Kitabı oku: «The White Virgin», sayfa 14
Chapter Thirty One.
Fox and Wolf
The days went by slowly and sadly. Letters came regularly enough, but they were not hopeful, for Clive told how he was hemmed in by difficulties which prevented his stirring: and, as he said, it would be madness to do anything which would involve legal proceedings and injure the prospects of the mine. There was nothing for it but to wait: for Wrigley had laid his plans only too well, and he and Jessop had everything in their own hands.
To the Major he said emphatically that as far as money matters were concerned there was nothing to mind, for the new management was bound for their own sake to do their best, as any lapse and falling off of the returns would be fatal to their position.
To Dinah there were tender breathings of devotion, and the assurance that though absent he was with her always in spirit; and at the first opportunity he would run down.
Ten days had passed, and one afternoon the Major had encountered Robson, whom he was passing with a short nod; but, after glancing round to see whether they were observed, the young man followed the Major and said quickly —
“I’m kept on at the mine, sir, because I know so much of the books, and they can’t very well get along without me; but you looked at me so differently to what you used, sir, that I thought I’d speak.”
“Yes, sir: you belong to the enemy’s camp,” said the Major sharply.
“No, I don’t, sir, though I’m there, and I wish to goodness Mr Clive Reed was back, for Sturgess is unbearable with his bullying ways; and as for Mr Jessop, he’s no more like his brother than chalk’s like cheese. Think there’s any chance of Mr Clive coming back?”
“Yes, my lad, every chance, if we’re true to him,” cried the Major; “and I beg your pardon, Mr Robson, I thought you were one of the scoundrels. I’m very glad to find you are not.”
“I thank you, sir,” cried the young man; “and if you write to Mr Clive Reed, please tell him so long as I’m in the mine office the books shall be kept just as he wished, so that any one can see at a glance how matters stand.”
“And I thank you too, Mr Robson. I, as a shareholder, am very glad that we have so good a man in your administrative post. But tell me, how are the returns?”
“Wonderful, sir. They increase every day. The profits will be enormous.”
“And is this man Sturgess doing his duty?”
“Oh! yes, sir, splendidly,” said Robson, laughing. “By his new agreement he is to get a percentage upon the metal smelted. I don’t like him, but there’s no mistake in his working.”
“Humph, that’s right,” growled the Major.
“And now, sir, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go, for if it was known that I talked about the mine affairs, I should be packed off; and for Mr Clive Reed’s sake I want to stay.”
“Right: good day. I daresay we shall run up against each other again.”
They parted, and none too soon, for, hammer in hand, the Major had just plunged down into a gully when Robson caught sight of a tiny cloud of smoke rising above a ridge before him.
Quick as thought he threw himself down among the heather, and lay peering between two tufts, till Jessop came into sight directly after, puffing away at a big cigar as he walked sharply along the track, passing the spot where the clerk lay, and evidently going in the direction of the cottage.
Robson looked uneasy, and his forehead began to wrinkle with the thoughts which entered his brain. He was puzzled at first; then suspicious; and at last determined.
He waited until Jessop was well out of sight, and with his mind made up, he was about to scramble to his feet, but he dropped down again, feeling sure he must have been seen, for he was conscious of a figure higher up the slope, coming slowly towards him; and soon after Sturgess, with his arm still in a sling, came close by, went down to the shelf-track, and there seated himself in a nook amongst some ferns. This forced the young clerk to slowly worm himself along among the heath and whortleberry tufts for a couple of hundred yards before the rising ground was well between them, when he went off at a sharp walk in the direction taken by the Major.
Meanwhile Jessop had gone on smoking heavily till he reached the river side, where he stopped gazing down into the sparkling water, evidently thinking deeply, and drawing hard at his cigar, till it was nearly done, when he threw it to fall with a loud hiss into the stream.
Then, with a quiet, satisfied aspect he went on for a few steps, and turned up the tiny gully hard by the Major’s garden.
Fortune favoured him, for Dinah was seated in the shady porch working; and she started up in alarm as he came close up.
“Don’t be frightened,” he said, with a smile, and holding out his hand. “Surely you have not forgotten me?”
“No,” said Dinah, recovering herself, though her heart beat heavily from apprehension. “You called here once before.”
“To be sure I did; but you will shake hands?”
“As a friend of Mr Clive Reed, under the present circumstances, surely, sir, it is better not,” she replied with dignity.
“Sir – under the present circumstances,” he cried bitterly. “The old story. Blackguard again. Ah,” he said, with a stamp of the foot, “is that man to go through the whole of his life spreading malicious slanders about his brother?”
Dinah was silent.
“Then you will not shake hands with one who spared no effort to get himself appointed to stay down here – whose sole thought has been of her whom he met once – only once – but whose impression was fixed so deeply upon his heart that ever since he has thought of her night and day.”
Dinah rose and drew back into the doorway, looking at him with contempt.
“Is this part of some melodrama, Mr Jessop Reed?” she said, “or do you imagine that you are speaking to a weak rustic girl?”
“I am speaking the truth – blunderingly, perhaps,” he cried excitedly, “but in the best way I can. I wonder that I am not dumb before you. How can you be so cruel. You must have seen how you impressed me when I was down here before. That feeling has grown into an overpowering passion. Dinah Gurdon,” he cried, catching her hand, “I came down hereto live – to love you. I cannot help it.”
“And you know that I am your brother’s betrothed,” she said wildly.
“I know that without doubt he has taken advantage of his position here to try and delude you, as he has deluded other poor girls again and again; but you must know the truth. He is not fit to touch your hand – no, not even to stand in your presence. Hush! let me speak. I know all this is cruelly sudden, but you would forgive me if you knew what I have suffered since I saw you last. Dinah, dearest Dinah, give me some little ray of hope to take away with me. You are too beautiful to be cruel – too gentle to send me away despairing. Ah, you are relenting! A word only, and I will go away patiently, and ready to wait till you know me better.”
“I never could know you better than I do at present,” said Dinah firmly, and quietly withdrawing her hand.
“Ah, then I may hope?” he cried.
“For what, sir? – an increase in my feeling of contempt? Your brother spared you, but I formed my own estimate of your nature, and it is true.”
“I – I don’t understand you,” he whispered, “only that your words give me intense pain.”
“I know, too, my father’s estimate of your character. Shall I tell you what he said?”
“If you will. It is joy to hear you speak,” he cried, as he tried to catch her hand again.
“He said, sir, that you were a scoundrel.”
“Of course,” cried Jessop, with a bitter laugh, “from my brother’s slanders.”
“Did your brother slander you when he told me that you married his betrothed?” cried Dinah indignantly, her eyes speaking her disgust. “Should I slander you, sir, if I told you that your words to me – words from a married man, to one whom you know to be his promised wife, are an insult? Have the goodness to go, sir, before my father returns, or I will not be answerable for the consequences. Ah!”
She rushed past Jessop, forcing him on one side, for the Major, warned by Robson, had hurried back, and was coming up the path with his stick quivering in his grasp.
“Don’t – don’t, father,” she panted in her excitement, “for my sake. I have said enough.”
The Major’s face was purple with anger, but he did not speak, only raised his quivering stick, and pointed down toward the pathway, while Dinah clung to his arm.
Jessop shrugged his shoulders, uttered a contemptuous laugh, and calmly took out his case, selected and lit a cigar, closed the case with a snap, pocketed it, and walked by them smoking, insultingly contriving to send a puff of tobacco into the Major’s face as he passed.
The next minute he was on the shelf path with his face convulsed with fury; and he walked on backward toward the mine, biting off pieces of the cigar, and spitting them out savagely.
“That’s it, is it?” he snarled. “Well, we can soon tame all that. He won’t come back here, and all that is vapour. Pretty indignation; but a woman is weak. She knows I want her, and she’ll dream about it, and grow softer till the siege comes to an end. For it shall come to an end, and in my way, my lady. I never fairly attacked a girl yet without winning; and my pretty, sweet darling shall go on her knees to me yet, and what do you mean by that?”
“I want to talk to you, guv’nor,” said Sturgess, who had suddenly clapped him roughly on the shoulder.
“What is it, then? And, confound you, don’t you forget your place, sir.”
“No fear. I’ve done your dirty work, and helped you to get your position here.”
“And your own,” cried Jessop, with a sneer.
“Oh yes, that’s all right; but I’m not going to have you ride roughshod over me in every way.”
“What do you mean, sir?”
“That you’ve got to keep away from the cottage yonder. I’m not going to have you poaching on my preserves.”
“What do you mean?”
“That Dinah Gurdon’s mine – my lass; and that I’d break the neck of any man who came between us two.”
Jessop looked at the man in astonishment for a few minutes, and then burst into a mocking laugh.
“You!” he cried. “Oh, this is too rich.”
“What!” cried Sturgess, who was black with fury.
“You be damned!” cried Jessop; and rudely thrusting the man aside, making him wince as he touched his wounded arm, strode away.
Chapter Thirty Two.
In a Flash
It was a curious blending of the bitter and the sweet when Clive Reed came down to the Blinkdale Moor. To a man of his temperament, it was maddening to find himself completely supplanted at the mine – where Jessop reigned supreme, when Wrigley did not come down; and in spite of the past the young engineer would have insisted upon frequent inspection of the place and statements as to the proceedings, but he dared not go, for at his next visit the Major had excitedly told him of all that had taken place with Jessop, and also of Dinah’s complaint of insult received from Sturgess.
“I promised her that I would leave it to her to tell, my dear boy, but it’s like going into action – one does not care to begin, but the moment one’s blood is up, one doesn’t know where to stop.”
“No,” said Clive, with his brow contracting. “The scoundrel, the scoundrel!”
“And that brother of yours is the worst. Why, good heavens, is he mad with conceit as well as brazen wickedness? What does he take my darling for – some silly country wench to whom he has only to throw the handkerchief for her to fall on her knees at his feet?”
“Don’t talk about it, please, sir!” cried Clive huskily. “I find that my bad passions are stronger than I thought, for I dare not go over to the mine for fear of the scene which would be sure to follow.”
“No: you mustn’t go, Clive, or you’d half kill him – though he’s your own brother. If I had known all when I came back that day, thanks to that young fellow, Robson, I’d have thrashed him till he couldn’t stand. Thirty years older, my boy, but I’m a better man than he is: a miserable, flushed-faced sot! He drinks. I know he does, and he must have been half drunk when he came here that day.”
“He will not dare to come again.”
“No. Let him take the consequences if he does – him or that black-haired scoundrel, I’ll give either of them a charge of shot, I swear.”
Still there was the sweet as well as the bitter, during his stays at the cottage; and Clive often asked himself why he, with the large property left to him by his father, should trouble about the mine, when there was a dreamy life of simple, idyllic happiness and joy. No allusion was made to Jessop or Sturgess by either Dinah or her lover, for it was enough that they could be together in that little paradise the Major had in the course of years contrived, wandering hand in hand beside the clear sparkling river which ran on laughing in the sunshine, so stern and calm in the deep shades beneath the rocks. They said little save in the language of the eye, and though Dinah had again and again determined to speak and tell Clive everything – some day when he was seated at her feet holding her hand in his, and say to him, “I dared not tell you lest you should despise me,” those words never passed her lips. “I cannot tell him now,” she sighed to herself. “I am so happy – he looks at me so full of joy and trust. Some day I will, some day when he is holding me tightly in his arms, and I feel so safe. I will tell him then. How can I make him unhappy now?”
So she went on dreaming; happy in the present. The little river valley had never looked so beautiful before, nor her father so restful and content. It was life’s summer, a golden time with nothing to wish for more. The storms were hushed to sleep, and like the beautiful streamlet, they two were gliding onward in that mystic peace that softens down the passion of a strong first genuine love.
“Bah! I wish there was no London, my boy. No work, no worry, no struggle,” cried the Major, one evening, when he was alone with Clive, who had been looking curiously at Martha, and recalling that night when he had first slept at the cottage. He was wondering how it all was. Whether the sturdy elderly woman had some love affair. Then he had, in spite of himself, thought of Sturgess, whom he had that day seen crossing one of the hills at a distance. He recalled the Major’s words and asked himself whether he, as a man, ought not in his resentment to have taken some step to punish the scoundrel. But with the idea within his mental grasp, he had let it slide again. For why, he asked himself, should he strike and jar the gentle, harmonious life of her who was so happy.
Though the mine was so near, he had only seen his brother and the new deputy manager from time to time, at a distance, and his knowledge of the progress there came either from London or from Robson, who wrote occasionally, always to say that things were miserable, for Jessop and Sturgess were at daggers drawn, but the profits of the mine still rose.
And now a letter had come down from the old lawyer – Mr Belton – endorsing the clerk’s announcements, and saying that an extraordinary meeting was to be held through a movement on the part of Wrigley, and in connection with the advance of the mine under the new management.
“I don’t know what plans the man is going to propose, but you had better come up, my dear boy, and be present. I daresay you will do more good here than by staying down there watching and keeping those people up to their work.”
So wrote the old family solicitor, and Clive’s conscience smote him, as he recalled how little he had done, and how very small was the credit he deserved. For his days had been spent in that dreamy pleasure at the cottage, and for the most part the mine was forgotten.
But this letter had roused him to a sense of his duties, and, commending Dinah to her father’s care, Clive departed once more for town, in happy unconsciousness of the fact that his every step was watched; while as his figure grew less and less as she watched him along the moorland track, Dinah’s heart sank, and the old dread crept back at first like a faint mist, then growing more and more dense, until it was a black shadow between her and the sunshine of her life.
“But it will not be long – he will not be long, he said,” she whispered to herself. “He will come back to-day.”
That was on the following morning. But there was no Clive, and on the second morning she rose hopeful, saying the same words – “He will come to-day;” and she waited eagerly till toward evening, when the Major said suddenly —
“No message from Clive, pet. I thought we should have a telegram.”
Dinah looked at him wistfully, and then her face brightened up.
“That means,” said the Major, “that he is coming back to-night. Look here, my dear, I’ll take the rod and get a brace or two of trout for his supper. There are four or five fine fellows in the lower pool, where I haven’t been for months. You had better stop in case Clive comes.”
Dinah’s face clouded over again.
“Nothing to mind, my dear. I saw Robson this morning, and he told me that Jessop and that black scoundrel went up to town to the meeting the same day as Clive. I suppose they didn’t meet in the train. If they did, I hope my dear boy turned them both out in the first tunnel they went through. There, I’m off.”
The autumn evenings were upon them, and the sun dipped behind the crags of the millstone grit earlier now; and that evening, to prove the truth of the Major’s prophecy, Clive Reed trudged over the hill track leading from Blinkdale past the ‘White Virgin’ mine, where the roadway had been widened and fresh tram-lines laid, to meet the necessities of the vastly increased traffic. He frowned when he saw all this, for it jarred upon him that so much advance should have been made under other management; but the cloud passed away, for he met a group of men returning from their work, to the cottages down in the valley – men for whom there was not room in the new buildings, or who preferred their old homes. These were for the most part known to him, and they greeted him with a friendly smile or touch of the cap as they passed.
Clive longed to stop them and ask questions, but he felt that he could not stoop to a meanness, and he went on in the soft evening glow watching the golden-edged purple clouds in the west, across which the boldly marked rays of the sun struck up, growing fainter till they died away high up towards the zenith. There was a pleasant scent of dry thyme from the banks, and the familiar odour of the bracken as he crushed it beneath his feet, or brushed through it and the heather and gorse. Only a couple of miles farther and he would be passing the spoil bank, and going along the rock shelf in the tunnel-like cutting, along by the perpendicular buttress which stood out from the lead hills like a bold fortification. Then half a mile down and down to the river, where the lights from the cottage would strike out suddenly from the ravine garden, and he could steal up, and announce his coming.
He knew he would see the light, for it would be dark before he passed the spoil bank, almost before he reached the entrance to the gap – the natural gateway to the ‘White Virgin’ mine.
And how prosperous the place had proved! How correct the dear old dad had been! But how bitterly he would have resented Jessop’s interference!
Clive laughed almost mockingly, as he thought of the vote of thanks to Mr Jessop Reed, carried at the meeting with acclaim, for the vast improvements he had made, and the increasing prosperity, all of which were, of course, the natural growth of his own beginnings.
“Never mind,” he said directly after; “let the poor wretch enjoy the satisfaction of having tricked me. Better be Esau than Jacob, after all. But I knew that lode must prove of enormous value, and I get my share of the prosperity.”
He walked on more rapidly, but with a free, easy swing, enjoying the fresh mountain air, so bracing after the stuffy heat of the sun-baked London streets. The heavens had grown grey in the west, and it was as if a soft dark veil were being drawn over the sky, where from time to time a pale star twinkled, disappeared, and came into sight again.
Then the gap was reached, and a strong desire came over him to go down and look about to see how the place appeared, for the chances were that he would not be heeded. But no: he resisted the desire. His brother and Sturgess might be back, and staying late at the office, when a meeting would probably lead to a fierce quarrel.
“Just when I want to be calm and happy, ready to take my darling in my arms,” he said softly. “Poor Janet! I thought I loved you very dearly, but I did not know then that my fancy for the poor, weak, unhappy girl was not love.”
He walked faster, for it was as if there was a magnet at the cottage, and its attractive power was growing stronger as he went along the shelf path, round by the spoil bank, and on in the darkness to the path notched in the perpendicular side of the rugged hill.
“Just the time for a cigarette,” he said; and he took one, replaced his case, and then taking advantage of the sheltered tunnel close by the cavernous part where Sturgess had watched and waited for his return, he prepared to light up in the still calm air away from the brisk breeze outside.
The box was in his hand; he had taken out a little wax match to strike, when he stopped short as if turned to stone, for there, close by him, he heard in a low murmur —
“Yes, I knew that you would come.”
Dinah’s voice; and as he struck the match and it flashed out into a vivid glare, there, within two yards, she stood clasped tightly in his brother Jessop’s arms.
