Читать книгу: «The Man with a Shadow», страница 20

Volume Three – Chapter Four.
The Open Window

As a rule, repeated knockings at a bedroom door when there is no response create alarm; thoughts of accident, illness, murder, teeming to the brain of the one who summons, and the alarm soon spreads through the house.

But in this case Hartley Salis took steps to prevent the alarm spreading, as he thought, in happy ignorance of the fact that Dally was down on her knees breathing hard with her ear to the keyhole.

He tapped softly, and uttered Leo’s name again and again before trying the door and satisfying himself that it was locked on the inside.

He uttered a low, hissing sound as he stood there thinking, his brow knit, and an angry glare in his eye. He felt no dread of an accident or of illness, for the note he had received was a warning of what he might expect. He only wanted one proof of its truth.

He went back to where Mary was waiting, full of anxiety.

“I know nothing yet,” he said abruptly. “Wait!”

With his countenance growing more stern-looking and old, Salis went downstairs and into the drawing-room, which was the easiest way out on to the little lawn at the back.

The window fastening was removed without sound, the door opened, and he stepped out on to the short grass, with the stars overhead glimmering brightly enough for him to make out the dark patches of leafage trained against the house and the dim panes of the different casements.

He did not look in the direction of Dally Watlock’s room, or he might have made out a fat little hand holding the blind sufficiently on one side for a pair of dark eyes to watch keenly what was going on. He stepped straight at once for the summer-house, with his heart beating in a low, heavy throb, as he mentally prayed that the words written in that note might be a cruel lie.

Only a few moments, and then, feeling as if stricken by some mental blow – angry, jealous of the man who had stolen from him the love of his sister; enraged against the carefully-bred girl, whose life had been passed in the pure atmosphere of a country rectory, and to whose welfare he had devoted himself, to the exclusion of what might be dear to the heart of man. All contended in his heart for mastery, and seemed to suffocate him, as he dimly saw that it was true, and that the girl of refinement, to whom he and Mary had rendered up everything that her life might be smooth and pleasant, was behaving like some miserable drab who had the excuse of knowing no better, of looking at reputation as an intangible something, worthless for such as she.

The casement was wide open, pressing back the creepers; and the interior of Leo’s room showed like a black, oblong patch.

“She may have gone to bed, and left the window open,” Hartley whispered.

He shook his head, and a terrible sensation of despair beat down upon him.

“Poor Horace!” he muttered. “He must know more than I give him credit for. This explains his absence, and the strangeness of his ways.”

He walked back into the drawing-room, and, without closing the window, went up to where Mary sat, waiting in an agony of suspense.

“Oh, Hartley!” she said, as she saw the look of agony in his eyes.

“It would be cruel to keep anything from you, Mary, in your helpless state.”

“Yes, dear; pray – pray, speak!”

“It is quite true,” he said laconically.

Mary’s breath, as she drew it hard, sounded like the inspiring of one in agony; and she clasped her brother’s hands tightly in hers.

“This can’t be the first time by many,” said Salis wearily. “Mary, dear, I’ve tried to do all that a brother could for you both, and I’ve been too weak and indulgent, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, Hartley, don’t talk like that!” cried Mary, with a sob. “My own dear, noble, self-denying brother.”

“Hush, hush! Mary!” he said sadly; “it has all been wrong, and here is the result!”

“What are you going to do, dear?”

“I know what I should like to do,” he said hoarsely; “go and half kill that scoundrel at the Hall.”

“Oh, Hartley!”

“This explains why North has not been. He knows too much. Heaven! how is it that a woman can be lost to all that is due to herself, leave alone to those she is supposed to love!”

There was an inexpressible bitterness in his tone as he spoke.

“But what are you going to do?”

“Do!” he said fiercely, but with a tinge of despair in his words; “I’m going to thank Heaven that the man whom I believe to be the soul of honour and manliness has been saved from linking his fate with that of such a woman as Leo Salis.”

“Oh, Hartley!” cried Mary, “she is our sister.”

“Yes,” he said bitterly; “she is our sister. I shall not forget that.”

“But what are you going to do, dear?”

“What am I going to do?” said Salis, bending down and kissing Mary; “send you to bed to rest and be ready to bear the troubles of another day.”

“But Leo?”

“I am going down to wait till she comes.”

“And then?”

“And then? Ah, what then? What can I do, Mary?” he said despairingly. “You know Leo as well as I do. To speak to her would be waste of breath. There is only one thing I can do.”

“Yes, dear,” said Mary piteously.

“Strive hard to preserve your dignity and honour, and mine, in the eyes of the world.”

“But that letter, Hartley!”

“Yes,” he said bitterly; “it is too late for that. Well, I must strive. Good heavens! she is only fit to be treated like a wilful child.”

“Oh, Hartley!”

“There, hush! little one,” he said tenderly; “we must bear it patiently.”

“You will wait up till she returns?”

“Yes, of course.”

“And you will not be violent?”

“Violent! Cui bono? No, Mary; I shall say very little; but she will have to go from here.”

There was a desolate sound in his voice – a look of misery in his eyes, which brought a sigh from Mary.

“Perhaps I ought to go raging up to the Hall, and try and find Tom Candlish,” said the curate; “but I don’t wish to repeat my last encounter with the scoundrel. It might be worse. There, you are suffering. Go to bed.”

“But I could not sleep!”

“Never mind – lie down. There, I shall say very little to Leo. What I do say to the point shall be in your presence, dear. Good night.”

“Good night,” he repeated, as he walked softly downstairs, and out through the drawing-room into the garden, to see that Leo’s window remained open, when he sighed deeply, went back, and sat down to watch for his sister’s return.

Volume Three – Chapter Five.
A Wayward Sister

Hartley Salis was not the only watcher. Mary lay with her eyes burning and brain throbbing with contending emotions. She was in agony, for she had to combat, in addition to the horror of the discovery that her sister could be so shameless in her acts, a sensation of gratification that would force itself to the front.

It was terrible, but it was true; and she knew that she could not help a feeling of exultation that Horace North had discovered something of her sister’s character before it was too late. She felt ashamed of this feeling, but it was utterly unselfish, and born of the love she felt for North. He could never be more than a friend to her, but she would like to see him happy, and that he could never be with Leo for his wife.

She wept bitterly as she lay helplessly there, for it seemed like rejoicing that her sister was found out; but the thoughts would come, and they mastered her.

And there to share the watch of Hartley Salis was Dally Watlock, as she sat behind her curtained window with the casement just ajar. She could see nothing below, but she made sure that “Master” would not go to bed till “Miss Leo” returned.

“Bless her!” she said, with a little laugh that was like a baby born of old Moredock’s chuckle. “How she will catch it! Serve her right: trying to come between us. But she may try after this. She’ll get out to see him no more, and he’ll soon forget her.”

All was very still without, and Dally strained her ears to catch a sound, her eyes to make out some dark figure pacing the garden.

“I wonder where he is?” she said to herself. “He’d wait for her if it was for a month, and then my fine lady will catch it nicely.

“I wish I knew where he was,” she muttered, and her wish was gratified, for all at once, as she was pressing the casement open another quarter of an inch, there was a low cough from down to her left, as Salis altered his position in his chair.

“He’s watching just inside the drawing-room window,” Dally said to herself, as she clasped her little hands together; “and when my lady comes home – ”

Dally paused.

“My lady! No, she shan’t never be my lady,” she hissed fiercely. “I’d kill her, and gran’fa should bury her first.”

“When she comes home,” continued Dally with another malicious little laugh, “she’ll wish she had never gone. I’ll hear some of the row if I have to leave.

“Ah! It’ll pay me for her getting a few kisses, and having his arm round her waist a bit. Ugh! how I hate the nasty, good-looking minx. I wish she was dead!”

Daily’s teeth gritted together in the darkness, and she uttered a low, hissing noise, as she writhed in her jealousy, and pictured to herself the scene that was probably going on at the Hall.

“I don’t care,” she muttered recklessly. “What are a few kisses? I shan’t miss ’em, and he’s obliged to keep it up for a bit before he quite breaks it off. Says it will kill her when he does. I hope it will.

“Wonder how long she’ll be?” continued Dally. “I don’t mind. I can easily get a nap to-morrow after dinner, but I don’t think she’ll care to go to sleep after master’s had his say.”

She settled herself in her place to watch if it were till doomsday, so determined did she seem; and meanwhile Hartley sat just inside the drawing-room, shrouded in complete darkness which accorded well with the blackness of spirit which was upon him.

Leo could not reach her window without passing close to him, and he thought bitterly now of his simplicity in not grasping the meaning of torn-down growth and broken trellis by the summer-house. It was all plain enough now. Thought succeeded thought. He could grasp clearly enough the meaning of North’s actions when he had attended Tom Candlish – how bitter he had seemed against him, and then the full light came.

“Why, it must have been North who had surprised Tom Candlish, and beaten him within an inch of his life, and, oh! shame – the woman must have been Leo!

“And every one must have known this but poor, weak, blind mole, Hartley Salis,” he groaned.

“Scoundrel! Base hound! Why, if I had been North! – but I’m forgetting myself,” he said, as he pressed his hands to his throbbing brows, and felt that the veins in his temples were full and turgid.

“Not a word to me! Well, how could he speak, and complain to me? Oh, shame, shame, shame!”

The hot tears of indignation started to his eyes; the first that had been there for many years, and they seemed to scald him till he dashed them fiercely away.

“I stand to her in the place of father,” he muttered sternly; “and I’ll do my duty by her, even if I have to keep her under lock and key.”

The time did not seem long, though he sat there for hours, so active was his brain, and so flooded with memories of Leo’s early life – her wilful disobedience, her determined opposition even in childish things, and Salis felt that the woman was the same in spirit as the child had been, and that if Leo was to be reclaimed he must pursue a very different course in the future.

All at once he started, for there was the faint chirp of a bird; then the loud chink! chink! of a blackbird, and he became on the alert, for it was the note uttered when the bird was alarmed.

Day was close at hand, for there was a faint line of light in the east, and sure enough directly after there was a faint, rustling sound, as of a dress brushing against some bush; directly after —ruff, ruff; ruff, ruff– the rustling of the dress as its wearer walked quickly up the green path, as if in fear of being overtaken by the coming day.

Then it seemed a little darker just in front of the drawing-room window; a shrub was blotted out by something black, which seemed to glide by —ruff, ruff; ruff ruff– and then there was a hard breathing, and the creak of a piece of lattice.

For the moment, now that the time had arrived, Salis sat there quite overcome, and ready to let the opportunity pass.

But it was only momentary. Stung into action by the feeling that this woman was cruelly wronging and disgracing brother and sister, he rose from his place, took half-a-dozen quick strides, and was over the grass and at Leo’s elbow as she clung to the side of the summer-house, and was about to raise herself higher.

The sound of his approach was covered by the noise Leo made in rustling the growth pressed against her breast, and the first hint she had of discovery was a strong, firm hand grasping her delicate shoulder with almost painful violence.

She could not turn her head so as to confront Salis, for she was above the ground, clinging with outstretched arms to the strong trellis-work of the summer-house, but she uttered a low, hoarse cry, and a shiver ran through her as she felt the touch.

“Horace North!” she hissed, with her chin pressed down upon her breast. “You are a mean coward and spy. Oh, if I were a man!” Salis could not speak for a moment or two as he heard this confirmation of his belief, but he tightened his grasp till Leo uttered a cry of pain.

“You coward!” she hissed again. “It is not Horace North,” said Salis, in a deep voice. “Thank Heaven he does not know of this.”

“Hartley!”

“Yes, Hartley!”

“And North has told you?”

“Nothing!”

He half dragged her down, and kept his grasp upon her shoulder till she was inside the drawing-room and he had closed the window.

“You can go up to your bedroom by the stairs,” he said sternly, “without stealing in like a thief. Had some one told me of this to my face I should have said he lied.”

“There, say what you have to say, and end this scene,” cried Leo, defiantly now.

“I have nothing to say – now,” said Salis sternly.

“Oh, say it! I am not a child.”

“I am under a promise to Mary that I will say nothing now.”

Salis knew that she turned upon him very sharply, but he could not see her face.

“Under a promise to Mary? There, if anything is to be said, say it.”

Salis drew in his breath sharply, and the words came rushing to his lips, but he mastered the passion within him, and walked to the door to open it.

A dim twilight now faintly filled the hall, showing the curate’s figure framed in the doorway. Then he stood aside, holding the way open.

“Go!” he said.

“Sent to bed like a naughty child,” she cried, in a harsh, mocking voice, which feebly hid the anger and defiance by which she was nerved.

Salis made no reply, nor did he speak again for some moments.

“Go to your room,” he said again, more sternly.

Leo made an angry gesture as if she would resist. Then, giving a childish, petulant stamp upon the floor, she walked quickly by him and ascended the stairs, Salis following closely behind.

As they reached the landing, it was to find Mary’s door open, and that the half-helpless invalid had dragged herself there, to stand clinging to the side.

“Leo – Hartley,” she said, in a low, pained voice: “come here.”

“I am sent to bed,” said Leo mockingly; and she was passing on, but Salis caught her by the arm and checked her. Then he led her to the far end of the room before returning to close the door and help Mary to her couch.

“I can speak now,” he said, in a low voice full of passion, but at the same time well under control. “Where have you been?”

“Hartley!” said Mary appealingly.

“Hush, my child,” he replied. “I know what I am saying. I wish to avoid the scandal of this being known to the servants, but your position and mine demand an explanation. Leo Salis, where have you been?”

She turned her handsome, defiant face towards where he stood, and now it was beginning; to be visible in the soft dawn, pale, fierce, and implacable as that of one who has recklessly set every law at defiance and is ready to dare all.

“Where have I been?” she said. “Out!”

“I insist upon a proper reply to my question. I say, where have you been?”

“There!” she cried; “there is no need to fence. You know where I have been?”

“To meet that man Candlish, after promising me that your intercourse with him should be at an end; and, to make things worse, you have stolen from the house in this disgraceful, clandestine way.”

“Is there any need for this?” said Leo sharply. “There, if you wish to know, I have been to Candlish Hall. Sir Thomas is forbidden this house, so you force me to go to him. You knew where I had been.”

“Yes, I knew where you had been,” assented Salis, as Mary looked from one to the other, not knowing what to say.

“Now, answer me a question,” cried Leo fiercely. “Was it Horace North, in his mean, contemptible, jealous spite, who set you to watch me?”

“Leo!” cried Mary, stung to words by her sister’s accusation.

“Silence! What is it to you, you miserable worm?” cried Leo furiously. “My home has been made a purgatory for months past by you and dear Hartley here. Plotting together both of you to make me miserable, to treat me as a little girl, and to check me at every turn. What Hartley did not try, you thought, and suggested to him till my very soul recoiled against you both and your miserable tyranny. I say it was North – the mean wretch – who set you to watch me.”

“Horace North is too true a man to give you a second thought; too stern and upright to speak of you after your cruel treachery to him.”

“It is not true. I was neither cruel nor treacherous to him,” cried Leo.

“He told me nothing. Your acts are growing public, or I should not have known what I know now; and this must have an end.”

“What end?” said Leo shrewishly. “Am I to be confined to my room? Bah! I have had enough of all this. Yes, I have been to see the man I love, and will go again and again.”

“To your disgrace.”

“To my disgrace, or to my death, if I like,” cried Leo fiercely. “I’ll have no more of this humdrum, miserable life, where I must neither move nor stir save as my brother and sister ordain.”

“Have you thought what this means?” said Salis sternly.

“Thought? No. I have no time for thinking. I know.”

The day was dawning fast, and the pale, soft light slanting into Mary’s bedroom at the sides of the curtain, giving to each face a ghastly, livid look.

Salis strode to the window, and snatched the curtain aside before turning to pour out upon his sister’s head the hot vial of his wrath. But as he turned and faced her his anger was swept away by a great flood of pity, and he approached her gently, for he read in the handsome face before him, flushed with defiant, reckless passion, that she had reached a point in her life when a word might turn her to a future of good or one of misery and despair. She gazed at him as if he were her greatest enemy, and then at Mary, to see her hands extended, and a look of tenderness and love in her pitying eyes.

But the time was unpropitious; there had been a scene with her lover an hour before, which had stirred her angry passions to their deepest depth, and then, as she encountered her brother with his stern words of reproach, it seemed to her that the time had come when she must strive for her freedom. Tom Candlish had reproached her for her cowardice, and laughed her obedience to those at home to scorn. He had brutally told her to go and trouble him no more with letter or message, for she was a poor puling thing, and she had returned heartbroken and in misery, for, defiant to all else, she was this man’s slave.

The encounter then had unloosed her angry passions, and flogging herself again and again with her lover’s words, she turned recklessly upon those who were ready to forgive and take her to their breasts.

“Leo, dear Leo, for pity’s sake!” cried Mary wildly. “Come to me, sister. I cannot even crawl to you.”

“And you ask me, worse than worm that you are, to go down on my knees to you; and for what, pray? For the heinous sin of being true to the man I love. There, do you hear me, to the man I love?”

“Leo! sister!” said Salis, trying to take her hand, but she struck his away with an angry gesture which he did not resent.

“Well, what have you to say?” she cried. “Do you want to preach to me, to ask me to repent and sorrow with you? For what? Is it a crime to love?”

“Leo, my child!”

“Leo, my child!” she cried scornfully, as she repeated his words. “I tell you I am a child no longer, and that I will think and act for myself. Fool, idiot that I have been!” she cried, as her passion grew more wild and her voice rose. “I have submitted to you both till it has become unbearable. From this day, if I stay here, I will be my own mistress, and suffer your dictation no more. Teach and torture Mary into her grave, if you like, but I will be free.”

“Say nothing, Hartley,” said Mary softly. “She will repent all this, dear, when she is calm. Leo, stay with me. Hartley, dear, pray say no more; she is not mistress of herself, and to-morrow, perhaps to-day, this painful scene will be forgiven and forgotten by us all.”

“Forgiven? No. Forgotten? Never,” cried Leo; “and I tell you both that if I am driven from the home that I should have shared, and my future becomes to me a curse, it is your work.”

She had lashed herself into a pitch of unreasoning fury, and invective was flowing fast from her lips, when, in the midst of one of her most furious bursts, and just as Salis was being driven to despair, there was a sharp tap at the door, and before it could be answered, another, and Dally came into the room.

“Is Miss Leo ill, sir?” she cried. “I heard her sobbing in my room. Can I do anything? Shall I light a fire?”

It was Dally’s idea of being of some help, that of lighting a fire.

“No, no. Go away,” cried Salis passionately; but he said no more, for Leo had crossed quickly to the little servant maid, and clung to her.

“Go with me to my room, Dally,” she said in a sharp, strained voice; “and let them follow me if they dare.”

“Oh, Leo, my child, for Heaven’s sake!” cried Salis.

“For Heaven’s sake!” she cried wildly, as she clung to Dally. “What have you to do with Heaven, who have made my life a curse? Take me, Dally, take me away, for I am almost blind.”

“My poor, darling mistress!” sobbed the little traitress, passing her hand round Leo’s waist, and helping her towards the door, Leo yielding to the girl’s guidance, and keeping her defiant eyes flashing from sister to brother and back.

The door closed, and as Salis and Mary gazed after the retreating pair, a wild hysterical sob, followed by a passionate cry, reached their ears, and it was as if misery and despair were henceforth to be their lot; but at that moment, from the dewy meadow at the bottom of the garden, a lark rose to begin circling round and round, scattering his jubilant, silvery notes of song far and wide on the morning air. And as it proclaimed, as it were, to every listening ear that a new day had begun, hope and light flashed into the hearts of those within the room.

“It will be a hard task, Mary,” said Salis, going down on one knee beside Mary, who clung to him with a look of appeal that went to his heart. “Yes, a hard task, dear,” he said again, as he kissed her. “There, you will not go to bed now, but lie back and have a few hours’ sleep. The darkness of the night has passed, and hope cometh with the day.”

“But Leo – Leo!” moaned Mary, and, unable to contain herself longer, she burst into a passionate fit of weeping.

“Hush! darling. Come: I want my sister’s help. There, fight it down. Hers were the words of a passionate, hysterical woman. She will be penitent when the fit is over. What now?”

“Miss Leo, sir – Miss Leo!” cried Dally, running into the room.

“Well, what, girl?” cried Salis, alarmed by the maid’s frantic, excited look.

“She sent me out of the room, sir, to fetch her cloak.”

“Hush! Come with me,” said Salis, hastily rising to accompany Dally from the room, but Mary clung spasmodically to his hand.

“No, no; let her speak. I cannot bear the suspense.”

Salis nodded his head sharply, and the girl went on:

“I went down, sir, and when I came back she was standing in the middle of the room with a glass on the table, and something spilled – ”

Salis stopped to hear no more, but rushed into Leo’s room to find her clinging to the foot of the bed, her eyes dilated, a look of horror in her face, and in the same glance he took in that which Dally had described – a glass upon the table, overturned, and some fluid staining the cover and slowly sinking down the side towards the floor.