The Moving Finger Part 29

"Don't!" he exclaimed. "Can't we live without mentioning those things? I am nervous to-night. Hideously nervous!" he added, under his breath.

He stood before the open window, his face set, his eyes riveted upon a spot in the distance, where the great white front of Beauleys flashed out from amongst the trees. Its windows had caught the dying sunlight, and a flood of fire seemed to be burning along its front. The flag floated from the chimneys. There was no sign of any disturbance. The quiet stillness of evening which rested upon the landscape, seemed everywhere undisturbed. Yet Saton, as he looked, s.h.i.+vered.

Down in the lane a motor-car rushed by. His eyes followed it, fascinated. It was one of the Beauleys cars, and inside was seated a tall, spare man, white-faced and serious, on whose knees rested a black case. Saton knew in a moment that it was one of the doctors who had been summoned to Beauleys, by telephone and telegraph, from all parts.

"You are watching the house of your patron," she said, drily.

"Patron no longer!" Saton exclaimed, rolling himself another cigarette. "We are enemies, declared enemies--so far as he is concerned, at any rate."

"You are a fool!" the woman said. "He might still have been useful.

You quarrel with people as though it were worth the trouble. To speak angry words is the most foolish thing I know."

Saton glanced at the clock upon the mantelpiece.

"I am going out for an hour," he said.

"To Beauleys?" she asked, mockingly.

"Somewhere near there," he answered. "Good night!"

He strolled out, hatless, and with no covering over his thin black dinner-coat. He crossed the meadow, and climbed the little range of broken, rocky hills, from which one could see down even into the flower-gardens of Beauleys. He could see there no sign of disturbance, save that there were two motor-cars before the door. Slowly he made his way to the lodge gates, and pa.s.sing through approached the house.

There were many lights burning. A certain repressed air of excitement was certainly visible. Saton longed, yet dared not, to ask for news from the people at the lodge. At any rate, the blinds were still up, and the doctors there. Probably the man was alive. Perhaps, even, he might recover!

He struck off from the drive, and followed a narrow path, which led at first between two great banks of rhododendrons, and finally wound a circuitous way through an old and magnificent shrubbery. He reached a path whence he could command a view of the house, and where he was himself unseen. He looked at his watch. He was five minutes late, but as yet there was no sign of Lois. He composed himself to wait, watching the birds come home to roost, and the insects, whom the heat had brought out of the earth, crawl away into oblivion. The air was sweet with the smell of flowers. From a little further afield came the more pungent odor of a fire of weeds. The great front of the house, ablaze though it was with lights, seemed almost deserted. No one entered or issued from the hall door.

Half an hour pa.s.sed. There was no sign of Lois. Then he saw her come, very slowly--walking, as it seemed to him, like one afraid of the ground upon which she trod. As she came nearer, he saw that her face was ghastly pale. Her eyes, which wandered restlessly to the right and to the left, were frightened, dilated. The thing had been a shock to her, of course.

He stepped a little way out from the shrubs, showing himself cautiously. She stopped short at the sight of him.

"Lois!" he called softly.

She looked at him, and a sudden wave of terror pa.s.sed across her face.

She made no movement towards him. He himself was wordless, struck dumb by her appearance. She gave a little cry. What the word was that she uttered, he could not tell. Then suddenly turning round, she fled away.

He watched her with fascinated eyes, watched her feet fly over the lawns, watched her, without a single backward glance, vanish at last through the small side door from which she had first issued. He wiped the moisture from his forehead, and a little sob broke from his throat. The vision of her face was still before him. He knew for a certainty what it was that had terrified her. She had started to keep her engagement, but she was afraid. She was afraid of him. Something that he had done had betrayed him. She knew! His liberty--perhaps his life--was in this girl's hands!

He crept out of the shrubbery and staggered down the drive, making his way homeward across the hills as swiftly as his uncertain footsteps would take him. It was dusk now, and he met no one. Yet his heart beat at every sound--the clanking of a chain, attached to the fetlock of a wandering horse, the still, mournful cry of an owl which floated out from the plantation, the clatter of the small stones which his own feet dislodged as he feverishly climbed the rocks. Above him, on the other side of the road, towered the hill where he had sat and dreamed as a boy, where Rochester had come and encouraged him to prate of his ambitions.

He looked away from its dark outline with a little groan. Up on the hillside flashed the lights of Blackbird's Nest. He stretched out his hands and groped onwards.

CHAPTER XXII

SATON REa.s.sERTS HIMSELF

Rochester asked only one question during those few days when he lay between life and death. He opened his eyes suddenly, and motioned to the doctor to stoop down.

"Who shot me?" he asked.

"It was an accident," the doctor a.s.sured him, soothingly.

Rochester said no more, but his lips seemed to curl for a moment into the old disbelieving smile. Then the struggle began. In a week it was over. A magnificent const.i.tution, and an unshattered nerve, triumphed.

The doctors one by one took their departure. Their task was over.

Rochester would recover.

_"Who shot me?"_

The doctor had seen no reason to keep silence, and this question of Rochester's had created something like a sensation as it travelled backwards and forwards. Rochester had been shot in the left side, in the middle of a field, where no accident of his own causing seemed possible. One barrel only of his gun had been fired, and to account for that a c.o.c.k pheasant lay dead within a few feet of him. The shooting-party were all old and experienced sportsmen. The gun which Rochester had left leaning against the gate was discovered exactly as he had left it there, loaded in both barrels. There was not the ghost of a clue.

Only Lois kept to her room for three days, until she could bear it no longer. Then she walked out a little way toward the woods, and met Saton. He recognised her with a shock. He himself, especially now it was known that Rochester would live, had rapidly recovered from the fit of horrors which had seized him on that night. It was not so with Lois. Her cheeks were ghastly pale, and her eyes beringed. She walked like one recovering from a long illness, and when she saw Saton she screamed.

He held out his hand, and noticed with swift comprehension her first instinctive withdrawal.

"Bertrand!" she cried. "Oh, Bertrand!"

"What do you mean?" he asked, hoa.r.s.ely.

"You know what I mean," she answered. "I don't want to touch you, but I must or I shall fall. Let me take your arm. We will go and sit down."

They sat side by side on the trunk of a fallen tree. A small stream rippled by at their feet. The meadow which it divided was dotted everywhere with little clumps of large yellow b.u.t.tercups. She sat at a little distance from him, and she kept her eyes averted.

"Bertrand," she murmured, "what does it mean? Tell me what I saw that afternoon. You took up the gun. Was it an accident? But no," she added, "it is absurd to ask that!"

"You saw me?" he exclaimed quickly. "You believe that you saw me touch that gun?"

She nodded.

"I hated to go and leave you there," she said. "I waited about behind those thick blackthorn trees, hoping that you might come my way. I saw you creep up to the gun. I saw you raise it to your shoulder. Even then I had no idea what you were going to do. Afterwards I saw the smoke and the flash. I heard the report, and Mr. Rochester's cry as he fell. I saw you slip a fresh cartridge into the gun, and go stealing away. Bertrand, I have not slept since. Tell me, was it a nightmare?"

"It was no nightmare," he answered. "I shot him, and I wish that he had died!"

She looked at him with horror.

"Bertrand," she faltered, "you can't mean it!"

"Little Lois," he answered, "I do. You do not understand what hatred is. You do not understand all that it may mean--all that it may cause.

He is my enemy, that man, and I am his. It is a duel between us, a duel to the death. The first blow has been mine, and I have failed.

You will see that it will not be long before he strikes back."

"But this is horrible!" she muttered.

"Horrible to you, of course!" he exclaimed. "Hatred is a thing of which you can know nothing. And yet there it is. People might think that he was my benefactor. He gave me money to go out and find my level in the world, gave it to me with the bitter, cynical advice--advice that was almost a stipulation--that if I failed, I ceased to live. I did fail in every honest thing I touched," he continued, bitterly. "Then I tried a bold experiment. It was the last thing offered, the last wonderful chance. I took it, and I won. Then I returned. I paid him back the money which he had lent me--I did my best to seem grateful. It was of no use. He mistrusted me from the first. In his own house I was the b.u.t.t for his scornful speeches. I was even bidden to leave. I ventured to speak to the woman with whom he is slavishly in love, and he came to me like a fury. If I had been a hairdresser posing as a duke, he could not have been more violent.

He wanted me to promise never to speak to her again--her or you. I refused. Then he declared war, and, Lois, there are weak joints in my armor. You see, I admit it to you--never to him. When he finds his way there, he will thrust. That is why I struck first."

She shook her head sadly.