Kitabı oku: «The League of the Leopard», sayfa 12

"It is not exhilarating weather, and this has been a hard winter for the poor," he said. "Unfortunately, we have had rather more of them than usual with us of late, and the sick would have suffered considerably if it had not been for your kindness."

"I have done little," Lilian replied; "but they are somewhat hard to help."

The Reverend Andrew Rae laughed.

"That is the simple truth. We are not an effusive race, and it sometimes hurts us to receive a favor. Still, though they would rather perish than express it, I fancy most of them would on opportunity prove their gratitude. I have been wondering if the worthy Robert Johnstone's opinions have been too much for you, having noticed that his house, or rather, his son's house, is the only one in the village you have not entered. It surprised me, since his daughter used to sew for you, and has been ailing lately."

"It is some time since Mary Johnstone did any work for me," said Lilian, and the clergyman wondered at the coldness of her tone.

"She is a very hard-working girl, and as she has been lying helpless for several weeks, would it not appear unkind if you made her the one exception? I want you to come in with me now."

Drawing the girl's arm lightly through his own, he marched her up to the doorway before she quite grasped his intentions, and halted in front of the man who lounged there regarding them with undisguised hostility. He was not an attractive person, and did not look like an abstainer from alcoholic liquor, but just then he was evidently in the more aggressive humor because, for the time being, he was wholly sober.

"We are coming in for a few minutes to see your daughter," announced Rae.

The man did not move an inch, and his person barred the entrance.

"Will ye no wait until ye are invitit?" he inquired sardonically. "Still, if there is anything good in yon basket ye can leave it with me."

A grimy hand descended into the basket Rae carried and reappeared clutching the neck of a bottle, while a derisive grin suffused the speaker's unwashed countenance.

"I'm thinking I'll just keep it with thanks. It's whiles more comforting than tracts."

The Reverend Andrew Rae had perhaps studied more than theology at a certain university, for there was a twinkle in his eyes as he laid one hand on Johnstone's wrist.

"Not so fast!" he said. "That is Miss Chatterton's property, and I did not hear you ask her permission."

He used no apparent violence, but his fingers tightened steadily, and Johnstone gasped with astonishment as he relinquished his hold upon the bottle.

"Am I to be insulted in my own house?" he cried. "Away with ye! A free man's dwelling is his castle."

"Havers!" exclaimed a voice behind them; and a neatly dressed young man joined the group. "If it's anybody's castle it's the man's who pays the rent, and that's more than Rab Johnstone has done for long, I'm thinking. If ye an' Miss Chatterton are for stepping in to see Mary we'd take it kindly, sir."

Johnstone senior slouched away down the street, frowning scornfully.

"I am glad to see you have prospered since you took to honest ways, Jim," Rae said.

"It's small thanks to any one but Mr. Dane. He was no too particular to help a poor man, ye see."

"Was that it?" asked Rae, a trifle awkwardly. "You are surely not turning back, Miss Chatterton!"

Lilian was certainly about to retreat; but being a young woman of spirit, she determined to make the best of it when the man, opening another door, announced:

"Miss Chatterton an' the minister to see ye, Mary."

She entered the poorly furnished room the next moment, but saw nothing of its interior, for her eyes were fixed upon the sick girl, who lay on a dilapidated sofa. Rae noticed the contrast between his companion and the seamstress. Miss Chatterton was a very dainty figure in costly furs, and the slight trace of haughtiness became her. The seamstress was pale, and hollow in face, with the sign of poverty stamped upon her, for the faded shawl about her shoulders and the little ragged garment told the same story.

Rae soon became conscious that there was a latent hostility between the women, and he felt it incumbent on him to break the silence.

"I am glad to see you better," he said; "but you should not work too soon. You must lie still and recover completely, because there are a number of customers waiting for you. Mrs. Gordon told me she was keeping quite a large order back until you were fit to undertake it."

Lilian had been present when, by dint of dogged persistence, the reverend gentleman had secured a reluctant promise to employ his protégée, and she wondered whether all his sex, without exception, could be deluded by a pretty face. She was forced to admit that men of uncultivated taste might consider Miss Johnstone pretty.

"Poor folk cannot afford to be idle long, an' my wee sisters cannot go ragged," replied the sick girl. "Still, I'm no complaining. Jim has helped me bravely, and we're winning through a hard winter well, thanks to the gentleman who befriended him."

Rae observed that the speaker flashed a glance at Miss Chatterton, whose face remained icily indifferent. Feeling that the situation was becoming strained, he turned toward the boy.

"Being away at the time, I never quite got to the bottom of what preceded your acquittal. Do you mind telling me, Jim?"

"It's no great secret, an' all to the credit of the man who helped me. Weel, I was locked up, charged with poaching and wounding."

"Innocently, I hope," said Rae; and there was a trace of Caledonian dryness in Johnstone's reply.

"Ye will mind the saying about speiring no questions and being telt less lies. Meanwhile two or three others consultit with Lawyer Davidson, and he said conviction would be certain if Mr. Dane could swear to me. Otherwise, he suspectit I would go free. Then Mary would see Mr. Dane for the sake of the bairns. I was sore against it, but they had me jailed, an' what could I do? Well, she wrote asking him to meet her by the Hallows Brig, and Mr. Dane e'en promised to do his best for me, an' tell nobody. May be he could no be quite certain. Ye will mind there was no moon just then, and the night was thick, Mr. Rae."

"I have heard that no man is expected to testify against himself," said the reverend gentleman dryly.

"That's what Davidson telt the fiscal," continued Johnstone, with a laugh. "Says he, 'It's the business o' your witnesses to convict him'; an' I'm no denying that they did their best, all but Mr. Dane. He just stuck to his story – it was dark, an' while the man he grappled with was like to me, he could swear to nobody who had just kicked him hard upon the knee."

Johnstone added further details, and then looked hard at the clergyman, as though expecting him to take up the challenge when he concluded, "May be there are folks who lightly Mr. Dane for what he done, but it was him an' no other who made an honest man of me, forby a promotit foreman home on a holiday."

"I am not a lawyer," said Rae. "It is therefore not my business to judge him; and you need not stare at me. I already believed Mr. Dane to be a kindly gentleman. I am also open to admit that he did more than either I or my predecessor could accomplish. We are not, however, all friends of big contractors, you see."

Johnstone grinned in answer to the last thrust, while Lilian felt thankful that she sat in a shadowy corner, for the simple story which bore the truth stamped upon the face of it, had stirred her strangely. The action narrated was characteristic of the man who was risking his life in Africa. She knew that he was very generous, and could be loyal to a pledge, even to his disadvantage. It was equally evident that the young workman with his unconcealed dislike to his benefactor's class would be very unlikely to shut his eyes to any intrigue between Dane and his sister. Yet, though Lilian was angry with herself for the thought, it was possible that the brother might have been deceived, and she felt that she must learn the truth. The seamstress said nothing, and it dawned upon Rae that his presence was superfluous; so, making the first excuse available, he took his departure, and Johnstone with him.

CHAPTER XVI
ILLUMINATION

When the two men went out Miss Chatterton discovered that she had undertaken a very difficult task. The seamstress lay still looking at her, evidently expectant, but saying nothing. She, it appeared, felt herself mistress of the position. Lilian felt that the silence was growing painful, and determined to attack the subject boldly.

"Mr. Dane has clearly been a good friend to your brother, but may I ask whether that evening at the Hallows Bridge was the only time you spoke to him?"

A flush crept into the sick girl's cheeks, and a hardness into her eyes.

"I was expecting ye would ask me. What would ye say if I did not answer?"

"Probably nothing," returned Lilian, quietly. "Mr. Dane is, as we know, somewhat impulsive, as well as generous. Why do you tell me that you expected such a question?"

Mary Johnstone painfully raised herself on one elbow.

"Ye are a grand lady, but hard, I think, as some folk would call ye bonny. I am a poor sewing woman with the need to strive hard, an' always, to keep hunger from the door – but in the hearts of us there is no that difference between you an' me. No – bide ye and listen."

Lilian had risen, but she sat down again. Something in the girl's voice and manner compelled her attention, for the seamstress spoke as equal to equal on the basis of their common humanity.

"I owe ye little, Miss Chatterton. What ye paid, I earned, an' some of it hardly, but when ye bade me come no more to The Larches, with no other word, there was many an ill tongue to cast dirt at me, forby lying tales that ye found things of value missing."

"I never suspected that would happen," said Lilian, a little uneasily.

"How should ye?" continued the seamstress. "But ye could not blame the slanderers, being quick yourself to think evil. May be ye did not know, either, that my good name means work and bread to more than me? So, if there was no other person interested, I would ask – how dare ye, thinking what ye think, come here and ask me that question?"

Lilian was contrite, realizing the harm she had unwittingly done, and recognizing the genuine ring of injured innocence in the speaker's voice. She was also slightly angry, as well as astonished, but she was sufficiently just to see that it would not become her to manifest displeasure.

"I did wrong, but how do you know what I thought, or if I thought anything at all?" she asked. "You have also avoided the question instead of answering me."

"What did I tell ye at the beginning?" said the sick girl with a curious smile. "Being poor, am I less a woman? Well, and not for your sake only, ye shall have the answer that should pleasure ye. That night at Hallows Brig was the one time only Mr. Dane had word with me. Are ye believing me?"

Lilian failed to understand why she should feel so relieved by the information, but she certainly did. She also felt humbled; and as it was not her way to do anything by half, she made reparation with a queenly simplicity. Stooping over the sick girl, she kissed her on the cheek.

"After that you cannot refuse to forgive me, and must come back and help me as soon as you are fit," she said. "But I do not understand yet what you meant when you said it was not for my sake only."

The sick girl at first only regarded her with a smile, but it sufficed to show Lilian that peace was made.

"If ye cannot guess, I fear I cannot tell ye," she said. "I have eyes and the sense to see, but it would be presumption for me to tell ye all they showed me. Still, ye and Mr. Maxwell were not the only persons I saw that night at the Hallows Brig."

Lilian asked no further questions, but when she left there was a brightness in her eyes which had not been there before.

"Mary Johnstone has clearly bewitched you," the clergyman remarked. "Your very step is lighter than it was an hour ago, and you are looking better than you have done all winter. Would it be indiscreet to ask what spell she cast upon you?"

"I am afraid it would," Lilian answered, while a softness crept into her face. She laughed, and henceforward chatted so brightly that when she left him her companion looked after her longingly, and then sighed as he turned back to his bachelor quarters. They struck him as very cheerless and lonely.

A week had passed when Miss Chatterton, sitting alone, listlessly took up a newspaper a maid brought in. The listlessness vanished, however, when a heading, "Further Fighting in the Dark Continent," caught her eye, and she eagerly hurried through an account of the reverses suffered by a British punitive expedition in West Africa. Then, while her heart beat fast, she sat very still, staring at the concluding paragraph:

A French trader brought news to the coast of another unfortunate affair in the hinterland. It appears that two Englishmen, Dane and Maxwell, who left the coast months earlier, on a prospecting expedition, lost their carriers by sickness, and have since been hemmed in by hostile natives in a perilous position. Our correspondent states that the French authorities, who warned them against the expedition, consider their extrication impossible, and believe they must have perished already.

Lilian let the paper fall from her nerveless hands, and lay motionless, shivering in her chair. The shock of a supposed discovery, and a jealousy she would not own, had played their part in forcing on her attention a question she had resolutely striven to ignore, while now, when it was perhaps too late forever, the answer was clear. She could deceive herself no longer; and she guessed why the man had risked his life to win a little gold in Africa. Risked it – at the thought her eyes grew hazy. It might well be that he had flung his life away! Yet, even then, it was with a passing thrill of pride that she remembered the stubbornness beneath his patience, and knew that it would go very hard with his enemies before he went down.

Hilton Dane had changed swiftly in her estimation from a man with a weakness to a hero, generous, loyal, swift to do her pleasure, and yet fitted to command. It seemed to her overstrained fancy that she could almost hear his voice ringing through the blast of the rifles in the last struggle; and that it would be a very grim and terrible struggle she knew. Then she shuddered once more, recollecting what she had read of the scenes within an African stockade when the rifles lay cold in the undergrowth, and the smoke of the flintlocks had melted away.

The sense of constraint inside grew unbearable, and the girl went forth into the night, and stood bareheaded, staring into the darkness, hoping, though almost afraid to hope, that the man she had sent away had not passed forever beyond her power to recall him.

Chatterton and his wife, returning presently, found her waiting in the hall; and the iron-master's action was characteristic when he had glanced at the paper she handed him. Wrenching out his notebook he wrote on the first blank leaf the address of a firm dealing in palm oil in Liverpool, and then a message beneath it:

"See newspaper report of disaster to West Coast explorers, Dane and Maxwell. Wire your agents to find out how much is true, and all possible details. Spare no expense whatever."

He flung the paper to the groom outside.

"Get that telegram sent off before the post-office closes, if you kill the horse!" he said.

There was a rattle of wheels, and Chatterton laughed a grim laugh as he turned toward the women.

"No great cause for anxiety as yet. I know Hilton Dane better than either of you, and I think I know Maxwell too. It would take several legions of niggers to hem them in – and I should be sorry for many of the black men."

A few days later, Thomas Chatterton sat beside his hearth one evening in an unpleasant frame of mind. The weather might have caused a more even tempered person some discontent, because the windows rattled under the impact of the sleet-laden blast, and the snugly curtained room was swept by chilling draughts. But Chatterton was not considering the weather; he glanced at the clock before he turned toward the owner of Culmeny.

"That lazy rascal is stopping somewhere to gossip on the way," he said.

"The telegraph office is closed now, and he must be here shortly," replied Maxwell. "I was sorry to hear that Miss Chatterton was no better. Have you any more favorable news to give me?"

"No. She is rather worse than better, and we are distinctly uneasy about her to-night," he said. "Dr. Gilmour was here an hour ago, looking rather more owl-like than usual, but I could get no opinion out of him. In fact, the man puzzled me. He appeared dazed, and either would not listen to my questions or was incapable of understanding plain English."

"Dazed? You do not as a rule speak ambiguously. If Miss Chatterton is seriously ill I think it is my duty to tell you what you evidently do not know, though it is no secret. Gilmour is not free from a weakness for alcohol."

Chatterton was a man of action; making no comment, he wrenched upon the rope of the bell before he pulled out his watch.

"Send Robertson here at once!" he ordered; and when his groom appeared, he asked:

"Is it possible to ride a horse to Swiftsbridge across the Langside moss and through the ford in time to bring out the doctor by the last train?"

"No, sir," was the answer. "The moor track's under water, the ford just roaring full, and I'm thinking that to swim the Swift to-night is impossible."

"I think he is right," Maxwell said; "though I fancy I could have done it twenty years ago."

"Then you can drive!" Chatterton said harshly to the groom. "It's a little over forty miles there and back by road. Get a fresh horse at the bridge; but if you value your place don't come back without the doctor!"

Chatterton walked to the window and flung the curtains behind him; then he returned with brows contracted farther.

"The moor is white all over, and the air thick with sleet," he said. "It will take that fellow all his time to bring the doctor here by to-morrow."

A maid, appearing, laid a telegraphic envelope on the table, and Chatterton tore it open.

"At last! I always thought the man was incapable. Listen to this!

"Difficult to communicate by ocean cable except at heavy cost, but surmise from message received that our coast agent credits published account. His cable just received reads, as deciphered by our code: Yes. Consider prospects discouraging. Do not look for improvement. Think we could confirm."

Chatterton whipped out a pencil and, scribbling across the foot of the message, handed it to Maxwell.

"Can you send somebody down to the office with that?" he said. "It can't go until to-morrow. I want to keep my other man ready."

"Yes," agreed Maxwell. "There are regulations, Chatterton, which will bar out your opening sentence, Damn your private code. The rest is, I think, plain enough. Get news whatever it costs. Wire your agent in English if he has sense enough to understand it. Believe I am quite able to meet the bill."

"That man," explained Chatterton, "is, I blush to say, a relative of my own, and given to complaining that times are bad. It surprises me that he does not find them ruinous, if this is a sample of his enterprise. I'm almost as much cut up as you are about this affair; and I'm sorry for you, Maxwell."

"Thanks," returned the master of Culmeny, quietly. "He was the only son left me, and I have a presentiment of what the end will be. It is, however, in the hands of the Almighty; but, if the worst comes, I know that neither of them will forget what is due to the land that bred him."

Chatterton coughed huskily.

"You are morbid, Culmeny. If they can only steer clear of treachery, by the Lord, those two lads will cut their way out in spite of all the savages in Africa. I know the one whose father was my partner, and I know your son. If my own brother told me he had seen them beaten, I would not believe him."

Maxwell left, and in a few minutes Mrs. Chatterton came in to say that Lilian was growing delirious. As they spoke together the iron-master heard a voice in the hall.

"It is that confounded Rae," he observed. "It was he who encouraged Lily to go poking into the houses of poor folks who didn't want her, all winter. I consider him responsible for her illness, and feel quite capable of telling him so."

The clergyman was ushered in, and he had barely stated the purport of his visit when the elder man cut him short.

"No. Miss Chatterton will neither sing at your concert, nor distribute any more coal tickets to encourage professional loafers!" he said. "In fact she is seriously ill. If you had not been enjoying yourself in Edinburgh you would have known it. You are sorry! Well, I really cannot help saying that I think you ought to be. Miss Chatterton has not been strong all winter, and was warned against damp and exposure; but you managed to convince her it was her duty to wander up and down the village, pestering the sick folk, in spite of the rain and snow. Women have not the sense to discriminate between what is necessary and sentimental foolishness, you know."

Rae, who was not readily browbeaten, interrupted the speaker, and though he expressed no contrition, he showed such genuine anxiety concerning Miss Chatterton's health that her uncle was surprised, as well as mollified. It is possible that the clergyman showed his fears too plainly.

"Perhaps you could not help it, being possibly afflicted with the crazy notion that to destroy one's bodily health is good for the soul," he said. "It is one of the few things which always excites my indignation."

Rae, who knew that the things which roused the speaker's ire were numerous, smiled a little. "I certainly have never preached that doctrine."

"You must forgive me if I appear abrupt," Chatterton apologized. "The fact is that when I'm anxious my temper is not so good as it generally is, and I am very anxious about my niece to-night. When Gilmour came round, the infernal – yes, that's the adjective I meant – old scoundrel wasn't even sober. And you remember Dane? Well, he is hemmed in by hostile savages somewhere in Africa, and we can learn no news of him. My niece and he were very good friends, and when she grows light-headed she begs us to tell her what has happened to him. It is distressing because, of course, we cannot do so."

Rae winced visibly at the last few sentences, and found a corroboration of them in the recollection of the change in Miss Chatterton after hearing Johnstone's story. Still, he pulled out his watch.

"There is a clever doctor at Swiftsbridge."

"I believe so," said Chatterton, impatiently. "There are also a number in London and a few in New York, I've heard. I sent over for the Swiftsbridge man some time ago; but considering the snow and bad roads, I don't expect him before to-morrow – and to-morrow may be too late."

"It is scarcely twelve miles across the moor and moss," said Rae. "There's a train this way in two hours' time. If you could lend me a horse – "

"My man, who ought to know, declares that nobody could get through the ford to-night. I'm obliged to you, Rae, but what you suggest is out of the question. The one horse now in my stable has the fiend's own temper, and I cannot allow you, who cannot have had much experience in the saddle, to run risks that were too heavy for a very capable horseman."

"I used to ride a little, and haven't quite forgotten. If, as you suggest, I am responsible for Miss Chatterton's illness, I must make the only reparation possible. In fact, I intend to do so; and unless you will mount me I will borrow a horse at Culmeny. I will not, however promise to spare the beast."

"You can drown him if you bring the doctor through by the last train!" said Chatterton, ringing the bell. "The horse will be ready inside ten minutes; and I'm greatly obliged to you."

The time had not elapsed when Rae walked quietly toward the mettlesome beast, which, resenting the change from its warm stable into the stinging sleet, laid its ears back, and when Chatterton approached it bared its teeth.

"Stand clear of his head!" cautioned Rae, swinging himself to the saddle; and the horse, rearing half upright, sent the gravel flying. "No. Leave the gate shut! I'm going the nearest way."

"I shall not forget this kindness," called Chatterton. "Feel I ought to stop you, but dare not do it. Take care of yourself – and God bless you!"

"I hope He will prosper my journey," the younger man answered gravely.

There was a further scattering of gravel, a pounding of hoofs across a strip of lawn, and a crash of brittle branches as horse and rider smashed through a tall hedge into the sleet which whirled across the meadow beyond it.

Chatterton, shaking the white flakes from him, returned to his wife.

"I suppose you saw what has happened," he said. "There's another of them in the running now, and this one has mettle in him if he is a clergyman. He's going through Langside moss to-night, though I gave him the plainest hint I could that in respect to Lilian his chance is of the smallest. Maxwell, it seems, took his dismissal gracefully; but what Rae has done to-night will count heavily on his side. Why must that idiot Hilton go out and get himself cut off by niggers in Africa?"

Thanks to Rae's daring ride, a skilful doctor arrived at the junction by the last train, and remained at The Larches all the next day. He also made a number of other visits before he stated that his patient was making rapid progress on the way to recovery.

"You had, however, better take her south, say Egypt or the Canaries, to escape our genial spring," he said. "Not necessary, but distinctly advisable. Miss Chatterton might sail almost at any time."

"We will choose Teneriffe, and start at once," Chatterton informed his wife. "It is well on the mail route to West Africa, and I'm growing anxious about Hilton."