The League of the Leopard Part 10

"Can you furnish one?" asked Lilian, with a quickness which was not wholly lost upon her companion. If he had spoken plainly, it is possible that the explanation might have changed a good deal for both of them; but that was just what the man had pledged himself not to do. He was not a casuist, and, having no time for reflection, saw only one course open to him. It was too late when he realized that it was the worst one possible from any point of view.

"I am afraid I cannot, at present," he said.

The girl's eyes grew almost wicked, for his hesitation was fatal, and she was angry that she had even allowed him to draw her into the discussion.

"That is comprehensible," she said. "You must already have taxed your imagination severely, and it is perhaps natural that the testimony of a quite disinterested gentleman should be more convincing. Besides, as I said already, it is certainly not my part to judge you."

"Then I can only hope that you will hear the full truth from some other person you consider more worthy of credit," Dane said somberly.

Miss Chatterton returned no answer, but, drawing her skirt to her side, brushed past the man, who stepped recklessly among the chrysanthemums.

She had, of course, no intention of looking back in his direction, but, on turning at the end of the alley, it was almost necessary to do so, and she sometimes remembered, with both a smile and a sigh, how he had stood, a somewhat commanding, as well as a slightly ludicrous figure, staring straight before him, knee-deep among the chrysanthemums. That, however, was afterward, for then Lilian was in a royal rage with herself as well as the man, because she had allowed anything he could say or do to disturb her serenity.

Dane sighed a little, but there was resolution as well as indignation in his face as he moved away, and left the gardener, who had witnessed the scene with indignation, to a.s.sess the damage.

"Would nothing fit yon theatrical ijiot but stamping my new quilled Regents flat?" the gardener grumbled.

Early the next morning Chatterton and Dane stood waiting for the South express in the little country station.

"I don't altogether understand what you have been doing, Hilton, and, though n.o.body seems quite pleased with you, I won't ask," said the iron-master. "I know you had a good reason for it, whatever it was; and if that meddlesome Black or any of his friends feel inclined to make further unpleasant suggestions, I shall enjoy the opportunity for a little plain speaking. If you ever change your mind, remember what I said; and don't close with any offer unless it's tempting, but come back and wait at The Larches for a better. I can't help saying I'm sorry you did not altogether hit it with Lilian. Modern young women, however, often appear to consider cheap smartness more becoming than the genuine cordiality they may feel."

"It was not Miss Chatterton's fault, sir," declared Dane, who, growing slightly confused, wished the iron-master would favor anything else with his fixed attention. He was thankful that the approach of the express prevented the conversation from progressing further in that direction.

A few evenings later, Lilian dismounted from her pony in the shadow of a copse. For some reason she had been restless all day, and sought solace in a ride across the moor. The saddle had slipped a little, and she spent some time tightening the girth. Meanwhile two men came to a standstill in the stubble beyond the hedge, and she recognized Carsluith Maxwell in one spare figure. The sunset beat into his face, and she saw it was stamped with a curious melancholy as he looked down the deep-wooded valley toward Culmeny. Ridges of brown moorland, whose slopes were streaked by dark firs, hemmed the hollow in, and the tower rose blackly in the mouth of it against the shimmer of the sea.

"It is an inheritance to be proud of, sir," Carsluith said. "Perhaps it is because of the contrast with the rank luxuriance of the tropics, and their stifling heat, but each time I come home to the old place and breathe this keen sweet air, I feel that I love it better."

The second man, turning, laid his hand on the speaker's shoulder, and as he did so Lilian recognized the master of Culmeny.

"It will be yours some day which cannot be very distant now," the elder man replied. "It is a barren heritage, and I have long regretted that, after the girls are provided for, its revenues will do little more than cover the interest on the burden you must take up along with it."

"I hope that day will be long in coming, sir; and I shall never rest contented until by some means I win enough to restore our former prosperity. To-morrow will see me on my way to London, and we must hope that my latest venture will prove successful!"

Lilian could not escape without attracting attention, and she was so close to the two men that she heard Brandram Maxwell sigh.

"I do not approve of it, but know I cannot dissuade you," he said, with a certain pride as well as wistfulness in the glance he cast upon his son. "I had hoped you might have settled here--and think she is good as well as bonny--but that was not to be. Prosperity! The old place was aye needy, and its plenishing has cost the life of many of those who have gone before you. You will mind Andrew's answer when he fell out dying in the retreat from Derby: 'I'm not caring greatly where I lie,' said he.

'Our kirkyard is not contracted. It runs from the Low Countries to the sands of Cree.' Maybe it's your destiny, but you will not forget that an old man is longing for the sight of you, longing the more because----"

He ceased abruptly, and Lilian noticed that Carsluith Maxwell made the slightest gesture of negation, while his face darkened a little. She recalled an old superst.i.tious tale.

"We have outgrown belief in those fables, sir," he declared.

The ruler of Culmeny made no direct answer.

"The old tale is told over often, and the end is the same. G.o.d keep you, and bring you safe home from that dark land," he said solemnly.

Here the pair forestalled the unwilling spectator's intention by moving away, and left her troubled. She had done nothing to raise false hopes in Carsluith Maxwell, and in that respect her conscience was clear; but there had been a strange somberness in both men's faces, and she felt that she was mainly responsible for sending the younger one to Africa.

He was of good family and accomplished, and she wondered why, when many another damsel would have gladly listened, she had so promptly declined him as a suitor. Then, even as she reflected that there was no one else she preferred to him, a tinge of color crept into her face, and, dismissing the subject, she mounted, and sent the pony at a gallop across the next meadow.

It was a depressing afternoon when Carsluith Maxwell found Dane lounging in the smoking-room of a London hotel. The air outside was foul with smoke and fog; and it was little more cheerful within. Dane was in distinctly low spirits. He had spent a fortnight haunting the offices of engineering firms, financiers, and company promoters, and had discovered once more that anybody willing to take up his invention would require the lion's share of the contingent profit. He could hear of no remunerative professional engagement; and the contractors who had promised him the foreign commission stated that the work would not be begun for some time.

"You do not look exactly pleased with either the world or yourself,"

observed Maxwell.

"I certainly don't feel so," Dane said shortly. "Several things have gone wrong with me lately, and I'm even more troubled than usual by a chronic shortness of capital. I want ten thousand pounds rather more badly than most folks do, and no mental effort will show me where to raise more than five."

Maxwell looked hard at the speaker.

"If you are willing to risk a good deal on a chance of obtaining the money, I think I can show you a way."

Dane laughed harshly.

"There is no risk you could mention which, for the sake of five thousand pounds, I would not run."

"If you join me you will run a good many," said Maxwell. "There were reasons why I could not make the offer until to-day. Give me about ten minutes to explain the venture."

Dane drew in a deep breath when his companion concluded; then held out a big hand.

"It is a bargain," he said simply. "Half the profit, half the expense and peril. I can start any time after to-morrow."

They shook hands on it, while the blue cigar smoke curled about them; and the bargain they made was kept faithfully in the face of manifold perils, and in spirit as well as in letter. Long afterward, Dane remembered that Maxwell's smile was much the same when, clenching the hot rifle barrels, they watched the flintlocks flashing through thicker wreaths of a more deadly vapor.

All arrangements had been made when Maxwell departed; and Dane sat down to write Chatterton a letter. When that gentleman received it, he first used expressions which should have cost him five shillings, and then, seeking his wife, thrust it down before her with quite unnecessary violence.

"The man has taken leave of his senses!" he exclaimed. "Read that, and tell me if you don't think so."

"Is this the beginning of another ancient-right crusade, or the effect of the lobster salad? You will remember that I warned you," said Mrs.

Chatterton.

"This is not a time to indulge in puerile levity! It is that--that confounded idiot, Hilton! He and the other madman, Maxwell, have gone out to look for gold mines in one of the deadliest holes in Africa. He says he wanted five thousand pounds, and, when he knows it was his duty, could not come to me!"

Mrs. Chatterton read the letter, and then tried to flash a warning at her husband before she glanced in her niece's direction. Lilian who had leaned forward as though listening intently, sank back into her chair.

"Perhaps they may find the gold mine; and Carsluith Maxwell is by no means an idiot," she said. "Indeed, he always struck me as a shrewd, determined man."

"Determined enough," fumed her husband. "They're all made that way.

Maxwell rebuilt his iniquitous obstruction four times after I tore it up; but there's something in Carsluith's dark face I don't care to see.

I've seen the sign on other men, and it implies a tragedy. Besides, from what Black told me, they're an unlucky family, with an hereditary weakness for dying fully dressed. Any mad venture they could get themselves decently killed in seems to have been irresistible to those men of Culmeny. I'd have given three times the money to prevent Carsluith from decoying poor Hilton. Do the fools fancy nuggets grow on palm trees?"

Chatterton, receiving no answer, retired to what he called his study, where they heard him banging books about. Lilian sat silent with hands crossed in her lap. She, also, she fancied, had seen the shadow in Carsluith Maxwell's face, and she felt both troubled and anxious about him and about somebody else.

A week later Mrs. Chatterton, entering her niece's room in search of some trifle, came upon a book the girl had been reading. She looked thoughtful when she saw that the volume treated of travels in West Africa, and that the marker in it rested between the last pages.

CHAPTER VII