The League of the Leopard Part 26

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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sed 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 n.i.g.g.e.rs 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, _d.a.m.n 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."