Kitabı oku: «Trevlyn Hold», sayfa 13

CHAPTER XXI
THE STRANGER

When Mrs. Chattaway and Cris drove off in the dog-cart, George Ryle did not follow them down the avenue, but turned to pursue his way round the house, which would take him to the fields: a shorter cut to his own land than the road. For a long time after his father's death, George could not bear to go through the field which had been so fatal to him; but he had lived down the feeling with the aid of that great reconciler—Time.

Happening to cast his eyes on the grounds as he skirted them, which lay on this side the Hold, he saw Rupert Trevlyn. Leaping a dwarf hedge of azaroles, he hastened to him.

"Well, old fellow! Taking a nap?"

Rupert opened his half-closed eyes, and looked round. "I thought it was Cris again!" he exclaimed. "He was here just now."

"Cris has gone out with his mother in the dog-cart. I don't like the horse he is driving, though."

"Is it that new horse he has been getting?"

"Yes; the one Allen had to sell."

"What's the matter with it?" asked Rupert. "I saw it carrying Allen one day, and thought it a beautiful animal!"

"It has a vicious temper, as I have been given to understand. And I believe it has never been properly broken in for driving. How do you feel to-day, Rupert?"

"No great shakes. I wish I was as strong as you, George."

George laughed pleasantly; and his voice, when he spoke, had a soothing sound in it. "So you may be, by the time you are as old as I am. Why, you have hardly done growing yet, Rupert. There's plenty of time for you to get strong."

"What brings you up here, George? Anything particular?"

"I saw Amelia to-day, and brought a message from her to her mother. Caroline is coming to us for the harvest-home, and Amelia wants to come too."

"Oh, they'll let her," cried Rupert. "The girls can do just as they like."

He, Rupert, leaned his chin on his hand, and began thinking of Amelia Chattaway. She was the oldest of the three younger children, and was at first under the tuition of Maude. But Maude could do nothing with her, the girl liking and taking; in fact she was too old both for Maude's control and instruction, and it was thought well to place her at a good school at Barmester, the school at which Caroline Ryle was being educated. Somehow Rupert's comforts were never added to by the presence of Amelia in the house, and he might have given way to a hope that she would not come home, had he been of a disposition to encourage such feelings.

Octave, who had discerned George Ryle from the windows of the Hold, came out to them, her pink parasol shading her face from the sun. A short time and Miss Trevlyn came home and joined them; next came Maude and her charges. It was quite a merry gathering. Miss Trevlyn unbent from her coldness, as she could do sometimes; Octave was all smiles and suavity, and every one, except Rupert, seemed at ease. Altogether, George Ryle was beguiled into doing what could not be often charged upon him—spending a good part of an afternoon in idleness.

But he went away at last. And as he was turning into the first field—never called anything but "the Bull field," by the country people, from the hour of Mr. Ryle's accident—he encountered Jim Sanders, eager and breathless.

"What's the matter?" asked George. "What do you want here?"

"I was speeding up to the Hold to tell 'em, sir. There's been an accident with Mr. Cris's dog-cart. I thought I'd warn the men up at his place."

"What accident?" hastily asked George, mentally beholding one sole object, and that was Mrs. Chattaway.

"I don't know yet, sir, what it is. I was in the road by the gate, when a horse came tearing along with broken shafts after it. It was that horse of Allen's which I saw Mr. Cris driving out an hour ago in his dog-cart, and Madam along of him. So I cut across the fields at once."

"You can go on," said George; "some of the men will be about. Should you see Miss Diana, or any of the young ladies, take care you say nothing to them. Do you hear?"

"I'll mind, sir."

Jim Sanders hastened out of the field on his way to the back premises of the Hold, and George flew onwards. When he gained the road, he looked up and down, but could see no traces of the accident. Nothing was in sight. Which way should he turn? Where had it occurred? He began reproaching himself for not asking Jim Sanders which way the horse had been coming from. As he halted in indecision some one suddenly came round the turning of the road lower down. It was Cris Chattaway, with a rueful expression and a gig-whip in his hand.

George made but few strides towards him. "What is the worst, Cris? Let me know it."

"I'll have him taken in charge and prosecuted, as sure as a gun," raved Cris. "I will. It's infamous that these things should be allowed in the public road."

"What—the horse?" exclaimed George.

"Horse be hanged!" politely returned Cris, whose irritation was excessive. "It wasn't the horse's fault. Nothing could go steadier and better than he went all the way and back again, as far as this–"

"Where's Mrs. Chattaway?" interrupted George.

"On the bank, down there. She's all right; only shaken a bit. The fellow's name was on the thing, and I have copied it down, and I've sent a man off for a constable. I'll teach him that he can't go about the country, plying his trade and frightening gentlemen's horses with impunity."

In spite of Cris's incoherence and passion, George contrived to gather an inkling of the facts. They had taken a short, easy drive down the lower road and through Barbrook, the horse going (according to Cris) beautifully. But on the road home, in that lonely part between the Hold and Trevlyn Farm, there stood a razor-grinder with his machine, grinding a knife. Whether the whirr of the wheel did not please the horse; whether it was the aspect of the machine; or whether it might be the razor-grinder himself, a somewhat tattered object in a fur cap, the animal no sooner came near, than he began to dance and backed towards the ditch. Cris did his best. He was a good whip and a fearless one; but he could not conquer. The horse turned Mrs. Chattaway into the ditch, relieved his mind by a few kicks, and started off with part of the shafts behind him.

"Are you much hurt, dear Mrs. Chattaway?" asked George, tenderly, as he bent over her.

She looked up with a smile, but her face was of a death-like whiteness. Fortunately, the ditch, a wide one, was dry; and she sat on the sloping bank, her feet resting in it. The dog-cart lay near, and several gazers, chiefly labouring men, stood around, helplessly staring. The razor-grinder was protesting his immunity from blame, and the hapless machine remained in its place untouched, drawn close to the pathway on the opposite side of the road.

"You need not look at me so anxiously, George," Mrs. Chattaway replied, the smile still on her face. "I don't believe I am hurt. One of my elbows is smarting, but I really feel no pain anywhere. I am shaken, of course; but that's not much. I wish I had taken your advice, not to sit behind that horse."

"Cris says he went beautifully, until he was frightened."

"Did Cris say so? It appeared to me that he had trouble with him all the way; but Cris knows, of course. He has gone to the Hold to bring the carriage for me, but I don't care to sit here to be stared at longer than I can help," she added, with a half-smile.

George leaped into the ditch, and partly helped and partly lifted her up the bank, and took her on his arm. She walked slowly, however, and leaned heavily upon him. When they reached the lodge, old Canham was gazing up and down the road, and Ann came out, full of consternation. They had seen the horse with the broken shafts gallop past.

"Then there's no bones broke, thank Heaven!" said Ann, with tears in her meek eyes.

She drew forward her father's armchair before the open door, and Mrs. Chattaway sat down in it, feeling she must have air, she said. "If I had but a drop o' brandy for Madam!" cried old Canham, as he stood near leaning all his weight on his stick.

George caught up the words. "I will go to the Hold and get some." And before Mrs. Chattaway could stop him, or say that she would prefer not to take the brandy he was away.

Almost at the same moment they heard the fast approach of a horse, and the master of Trevlyn Hold rode in at the gates. To describe his surprise when he saw his wife sitting, an apparent invalid, in old Canham's chair, and old Canham and Ann standing in evident consternation, almost as pale as she was, would be a difficult task. He reined in so quickly that his horse was flung back on its haunches.

"Is anything the matter? Has Madam been taken ill?"

"There has been an accident, sir," answered Ann Canham, with a meek curtsey. "Mr. Christopher was driving out Madam in the dog-cart, and they were thrown out."

Mr. Chattaway got off his horse. "How did it happen?" he asked his wife, an angry expression crossing his face. "Was it Cris's fault? I hate that random driving of his!"

"I am not hurt, James; only a little shaken," she replied, with gentleness. "Cris was not to blame. There was a razor-grinder in the road, grinding knives, and it frightened the horse."

"Which horse was he driving?" demanded Mr. Chattaway.

"A new one. One he bought from Allen."

The reply did not please Mr. Chattaway. "I told Cris he should not buy that horse," he angrily said. "Is the dog-cart injured?"

It was apparent from the question that Mr. Chattaway had not passed the débris on the road. He must have come the other way, or perhaps across the common. Mrs. Chattaway did not dare to say she believed the dog-cart was very much injured. "The shafts are broken," she said, "and something more."

"Where did it occur?" growled Mr. Chattaway.

"A little lower down the road. George Ryle came up soon after it happened, and I walked here with him. Cris went on to the Hold to send the carriage, but I shall get home without it."

"It might have been worse, Squire," interposed old Canham, who, as a dependant of Trevlyn Hold, felt compelled sometimes to give the "Squire" his title to his face, though he never would, or did, behind his back. "Nothing hardly happens to us, sir, in this world, but what's more eased to us than it might be."

Mr. Chattaway had stood with his horse's bridle over his arm. "Would you like to walk home with me now?" he asked his wife. "I can lead the horse."

"Thank you, James. I think I must rest here a little longer. I had only just got here when you came up."

"I'll send for you," said Mr. Chattaway. "Or come back myself when I have left the horse at home. Mr. Cris will hear more than he likes from me about this business."

"Such an untoward thing has never happened to Mr. Cris afore, sir," observed Mark Canham. "There's never a better driver than him for miles round. The young heir, now, he's different: a bit timid, I fancy, and–"

"Who?" burst forth Mr. Chattaway, taking his foot from the stirrup, for he was about to mount, and hurling daggers at Mark Canham. "The young heir! To whom do you dare apply that title!"

Had the old man purposely launched a sly shaft at the master of Trevlyn Hold, or had he spoken inadvertently? He hastened to repair the damage as he best could.

"Squire, I be growing old now—more by sickness, though, than by age—and things and people gets moithered together in my mind. In the bygone days, it was a Rupert Trevlyn that was the heir, and I can't at all times call to mind that this Rupert Trevlyn is not so: the name is the same, you see. What has set me to make such a stupid mistake this afternoon, I can't tell, unless it was the gentleman's words that was here but an hour ago. He kept calling Master Rupert the heir; and he wouldn't call him nothing else."

Mr. Chattaway's face grew darker. "What gentleman was that, pray?"

"I never see him before in my life, sir," returned old Canham. "He was a stranger to the place, and asked all manner of questions about it. He called Master Rupert the heir, and I stopped him, saying he made a mistake, for Master Rupert was not the heir. And he answered I was right so far, that Master Rupert, instead of being the heir of Trevlyn Hold, was its master and owner. I couldn't help staring at him when he said it."

Chattaway felt as if his blood were curdling. Was this the first act in the great drama he had so long dreaded? "Where did he come from? What sort of a man was he?" he mechanically asked, all symptoms of anger dying away in his sudden fear.

Old Canham shook his head. "I don't know nothing about where he's from, sir. He came strolling inside the gates, as folks strange to a place will do, looking about 'em just for curiosity's sake. He saw me sitting at the open window, and he asked what place this was, and I told him it was Trevlyn Hold. He said he thought so, that he had been walking about looking for Trevlyn Hold, and he leaned his arm upon the sill, and put nigh upon a hundred questions to me."

"What were the questions?" eagerly rejoined Mr. Chattaway.

"I should be puzzled to tell you half of 'em, sir, but they all bore upon Trevlyn Hold. About the Squire's death, and the will, and the succession; about everything in short. At last I told him that I didn't know the rightful particulars myself, and he'd better go to you or Miss Diana."

Mrs. Chattaway stole a glance at her husband. Her face was paler than the accident had made it; with a more alarmed pallor. The impression clinging to her mind, and of which she had spoken to her husband the previous night—that Rupert Trevlyn was on the eve of being restored to his rights—seemed terribly strong upon her now.

"He was a tall, thin, strange-looking man, with a foreign look about him, and a red umberella," continued old Canham. "A long white beard he had, sir, like a goat, and an odd hat made of cloth or crape, or some mourning stuff. His tongue wasn't quite like an English tongue, either. I shouldn't wonder but he was a lawyer, Squire: no one else wouldn't surely think of putting such a string of questions–"

"Did he—did he put the questions as an official person might put them?" rapidly interrupted Mr. Chattaway.

Old Canham hesitated; at a loss what precise reply to give. "He put 'em as though he wanted answers to 'em," returned he at length. "He said a word or two, sir, that made me think he'd been intimate once with the young Squire, Mr. Joe, and he asked whether his boy or his girl had growed up most like him. He wondered, he said, whether he should know either of 'em by the likeness, when he came to meet 'em, as he should do to-day or to-morrow."

"And what more?" gasped Mr. Chattaway.

"There was nothing more, Squire, in particular. He took his elbow off the window-sill, and went through the gates again down the road. It seemed to me as if he had come into the neighbourhood for some special purpose connected with the questions."

It seemed so to some one else also. When the master of Trevlyn Hold mounted his horse and rode him slowly through the avenue towards home, a lively fear, near and terrible, had replaced that vague dread which had so long lain latent in his heart.

CHAPTER XXII
COMMOTION

The beauty of the calm autumn afternoon was marred by the hubbub in the road. The rays of the sun came filtering through the foliage of the trees, the deep blue sky was without a cloud, the air was still and balmy: imparting an idea of peace. But in that dusty highway, so lonely at other times, a crowd of people had gathered, and they talked and swayed, and made much clatter and disturbance.

The affair had got wind. How these affairs do get wind who can tell? It had been exaggerated in the usual fashion. "Madam was killed; the dog-cart smashed to pieces; the horse lamed; and Mr. Cris wounded." Half the gaping people who came up believed it all: and the chief hubbub was caused, not so much by discussing the accident, as by endeavouring to explain that its effects were not very disastrous.

The news had travelled with its embellishments to Trevlyn Farm, amidst other places; and it brought out Nora. Without waiting to put anything on, she took her way to the spot. Mrs. Ryle was expecting company that afternoon, and Nora was at leisure and en grande toilette: a black silk gown, its flounces edged with velvet, and a cap of blonde lace trimmed with white flowers. The persons who were gathered on the spot made way for her. The wrecked dog-cart lay partly in the ditch, partly out of it. Opposite was the grinding-machine, its owner now silent and crestfallen, as he inwardly speculated upon what the law could do to him.

"Then it's not true that Madam's killed?" cried Nora, after listening to the various explanations.

A dozen voices answered. "Madam wasn't hurt to speak of, only a bit shook: she had told them so herself. She had walked off on Mr. George Ryle's arm, without waiting for the carriage that Mr. Cris had gone to fetch."

"I'll be about that Jim Sanders," retorted Nora, wrathfully. "How dare he come in with such tales? He said Madam was lying dead in the road."

She had barely spoken, when the throng standing over the dog-cart was invaded by a new-arrival, one who had been walking in a neighbouring field, and wondered what the collection could mean. The rustics fell back and stared at him: first, because he was a stranger; secondly, because his appearance was somewhat out of the common way; thirdly, because he carried a red umbrella. A tall man with a long white beard, a hat, the like of which had never been seen by country eyes, and a foreign look.

You will at once recognise him for the traveller who had introduced himself at the parsonage as the Reverend Mr. Daw, a friend of its owner. The crowd, having had no such introduction, could only stare, marvelling whether he had dropped from the clouds. He had been out all the afternoon, taking notes of the neighbourhood, and since his conversation with old Canham—which you heard related afterwards to Mr. Chattaway, to that gentleman's intense dread—he had plunged into the fields on the opposite side of the way. There he had remained, musing and wandering, until aroused by the commotion which he speedily joined.

"What has happened?" he exclaimed. "An accident?"

The assemblage fell back. Rustics are prone to be suspicious of strangers, if their appearance is peculiar, and not one of them found a ready answer. Nora, however, whose tongue had, perhaps, never been at fault in its whole career, stood her ground.

"There's not much damage done, as far as I can learn," she said, in her usual free manner. "The dog-cart's the worst of it. There it lies. It was Cris Chattaway's own; and I should think it will be a lesson to him not to be so fond of driving strange horses."

"Is it to the Chattaways the accident has occurred?" asked the stranger.

Nora nodded. She was stooping down to survey more critically the damages done to the dog-cart. "Cris Chattaway was driving his mother out," she said, rising. "He was trying a strange horse, and this was the result," touching the wheel with her foot. "Madam was thrown into the ditch here."

"And hurt?" laconically asked Mr. Daw.

"Only shaken—as they say. But a shaking may be dangerous for one so delicate as Madam Chattaway. A pity but it had been him."

Nora spoke the last word with emphasis so demonstrative that her hearer raised his eyes in wonderment. "Of whom do you speak?" he said.

"Of Chattaway: Madam's husband. A shaking might do him good."

"You don't like him, apparently," observed the stranger.

"I don't know who does," freely spoke Nora.

"Ah," said Mr. Daw, quietly. "Then I am not singular. I don't."

"Do you know him?" she rejoined.

But to this the stranger gave no reply; he had evidently no intention of giving any; and the silence whetted Nora's curiosity more than any answer could have done, however obscure or mysterious. Perhaps no living woman within a circuit of five miles possessed curiosity equal to that of Nora Dickson.

"Where have you known Chattaway?" she exclaimed.

"It does not matter," said the stranger. "He is in the enjoyment of Trevlyn Hold, I hear."

To say "I hear," as applied to the subject, imparted the idea that the stranger had only just gained the information. Nora threw her quick black eyes searchingly upon him.

"Have you lived in a wood not to know that James Chattaway was possessor of Trevlyn Hold?" she said, with her characteristic plainness of speech. "He has enjoyed it these twenty years to the exclusion of Rupert Trevlyn."

"Rupert Trevlyn is its rightful owner," said the stranger, almost as demonstratively as Nora herself could have spoken.

"Ah," said Nora, with a sort of indignant groan, "the whole parish knows that. But Chattaway has possession of it, you see."

"Why doesn't some one help Rupert Trevlyn to his rights?"

"Who's to do it?" crossly responded Nora. "Can you?"

"Possibly," returned the stranger.

Had the gentleman asserted that he might possibly cause the moon to shine by day instead of by night, Nora could not have shown more intense surprise. "Help—him—to—his—rights?" she slowly repeated. "Do you mean to say you could displace Chattaway?"

"Possibly," was the repeated answer.

"Why—who are you?" uttered the amazed Nora.

A smile flitted for a moment over Mr. Daw's countenance, the first symptom of a break to its composed sadness. But he gave no reply.

"Do you know Rupert Trevlyn?" she reiterated.

But even to that there was no direct answer. "I came to this place partly to see Rupert Trevlyn," were the words that issued from his lips. "I knew his father; he was my dear friend."

"Who can he be?" was the question reiterating itself in Nora's active brain. "Are you a lawyer?" she asked, the idea suddenly occurring to her: as it had, you may remember, to old Canham.

Mr. Daw coughed. "Lawyers are keen men," was his answering remark, and Nora could have beaten him for its vagueness. But before she could say more, an interruption occurred.

This conversation had been carried on aloud; neither the stranger nor Nora having deemed it necessary to speak in undertones. The consequence of which was, that those in the midst of whom they stood had listened with open ears, drawing their own deductions—and very remarkable deductions some of them were. The knife-grinder—though a stranger to the local politics, and totally uninterested in them—had listened with the rest. One conclusion he hastily came to, was, that the remarkable-looking gentleman with the white beard was a lawyer; and he pushed himself to the front.

"You be a lawyer, master," he broke in, with some excitement. "Would you mind telling of me whether they can harm me. If I ain't at liberty to ply my trade under a roadside hedge but I must be took up and punished for it, why, it's a fresh wrinkle I've got to learn. I've done it all my life; others in the same trade does it; can the law touch us?"

Mr. Daw had turned in wonderment. He had heard nothing of the grinding-machine in connection with the accident, and the man's address was unintelligible. A score of voices hastened to enlighten him, but before it was well done, the eager knife-grinder's voice rose above the rest.

"Can the laws touch me for it, master?"

"I cannot tell you," was the answer.

The man's low brow scowled fitfully: he was somewhat ill-looking to the eye of a physiognomist. "What'll it cost?" he roughly said, taking from his pocket a bag in which was a handful of copper money mixed with a sprinkling of small silver. "I might know. A lawyer wouldn't give nothing for nothing, but I'll pay. If the laws can be down upon me for grinding a knife in the highway open to the world, all I can say is, that the laws is infamous."

He stood looking at the stranger, with an air of demand, not of supplication—and rather insulting demand, too. Mr. Daw showed no signs of resenting the incipient insolence; on the contrary, his voice took a kind and sympathising tone.

"My good man, you may put up your money. I can give you no information about the law, simply because I am ignorant of its bearing on these cases. In the old days, when I was an inhabitant of England, I have seen many a machine such as yours plying its trade in the public roads, and the law, as I supposed, could not touch them, neither did it attempt to. But that may be altered now: there has been time enough for it; years and years have passed since I last set foot on English soil."

The razor-grinder thrust his bag into his pocket again, and began to push back to the spot whence he had come. The mob had listened with open ears, but had gained little further information. Whether he was a lawyer or whether he was not; where he had come from, and what his business was amongst them, unless it was the placing of young Rupert Trevlyn in possession of his "rights," they could not tell.

Nora could not tell—and the fact did not please her. If there was one thing provoked Nora Dickson more than all else, it was to have her curiosity unsatisfied. She felt that she had been thwarted now. Turning away in a temper, speaking not a syllable to the stranger by way of polite adieu, she began to retrace her steps to Trevlyn Farm, holding up the flounces of her black silk gown, that they might not come into contact with the dusty road.

But—somewhat to her surprise—she found the mysterious stranger had also extricated himself from the mob, and was following her. Nora was rather on the high ropes just then, and would not notice him. He, however, accosted her.

"By what I gathered from a word or two you let fall, I should assume that you are a friend of Rupert Trevlyn's, ma'am?"

"I hope I am," said Nora, mollified at the prospect of enlightenment. "Few folks about here but are friends to him, unless it's Chattaway and his lot at the Hold."

"Then perhaps you will have no objection to inform me—if you can inform me—how it was that Mr. Chattaway came into possession of the Hold, in place of young Rupert Trevlyn. I cannot understand how it could possibly have been. Until I came here to-day, I never supposed but the lad, Rupert, was Squire of Trevlyn Hold."

"Perhaps you'll first of all tell me what you want the information for?" returned Nora. "I don't know who you are, sir, remember."

"You heard me say I was a friend of his father's; I should like to be a friend to the boy. It appears to me to be a monstrous injustice that he should not have succeeded to the estate of his ancestors. Has he been legally deprived of it?"

"As legally as a properly-made will could deprive him," was the reply of Nora. "Legality and justice don't always go together in our parts: I don't know what they may do in yours."

"Joe Trevlyn—my friend—was the direct heir to Trevlyn Hold. Upon his death his son became the heir. Why did he not succeed?"

"There are folks that say he was cheated out of it," replied Nora, in very significant tones.

"Cheated out of it?"

"It is said the news of Rupert's birth was never suffered to reach the ears of Squire Trevlyn. That the Squire went to his grave, never knowing he had a grandson in the direct male line—went to it after willing the estate to Chattaway."

"Kept from it by whom?" eagerly cried Mr. Daw.

"By those who had an interest in keeping it from him—Chattaway and Miss Diana Trevlyn. It is so said, I say: I don't assert it. There may be danger in speaking too openly to a stranger," candidly added Nora.

"There is no danger in speaking to me," he frankly said. "I have told you the truth—that I am a friend of young Rupert Trevlyn's. Chattaway is not a friend of mine, and I never saw him in my life."

Nora, won over to forget caution and ill-temper, opened her heart to the stranger. She told him all she knew of the fraud; told him of Rupert's friendlessness, his undesirable position at the Hold. Nora's tongue, set going upon any grievance she felt strongly, could not be stopped. They walked on until the fold-yard gate of Trevlyn Farm was reached. There Nora came to a halt. And there she was in the midst of a concluding oration, delivered with forcible eloquence, and there the stranger was listening eagerly, when they were interrupted by George Ryle.

Nora ceased suddenly. The stranger looked round, and seeing a gentleman-like man who evidently belonged in some way to Nora, lifted his hat. George returned it.

"It's somebody strange to the place," unceremoniously pronounced Nora, by way of introducing him to George. "He was asking about Rupert Trevlyn."