "that is half the battle. If I have said it to one, I have said it to a hundred. You be content," says I, "and you will be all right."

For the first time, though they had plodded on a mile together, the tall gentleman turned his eyes from the sombre moorland which stretched away on either side of the road, and looked at his companion. There had been something strange in the preoccupation of his thoughts hitherto; though the carrier, lapped in his own loquacity, had not felt it. And, to tell the truth, there had been something still more strange in the tall gentleman's behaviour before their meeting. Now he had raced along the road and now he had loitered; sometimes he had stood still, letting his eyes stray over the dark groups of heather, which lay islanded in a sea of brown grass; and again he had sauntered onwards, his hat in his hand and his face turned up to the sky, which hung low over the waste, and had yet the breadth of a fen cloudscape. Whatever the eccentricity of his lonely movements, his tall hat and fluttering frock-coat had exaggerated it.

At length on the summit of one of the ridges over which the road ran he had made a longer halt, and had begun to look about him to right and left, seeking, it seemed, for a track across the moss. Then he had caught sight of the carrier plodding up the next ridge at the tail of his cart, and he had started after him. But having almost overtaken him, he had reduced his pace and loitered as if his desire for human company had faded away. He had even paused as though to return. But a glance at the desolate waste had determined him. He had walked on again, and had overtaken and fallen to talking with the carrier. The latter on his part had been glad to have a companion, and had readily set down what was odd in the stranger's bearing to the cause which accounted for his costume. The tall gentleman was a Londoner.

"'You be content,' says I," quoth the old fellow again, his companion's tardy attention encouraging him to repeat his statement, "'and you will be all right.' I have told that to hundreds in my time."

"And you practise it yourself?" The tall gentleman's voice was husky. His eyes, now that they had found their way to the other's face, continued to dwell on it with a gleam in their depths which matched the pallor of his features. His forehead was high, his face long and thin, and lengthened by a dark brown beard which hid the working of his lips. A nervous man meeting his gaze might have had strange thoughts. But the carrier's were country nerves, and proof against anything short of electricity.

"Oh yes, I am pretty well content," Nickson answered sturdily. "I have twenty acres of land from the duke, and I turn a penny with the carrying, going into Sheffield twice a week, rain and shine. Then I have as good a wife as ever kissed her man, and neither chick nor child, and no more than three barren ewes this lambing."

"My God!" said the stranger.

The words seemed wrung from him by a twinge of mental pain, but whether the feeling was envy of the man's innocent joys, or disgust at his simplicity, did not appear. Whatever the impulse, the tall gentleman showed an immediate consciousness that he had excited his companion's astonishment. He began to talk rapidly, even gesticulating a little. "But is there no drawback?" he said--"no bitter in your life, man? This long journey--ten--eleven miles?--and the same journey home again? Do you never find it cold, hot, dreary, intolerable?"

"It is cold enough some days, and hot enough some days," the carrier replied heartily. "But dreary?--never! And cold and heat are but skin deep, you know."

The tall gentleman let his head fall on his breast, and for some distance walked on in silence. The carrier whistled to his horse, the cry of a peewit came shrilling across the moor, one wheel of the cart squeaked loudly for grease. The evening was grey and still, and rain impended.

"It is all downhill after this," Nickson said presently, pointing to the sky-line, now less than a hundred yards ahead. "You see that stone there, sir?" he continued, and pointing with his whip to a stone lying a little off the road. "There was a man died in the snow there. Three years back it would be. I went by him myself for a month and more, and took him for a dead sheep. At last a keeper passing that way turned him over with his foot, and--well, he was a sad sight, poor chap, by that time."

The carrier should have been pleased with the effect his story produced; for the stranger shuddered. His face even seemed a shade paler, but this might be the effect of the evening light. He did not make any comment, however, and the two stepped out until they gained the summit of the ridge. Here the moor fell away on every side--a dark sweep of waste bounded by uncouth round-backed hills, which rose shapeless and grey, with never a graceful outline or soaring peak to break the horizon.

"You will take a lift down the hill, sir?" the carrier asked, gathering up his reins and preparing to mount. "I am light to-day."

"No, I think not--I thank you," the stranger answered jerkily.

"You are welcome, if you will," persisted the carrier.

"No, I think not. I think I will walk," the tall gentleman answered. But he still stood, and watched the other's preparations with strange intentness. Even when Nickson, having wished him good day, drove briskly off, he continued to gaze after the cart until a dip in the descent--not far below--swallowed it up. Then he heaved a sigh, and looked round at the grey sky and darkening heath. He took off his hat.

"Hold up! what is the matter with the mare?" the carrier cried, coming to a stop as soon, as it chanced, as the dip in the road hid him from the other's eyes. "She has picked up a stone, drat it!"

He got down stiffly, and taking his knife from his pocket went to the mare's head. Having removed the stone he dropped the hoof, and stood a second while he closed the knife. In this momentary pause there came to his ear a sharp report like that of a gun, but brisker and less loud. It was difficult to suppose it the sound of a snapping stick; or of one stone struck against another. It puzzled Master Nickson, who climbed hastily to his seat again and drove on until he was clear of the dip. Then, swearing at himself for an old fool, he looked anxiously back at the top of the ridge, which had come into view again. He was looking for the tall gentleman. But the latter was not to be seen, either standing against the sky-line or moving on the intervening road. "Lord's sakes!" the carrier muttered uneasily, "what has become of him? He cannot have gone back!"

He continued to stare for some moments at the place where the stranger should have been. At last giving way to a sudden conviction, he got down from his cart, and, leaving it standing, hurried back through the dip, and so to the top of the ridge. The ascent was steep, and he was breathing heavily when he reached the summit and cast his eyes round him. No, the tall gentleman was not to be seen. The brown grass and heather stretched away on this side and that, broken by no human figure. Not even a rabbit was visible on the long white strip of road that in the far distance grew hazy with the fall of night.

"The devil!" the carrier said, shuddering, and feeling more lonely than he had ever felt in his life. "Then he has gone, and----"

He stopped. His eyes were on a dark bundle of clothes that lay a little aside from the road between two clumps of heather. Just a bundle of clothes it seemed, but Master Nickson drew in his breath at sight of it. The peewits and curlews had gone to rest. There was not a sound to be heard on the wide moor, save the beating of his heart.

He would have given pounds to drive on with a clear conscience, yet he forced himself to go up to the huddled form, and to turn it over until the face was exposed. There was a pistol near the right hand, and behind the ear there was a small, a very small hole, from which the blood welled sluggishly. Round this the skin was singed and blackened. The eyes were closed, and the pale face, thoughtful and placid, was scarcely disfigured.

Suddenly Master Nickson fell on his knees. "Dang me, if I don't think he is alive!" he whispered. "For sure, he breathes!"

Convinced of it, the carrier sprang to his feet a different man. He lost not a moment in bringing his cart to the spot and lifting the insensible form into it. Then he led the horse to the road, and started gingerly down the hill. "It is a mercy it happened right at the doctor's door," he muttered, as he turned off the road into a track which seemed to lead through the heather to nowhere in particular. "If he lives five minutes longer he will be in good hands."

A stranger would have wondered where the doctor lived; for there was no signs of a house to be seen. But when the wheels had rolled noiselessly over the sward a hundred yards a faint curl of smoke became visible, rising from the ground in front. A few more paces brought the tops of trees to view, and nestling among them the gables of an old stone house, standing below the level of the moor in a gully or ravine, that here began to run down from the watershed towards Bradfield and the Loxley. The track Nickson was following led to a white gate, which formed the entrance to this lonely demesne.

The carrier found assistance sooner than he had expected. Leaning against the inner side of the gate, with her back to him, was a tall girl. She was bending over a fiddle, drawing from it wailing sounds that went well with the waste behind her and the fading light. Her head swayed in time, her elbow moved slowly. She did not hear the wheels, and he had to call, "Whisht! Miss Pleasance, whisht!" before she heard and turned.

He could see little of her face, for in the hollow the light was almost gone, but her voice as she cried, "Is that you, Nickson? Have you something for us?" rang out so cheerily that it strung his nerves anew.

"Yes, miss," he answered. "But it is your father I want. I have got a man here who has been hurt----"

"What? In the cart?" she cried. She stepped forward and would have looked in. But he was before her.

"No, miss, you fetch your father!" he said sharply. "It is just a matter of minutes, maybe. You fetch him here, please."

She understood now, and turned and sped through the shrubbery, and across the little rivulet and the lawn. In five minutes the grey house, which had stood gaunt and lifeless in the glooming, was aroused. Lights flitted from window to window, and servants called to one another. The surgeon, a tall, florid, elderly man, with drooping white moustaches, came out, after snatching up one or two necessary things. The groom hastened behind him with a candle. Only Pleasance, the messenger of ill, whom her father had bidden stay in the house, had nothing to do in the confusion. She laid down her violin and bow, and stood in the darkness of the outer room--it was half hall, half parlour--listening and wondering.

The sound of heavy footsteps crunching the gravel presently warned her that the man was to be brought into the house. She heard her father direct the other bearers to make for his room, which was on the left of the hall, and her face grew a shade paler as the men stumbled with their burden through the doorway. There is something monstrous to the unaccustomed in limbs which fall lifeless, or stick out stiff and stark in ghastly prominence. She averted her face as the group passed her, and yet managed to touch the groom's sleeve. "What is it, Daniel?" she whispered.

"He has been shot, miss," the servant answered. He was enjoying himself hugely, if the truth be told.

She had no time to ask more. The door was shut upon her, and she was left alone with her curiosity. She wondered how it had happened, for this was not the shooting season, and Nickson had spoken of the man as a stranger. She pondered over the problem until the maids, who were too much upset to stay in their own quarters, came into the room with lights. Then she stepped outside, and stood on the gravel listening to the murmur of the brook, and looking at the old sundial which gleamed white on the lawn.

She had been there no more than a minute when the doctor--as every one in those parts called him--came out with Nickson. Carefully closing the door behind him--an extraordinary precaution with one who was usually the most easy-going of men--he laid his hand on his companion's shoulder. "Why did he do it, Nickson?" he asked in a low voice, which was not free from tremor. "Can you tell me? Have you any idea? He is dressed as a gentleman, and he has a gold watch and money in his pockets."

Their eyes were new to the darkness, and they did not see her, though she was within earshot, and was listening with growing comprehension. "It beats me to say, sir," was Nickson's answer--"that it does. If you will believe me, sir, he was talking to me, just before he did it, as reasonably as ever man in my life."

"Then what the devil was it?"

"That is what I think, sir," the carrier answered, nodding.

"What?"

"It was just the devil, sir."

"Pshaw!" the doctor returned pettishly. "You are sure that he did it himself?"

"As sure as I can be of anything!" the carrier answered. "There was not a human creature barring myself within half a mile of him when the pistol went off--no, nor could have been."

"Well," the doctor said, after a pause, and in a tone of vexation, "it is no good bringing in the police unless he dies, and I don't think he will. He has had a wonderful escape. I suppose you will not go blabbing it about, Nickson?"

"Heaven forbid!" the carrier replied. And after a few more words took his leave.

They went without discovering the listener, and she slipped into the lighted hall and stood there shivering. The darkness outside frightened her. It seemed to hold some secret of despair. Even in the familiar room, in which every faded rug and dusty folio and framed sampler had its word of everyday life for her, she looked fearfully at the closed door which led to her father's room. She shrank from turning her back upon it. She kept glancing askance at it. When her father came to supper, she could not meet his eye; and he must have noticed her strangeness had he not been absorbed in the riddle presented to him, in thoughts of his patient's case, and perhaps in some painful train of meditation induced by it. Such questions as his daughter put he answered absently, and he ate in the same manner, breaking off once to visit his charge. It was only when the preparations for the night were complete, when the maids had retired, and Pleasance was waiting, candlestick in hand, to say good night, that he spoke out.

"When is Woolley coming back?" he asked with a sigh.

"The twenty-eighth, father," she answered. She betrayed no surprise at the question, though it was one he could have answered for himself. Woolley was his assistant, and was absent on a holiday tour.

He was silent a moment. His tone was querulous, his eye wandered when he spoke next. "I thought--I did think that we should have this little bit to ourselves, Pleasance," he complained. And he seemed shrunken. His fierce moustaches and his florid colour no longer hid his weakness of moral fibre. He looked years older than when he had bent with professional alertness over his patient. Something in that patient's strange case had come home to him and unmanned him. "This little bit," he continued, looking at her wistfully, "though it be the last, girl."

"It will not be the last, father," she answered, meeting his look without flinching. "We shall stay together whatever happens."

"Ay, but where, child?" he cried with passion, throwing out his hands as though he appealed to the dumb things around him--"where? Do you think to transplant me? I am too old. I have lived here too long--I and my fathers before me for six generations, though I am but a broken country apothecary--for me to take root elsewhere! Why, girl"--his voice rose higher--"there is not a stone of this old place, not a tree, that I do not know, that I do not love, that I would not rather own than a mile of streets!"

To her surprise he broke down and turned away to hide the tears in his eyes--tears which it pained her deeply to see. She knew how weak he was, and what cause she had to blame him in this matter. But his tears disarmed her, and she laid her hand on his and stroked it tenderly. "How much do you owe Mr. Woolley, father?" she asked, when he had recovered himself.

"Three thousand pounds," he answered, almost sullenly.

He had never told her before, and she was appalled. "It is a large sum," she said, looking at the faded cushions on the window-seats, the fly-blown prints, the well-worn furniture, which made the room picturesque indeed, but shabby. "What can have become of it?"

He made a reckless movement with his hand--he still had his back towards her--as though he flung something from him.

She sighed. She had not intended to reproach him, for economy was not one of her own strong points; and she remembered bills owing as well as bills paid, and many a good intention falsified. No, she could not reproach him; and she chose to look at the matter from another side. "It is a great deal of money," she repeated. "Would he really let all that go if--just to marry me?"

"To be sure!" her father said briskly. "That is," he continued, his conscience pricking him, "it would be the same thing then. The place would come to him anyway."

"I see," she answered dryly. She was always pale--though hers was a warm paleness--but now there were dark shadows under her eyes. They were grey eyes, frank and resolute, now sad and scornful also. As she sat upright in a high-backed chair, with the forgotten candle in her hand and her gaze fixed on vacancy, she seemed to be gazing at the Skeleton of the House. It was a skeleton which she and her father kept for the most part locked up. Possibly it had never been brought so completely to view before.

"You will think of it?" the doctor presently ventured, stealing a glance at her.

"I may think till Doomsday," she answered wearily. "I shall never do it."

"Why not?" he persisted. "What have you against him?"

"Only one thing."

"What is it?" A gleam of hope sparkled in his eyes as he put the question. A definite accusation he might combat and refute; even a prejudice he might overcome. He prepared himself for the effort. "What is it?" he repeated.

"I do not love him, father," she said. "I think I hate him."

"So do I!" the doctor sighed, sinking suddenly into himself again. Alas for his preparations!