Читать книгу The House of Spies (Historical Novel) - Warwick Deeping - Страница 9

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It was stormy weather. The golden-budded oaks shook their branches against a hurrying grey sky. Primroses shivered on the banks, and cold glimmers of wind-swept over the bent grass. A few early swallows skimmed against the stiff south-wester. Everywhere the woods looked gloomy and black.

Up at Stonehanger the furze rolled like a sea as Jasper and Devil Dick climbed out of the valley. Jasper came slantwise up the hill, so that he had a raking view of the terrace and the grey house with its bluff, stern chimneys. The casements shook and glittered. One thin stream of smoke was blown like a pennon from the nearest chimney.

Jasper saw a figure on the terrace, outlined against the sky. It stood there visible between two clumps of thorn-trees, and tossed its arms as though they were blown about by the wind. Its gestures were so wild and passionate that Jasper drew in under the shelter of a furze-covered bank, and watched the distant figure over the tops of the bushes.

It was Anthony Durrell. Benham could tell that by his thin, black figure and white hair. The old man was like a mad poet in a frenzy, or a prophet drunk with the spirit of prophecy. He strode up and down between the thorn-trees, waving his arms, shaking his fists, pointing toward the sea. The fragments of a voice were carried down to Jasper against the blustering of the wind.

"The man's mad!"

He reconsidered the exclamation, out of respect to Nance.

"A bit queer in the head, perhaps! Too much hanging over books. I wonder what he is shouting about? Just like Mad George, the Methodist!"

He rode on, drawing a little toward the left, so that the thorn-trees were between him and Anthony Durrell. For Jasper had not ridden to Stonehanger to waste time on a dry-as-dust scholar. He wanted to make sure of seeing somebody before Anthony Durrell could interfere.

Jasper found a five-barred gate closing the stable-yard from the common. The gate was padlocked, but Jasper put Devil Dick at it, and was over in style. In fact, the horse nearly trampled on old David Barfoot, who bobbed out suddenly from the door of an outbuilding.

"Where be ye a-coming to?"

"Hallo! Good-day to you, Mr. Barfoot. Is your mistress at home?"

David stared, and Benham remembered the old man's deafness. He felt in a pocket, produced the red scarf, and also a silver crown.

He spoke slowly, showed David the scarf, and pointed to the house. David displayed utter stupidity. He held out a brown paw for the scarf.

"No, you old fool! Do you think I have ridden five miles to hand this over to you!"

He pointed toward the house, and then gave David the silver crown.

The man stared at it, scratched his chin, and then pocketed the money. He threw up his hairy face suddenly, and shouted:

"It's Miss Nance you be wanting?"

"All right, all right, don't tell the whole county!" and he nodded.

"She be'unt in."

"Oh?"

"She be gone over yonder, down to the oak wood for primroses."

David was not such a cross-grained old fool, after all.

"You'd better go round by t' lane. It'll take ye out on t' common."

Jasper smiled at him, leapt Devil Dick over the gate again, struck round by the grey wall of the garden at the back of the house, and found a gap in the hedge leading through into the lane.

"I am in David's debt," thought he. "Mr. Durrell can play the windmill yonder so long as he pleases."

The lane brought Jasper out on to the common where he could see the oak wood as a brown and purplish mass beyond the tumbling green of the wind-swept furze. Something red was moving along the edge of the wood like a spark creeping along tinder. It was the red hood that covered Nance's black curls.

Jasper thrilled on the edge of an adventure. He rode down the hill, and met Nance in a winding grass-way between the furze bushes. She was carrying a rush basket full of primroses, with a bunch of purple orchids thrust into one corner.

"Mr. Benham!"

The exclamation was as obvious as Jasper's satisfaction at seeing her.

"David told me you were down in the wood."

"David! How did you make him understand."

"Oh, somehow. I have brought you back your scarf."

He dismounted, looped Devil Dick's bridle over his sound arm, and set himself beside Nance. Her eyes sent a hovering glance over his face. An immense seriousness seemed to possess him. His square jaw, firm mouth, and blue eyes might, have belonged to a man who was about to lead a forlorn hope. Yet the whole truth of it was that he had been attacked by violent and absurd shyness.

"How is the arm?"

"Mending. Surgeon Doddington admired the way you had bound it up."

"Did he?"

"Yes. By the way, I have forgotten that cushion. I must bring it back some other time."

He glanced at Nance, and the frank flash of laughter in her eyes helped him to climb out of the slough of his own shy seriousness.

"It sounds very simple, doesn't it?"

"What?"

"To make a cushion an excuse."

"An excuse for what?"

They looked at each other again, and laughed, with the incipient mystery of the thing creeping into their blood. The wind blew the golden-flowered furze against the grey sky. Even this stormy day seemed glorious.

"I wanted to come to Stonehanger."

"Did you! Well, why not?"

"Yes, why not! And just for the same reason I'm going to call you—Nance."

She looked straight before her with a sudden self-conscious stiffening of the face. It was as though some strange new thought had touched her, and startled her into introspective silence.

"Is this your horse—Devil Dick?"

"Yes."

"And the other horses? Were the thieves caught?"

"No. They got clean away. It is a rogue's country."

"What a shame!"

She looked past Benham toward the sea where faint white smudges showed up against the greyness of the horizon. They were the sails of ships in the Channel. The boom of a distant gun came to them on the wind.

Nance stood at gaze.

"Is anything happening out there?"

"Only a signal-gun from somewhere."

"I wonder if the French will ever come?"

"I wonder!"

They moved on again toward Stonehanger, Nance looking at Jasper a little shyly.

"You are a soldier, are you not?"

"A lieutenant of volunteers. Nearly all the gentry are serving in one way or another."

"You wore a soldier's red-coat that night. If the French land it will be a terrible thing for us all."

"It may be more terrible for the French."

"But Napoleon! Who have we to put against him? And they say the French are such ruffians; think of having them quartered on us, and doing just as they please. I sometimes start awake at night and think I hear the sound of guns."

"Do you?"

"Stonehanger is such a windy old place. It is the sound of the wind in the chimneys."

Jasper looked at her gravely.

"I can promise you and your father an early warning should the French land. All the country folk will be hurried away inland with the cattle and the corn."

"I don't think I should be afraid when the danger actually came."

"No, I know you wouldn't."

"But it is the waiting, a tense feeling in the air like there is before a thunderstorm."

They came in sight of the terrace of Stonehanger. Anthony Durrell was still there, pacing up and down, and waving his arms. Nance watched him a moment, and then glanced at Jasper.

"Father has his restless moods."

"The times worry him?"

"No, I don't think it is that. He just stares when I speak of Napoleon and the French, as though I were telling him some absurd tale. He often walks up and down the terrace and makes long speeches in Greek or in Latin. I think the words are to him what music is to other people."

Jasper's presence did not seem to trouble her. She took the path that ran along the foot of the terrace, and Benham had no choice but to follow her. He was too honest a man to think of shirking Anthony Durrell. The scholar was standing by one of the yew-trees, one arm raised, head thrown back, when he caught sight of Nance and Benham. He remained thus for a moment, mouth open, eyes set in a stare. Then his arm fell abruptly, and an irritable frown wiped the finer fervour from his face.

Jasper raised his hat to the old man.

"Good day to you, Mr. Durrell."

"Good day to you, sir."

His face seemed to narrow with sharp severity, and with scorn. He stared at Jasper as an eagle might eye a jay.

"I rode over to return the scarf Miss Durrell lent me."

"You might as well have kept the rubbish, Mr. Benham. Nance, I have been waiting for you. There are several papers of notes to be copied into the manuscript book."

Nance looked at him questioningly.

"Perhaps—Mr. Benham——"

"Mr. Benham is waiting to be off. We must not keep him. It will rain in half an hour; the wind is dropping."

Nance went up the steps to the terrace, and turned to glance, half-humourously, at Jasper.

"It is one of father's whims," her eyes said to him.

Jasper mounted his horse. He was angry, and a little puzzled.

"Mr. Durrell, sir, I need hardly speak to you of the danger that threatens all of us. As a friend I can promise you an early warning, and a place in our wagons if the French should land."

The elder man stared, and seemed to breathe through scornful nostrils.

"Mr. Benham, I am obliged to you. But I have always managed my own affairs. I wish you good day."

He turned and followed Nance who was walking toward the house. Jasper watched him, and saw his narrow, black figure disappear round the grey angle of the house. Nor was he in the sweetest of tempers as he rode on through the waving furze.

The wind dropped somewhat toward nightfall, and howled less in the Stonehanger chimneys. Nance went to bed early, her face troubled and a little sad. Her father had been morose, reticent, and strange, and she had caught him watching her from his chair beside the fire.

It was near midnight when Anthony Durrell put down the book he was reading, listened a moment, and then went to the porch door. He rapped on it gently with his knuckles. The rap was answered from without.

Durrell opened the door, and the Chevalier de Rothan stepped into the hall.

"Well, sir, any news?"

"Only that young Benham has been here."

"The devil! There will be trouble between me and that young man."