Kitabı oku: «The League of the Leopard», sayfa 19
CHAPTER XXVI
REWARDED
It was a sunny afternoon when the little West Coast mailboat's engines ceased their throbbing off the mole of Santa Cruz, Teneriffe. Clear skies had hung over her as she rolled northward in no great hurry, and the fresh breezes which curl the sparkling sea between Morocco and the fever coast had brought new life to her sickly passengers. Dane felt his heart grow lighter as each league of deep blue water rolled astern, and the shadow of the dark land had almost fallen from him when the Canaries rose out of the sea. He had youth on his side, besides a comparatively clean conscience and a sound constitution; and a little chest consigned by him to a British bank was locked in the steamer's specie room. Though he would gladly have flung its contents into the sea to undo the past, regrets were futile. So, with a courage which sprang rather from humility than pride, he had determined to ask Lilian Chatterton to either share his struggles or await his prosperity.
The long black mole slid past, the bows forged more slowly through the crystal brine, and the harbor opened up. Even before the yellow flag fluttered aloft, boats by the dozen shot out from the lava steps, and Dane eagerly scanned the faces of their occupants. They were fruit peddlers, shipping and coaling clerks, and he sighed with disappointment as he next swept his eyes along the mole. Nobody among the loungers there raised a hat or a handkerchief.
"Expecting friends?" asked the purser, halting beside him.
"I was," Dane answered dejectedly. "Although I cabled from the Coast, I don't see them."
"I wouldn't count too much on that," smiled the purser. "Nobody is very particular in Spanish possessions, and it's quite possible they lost your message or couldn't decipher the English name. We shall fill up here with tourists, and if you are going home with us you must let me know."
"I can't tell you now," Dane said. "It depends on what I hear ashore."
"Well, I won't keep a berth for you."
He left Dane troubled when he turned away, for he had certainly expected Chatterton to welcome him and he had counted the days until he could ask Lilian an eventful question. He had hoped also that the cable message would have prepared them for his tidings; he shrank from again appearing unexpectedly as the bearer of tragic news. There was no time to be lost, however, and he went ashore in the first boat. Strange faces looked down at him from the mole, and no friendly voice was raised in greeting; and further annoyance awaited him when he hurried into the hotel.
Mr. Chatterton and family had stayed there for a time, but had left, the major-domo said. He thought they had gone to Madeira, but they might have sailed for England, or anywhere. It was not his business to ask where any Englishman wandered to, but the clerk might know. The clerk, it appeared, was out, and might not be back for an hour or so, but the major-domo suggested that in the meantime something might be gathered by an examination of the visitors' letters in his office. He showed Dane where the office was, and then shrugged his shoulders.
"What pity! Ramon he have lock the door," he said.
"That's a very small obstacle," answered Dane. "Nobody else has a key, I suppose, so I'm going to get in through the window, and I will most certainly break it if he has fastened that up, too."
There were murmurs of protest, and Dane fancied that half the staff gathered in the hall and watched him endeavor to wrench the sash out by main force. When he had almost accomplished it, somebody suggested that when Ramon locked the front door he usually left one at the side open. It was a characteristic example of how things are managed in Latin countries; and the next minute Dane was busy turning over a bundle of letters in the office. There were several for Thomas and Mrs. Chatterton, and the sight of them filled him with satisfaction. Then his eye was caught by his own name on the top of two envelopes reforwarded to Chatterton, and after a swift glance at the embossed name on the back, he tore the first open.
It was from a celebrated engineering firm, and his blood pulsed faster as he read it:
"Although when you last called upon us we could not quite see our way to do so on the terms you mentioned, we are now prepared to undertake the manufacture and sale of your invention on the following conditions."
Dane saw that the conditions were as favorable as any non-capitalist inventor could expect, but he felt that the gold he had sent home would help him to improve them; and it was with a thrill of satisfaction that he opened the second letter. This was from his last employers, offering him reasonable remuneration if he would undertake the supervision of the machines and bridge work they were sending out to execute an important railroad-building contract abroad.
Here was one difficulty removed, at least. Dane hastened to the cable offices, and felt a great contentment when his messages were on the wires. His prospects were improving, and it was encouraging to know he would not pose as a wholly indigent suitor. When he reached the hotel once more, the clerk had returned, and informed him that Mr. Chatterton and family had retired for the sake of coolness to Laguna, five or six miles away.
Dane procured a horse, and within the next few minutes he was urging it at its best pace up the steep hillside. The horse, as it happened, was a good one, and its rider's spirits rose higher as each mile went by. It was a fine evening, and to one fresh from the enervating heat of Africa, there was a wonderful buoyancy in the cool air that came down from the cordillera. It was a refreshing change to see the merry brown faces of the peasants who saluted him as he passed, and hear the laughter of the mule drivers as their climbing teams dropped behind. Dane had almost forgotten the dark land when the white walls of drowsy Laguna rose to view. The loungers in the plaza knew the Englishman Dane inquired for, and one of them preceded him down a narrow street with a dignified leisureliness which even the sight of a dollar failed to dissipate, and finally halted outside a high-walled garden doubtless laid out by some Castilian conquistador four centuries ago.
Dane swung himself from the saddle before a door ornamented by a beautiful bronze bell handle, and spent two minutes pulling the bell vigorously. There was no answer nor any sound within, and remembering that it did not necessarily follow that the handle had a wire attached, he stepped back into the roadway and flung himself against the barrier. A hasp of some kind yielded, and he staggered forward into the garden. The sun was dipping behind the cordillera, but its red light beat into his eyes, and at first he could see only a row of crimson oleanders stretching away before him. Their fragrance and the scent of heliotrope was heavy within his nostrils. Passing through the shadow of an orange-tree he made out a white wall garlanded by blue bougainvillea, and halted at the sound of a startled voice as his eyes fell upon the group on the terrace beneath it.
Thomas Chatterton had flung his chair back, and stood up with a flushed face, speaking excitedly. His niece also had risen, and her gaze was fixed upon the man who came hurriedly out of the shadow of the tree. She was silent, but Dane read in her eyes that which set his heart beating, and for a second or two he saw only the dainty figure and the smiling face turned toward his own.
The elation suddenly died out within him, and it was by an effort that he moved forward, for there was a third in the party. A man with iron-gray hair stood a little apart from the rest, and while each of his companions showed that they rejoiced to see the new arrival, he was gazing fixedly at the open door behind him. Dane saw that it was Brandram Maxwell of Culmeny, and knew why he watched the door.
"This is even more than we hoped for, Hilton, though we have all been anxiously waiting for news of you," said Chatterton. "Thank Heaven you are safe anyway. Worth a good many dead men, isn't he, Lilian? She knew Maxwell would bring you out; and when I grew anxious her confidence reassured me. But why didn't you cable – and where is Maxwell?"
Dane disregarded the last question, for Lilian laid her hand in his. He was not certain what she said, but her eyes were shining under the half-closed lashes in a fashion that was eloquent enough. Still Dane could not linger to wonder what, if they were fully opened, he might see within them, for Chatterton repeated his question.
"Where have you left Carsluith. Did he not come up with you from Santa Cruz?"
"No," Dane answered, and his voice shook a little. "Did you receive my cable?"
"We did not," said Chatterton. "What has gone wrong, Hilton. Speak out, man!"
Lilian, guided by some womanly instinct, laid her hand warningly on the speaker's arm, and Dane nerved himself for the hardest task of all, as the owner of Culmeny, moving forward, stood close beside him. He was very much like what Dane's dead comrade had been – wiry, spare, and grim. The drooping gray moustache matched the pallor of his face; but his eyes were steady and keen, and only a deepening of the lines about them betrayed his anxiety.
"I fear you bring bad news," he said.
"I do," Dane answered as steadily as he could, though the older man's composure rendered his task even harder than a sign of weakness would have done. "I had hoped the cable I sent might have prepared you – and now I hardly know how to tell you."
It was just possible to see that a tremor ran through Maxwell and his lean hand closed a little more firmly than was needful on the back of a chair.
"Brevity is best. Disaster has overtaken him?"
"Yes."
The owner of Culmeny looked him full in the eyes, and it was some time before Dane could shake off the memory of that gaze.
"It is the worst – he is dead?" he said; and Dane mutely bent his head.
Brandram Maxwell's fingers trembled, and for a moment he looked at the ground; then he spoke very quietly:
"I feared this when I saw he was not with you. Tell me how it happened. It is not the first shrewd blow fate has dealt me."
Chatterton and Lilian would have turned away, but Maxwell beckoned them to remain.
"No. We have grown to be good friends, and I should like you to hear it, too," he said, looking toward Lilian. "There will be no cause for any one who knew my son to blush at this story. It will be a kindness if you hide nothing, Hilton."
Dane afterward wondered how he got through that recital. At the beginning speech seemed to fail him, but one listener's spirit infected him as he proceeded, and pride was mingled with the man's grief, for what he had seen in Bonita Castro's face he read in that of the owner of Culmeny. It was dark when he concluded:
"I can tell you nothing more, sir, and, though God knows it is the truth, it is useless to say that I would willingly have staked my own life on the chance of saving him."
Lilian appeared to be crying softly, and Chatterton troubled with something in his throat, for he coughed several times vigorously, but Maxwell held out his hand to Dane.
"I believe you would. You were his friend," he said, still with a startling quietness. "You did your best for my dead son, and no man dare blame you. It is a brave story, and I am not ashamed of his end. It was in accordance with the traditions of an unfortunate family. But you will excuse me. I am getting an old man and weaker in the fiber than I used to be."
He turned away, holding himself stiffly erect, and Chatterton laid a heavy grasp on Dane's shoulder.
"Well done, Hilton. If you had not chased that damned rascal to his death I'd have sent you back with another expedition to take up the hunt again. I am sorry for Culmeny. He was fonder of Carsluith than anything else under heaven, and you saw how he took the blow. Well, I won my own place, and went through the fire for it, but the brand Culmeny wears is what I could never attain to. They were alike, both of them, and it will be a long time before we find their equal. Perhaps I had better follow and try to comfort him."
It struck Dane that Thomas Chatterton, though not lacking in sympathy, would hardly make a tactful comforter, but he did not say so, and Lilian seemed content to let him go.
"You are not sorry to see me, Lilian?" asked Dane, taking one of the girl's hands into his own, for her cheeks were damp yet, and bending, he caught her answer.
"No, but I was shocked. Hilton, I felt that when he went out to save you he knew he was going to his death, and I – I let him go."
"Even you could not have turned him aside," said Dane.
"I – right or wrong – I did not try."
"He was a better man than I am," declared Dane. "But it is fortunate that there are women who can be content with less than the best, and make up the deficiencies themselves. Will you listen to a little tale, one which is rather amusing than somber?"
"Is it about the poacher? If so, you need not tell me. You must also take the confession I ought to make for granted. You were always a blunderer, Hilton."
"I dare say I was," Dane answered, laying his hand on the girl's shoulder in a masterful fashion. "And my last adventure was perhaps the maddest freak of all; but that is beside the question. I once made a very vague arrangement with you, though you kindly said we understood each other. Now, I must ask you, do you wish that understanding to continue. If so, the only way for me to keep it would be to go back to Africa. A steamer sails to-morrow."
"No," the girl said shyly, then lifted her head and glanced at her companion. "I dare not send you back to that hateful country, Hilton."
There was no need for further speech. Dane knew that he had won at last.
