The Hillman Part 10

"I've seen it already."

Stephen threw the paper upon the table.

"She's going to act in another of those confounded French plays," he said; "translations with all the wit taken out and all the vulgarity left in."

"We know nothing of her art," John declared coldly. "We shouldn't understand it, even if we saw her act. Therefore, it isn't right for us to judge her. The world has found her a great actress. She is not responsible for the plays she acts in."

Stephen turned away and lit his pipe anew. He smoked for a minute or two furiously. His thick eyebrows came closer and closer together. He seemed to be turning some thought over in his mind.

"John," he asked, "is it this cursed money that is making you restless?"

"I never think of it except when some one comes begging. I promised a thousand pounds to the infirmary to-day."

"Then what's wrong with you?"

John stretched himself out, a splendid figure of healthy manhood. His cheeks were sun-tanned, his eyes clear and bright.

"The matter? There's nothing on earth the matter with me," he declared.

"It isn't your health I mean. There are other things, as you well know.

You do your day's work and you take your pleasure, and you go through both as if your feet were on a treadmill."

"Your fancy, Stephen!"

"G.o.d grant it! I've had an unwelcome visitor in your absence."

John turned swiftly around.

"A visitor?" he repeated. "Who was it?"

Stephen glowered at him for a moment.

"It was the prince," he said; "the Prince of Seyre, as he calls himself, though he has the right to style himself Master of Raynham. It's only his foreign blood which makes him choose what I regard as the lesser t.i.tle. Yes, he called to ask you to shoot and stay at the castle, if you would, from the 16th to the 20th of next month."

"What answer did you give him?"

"I told him that you were your own master. You must send word to-morrow."

"He did not mention the names of any of his other guests, I suppose?"

"He mentioned no names at all."

John was silent for a moment. A bewildering thought had taken hold of him. Supposing she were to be there!

Stephen, watching him, read his thoughts, and for a moment lost control of himself.

"Were you thinking about that woman?" he asked sternly.

"What woman?"

"The woman whom we sheltered here, the woman whose shameless picture is on the cover of that book."

John swung round on his heel.

"Stop that, Stephen!" he said menacingly.

"Why should I?" the older man retorted. "Take up that paper, if you want to read a sketch of the life of Louise Maurel. See the play she made her name in--'La Gioconda'!"

"What about it?"

Stephen held the paper out to his brother. John read a few lines and dashed it into a corner of the room.

"There's this much about it, John," Stephen continued. "The woman played that part night after night--played it to the life, mind you. She made her reputation in it. That's the woman we unknowingly let sleep beneath this roof! The barn is the place for her and her sort!"

John's clenched fists were held firmly to his sides. His eyes were blazing.

"That's enough, Stephen!" he cried.

"No, it's not enough!" was the fierce reply. "The truth's been burning in my heart long enough. It's better out. You want to find her a guest at Raynham Castle, do you?--Raynham Castle, where never a decent woman crosses the threshold! If she goes there, she goes as his mistress.

Well?"

An anger that was almost paralyzing, a sense of the utter impotence of words, drove John in silence from the room. He left the house by the back door, pa.s.sed quickly through the orchard, where the tangled moonlight lay upon the ground in strange, fantastic shadows; across the narrow strip of field, a field now of golden stubble; up the rough ascent, across the road, and higher still up the hill which looked down upon the farm-buildings and the churchyard.

He sat grimly down upon a great boulder, filled with a hateful sense of unwreaked pa.s.sion, yet with a queer thankfulness in his heart that he had escaped the miasma of evil thoughts which Stephen's words seemed to have created. The fancy seized him to face these half-veiled suggestions of his brother's, so far as they concerned himself and his life during the last few months.

Stephen was right. This woman who had dropped from the clouds for those few brief hours had played strange havoc with John's thoughts and his whole outlook upon life. The coming of harvest, the care of his people, his sports, his cricket, the early days upon the grouse moors, had all suddenly lost their interest for him. Life had become a task. The echo of her half-mocking, half-challenging words was always in his ears.

He sat with his head resting upon his hands, looking steadfastly across the valley below. Almost at his feet lay the little church with its graveyard, the long line of stacks and barns, the laborers' cottages, the bailiff's house, the whole little colony around which his life seemed centered. The summer moonlight lay upon the ground almost like snow. He could see the sheaves of wheat standing up in the most distant of the cornfields. Beyond was the dark gorge toward which he had looked so many nights at this hour.

Across the viaduct there came a blaze of streaming light, a serpentlike trail, a faintly heard whistle--the Scottish Express on its way southward toward London. His eyes followed it out of sight. He found himself thinking of the pa.s.sengers who would wake the next morning in London. He felt himself suddenly acutely conscious of his isolation. Was there not something almost monastic in the seclusion which had become a pa.s.sion with Stephen, and which had its grip, too, upon him--a waste of life, a burying of talents?

He rose to his feet. The half-formed purpose of weeks held him now, definite and secure. He knew that this pilgrimage of his to the hilltop, his rapt contemplation of the little panorama which had become so dear to him, was in a sense valedictory.

After all, two more months pa.s.sed before the end came, and it came then without a moment's warning. It was a little past midday when John drove slowly through the streets of Market Ketton in his high dogcart, exchanging salutations right and left with the tradespeople, with farmers brought into town by the market, with acquaintances of all sorts and conditions. More than one young woman from the shop-windows or the pavements ventured to smile at him, and the few greetings he received from the wives and daughters of his neighbors were as gracious as they could possibly be made. John almost smiled once, in the act of raising his hat, as he realized how completely the whole charm of the world, for him, seemed to lie in one woman's eyes.

At the crossways, where he should have turned up to the inn, he paused while a motor-car pa.s.sed. It contained a woman, who was talking to her host. She was not in the least like Louise, and yet instinctively he knew that she was of the same world. The perfection of her white-serge costume, her hat so smartly worn, the half-insolent smile, the little gesture with which she raised her hand--something about her unlocked the floodgates.

Market Ketton had seemed well enough a few minutes ago. John had felt a healthy appet.i.te for his midday meal, and a certain interest concerning a deal of barley upon which he was about to engage. And now another world had him in its grip. He flicked the mare with his whip, turned away from the inn, and galloped up to the station, keeping pace with the train whose whistle he had heard. Standing outside was a local horse-dealer of his acquaintance.

"Take the mare back for me to Peak Hall, will you, Jenkins, or send one of your lads?" he begged. "I want to catch this train."

The man a.s.sented with pleasure--it paid to do a kindness for a Strangewey. John pa.s.sed through the ticket-office to the platform, where the train was waiting, threw open the door of a carriage, and flung himself into a corner seat. The whistle sounded. The adventure of his life had begun at last.