The Unspeakable Gentleman Part 23

I shall be waiting there, I promise you, and we shall drink some corked ambrosia. Surely the G.o.ds must give a little to the shades, or at any rate, Brutus shall steal some. And then perhaps you shall tell me what happened after that. I shall look forward--I shall hope, even, that it may be pleasant. Good-bye, my son."

I think he had often planned that leave taking. Surely it must have satisfied him.

XIII

He was gone, like the shades of which he had spoken, and Mademoiselle and I were left staring at the black rectangle of the broken door. I drew a deep breath and looked about me quickly. It seemed somehow as though a spell were broken, as though the curtain had lowered on some final act in the theatre. Slowly my mind seemed to free itself from a hundred illusions, and to move along more logical paths. Brutus went to the arms rack in the corner, and selected a rusted cutla.s.s from the small arms that still rested there, thrust it at me playfully and grinned. For a minute or even more, the single log that was still burning in the fireplace hissed drowsily, and I could hear the vines tapping gently on the windows. Then I heard a pistol shot, followed by a hoa.r.s.e cry.

Mademoiselle started to her feet, and then sank back in her chair again, and from where I was standing I could see that her face was white and her hands were trembling. So she loved him. My hand gripped hard against the back of a chair. Why should I have hoped she did not?

"G.o.d!" she gasped. "I have killed him!"

"You?" I cried, but she did not answer.

"Huh!" said Brutus, and his grin grew broader. "Monsieur's pistol. He kill him."

"Indeed," I said, for the sense of unreality was still strong upon me.

"And whom did he kill, Brutus?"

Brutus c.o.c.ked his head to one side, and listened. Somewhere behind came a confusion of shouts and the thudding of horses' hoofs.

"He kill Mr. Jason Hill," said Brutus.

"Are you sure?" Mademoiselle demanded sharply.

Brutus nodded, and the dull, fixed look went out of her eyes, and slowly a touch of color returned to her cheeks.

And then there was a clamor of voices and a tramp of feet and a crash on the door outside.

Brutus looked about him in wild indecision.

"We have callers," I observed, doing my best to keep my voice calm. "Who are they, Brutus?"

Brutus, however, had forgotten me, and had sprung into the hall. At almost the same instant, someone must have discovered that the door was unlocked, for a sudden draught eddied through the pa.s.sage. Then there was a confused babel of voices, to which I did not listen. I was busy swinging up the sash of the nearest window.

"Quickly, Mademoiselle!" I whispered.

"d.a.m.n it!" someone shouted from the hall. "There's another of 'em!" And there came the crack of a pistol that echoed loudly in the pa.s.sage.

"It is time we were going," I said. "Out of the window, Mademoiselle!"

In my haste I almost pushed her from the sill to the lawn, and was leaning towards her.

"Mademoiselle, listen! The stables are straight to the left. Can you saddle a horse?"

She nodded.

"The first stall to the right. I shall be there in an instant!" For I remembered my sword, and sprang back into the room to get it.

"Get that man!" someone was shouting. "In after him, you fools! Don't shoot in the dark!"

I had a glimpse of Brutus darting through the pa.s.sage and making a leap for the stairs. Then there was a crash of gla.s.s.

"Begad!" came a hoa.r.s.e voice. "He's jumped clean through the window!"

And another pistol exploded from the landing above me.

"Five hundred dollars for the man who gets him." I could swear I had heard the voice before. "d.a.m.n it! Don't let him go! Out the door, all of you! Out the door, men! Out the door!"

There was a rush of feet through the pa.s.sage. I had a glimpse of men running past, and then I was half out the window.

"Stop!" someone shouted. I took a hasty glance behind me to find that my Uncle Jason had entered the morning room, his clothing torn and disarranged, the good nature erased from his face, and a gash on his left cheek that still was bleeding.

"Stop!" he shouted again, "or I fire!"

Then I was out on the lawn with the cool air from the river on my face, and running for the stable. I wonder what would have happened if the evening had been less far advanced, or the sky less overcast, or Mademoiselle less adroit than providence had made her. She had bridled the horse and was swinging the saddle on him when I had reached the stable's shadow. I could hear my uncle shouting for a.s.sistance as I tightened the girths, but Brutus must have led his men a pretty chase.

I mounted unmolested, as I somehow knew I should, and helped her up behind me. Somehow with that first crash on our front door, I knew that the game had turned. I knew that nothing would stop me. An odd sense of exaltation came over me, and with it a strange desire to laugh. It would be amusing enough when I met my father, but I wondered--I wondered as I clapped my heels into my horse's flanks.

What had my uncle to do in this affair?

XIV

It was just that time in an autumn day when the light is fading out of the sky. The thick, heavy mists that the cold air encourages were rolling in chill and heavy from the river and leveling the hollow places in the land. The clouds were still a claret colored purple in the west, but in another few minutes that color would be gone. The shapes around us were fast losing their distinctiveness, and their outlines were becoming more and more a matter for the memory, and not the eye. And it seems to me that I never knew the air to seem more fresh and sweet.

We had broken into a sharp gallop down the rutted lane. The house, gaunt and spectral, and bleaker and more forbidding than the darkening sky, was behind us, and ahead were the broad level meadows, checkered with little clumps of willow and cedars, as meadows are that lie near the salt marshes. I had feared we might be intercepted at our gate, but I was mistaken. We had swerved to the left and were thudding down the level road, when an exclamation from Mademoiselle made me turn in my saddle. My look must have been a somewhat blank interrogation, for Mademoiselle was laughing.

"To think," she cried, "I should have said you resembled your mother!

Where are we going, Monsieur?"

But I think she knew without my answering, for she laughed again, and I did not entirely blame her. It was pleasant enough to leave our house behind. It was pleasant to feel the bite of the salt wind, and to see the trees and the rocks by the roadside slip past us, gaunt and spectral in the evening. I knew the road well enough, which was fortunate, even when we turned off the beaten track over a trail which was hardly as good as a foot path. I was forced to reduce our pace to a walk, but I was confident that it did not make much difference. Once on the path, the farm was not half a mile distant, just behind a ridge of rocks that was studded by a stunted undergrowth of wind beaten oak. I knew the place. I could already picture the gaping black windows, the broken, sagging ridge pole, and the crumbling chimney. For years the wind had blown sighing through its deserted rooms, while the rain rotted the planking. It was not strange that its owners had left it, for I can imagine no more mournful or desolate spot. Our own house, three miles away, was its nearest neighbor, and scarcely a congenial one. Around it was nothing but rain sogged meadows that scarcely rose above the salt marshes that ran to the dunes where the Atlantic was beating.

As I stared grimly ahead, I could picture her there behind me, the wind whipping the color to her cheeks and playing with her hair, her eyes bright and gay in the half-light. Save for the steady plodding of the horse, it was very still. I fancied that she had leaned nearer, that her shoulder was touching mine, that I could feel her breath on my cheek.

Then she spoke, and her voice was almost a whisper.

"It was good of you to take me with you," she said.

"Surely, Mademoiselle," I replied, "You did not think that I would leave you?"

"I should, if I had been you," she answered, "I was rude to you, Monsieur, and unjust to you this morning. You see I did not know."

"You did not know?"

"That the son would be as brave and as resourceful as the father. You are, Monsieur, and yet you are different."